The Infinite Wheel E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: Simone Malacrida
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Following the symbolic unfolding of a solar year, multiple existences intersect their destinies with thoughts and actions halfway between the particular and the abstract.
Olga chronologically relives the events that take her around the world, ignoring the existence of her alter-ego given by Eleonora. Their double destiny will be to never cross paths, not even when space and time come to touch.
At the end of the logical cycle, several women's stories bring attention back to the spaces and times that seem univocal, but which, instead, depend only on the particular observer.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ The Infinite Wheel”

ANALYTICAL INDEX

JANUARY

I

II

III

FEBRUARY

IV

V

VI

MARCH

VII

VIII

IX

APRIL

X

XI

XII

MAY

XIII

XIV

XV

JUNE

XVI

XVII

XVIII

JULY

XIX

XX

XXI

AUGUST

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

SEPTEMBER

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

OCTOBER

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

NOVEMBER

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

DECEMBER

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ The Infinite Wheel”

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

JANUARY

I

II

III

FEBRUARY

IV

V

VI

MARCH

VII

VIII

IX

APRIL

X

XI

XII

MAY

XIII

XIV

XV

JUNE

XVI

XVII

XVIII

JULY

XIX

XX

XXI

AUGUST

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

SEPTEMBER

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

OCTOBER

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

NOVEMBER

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

DECEMBER

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

––––––––

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. Such events and such characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

Following the symbolic unfolding of a solar year, multiple existences intersect their destinies with thoughts and actions halfway between the particular and the abstract.

Olga chronologically relives the events that take her around the world, ignoring the existence of her alter-ego given by Eleonora. Their double destiny will be to never cross paths, not even when space and time come to touch.

At the end of the logical cycle, several women's stories bring attention back to the spaces and times that seem univocal, but which, instead, depend only on the particular observer.

“Even pains are, after a long time, a joy, for those who remember all they have been through and endured.”

​​JANUARY

––––––––

“Men quickly grow old in misadventures.”

​I

Mexico City, 1946

––––––––

The new year opened with a crucial event in Olga Martinez's life.

After a long wait, especially on the part of her parents Enrique and Cristina, their only daughter would begin her school year.

All this was a source of pride and boasting.

It was a certification of the integration that had taken place.

Of a new citizenship acquired not only thanks to Olga's birthright on Mexican soil, an event that occurred at the end of August 1940, and to the change of name and surname of the married couple, certified well before that date, but thanks to the most powerful means in existence.

Institutional education provided by school.

Language, cadence, culture, history.

Everything about Olga was supposed to recall Mexico and make us forget her features, which had nothing to do with the Latin or pre-Columbian population.

The skin was too light, the features too delicate.

Perhaps there were no Mexican families of Central European origin?

Of course there were, but not with those surnames.

Enrique Martinez, born Heinrich Zimmermann, allegedly fought to the bitter end to prevent his daughter from being looked at in a sinister way.

With always a big question mark behind every statement and every thought.

“They are...Jews...”

The term to be abjured and erased, even now that the war was over and the horrors of Nazism had disappeared, brought to light by willing people who were instituting a process.

Even now, Enrique and his wife Cristina were afraid.

Not so much the persecutions, but the judgment of others.

That secret would stay between them and no one else would ever have to know.

Much less their daughter.

The more Mexican Olga felt, the safer they would be.

The previous documents and photographs containing some minimal recollection of the Zimmermanns and the Sterns were burned, and the paperwork according to which the change of name and surname had been accepted was hidden in a safe and inaccessible place, and everything was supposed to proceed in complete normality.

Spanish language, with only a few accents allowed given their families' decades-long frequentation of Germany.

For the rest, nothing that recalled that past.

Cristina had learned to cook traditional Mexican food and Enrique dressed just like a citizen of the capital, using the same clothes and the same way of wearing a hat as was done in that place.

Their house was furnished in a local style and they never missed going to Mass, a practice they had adopted despite the secularism of the state that had arisen from the 1910 revolution and the subsequent internal feuds.

The best way to remove any doubts about their origins was to mingle with the crowd, so Olga was baptized and would receive all the sacraments of the Catholic Church.

Just thinking about it made Enrique and Cristina feel sick, but for the two of them it was the only way out.

For this reason, they celebrated, like everyone else, the beginning of 1946, participating in the pagan ritual of lights and explosions.

Once the war was over, which was non-existent in Mexico but destructive worldwide, new horizons and new economic prosperity opened up.

