Does one not hear, in contemplating the sixth Card of the Tarot, a voice which says: “I have found you,” and another which says: “Those who seek me find me”?
Dear Emma,
Finally your letter arrived, if it had been delayed I would have written again. I miss you, too, thanks for sending the photo, I imagined your new mamma just like that, with blond hair, while I didn’t imagine that your papa was bald. Anyway he’s very elegant. Monsignor Cottafavi was right, our perfect parents were somewhere waiting for us. I’m sorry that the right family for me is in Biella and yours in Naples, because otherwise maybe we’d go to the same school, who knows! In the photo Camilla’s hair is very long; I go to the barber often and my hair is never uncombed the way it was when we met.
My best memory of Reggio Calabria is our friendship.
A letter also arrived from the document office in Reggio. It said that my old parents are dead. Two weeks after we left they recovered the bodies and buried them in the cemetery. One day I’ll go and find them and bring them a bouquet of chrysanthemums and orchids—we didn’t have relatives there, so I don’t think anyone ever goes.
My new mamma told me something very sad. My house was destroyed. It was dangerous and they blew it up, because no one could live there, and in its place another one will be built. You remember the cellar where we met? I used to sleep there. I left all my things, but I miss only my collection of magazines. My mamma Sabina applied to buy me the back issues, so I won’t mind so much not having mine. I hope another child takes them. I wonder if they’ll build above the cellar or if it will stay as it is now, with the door open to the garden where you came to look for me. Maybe it would be good for storing wine and oil.
Anyway, now that we have the documents, my parents can actually adopt me. Every so often at night I dream that my old parents come back to get me, but I want to stay here and I hold tight to Mamma’s dress.
My old mother was the Devil, and also my father. I never told you, because when we met I couldn’t speak and didn’t want to frighten you.
I thought Sabina would scold me, but when I confessed it to her she said only: Now it’s over. And then, that night, I heard her say to my father: You thought that child wouldn’t love us because he would always miss his parents: on the contrary.
Oh, when I’m grown up and go to Reggio Calabria, I want to visit Messina, too. I was there a few times and I had a friend who may remember me. Maybe, on the way, I’ll stop in Naples, I’ll put all the pastries from here in my suitcase, you’ll really like them. In the meantime I’m putting in the envelope a little chocolate and a photo in the snow, from that trip I told you about in the last letter. My father came out better than in the other one, but my mother is the same.
Now I have to go, tomorrow is the first day of school and I have to get my notebooks ready. I’m not going to study at home anymore, but will go to a real school. I’m excited.
Don’t take too long to answer!
Nicola Crestani