I can't tell you how this story started, I just don't remember how I ended up in it. But maybe it doesn't even matter, because the preambles are often useless and only serve to buy time. What really interests is the juice, the precious distillate that is obtained when you eliminate everything that surrounds it, a few drops that if you see them collected between two hands make you think of how little life remains once you have removed the lumps and skimmed and filtered and stuff like that, in short, we don't have much left if you remove the superfluous. In short, we have reached the moment in which that stupid expression appears on the face that appears mechanical, out of control, while you are watching a film and you say to yourself "here, now something has happened". I've been trapped in an electronics megastore for days, I don't even know how many, and it's only me. Now, the news isn't really shocking if you think of those who remain closed in a mine for months and maybe die there dehydrated, hungry, frozen, and it isn't even so compared to those who end up by mistake in a narrow and long shaft and dark as they walk quietly along a country path and crash!, a rotten wooden plank under their feet breaks and makes them fall down, into the abyss, a few meters from the world but far enough away from someone who can rescue them. The crime news of the news has nothing to do with me. Here for now I have food and drink (there are two vending machines for snacks, drinks, coffee) and the temperature is not bad either (and then, with all the appliances that are there, do you want an air conditioner?). The shocking news is another, brace yourselves: yesterday, seized by a moment of despair at being imprisoned here, I was crouched complaining in a corner, in the CD department, and who am I meeting? Elvis. I say him, Elvis Presley, the King, understand? He who proudly wears his banana quiff and his thick sideburns (what the hell, but he was Elvis after all) and is dressed in his classic white suit, sequins, sequins, fringed sleeves, ankle boots, that posture, that gait, he embraces the guitar as if it were a woman, it was him from head to toe, he who would be recognized by a South African Zulu as by a Borneo. He approaches and speaks to me in my language, and he also spells out the words well (fuck I know why he spoke Italian, don't ask me but he was like that).
“Dude, don't cry,” he tells me.
And who cries the most, there is Elvis in front of me.
He delicately rests his fingers on the strings and begins to sing to me Are you lonely Tonight with that voice of his, which by God perhaps won't be the most beautiful ever heard according to the rankings of the experts but to me it has always seemed unique, impossible to reproduce, something inexplicable, almost celestial, something that if you hear it you will remain glued there listening motionless because there is nothing else that can interest you more in those moments.
I move my head following the song, my head swings here and there, I look like a fool, my eyes closed and a smile like a teenager in love (only the little hearts around are missing, which rise and crackle like popcorn), I also seem to hear corrected in the background. I imagine romantic walks and crossed hands and kisses: kisses on the cheek (smack!); molded kisses (schiok!); tongue kisses (sguish sguish!); tongueless kisses (uff!); memorable kisses (wow!); kisses to forget (reset!); stolen kisses (ne-ni ne-ni ne-ni!); chased kisses (boooom!); requested kisses (kiss?); kisses never had (fuck!); lost kisses (no!); found kisses (oh yeah!); kisses that lasted a few seconds (bye bye!); kisses that never end (do not disturb, please…).
End of the kisses. And then all the make out I've had over the years as a boy, man, adult, the ones I'll do, maybe not as an old man but as long as I can yes, here, all the make out and that song as a soundtrack. Then it ends and I open my eyes, but Elvis is gone.
“Elvis! Elvis!! Elvis!!!" [Author's note: progressively increase the exclamation points to give more emphasis.]
I start looking for him everywhere but he has vanished, gone… I really saw him, it was a vision, an apparition like those of religious fervents, what was it? I go around the megastore and go back to the point where I saw it, then not even the time to rattle off some hypotheses (hypothesis 1: I'm hallucinating, I'm crazy; hypothesis 2: Elvis appears only to the elect; hypothesis 3: it's a dream and all this never happened; hypothesis 4: perhaps a panel from the ceiling or an electric cable has come off, it has fallen and tree!, it hit me right on the head, so now I'm having one of those weird life-and-death experiences; hypothesis 5: they are writing a story about me, or they are writing about someone who is writing a story about me; and so on, hypotheses about stories that are too absurd to be true, such as parallel dimensions and plots suitable for dreamlike, visionary films, à la David Lynch, so to speak) and in the CD department I see someone else, I say "someone else" but instead it is Frank Sinatra himself, oh yes, I'm not mistaken, The Voice, Ol' Blue Eyes, Frankie, call him what you like, it's him [Author's note: I consciously omit the nickname Swoonatra, in Italy it has never sounded so good]. He looks at me, winks at me and says “come with me” (also with perfect Italian. He's fine, but he was of Italian origins or he will have done a language course together with Elvis).
