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( Sergio Bissoli ITA – 63 RACCONTI SUPERNATURALI - tran. by G. M.)
Short stories on spiritism, witchcraft, the occult,
paganism, animism, the unusual and the mistery.
At August sunsets the blue clouds are like heavy drapings spread upon the pale background of the sky.
I’m walking to Sereno’s I quite often patronize.
The shop is crammed with goods and whatever thing you may look for, you can bet you’ll find there. Brooms, sieves, pots are hanging from the ceiling-hooks... The counters are chock-full with wares. The floor is strewn with bed-warmers, hearth-tools, rat-traps, sacks of beans...
The owner is a stout, smiling man and for many years has he been running this bazaar-like shop. After I have bought a few things I say good-bye to him and go away.
The sunset is really foaming with rosy gauzy clouds. It’s a heavenly night, a night that certainly becomes poets and lovers.
In the uncertain light I am slowly stepping along porches, I’m grazing closed doors. A thin girl is sewing seated by the door. She’s beautiful and sad. Her hair is sleek and quite long, and she wears a black dress trimmed with white lace.
Silence, shade, mould and dampness are under the porches. I’m giving way to grief since I feel oppressed here by the ineluctable rolling by of time. When autumn approaches, memories become long-bladed knives. I’m thinking of winter, of old age, of death... And I’m asking myself what I’ve mistaken in the game of Life...
The name of the girl is Mara and every time I call at this place I stay a while to chat with her. She’s a solitary, introverted, friendless type of girl. She is so sealed up a world, made both of suffering and sweetness.
When I am by her while she’s needleworking, I can’t help staring at her. She is as beautiful as the very first lost love. A broom leans against the wall. There are purple, fire-bordered clouds in the sunset sky and incandescent fires behind them.
I feel anxious as I begin to talk :
"Here I am meeting you again at last, even though it is only for a short time... The way that leads to you is long, tortuous and it seems to be endless to me".
I stop speaking while a feeling of emptiness and suffocation seizes me. The girl stops sewing to better concentrate on my words.
"Forget me..." I tell her in a whispering voice.
An old man as bent as a snake is passing by. The sky now opens with gashes, cracks, holes from which sabre-cuts of light rain.
"Forget me, for all things I haven’t given to you, for all promises I haven’t kept.... For all time flown away, for all lives wasted..."
I resume to speak after a short pause :
"For this reason am I to love you without possessing you, am I to adore you without possessing you... up to the moment when a new opportunity offers and I won’t be withdrawing by that time and I’ll be keeping my pledge..."
Extensive clouds as thin as needles are still delaying in the sky that is already of a light-blue colour.
For the first time the girl turns away from needleworking and raises her head. I look at the bottom of her eyes and it happens as if I were looking at the depths of an abyss. I can see so many things in her eyes : the promise to take me into the labyrinths and mysteries of love; but melancholy and a vague feeling of despair also...
I lower my eyes just to escape all these things and in this way my eyes rest a while on the fabric she’s working on. I see a conspicuous odd pattern made of complicated arabesques that widen out, repeat over and over again, cross one another.... intertwine....
* * *
"Do you feel well? Do you want us to call a doctor?"
I see uneasy people round me, who are putting some bandages into a basin full of water.
I am seated at Sereno’s. Someone is telling me that a hook must have come off the ceiling and that a pot has fallen onto my head, so that I have fainted for a few minutes.
I reassure them that I’m all right, then I pick up my shopping-bag, pay and get out of the place. Night has fallen. I make for home while keeping a wet handkerchief upon my head where it aches.
The next days I make inquieries about that incident. What I get to know is that a girl named Mara really lived in a house under the porches, some fifty years ago. An old fortune-teller who had known her has told me that the beautiful introverted girl was left an orphan.
Mara had a fiancé who abandoned her. After that, the girl moved to another town, and nothing could be heard of her by anyone ever since.
It’s quite strange. Perhaps Mara, seated somewhere in the folds of time, is really waiting for her destiny to come back to accomplish its plan.
