music: Maurice Ravel, Trio for Piano in A-minor-- as far as I can hear it while keeping my ability to concentrate on what I'm writing. noise: drills and bangs coming from yet another apartment renovation in the complex; muffled rumble of the city; rattling of trams in the avenue: (the usual)

Yesterday I tried to get in touch with Jawa again-- apparently they're away for the entire week. I steered to Gisa's and managed to talk with her about the situation, and it was useful, I guess. She was so surprised to hear the story. After all it all happened in her apartment, when she lend it to me for few months and I had that affair.
See? I said to myself. You lead a interesting life.
Then we agreed that every possible outcome was going to be either unsatisfactory or unjust, or painful. Whether Jawa happens to "know" that their son is actually "our" son, and she deliberately is hiding it from me; or she doesn't want to know and gets evasive; or Ernesto knows too and it's the way they decided to live this thing (the fact that they're both quite rational and science-minded individuals can be a factor); or it is all a fantasy of mine; or she realizes the possibility as soon as I tell her: in all cases what happens next is the same thing, which is, nothing.
I list to Gisa all my fears and obsessions. I say that maybe they both know, and are hiding it from me because they're scared that I might want to barge in, if only on a given hypothetical day far in the future. This can be disappointing --people not trusting me and all-- but understandable: and the consequence could only be not to see them anymore, for ever, for life: To reassure them that I am willing to spare the child a shock tomorrow that only a misunderstood idea of science or nature (what being a "biological" parent means) may consider necessary.
"Talk to her" says Gisa.
"I want to, believe me. But she seems to be sneaking away from it all the time. Why is she avoiding me anyway?"
"Oh, she probably thinks that you want to fuck her again-- and with the baby and all she doesn't want to have to tell you that it is not going to happen" Gisa answers.
"What?" See, I haven't thought of that.
"Why do you want to know it so much? What can you really do with it?" she asks.
Nothing, I know she's right. "Maybe Jawa knows for sure that this is not the case. Blood types, DNA, whatever. She can reassure me. Or maybe I just want to know what happens next with the story, you know. Describe it to myself as it happens. I can't keep that part frozen."
Skeptical look from Gisa.
"I know I have lied many times in my life" I say. Hell I have been lying to Gisa too, she knows me."Still, I hate to hide things when it's not my choice: I hate to know that there's this sort of terrain I cannot walk on. At least I would like to know that Jawa knows that I am willing to do whatever it takes to make her or them more happy with the situation."
"I bet they're happy with the situation."

Gisa is tidying up the apartment. I follow her around as she piles up stuff and takes toys out of the way, throws away stuff. Little Biba is taking a nap in the other room, Loris (the rockstar) is about to come back from a sound check. There's white light pouring in from the high windows, smell of budino and hanging clothes.
"Funny" Gisa says then.
"What?"
"You telling me about this, and I reading Dostoevsky's the eternal husband these days. It just is a very similar story. Have you read it?"
"No".
"Well is about this guy who receives a visit from a friend who recently became a widower. The guy and this friend's wife were lovers until 9 years before, when she abruptly put an end to their relationship without an explanation. Later he meets the daughter of the widower and from the moment he lays his eyes on her he is convinced that she is his own daughter. The little girl is 9 years old, and the age makes it possible if not probable for her to be his daughter. More importantly, there is something with her that makes it even more obvious, some affinity and special bond that they have."
"So how it ends?"
"I don't know, I haven't finished it yet. But you said you felt some connection with Jawa's son."
"Well, I thought. But probably the boy is too little to say." I know you can't cling to something so irrational, you're not supposed to.
"Man, I really would like to know how the story ends." I mumble. "Please let me know." Like anything depended on that.

