The house at the edge of time, Page 2

  Of side to our platform, to about thirty footsteps after the garden, there is another almost equal house-train to ours, apart for the fact that falls asunder. The other summers it was uninhabited, but this year no. A family has arrived. Numerous. Numerous. They don't live in the house, however. They are out, camped in the spiazzo in three enormous trailers. I don't know well from where comes, but they speak a strange language all consonants. Charles says that you/he/she is an ancient language. Ancient. A language that comes from India and that you/he/she has crossed the whole world. I don't know if they also speak Italian. Grandmother has said that they belonged to a circus that then you/he/she is bankrupt, and since then they do some that that understands. They play in the parties of country, they pick up the copper in the houses and they resell him/it, stuff this way.

  "To me they don't frighten. And then I am happy that the house of forehead is not emptier."

  Grandmother is this way. In country they call her/it "the nonconformist", that wants to say that it is one who does what seems her and it doesn't interest her what the others think. The others, in fact, don't think her/it as her. You/they are picking up signatures to send them street. On the strip of earth of the bank, someone has attached a poster above the trunk of an acacia. Above you/he/she is written there: "Forbidden the standstill to the nomad."

  I like to be them to look and until I am here I will look at them. It now seems also a circus that is not him/it anymore. They are so many, as. About ten people of every age. The men have long and shining hair and gold necklaces that hang from his neck. The women, to the neck, they usually have some children. In the evening, understands that they serve flames of fire as the lips and music from a kind of accordion. There is a little boy that has more or less my age. It calls Mujo. It walks on the palm of the hands as it was the plant of the feet.

  Also I know him/it to do. Only for some footstep, however, then I lose the balance.

  I train me against the wall. I take the push, support the fingers to some centimeter from the wall, rotate the legs and I lean on her against. I look me the hands, the fingers widened on the sidewalk, I see down the world to head. The grass above and the sky under, the suspended trees contrarily, Barabau that wags the tail to upside-down, mother afoot for air that orders me to go down that it is badly me grandfather that walks upside-down with the straw hat. Then it suits me the blood to the head, I return down. Mother says:

  "Finally."

  I see as before the world.

  4

  Something is about it to happen

  Something is about it to happen.

  I know him/it. It tells me him every thing. It tells him/it the vase of tulips that he commits suicide, it tells him/it the sun pander that never wants tramontare, they tell him/it the branches of the tiglis that chirrup in the air. Something is about it to happen. But thing?

  This the branches of the tiglis don't mean him/it and to me the future frightens some. The future is a spiteful creature that materializes him in the present and of hidden it lengthens a leg to make you the trip, so you fall on him. And you/he/she cannot be done us nothing. Even if even you were very well there in your present and you didn't have anybody desire of veder to sprout one with does her/it from future. Everything that that can be done is to fall on him and enough. At the most, if you have been provident, you have thrown of there a pillow to reduce the fall, when you were still in the present.

  My pillow calls "vertical against the wall." I want to strengthen the muscles of braccia and legs, I want to learn to also walk with the hands to earn an unshakable equilibrium to test of trip. It needs to be always ready, the future is quicker than that that want to make to believe the clocks.

  I train me every day against the wall that looks at the garden. From the other side, I feel the housewives that speaks in a low voice to low voice. They think that I don't feel her, but this is a house-train and the platforms they are conductors, I have read him in a book. All it takes is supporting an ear to feel the kilometers appear on the surface noises and kilometers of distance.

  To head down, against the wall of the house, I feel mother that says that you/he/she is worried for me, that from when it has happened what has happened I/you/they have become taciturn. What I don't laugh as before and there are some afternoons that I am immovable for times. He/she doesn't know why I do him/it. You/he/she has also talked to a doctor of it, it says, and that has explained her that it happens too much at times to the sensitive little boys, but whether to say more had to do me a test and to establish to what psychological type I belonged. It seems that we are all classified in a series of psychological types of the kinds of boxes in which you/he/she can be inserted us inside the whole world. And they are not even so many to say the truth. I am as soon as twelve. Six million people, according to the physicians, you/they can be thrusted for convenience in a dozen of boxes. Those "extrovert", with dominant function "the feeling" and function of support "the feeling"; those "introverted", with tendency "judging" and inferior function "the feeling" and so street.

  This way, mother has brought me to make the test. The doctor had to be old, in fact you/he/she had all the white hair. You/he/she has asked me a lot of questions as in a television quiz, only that here it didn't win him nothing. All the answers you/he/she is marked on a piece of paper, then you/he/she has disappeared in the room of side and at the end you/he/she has returned back with the verdict: my box is the ITN. He/she wants to say that I have an orientation "introverted", with dominant function "the thought" and with function of support "the intuition."

