Il mio nuovo libro - Anguera aveva ragione

Il mio nuovo libro - Anguera aveva ragione

Cari Amici,
ecco qui il mio nuovo libro, pubblicato dall'editore Fede e Cultura, di Verona, nello scorso gennaio:

http://www.fedecultura.com/p/vetrina_30.html#!/Anguera-aveva-ragione/p/99766424/category=0

Questo libro è il frutto di 5 anni di ricerche e di un'analisi attenta e rigorosa dei messaggi che la Vergine darebbe, dal 29 settembre 1987, a un signore oggi di mezza età, allora diciottenne, Pedro Regis, ad Anguera, diocesi di Santana de Feira, presso Salvador Bahia in Brasile. Ho potuto incontrarlo più volte, parlare con lui e ne ho ricavato la convinzione che si tratti di una persona equilibrata. Inoltre, i messaggi contengono una vasta serie di appelli a costruire una vera e propria "civiltà dell'Amore" che l'Apparsa tratteggia con accenti accorati, perché ci vuole "felici in questa vita e nell'altra". Essi si mostrano del tutto fedeli alla dottrina cattolica e insistono sulla preghiera, l'amore vicendevole, la fedeltà alla Chiesa, la frequenza ai sacramenti, l'amore per gli ultimi e i poveri. 

                                                             Col veggente, il sig.Pedro Regis

I messaggi superano ormai i 4.000 e comprendono anche un ricco insieme di profezie, probabilmente il corpus profetico più importante dell'ultimo secolo. Uno in particolare riprende il dettato del famoso Terzo Segreto di Fatima. Per studiarle, le ho raggruppate per argomenti, verificate nell'originale portoghese, analizzate e confrontate con i testi biblici, quindi con una ricca bibliografia di carattere geopolitico. Effettivamente, il quadro che ne esce è attendibile e compatibile con gli eventi di questi ultimi anni: sono profezie che si stanno progressivamente avverando. Il mio auspicio è che questo studio possa favorire l'evangelizzazione ed il lavoro della commissione istituita dal vescovo di Santana de Feira, mons. Zanoni Demettino Castro.

Chi fosse interessato all'acquisto può direttamente rivolgersi a me, oppure acquistare l'e-book o il cartaceo sul sito dell'editore al link sopra. Alcune copie sono disponibili anche alla cartoleria Mazzoni in via Pomposa a Ferrara e in altre librerie. 

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.

L'amore di John (dal mio romanzo "I bimbi di ieri")

L'amore di John

Questo brano, che ritengo piuttosto poetico, risale al marzo 2014 e parla dell'amore di John, il protagonista del mio romanzo "I bimbi di ieri", per Ada (che, avverto, è un po' idealizzata). Lo dedico ai miei studenti e a chiunque sognasse ancora il "grande amore".

Quella mattina, dopo una consistente sessione di ginnastica in cella - centinaia di flessioni, push-ups, squats, addominali e quant'altro - John aveva fatto una specie di doccia servendosi del misero lavandino a disposizione, quindi si era sdraiato sul letto, a leggere. Ma, quel giorno, non riusciva a concentrarsi. La mente veniva ripetutamente agganciata dal pensiero dell'udienza in corso, udienza cui si sentiva interessato per vari motivi. Inevitabilmente, il pensiero scivolava su Ada e sull'ammirazione da lui nutrita nei suoi confronti per tutto l'impegno e l'abnegazione di cui ella dava prova. Ben al di là di tanti altri. Altrettanto inevitabilmente, affioravano dei ricordi che inducevano in lui il confronto con altre donne da lui incontrate in passato.