I follow him, and how can you not follow Frank Sinatra, just seeing him walk I would like to ask him for charisma repetitions. He starts humming How to fly With me a capella and I'm already ecstatic. We arrive in the electric armchairs department, he motions me to sit down and is silent for a moment. I recline the backrest until I find the position and I get comfortable (these armchairs aren't bad, they even have the vibro effect!), meanwhile he taps his foot to give the rhythm. I see a microphone magically appear in his hands – yet it's strange, I'm sure he didn't have it before – the music starts, the trumpet, the piano, the double bass and all the rest, he snaps his fingers in time, new How to Flight with Me but this time it's played as if at a concert, it's a live show just for me, and the head is still moving, swinging here and there, me like a fool and my eyes closed and a smile, I fly over the megastore, overtake him, again further up, faster and faster, it's day, I emerge from a cloud and puff!. It's starting to get cold, it's dark, pitch dark, a darkness never seen before [Note from the psychiatrist: oxymoron strongly desired by the author!], I'm in space, boundless space, planets, stars, wandering satellites, shuttles, the sun, the moon, earth – I see a monkey tapping on a pile of bones over there, to the tune of Thus spoke Zarathustra by Strauss – dazzling lights, violet-yellow-green-red-blue color spectrum, an astral fetus and then the black monolith that emerges, comes towards me, approaches, is about to crush me, but no, I'm the monolith , it's me, I crush them all (but what's the use of being so big and imposing if I'm alone anyway?). Then I think about it and start to descend again, I am no longer the monolith, I move away, I sling down like a splinter, a ball of fire, I come out of the dark, I come out of the cold, I pierce the cloud and again puff!, day again, down to the megastore, there it is, I see it, I go back inside, the smile, the eyes closed, me like a fool, the head moving, swaying here and there, eyes open: the music is gone, Frank Sinatra is gone!
"Frank! Frank!! Frank!!!" [Author's note: I repeat the concept of exclamation points, and then I have to give continuity to my stylistic choices.]
He too has abandoned me and I wonder why good things always last too little [Author's note: moment of creative crisis, I play the joker], but then I hear muttering, there is someone else, there, in the DVD department, here they are, I get closer and I see them clearly, there are four of them: there are Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick arguing among themselves. I start to go towards him but immediately something stops me, or rather someone pulls me by the arm, I turn around, I see him, OMG! (private message to the former catechist: no, I'm sorry, I'm not a believer, but this expression gave a good idea], I never imagined meeting him here, Humphrey Bogart! Bogie is dressed like in Casablanca, with his raincoat and hat with the band, and then that smoking cigarette between his fingers. But why do I see it in black and white? I don't know, but these shades suit him a lot; in fact, it's the only time I think that colors in cinema are superfluous!
"What do you want to do, boy?" he asks me, arching an eyebrow slightly (if you're wondering if he spoke Italian too, yes, the answer is yes. And what a voice!).
"What do I want to do? There, just a few steps away from me, are the greatest directors in the history of cinema. Now I go to them and have a chat, it seems to me the minimum. "
"They don't run away, you know?" he retorts, chuckling.
"Oh no? And what about Elvis and Frank Sinatra? They were there and after a moment they were gone.”
"Wake up, boy," Bogart tells me, becoming serious again.
I notice that his cigarette never burns out. He continues to smoke and that always remains the same. But what the hell is this? It crosses my mind that maybe it's a cinematic trick, then I stare back at it. “You mean wake up in the sense that I'm sleeping? In short, I will soon wake up in my bed and everything will turn out to be trivially a dream?»
“Hey, kid, they already did that. You've never seen The wizard of Oz?»
"You're right, it can't be like that. It would be too obvious, right? So what did you mean?”
"You can see whoever you want, whenever you want, in here."
I look at him, even more confused than before. So he goes on.
“For example, look over there in the books section. See that?”
A guy appears, black hair with a uniform on one side that reaches just below the ears, and a mustache that gives it a certain importance. He is wearing a dark suit and tie over a white shirt. He is eagerly leafing through volumes.
"And who is that?" I ask.
«Edgar Allan Poe, who do you want it to be» he clarifies, even a little annoyed.
I start to go again, but Bogie takes me by the arm again.
“Maybe you can't hear well, boy. Leave Poe alone, today he is also skittish. I think he drank more than usual."
“But maybe there won't be any other chances,” I whine.
