I went back to Beatrice’s. I was beginning to get worried, but then her mother sent me a message. I find her asleep, very thin, opaque. An IV drip counts the seconds that transpire, drop by drop. She opens her eyes, and her smile seems to come from far off, like the elderly smile, a smile of melancholy.

“I’m very tired, but I’m glad you came. I wanted to write in my diary, but I can’t hold the pen. I feel like an idiot.”

I pull out a sheet of paper from my pocket and secretly put a lined page behind the white page I have to write on. When I want to, I do apply myself, and how! I write what Beatrice dictates to me, in stops and starts, her voice breaking, with beleaguered breathing. Then she dozes off. I wait and I watch her slide away like a boat without a motor, without a sail, without oars, carried off by the current. She reopens her eyes.

“I am too tired … you tell me something, Leo.”

I don’t know what to talk about. I don’t want to tire her with stupid stuff. I talk to her about school and about my difficulties, of what happened this year, about The Dreamer, about Gandalf, about Niko, and about the soccer tournament that we Pirates are about to win … I speak to her about Silvia, of the times she has saved me from trouble, about the day she cut school with me, and how she encouraged me to come to see her … Beatrice suddenly interrupts me.

“Your eyes sparkle when you talk about Silvia, like a star. … ”

Beatrice knows how to say some incredible sentences with the simplicity of a child who is asking for the umpteenth cookie. I’m struck silent, like someone undergoing a great injustice but who can do nothing to defend himself. I cannot love Silvia. I can and I do love only Beatrice; and it is precisely she who tells me that my eyes shine like stars when I speak of Silvia.

“Have you ever fallen in love, Beatrice?”

She tells me she has with a light sigh and then falls silent. I realize that it isn’t the time to ask her anything else, but I also know that only she has the right answers.

“And what was it like?”

“It was like a home to go to whenever I wanted. Like when you go scuba diving. Down below, everything is silent and immobile. There is an absolute silence. There is peace. And maybe when you come back up to the surface, the sea is rough.”

I listen quietly, and I have the suspicion that the words I have used in my life might have something to do with the word love, but actually, if I look for the real state of the word, the only thing that I find written is “look to the voice of Beatrice.” While I am caught up in these useless thoughts, Beatrice falls into a surprising drowsiness, as if her light were suddenly going out. Or maybe she only has her eyes closed, but I understand that I must go.

Silvia is blue, not red. And yet, my eyes sparkle for blue.