MAGGIO 1997
On my evening, digestion-helping promenades I like going along a country road in the vicinity of the village of M***.
I’m also walking along this usual solitary road this evening, where I rarely meet with an occasional peasant . I cross a bridge over a river and listen to the frogs croaking at sunset. Some distance away there is a rusty pump encased into a pillar. Still further on, beyond a curve, I pass past an old deserted house.
It’s a grey, long and narrow house with a pitted chimney-stack on top of it. The brickwork is visible under the plastering removed here and there. Weeds grow all over the place and a can leans against the wall. One of the windows is open and a mouldy moist smell comes out from inside the house.
On making my way through nettles and debris I manage to draw nearer to take a glance at the semi-dark interior. There’s a sooty hearth, a rotten wooden ambry and a broken mirror. Maybe I shall be getting in through the window one of these evenings to have a look at the rooms upstairs, too.
The next evening I’m, again, going along that road and remain a more time in front of the deserted house. In that loneliness I am being imbued with its past, I am absorbing pieces of its history.
I am convinced that in the old houses the facts that took place are recorded and kept. All deeds of life’s comedy; the gestures pertaining to love have been repeated for tens of years. All scenes of home life are certainly still impregnated in such places as these. Just a little sensitiveness is enough to be able to perceive all memories of the walls, that’s to say the small paradises which are shut in these rooms.
The next evening I’m once again walking along the road that leads to the old house. Days are getting shorter and the twilight is greyer and paler.
When I arrive in front of the ruined house the light is even fainter.
Now I have a look inside through the window and the room seems full of smoke. But there isn’t any smell of burning. There’s an odd dusty light inside the room and in that haziness some people are moving...
I see a thin young woman. She’s very beautiful but her look is grave and sad. The woman wears a flower-patterned dress and holds a child in her arms. An old woman seated in a corner is knitting. A pan is boiling by the fireplace.
I remain astonished and look fixedly inside the room. I feel my sweat dripping down my skin and those sweatdrops seem as many pinpricks to me.
Those people don’t seem real, nevertheless they are not unreal, only they are a bit more faded and when they go to a more illuminated spot they completely disappear.
At every second that goes by the room gets darker and darker, until I can see but darkness.
With my breath quickened by emotion I resume to step away. I am sure that the things I’ve just seen are scenes of the past. They are small paradises, or small hells that take place now and then in process of time.
JULY 1997
BLUE ENTITY (PART TWO)
"Guide Spirit, give us a sign of your presence" professor Lorentz whispers.
Silence. The flame of the candle illuminates the small room where we are gathered together for our monthly séance.
"Guide Spirit, give us a sign of your presence".
The tick-tacking of the pendulum-clock, a creaking from a piece of furniture. A deep sigh from the woman medium.
"Guide Spirit, give us...".
"The little table lifts on one side and remains inclined. The polished top of the table we are resting our hands on is run through by vibrations. Then the table suddenly falls down at a blow going back to its previous horizontal position.
Now professor Lorentz begins asking questions :
"Let’s start from my last question : who created God?"
"God derives from another primordial entity. God is the result of a very long evolution".
"Possible? Isn’t God eternal and immutable?"
"No. God is an entity undergoing evolution and eternity is cyclic".
"In this world there are diseases, sufferings, parasites... Why?"
"Some of the imperfections are wanted, others are intermediate stages, others are errors ascribable to the same plan of creation".
"A man is born as a paralytic and he’ll therefore spend a lifetime in a wheel-chair. Why do such things happen?"
"He may have upset an equilibrium and he’s therefore in need of restablishing it. Or he may need to go through this kind of experience. Or it may be a consequence of an error on the part of God’s creative action. In any case, before being born, he himself has already planned and chosen just that particular way of living".
"What happens to a man who has committed a crime?"
"In this life everybody harvests the fruits of his previous incarnation and seeds for his future one. Every spirit is in the overbearing need of paying off his debts and chooses for himself one or more lives for his sufferings! Or he goes down the evolutionary scale and comes to a new life again as an animal".
"How does personality (i.e. the ego) evolve after death?"
"Personality remains identical inside the spiritual body".
