mercoledì 11 marzo 2020

Divieto di fermata 2North by Piera Mattei 2






***

At noon the sky doesn’t have a real color any more, just the color of air. In broad daylight blue is less intense than in the morning explosion. Light doesn’t burn, doesn’t shout like in the city I came from.
In these latitudes, sunset takes a very long time. Lights are on the flats and the sky is still full of color. Blue, red or purple?
I spend hours watching by the same window

***

Max and I came due North because our city was affected by the disease, They said the latitude was chiefly responsible for its spreading.
We found it here too. Wounds can be covered by any rag and, though exhaling strong smells, sick people do not shout, never they do. But when we arrived at the station, I have to admit by now, I heard groans around me, saw people sat on the ground, their heels attached to their buttocks, their heads on their knees. Their mouth was hidden, expressing groans only.
Those groans pushed us with our parcels through the main door and upstairs.
Max and I are staying here as prisoners, with our abundant provisions, our colors and papers.
Swallows have got to make acrobatic exercises in group inside the courtyard. They nosedive just in front of the window. " Swallows – Max says after coming inside noiselessly – are black and white birds. They aren’t good for your study."

***

My diary stopped. It’s because of my bad relationship with Max. I never thought to shut ourselves up inside a flat could be so dangerous.
We have always got along well together. We have always helped each other, but he has a worse physical lack. I have always let him be a mother to me so that he couldn’t feel too dependent. If he has lost the sense of reality that is my fault. Now he would like to help me. He always finds an opportunity to remind me we are here because I have to learn to paint. He forgets that the plan about painting started because we had nothing else to do. He tries any way and mean so that I can learn, but I am no more sure about my will of learning. just for that I wouldn’t like to learn any more.
I’d like to get rid of him, of his impositions, but where can I go if the street is so infected? and what would he do without me?
We must stay here because I want he stays healthy.

***

I didn’t know Max was in the bathroom. When I opened the door saw he was going to take a shower. His skin is clear, smooth like a young woman or a teenage skin.
Instead mine has started to sting on all sides, among my hair, on a cheek, up to one shoulder blade and I’m just making an effort to open my scorching wounds by my nails. Is it a reaction to my untenable discomfort or have I been infected on the way from the train to the main door?
I’d ask him, I’d like to draw on him some of my pain, of my worry. How can he understand with his blind eyes and his spotless skin.

***

Secretly I had developed my technique, where sign and color never look distinct. I was shily starting to get some satisfactions.
Max became immediately aware of it. I realized by his excitement. He asked which was my way but I didn’t feel like talking about it.
I had no particular way. No more. I had put completely apart the chronometer. Hardly ever I was using my notebook where I wrote the qualitative changes of light over daytime. As if colors had got looking for their selves, on the sheet, on the picture. As foreign language getting its natural way from uvula to palate and lips.
Since I wasn’t willing to take about it, Max had got to use checking my work while I was sleeping. I had never caught him in the act, though I started to suspect when I noted little movings about the position of the objects I used for painting, yes, I had checked it more times. I could imagine him enlightened, by his malicious smile carefully inspecting my still recent work. His so capable fingers, I was envious about the cleverness of his touch.
At the end I surprised him, at dawn, his hands on the sheets still damp of my night work. I threw at him the water still in the tin can. Shouting I opened up running to the street.

(continua nel post successivo)


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