Quando era più giovane, John non aveva mai avuto bisogno di corteggiare una ragazza: gli correvano dietro da sole, adolescenti della sua età o poco meno, e anche qualcuna di qualche anno maggiore. La cosa aveva finito addirittura quasi per annoiarlo. Il suo carattere riservato, non propriamente timido, ma leggermente introverso e tendente a isolarsi, molto più di quanto paresse dai suoi improvvisi scoppi di allegria, non amava le manifestazioni di favore eccessivo che certune gli dimostravano; per di più, il suo lato intrinsecamente sobrio, quasi severo, non tollerava le civetterie. Certo, aveva avuto varie storie e, non di rado, esse avevano avuto inizio quando lui stesso aveva risposto alle occhiate dolci delle coetanee che incrociava: per una, quando era poco meno che diciottenne, aveva perso letteralmente la testa; ma era durata poco. Non che i suoi sentimenti fossero mutati rapidamente: era lei che si era dileguata, quando lui si era cacciato, per l'ennesima volta, nei guai. Chissà, forse dissuasa dai suoi, forse poco convinta ella stessa, forse impaurita, non si era fatta più sentire: e lui l'aveva cercata e attesa invano. Era successo qualche anno prima che finisse nel braccio della morte: e spesso vi aveva ripensato in quel periodo e dopo, anche quando usciva con delle altre o i suoi sentimenti erano rimasti impietriti nel death-row.

Eppure, ora lo riconosceva, anche nel bel mezzo degl'innamoramenti più travolgenti, quelli così totalizzanti della prima giovinezza, in lui era rimasta sempre un'impercettibile, perenne sfumatura di insoddisfazione; ed essa si riverberava in quell'indefinibile austerità con cui valutava quelle stesse ragazze. A dire il vero, il motivo per cui si era, in fin dei conti, fidato abbastanza poco delle donne quando era libero, era più profondo. Nel corso degli anni era giunto a comprenderlo, o quasi. Quello che non tollerava, quando l'ennesima ragazza dal bel viso manovrava, neanche tanto velatamente, per fare la sua conoscenza a una festa o in un night, anche quando la sua vanità maschile ne rimaneva adulata e lui rispondeva di buon grado, anche quando finiva la serata a letto con una di esse, era la superficialità che lui avvertiva nella maggioranza di loro. Involontariamente, John si adeguava ai criteri severi assorbiti in famiglia, pur avendo perennemente lottato contro di essi. Sotto sotto, nutriva esigenze ben più profonde, forse anche più elevate; e la garrula gaiezza di varie ragazze che gli finivano tra le braccia dopo un party, magari dopo che avevano bevuto tutti e due, lo irritava la mattina dopo, quando si svegliava col mal di testa accanto a una di loro, pieno di un'amara scontentezza. Non di rado, nutriva altresì l'impressione che la ragazza in questione fosse psicologicamente miope e che la sua attenzione non andasse molto al di là dell'attrattiva costituita dal suo aspetto. Praticamente nessuno di quegl'incontri fugaci aveva retto alla prova del tempo.

A questa severità non del tutto sua, John alternava però dubbi e sensi di colpa. Talora si rammaricava di giudicare le sue ex in modo troppo rigido e scivolava nella convinzione di essere lui stesso il maggiore responsabile di quei naufragi affettivi. Talora riteneva di non aver capito di cosa loro stesse avessero bisogno e si accusava di una superficialità tutta da dimostrare. Ada preferiva parlare di debolezza e depressione: ma lui non sapeva se fidarsi della magnanimità di quel giudizio, a suo avviso orientato dall'amore. Dimenticava, in quei momenti di autocritica, che l'amore vive di verità.

Poi era arrivato nel braccio della morte. I primi anni, aveva ricevuto delle lettere di alcune giovani donne rimaste affascinate dopo averlo visto in TV o sul giornale. I media avevano preso l'abitudine di definirlo "occhi di ghiaccio": e giocavano perversamente sul contrasto tra il suo aspetto, quasi angelico, e l'efferatezza del delitto di cui era accusato e, senza via di scampo, ritenuto colpevole. Nonostante la pessima descrizione che di lui era stata offerta, d'altronde una descrizione del tutto irrealistica, o forse solleticate proprio per questo, quelle là si erano invaghite di lui: e alcune gli avevano scritto, senza farsi remore a rivelargli la loro attrazione, un'attrazione per nulla sostenuta dalla conoscenza della sua personalità. Aveva gettato quei fogli con rabbia. Ancora più di prima, quando era abituato a percepire l'interesse che suscitava nelle ragazze nel passare attraverso una sala affollata, aveva provato la netta sensazione che quelle sceme non cercassero lui, che non volessero lui. Aveva avvertito, nelle loro frasi esagerate, la falsità di un interesse effimero e meramente esteriore. Aveva avvertito il peso dell'adulazione. Aveva allora preferito rimanere solo.