  Perched on the edge of the chair, mother has listened to the doctor with round and careful eyes from owl, as if same receiving the greatest of the revelations. Did I look at them, before him, then her, then again him, as to say "And then?". What was introverted, could I also tell you him I, know that revelation. that need there was to make me visit from this old gentleman with the white uniform, that had to be to eye and cross I ascertain as us the bookstore of the living room? And I tell him/it exploiting my function of support (what the intuition would be).

  To say the truth, is me some offense that mother had had to need that old doctor to understand to what psychological type I belonged. I thought that it knew better than anyone else me on the earth. I was evidently wrong me. Who has great intuitions, he/she also takes big corners.

  At the end of the visit, a nurse has accompanied again me in the room of aspect, while the doctor told in a low voice something mother, that in exchange for everything that to whisper wrote him a sonorous check. Mother and I are found again in silence to the stop of the bus there. We were all and two some you shake. You for the revelation that he/she thought about having received session on the edge of that chair, me because it doesn't suit me to make me look too much inside, considering that I belong to the psychological type ITN.

  When we have arrived home, to calm down, mother has gone to mince celery-carrot-onion to make to sizzle in frying pan and me I have taken a seat in my room, of side to the white bear that grandmother has given me one December of some years ago. This is not really my room. I want to say, it is not that of before. Mother and I are transferred here there after dad if you/he/she has gone of it. We didn't need all those rooms anymore, mother has said. It was dad that had the manias of greatness and he/she wanted to live in a castle. What an exaggeration! To us two were enough very less, you/he/she has declared. And then, didn't I feel like seeing the world to depart to the adventure? To me idea to see the world was not sorry and so we have filled three suitcases and winds scatoloni and we have departed to the adventure.

  In reality, the whole world that I have seen has been the grass of the lawn that separated us from the new house. To the beginning Mother had departed with ideas from unprejudiced traveller, you/he/she passed the evenings to skim through the brochures of all the aerial companies in activity. After a few days, however, the airplane was turned into a train. Then the train in a bus. The bus in a car. A week and mother you/he/she w
as passed it was not surer than to want to change city. And, to say the truth, also to move in another district seemed her an exaggerated pochino. However the fact stayed that could not continue to live in our house. This way we have crossed the grass of the lawn, and we have gone to live on the other side of the park. And this was my new room after the crossing. From the window I could see the same world of before, only to upside-down.

  The crossing, is so that mother says. He/she never speaks of what has happened with dad. Our life divides him in before the crossing and after the crossing. There is no need to add other.

  That day, the day of the physician that inserted the world in the boxes, I remember him/it well to me. I remind me that the frizzling of the soffritto of mother has entered me until in the nostrils and that the white bear of side to me has collapsed on a side and you/he/she is me missed some the breath. To calm I have looked me out of the window. There was always the usual street bit, the usual edge of building and the usual lawn. They were the same of yesterday, the same of before. For them you/he/she was not changed anything, nothing mattered. Down after all, under to the window, the grass was so calm. It is so that I have begun. To calm I have decided me to do as her, to copy the grass. With the time I/you/they have become good.

  I still do him/it, sometimes. Now no. Now I am busy with the vertical one against the wall on the platform of the house-train. Braccia extended above the head, look in before, push and hop: they are down to head.

  Mother, however, this thing to copy the grass to calm down himself/herself/themselves has not understood her at all. And you/he/she has not picked well at all her up. But her ago always this way. Of a small thing without importance of it ago a mountain, really here, in the Lowland Padana. Dad always told that you/he/she had a good time complicating the things. But so much, passes then, her.

  As us, dad has decided to also cross him anything. You/he/she has made his/her crossing. Now he/she lives on the other side of the river. Who knows thing will be doing in this moment. I imagine his/her new house. You/he/she must be great, perfumed, bright. You/he/she must be full of mirrors and of plasters, that to be sincere doesn't know well thing is, but they have the air to be something beautiful and surely dad has them. It also has an enormous living room with three white couches and a black cat as Pralina that walks on the edge of the window, but thinner and aristocrat. A cat, in short, that would not have problems to shell inside and out of whatever door of Newton. After all in the corridor there are two rooms from bed, one for one and he for me. And it will be also perhaps another of it, for the woman with which alive now, but to the moment that room I don't see her/it. No, no. I am sure, after all in the corridor they are only there two rooms from bed and I am certain that one is mine. Dad has already invited me to go to him. You/he/she will just have finished filling of mirrors and of plasters his/her house, you/he/she has said. I swear. You/he/she has told him the last time that I have seen him. Here I feel the blood that suits me to the head. The vertical one, surely. I go down from the wall and amount carried over the feet against earth.

  5

  Grandfather has an afloat house on the river

  Grandfather has an afloat house on the river. Not really a house. We say a room. A great house as a room, here.