“There will be many more, however. I repeat: you can see whoever you want and when you want. If you want to see Conan Doyle, you can see him. If you want to see Dostoyevsky or Kafka, you can see them too."
"Agree."
I finally resign myself.
"One question, boy: what year is it?"
«Well, when I came here it was 2011, but now I don't know. Well, it could be 2012, like 2015, or any other year.”
"You've been making stuff up since my time, huh?" he says to me, taking a look around him.
"Already."
«And tell me, boy, have you also invented a machine that counts all the money that a person has thrown away in his life? I mean, those that one has wasted, that one has spent in vain. I've always thought something like this might be useful in the future."
«No, we didn't invent this one» I reply, as I think back to all the money I've wasted and the genius of such a contraption.
"Too bad... Then the future can't be much."
"Yeah," I nod again.
"What's your name, boy?"
I remain disoriented, as if no one had ever asked me that question. What's My Name? What's my damn name?
"I don't know," I reply with candid bitterness.
"Can I call you Louis?"
"Sure, you can call me whatever you want."
I think about it a bit. Actually Louis I don't mind.
“Louis, perhaps today we inaugurate a beautiful friendship.”
I think back to these words, I'm sure I've heard them before. I don't remember where or when, though. All I know is that while I'm there thinking, a mist appears that gets thicker and thicker and rises up to capture Humphrey Bogart and take him away with it. Bogie disappears in the fucking fog, he leaves me too.
"Humphrey!!!!!!" [Author's note: I didn't feel so good repeating his name three times. However, I do not save on the total number of question marks.]
But what did he mean by alluding to other occasions? What does that mean, I'll rot here long?
Night comes and it is as if the darkest and most oppressive despondency shares my bed (but which bed? An electric armchair at the most), the despondency that is an exhausted and cumbersome body, and underneath there is a bottomless abyss, and above a black and boundless sky without hope. I think and remember. I think back and I still remember. I remember, especially I remember. I remember that this kind of shop was my favourite, I remember the Boss' last concert and his three hours non-stop, I remember Brazil by Terry Gilliam, I remember all those who meet me on the street after a while and ask me why I'm always so thin and maybe even thinner than before (but I have a fast metabolism, heck, you don't have it yet understood?), I remember beers drunk, beers with friends and solitary beers, light beers, dark beers, red top and bottom fermented beers, hop beers, wheat beers, barley malt beers, double malt beers, beers amber, weiss beers, foamy beers, foamless beers, I remember discos I didn't like and discos I hated (but why did I go there then?), I remember that high school classmate who wanted in every way to sleep with me and I didn't because I was obsessed with another woman I was with who then left me without even letting me see her from afar [Note from the censor: you can guess the meaning, there's no need to use that word that begins with "f"], I remember the unthinkable tuft I wore in the nineties (of course, I always looked Beverly Hills 90210), I remember the grunge wave and when it seemed that only that existed, I remember the Amiga 500 e Sensitive result, I remember the forks at school and failing (because I was always playing Sensitive result), I remember the pommarola with meatballs that my grandmother used to make on Sundays (what a scent!, I seem to smell it even now), I remember the Commodore 64 and the video games, I remember Subbuteo and the games with my uncle who made fun of me when he won I always remember the Cola-Cola commercial with the flames from the lighters [Author's note: I am aware of the mistake, but one never knows that such a giant will come and ask me to pay him the royalties for mentioning the name] , I remember the long sax solos as an instrumental interlude in the eighties light rock pieces, I remember car trips in the back seat and Pooh-Dalla-Venditti as the soundtrack (how many times have I found myself listening to them again in the grip of nostalgia!), I remember the shorts and knee-high socks and the blue bull's-eye shoes and the little jacket that I always threw on the grass and the blond curls that are gone, I remember NA to the cinema as a child and then I don't remember anything. I no longer remember my name or how I ended up here. Then here I start thinking again, I think of only one thing, what one shouldn't think about in such a situation but go explain it to a desperate person: death. Maybe Bogart meant that we'll all meet on the other side and then there will be plenty of opportunities to see each other again: I'm dead, he's dead, everyone's dead. I ask myself again, a hundred and a thousand times: will I die? I think again. Of course I will die. But will I die in this megastore? I will die without ever having seen The big-Bowl by Seurat at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Felix Feneon by Signac at the MoMA in New York (and that's fine, I like the pointillist movement!), I will die without ever having been to Japan or Australia, I will die without having learned English well (I say well in the sense that it must correspond to the real level of knowledge indicated in my curriculum) and playing an instrument that is one (the cymbals and the triangle do not count, however), I will die without having finished reading In search of lost time of Proust that has been there on my bedside table for a long time and there is no copy here! [Author's note: actually on my bedside table there is a collection of Woody Allen stories, but my character does more busy reading], but above all I will die without ever having uttered words such as arrogant, ubertous, occiduous, daguerreotype, synallagmatic in a public speech or terms from other times such as never, testé, felon with acquaintances, just to show my know-it-all (I know, it's ugly, but that's how they say it, and not "know-how". I take the opportunity to propose a petition regarding the replacement of the two terms in the vocabulary of the Italian language)! And then I start shouting those words as if they were one, without taking a breath, and a kind of singsong comes out (and the most beautiful thing is that the total number of letters far beats the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of Mary Poppins!):
PROTERVOUBERTOSUCCIDUODAGHERROTYPICAL SINALLAGMATIC GIAMMAITESTÉFELLONE!!!