L'unica, vera che avesse corteggiato e, nonostante la propria riservatezza, accanitamente, era Ada. La sua Ada. Con lei era stato diverso fin dall'inizio: era sbocciata prima l'amicizia, poi l'intesa, la complicità, quando lei non lo aveva neancora mai visto. Cos'era stato ad avvincerlo da subito? Il tono della prima lettera? La dolcezza con cui lei gli scriveva, la sorridente comprensione che gli dimostrava? Il suo humour allegramente pazzerello, con cui lei gli rivelava che parlava da sola di continuo, servendosi degl'interlocutori più improbabili, peluches compresi? La cura con cui si preoccupava delle sue condizioni e gli raccomandava di bere molta acqua o di mangiare il più sano possibile? Oppure le sue qualità?

Miseria, che donna era Ada! Capace di attraversare il mondo per venire a visitarlo, di lasciare il suo paese, il suo continente, la sua carriera, la sua vita per stare con lui: e poi con un'intelligenza! Acuta, analitica, implacabile: aveva fatto a pezzi il suo caso come forse solo lui era riuscito. E si era convinta, razionalmente convinta, che lui fosse innocente. Lavorare con lei era un piacere genuino, impagabile, anche perché erano complementari: analitica e razionale lei, più sintetico e intuitivo lui. Ma di lei lo attirava anche la forza di volontà: una volontà di ferro, insospettabile dietro un viso tanto dolce. Nel suo lavoro, riusciva a mettere a posto anche soggetti non del tutto malleabili.

E, infine, guardarla era uno dei piaceri più grandi della sua vita, secondo solo a tenerla tra le braccia: John, che aveva sempre avuto un debole per le brune, era crollato già al vederne la prima foto, nel lontano autunno 1998; ma poi, al trovarsela davanti durante la prima visita, un anno e mezzo dopo, aveva lottato con se stesso a lungo per non manifestare i propri sentimenti subito. Si ricordava che la seguiva con gli occhi, così aggraziata e sorridente, così dolce e simpatica, senza perderla di vista un attimo. L'aveva vista arrossire più volte sotto il fuoco del proprio sguardo e, a un tratto, quando lui le aveva mormorato qualcosa...Ah! Sì:

- Sei molto più bella che in fotografia - le guance le si erano soffuse di un rossore adorabile e lieve e poi lei aveva distolto un poco lo sguardo in direzione della finestra. Quel momento gli era rimasto dentro da allora; e, allora, l'aveva contemplata così, un poco di profilo, lo sguardo leggermente abbassato per un'incantevole, rara ritrosia e gli era venuta la tentazione di dichiararle il suo amore lì, subito, senz'altro. Poi, si era reso conto che lei poteva provare imbarazzo e che avrebbe potuto metterla a disagio: e, per l'ennesima volta, si era trattenuto. Alla fine, però, il giorno dopo, non c'era riuscito più.

Per lei si era messo in gioco totalmente, si era speso, aveva operato acrobazie di creatività. Non aveva mai desiderato una donna tanto quanto lei e non solo perché l'amava da anni e da anni non poteva quasi toccarla, stando nel death-row: lui era perfettamente consapevole del fatto che, se l'avesse incontrata prima, se solo l'avesse incontrata prima, avrebbe fatto di tutto per averla.

Una volta le aveva sussurrato scherzando:

- In fin dei conti, sono come quegli scavezzacollo bacchettoni che saltano la cavallina per anni e poi sono proprio quelli che esigono le ragazze più serie; e si mostrano pure i più esigenti. - Avrà anche scherzato, ma diceva il vero. La relazione intrecciata con Ada era la realizzazione più alta che avesse raggiunto nel corso della propria vita. Nulla reggeva il confronto.

Incontrare Ada, aveva significato ritornare a una concezione dell'amore completamente diversa: a lui familiare, perché non molto lontana da quanto aveva udito dai genitori, ma differente da quello che, da ribelle, aveva sperimentato lui fin dall'adolescenza. Era vissuto tra gli adolescenti e i giovani dei tardi anni '80, primi anni '90, abituatisi, in buona fede, a lasciarsi trascinare dalle esperienze sentimentali e a non controllarle troppo, sicuri che andasse bene così.

