Dedicated To Sara E-Book

Marco Fogliani

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Dedicated with affection to all those (and there are many) who have given their love to someone and had to contend with their illness, even though they knew that they have no chance of winning; and to those who had to coexist with a love like this.

”Over twenty years ago a girl I loved like myself asked me to leave her forever because of her poor health, and not to contact her again. I agreed, with death in my heart, and intending it only as an act of love on her part towards me, to allow me to build a normal and happy family blessed with children. In 2013 Sara left this life. And on that occasion, together with the certainty that at this point what had happened could not be changed, and despite the fact that I found myself with two wonderful daughters, returned the doubt of having made, back then, the right choice.” A story of troubled and romanticized love, drawn from several short stories which, although independent of each other, follow in part the logical and chronological steps of the story. A tribute to my first love, savored and then lost, at a year from her death: a collection stories about her and inspired by her.

PUBLISHER: TEKTIME

Leseprobe

Written by:

MARCO FOGLIANI

Dedicated to Sara

Translated by: Barbara Maher

©2022 - Marco Fogliani

Table of Contents

EPITAPH (14/10/2015)

THE CONCERT OF “LORENZO'S BAND“

NOTHING ESCAPES MOTHER

CLARA'S POSTCARDS

GELINDO AND FLORINDO

THE ENCOUNTER IN DIGNANO (14/7/2018)

A DIFFERENT CHRISTMAS

A THOUSAND AND A HUNDRED MORE

ANNA AND I

A LUCKY WOMAN

THE OTHER SARA

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

CHOICE OF LOVE

PRINCESS CYCLAMEN AND CAVALIER BLUEBERRY

THE IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND

NOT WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE

THE THIRD SPRING (A ONE ACT PLAY)

REFLECTIONS AFTER A TRIP TO TIVOLI

EPITAPH (14/10/2015)

Hi Sara

A lifetime has passed since I met you more than thirty years ago at university.

A lifetime has passed since love first burst into my existence and shone a light on it, a beacon, and let me know its miracles, giving me the most beautiful and unforgettable moments. I loved you more than myself.

A lifetime has passed since, maybe twenty years ago, we had to leave each other.

A lifetime has passed, but love, like a family treasure, still remains.

A lifetime has passed since, perhaps the day before yesterday, you stopped suffering and left.

A lifetime has passed, but for me nothing changes or will change between us.

Goodbye Sara

SARA CAGNUCCI

(6/5/1964 - 14/10/2015)

THE CONCERT OF “LORENZO'S BAND”

One afternoon as I was coming home from school, I happened to see some posters advertising a concert of “Lorenzo’s Band” about one month later.

I thought of Clara at once when I saw them - because it was her favorite group - although my thoughts had probably been almost permanently fixed on her for a few months now. A good excuse, if I ever needed one, to call her that evening and have a nice little chat with her again. And then, who knows, maybe arrange to go together.

“Did you see that Lorenzo's band is performing next month at the Concert Hall?”

“Yes, I know. And I went to Tivoli the other day to get some information about it from the tobacconist in the square. He’s the only one around here that sells tickets for the theater and concerts, but he had already run out of them.”

I was a bit disappointed that she hadn't told me this earlier because, given how loquacious she is, it was almost equivalent to having kept it hidden to me, and she hadn’t thought of going to it with me. But as usual I really appreciated her spontaneity and sincerity, and I was very happy to have had a chance to make myself useful to her and earn her gratitude.

“If you like, I’ll see if I can find them here in Rome. And if I do, let's go together, okay?” I proposed.

“Oh yes, I hope you do! And if you find some you should get one for my sister. She’d like to come too.”

I would have preferred it to be an outing for just the two of us, but her sister was alright. She was nice and was on my side. And anyway, I would have been willing to do anything for Clara, even get tickets for all her friends in Tivoli, and maybe go and buy them in Naples if necessary.

So, I went downtown to inquire at the ticket office. I queued up for quite a while, and in the end I couldn’t find anything better than three unnumbered places in sector H from which, the young lady explained to me, you couldn’t see much but to make up for it you could hear everything, and they didn’t cost much.

A friend of mine who often went to that Concert Hall told me that in fact you could see the big screen quite well from sector H, though the people on stage were like distant specks; but he did not agree that you could hear very well. It was loud, yes, very loud, because there were powerful loudspeakers nearby, but this certainly didn’t mean that the audio was good, on the contrary.

I told Clara about my friend’s comments, and also his advice to take ear protectors or earplugs although then, he had explained, you feel the bass notes vibrating in your belly, and there are no earplugs that can stop it. But if you arrive very early you can choose the best places, and you might even be able to change sector; and in the worst case scenario you can go outside onto the square right in front of the gates, because you can hear from there too.

When I told Clara all this, she seemed resigned: “Well I'll take ear protectors, and let's try to get there as early as possible, then we'll see,” she commented.