"Can you describe the experience of death?"
"After death the spirit takes off and sees his physical body below. Then the spirit goes through a tunnel. And at the bottom of it he meets some familiar spirits waiting for him".
"Where is the spirit bound to go to after death?"
"He gets to a spiritual level where other spirits belonging to the same evolutionary level dwell".
"Does evolution continue also in the Hereafter?"
"Yes, it does".
"How do you explain children’s deaths?"
"Death doesn’t mean the end. Children grow in the Otherworld or reincarnate".
"Where do animals get to after death?"
"To the Otherworld and they are to carry out their own evolutionary process".
"Are then animals endowed with spirit?"
"Yes, they are. Superior animals are endowed with a well developed spirit like a man.
Inferior animals and bacteria are endowed with a very primitive spirit that reincarnates at a fast pace".
"Do vegetables possess spirit?"
"Yes, they do. Moreover, they also have the faculty to develop it. Remember that your own spirit has gone through mineral forms, then vegetable and eventually animal forms, before being able to reincarnate into a man".
"What’s the ultimate goal of each life?"
"The ultimate goal of each life is learning how to become a God, that’s to say co-creators".
At this point the sitters begin making inquiries after their dead dear ones and speaking with them. I just don’t feel like here reporting these dialogues concerning personal matters.
The séance is interrupted when tiredness prevents us from going on. Then I slip my overcoat on and go away.
The night is immense and cold around me and the stars are winking in the dark sky. As I’m walking along, I think back to my past life and to what I have presently become. I delay in thinking of this long pathway all creatures are to go through to reach their own individuality, knowledge and consciousness. And in thinking of that grand mysterious fate that is still ahead of me.
JULY 1997
Dead silence. The room is as icy as an ice-house. The moonlight coming in through the windows faintly illuminates the furniture and draws shining rectangles on the floor.
Mr. Bert, the owner of this old villa, restless and overstrung, is by me. He’s a slim, tall man. He’s walking back and forth to dispel his nervousness and is incessantly smoking. I do not know what we are exactly waiting for, neither have I any idea of the reason why he’s invited me to come here tonight.
This enervating suspense has been lasting for over an hour. Then Mr. Bert suddenly takes me by the arm and tells me in his hoarse and excited voice :
"Keep quiet. Listen. It’s coming..."
In the silence some faint, piercing sounds can be heard at a distance... After a while I hear someone play the piano. At times he or she plays at random, at times starts a melody, then stops and the some other random notes are played again. Then, again, a soft, cryptic, secret melody...
"Who’s playing at this time?" I ask.
"Nobody. The upstairs apartment is uninhabited".
"Do you mean that..."
"Just so! That piano plays by itself by night... Follow me!"
Mr. Bert lights a candle and in front of me he climbs the stairs lined with banisters made of wrought iron. At times the sounds are loud, at times faint, till they deaden.
Once upstairs, we go along a corridor. Mr. Bert stops in front of a wooden, polished door, gets the key out and opens it. We get in.
The candlelight illuminates a small, dusty room with velvet armchairs and a little broken table.
The piano is in a corner and its vibrating strings emit sounds from time to time. It’s an old instrument with two branched candlesticks on each side. When I draw nearer, I notice that the keyboard is yellowed and full of dust.
Puzzled and scared we go back downstairs.
The next morning Mr. Bert and I are seated in an austere office with high book-shelves and blackened pictures hanging on the walls. I begin asking questions with the intention of unveiling the mystery.
"Are there any young people coming to the house?"
"Nobody comes here. I live alone".
"Have you called any spiritualist séances of late?"
"No, I haven’t".
"Who did that piano belong to?"
"It was my aunt Carmen’s. She had it shipped from Massachusetts when she was young".
"When did your aunt’s death occur?"
"Over two years ago".
"Is it from that moment on that this phenomenon has been occurring?"
"I don’t know. I haven’t lived here for a long time. I lived at my brother’s before".
"What type of person was your aunt?"
"Oh! She was an eccentric woman. She loved music and never got married. During the last years of her life she would hardly ever set foot outside her house. She was an alcoholic, she used to lock herself in her own room and drink and play..."