The rapprochement of previous governments towards the Soviet Union would have had to clash with their proximity to the United States of America, the victorious power par excellence.

Those who had defeated the Germans and the Japanese, and in the meantime held the nuclear monopoly.

That fearsome weapon, tested twice on Japan, had established the technological dominance of the Americans, whose cities were completely intact, unlike all those of Europe and Japan or China.

Of the developed world, the Americas had suffered no damage.

And that was definitely an advantage.

Enrique was convinced that by staying put and without too many demands, their economic situation would benefit and their integration would be perfect.

Blending in with the crowds and multitudes of perhaps the most populous city on the continent had been a great idea, as had opening a watchmaker's shop.

It was something familiar to Enrique, whose profession had always revolved around tiny gears, just as Cristina had always surrounded herself with flowers.

Having stopped working for third parties, once Olga was born, she had withdrawn into the house to be a mother, but something had changed in the last few months.

He had found a suitable place, an abandoned and disused shop, to buy for a few pennies.

Enrique's business was doing quite well and so he could think about an additional investment.

“What do you think?”

They had viewed the place and hadn't thought about it too much.

Purchased.

After that, it needed to be fixed and here Enrique put his skills as a perfect connoisseur of people into play .

In the area where he lived and where he had opened his watchmaking business he was known by everyone.

He had moved to that place just when his request to change his name had been definitively accepted, so everyone had always known him as Enrique Martinez.

The network of relationships allowed him to find a series of people who, in exchange for deferred payment, refurbished the shop.

From that moment on, it would be Cristina's turn.

Starting from the few flowers he had at home and buying a few seeds, soil and pots, his shop would be ready within six months, before the final opening.

It aimed to amaze customers through the senses.

The view, first of all.

Upon entering her store, what Cristina would have wanted to leave an impression on her was the overall view.

Similar or contrasting colors, changing over the seasons.

Together with the fragrances spread on an olfactory level, all this had to lead each customer to live a magical and fairy-tale experience, a place where they could lose themselves in the memories of joy and lightheartedness of childhood and adolescence.

By doing so, everyone would have wanted to come back, even without a real need to buy.

Once there, inside Cristina's kingdom, there would be no rules and imagination would take over.

At the end of it all, like a perfect accountant, she would have counted the above-average earnings, focusing mainly on those who had to organize a party.

Weddings, baptisms, funerals, birthdays, religious and pagan rites.

All this would have been accompanied by its flowers, aesthetically perfect and ephemeral, as life is.

It would take the first part of 1946 to get everything ready, with the official opening coinciding with Olga's start of school.

For this reason too, the beginning of the new year had to be celebrated.

The family, gathered on the balcony overlooking the street, huddled together and Olga felt the presence of her parents.

It seemed strange to her, but she didn't ask anything.

She was happy like that, unaware of everything.

Of the fate of his grandparents and relatives, all incinerated somewhere in Europe and whose remains would never be found.

Of the ugliness that the world had left behind and that they were rediscovering year after year.

Of the fact that every single positive action found a negative and disastrous counterpart.

He didn't know and he wasn't supposed to know.

How do you put out a little girl's smile?

He received a kiss from his father and one from his mother, just before going back inside.

The glittering world of lights and noises was left behind, with Cristina's repeated gesture, as she barred the windows.

“Out there is the world, inside here is us,” she said to her husband.

It would have been nice to have another child, but the doctors had somehow ruled out the possibility.

After Olga, Cristina had become pregnant again but had a miscarriage and, at the next visit, they had explicitly told her that there was no hope for the future.

She had been sick for a few months, but then her little girl's smile had brought her back to normal.

“And now what should we do?”

She asked Olga enigmatically.

The little girl, not at all scared, already knew what to answer.

“Let’s all go to sleep...”

They retired to their rooms.

Olga's was square, with the bed against the left wall, facing the window and next to the entrance door.

There were a few games, a couple of dolls and some paper to draw on, not much to tell the truth.

Paper was a precious commodity and should not be wasted.

Enrique had commissioned a client of his to make a desk and chair for Olga's room, objects that would become essential from the beginning of school.

Two books, recovered from the library to which they regularly went and which they had learned to make Olga frequent with their presence.

Little else, for now.

They were certainly not well-off, even though their lives lacked nothing.

Gone were the days of food rationing due to money shortages.

Since they landed in Mexico, the couple had told each other that they would work hard to build a better future for themselves.

Olga changed into her pajamas.

