So I tried to get in touch with Jawa few times these couple of days to no avail. Today I discovered they were out on a short trip. Jawa texted that we could meet for another dinner very soon, and I answered, sure (but this is not what I wanted, baby, we should talk). No I didn't write her this, I don't want to make the thing bigger by announcing it in advance-- always hated the announce of the "talk". My father used to announce the "talk" and the "talk" always degenerated in something violent one way or another.
Get to Jawa alone one afternoon and put the courage together and ask her to know a little more about the baby so that it is possible to wake up, whatever the verdict, and know what to do (I'll know).

Put the phone down and imagine them traveling or sailing somewhere, the happy little kid among them. One cannot really be part of another family, that's the essence of it, either you're in or you're out of any family or couple-- they're all seen from a distance. It is always from a distance and that's good. The pretense of the cinema to put you closer to other people's lives always sounded odd to me. When the truth is that you're only closer to appreciate the distance. Eventually the premise drove me out of the theaters where the position of "spectator" was too awkward for me (I am a reader, a painting viewer, at most a record listener).
Nowhere closeness is more possible than in oneself's imagination I guess, banale ma vero, wherein on the other hand nothing is real and clear and entirely sound and entirely visible or told (that's the good part).

It happens sometimes with certain pictures you take, that certain details on the background are like stills from a movie, only because in them is visible the life of a couple, of a family, like if it is a part of a story (which it is) and yet it is totally out of reach --sort of desperately distant from you and inexplicable, no matter how many stories you can make up about it, also because it is not happening now (it happened then) and you didn't notice when you was there.

So is with the picture above, whose total is just a trivial picture taken in
Venice a while ago (St. Zaccaria).

Me and Jawa are crouching next to the little boy and Ernesto is standing near the stove cutting artichokes. That's us here tonight. It's the first time we're being in the same room in like four or five years. Well, except when me and Ernesto met again at the hospital a month ago, when the baby was in intensive care.
I'm looking down at the head of the baby, and the evening is about to turn weird. It's probably my fault because I didn't worried about it. I just came with few presents and my face and all. Now the head of the baby, still half-covered by bandage, has what in Italy is called a "rose", a visible and very delineated area on the back of his head where the hair seem to converge or depart in a spiral, creating a small bump or irregularity (this has certainly an everyday name in English which I don't know).
"Look what a beautiful rose" I say out loud.
"Isn't it?" says Ernesto. He has his normal tone of voice, stirring the artichokes in the paddle. He says: "I don't have one."
"Me neither" says Jawa, squatted next to me.
"I can't believe it!" I say. I even stand up and go behind Ernesto to check. He really doesn't have a rose on his head.
"I have one!" I say. "That's where my hair are all standing up" I say touching my nape.
Funny how my voice has faded out towards the end of the sentence.
I put down my glass of wine to do the gesture a second time, properly. I feel my hair standing up and bouncing against the middle of my fingers. I do the gesture again as the silence grows for few more seconds in the kitchen.

When I was a kid I thought everyone had a rose between his hair. To a certain extent, until tonight I thought everyone had one, large or small.

I can't believe it I am this baby's biological father. I don't believe it. It is so unlikely and fucking ironic and absurd. It just shouldn't be. No, it can't be. Seriously. Shouldn't she tell it to me? May be she isn't talking about it because he made her swear to never do so. It would be logic. Maybe we are grown-ups and not supposed to-- But have they talked about it? Maybe everyone is just removing the thought. Would it ever be possible to speak about something like that? And with me?
I won't ever do anything to harm them, to harm this family, I swear-- what a hypocrite, I've done that already, plenty!
I must say something now. I should really. Why all these fantasies? They're all fragments of my imagination. Just a fucking rose in the hair. It is the most unlikely thing. Yet every time I look at this baby he has something else weird that-- And we connect too--
I sip the wine now--yeah-- Oh God, must I be such a mythomaniac?
Is everyone thinking the same thing now?
I don't know what I'd give to hear our three voices coming out of our minds like in a movie now, spelling out what our thoughts are.
And yet maybe they know, and are worried also for me. Or they hate me. He doesn't seem to though. Jesus, I'm always thinking that everyone knows when no one knows, I must remember that.
Say something now.

"And so, have you thought about sending him to the kindergarten?" I ask.
"It's too early" Ernesto responds.
"Yeah, it's early, " she says, lifting the baby in her arms.
Is this normalcy? I wonder.
We start grating the botargo.
We chat.
The baby has the attention.
We laugh. It's normalcy.
I feel deadly alone and hopelessly falling for many many more minutes into the night.
I am convinced that we are all feeling that way except the baby.
Maybe it is only because we are grown-ups that we make it to the other side.