After exchanging these few words we get back upstairs to inspect the piano. Owing to the sunlight coming in through the window the room seems different : older and more dilapidated, full of creakings and smelling mouldy.
I lift the cover of the piano, check the mechanism, then I seal up the lid of the keyboard with sealing wax with the proprietor’s permission. I also seal up the door leading to the staircase, then we go downstairs.
The same evening we are seated in the drawing-room and wait. When the night comes Mr. Bert becomes more restless and more anxious. He smokes quite nervously and walks to and fro...
At a point we hear a music in the silence coming from the uninhabited apartment. It’s a fall of faint sounds in the beginning. Silence follows. Then a few more notes. Sounds resume to be heard again, at times chaotic, at times melodious...
At this point I suggest to Mr. Bert to go away and leave me alone in the villa for some time. He agrees very willingly. He takes his coat from the clothes-hook and goes out of the room. I hear his footsteps as he’s going along the corridor. Now I hear the noise of the exit door when it is opened. I hear Mr. Bert tread on the gravelled alley in the garden and then I see the man go past the windows and go away.
As the owner is leaving the villa, the sounds from the piano become fainter and fainter. They little by little lose their intensity, they become nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations.
Then the silence of the night falls on the villa. The phenomenon has completely stopped.
The morning after I check up the wax seals and, since I find out they are untouched, I have to admit that what is going on is supernatural. I suggest as a solution to the enigma that the piano should be sold, or be given to someone else, or be carried away somewhere else.
Mr. Bert sends for the labourers and accepts my suggestion very enthusiastically.
Some months later Mr. Bert informs me that the piano has already been carried to his brother’s house, where it seems to trouble nobody.
As is the case of all things in this world, also the piano was impregnated with its proprietor’s psychic energy. This energy in our case was particularly powerful, but it alone wasn’t enough to produce the phenomenon.
Mr. Bert is a medium and doesn’t know he is. He just acted as a means capable of giving off the energy which in this way could show in a series of sounds. And that just turned out to be enough to get the two things separated, so that the disquieting phenomenon has ended by recurring no more.
JULY 1997
It’s not long ago that I’ve moved to this village to live here.
It’s a quiet place, with nothing interesting in the surroundings. There are neither natural, nor historic, nor panoramic beauties. The country stretches out flat around us and the village is nothing but a small cluster of houses that are more or less very like one another.
Perhaps the only nice thing here is the rosery belonging to my neighbours.
In a small house painted white there live three little old people, two brothers and a sister. Before the façade there are three rose bushes, old and in full bloom. I’m not good at flowers, but I had never seen such beautiful and big roses as these before.
One morning I notice that the bush in the middle seems diseased; its flowers and leaves have withered up and the plant is visibly suffering. A few days later the petals fall to the ground and by a week’s time the bush becomes dried up, its branches yellowed.
Old Linda who waters the roses every day is very sorry about it.
But another bad luck, much more serious, hits the home. The windows are closed this morning and I see the undertaker’s men come. Soon afterwards, I get to know that Joseph, the eldest brother, is dead of infarct this very night.
I haven’t known my neighbours for a long time, but I by courtesy join in the funeral some days later.
During the summer months, when I open wide my windows as a daily habit, I am enraptured and stare at the roses which stand out like coloured arabesques against the white background of the wall. The sight of the blooming rosery gives me great pleasure, not differently from as if I were watching a painting, or listening to music, for that matter.
Then, in process of time, the bush on the right becomes shrivelled up; its petals are falling, its branches are bending... Perhaps some parasites are devouring the roots of the plant.
When the bush gets dried up and dies out, Mr. Arthur works all day in the sun to uproot the plant, takes the branches off and levels the soil.
This hard work turns out to be excessive for old Arthur, since he’s now in bed suffering from pneumonia. Some days later, I hear that the man is dead.
Now only one rose bush is left and I take heart at looking at it. I’ve even put my writing-table next to the window.
