John's love (from my novel "The children of yesterday")

John's love

This passage, written by me on March 2014, concerns the love by John, the protagonist, for Ada (who is actually a little idealized). I dedicate it to my students, and to everyone who still believes in the "great love".

That morning, after a substantial session of gymnastics in his cell - hundreds of push-ups, squats, sit-ups and anything else - John made a kind of shower using the poor sink available, then he lay on his bed, to read. But, that day, he could not focus. His mind was repeatedly hooked by the thought of the hearing underway, hearing he was interested in for various reasons. Inevitably, his thought slid to Ada and to the admiration he nourished for her for all the effort and dedication she gave evidence of. Well beyond many others. Equally inevitably memories cropped up inducing him to compare her with other women he had met in his past.

When he was younger, John had never needed to court a girl: they spontaneously ran after him, teenagers of his age or a little less, and some even a few years older. The thing had even ended up by almost boring him. His reserved nature, not exactly shy, but slightly introverted and prone to isolate him, much more than it should seem from his sudden outbursts of joy, didn't like the excessive favor some of them showed him; moreover, his inherently sober, almost severe side couldn't tolerate any coquetry. Of course, he had had numerous love stories and, not infrequently, they had begun when he had answered to sweet glances from the girls of his age he crossed: for one of them, when he was less than eighteen years old, he had literally lost his head; but it was short-lived. Not that his feelings had changed rapidly: it was her who had vanished when he had got, yet again, in trouble. Who knows, perhaps discouraged by her parents, perhaps unconvinced herself, perhaps frightened, she had never called him anymore: and he had sought and waited for her in vain. It had happened a few years before he ended up in the death row: and he had often thought of her in that period and later, even when he went out with others or his feelings were petrified in the death-row.

Yet, now he recognized that, even in the most overwhelming passions, those so absolute of his early youth, he had always kept an imperceptible, perennial shade of dissatisfaction; and it was reverberated in that indefinable austerity he evaluated those same girls by. Actually, the reason why, after all, he had trusted women so little when he was free, was deeper. Over the years he had come to understand, or almost understand it. What he didn't tolerate, when yet another girl with a pretty face was maneuvering, not so covertly, to make his acquaintance at a party or in a night-club, even when his male vanity was flattered and he responded willingly, even when he ended the night in bed with one of them, it was the superficiality he found in most of them. Involuntarily, John conformed to the strict criteria absorbed in his family, while having constantly fought against them. Deep down, he fed far more profound needs, perhaps even higher; and the garrulous glee of several girls who ended up among his arms after a party, even after both of them had been drinking, irritated him the next morning, when he woke up with a headache next to one of them, full of bitter discontent. Not infrequently, he also fed the impression that the girl on issue was psychologically myopic and that her attention did not go far beyond his attractive look. Virtually no one of those fleeting encounters had stood the test of time.

With this severity not entirely corresponding to him, John alternated doubts and guilt-feelings though. Sometimes he regretted judging his former girl-friends too harshly and slid in the belief that he was himself the main responsible of those emotional wrecks. Sometimes he thought he had not understood what they needed and accused himself of a kind of superficiality to be demonstrated. Ada preferred to speak of weakness and depression: but he did not know whether he could trust the magnanimity of that judgment, in his opinion directed by love. He forgot, in those moments of self-criticism, that love lives of truth.

Then he had arrived on the death row. The first years, he had received letters from some young women fascinated by him after seeing him on TV or in the newspaper. The media had started to call him "cold eyes" and perversely played on the contrast between his almost angelic appearance, and the brutality of the crime he was accused of and, with no way out, found guilty. Despite the bad description which was offered about him, besides a completely unrealistic one, or maybe tickled just by it, those there had fallen in love with him: and some had written to him, without hesitating to reveal their attraction, an attraction not supported at all by the knowledge of his personality. He had thrown away those papers angrily. Even more than before, when he was used to perceive the interest he aroused among girls while walking through a crowded room, he felt strongly that those silly women didn't seek him, they didn't want him. In their exaggerated sentences he felt, the falsity of an ephemeral and merely external interest. He felt the burden of flattery. Then he preferred to be alone.

The only, true one he had courted and, despite his reserve, doggedly courted, was Ada. His Ada. With her it had been different since the beginning: at first friendship, then understanding, then complicity blossomed, when she had not even seen him yet. What had captivated him at once? The tone of her first letter? The sweetness by which she wrote to him, the smiling understanding she showed him? Her cheerfully crazy humor, by which she revealed she talked by herself all the time, addressing the most unlikely interlocutors, including her soft toys? The care by which she was concerned about his condition and recommended to him that he drank plenty of water or ate as healthy as possible? Or her qualities?

Hell, what kind of woman Ada was! Able to cross the world to come and visit him, to leave her country, her continent, her career, her life to be with him: and then, with such an intelligence! Acute, analytical, implacable: she had torn his case into pieces as perhaps only he had managed. And she was convinced, rationally convinced that he was innocent. Working with her was a genuine pleasure, priceless, because they were complementary: she was analytical and rational, he more concise and intuitive. But he was also attracted by the force of her will, a irony will, unsuspected behind such a sweet face. In her work, she could put in place not completely malleable individuals too.