Afterwards I wish I had something innocent to feel tonight, to say to them, at least rightful, at least dividable.
So I end up staying for too long-- drinking and hypertalking-- and then being stupefied to go away-- where there's the streets and the the dusty smell of the city and could be raining tomorrow.

Every time I drag myself down to the navigli beyond the bridge of Via Cassala to see Jawa, I bring with me questions for her, and bits of a discourse I would like to make. Then regularly there's the baby, and her worries and her enthusiasm for the baby, and I give up and put away all my anxiety to speak more seriously or passionately with her. I reckon that everything is different when you face a mother.
Then coming back there's the rumble of traffic and the heavy air to breathe and everything is more confused and lonesome-- I wonder whether this is a sign that I'm finally growing up, and that I am beginning to develop some form of mature resistance to my constant craving for real connections (if so the thought disappoints me).
I walk, the dusk descend on the city and the people and me. I go over the two hours spent in her kitchen. I reenact the three windows on the roofs of Milan and the balconies and the far mall sign that seem to be resting under a coat of clouds. Occasional pigeons and the intense silky violet of cyclamen sticking out beyond the window panes. Lifegate radio playing and preaching.
I am stretched on the pavement with her, we speak of the winter that didn't come this year. Of the gorses blossoming in January. I watch her long legs in the corduroy jeans as we crawl on the pavement around the baby. We accidentally touch each other but there is no hesitation. I watch her hands and realize I never saw how long they were. She turns, is her ass always so beautiful and inviting? Quite-- I wish she didn't kiss me on the mouth when she welcomes me or when she says goodbye. She closes her eyes too.
I listen to her telling about her residual fears after the little boy's accident. I listen to her plans to stay home without a salary for six months more. She says that she would love to give a little sister to the boy, and that they're trying but so far no luck. This could be the moment to ask her-- does he knows that there's a remote possibility that the little boy is mine? Of course not, right? But I don't know about the menage you two guys have. Sometimes I wonder --
Although maybe the little boy doesn't look like me? Or maybe he does?
I look at him. I never saw such a charming smile in a one year old little thing like this. Is his mouth similar to mine? Do I smile like this?
I would like to ask her, aside of the baby, you know-- How much does he knows really?
I would like to ask-- Do you have the same memories I do of those days, kind of wrong and right at the same time? Do you know that I made a mistake, I told him I used to live in Via Savona at that time? So close to your house. A mistake. Nobody knew. I wish the baby wasn't here for a while and I could ask you to undress like you used to do, shyly looking away or down and then suddenly looking straight at me--
Listen Jawa, I'm going-- I says. They escort me to the door. There's the light kiss on the mouth and the eyes briefly closed. The charming smile of the little boy as the door closes and then a corridor-- steel pipes running along the roof of it.

Now all the trams of Milan have canned voices reciting the stops. The city glides away, all the cars are rolling. We sit and we stand in the tram and nobody speaks. The canned voice goes on calling the stops, sort of evil aristocratic tone. A girl touches my hand as we reach for the same support. No hesitation. I look at her and she looks away. The canned voice calls Alzaia Naviglio Grande and at these words I feel like a strange emotion in my stomach, for all the things not told, the things not done, the lives not lived. It is like a punch or an embrace and for a brief moment I am suddenly surprised of being here, now, and everything seems right and enviable, even the city I always hated.
I climb down the tram in a state of marvel, and there's a large sign that says "absolute zero" --and when I turn southward this incredible sunset is tearing the sky apart. The air is warm and dense. The winter didn't really come this year.

We meet near the bridge of via Cassala, where the shadows bounce and the tables of an Italian bar are cluttered in a small stretch of sidewalk. Around us and everywhere in the city the warm wind is spreading methodically the white furry filaments dropped by the high poplars. Jawa carries her baby boy in a knapsack tight on her belly and smiles radiantly from twenty yards as I approach her, hug her, kiss her on the mouth.
I tried in the past not to kiss her on the mouth when we greet, because although we were lovers it didn't seem natural to do it-- particularly if in front of friends who didn't know we were lovers. Now that we're not lovers anymore I just accept the kiss on the mouth as it comes. I even anticipate it. But in the end I always accepted it, so she doesn't notice the difference.

There's the typical chaos of Milano around us, mopeds screaming and buses yelling and cars trumpeting and trucks barking. I praise her baby whom I'm meeting for the first time, tanned and sulky five months years old, and we go, in the clouds of invisible dusts and noise, talking about the baby and the weather and what he's liking of the world and what not.
( I mentioned anonymously Jawa in this blog before, hers was an afternoon or a morning spent in someone else's house, curled up together in bed listening to blackbirds and pigeons on the other side of Via Savona, Milano of course, which is always the same untellable place. Now those days and those places seem so distant and impossible. And they are not distant at all. )

We stroll up and down the grid of roads around Naviglio Grande, via Savona (coincidentally), Giambellino, Vigevano. The stores and offices are busy and the people busy, and pretty soon the little boy falls asleep in the knapsack regardless the chaos, and everyone, man or woman, passing by look at him tenderly.
"This is a very seductive boy," I say admiringly. "Everyone loves him."
"It's true" says Jawa
It is hard to look at her face walking at her side, 'cause her bulky Sicilian black hair always covers her profile, but I think she looks beautiful and I tell her. She smiles and we don't say anything for a while.