One morning Linda calls me to ask me a favour, so we stay and talk a while. I congratulate her on the wonderful roses and the love with which she takes care of them.
Then she puts away the watering-can and tells me this secret :
"It was mum that planted those bushes, mum who had second sight. She planted a rose bush for each son born to her and dedicated them to all of us. When the first bush got dried up, my brother Joseph died. When the second one dried, my brother Arthur died. Now the last bush left is also beginning to wither... And I myself don’t feel good..."
As a matter of fact the rose bush isn’t any more so blooming.
The next days the plant little by little becomes unturgid, gets yellow, until it dries up.
Old Linda dies of aneurysm few days later.
AUGUST 1997
When she was alive, old Athra has always been by nature a restless person, and even now that she’s dead she hasn’t changed a bit. Or, to be more exact, her tomb is unquiet.
For over a year have I accustomed myself to turning my eyes to it as I go along the cemetery on my usual visits. I am wont to have a look at the picture of her bony, sunken, old-witch face; just the features I remember she had while she lived. The village people rumoured she was a witch, but I’ve never been inclined to give ear to the gossiping of all bright sparks.
And this afternoon, while going along the little alley of the cemetery, I notice her tomb is missing. Never! I’ve not had a drop too much and I master a logical, rational mind.
When I get to the other side of the cemetery and there’s no way of seeing it, I am obliged to admit I’ve gone past the tomb without noticing it. Then I persist in going back, although it’s annoying to walk in the sun.
I patiently go back along the little lane again and look round for it. First there’s the tomb made of black marble, then that with the amphora, that with the angel, that with the semicircle balustrade... Then there are four grey tombs, then that with the iron lamp, that with the trap-door and the ring; then the sarcophagus-shaped tomb, the book-shaped tomb...
No, what is certain is that there isn’t any old Athra’s tomb! it isn’t any more in its place!
At this point the logical building of my mind collapses like a card castle. Each certainty that I rely on is now crumbling at one blow. The world doesn’t seem to me either solid or material any more. The world is but a coloured reflection upon a soap-bubble...
Because not only is the tomb missing, but the same place where it was is also missing!
I mean, the tombstones are lined up very close the one after the other, continuously and without a break. Everything would be perfectly regular and as usual, if it were not for that darned tomb.
On seeing what’s going on I start perspiring and cursing in a low voice. Some ladies on their knees over there turn and look at me.
I go away from the cemetery almost at a run, shocked and downcast.
I meet with my old friend Billy in the street. He’s a student of occultism and of other odd subjects. I tell him what’s just happened to me, though I expect his incredulity.
And Billy replies :
"Yes, I believe you. One night I happened to see that the old Tower of the Clock had disappeared".
"But what are you talking about?..."
"I’m telling you the truth. There are some cases in which material things shift about through time and we aren’t therefore any more able to see them. When they come back into our own time, they become visible to us again."
Never heard of such bizarre a theory in all my life, but it’s certainly better than nothing.
My friend gets a notebook out, does a few sums and then :
"We can try to call it back. Tonight at the graveyard there will be the proper time to...".
"As to me, the tomb can well stay where it is now".
"Aren’t you curious of attending the experiment?"
"Yes, but... the gate of the cemetery is closed during the night and..."
"We’ll get in from behind and we’ll go across the onion field. Meet me in front of the weigh-house before midnight..."
I leave him while he’s still speaking. I’m utterly uninclined to satisfy such a foolishness. Moreover, just tonight I’m looking forward to having a nice dinner, a game of cards...
At 11 thirty I am in front of the weigh-house, fretful and excited. It’s a spring night giving away sprinkles of rain and gusts of wind.
Soon after there comes Billy wrapped up in his overcoat :
"I knew you would come".
"Billy, the time for boyish escapades is over..." I reproach him.
"Time goes by and comes back again, my dear".
"What do you want to do?"
"Let’s go".
We leave the suburbs of the village behind us and go along a country road. Luckily enough, it has stopped raining and the moon has turned up. We silently go across a muddy field and climb the cemetery wall.
The cemetery appears white and quiet under the moon and dotted with glowing lamps. The noise of our footsteps upon that silent place makes us slow down.