And finally, looking at her was one of the greatest pleasures of his life, second only to holding her among his arms: John, who had always had a soft spot for brunettes, had collapsed already seeing her first photos, back in the distant autumn 1998; but then, finding her in front of himself, during their first visit, a year and a half later, for a long time he had struggled with himself to not express his feelings at once. He remembered he followed her with his eyes, so graceful and smiling, so sweet and nice, without losing sight of her for a moment. He had seen her blushing repeatedly under the fire of his eyes and, suddenly, when he had whispered something ... Ah! Yup:

- You're much more beautiful than in a photography - her cheeks were suffused with an adorable blush and then she had slightly diverted her look towards the window. That moment had stayed inside him ever since; and, then, he had contemplated her like this, a little sideways, her eyes slightly lowered for a lovely, rare modesty, and he had been tempted to declare her his love there, immediately, at once. Then, he realized she could be embarrassed and he could make her feel uncomfortable: and, for the umpteenth time, he had withheld his feelings. Eventually, though, the next day, he had not been able to anymore.

For her he had totally put himself into play, he had spent himself, he had bent backwards out of creativity. He had never desired a woman so much as her, and not only because he loved her since years and since years he could't almost touch her, being in the death-row: he was perfectly aware that, if he had met her before, if only he had met her before, he would have done anything for her.

Once he jokingly whispered to her:

- After all, I'm like those sanctimonious daredevils who sow their wild oats for years and then they're those who require the most serious girls; and they appear even the most demanding. - He might have joked, but he told the truth. His relationship with Ada was the highest fulfillment he had reached in his life. Nothing held the comparison.

Meeting Ada meant to return to a completely different conception of love: familiar to him, because not very far from what he had heard from his parents, but different from what he, as a rebel, had experienced since his adolescence. He had been living among teenagers and young people in the late 80s, early 90s, used, in good faith, to be carried away by relationships and to not control them too much, sure it went okay like that.

Ada however, belonged to another world: that of good girls and good boys who still wait for their first wedding night to give themselves to their love. With her, he had learned the true meaning of a value considered by the most out of date, almost an antique or a wreck inducing discomfort: purity. Ada was sexy, according to him terribly sexy: she radiated a sunny sensuality, limpid, worth the most exuberant summer days in the Mediterranean land. She was like he imagined Italy: full of sun, colors, human warmth. Her heart overflew with passion, a compelling, gentle, yet intense passion, able to nourish not one, but one thousand one nights. Yet, beside her, he breathed air of purity. Once she had explained him what she meant by that word:

- Many think of purity as something neurotic, full of fear, as if it consisted of a sum of external and artificial prohibitions; and as if keeping it coincided with avoiding dirt stains, like clothes to be put in the washing machine. But purity is more, much, extraordinarily more than something so petty. Purity means harmony, means primarily selflessness; it means true dedication, it means respect.

                                         

Here, for the first time in many years, with Ada, John had learnt on his skin the light caress of respect, a modest veil covering gently the loved person, the ecstasy of beig loved for the person he was. There was no need for her to tell him, because he was sure about that: she would never agree to end up sleeping with him after a party. And not that she did not wish for it: no woman, his manly instinct suggested to him, had desired him so much as her. During their visits together, her loving look was sliding on his features caressing them tenderly, it slid along his broad shoulders, arms, chest and his whole, tall figure with the sweet rapture of someone contemplating a wonder and who would never leave it. With her, John had understood, in its deepest meaning, why her demeanor would be so different; if she had known him outside, the true, only, great reason to wait for the supreme joy of a night among his arms, would be only one: her love for him.

                             

A few lines of comment to this passage. I can say that its ground comes from true life; anyway, Ada's love is founded in something which can be very well expressed by the poem beneath.

I remember one film by K.Kieslowski, Decalogue 1, where the protagonist, a scientist who has completely forgotten the supernatural side of our life, sees his computer suddenly going crazy: and, on the screen, there is just a sentence: "I'm ready". It is very suggestive and recalling the absolute. The absolute is ready at our door ("I stand at the door, and I knock") with his love; but this love can be also embodied in the love by a woman: a true woman. True love shows true Love: that's what Ada's love says to John.

I'm ready

I'm ready to love you - forever.

I'm ready to support you and to stay by your side:
so that you're not alone anymore.
I'm ready to give you what you need -
- esteem, comprehension, tenderness - and so much more.
I'm ready to adorn a fire-place with you -
and to make your house home.
I'm ready to share your plans and projects -
and to make them progress towards the horizon tiny line.
I'm ready to leave my country and to love yours as my own.
I'm ready to love your dear ones as if they were mine -
- for their own sake and because in them I'd see a spark of you.
I'm ready to heal your wounds, to feel your pain as my own -
- but also, to make you smile and laugh, to let you hope.
I'm ready to share with you the burden of passing years -
- to find a meaning in what is lost, and what we'll never have.
I'm ready to forgive you - and to need your forgiveness.
A woman should be the Paradise of a man - if she is just willing to.
Happyness knocks only once at the door - and now, she is at yours.
Opening to her requires prudence -
- but also the unavoidable crazyness of courage.
Immense is the regret coming from fear:
years of pain, afterwards, never end.
Life is heavy when, only when one says "no" to Love:
the true one, always coming from above.