Later we're going on talking about the boy, and her life with Ernesto and their projects.
Twice Jawa asks about me, and both times I manage to change argument. Then we sit down on a bench in a patch of green behind some new houses, because she has to feed the baby. This patch of green, what in Milan is called a garden, is lousy conceived, covered with clover and infested with sand-flies, divided by irrational rotten tracks made of tartan and small ill young trees in bad shape. The bench faces the new housing projects which also are visibly falling to pieces already.

"Think at those who bought into this dump", I say. "How happy they must be now."
"Tell me about you" she says. She has freed the little boy from the knapsack, and now the sulky face is giving place to a bright toothless smile.
"I live with a girl, very sweet and lovely and all. But somehow I feel suffocating, I don't know why."
"I'm sorry to hear that"
"Yeah well" I said. "I learned something about myself recently. I learned that I dedicate less energies to love and relationships and friends, because I am always engaged in this inside battle with myself and my thoughts."
"Yeah, I know" Jawa says, smiling.
"I never really realized it. I need to save energy for the battle and so I neglect my relationships. Actually, any activity is less important than the battle. And what is worse, I favor relationships that need less energies to be moved on. Isn't it horrible?"
"I always thought my life would be different. Now with the baby it's even more unforeseeable and inevitable. Me and Ernesto don't have much time for each other. All is turning into something else. Very out of control. Maybe you want to avoid all this, I don't know, although I'm actually liking it."
"Oh, I envy you." I say not persuasively. "I wish I had a baby with someone and a job I like and all that stuff. Only, not with my head. Anyway, I have no idea of what I once thought my life should turn out to be. If I ever had a plan or a vision, I forgot about it."
"Don't you ever do any progress in the battle with your inside self?" Jawa asks.

Good luck I don't have to answer because the little kid asks for our attentions now. And then it is late, and we say goodbye near the bridge of Via Cassala again. Above our heads the traffic is rumbling and the concrete vibrates against the metal pylons and the smell of diesel engines floats down to us.
It is all, and I go back home on foot again, slowly, thinking about having a kid or a family or nothing. In my head is everything.

The following evening I sent Gisa a message, to know whether she had called for the babysitter or not, and what about the application at her friend's bookstore for me, and how she felt given Loris was out on a gig again. She answered shortly.

I called, I texted, but she no answered me. I stayed at home, I been bored, nobody was called me all day. Kisses.

Me and Gisa switch into ungrammatical mode sometimes, supposedly for fun. But I suspect is more a way to self-mock ourselves before the other does. I guess it helps us to cope with our failed dreams for the creative life we are not having, minimizing and all. Or maybe it is some other less interesting reason, like the fact that most of the italian TV comical style is based on all sorts of ungrammatical speeches, and we probably absorbed it unconsciously since our childhood, like everybody else.

F.'s message was not mentioning the babysitter, so I texted her again. She answered,

No not called for a nanny, I were sad and distressed all day... so much I fell into apathy. Tomorrow was another day.

Tomorrow was another day. This sounded more like a piece of poetry than a mistake to my ears. Gisa really was talented with words, too bad she obviously denied it.
Not only she had helped Loris with almost all the lyrics in the album past summer, coming up with the most beautiful lines. I have an entire collection of letters and notes she wrote me when we were together. The most beautiful swift phrases were mixed up in those messages.
For example I could recall a poem she wrote me, were she compared her love to a broken bicycle, it was the most hilarious and moving thing.
Suddenly, thinking back about this, I realized I had lent her all those letters before her moving in with Loris and I hoped they hadn't got lost. All kind of stuff got lost in that moving in.
I answered,

Poor Gisa! You no worry. You was to be resting and collected. True, tomorrow was another day! I hug you strong, good night! ps. you is a-genial with words. This reminding me, you not lost that letters of yours I gave you, aren't you?

Her answer came with grammar.

Sure I have them. I keep 'em with a piece of my heart. I don't know were they are exactly though. I wonder why they came to your mind tonight anyway. Ps. I actually found a babysitter just now. For the late hours so I can go revel around. Goodnight. It's lovely to text with you.