Once in the middle of it, Billy gets out a big black handkerchief that has something white drawn upon it. He lays it spreaded out on the ground and puts four stones in the four corners. Then he sits down on a tomb near there and looks at the drawing. I also look a little far from him : the drawing represents a circle with a lot of Js in a row across it.
Time goes by. My friend is still there as if he were hypnotized in front of the drawing. I’m standing there, chilled, the moon is running across the sky...
My friend moves at last, as if he were awakening, stands up and puts his handkerchief away.
"That’s that. I’ve finished".
"Is that all? But nothing has happened to tell the truth".
"Only apparently it seems that nothing has happened. As a matter of fact, I have sowed a thought beyond that seal. You’ll see the fruit of it in the future".
We go outside from the back of the cemetery and I get my trousers torn while jumping over the wall. At this point I get annoyed and go home straight off.
I let a few weeks go by before going back to the place. In these cases it’s better not to risk going through a nervous breakdown.
When going to the cemetery one afternoon my pulse quickens in front of the gate; I begin perspiring along the little alley...
Then I see old Athra’s tomb, with the picture of her ugly, witch-like face that looks like making me a piece of sorcery.
Yes, everything is settled now. I can rely on Billy as he manages to get off these situations.
Or, perhaps, what we really deal with is nothing but quackery and suggestion.
OCTOBER 1997
Three old women seated under the porch are talking. One of them is fat, another one tall and slim and the third one is of a medium build.
At the farm where I work I happen, while pushing my wheelbarrow, to pass very close to them : in such occasions I can’t help looking at them with a feeling of pity. Poor, useless, impotent human beings with no more rapport with life.
As I carry dung back and forth from the stables to the manure-heap, I run my eyes over these old women standing in the shade of the porch and give ear to what they say. They are all half-deaf and speak aloud to make themselves heard.
"Our ducks are suffering because of the ditch being almost dried up".
"That’s why they are".
"Let’s pour the broth in a tureen to get the water-level risen".
"Yeah, let’s do so".
"Ah, ah"
"Eh, eh"
"Ih, ih"
I bear with such foolish dialogues and the dread of old age seizes me at a point. How sad the end of life is.
Soon after big raindrops begin to fall. Yet, the sun is shining far away over there, westward. But a summer cloud both fast and loaded with rain has come over here. The works in the court-yard have put off because of the driving rain. In the meanwhile more clouds have flocked to darken the sun and the rain lasts all afternoon.
A few days later, while hoeing the kitchen-garden and putting weed out, I can hear the old women’s words, still seated in the shade of the porch. It’s not difficult to imagine how heavy the boredom they go through while as they are sitting all day and with no opportunity to mould reality on their own.
"This morning your grandson abused us".
"Quite so indeed".
"He must learn his lesson, that nasty bully. Let’s cover his head with a bucket. Let’s render him dumb the whole day".
"Yeah, let’s do so".
"Ah, ah"
"Eh, eh"
"Ih, ih"
The morning after Jeffrey, the master’s son, doesn’t come to work since he’s got a sore-throat. Now he’s in bed applying himself a compress imbued with cold water. I’m sorry for this drawback as the barndance won’t take place tonight in the threshing-floor.
Days go by at the farm, works go on, vegetables grow... and the old women are still in their place.
I’ve resumed to work in the kitchen-garden where I throw new seeds, and I hear their chats again. I had nearly forgotten those old women as well as their blathering. Now that I am thinking it over, I am inclined to surmise a relationship between their words and what has happened. No! It would be absurd, it would be illogical, it would be... witchcraft.
This last sudden supposition of mine takes me to see them under a new light. But why not. Those old women must know the Wise Craft, as it was once called. Their grand-mothers’ teachings, the little secrets pertaining to herbs, country-life and mind have certainly been handed down to them...
Moreover, they possess the experience and the sensitiveness for perceiving, the time for pondering...
And now what are they saying? I attentively listen to their croaking voices :
"... the world isn’t any more working in the right way, it no more is what it used to be, let’s fix it...".
