Published in Fab 06 - Turning Point
Graphic design by Andy Rementer - get the pdf
08/1999 - London
C. has blue eyes, a Sicilian accent and is a few years older than me. He is affectionate. His warm embraces take me, a shy girl from the North, by surprise. C. calls me darling and he’s not my boyfriend. He says that he misses The Sea in rainy England. That he would like to write poetry and do something to change Sicily. C. smiles, C. is amazed, C. cries when the vacation is over and it’s time to return home, two thousand kilometers of Italy will divide us.
08/2000 – London
Another study holiday. God bless English. C. has his diploma in his pocket, a house to find in Turin, an enrolment already sent to the Polytechnic. He is happy, excited, scared.
11/2000 – Turin
C. proudly shows me his room, covered in photos. His family, friends, me. C. misses Palermo but he wants to be where he is. Turin is bitter cold, and there is fog every night. Soon it will be Christmas, time to go home, citrus fruits and arancini (filled rice balls).
10/2002 – Assisi
At the start of the peace march there are rivers of people. After a year and a half C.’s blue eyes meet mine by chance. A long hug. He is fine, I am fine, we should see each other more often. I have to go, he has to go.
09/2003 – Turin
C. graduates. Party, wine, people. C. teaches me to dance the pizzica. A master of environmental engineering he tells me he wants to save his island.
7/2004 – Bologna
Another graduation party. Mine. C. can’t come, he is too busy doing something that he doesn’t want to discuss with me on the telephone. It sounds serious but he tells me that everything is fine.
7/2004 – Turin
Almost forty degrees, an empty city, gelato shops closed. I meet C. outside the Chagali exhibition. He didn’t want to come with me. We talk about the weather and our vacations. He won’t return home this August; he is too busy with the group. He tells me that the group is a university Leninist committee. He has been part of it for a few months: meetings three times a week and propaganda papers to sell door to door.
I ask him to explain what it is, what they do. He says that the left I vote is worthless, that politics is worthless, that only the economy moves the world, that there will be a revolution and the opposition with have to die. I listen stunned and afraid. He seems grotesque. He is delirious.
I ask what happened to his ideals of peace and he realizes that they have unduly influenced him. He raises his voice. He yells at me. I leave.
10/2004 – Bologna
On my birthday the phone rings and it’s him. He says sorry darling. He asks me to listen to him, he tells me about his hard time looking for a house, exams pending, of university done in his spare time, about walking all over Turin trying to sell copies of Lotta Communista door to door. He listens to my silence. He asks me if I think I can be his friend despite what he’s telling me. I answer that I don’t know and that I care about him.
09/2005 - Treviso
I am sorry but I can’t tomorrow. Those of us in the committee never do it. We keep a low profile. I am sorry, I wanted to help you. Kisses.
His last SMS
I called C. to write about him in my turning point. We had agreed: becoming part of the committee had changed his life. We gave each other a telephone appointment for the following day: I don’t write about politics that was enough for him to trust me and tell me his story. He wanted to help me understand, I wanted to try to understand.