The church is bursting with people; the whole student body is there. Everyone is closely gathered around a shiny, wooden coffin, which hides her body, her lifeless eyes.
The Beatrice I remember no longer exists, and now inside that wooden box there is another Beatrice. Here is the mystery of that thing called death. But what I loved in her and about her hasn’t flown away. It hasn’t vanished like one quick breath. I have her diary, held tightly between my hands; it is my second skin.
Gandalf is celebrating the mass. One more time. He speaks about the mystery of death and tells us a story about a guy named Job from whom God took everything, yet Job remained faithful to Him, even though He had the courage to throw His cruelty in his face.
“And while Job cries out among his tears, God says to him, ‘Where were you when I created the Earth? Who shut in the sea between two doors? Since your birth, have you ever commanded the morning and put dawn in its place? Has the rain a father? Who puts the drops of dew in the world? Can you bind the ties of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion? Who provides food for the raven? Maybe by your wisdom the hawk takes flight and beats his wings toward the South? Speak up, if you have so much intelligence!’”
After Gandalf’s sermon, a silence falls.
“We, like Job, cry out our disapproval to God today; we cannot accept what he has decided to do, we don’t accept it, and this is human. But God asks us to have faith in Him. This is the only solution to the mystery of pain and death: the faith in His love. And this is divine, a divine gift. And we should not be afraid if now we are able to manage. Rather, we must declare this clearly to God: we can’t do it!”
All nonsense! I hate God. What do you mean trust in Him?
He continues, unperturbed, “But we have the solution that Job did not have. Do you know what the pelican does when its young are hungry and it has no food to offer them? It wounds its breast with its long beak and causes the nourishing blood to flow out for its young, who will drink from its wound as if it were a fountain. Just as Christ has done for us, and it is for this reason that He is often represented as a pelican. He has defeated our death, the young hungry for life, with his blood, his indestructible love for us. And his gift is stronger than death. Without this blood, we would die twice. … ”
There is silence within me. I am a stone of suspended pain in a vacuum of love. I am totally impermeable.
“Only this love surpasses death. He who gives it and he who receives it do not die, but are reborn. Just as Beatrice has been … !”
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
“Now I invite whoever would like to remember her.”
A long silence of embarrassment follows, then I get up, under the watch of everyone. Gandalf observes my gait with some apprehension. … He fears I might say something stupid.
“I only wanted to read the last words in Beatrice’s diary, words that she dictated to me and that I transcribed. I’m convinced that she would have wanted to make them known to everyone who is present.”
My voice breaks, and I drink unstoppable tears, but I continue to read on.
“Dear God, today it is Leo who is writing to you, because I cannot do it. Even though I feel so weak, I want to tell you that I am not afraid, because I know that you will take me in your arms and you will rock me like a newborn baby. The medicine hasn’t cured me, but I am happy. I am happy because I have a secret with you: the secret of seeing you, of touching you. Dear God, if you keep holding me, death no longer scares me.”
I lift my gaze and the church seems flooded by the Dead Sea of my tears upon which I am floating in a boat that Beatrice has constructed for me. My eyes catch Silvia’s, who is staring at me, and in a single look, she tries to console me. I lower my gaze. I run from the microphone because, in spite of my wooden raft, I too am about to drown in my tears. The last words that I remember are those of Gandalf’s. “Partake and drink of me everyone. This is my blood, spilled for you. … ”
Even God has given His blood: an infinite rain of blood red love that bathes the world every day in an attempt to keep us alive, but we remain more dead than those who have died. I have always asked why love and blood are the same color: now I know. It is all God’s fault!
That rain doesn’t touch me. I am impermeable. I remain dead.