Visti i buoni riscontri da parte dei lettori, pubblico anche la versione in inglese del racconto “Il colore del sole”. Questa versione è stata scritta subito dopo quella in italiano, e beneficia della lettura da parte della stessa persona che mi ha raccontato la storia di Kathy e ha ispirato il racconto. Le nuance, e i colori, sono suoi. IM
Since the readers have appreciated the short story “Il colore del sole”, I also publish it in English. This version was written immediately after the one in Italian, thanks to the reading from the same person who told me about Kathy’s life and inspired the story. The shades and colors are hers.IM
The color of sunshine
(This is not Thelma and Louise)
Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
Tampa, Florida.
The sea is a blue postcard. As if millions of dwarf slaves of the goddess of beauty painted every drop to make it more beautiful than that of Osaka or Adelaide, much sleeker, more American. It is only a bridge. Nay, it is the way to heaven. The road leading somewhere else, where the blue does not need to be painted and polished every day by the sweat of brow and arms.
Nearby lives Liza, my American beauty.
She loves Italy, and I love her love.
She says that she has Sicilian roots. But she’s like the Statue of Liberty – she comes from Europe but no one remembers that. She laughs, with those teeth eternally young and her brilliant mind far away from self-centered billionaires with hair resembling the fur of unkempt cats. She laughs and runs each day among her true cats, black and healthy, and her smooth lawns, no fences.
Today she has run to the airport, to take me, the sloth Italian drawn by her, by the thought of her flesh and mind, in this huge playground where every step brings you toward astonishment and fear. Where even the morning is bigger, thirstier, and the evening is a smooth lawn to walk and dream on.
She keeps talking and laughing, with that voice that sways like a song on the skin and sinks into the veins. She laughs, and before I can embrace her, she has already told me about her life, her brother, her cousins, relatives, work, the glasses of more and more colorful and alcoholic drinks, friends, gyms, massages, the steps of a lifetime between heat and wind, laughing and crying, perseverance and dreams.
I step into her giant car. She tells me that there, by them, that is a small car, similar to our Panda, the old model, square, still not completely extinguished. She has been in Italy, with her love, far away now. She saw St. Peter and St. Siro, the sun and the frost. She brought with her huge suitcases and heavy memories, regrets of cast iron and lead evenings. She has not stopped loving this crazy and strange country that is ours. But she is here now, in her own world. Playing at home, she is favored. She is the captain of the soccer team, as they say, of my overseas dreams.
She drives without hardly an eye to the road ahead, along wide and straight roads. I look at the road with one eye and at her with the other, and squinting has never been more full of fear and excitement. She brings me, first, to see their most beautiful monument: the Ocean. A huge installation on which no man has put a hand.
We cross the Skyway Bridge. And it’s like flying. Rapid and unstable, away from the ground. Close to the words of the story which, with a more intense laughter, she gives me as a gift.
DEDALUS: corsi, testi e contesti di volo letterario 