  Around I am here so many of it greater than his. There is who inside you/he/she has made us a restaurant straight. But that of grandfather is only a shop for the utensils. There inside it cares of everything. Hammers, nails, grapevines, pliers, pliers and then wood pieces, of cloth, of paper. It is there that it mends the bicycles and he/she builds the kites. Of it ago of new every summer. He/she takes the paper and it glues her/it on the thin canes that form the armor. It starts out then fishing, while glue dries. You/he/she cannot be said that form will take the kite up to when you/he/she is not ended.

  This week has done to form of airplane one of it. It is beautiful. It has a yellow and chubby body. You haul green. There is even the helix and after all a garland of colors that will swing in the wind. I clap the hands, I cannot wait to see him/it in action.

  On the other bank of the river I perceive Mujo the little boy of the house of forehead. It also looks at the kite him, incuriosito. Grandfather smiles satisfied, you/he/she inserts the index in mouth and you/he/she spits him/it out to make a will the air. The crickets the wings rub him. Apart this, it doesn't stir a leaf. We lift the shoulders to send away the disappointment, as they make the crickets to send away the warm one. Patience. I recover the bicycle to return to the house-train. Grandfather crushes a mosquito on the neck with the palm and sits to fish. Mujo also fishes, on the other side of the river. Before climbing on the saddle, I succeed in intercepting a smile that gives him on does her/it light as a butterfly and I am almost certain that that smile is for me. We wait for the whole day when it will get up the wind.

  Grandmother, instead, of kites he/she doesn't want to know of it. It says that there would be so many lavorettis to do in the true house, that on the dry land, and instead grandfather is always in that accursed afloat house, where she cannot even enter. Grandfather doesn't want that goes to do cleaning to the house on the river, you/he/she says that he doesn't succeed anymore then in finding his/her things. However you are well happy not to have anything to do with it. The kites don't concern her/it. You he deals only with geese, hens and rabbits.

  The hens are lazy, also worse of Pralina, instead the geese are of the clairvoyants; they also recognize his/her voice to distance of one hundred footsteps, also behind the trees. They just feel her/it turn the handle of the door, they begin to make a big confusion. According to me they have some powers paranormali. Grandmother opens the porticina of their house, that would be a very greater special enclosure of that of the hens, and they depart in single file toward the river. They are very orderly.

  Instead the rabbits live in of the stanzettes lifted by earth to the height of my nose. Last week they were born of of it new. Grandmother puts in hand of it one minuscule, soft. It seems to touch a cotton wad. He trembles, however. The heart beats him strong, it seems must squirt out of his breast from a moment to the other. I caress him/it to reassure him/it, but it trembles even more. Horrible feeling, to be someone of which to be afraid. I don't want to hold him/it in hand anymore. I tell grandmother to recover the rabbit, but he doesn't want to be captured by the great hands of grandmother, it trembles never. The heart beats him fast, more and more fast, until a warm liquid it roars me among the fingers, yellow.

  Grandmother succeeds in putting again the rabbit in the cage. I return to the house-train holding the wet and sticky hands distant from the body.

  6

  This summer is so strange that have decided

  This summer is so strange that have decided to mark me from some part the things that happen. As I have not brought with me the diary, I will write everything above of the flying sheets, whatever piece of paper it will be all right, it doesn't matter. Don't lose them, will insert them in that salvadanaios to form of transparent piglet that grandmother has given me one December of some years ago. Till now you/he/she has always had the empty belly, but beginning from today I will fill her/it to you with paper. It will become a salvapensieri. I promise that I won't skip anything. I swear. Not even the things that don't seem important to the adults. Above all the things that don't seem important to the adults. Because it has happened again this morning: the things want to speak to me. There is no doubt.

  This time has been the turn of the keys. You/they have thought well about closing us inside during the night for then to give her/it for him to legs. To our awakening there was no more trace of them. As if you/they had never existed.

  Grandfather has grasped the handle to go out and for a little you/he/she doesn't give a heading against the wood of the stipite. The door has usually opened already when it gets up, but this morning nobody had still gone out. He is scratched some the grizzled hair, you/he/she has tried again. The handle went on and down without any intention to open the passage.
Then you/he/she is bent for looking for the keys. Before on the table, on the belief, on the couch. Then under to the table, under to the belief, under to the couch. To say the truth, is bent under there everybody to the table, under to the belief, under to the couch. We have put upside-down the house. Nothing. Looked for in the places in which one would never look for. Still nothing. Tried to immedesimarci in a bunch of keys to imagine where he could be hidden. Nothing the same.

  I have peered at in the hole of the lock, that seemed to know as of it it didn't give to see. The keys care in hostage, I have thought. Soon a letter written with clippings of newspaper will slip under to the crack of the door and they will ask us a ransom in exchange for the liberty.