80

When I get back home, I see my mother sitting in the living room. My father is sitting in front of her. They seem like two statues.

“Sit down.”

I put my backpack between my legs as a defense against the fury that will be directed at me in a moment. It’s my mother who makes the first move.

“They called from school. You are at risk of repeating the whole year. Starting today until the end of the school year, you don’t leave the house.”

I look at my father to understand if it’s the usual Mom attack, which will involve a series of stipulations along with punishment likely to include the withholding of my allowance or being grounded for one Saturday. But my father is dead serious. The discussion is over. I don’t say anything. I take my backpack and go up to my room. What do I care about punishment like that? If it’s necessary, I will escape; no way could they keep me at home. Besides, what can they do if I run away—can they punish me for a year? Then I’ll run away again, until they punish me for life, which is useless, because lifelong punishment wouldn’t make any sense at all, it would be overlapping. I stretch out on the bed. My eyes stare at the ceiling where Beatrice’s face appears like a fresco.

“I don’t know if you understand: I am dying.”

Her words, like a thousand needles, are perforating my veins. I haven’t understood anything about life, about suffering, about death, about love. And I believed that love could conquer everything. What an illusion. Like everyone, we are reciting the same script in this comedy, to be massacred in the end. It’s not a comedy, but a horror. While I am becoming petrified on the bed, I realize that my father has come into my room. He is looking out the window.

“You know, Leo, I also cut school once. They had just given a convertible Spider to my classmate’s brother, and that morning we were going to the beach to try it out. I still remember the wind that overpowered our screaming conversation, and that monster of an engine stabbing through the air like a rocket. And then the sea. And all that freedom of the sea that appeared to be ours. The others were closed within the four walls of school, and we were there, fast and free. I still remember the vast horizon without any vanishing point, where only the sun could set limits to infinity. In that moment, facing the freedom of the sea, I understood that what counts is not having a ship, but a place to go, a harbor, a dream worthy of all that water to be to crossed.”

My father interrupts himself, as if he has seen beyond that window toward the horizon, and the lights of a distant harbor far away like in a dream.

“If I had gone to school that day, Leo, today I wouldn’t be the man I am. The answers I needed I received on a day I didn’t go to school. A day when, for the first time, I searched by myself for what I wanted, at the cost of being punished … ”

I don’t know if my father has become Dumbledore or Dr. House, but the fact is that he has perfectly understood how I feel. I almost can’t believe it. He already amazed me when he told me about the first time he met Mom, but now this; I just didn’t expect it. After all, I have known him more or less for sixteen years, and I really don’t know much about him, almost nothing about what really counts. I am about to say something, but it is so cheesy that it would be nauseating, and luckily Dad continues.

“I don’t know why you didn’t go to school, and for this you deserve punishment, which is part of the game of facing one’s responsibilities. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I trust you.”

The world is changing. I begin to expect that from one moment to another, the world will start to turn in the other direction, that Homer Simpson will become an exemplary husband, and Inter-Milan will win at the Champions League. My father is saying something incredible. It seems like a film. Exactly the words I need. I ask myself why he hasn’t done it before. The answer arrives punctually without my having to formulate the question.

“Now I understand that you are ready to risk one year for what you deem important, and I am sure it’s nothing foolish.”

I remain silent, asking myself how it is possible that cutting class just one day can change your life from black and white to color. First Beatrice, now Dad. The only thing I can say is, “What punishment did you get slapped with that time?”

My father turns toward me with a wry smile. “We will discuss that one day. I have two or three tricks up my sleeve to teach you about how to avoid some beginners’ mistakes.”

I smile in return. And that smile between Dad and me is the smile between one man and another. He is about to leave the room, and the door is closing, when I find the courage, “Dad?”

He sticks his head in, snail style.

“I would only like to go out to visit Beatrice. Today I was with her.”

Dad remains serious for a moment, and I prepare myself for his “Don’t even bring it up.” He lowers his glance toward the floor and then looks up. “Permission granted, but only for this reason. Otherwise—”

I interrupt him. “You will reduce me to the dust of my shadow, I know, I know. … ” I smile. “And Mom?”

“I’ll speak with Mom.”

The door is already closing when he says it.

“Thank you, Dad.”

I repeat it twice. The words are rolling on the floor while, stretched out on the bed, I observe the white ceiling transforming itself into a starry sky. The blood is pumping quickly in my veins and sets them on fire. For the first time after a punishment, I don’t hate my parents and myself. And the dust of my shadow is the dust of stars.