About ten days later the outlook for our concert seemed to improve considerably when I ran into Franco on the bus. He was an old friend of mine, a tall man with a very deep bass voice. He asked me if I might need two tickets for the concert of Lorenzo's band.

“I've already bought some, but they’re in sector H and they told me the audio is terrible there,” I replied.

“I have two tickets for seats in sector C at 25,000 lire each. If you want you can have them for half price. Unfortunately, I can't go because I’m being sent on a mission in Turin that week. I can't find anyone to sell them to, apart from my boss, and I don't want to give them to him. All my friends have already bought their tickets. What do you say?”

“I say that I’d also have another problem: that I need three tickets.” I already imagined how it would end: me alone in the hell of sector H, with Clara and her sister sitting comfortably on two seats in the stalls being harassed by handsome young men in suits and ties, like two flowers being attacked by wasps.

“Come on, think about it. Let's make it 20,000 for both. Maybe they won't notice if one is different when the tickets are all together.”

“Okay, I'll make something up,” I replied reluctantly. To tell the truth, I was nurturing the hope that Clara's sister might change her mind, maybe at the last moment, and not come.

“Listen, let's do this: we’ll be in touch before I leave. In the meantime, I might be able to get hold of another ticket. And anyway, I don't have them with me right now.”

We left it like that, and in fact he contacted me again.

“I would have found two more tickets for the stalls. That bastard the captain has sent my colleague in mission too. We think he did it on purpose: he couldn’t find tickets and sent us out of town. And then guess what, he asked us if there was any chance someone could sell him some tickets. But over our dead bodies, we said, rather than give them to him we’d tear them up. Or we could give them to him for a million upwards … But no, come on, if you want them, they're yours, let's say 20,000 for all four of them, okay?”

“Well, thank you, and to your colleague too. In return I can give you three tickets for sector H, where the audio is bad, and you can't see anything. At this point I don't need them and maybe you can use them to spite your captain or make some money on them …”

Well, in the end, with only a week to go before the concert, we made a deal on the tickets. But when I had them in my hand, I already had the feeling that they wouldn’t be of any use to me. Clara had come down with a cold a couple of days before, and I already knew what would happen: first the scarf, then the reddened nose. Guess if she would go out in the evening in that condition! On Thursday she didn’t even come to classes. In the evening I called her at home, and she confirmed her poor state of health.

“I'm sorry, I think I won't be able to come to the concert on Saturday,” she told me.

“The show won’t be the same without you, of course” I replied jokingly, but sincerely sorry. “What about your sister?”

In fact, I would reluctantly have gone to the concert without Clara, and going to it with her sister, just us or with someone else I didn’t know, could have become embarrassing: but if she or Clara had insisted, it would have been morally difficult for me not to go with her. It would have been like pulling back from a commitment I’d made.

“No, she’ll stay at home with me.”

I was relieved by this news.

“We found out that the concert will be live on TV, so we’ll watch it together.”

“Too bad you're not well, otherwise I could have come to watch it with you,” I said. I would certainly have gone whatever illness she had, but I knew that there was no way she would allow me to do so.

But in the end, it was actually as if we had gone together.

That evening, as soon as the concert began, I phoned her, and we spent maybe more than an hour on the phone. We quite often spent entire evenings on the phone, but generally it was to talk about everything and nothing, and maybe unconsciously just to hear the sound of our voices. That time, though, there was no conversation except for a few brief comments between one song and another, some her explanations about what she liked about this song, or what another reminded her of. I could hear the TV on in the background, and she sang along as best she could, as far as her state of health and her voice allowed, a bit hoarser than usual but never loud and always very beautiful for me.

“I don't know if you should be singing in your condition,” I pointed out timidly. For once I was playing the part of the apprehensive mother/nurse, the role that she usually played with me. She didn't even try to justify herself with an excuse, but I let the thing drop. I felt that her soul came out with her voice so happy and carefree, and it was a wonderful show to listen to.

She was lying or sitting in her bed, with the television that had been taken to her room especially for the occasion, with long cables stretching out around the house. I, who instead had not won the exclusivity of the television in my home, had sunk into the armchair listening very relaxed, and occasionally singing along with her the few words I knew.

It is for you only that I sang,

it is for you only that I studied,

it is for you only that I died,

only for yoooou …

I had always been rather indifferent to Lorenzo's band, a group like many others even if I had to admit that some of their songs were nice; but since I’d met Clara, I had begun to appreciate them too, only out of solidarity with her at the start but little by little also because I was really convinced.