The apartment is silent. I finished writing a political thing about the supposed terrorism, posted it, and as always I'm depressed and sad. Politics depresses me. What I write in that realm always leaves me unsatisfied and dubious. Worried for everyone's reaction. I would mind less if I had to write about my intestinal habits or my kinky dreams or whatever. I wouldn't mind at all actually. I wish I had the time or better the urge to draw today. To post a drawing would cheer me up, it usually does...
Eat a yogurt, read some blogs. Admire a number of them. Avoided DC's again for fear of being annoying for mysterious reasons I wouldn't get --or to write something toady or silly (I'm crazy). There's a mountain of dishes in the sink I should wash, piles of books around the small green table. Today after I worked out I looked at my sketchy muscles in the mirror and made faces. This makes me smile if I think about it now.
No sex today, yesterday. Masturbation upon awakening, mixed in the dreams. Jawa, Rulla, made appearances today in it. I should translate some poetry, find the room to write some. Should finish a website and the logo for Libi. Tomorrow open mouth to the dentist. Tragically tired... And yet is life that empty?
Maybe tomorrow will come the courage to go to Jawa's and talk. With my luck she won't be home. I have been thinking about Piero and them every day since the last time we met. Wished I had someone, anyone to talk to about that. Because I don't know if I am crazy or not. Or what. I played all the possible outcomes of the conversation over and over in my head. "...You'll think I am crazy..." "...do you remember one year and ten months ago when you said you were pregnant? I asked you, wait, there's a little chance that I might be the father? And you said..." "Jawa, don't worry. Don't be scared of me..." "fuck, let's talk blood types. You guys are physicians after all..." "...I don't even imagine this could change anything: it couldn't. I just... would like to know, I guess..." "...I don't want to barge in your lives... I'd never..."

And what if I'm wrong? Should I be ashamed, and how could I avoid the shame? After all the first time I saw the child I felt he looked like his father. I said that out loud. The first impression should be the right one. He looked like his uncle actually. But maybe I was deliberately trying not to see that he looked like me. I remember that day, me and Jawa where waiting at the railroad crossing behind the little church next to Naviglio Grande, and the bascule lifted and the cars began moving next to us and we were on the sidewalk and in the rumble I said, to the five months old thing in her knapsack, I said, let's go my child. It was inadvertent, but Jawa didn't say anything, not even, yeah, right. She deadly serious looked away. I am still thinking at that and wondering. I thought, shit, I wish it was something one could talk about. And, incredible, it still is something you can't talk about. But I shouldn't complain for it-- after all I so obviously enjoy having secrets, don't I? They're the freedom I wasn't allowed to have as a child I guess. Or some other bullshit.

Since I must do something, I think I'm removing the fucking political post. It took me one hour to write it... that should make me feel better. To end with a similitude, I'll say that politics are just like italian coffee. No lasting. Overrated. Poisonous in the long run. Easily bitter as gall in the wrong hands. Needs rubber to work his way through. Chauvinist. Obscure. Needs sugar to be swallowed (end of the post.)

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.

Milano is hot and summery today. Warm wind is coming in to dry the clothes hanged outside on blue wires, or dropped on the flayed metal frames of the tenders beneath the dark windows. Someone, fanatic, turned on a cooler, and the hot whir swirls out of the white box hooked outside, its familiar noise filling the gaps of silence in the city ferment. A telephone rings repeatedly from one of prostitutes' apartments, and from the other side of the court echoes the dull cracking of an oval carpet wildly shook against the yellowish plaster walls. All around are fainted voices of indoor conversations and televisions, shotguns, fights, laughters, tricks.
The sky is blue, white with remnants of frayed clouds and chemtrails that swiftly are shifting westward. Again I have this strange feeling inside, like something growing. Gatherings of strength to liberate me from the falling country and its souls, maybe? Or the energy to decide about Libi instead of letting her down or giving her hopes? I don't know.
Jawa texts me a triple message about little Piero who's discovering the grass of the lawn at Parco Nord, and learning to roll himself always on the same side. I don't know what to answer, later I can't find the cellphone.
Finally the tram in the avenue rattles by, urging to leave the stop in front of the building where I hide. I sham normalcy down the streets and my shames follows me at a certain distance, looking as if going its own way.

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.