He went to the bathroom, which was already a luxury to have running water in the house, but his parents had set minimum standards.

He received greetings from both of them, climbed into bed, pulled back the covers and slipped under them.

She wasn't used to staying up late and her body fell into a deep sleep.

His mind went blank, dreaming nothing.

Enrique and Cristina waited.

They poured themselves some sweetish wine, the kind that everyone except connoisseurs likes.

Enrique had never liked wine much, preferring beer, but he had adapted.

“To the future...”

They looked into each other's eyes as they had done years before in Germany, when they first met.

At almost forty years old, Enrique was no longer the boy he once was; some first signs of maturity were visible in his high forehead due to the first hint of a receding hairline.

Cristina, at thirty-five, had rounded out slightly from the angular girl she once was.

His bones were no longer protruding, but covered with a layer of flesh, which for now was still firm and not at all soft.

“Is he sleeping?”

They put their heads inside Olga's room, whose breathing left no room for doubt.

The nocturnal world had kidnapped her and the house was once again at the complete disposal of the spouses.

Slowly they undressed and looked at each other.

They knew each other by heart.

All their imperfections, their skin marks, their roughness.

Yet, each of them was constantly changing.

If someone outsider saw them every year, they would have noticed the changes.

In these cases, the best yardstick is given by those who do not know you and notice all the differences.

Those around you don't perceive your individual facets at all, always seeing you in the same way.

They lay down without haste.

They had all night at their disposal.

Like once upon a time, like when we were young.

They stood there looking at each other and seeing the tremors reaching every part of their bodies.

They smelled their scents, very different from flower essences.

As the dawn of the new day was about to break, they fell asleep.

The new year caught them like this, without any defense.

Lovers like they haven't been in a long time.

Would it have been like this for everyone?

Maybe not.

Perhaps only one other couple, miles away, could be said to be identical.

In that case, however, given Europe's earlier time zone, it was someone who hadn't been seen for twenty years.

Of fleeting and fleeting lovers, overwhelmed by an unusual destiny.

Of victims and executioners at the same time.

Unaware of such a long-distance connection, a kind of effect probed by that new science that Enrique knew nothing about, he was surprised.

Daughter's eyes, demanding attention.

New day, same rites.

“Mom, Dad, I’m hungry.... ”

Olga was crying out for her usual milk.

She liked that creamy taste, especially at room temperature.

Inside the milk, it didn't matter what was inside.

Sugar, honey or nothing.

Some dry bread.

Some bread that is not dry.

Everything became secondary.

Cristina got up, while Enrique took care of opening the house to the new day.

A full sun with its load of shining light invaded the apartment, illuminating every little corner.

Slowly, the day took shape.

Wash, get dressed, go out for a walk.

Nobody worked that day.

Shops and offices closed.

This is how the New Year was to be welcomed, not in the throes of business.

“Will you take me to see where Mom’s flowers will be?”

Olga enjoyed visiting that place which was still closed and where, little by little, various stations were being set up.

He imagined, fantasized and visualized.

Children don't need much.

A rag or piece of waste building material.

Everything could become everything, without too much thought given to logic.

Adult stuff, which would have been a lifelong task.

Enrique started arguing with his wife.

The sign was still missing.

It was the first business card for customers and it had to be thought about in advance.

They left shortly after, taking advantage of the hot hours of the day.

It was still winter, although noticeably different from the European one.

Since they had moved to Mexico, they had no longer suffered from the cold.

The stinging one of Germany in the 1920s, also shaken by the lack of money and growing inflation.

At that time, they had wanted to forget everything and Olga should never have suffered like this.

On the other side of the neighborhood, people we had met several times were wandering around.

Mexican families for generations, with various ties of kinship and failed revolutions.

So many deaths, so much suffering, but not evident to Enrique and Cristina.

For them, who arrived when the waters in Mexico had calmed down, all that bloody past had no equivalent in practice.

It had not been lived.

So they thought they had found Heaven on earth, where there had not been two world wars, when in fact it was a country like any other.

With the same problems and the same tensions.

Olga had stopped to play with some children, children of the aforementioned families.

She was unaware of their past history, just as she was unaware of her own.

At that age, the past matters little.

What matters is the present.

The way of playing and having fun, the smiles and the lightheartedness.

When her parents saw her, they were happy.

For them, every single step the little girl took was a source of joy and a valid reason in hindsight to justify their departure from Germany.

It didn't matter if their entire past had been erased.

The present and the future were much more important.

