In The Background Of The Muse E-Book

Andrea Bruno

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Fabio is a young mathematics teacher at the Liceo di Locarno and is ready to marry Giovanna. But Giovanna suddenly breaks off the relationship at the beginning of the summer. Changes only colour the soul when they are abrupt and unexpected. But the summer for Fabio will also be an unexpected journey for another reason. There has been a mystery buried for centuries in the memory of Canton Ticino. The conversations about history and mathematics that Fabio has with his friend Jean-Francois will only serve to fuel new doubts about Fabio's role in the world. Fabio will have to fight his way through the thousands of memories that tie him sentimentally to Giovanna and find the new coordinates of his destiny. In the meantime, Fausto, an elderly painter, enjoys the national fame he has gained by investing years in technique and intellect. With no descendants, and knowing that death will soon be knocking at his door, Fausto knows there is a secret hidden within the peace and beauty of Canton Ticino. A secret that has haunted Fausto for decades and which, despite the decades invested in unravelling it, still remains unsolved. In the wind of change, Fabio will have to put the pieces of his heart back together and unravel this enigma, following in the footsteps that Leonardo Da Vinci sowed on Swiss soil five hundred years ago. Born in Locarno in 1983, Andrea Bruno still lives in Switzerland with his life partner and their two children. In The Background Of The Muse is his first novel. l.

Leseprobe

Index

1. Fabio 2. Giovanna

2. Giovanna

3. Jean-Francois

4. The phone call

5. Fausto

6. Aida

7. The Rivellino in Locarno

8. The Brissago Islands

9. The world’s oldest borders

10. Cenacle

11. The castles of Bellinzona

12. The Smile of Apollo

Acknowledgements

IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE MUSE

2023 © Andrea Bruno

I edition 2023

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9791222706115

Copertina: furgi.ch

Grafica: robertoiacono.com

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination.

Any reference to facts or persons is entirely coincidental.

For the eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake.

1. Fabio

Cockroaches emerge from the crevices between the church steps. It happens at night when darkness engulfs the marble. But it is difficult to say exactly where cockroaches sleep during the day. If the creeks are very deep and there are pockets of soil at the end of the line. Or whether instead the creeks are just dark paths through which cockroaches stroll to find oases of crumbs.

July’s wind blew through the arches and the bells twinkled in the lights projected through the church. I have a bite of the avocado toast and contemplate the crown of mountains standing against the star-filled sky.

The darting walk of the cockroaches, especially when they run in search of sugar and gnats, is a reflection of childhood, when as children we played catch in the park. Beneath our shoes the gravel turned every change of direction into a body sway. As if we had been drunk.

Tonight, there is a breeze coming from the clouds. Dry as if the sky had not drunk for centuries, the breeze pushes the pine needles and brushes the coloured glass windows. I took a bite of the toast, loosened my tie and observed the cockroaches, equipped with a notebook and pencil.

On the step closest to the forecourt is a cockroach with distinctly long antennae. Were it not for their short legs, one could mistake it for a country cricket. But the head, which is small in relation to the body, leaves little room for doubt.

I visit this church for the second night in a row. There are only cockroaches here. Their feet caress the marble like sparkless matches. In the pitch-black carapace, a dull glow of the stars is faintly mirrored.

I have been studying that childhood-soaked walk for almost exactly one hundred minutes. I am working on a new wood sculpture. It is a machine capable of moving with the blowing of the wind. But because of the round torso and transparent sails, assembled with reinforced cellophane, my sculpture brings to mind a ladybird rather than a cockroach.

I take a last bite of the sandwich and rub my hands, sprinkled with crumbs, on the steps.

Unfortunately, studying ladybirds is very difficult. They have the tendency to fly off, to a new horizon, without warning. So again, tonight I thought I would settle with cockroaches.

On the blank page the pencil slid, tracing a convex graphite- coloured line. I segmented that line into three points, then, ignoring the ten Instagram notifications, turned on my phone flash and approached the cockroach.

