After having let myself go overboard for at least fifteen minutes (behind the fire of rage is hidden at least double the amount of salty water … ), The Dreamer breaks the silence that follows my crying, like the silence of the sand after a violent storm.
“I will tell you a story.”
He tells me the following, and he gives me a tissue (vanilla scented … ):
“A friend of mine had an argument with his father. He loved him very much, but that time he lost his patience and told him to go to hell. In the evening, they were seated at the dinner table and his father tried to speak to him, but he got up and went out without saying a word. He didn’t even want to listen to him. My friend felt strong. He felt that he had won, that he was right. The day after, the father’s place at the table was empty. His father had suffered a heart attack. This is how they had left each other. Without a word. But how could he know this? Since that day, my friend has known no peace because of that error; he is ashamed of it, as might be the worst assassin. And do you know the reason why that guy will never forgive himself for having refused a good-bye to his father?”
I shake my head while I sniffle.
“Because his father, in a moment of rage, had told him that he was a good-for-nothing, that he had chosen the job of a loser, despite the fact that he, the father, had a well-established studio that his son could have easily taken over. Tell me if this isn’t something to be ashamed of, to run away from?”
It takes me a while before breaking the silence following his question.
“How did your friend overcome that moment, Prof?”
The Dreamer kicks an abandoned can on the sidewalk, with anger.
“By living with it. Well aware of being like that, but with a promise to himself of not allowing a single opportunity to slip by of mending some deteriorating relationship, motivated by any reason whatsoever, important or not. One can always do something.”
I already feel better. I, who, confronted by an error, would like life to have a rewind button. Instead, life doesn’t have that button. Life goes on anyway, and it plays on if you want it to or not, and you can only raise or lower the volume. And you have to dance. The best you can. However, in some way now, I have less fear. My thoughts are interrupted by The Dreamer.
“We all have something we’re ashamed of. We’ve all run away, Leo. But this makes us men. Only when we have something tattooed on our face that we are ashamed of do we begin to have a real face. … ”
“Do you cry, Prof?”
The Dreamer remains in silence.
“Every time I peel onions.”
I burst out laughing, even if the joke is a pathetic one. With my nose, I give one final sniffle and manage to hold back the tears that were ready to flow.
“It’s normal to be afraid. Just as it’s normal to cry. It doesn’t mean we are cowards. To be a coward is to pretend you feel nothing, to turn your back on the problem. To not give a damn. I believe that you have fled. I believe that you are pissed off”—he said pissed off!—“with everybody and even yourself. This is normal. But getting pissed off”— that’s twice—“ … doesn’t accomplish anything. You can get pissed off”—and three times!—“as much as you want, but this isn’t going to cure Beatrice. Once, I read in a book that love doesn’t exist to make us happy but to demonstrate how strong our capacity to bear suffering is.”
A pause.
“But I ran! Me. The one who should be capable of dying for her so that she might get better!”
The Dreamer stares at me.
“You are mistaken, Leo. Maturity is not revealed through the will of dying for a noble cause but through the will to live humbly for it. Make her happy.”
I remain silent. Somebody within me is coming out from the cavern. Someone who was there, hidden, wounded and in need of help. Maybe, finally, he is taking the decision to challenge the dinosaurs. In this moment, I am going from the Stone Age to that of Iron. It’s not a great step, but at least I feel I have some sharp weapons against the dinosaurs of life. The sensation is stronger than the shield of armor made of iron and fire that I believed I had built with my anger. It’s a different strength, this new somebody who adheres to my skin and makes it transparent, strong, elastic.
“It’s getting late,” says The Dreamer, while I am making an evolutionary leap of at least two thousand years.
He looks me straight in the eye.
“Thank you for the company, Leo. And thanks especially for what you have given me tonight.”
I don’t understand.
“To make a gift of one’s suffering to another is the best act of trust one can give. Thank you for today’s lesson, Leo. Today you were the professor.”
He leaves me there like a dazed baboon. He’s already walking away. His shoulders are thin, but strong. The shoulders of a father.
I would like to run after him and ask who his friend is, but then I realize there are things that are better left uncertain. … My eyes are red from sobbing, I am without strength, drained, and yet I am the happiest sixteen-year-old on Earth, because now I have hope. I can do something to put everything right: Beatrice, Silvia, friends, school … Sometimes all it takes is the word of someone who trusts you to lift you up again in this world. I am singing out loud, I am not sure what. The people I cross in front of take me for a madman, but I don’t care, and I sing even louder when I pass very close to someone in order to force him to feel my joy.
When I enter the house singing, with my face all flushed from crying, my mother sends a strange glance to my father, who shakes his head and sighs. Why do parents think we are fine only when we seem normal?