With the first day of the year over, the following days went by as smoothly as ever.

Rhythms marked by habit.

Olga, whose figure was taken care of directly by her mother, changing her hairstyle and rotating the few clothes the little girl wore, did not have too many problems.

She knew there was someone close to her.

She felt loved and protected.

Every now and then, he scanned her face for something new.

She saw herself like all the other girls, without any differences whatsoever.

The skin was light like that of many others, while some, especially those with origins linked to pre-Columbian civilizations, were not.

This had not affected his ability to analyze and find solutions in the slightest.

Olga paid no attention to all this, focusing her attention more on the natural elements that surrounded her.

Atmospheric phenomena, the colour of the sky, the presence of animals and the re-blossoming of plants were all events she noted with great interest.

He had his parents explain the reasons and consequences, experiencing them first-hand.

She delicately sniffed the natural fragrances and made a mental classification of the various colors.

Yellow, for example, was declined in at least ten different typologies to which he gave imaginative names that were far from common among the rest of the population.

“Mom, shall we go for a walk?”

With a questioning face, she presented herself in front of Cristina, who never knew how to say no to her daughter.

The tour consisted of several fixed stages.

To Cristina's future shop, where Olga could find play spaces and her mother something to fix.

In Enrique's shop, a magical and enchanted world, frequented by a diverse set of people.

And then some variations.

A park or a garden during the summer.

A place to get food and rest.

The library, sometimes, but for that you had to give up walking and take some tram or bus that crowded the chaotic streets of the city.

More rarely they went out of town.

Mexico City was so immense that it took a long time before its outskirts could no longer be seen.

This meant traveling by train, since Enrique did not own a car or any means of transportation other than a bicycle.

He had judged that a car was too expensive and quite unnecessary, given that the vast majority of trips took place within the neighborhood.

So Olga had been on the slopes of the Sierra four times and had never seen the sea.

It had been years since Enrique and Cristina had been to a seaside resort and had not glimpsed the Atlantic Ocean.

For them, that wall of water separated life from death and no one wanted to remind them of their arrival.

They were always afraid that someone would recognize them, some sailor or member of the crew, even though many years had passed and there was no longer any trace of them in anyone's memory.

“How is the sea?”

Faced with Olga's curiosity, her parents could not keep quiet about their life choices and had promised themselves to take her there that summer.

“You’ll see it soon,” he said in mid-January.

It took months, but children and adults have different concept of time.

They described it to him as large and enormous.

“Like the sky?”

Olga had these comparisons.

He possessed an analytical ability beyond his years, without compromising his imagination and creativity.

This was certainly due to the great care that Cristina had put into her education.

Having to practice the language, it had helped her to teach Olga the rudiments of Spanish.

Both the woman and her husband could boast of an education higher than the Mexican average, having obtained diplomas in Germany, which were clearly not to be displayed in public, perhaps no longer valid and in any case not possessed by the spouses.

Nevertheless, culture was the legacy that Olga would receive from her past.

No gifts, no money.

The pleasure of knowing, the curiosity of knowing.

Cristina never missed an opportunity to stimulate her and so did Enrique, each applying what they had learned during their life.

All their thoughts were focused on Olga and her future.

About how she would grow up in a free country, without problems of discrimination and prejudice.

About what loves she would find and where life would lead her.

When they found themselves fantasizing about such events, time seemed to pass lightly.

It flew away, carried by an upper current that lapped at the skin and gently touched it.

Enchantment from other times, where progress and technology had not yet taken the place of magic.

Sometimes it was Olga who brought us back down to earth, with a few precise words.

She was a bright and straightforward child, without frills.

His straight hair, without any spiral or curl, outwardly denoted his character.

Just another way of saying who he was.

“It's amazing how much it grows...”

Cristina noted.

It seemed like yesterday that she was struggling to stand and now Olga's slender legs were milling at an impressive rate.

“Like the rain of a storm,” said some elderly man who lived in the same building.

Soon after the middle of January, clouds laden with moisture and rising from the ocean, whichever was the case, dumped an enormous amount of water on Mexico City.

The streets became rivers, almost in flood.

Streams of water were flowing everywhere and this was a great relief to Olga.

“Luckily we’re on the second floor...”

His mother would have wanted a house on several levels and independent, with an entrance and a small piece of garden.

Maybe in a few years, after he opened his shop and if business was good.

For now, we had to be satisfied.

Remain cautious and don't take too many risks.