Ada invece, apparteneva a un altro mondo: a quello delle brave ragazze e dei bravi ragazzi che attendono ancora la prima notte di nozze per donarsi al proprio amore. Con lei, lui aveva appreso il vero significato di un valore considerato dai più ormai sorpassato, quasi un'anticaglia o un relitto per cui provare fastidio: la purezza. Ada era sexy, secondo lui tremendamente sexy: da lei sprigionava una sensualità solare, nitida, degna delle più esuberanti giornate estive in terra mediterranea. Lei era come lui si immaginava l'Italia: piena di sole, di colori, di calore umano. Il suo cuore traboccava di passione, una passione trascinante, dolce, eppure intensa, di quelle che alimentano non una, bensì mille e una notte. Eppure, accanto a lei, si respirava aria di purezza. Glielo aveva spiegato lei una volta, che cosa intendeva con quella parola:

- Tanti pensano alla purezza in modo nevrotico, pieno di paura, come se consistesse in una somma di divieti esterni e artificiali; e come se mantenerla coincidesse coll'evitare delle macchie di sporco, alla maniera dei vestiti da mettere in lavatrice. Ma la purezza è molto di più, straordinariamente di più di qualcosa di tanto meschino. La purezza significa armonia, significa soprattutto mancanza di egoismo; significa dedizione vera, significa rispetto.

Ecco: per la prima volta in tanti anni, con Ada John aveva conosciuto sulla propria pelle la carezza lieve del rispetto, di un velo pudico che copre delicatamente chi si ama, dell'estasi di essere amato per la persona che era. Non c'era bisogno che lei glielo dicesse, perché ne era sicuro: non sarebbe mai stata d'accordo a finire a letto con lui dopo un party. E non che lei non lo desiderasse: nessuna, il suo istinto di uomo glielo suggeriva, lo aveva desiderato tanto quanto lei. Durante le loro visite insieme, lo sguardo innamorato di lei scivolava sui lineamenti di lui accarezzandoli dolcemente, scivolava lungo le sue larghe spalle, le braccia, il torace e tutta la sua alta figura con il rapimento dolcissimo di chi contempla una meraviglia e non se ne staccherebbe mai. Con lei John aveva compreso, nel suo significato più profondo, il perché il suo contegno sarebbe stato tanto diverso; se lei lo avesse conosciuto fuori, il vero, unico, grande motivo per attendere la gioia suprema di una notte tra le sue braccia sarebbe stato uno solo: l'amore per lui.

Kintsugi

Kintsugi

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of piecing together vases by a golden or silver thread: an art which shows a philosophical background too. The Japanese, in fact, appreciate a lot what is old, scarred, broken: it emanates the scent of deeper life. In this tale, which I sent to a literary competition on February, I connect kintsugi with the subject of ageing: this is particularly worthy of attention in our era, when we are often tempted to reduce everything, even weak human beings, to trash.

Biopsies, blood tests, chemotherapy, vomit; and then, radiotherapy, hormones, nausea, bleeding; and again, bones aches, weakening muscles, impaired sight, collapsing skin. And the solitude of days elapsing in a lonely, pale, hospital room, staring at the ceiling; dejection, grey depression, even despair, exploding suddenly in his heart; or the fear of ache, even more dreadful than ache itself. All of this had become his daily routine since the day when his specialist, with grey, watery eyes, had stared at him and spelled, in a hardly audible voice:

- Carlo, it's prostate cancer. With metastasis in your bones. You might have one year left, more or less.

Since then, he didn't recognize his existence anymore: Carlo, riding a motorcycle and enjoying gymnastics and Nordic walking; Carlo steadily frequenting movies, museums, the theater, libraries, and increasing his collection of history books. He was 67, but still thirsty of life and youth: and now he had almost forgotten how he was just two months before. Years long, in spite of ageing, he had almost persuaded himself that he remained strong, lively, young; and now, he had apparently lost all of his energy, his impassioned zest for life. In the hospital, he lay on his bed, absent-mindedly, just waiting for the next treatment and fit of nausea; at home, he unusually sat round-shouldered in his wonderful, but now dusty, library, full of superb volumes. A relic among relics.