He slips into a frenzy, out of the beam of light, like an actor fleeing the stage. But it suddenly froze when a five-cent coin fell out of my pocket and bounced on the step. I moved the phone closer to the ground hoping not to scare the cockroach away.

His antennae sway, shiny and black, in the light, like oil-soaked blades of grass.

I quickly draw a new sketch. Rather than a scientific drawing, my drawing is meant to be an impressionistic note. I want to absorb the feeling transmitted by the cockroach as it strolls over the stone. My goal is to share this feeling through a sculpture that moves with the breeze.

The pencil slips on the paper and the beetle is still motionless. As I draw, I am reminded of my girlfriend and the bitter smile that blossomed on her lips this morning before she went to the basement to get the suitcases. On the bed, her clothes were stacked in extremely lopsided piles and a vivid rainbow against the white of the sheets.

On the street in front of the church is a pavement on which a young couple is walking. He has bleached hair and a thousand bracelets on his wrists. She instead gathered her black hair into a chignon, while a studded handbag dangles below her shoulder.

During the warm nights, my girlfriend and I also used to take frequent walks. But then something in our relationship broke down. In May we stopped spending those little night moments together, so simple yet so meaningful. Often much more genuine than sex.

The beetle resumes its run but stops climbing the step. I turned off the flash and sat down next to him. In silence it is as if we can communicate. Each perceives the invasive presence of the other organism. There are millions of churches in the world in which to stand and yet we both hang on the same step and are enveloped in the same turgid July darkness.

I have marked other curves and other shapes on the page, but the contraption of my concentration flaked off like butter on a hot pan when I thought back to my girlfriend and the suitcases.

As I walk away down the road, the beetle is still stuck to the step, determined not to move an antenna. Instead of shrinking, with each step towards my girlfriend, he seems to get bigger. Like a black hole in the path of an early summer night.

2. Giovanna

In the greenhouse, the tomatoes glistened under the neon strip. I pass them and stop further on where the orchids dance motionless above the earth still moist from the afternoon. I bent down in front of the irradiated white lilac petals, resembling butterfly wings, to savour their scent.

Even on the most torrid nights, the scent of orchids is of refreshing elegance.

In the 27 years since my birth, I have always loved flowers.

They are painted, in my synapses, as caves jagged with coloured chalk drawings. If people could dive into the flowers, I’m sure they would find a lot of gold, not material but of the spirit.

Leaving the greenhouse, I crossed the garden and entered the house. The light from the kitchen shines on the realism landscapes hanging on the wall. I undid the last button on my shirt. The smell of Cuban cigars wafts down the corridor.

In summer, when you come home at night, your mind is invaded by a sultry feeling very different from what you experience during winter. Next to the door are three suitcases and two stacks of boxes.

Sitting at the kitchen table, my girlfriend has her legs crossed, wearing a white tracksuit and smoking a cigar with elegance. The chandelier, wrapped in opaque glass, anointed with soft light the golden bracelet she wears on her wrist. There is an oily density in the air, as if we were in the depths of a pond.

I opened the fridge, uncorked some white wine that I bought today at the local wine cellar and filled two glasses up to half. Then I sat down at the table with her.

“Have you been to the church?” he asked, taking a sip of wine. “Yes, I was at the church.”

Outside the window strands of cloud overlaid the stars. The howling of a dog overlaps the rumbling of distant cars.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” “More or less.”

I rested my lips on the glass’s glassy rim. The wine releases a fresh flavour on the tongue but, despite being white, it touches the inside of the cheek with cloudy tones. As taste, it tastes of nights spent hovering over the labyrinths of memory.

My girlfriend rolls up the sleeves of her overalls to her elbows and takes a puff from her cigar, watching the smoke disperse in grainy swirls below the ceiling. Then she caresses the goblet with the sharp nail of her index finger. Her eyes are blue but overshadowed by the decadent glow by which we are enveloped. It is as if a membrane of jelly existed all around us.