It was a matter of moments before you could fall into poverty due to some economic crisis.

They had experienced this in Germany and that lesson would be enough for the rest of their lives.

After a while, Olga's thoughts went to those at street level.

“How do they do it?

Water will enter the house.

We need to help them.”

The child's naturalness and spontaneity provoked an unstoppable gesture of endless hugging.

Enrique simply patted her and leaned over her.

“It’s not like that. The water slides away, there are obstacles and those people stay dry.”

She knew that this was only the case in apartment buildings and residential neighborhoods, while elsewhere rivers of water actually entered homes, but there was no reason to further alarm a sensitive soul like Olga's.

He reached out his finger and showed his daughter the phenomenon.

The little girl smiled.

Happy with the result and the fact that everyone was safe.

She had been told that the sea could be dangerous and swallow men, as could rivers and lakes.

In his imagination, he thought that someone was in danger and his attention threshold was alerted.

“Can I read?”

Before going to bed, he had acquired the habit of recognizing certain letters printed everywhere.

On the boxes or on some piece of newspaper.

For Olga, reading was simply recognizing letters and making some sounds, no more than a syllable or two.

Soon, before the official start of school, he would memorize some words, repeating them.

“Okay, but then to bed.

Look outside.”

He peered out the window with an upward gaze and saw the dark sky.

“It's dark.”

In his mind, the night signal had gone off and now he had to prepare to rest.

It was about habits and rhythms that developed over time.

However, it didn't take much to change the tune.

Short-term memory is almost always easily overridden in children, making slight changes that, after a few times, become part of common practice.

So Cristina and Enrique had changed Olga's schedule, without her noticing or considering it anything new.

Lying in her bed, which seemed as huge as the adults', the little girl's dreams went to unspecified forms of people in equally unknown places.

No nightmares, not even when the news of previous years had crossed the threshold of their home.

Olga knew, vaguely, that far away there had been a war and she knew the meaning of that word.

She had asked for an explanation of what was happening and Cristina had been precise, while still avoiding the bloody passages.

Olga had thought for a long time.

Death was a part of life, but it left behind pain.

She had clung to her father, having understood that men died in war.

They had completely concealed from her the vast scale of destruction caused by modern weapons, capable of razing entire cities and causing many more civilian casualties.

“You’ll never go to war, will you?”

He had asked.

Enrique had consoled her and the next day everything had disappeared from Olga's mind.

Cataloged and stored away somewhere, but not to the point of becoming an obsessive thought.

The couple followed her with their eyes and accompanied her to the room with their thoughts, after which they went to check.

“It collapsed.”

Squeezed together on the sofa, they talked about the day that had just ended and what they had to do.

“A few seedlings have taken root.

At this rate, in two months I will have enough variety to be able to start a first cultivation nucleus inside the shop.

For now, the opening at the end of August has been confirmed.”

Enrique kissed his wife.

She had always liked his pragmatic way of approaching life.

It was Cristina, Krista at the time , who supported him in leaving Germany.

Sell everything and move to Paris.

And from there, take a ship to sail to the new world.

With a different woman at his side, with someone who didn't feel like giving up everything and severing ties with his family, Heinrich would have stayed.

He would have made the big mistake that almost everyone made.

Trapped in a state that no longer wanted them and that would first have robbed them of all their possessions and then sent them to the slaughter, he would have been one of the many interned and then killed.

How many Jews remained in Germany?

Very few.

In those few seconds in which they were given to think about the past and to do so in German, there was nothing that appealed to hope.

Only memories and nostalgia.

Destructive ideas if allowed to take hold in the mind.

Instead, work, projects, the future and above all Olga had given him a new vitality.

A meaning, where the world had wanted to erase it at all costs.

This had been the resistance of the two spouses, their way of opposing barbarism.

Escape and rebuild a new civilization.

Of course, they knew that Mexico was not free from ideologies and discrimination.

Hadn't they been slaughtering each other for twenty years or more?

Had not entire generations perished for more or less virtuous or criminal ideals?

He heard plenty of stories like this in his shop, and Cristina would experience the same once she became a nurseryman and florist.

Inside those commercial establishments, a sort of illogical bubble was created in which everyone tended to open up.

Maybe not immediately, but over time, Enrique's great life companion.

Man, who had always been accustomed to having to deal with it, to measure it and to grasp its intrinsic perfection, had found himself at the centre of a series of events and confidences that were as casual as they were necessary.

Thus he had discovered that, in the same neighborhood, there lived victims and executioners who had alternated over the decades.