"Well then, let’s get that walnut-tree over there turned upside-down".
"No, let’s get that mountain turned upside-down".
"But, what’s the matter with you? Got your brain rotten?" the slim old woman rebukes them.
"Why not? Why don’t you want us to take a little time to enjoy ourselves?".
"Let’s then do like this ; let’s move the sun a bit tonight, just to keep ourselves cooler!".
Yeah. Yeah. Let us get the pot off the fire. Let us draw it a little more back. Yes. Let’s do it, let’s do so".
"Ah, ah"
"Eh, eh"
"Ih, ih"
On hearing their words, I see what they intend to do and I am afraid.
Then I raise my head to look at them. They don’t any more look like three weak, impotent, old women. Now they are three stately, solemn, ancient Goddesses with the power to determine the fortunes of the world while sitting in the shade of the porch.
When the evening comes, primordial fears invade my soul ; fear of darkness, of night, of death... When darkness falls, I feel weaker and more defenceless, I feel slave to unknown, overwhelming forces...
The next morning, as soon as I wake up, here I am smiling at my last evening’s worries. It’s not difficult to fall a prey to superstition when scientific knowledges are disregarded.
I don’t think the old women have been successfull with their plan. It’s by mere chance that last night has been cooler than the previous nights.
But this morning, when going past the porch, I feel like saying hallo to the threee old women quite respectfully :
"Good morning, grand-mothers. Do enjoy yourselves... but, please, without making trouble".
OCTOBER 1997
I fit the key into the lock and open the door.
Where I am immediately afterwards, is a long, cold hallway that smells musty. Spots of white mould are scattered all over the floor. The plant in the put is withered, owing, I suppose, to lack of light and water.
A few weeks have passed since aunt Mary's obsequies and nobody has come to her house during this lapse of time.
Here was the coffin along with the catafalque, the candies...
I head for the kitchen-room. In the sink are the cups, still there overturned.
I turn back and go past the study. In this room, chock-full with papers, volumes, documents, she, my aunt, for as long as 40 years has been keeping the books for her father's gasholder.
I go on and climb the stone stairs that she has been climbing for over 80 years. I try to touch the wooden, worn-out banisters that she for such a long time has been leaning upon.
On the corridor walls, upstairs, are hanging some yellow pictures inside old frames. A wool-winder she would work with when she was a young girl. Her rocking-horse as well, of when she was a child, is left.
I open a door and get into her bedroom. Semidarkness, silence, smell of linen.
I fling open a window to let the metallic light of this March evening in.
The stern wardrobe upon which stands her father's picture. Her modern-style bed in which she has passed away, alone, that night of February 2...
I'm standing, Motionless, silent, waiting.
I expect to see my aunt again, albeit I was present in the flesh when they were locking her up in the coffin and were interring her at the cemetery. I also expect to hear her croaking voice again; I expect a sign from her, something that could convince me that she's still living somewhere...
Some more minutes have gone by and nothing has happened. Then, in a loud voice, I try to ask her :
“Aunt Mary, if you're here, beat once”.
Dead silence.
I say the same words again and wait:
“Aunt Mary, if you are here, beat once”.
No reply at all is given.
I feel rather idiotic talking by myself, in that empty room. The whitewashed walls in front of me cannot speak in reply.
I let a little more time go by before I ask again, twice. It doesn't get anywhere. lt does not work this way.
I begin to move to and fro thoughtfully along the wooden, polished and creaking floor. How finding out a way to communicate? What can I do to the answers I need from her spirit?
As I keep stepping along I say it one more time:
“Aunt Mary, if you are here, beat once”.
The floor just behind me makes a crash-like noise.
I halt and think it over. The floor boards are of seasoned wood and they always creak when stepping upon. So the noise I've heard isn't exactly what could considered as a reliable sign and it's by mere chance that that has taken place.
I resume stepping to and fro, a series of slight creakings being brought about. Meanwhile I try to ask again:
“Aunt Mary, beat once if you can”.
Another crash-like noise, even louder than before, coming from a board just in front of me. I stop all of a sudden, bewildered.