“I have thought long and hard about the reasons you listed for wanting to leave my place,” I said pouring more wine, “but I still don’t understand.”

“Which part don’t you understand?” she asks as she picks up the lighter to give the cigar a new flame.

“After seven years, the star of our story seems to be reduced to a firework that leaves behind a lot of smoke but no light.”

Outside the window, clouds gathered against the sky, hiding the stars painted in the universe.

“The memories of our days together,” says my girlfriend, “will come back to shine when I am gone. It is a promise. Because that’s how it always works, right?”

I ran my fingers through my sweat-damp hair. “For me they have never stopped shining, yet at the idea that you are leaving they seem to have lost all the light they are imbued with. That light is here, but it is shrouded in smoke that I do not recognise.”

My girlfriend did not say anything about this. She looked at her nails, her eyelashes wrinkled. The ash accumulates in crumbly flakes on the tip of the cigar. Every time she inhales the cigar, the flakes are tinged with incandescence, as if blowing life into a very long firefly.

When my girlfriend raises her eyes to me, her voice is very clear. “It is useless to stand here and blame ourselves. List the reasons why the stars go out. Many things are never born, others are born but have an expiry date. In this case we refuse to see, yet this date exists. I fell in love with you when we were in our early twenties, now seven years have passed. If you freeze a ripe fruit, it will stay perfect forever. But if you freeze an unripe fruit, I have the impression that the fruit will be young enough to grow even in frost, sometimes to the point of cracking ice.”

From the tap, it rains one drop at a time on the dishes in the sink “So I’ve been ice for you lately?”

“No,” he finished his second glass of wine, “it’s just a metaphor.” “You know, according to Nietzsche all language was originally a metaphor, and if I made you feel cold, I am very sorry.” “I don’t care about Nietzsche.”

“Right now, neither do I.”

I got up from my chair and poured more wine for both of us. We usually have a glass every now and then, but tonight we finished a bottle in twenty minutes.

The clouds, outside the window, still stain the whole sky. Instead of sitting down, I went to the sink, rinsed the dishes under the tap and put them in the dishwasher. Then I insert the tablet and run the eco wash programme, which is slow but saves a lot of water. So I sat back down at the table, my lips very dry despite several sips of wine.

“Can I call you in the next few days?” I asked.

“No, better not,” she says. “If we don’t hear from each other, it will be easier for both of us to move on, don’t you think?”

“Maybe you are right.”

“I have to go now anyway.”

Howling out of the sky, the wind creates new gashes in the clouds. “What time is your flight?”

“Five o’clock,” she says, drinking her last glass of wine in one gulp. “In less than 24 hours you will be on the other side of the world starting a new life. It seems incredible to me.”

“I know, it seems unbelievable to me too, and although I will do everything to avoid it, I will think of you, I really will.”

The taxi stopped in front of the house and honked its horn. We get up from the table and go out into the square. There is a heterogeneous darkness, mixed with the beams of streetlamps and the shiny cut-outs embedded in the neighbourhood houses. As my ex-girlfriend and I walk through the garden, we remain silent. I have known for a long time that something in the relationship had broken down, but only tonight did I realise for real that we had reached the end of the line.

The taxi driver and I exchanged pleasantries, then, crossing back and forth across the garden, we loaded the suitcases into the trunk. Meanwhile, my girlfriend texts someone on the phone.

A company specialising in foreign shipments will arrive tomorrow to load the boxes and suitcases that were left at the entrance. Although I exercise regularly and have trained muscles, tonight the suitcases feel heavy, like boulders impossible to move.

It is very cool, despite it being July, and the blades of grass sway in the wind but are stiff as needles. Immersed in the headlights of the taxi I wrapped my arms around her body.

“Goodbye, Giovanna.”