Something happens. I think if I can say something like that all at once and never take a breath then I can do it all. And while I'm still there thinking about it, a gigantic writing appears before my eyes, flashing large characters: WHO CARES (I'm not sure I've really seen this, but if I did, it appeared on a flat screen from 60 inches, vivid color and high image resolution). Who cares if I rot in here, who cares if I die, who cares if I don't see or do something. I'm here and I can see whoever I want and when I want (oh, Humphrey Bogart told me, I didn't make it up). Just as I realize this, I hear music slowly building in volume. I approach the hi-fi systems and amplification department and I see that they have set up a stage above which a band is performing and… and…. oh-my-DI! (I repeat to the former catechist that I make an improper use of this expression), is the rock supergroup I've always dreamed of: Jimi Hendrix on guitar, Jaco Pastorius on bass (if you don't know him, go immediately and see what he could do!) , Keith Moon on drums and Freddy Mercury on vocals (the keyboard spot remains vacant because the keyboard players I like are all still alive!). Freddy (who is dressed like at the 1986 Wembley concert: white suit with red stripes, white undershirt too and yellow jacket) looks at me and motions me with his finger to sit in the front row (there's only the front row, anyway ). When I sit down, he goes to the microphone.
«This is for you, guy» says Freddy Mercury (I point out that he doesn't speak Italian, unlike the others. Long live unconventionality!), and then continues: «At megastores Odyssey».
A new song, written especially for me. And there's his voice and he starts moving (uh, how Freddy moves!) and Jimi Hendrix and Jaco Pastorius doing crazy things with their instruments and Keith Moon starting to roll like him. I am enchanted, intoxicated, enraptured [Author's note: synonyms used to reinforce the concept], the song is also beautiful; it lasts minutes and then hours, hours and hours, all night, always the same, so much so that I fall asleep and wake up in the morning.
We are back to square one. The supergroup is gone, but I am. I can't tell you how this story began or how it will end. On the other hand, what do you expect from someone who can't even tell you his name? Maybe shops like this shouldn't always be open, or at least have one day off? And is it possible that my supplies of drinks and food never run out? But what is really important, in conclusion? Do you have to find an explanation or don't care and enjoy it to the fullest? I've decided that I won't be asking myself anything anymore, I'll live like this, seeing whoever I want and when I want, as long as I want. Rational explanations be damned, in case there was one. To hell with complaints too. I'm serious, I've changed my philosophy of life (under my breath: it was actually Humphrey Bogart who convinced me to say these things. He's here, he's next to me, in black and white, with his endless smoking cigarette between his fingers. And I swear, he's not pointing a gun at me!). That's the whole story. I'm off now, I have an appointment with Oscar Wilde in the book section in a few minutes. We'll sip tea from the vending machine together and meanwhile he'll entertain me with his aphorisms. The only problem is that he asked me to dress well, but I don't know how to do it because here there are only band T-shirts and what I'm wearing isn't so good for a meeting with a dandy like him. But this is a problem that does not concern you, I will deal with it myself.
"Let's go, Louis."
“Yes, Humphrey. Um, look, since Elvis doesn't have anything to do with me… could you lend me a raincoat and hat, by any chance?”
“Not even dead, Louis. Not even dead.”
The cigarette continues to smoke. And the smoke mixes with the fog. Bogart and I disappear in there.
Mirko Tondi Born in 1977, he received a special mention at the Troisi prize (2005), published poems and stories in anthological volumes (including a story for Mondadori crime novels, 2010), some novels that he likes to define as "experimental" without knowing whether actually so. He takes care of writing workshops in Florence (where he also organizes the Literary Club) and Viareggio. His latest publication, published by Robin, is Seeing double (2018)
