Italian stories. "Belgique Joyeuse 1960. 
Ay Marieke Marieke je t'aimais
tant Entre les tours de Bruges et Gand Ay Marieke Marieke
ya Longtemps
Entre les tours de Bruges et Gand
(Jacques Brel)
There are times in life and in our memories seem enveloped in fog as if we had crossed in a state of sleepwalking. This impression of distance and strangeness is not always caused by the years that have passed, and from possible lapses of memory, but sometimes it is because we have lived through those periods in a state of dreamy unconsciousness and almost happy.
Gigino In 1958, my brother, who had recently taken a diploma in accounting, worked from April to November in the Italian pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels. For all those long months Gigino, who had little more than two decades, she wrote home, addressed to my father, at least two letters a week. All these letters are moving as a monument of his filial piety and his boyish innocence.
When he returned to Italy, proud its first earnings, reported that the objects for our family at that time were the valuable new features: a camera and a fonovaligia, with the two-disk set. For some years, until Gigino not find a stable job, those first two albums were the only possessions. So I had the opportunity to listen to over and over again and learn it by heart. They were the 'Symphony from the New World', by Antonin Dvorak, and the Emperor piano concerto, Beethoven. For hearings, Gigino pulled out of the closet and support the fonovaligia gently on a padded stool that sat in a corner of our room, then dusted the disc, with solemn gesture, using a special buffer velvet. Gigino was jealous of his stuff and kept in a small cupboard locked. Its object was to touch and handle him alone. But fonovaligia was too big to fit in the cupboard, and when Gigino was not there, I took advantage of his absence for clandestine hearings.
The morning hours were not suitable for listening to classical music, because the light that filtered through our curtains and white plastic mat was uncomfortable and conflicted with the dream of music that I wanted to pursue. But in the afternoon, which was not as hasty and precarious in the morning, the atmosphere was better. In the winter afternoons, the room began soon to darken the window and I could see the clear blue sky from the north, down the street the shops lighted signs and lights of the windows, and I seemed to contemplate the overwhelming sight of a big city full of entertainment, leaving the 'Symphony in the new world ', whose case had photographed the illuminated skyscrapers in New York.
Gigino In Brussels he met a girl of eighteen named Claudine. Claudine immediately began to write long letters brimming with sentimentality. After a few weeks, she asked if he had a friend who wanted to write to his classmate. I offered myself, and wrote a first letter, for emphasis and bravado, seemed an obvious election. I wrote in a fancy way, my letters were real school exercises. My correspondent's name was Suzanne and she was the only child of elderly parents. He wrote with a tiny, tidy handwriting. He expressed himself with moderation and education. The postcards that every now and then I sent him impress me much. The first images that I met in Brussels merged with the music of Beethoven concert, I listened constantly. It seemed to me that the Emperor harmonizes well with the image of a city and gloomy monotone, Gothic, rainy, austere and solemn, but not devoid of gaiety and sweet villainy. It was Suzanne who first introduced me to some poems by Rimbaud, Verlaine and other poets, anarchists and extravagant. Their desire for love and wide open spaces, their sensitivity to wind, rain and nature became for me the stamp of French literature that I loved. Suzanne appeared in the pictures a young girl with a nice bunch of short brown hair and two large eyes gazing with a look of tremulous expectation. After a few months, my brother, who loved to write, he got tired and gave up Claudine. Gigino to write and draw was always an ordeal. Gigino was a sensitive and intelligent boy, but was too shy and insecure. Also should not feel at ease under the deluge of flattery and compliments Claudine filled in their letters. To live happily report that exaggerated tones, it would take some histrionics, which Gigino was completely unprepared.
then I offered to pay with Claudine, who began to write with the same impetuosity with which he wrote to my brother. In his letters Gigino owed by a passion that seemed already become legend or literature, even if among them, in Brussels, there had been nothing: they had only done a few walk together with friends.
My brother, shy and introverted boy, falls in love only with beautiful women and unreachable, and the prolixity of sentimental Claudine must have seemed too easy, the result of a misunderstanding, not aimed at him, and thus the inclination that she showed not touched at all. She had a great writing and elementary that corresponded perfectly to his person, which appeared in a photograph. High, filled with a broad face and thick lips, like a Renoir bather. In a photo Claudine girl of seventeen or eighteen years old, was sitting by the window while reading a book. Her hair tied in a ponytail and her face filled with the fleshy ears and cheeks bathed in white light. I've always loved "the woman that reads," in his collection consists abandonment, careful and dreamy.
For two years I maintained a lively correspondence with both girls, to which my letters like, probably because they were animated by a bold exhibitionism. However, relations between us were very correct. Our letters were chaste. None of us would dare to conclude with a more robust "her love", which, moreover, perhaps we would not have even been able to think.
During a school trip to Provence, the two girls held a joint diary, which then sent me, writing every other day. I believe that he no longer felt a feeling in my life so full of bliss.
In 1960, at the end of the school year, I decided to go hitchhiking in Brussels to know them.