She held me tight but only for a few seconds. “Goodbye, Fabio.” Once in the taxi, the car disappeared beyond the first bend.

Night moulds the light, tinging the landscape with darkness. If electricity did not exist and if too much wind blew to light a fire, it would be impossible to walk into tomorrow knowing on which path we have chosen to go. In the far distance a dog is barking in the wind.

I had known for some months that Giovanna was cheating on me. But I never wanted to tell her anything. I had thought it was a passing crush and that after many years of a relationship it could happen. I too was infatuated with a woman two years ago, but without anything happening. We taught at the same high school and she had fallen in love with me, but as much as a side of me was enchanted by her, my love for Giovanna cut short any fantasies long before they could materialise. I have always been much more thoughtful than Giovanna, I have always experienced things more with my mind than with my body. She, on the other hand, need to feel the chill on her skin. That is why I said nothing when I found out she was cheating on me with another man.

Back in the kitchen, I look out the window in search of consolation, but apart from a sea of stars I find nothing.

Before going to bed I drank two glasses of whisky refined in Ticino, hoping to be able to sleep before one o’clock. But sleep only comes when the first light of the sun appears on the horizon.

3. Jean-Francois

The phone rings on the bedside table when my eyes are still closed and the nine o’clock rays of the morning sun are imprinted on the sheets. But as much as good manners are part of me, this morning I prefer to let it play. I have the impression that the only way to find myself is to indulge every little desire that comes to mind. So I first switch off the phone and leave it under the pillow.

A perfect sun shines in the sky, free of any clouds and bathed in a deep blue. So I put on shorts and trainers, a light T-shirt, and went out for a run. On the roads, the air is very hot, but the hills between which Arcegno lies give the spirit a rejuvenating feeling. Coloured with a thousand shades of green, the hills rise up under the sky like timeless pyramids. I feed on this vision and as I increase the pace of the race, I forget my heart, which beats faster and faster.

Back home, I allowed myself a long shower. The water washes away the sweat, wiping away the last remnants of last night’s alcohol. Shaving, I watched my face in the mirror fading into steam. On the teeth the toothbrush and the toothpaste release a pleasant coldness on the palate.

For breakfast I butter a slice of wholemeal bread with apricot jam from my garden. On the oat yoghurt I sprinkled cereal and chopped nuts. Finally, a nice coffee. I take my time eating breakfast, listening to Vivaldi at full volume, Summer of course, and reading a manual on the anatomy of butterflies.

Moving faster in space has always been a commonality to which man has aspired. But the dream of flying goes beyond saving time. It has always been an embroidered idea with many sparks of imagination. We float in the wind as easily as we walk along asphalt pavements: just thinking about it makes you feel lighter. By flying, one can enjoy the image of the world shrinking, as if we were turning a telescope, while our hair fluttered in the clouds. The past can never be as distant as when we float in the azure. Where the horizon fades into the curvature of the planet.

I went into the greenhouse to water the orchids and the tomatoes, salad and strawberries. Wet with water, the petals and coloured peels take on a very refreshing sheen. So I went out into the garden and entered the studio which I finished building two years ago.

On the desk, in front of the computer, are piled up the sketches of the last few weeks, each one dedicated to the next sculpture that can move in the wind. The walls are crammed with books on natural science, mathematics, music and literature. Every single page can be of help when investigating the next idea to materialise in the artefact. I unbuttoned my shirt collar and instead of immediately working on the sculpture, I sat down in front of the tripod to paint.

Last week I started a painting whose subject is a woman I saw in a dream around December, but of whom I have had a memory ever since. I am sure it is my ex-girlfriend. However, dreams are material cast out of the unconscious and therefore it is almost impossible that the woman in my dream represents only my ex. As Freud argued, dreams are more likely to create a mixture of past and present, as well as unlived futures, whose individual fragments can be very complicated to identify. So I have the impression that together with my ex there was also another woman in the dream. But figuring out to which temporal dimension this second woman belongs is a challenge to which much time must be devoted.