And yet, in spite of this harassing depression, sometimes he still felt a desperate craving for life: when he gazed at the orange-reddish stripes of light expanding over the horizon, just minutes before darkness fell definitively on the rocks of his Liguria, he longed for wedging dozens of activities, one more frantic than the other, in those ephemeral twelve months. But lately, he found no more strength for this. He just lay inertly in his arm-chair. Feeling his face always more wrinkled.

Suddenly, he discovered himself lonely too. Since some years he was divorced - an adventure with a pretty woman, two decades, perhaps, younger than him, had resulted in the brutal collapse of his evanescent marriage; a marriage looking like an empty shell since so much time that he didn't remember when it had started to vanish. His wife had left and built again a life of hers elsewhere, determinedly and aggressively as usual; and the relationship with the younger lover, which had filled him with so much enthusiasm and exuberance at first - well, it dissolved too. Now Edda, his former wife, routinely visited him, with the achromatic solicitude of a governess; as for his grand-children, almost teenagers (Francesco was hardly 15, Martina 10), he had even less to share with them than with his own son, Enzo, often away for work. When he tried to talk with them, they weren't impolite, no, but distracted: their look wandered far away, outside of the window, towards the light of the afternoon; and he felt unable to reach them and their lively daydreaming. Unable to reach that light.

When he experienced some relief thanks to chemotherapy, failing to piece together his schedule again, Carlo found some distraction just on his sleepless nights, in scrolling websites on the Internet: websites dedicated to his, maybe whilom interests - antiques, books, art. He had no time anymore for books, they were too long to read: websites were more synthetic and focused. He passed unnumbered, silent hours before the screen, unable to detach his eyes from it: lest the night, now friendly, could suddenly clutch him with a hostile grip. Sometimes he didn't understand what he read, but those exquisite images - precious books, colorful ceramics, paintings blurred by the patina of time - diverted his thoughts towards a more pleasurable reverie.

In a chat about restoration he had got acquainted with a Japanese lady, Midori, an expert on kintsugi: the art of piecing together broken vases by a thin thread of gold. She still lived in Nagasaki and, since she was only 4, she was a survivor, a hibakusha, of the nuclear explosion: not seldom, she shyly hint to the crushing consequences of it, still lingering on her life like a poisonous cloud. But she enormously loved her job, whose adepts were becoming increasingly rare: and by email she explained techniques, showed him pictures of her tiny masterworks. She had sent him a photo of herself too: a gentle, smiling lady, simply elegant in her traditional kimono, with her hands joined as if she were born to bow.

A delicate friendship had developed; thanks to her, Carlo discovered the beauty of Japanese poetry, so concise and striking: it fitted more his urge to live.

And now, by night, many a time they shared their worries. Her memory was weakening, because of an insidious form of Alzheimer: and while he listed his ailments, depicting a life sliding imperceptibly toward a dark tunnel, she grieved her memory.

- I'll forget, Carlo...And then?

- Strange. Sometimes I'd like to forget. Everything. - He would have added: I'd like falling asleep and not awakening anymore.

- But if I forget, I won't be able to witness, above all in front of young people, nor to forgive...The art of old age is memory...and forgiving.

Her ideal of forgiving looked admirable to Carlo, and he was aware that Midori went on to bear her testimony about the bomb in front of class-rooms and a large audience, relating also her experience of forgiving, shared by her Nagasaki Christian community. But the man considered forgiving abstract, distant, like the moon: finally, he had a good American friend, Bill, a typical, warm-hearted, cheerful inhabitant of the South, met during a stage on finance: and, like many of his fellow-nationals, Bill felt no regret for the atomic bombs. Nor any worry at all for any kind of Japanese forgiving. US had done what was right for the world, full stop. In spite of his perplexity, Carlo had never dared oppose the perspective of his friend, who, after all, was a very nice man.

By the way, Carlo and Bill had heard from each other just a few months before, and he was grieving his wife, Louise, who had suddenly died of a heart attack after 38 years of marriage. Now he felt lost in their large, pretty house on the banks of a wide river, and the sunset never arrived for him sitting alone on the porch. He had started to cherish Louise's dainty belongings and to preserve them like in a small, family museum. He didn't dare leave the house anymore, even for a few hours.

Once, Carlo and Midori discussed about his library. He was reluctant to leave it to his grandson Francesco: he showed no interest in history, nor in books in general, and Carlo was afraid this wonderful collection might go damaged or dispersed. He rather planned to leave it to the local city library.

