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 Nord- L'amicizia e la ricerca artistica ai tempi dell'epidemia

Pubblichiamo qui il testo inglese del racconto di cui lunghi brani del testo italiano originale abbiamo letto su You tube

North

by Piera Mattei

A new epidemic has burst in the city.

Most of the population is locked in getting news about the disease running, as before they listened to the weather forecast or the road traffic news.

The weather isn’t changeable anymore and the streets are clear by now. Last cranes are removing abandoned carcasses of the cars rusted by the cold. Shifts are only by automatic trains.

Who is homeless and too weak to get on a train is down on the pavement, living along the streets with no more traffic by now. Bad taste to show the disease wounds, but easy to imagine under the clothes and the rags they wear. Many of those ones looking healthy watch the wounds being red with the morning by the dressing table, as they take the shower. Daily shower is a good hygienic measure, but chlorined water stings the wounds dilating. So to wash oneself is not useful to recover.

Some of the sick persons can’t stand the sight of their own wounds and take to prick by needles or spins, pressing to push out the liquids. They spend hours that way, in front of the mirror in the bathrooms.

                                        

***

I and my friend Max could be soon in a similar condition too. Fortunately we can still planning to evade escaping from most people’s behaviors. We were born different and we will not come to the others’ end. Max is totally blind. Mirrors are only cold and smooth surfaces to him, destitute of any visual information. Also Max is healthy. He has never got neither uneven nesses nor blushes or pustules over his skin. He has never even got temperature.

As I am concerned, the disease could be incubating. Here and there over my skin I feel burnings I have not manifest maculas.

***

No, we will not lock ourselve in. We are going due North where this kind of disease does not spread. We have got a flat on the fourth floor that looks on a very large courtyard, in a cozy town where they speak a language easy to understand. There won’t be noise. I shall paint and Max keeps me company.

During the quarantine-holiday I want to become a painter. It’s a plan more daring than supported by my natural bent. I have a powerful sight I can only distinguish different values not to the shade of colors. I live in a black and white film. I dream about colors.

                  

***

Dreaming colors I don’t know joins me to Max. But Max is freer in his images. Instead I could be tempted to address myself to painting handbooks to make up for my lack by theory. I would learn what they consider harmonious or dissonant, I would get to use contrasts of colors, I could get a sufficient technique at last. But I prefer to disregard books.

                 

***

Yesterday night we took possession of our flat. Three rooms one inside the other one, six windows. All the light I need. Days are long in the North during this season, By daylights tines I shall learn.

I dealt with an exposure meter, a chronometer, a notebook. I’ll register duration and intensity light over daytime. I go to bed without drawing the curtains.

                 

***

The exposure meter is useless. Changes of light are perceptible by my eye. The chronometer is poorly useful too.

In these latitudes light is opaque most of the time. To my glance, used to the southern light, a grey veil arises between the background and the foregrounds. I shake my hands in front of my eyes to tear up that veil but my wave is unuseful.

                

***

Finally this morning I am watching a clear blue sky. It’s early morning, there is a so different light that won’t last, “…dolce color di northern zàffiro… ”. Around that color there is a sort of aureole. Green is on the leaves of chestnuts, flowers are deep yellow, nearly orange. Chestnuts, inflorescences on those trees, from infinite to one’s eye when the sky is a medium. If I really want to learn to understand colors I have to make myself unconnected from that I knew before. The sky in these latitudes gets a blue golden shade. I have found it out. I like it.

***

Max has prepared a very good breakfast for me. He has taken plentiful provisions, choosing colored food. “You can practice to recognize colors that way”, he told me.

He believes in my plan and has decided to help me in any way.

***

Today, at the end of the lunch, Max has pushed in the middle of the table a trayful of fresh fruit: apricots cherries and peaches. Sat in front of me

showing and ill-concealed satisfacted smile. In the meanwhile amusing himself, fondling the apricots peel.

I knew what he wanted from me, by now.

“On apricots there’s yellow, orange and red and a touch of green too. ”

I deceive him and I’m mistaken. I repeat the lesson like a stupid child. Talking about things I don’t understand. On the tray, in front of me, there are slightly different objects the only color I see: do they call it grey? It is bright on cherries, veiled on apricots and peaches. You can’t distinguish colors in those mixtures.

Max has got to do a lot for me. Can he really help me? To him to see is to be free going without fear about accidents. Max can’t understand about colors.

***

We have been here for a few days and I’m just becoming impatient with Max. He’s like an ambitious mother to her son, but uncultured, obsessing her son to make him study but she herself doesn’t know what to study means.

I’ve shut myself up in my room.

I’ve refused the food he prepared for me.

He festers me with food, as if asking me to look at the colors of the food that I eat, he’d got a foolproof method to make me learn. He pretends to teach me how to see.

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