In the painting there is a girl with curly but scanty hair, her arms raised towards the ceiling of a bathroom. She wears blue jeans and a red sheet as a toga. In the shower cubicle, the water falls from above, but as it is a very high and narrow shower cubicle, the actual ceiling cannot be seen, so it looks as if the water is raining from the sky. In the picture, the girl stands out behind the cabin glass. The droplets slide on the glass and look like transparent pearls. The girl has a watery look in her eyes but the smile on her face is clear through the steam. Unlike the typical white-coloured bathrooms, this one has red and yellowish hues, reflecting the exotic and very summery flavour of the dream.

Often there is no escape, the only way to decipher dream frames is to draw them. However, this time my efforts were of little use because this dream is still shrouded in the smoke of doubt.

When I turned on my computer, I logged into Instagram and replied to about seventy public comments and private messages, trying where possible to suggest to my followers which books to read and which materials to use in order to best devote oneself to painting and engineering sculpture. The white light of the computer immediately reminds my eyes of the night spent without sleep.

If it wasn’t for my ex-girlfriend, I would never have started an Instagram account. I thought no one could be seriously interested in my work, especially as it has always been part of my life, since I was a child and before social media exploded. So with the advent of Instagram and other similar social media, no light bulb had gone on for me about the possibility of publishing them. Now I regularly post paintings and sculptures, sketches and mathematical demonstrations of a certain beauty.

As I work as a maths teacher at the high school in Locarno, this social side seems to me to be just an extension of my job, as I bundle each post with a detailed description, practically a lecture, of the procedure by which I arrived at a certain result.

Once I had settled on Instagram, I gave in to the temptation to look back at the old photographs my ex and I took together over the years. In most of the shots we are smiling, but after last night it is difficult to be certain when, exactly, there was genuine happiness between us.

The mountains outside the window, now lit up by the sun, are sinking into the early evening darkness.

I am about to go into the garden to work on the sculpture when the calendar application pops up at the bottom of the screen.

In an hour I have an appointment I forgot about. With someone I have not seen for a very long time.

***

Since Jean-Francois loves Ascona, we met at the O-steria Nostrana, which is located on the lakeside promenade, facing the spectacle of mountains and clear water in which the town is enveloped. During sunset, the sun fades behind the hills, but when the last rays peel out of the sky, they cut golden scales through the small waves. As if the sun, before falling asleep to make way for night, shattered on the lake.

Until June last year, Jean-Francois and I taught at the same high school, but during the final months of his last semester, having turned twenty-eight, the idea of taking a two-year sabbatical to explore Switzerland under the microscope had matured in him. As a history teacher, he has always been very attached to direct sources, forgotten in abbey archives or in old municipal registers. In search of the truth about our past, he distanced himself from everyone, wandering through almost every county in Switzerland in complete solitude.

Today he showed up in a Hawaiian shirt and a long, tapered moustache, 19th-century, the kind you can only recognise in portraits embedded in old philosophy books. His hair, although shoulder-length, is blond and very clean and gives a fresh touch to his face. Behind this jaunty appearance hides a very beautiful face. If Jean-Francois were less interested in books and more interested in girls, he would still be able to keep himself busy for the whole day by dispersing his energies between quite different shores.

As we sit at the outdoor table, speedboats highlight the blue water with trails of foam. I ordered a locally produced prosecco and Jean- Francois a Kiwi, a Ticino artisanal IPA beer. Sailing boats parade like large swans spreading a single wing to the wind. Jean-Francois observes them and notes some details on the notepad. The waiter, a boy with a well-groomed goatee, serves us two snacks and drinks. We toasted immediately to refresh ourselves.

“And so you were left,” says Jean-Francois, placing his pen on the table.

I had a sip of prosecco. “It was all very quick. While the change had been in the air for some time, the immediacy with which I was left alone at home was incredible.”