Then resume moving and asking :
“Aunt Mary, can we manage to communicate this way?”
Another crash.
“Aunt Mary, can you just assure me that the answers you are giving me are reliable?”
Another loud noise over there in a corner.
Maybe I've got it ... But of course, that's it. The spirit badly wants a supply of free energy to get in touch with me. The kind of energy of quality indifferentiated, so that it can be modulated, be properly utilized...
The floor is creaking and squeaking under my feet, but it's the loud noises only that I take into account.
“Aunt Mary, would you be pleased to talk to me?”
She beats three times. Which means yea three times.
“Aunt Mary, do you want me to go away?”
Silence. Now it's the slight creakings only that can be heard.
From now on, I'm going to ask her questions concerning my future, my personal things and take note of every single answer of hers.
It's growing dark and I am ready to go away. I shut the window and the door of the bedroom.
As I am climbing down the stairs one board of the landing I am stepping on releases a remarkably odd creaking-sound and it does seem to tell me : HI-YOU.
Three months have gone by since that day and now it's summertime.
Quite a few forecasts have turned out to be right, some others haven't come true yet.
I long for asking her so many questions, but unfortunately I can't any more make use of this singular method for communicating. In the meanwhile the house has been sold by my relatives and the new owners are now demolishing it to build a new one.
DARK LOVES
The sky is getting darker and darker, as I’m walking down the semidesert streets of this small hamlet, and it doesn’t take long before the rain begins to fall.
After a short running, I take shelter under the lintel of an old house, which is apparently abandoned. But as I’m getting wet even there, I push the rotten door an get in.
I find myself in a room; its floor is filthy and its walls blackened. There’s a wardrobe and a greenish mirror. Inside the wardrobe is hanging a wedding-dress. It has become yellow and is covered with dust... and gnawed by the moths.
These are the only things left, silent witnesses to events that took place inside that room. But the wardrobe won’t for sure open its secrets and, as to the mirror, who ever will rely on the images of mirrors?...
... The golden sunbeams are breaking through the clouds, as if these formed a huge sieve, and fall down onto the ground. The bells are singing, the candles burning inside the little church, where the people in their new clothes are chatting and waiting.
There is the bride coming in her white dress; a small crown turns around her hair. She’s pale and serious. Her thoughts are roving back to her past love, to her dead love... But now, it’s too late for her to think of that, as she’s getting married... The clouds in the sky are shaping an altar of white light.
The wedding-party is illuminated by small lanterns, some heart-shaped papers are hanging from the branches of trees. It’s a sweet and a little sad village fete. Everyone is eating, drinking, laughing and talking. But the past is far from being dead, differently from what she’s inclined to think about it. The threads of the past are getting straight to her heart; sorrowful rememberings, poisonous regrets are germinating...
Towards the evening, a cool, moist air turns up at last, along with the darkness; the guests are rising to their feet and going away. There’s nothing sadder than a finished fete. The guests disperse. On the ground remain all sorts of garbage and papers that the wind makes go round. The newly married couple is left almost alone, so they set out for home. A rotten moon is raising behind the roofs of the old buildings.
The night has come, the first night for them to be spent together. The stairs are creaking, the bride’s hands are humid in perspiration, as she’s getting into the bedroom...
At dead of night the bride shows herself at the window. What will she be thinking of? Chaotic thoughts, the past, the future, the mystery of life, of love, of grief, of living... A drunk, red, purple moon is now setting beyond the poplar-grove.
Twenty years of her life have been spun and the family, the sons, the work have made the nice bride look older and now she has become ugly. A peacock is singing its song standing upon the old ruined, ivy-clad walls. The day of another marriage anniversary has come. Life flows away. Purple clouds appear above the horizon.
Now the house is empty and abanodoned. The old lady has died. Her dog has also died. Still close to the dog’s rusty bed are some small bones, the leftovers of its eatings.
**** ********* *********** *********** ************ *********** ***
The storm has passed off. I leave my shelter and walk along the street, in the metallic light of the evening.
JULY 2000
Copyright by Bissoli Sergio