Yes, I toyed in my mind with the idea that we could get close again a little, and maybe meet in one of those evening when the babysitter was over. Get into bed again because there was always this moment of being intense in our messages. But friendship was much better, I thought, and with so little I felt uselessly good, more similar to the grown up the world expected me to be.

Plus it didn't make no sense to have the babysitter over in the evening when you're already exhausted by a whole day with the baby. What a lame idea. I weighted the cell phone in my hand and considered texting her again. But then I gave up. After all tomorrow was another day.

We were just talking about other friends, and what in their lives was going on.
"Well, we do things. But nothing really changes. Is life really this thing?" asked Gisa then.
I helped her to light a cigarette by coming close to her to shield the wind. As the lighter scratched twice beside my chest I looked down, into the sarcophagus were the baby was sleeping. Her sad expression had slipped onto her mouth.

"Do you ever ask yourself where your life really is?" Gisa asked after a deep breath of the cigarette, "where's your joy or your serenity... maybe in a cup of coffee, in the things to write and do, when you stay with Libi, or just because you can go out here under the sky? Really, where is this life of ours?". She had eneded the phrase smiling on her own voice, to mock herself. But I wanted to take her seriously, because I thought it was what she really wanted, to be taken seriously now and then.
"Minutes are incredibly slow and can contain everything," I said. "So is our life, which is contained in the smallest bits. But unfortunately is not 'life' what we want." I had not resisted and was mocking myself too now.
"Is not?" she said. "Good, I like this. Go on."

"No, you know, life is 'there', and we don't want that because is too vast and unexplicable and pointless I guess. We want the choice. We want to be able to pick what we want, who we want. That's what all our energies are aimed at."
"Yeah, this sounds amazingly true, although is probably bullshit. Isn't that 'life' either?"
"No, I mean. It doesn't really matter what life turns to be in the end, as long as we can still have a choice to pick what we feel like."
"That's really selfish and shallow, you know," Gisa said. Then after a while she added: "And talking about that, you know, Loris still wants you. He mentioned it to me again."
"Oh right!" I said, half laughing. But then I was so embarrassed I could only mutter stupid jokes until we said goodbye.

As we hugged, the little girl was still sleeping. Her expression was still sad. We kissed goodbye, and Gisa kissed me near the mouth as if I deserved a special treat. She was having the most fun at the idea that his man wanted to be fucked by me, or us together, and it was nice to see, as we parted, how much she was in a better mood. But I knew it wasn't really thank to me.
On my way back, twice I promised myself never to encourage Loris anymore with stupid jokes.

"Ok." I said. "What about the babysitter. Have you found one? Have you even looked for it?"
"M. said the one you found is not OK because she's not italian."
"Italian! Who cares! For chrissake, that baby is four months old! What do you expect the baby sitter to do, read her fairy tales?! Teach her ukranian?!"
"You talk to him. I'm sick of it. I'm tired."
F. was sitting on the couch, the baby rocked against my shoulder when she wanted me to walk around again. The afternoon light poured in from the dusty windows fading against the old empty walls gray and worn out. The house was an incredible mess-up, dirty and almost looking abandoned. It was still everything as Loris had it before Gisa moved in. The cluttered house of a single man that is always hanging out and is totally incapable to conceive remedies.

Her slender body on the couch, in the white old sweater and the bright pair of jeans was still, her face tilted toward the window behind the back of the couch. Her daughter was in my hands. We all were alive in the room, breathing and feeling. Alive, and still for that moment. I am alive, I thought, the baby is alive, she is alive. And it felt so hard in that moment, I don't know why, to see how much we were dense with our personal alive feelings hidden inside us like in a sealed black box and how this whole being thing was keeping us separated one from the other irremediably.

The baby for example, always with that expression of surprised sadness, of compassion and stupor in front of things. Only rarely, thanks to some mysterious impulse, a smile might fly around her tiny face. But it was impossible to grasp the origin of that mystery. Her mastery of sorrow expressions was intimidating and endearing, as if a new strange unheard personality was developing in the wrong world, were we had brought her for a fated mistake. How could we penetrate the secret of that expression?
The most crucial moment was when she was brought in front of the mirror, and her eyes immediately were fixated on herself, herself and no one else, with such an intense, hypnotized fear in her expression you could do nothing but try to mellow it down with your voice close to her ear. She raised her eyebrows from the inner end, closer to the little nose, just like her mother could do. Gisa used to say that only people mixed with southern italian blood can do that. I could do that too. Loris couldn't, not that it meant anything.

We went down in the streets and pushed the stroller from sidewalk to sidewalk. The canal was there, the lamplights, the stones. The evening was folding up over the city once again, over the cars and the passersby and the buses riding and the noise outside the shops, casting their yellow lights from the over-enlightened windows. The word "mother" was pushed back by the city.

(to be continued)