My father financed with thirty thousand francs, that I need just for a week that lasted the journey. I left a July morning with an old backpack before the war, lent by the doorman of our building. The stages were Firenze, Bologna, Milan, Basel, Cologne. I left with a serious injury to one of the girls. In those weeks he was a guest at our house my cousin Romeo, who had joined the faculty of political science and had come to Rome to give the exams. She was five years older than me. It was a fop who declared communist, but the university elections, for cheerful camaraderie, the association voted for the fascist Caravella. The seriousness of my brother and my irritated him. He said he had the utmost respect for the culture and the depth of Gigino, but I consider that my speeches 'cultural' a pure scimmiottatura. As he was casual and boasted an impressive number of female conquests, my brother and I recognize the immense superiority and we had to master of social life. I had him read the last letters of Claudine and Suzanne, and Suzanne found that he was cold and detached, and Claudine, according to him, was affectionate and romantic. In my mind crept the depressing idea that Suzanne, who was my true friend and a friend and co-opted to complement my trip to Brussels did not like, and in me you work in favor of a rapid change Claudine. Needless to say that I had made a terrible mistake? That led to abrupt changes in Suzanne a pain that I've never had a chance to heal and whose memory, after the fog in which I wrapped it was sparse, I was tormented for decades. My mistake, as well as painful, was also ridiculous, because inspired by a man with absolutely nothing. But the fault, of course, was all mine.
In Cologne, now approaching the finish line, I gave up hitchhiking and took the train to Brussels. The first impression was of a party town, which, with its many immigrants of color in exotic clothes, it seemed the scene of a spy movie od'avventure, as you could see so many works in Hollywood, which gave Africa a 'adventurous and reassuring image in which blacks were subjected and quiet.
arrived in town, still dominated by the opinion of my cousin Romeo, first tried to Claudine and the next day I called Suzanne.
For ten days were my guardian angels: I paid for their drinks in public places, the entry ticket in museums and even the tram. Claudine came to see me every morning at the home of his brother Arthur, where to stay, while the afternoon we went out together. Suzanne I never saw her alone, but always in the company of others. I am not well aware of what I did. I slid down the slope of the simple physical impressions and small vanity satisfied. As I was anesthetized. Claudine was very seductive. Although forms of full, was slender, with an elastic step, his eyes gentle, sly, slyly passive and cruel. He had white feet and chubby, yet fast.
I was eighteen and she was twenty, but when it comes to sex was inexperienced as me. He arrived at his brother's house about nine o'clock and spent a couple of hours together.
His brother Arthur was 32, had worked in Congo, which was recently returned for fear of political unrest. It was a small man, dark, sly and ironic with the thin mustache. He lived alone, making the life of a libertine who found women in public places late at night. He had a large closet chock full of erotic books.
When you stay at home with Claudine, we simply embrace. More than excited (I was maybe too young), I was curious. She gave kisses and long, so full-flavored, who later, while lunch alone at his parents' home, each time repeating that after the kisses, the soup seemed tasteless.
In late morning, we left the house of Arthur and went for a walk in some park. The sky was of a milky white and called for languor and drowsiness, the leaves were still dewy drops of intermittent drizzle that made the air fresh and fragrant. Every so often we would sit on a secluded bench, where we spent half an hour of boring as idiotic. In the afternoon, if it rained, Arthur took us by car to visit some places. Suzanne always sat in front beside the driver, while me and Claudine, in the back seat, we held hands. Claudine sported our intimacy with a subtle and fierce air of triumph against her friend, who evidently wanted to inflict a cruel mortification. Suzanne had blue eyes, was pretty, petite and small, introverted, honest and full of fortitude. In the evening we all ate together at his house. Because in my letters I had boasted of being a communist, his bigoted parents looked at me with suspicion. When I left to go to Brussels to Ghent, from my friend René De Winne, who had met in Genoa last year during a hitchhiking tour of Italy, the two girls accompanied me on the outskirts of the city and were waiting on the opposite edge of the road, I was getting a ride. Suddenly Suzanne crossed the roadway, she handed me a letter and ran by his friend. Then a car stopped and I left. Now I read the letter from Suzanne. He expressed sorrow for the fact that I, his friend, I had ignored, but he felt no resentment for me, was rather mild and tender. He just told me that I behaved like a gosse, like a child. Claudine said nothing. I'm still full of admiration for those simple and clean.
the evening of my arrival at the home of Rene De Winne, the flat countryside around Ghent, my friend took me a visit by his acquaintances as a trophy (fifty years ago the gap was much larger than now, and Rome seemed so far away). The next morning, with the bicycle René, remade the forty-five kilometers down the road and flew to Brussels where he lived, Suzanne. Never miss a second crossed running a butcher shop that had a door and climbed the stairs to her breathlessly up to her apartment on the top floor. He opened the door to his mother, who, surprised to see me, assumed an air of more suspicious than usual, and then it was her. Suzanne took me to a brasserie not far from his home. It was only ten in the morning and the sun was still up on the tables. In that atmosphere Safe and we talked a little uncomfortable, but weakly.
I was racing back to Brussels to repair, with chivalry, a wrong that I feel I have done, but I was still influenced by the physical proximity of Claudine in order to find myself so soon. With simplicity and uprightness
Suzanne asked me if, being in Belgium, I had found the girl I had imagined it or if I was not disappointed. Unable to lie, but wanting to avoid a clear and direct answer, I spoke so evasive and confused and cheated, increasing the pain of that brief conversation.
ambled returned to the village of Rene, stopping every now and then to the banquet on the road selling marine snails and fried potatoes. He made
evening. The lights are already lit in the villages that lined the road for miles, without stopping anything, and I was still traveling. In the flat uniformity, it seemed to cross a huge amusement park and I could not recognize the street where to turn to get to my friend's house.