Anyone who had persecuted someone at one time found himself in the dock a few years later.

And, in every family, there were fallen and wounded.

Died in ambushes or in the mountains, during assaults or shot on the spot.

Pablo, Pedro, Miguel.

Common names in a country that tended to combine two at a time and give nicknames of various kinds.

They had become accustomed to something like this and, when you think about it, the names Enrique and Cristina were too short.

“You can tell you were born in Europe...”, some of Enrique’s customers had muttered.

The man smiled and nodded.

Of their unspeakable secret, this could leak out.

On the other hand, it would not have been wise to completely hide the origins.

It was impossible not to notice their accent and this had to be explained.

None of this happened to Olga.

The little girl played with everyone and got along wonderfully.

At times, his parents had difficulty understanding his fluent, Mexican-accented Spanish, but they did not show any such deficiency.

“Hello little one...”

Enrique used to greet her every morning, after getting ready.

Olga didn't want to be last.

She knew that she would have to go to school soon and she saw the other children who were older than her.

She had gotten the idea that she would have to get ready, wash up, leave early, and go to a specific building.

So she had already made up her mind to carry out some routines and to anticipate the times.

“Where are you going all dressed up?” her father used to ask, partly mocking her.

Olga, not at all annoyed and not understanding the malicious intent, replied curtly and with a shrill voice.

“I go around with my mom, but I’m already ready for school.

I’ll be big soon.”

He said it believing it.

For Olga it was natural that school was her entrance into the adult world, even though she was aware that for years she would still remain a child.

It was a kind of game in her eyes, like when she pretended to be a grown-up with the other children.

It happened, in turns, to play the part of parents or children, in a role-playing game with continuous exchange of roles.

Mimicry and identification at the same time.

A careful observer could have picked up the signs.

Each child tended to replicate a pattern seen at home.

So those who had experienced anxious and possessive parents played a similar role, repeating the same phrases.

Olga, when she found herself having to imitate the role of a mother, gave out caresses and sweet phrases, delicate questions and veiled recommendations in abundance.

In his head, teachers were figures to be respected, a sort of projection of his parents, but without the emotional part.

The sense of duty and role, in addition to the notions.

Cristina was sure that her daughter would be fine.

In her family, they had shown her a love for culture and Olga's character had revealed itself to be open to comparison and dialogue.

She would grow up learning and, within a short time, she would go her own way.

Looking at herself in the mirror, the mother saw herself deteriorating every day, albeit imperceptibly, and saw herself in Olga.

The only regret was that he could not fully reveal his youth.

Sooner or later Olga would ask for explanations about her origins.

How people lived in Germany, what they had done, how they had met.

And, sooner or later, at school they would explain to her what had happened in Germany in those years.

Of Nazism, of dictatorship.

Perhaps even persecutions against the Jews.

And then, the daughter, now a girl and then a teenager, would have asked.

Too many coincidences and too many overlapping dates.

And that's where the hard part would come.

Lie to protect her.

To say up to a certain point and then invent or cut short the discussion.

Why didn't the grandparents follow them?

And why couldn't we go and visit them in Germany?

The excuse of distance and the cost of the journey would have held up until a certain age.

So why not write?

Could the letters be sent?

Faced with that watershed moment, Cristina and Enrique had already prepared themselves properly.

Almost every day they refined how they would behave, knowing full well that the time would come.

A clock that has chased us since we were born and never abandons us.

By concealing the existence of uncles, aunts and cousins, one could not erase every trace of the origin, but one could limit its impact.

Lie for his own good.

To arrive at building an alternative truth.

The grandparents had already died before their departure and had to leave Germany for economic reasons.

So there would be no one to look for.

No relatives to write to or receive letters from.

In part, this was true.

Although they knew nothing about the fate of their family, both were certain that no one had survived the murderous rampage of the Nazis and the Germans.

They felt it inside themselves, but that pain should never have overflowed into Olga's heart and mind.

Their daughter had to remain safe, just as she slept peacefully that Sunday in late January 1946.

The time would never have been ripe for the truth.

They had pondered a lot over the concept of truth.

What was it?

How could it be defined?

Was a life to be built around its research or as a primary foundation?

They had no answers.

Furthermore, they had a granite certainty.

No matter how much they read, study or inform themselves, no one possesses the truth and it is not completely knowable.

There was a limit, beyond which it was not possible to go.

With such a spirit, what purpose then did the eternal path of our existence serve?