- Are you sure, Carlo? - Midori replied from the other end of the world; a slight quivering could be guessed in her lines. - Are you sure?

Just this reiterated question aroused his doubts, even if her discretion did not dare advance beyond an invisible line. A week later, Carlo made a try with his grandson:

- See? These books?...I might leave them to you.

Francesco raised his chubby, pinky cheeks towards him with a flabbergasted look:

- Meeee???

- Yes. If you want, all this can be yours. - and, from his worn leather-chair, Carlo raised his hand in a circular, showing gesture.

- Miiiine?!? Wow!!!

Francesco approached a shelf with the veneration of a pilgrim in the cell of a sanctuary: and by a finger he caressed the colored cover of a volume about World War I. It was the first one he asked to read: maybe he was just attracted by the colors of the cover, but he tried. He was discovering himself owner of an extraordinary treasure, a treasure he had too long contemplated from a distance in awe.

This was a first spark in Carlo's now restricted sky: pain and despondency were swallowing the rest. Midori went on to send him detailed pictures of her restored vases, but he was not able to fully appreciate those pieces of brown or grey pottery, encircled by golden threads, sinuous like the tentacles of a silent spider. She tried to explain to him:

- It's our philosophy, wabi-sabi, which appreciates what's broken or worn. We don't throw away what we have used for a long time: waste comes from failed relationships, even with objects...Use makes them more precious, more perfect...

Among the pictures he also noted some expensive artifacts, enveloped as well by those shining meshes.

- How can you accept that a costly piece of porcelain goes broken? It will never be the same anymore, even if you repair it...

- No, it will become more precious. When we love something, we feel compassion for it and accept it changing.

This reminded Carlo again of his friend Bill. After Louise's death, he had religiously kept even the fragments of a precious, pearly vase from Bavaria she had loved a lot. They were still stored in a drawer. When, after a terrible week of bones-aches, he felt a little better, he phoned to his friend in Georgia.

- Bill? Have you still those white pieces?

The shipping and restoration needed some weeks, so much more so as Midori was now working always more slowly: but after two months, an amazed Bill, opening a voluminous, brown package, marked with some incomprehensible signs, discovered, amid a large amount of white paper and styrofoam, a delicate, pearl-white piece of porcelain, embraced by an embroidery of golden and silver lines. He had never got acquainted with any Japanese: and he stared wide-eyed at the horizon, wondering how such beautiful grace could inhabit those people that his father, while in the Pacific Sea, had considered just as cruel enemies.

Bill's joyful exclamations and a sense of quiet gratitude accompanied Carlo's weakening some days long, almost letting him forget that his time was running out: and the little rest of it was always more absorbed by the vapors of morphine. In the pauses among his excruciating tortures, and dulling mist, sitting in his chair, he looked at Francesco, who now frequently attended his library and shuttled almost whimsically from a book to another: but Carlo enjoyed that sight. His grandson even witnessed some of his chats with Midori. When he interfered, telling he had to do a school research about World War the II, the gentle lady, who hid beneath her smile the dread of losing always more fragments of her memory, agreed to recount her past to him. Carlo listened, nodding quietly, while Francesco recorded Midori's narrations on some MP3 files: oddly, she explained, she had never felt compelled to capture her own voice on tape, because she had always believed in the truth gushing from lively sounds. But could that stop, at least for a little time, the inexorable dispersion of images and faces flowing away from her mind like water from a broken piece of pottery? Who knows...

        

On a quiet summer sunset, spreading a golden drape on Liguria rocky coasts, from the silence beyond the horizon Carlo, always more tired, received a Japanese poem:

Ageing means forgiving:
forgiving leaves, as they fall down,
forgiving our body, as it collapses,
forgiving nature, as it abandons us,
forgiving others, as they forget us;
forgiving everything,
because it will go on to exist
also without us...

He read her verses in silence. Fear, an unfathomable fear of anything, still inhabited him, but now he cherished her vases: while sinking in the dark tunnel at the extremity of his life, in that night of senses, he could glimpse a delicate, golden web of loving gestures spreading among continents and generations, thinly, delicately supporting him, in spite of fear and pain, and piecing together the impossible...