It is for you only that I danced,

it is for you only that I fought,

it is for you only that I smoked,

only for yoooou …

In the most famous pieces, her sister joined the choir too. She occasionally went out of Clara's room and left us alone, then returned after a while; sometimes she too made her comments, in the background, but so that I could hear them too. This and everything else that was going on at Clara's house meant that there were interruptions from time to time disturbing the performance, but I continued to listen anyway. In fact, my right ear had started to burn because it had been in contact with the phone handset for so long and I had to switch to the other ear.

At some point though she said:

“Sorry Aristide, but my father needs to make a phone call. I have to hang up.”

“Okay Clara, but promise me that as soon as he finishes, you’ll call me back and we’ll continue watching the concert together.”

“Yes, alright.”

I sat in the armchair by the phone for a long time, waiting for it to ring. A few times I gave in to the temptation to try to call her back in case she had forgotten her promise.

The last time I did so, I was narrowly beaten by the phone that started ringing, perhaps the very first time she had ever called me.

“Sorry it took me so long, I couldn't find your number,” she apologized. And then she resumed singing along with the TV.

We said goodbye at the end of the broadcast.

“I'm really sorry you couldn't go to the concert because I wasn’t well, and that you spent money on the tickets. When I see you, I'll pay my share.”

“Not at all. Don't even try. And besides it was a great concert just the same, a really lovely evening,” I told her with conviction.

NOTHING ESCAPES MOTHER

Marco and Sara had been dating for several years, from the time they started university.

For him the spark had started from the first time he had met her, at the end of the first lesson in the large classroom full of yet unknown people. Chirping indeed like a sparrow, she was talking like a stream in flood, with a small group around her which he had willingly joined, almost out of necessity, attracted by a mysterious force. Perhaps it was the beauty of her eyes - one of them very particular, with a two-tone iris - and her sincere smile; or perhaps it was the sweet timbre of her childish voice; and everything she said made him think to a child on her first school day.

“She’s the one,” Marco thought immediately. But perhaps instead of thinking it he heard it from a little voice inside himself, or perhaps outside. The voice of the universe that solely in view of that moment had prepared all its wonders and awaited endless centuries of history: so that the two of them would meet and Love would be born.

Little by little the group broke up and he was left alone to listen to her; and from that moment their souls never ever left each other[1].

Several years had passed since that first meeting. They had first assiduously attended the University, sharing lessons, reviews, lunch breaks and friendships. He looked for and found every opportunity to have her company, which she always welcomed; he helped her and guided her in her studies and in anything else that could be of use to her. Her voice was often heard sounding cheerfully in the corridors (and, sometimes in an embarrassing way, in reading rooms and libraries too); and when you heard her you could be certain that you would also find him with her and other friends perhaps.

They made a beautiful couple, like others - few others - in their faculty. Undeclared, but solid and real. And although for both of them, and especially for her, there was no shortage of other suitors, it was evident that their chaste, fraternal bond was something you didn’t often come across, achieve or hinder; something which was impossible to compete or interfere with. A small miracle, a masterpiece; the dazzling reflection of the harmony of the universe in a man and a woman: it was Love.

Then he began to take her home, a remote house in the hills where no one could have ended up by chance, and he met her family, who welcomed him as if he were their fourth child. His intentions and their prospects were so obvious that there was never any need to declare them.

Sara was an open book for everyone, not to mention her family. It was like that for Marco too. Thanks to her sincerity he had known, right from the first moment, how to read her from her gaze, gestures, and intonations; and through them he was able to understand her thoughts and feelings, which he found wonderful. Her pure and innocent soul of a young girl seemed like something out of a Walt Disney fairy tale.

As time passed leisure was added to study and then replaced it, and every Saturday afternoon Marco, aboard his small mechanized carriage, went up the hill to get his princess[2] to take her to the city or around Lazio, their small kingdom. Museums, theaters, gardens or just a stroll; to which was then added the dinner at the restaurant, always in a different place, always romantic.

Everything was fine and everything was great, because wherever they were it was always the right place. Simply because together, they were happy.

I couldn't exactly say when or why their first kiss arrived - just as I couldn't say when the first time, without thinking about it, they had taken each other's hands.

He had taken her home at the end of one of those countless evenings. As always, leaving each other was difficult, they still had many things to say and were lingering, down there in the olive trees at the gate to her house, inside that little car that was just right for them, like a nest.

The evening was cold and damp, and the windows had quickly fogged up.

“Can I give you a kiss?” he asked suddenly, changing the subject.

Her pale face, mostly covered by her very long multicolored scarf, reddened slightly. She answered affirmatively more with a smile and her eyes than with a nod of the head and with words.

It was a chaste kiss really, which left an unexpected and unusual taste in their mouth like a never sampled dish. A kiss like millions of others that are exchanged on this earth every day, we might say; a normal stage of growth, such as the appearance of the first tooth. But for them it was something much more: it was the first kiss of their lives. And, each of them knew, it was the first for both of them.

“It’s taken you a while. I was wondering how much longer or what you were waiting for before you kissed me.”