They knew they couldn't dare that much.

They had settled for their life and another word that was much more accessible.

Happiness.

Be happy, despite everything.

Even though they knew parts of the truth that they didn't want to know.

Was it possible?

Maybe, but there was one thing above their will.

Duty.

They were supposed to be happy.

This was their mission, to be parents, to build a blueprint to protect the one being who mattered more than their lives.

They had sacrificed everything to get there.

They had left behind their pain, their memories, their past and their family.

Friendships and bonds.

The world as they had known it and which, perhaps, had been only an illusion for years.

Is it possible that they didn't see the danger building?

That they had not noticed the hatred, the banality of evil that dwelt in every neighbor?

With such a heavy load, the sense of duty for a new life and a new hope took on a completely different flavor.

Of revenge and victory.

Even if they had lost, they would have won.

And time would have been an ally, not the enemy of all that makes us grow old and then perish.

The last day of January 1946 was drawing to a close.

It seemed like any other day.

Many things had happened, both light and important.

Without warning, the lightning was waiting stealthily.

He doesn't warn anyone of his arrival, otherwise he wouldn't be one.

And it cannot be predicted, no matter how many theories or artificial constructs we may elaborate.

From the clear eyes of a child, innocent in their splendor, a bright light illuminated the entire apartment.

Enrique and Cristina were overwhelmed by it.

Rapt in ecstasy by an endless whirlwind, a vortex of the universal abyss.

Olga's mouth opened and a question pierced the silence.

“Is it true that you will never lie to me?”

The sound, perceived by the eardrums, had already thinned out and given way to nothingness.

This would have been the answer of Enrique and Cristina, watchmaker and florist by virtue and necessity, parents by choice and mission.

Their will would have been subjugated to their duty.

​II

Mexico City, 2018

––––––––

She had never been able to explain the reason, but Eleonora had felt that stopping in Mexico City was the right thing to do.

It was the compromise he had imposed on his daughter's family, consisting of his daughter Anna and her husband Alessandro, now in his fifties, and their daughter, and Eleonora's granddaughter, Olga.

The girl would have turned eighteen in the course of that year that had just begun.

The elderly matriarch, now a widow for a year and a half, knew she could make her past as a former RAI journalist count.

Mexico City was the city where many events had happened, both in the sports and political fields.

So, to the vacation in Yucatan to enjoy the sun and the heat during the Christmas period, a stay of only two days in the Mexican capital was added.

That was enough for Eleonora.

She felt like she had a task to complete and she knew it was one of the last transoceanic trips.

In August she would have turned seventy-eight and she would have celebrated as always, that is, surrounded by her family who, for years, had spent their holidays in Sardinia, the land where Eleonora lived and where Anna had grown up, only to leave it a quarter of a century ago in search of a job, which she found in Milan.

Eleonora hadn't had much fun in Yucatan, except for boat trips and visits to historical monuments.

For the rest, the unseasonal heat was unusual for her and she had no need to relax or rest, since she spent most of her time in her childhood home, in Gonnesa, in the same environment that she had known for a long time and that she had left years before to move to Cagliari.

After her husband Franco died, she didn't feel like staying in the city and in that apartment where every corner reminded her of the presence of the late university professor.

Despite this, she didn't complain.

Staying with his daughter and granddaughter was a way to feel good and spend time in the best possible way.

Olga had changed.

Now she was a modern teenager, full of enthusiasm and prospects, of particular and unknown worlds.

Like everyone, he was addicted to his cell phone even though he was on vacation.

He shared photographs of the sea and sunsets, food and people on Instagram.

Despite what her parents thought, she didn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

At least, not a fixed one.

She liked to have fun and hang out with friends, but no sob stories.

A fluid society imposed certain rhythms and Olga did not want to put her expectations on the back burner.

He still wasn't sure what he would do after high school, but college was a given.

“Grandma, we’ve arrived.”

His voice woke Eleanor.

The woman, who once would not have missed even a meter of the view of the globe from above, now needed increasingly frequent breaks.

She had adapted, like everyone else.

Olga found the vast view of Mexico City uninteresting.

What to admire in that jumble of streets and traffic?

A museum and a church.

And then?

Two days seemed like too much, but compared to staying in the hinterland of Milan in the cold, it was all good.

He knew that, within a year, his holidays would be separated from those of his parents.

With her friends, they were already fantasizing about going who knows where, taking a plane and touring the cities.

As for the sea, Olga had no doubts.

Sardinia and nothing more.

If he had probed another goal, it would have been another type.

Ibiza and Formentera, Santorini and Mykonos would have been fine for her, but only to party and live among young people.

Nothing to do with the ancestral relationship he had with the south-western coast of Sardinia.

In fact, she had noticed how she was being eyed in the summer.

Everyone knew who he was and he had friends from Iglesias or Carbonia to meet up with.

He didn't think about going back, about retracing his mother's path.

Eleonora got up from her seat.

Economy class on domestic flights was uncomfortable, even for a transfer of a couple of hours.

Behind them were Anna and Alessandro, who were scrutinizing the situation.

They knew that grandmother and granddaughter compensated each other.

Exuberance and thoughtfulness, experience and curiosity.

They were happy with that relationship, fragile and temporary like everything in life.

It would have taken very little to crack him.

An illness of Eleonora, a sudden change of character of Olga.

Compared to Yucatan, one could say that Mexico City was cold.

The girl almost got impatient, but she thought she would regret it in the future.

Of the four grandparents, only the female members remained.

He had lost his two grandparents in a year and a half and missed them dearly.

This had made her calmer and less instinctive, as far as a seventeen-year-old girl could be controlled.

Eleonora collected her bags and scanned the vast expanse of Mexico City airport.

What a difference from the one in Cagliari!

“I’ll do it.”

The son-in-law was always busy with the transfers.

He knew Spanish and felt he had the responsibility of being a man and head of the family, knowing full well the idea of independence that was harboured by the three women present.

The climate was very different and everyone noticed it, as well as the lesser propensity for tourism.

In fact, many more people passed through Mexico City than through Yucatan, but it was mostly internal traffic or business.

The percentage of tourists was significantly lower and this was evident in the general approach.

Less focused on what struck foreigners, closer to the true Mexican nature, even though such a vast country possessed, within itself, completely different souls.

Chiapas was different from Yucatan and the same could be said of Morelos or the area north of Chihuahua.

Mexico City was a story unto itself.

Strange fate for a capital city built on the ruins of the Aztecs and which then had to clash with the size of the country, uncontrollable and with disintegrating tendencies.

The paradox was total.

You couldn't control Mexico without having dominion over the capital, but that wasn't enough.

Many people had been in that dilemma and in that unclear situation and they had all had to give up.

This is why the rebellious and revolutionary nature had become so urbanized, only to then be anesthetized.

In almost all of Latin America, and Mexico could be said to be the first country further north that delimited such a connotation, there was a dual nature.

Rebellious and sedentary.

Revolutionary and institutional.

Long before other states, Mexico had resolved this duality by bringing everything to power, in a kind of mixture that, for a European, was very strange.

Eleonora had never set foot on Mexican soil before, but it was as if she had been born there.

He understood that land much better than those who had visited it several times or, even, than those who had been born there.

He couldn't explain why and, perhaps, that's why he wanted to visit the city.

She was aware of its architectural poverty compared to other European and world capitals, but she felt attracted.

To do this, he had organized a two-day tour which he had submitted to his daughter for consideration.

He didn't want to bore anyone.

It was not his intention to drag everyone into what he could only describe as a generic feeling.

The first day would include visits to what could easily be found in the guidebooks.

The Sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the national museum, dedicated mainly to Aztec art and the works of the painter Diego Rivera and his wife for a time, Frida Kahlo.

Eleonora drew few ideas, but she was enchanted.

She didn't like mural painting, but she felt there must be something in that world that appealed to her so much.

What was he looking for?

A secret?

A way to discover one's hidden identity?

Could he say he knew himself completely?

He felt that a part of himself remained hidden from everyone.

To her daughter and her husband, to her parents and even to herself.

How to bring it out?

And why only now?

Why Mexico City and not elsewhere?

There had been cities and places much more significant in his life and he knew it well.

He could never have hidden certain emotions when facing the sea, his sea, or when looking into Anna's eyes and discovering in her the child he once was.

Olga was impressed by the city.

Once the initial negative reaction for having lost two days at the seaside passed, he understood that there was something more than spending the days sunbathing and swimming.

Knowing people's souls and going beyond one's limits, even rejecting part of one's own beliefs.

She felt grateful to her grandmother.

All this exploded in the evening with a typical Mexican dinner, very different from the one tasted in the Yucatan.

It could be said that he had never eaten real Mexican food before.

In that restaurant, Eleonora was struck by the song.

It was an old piece, even for someone of her generation, composed before she was born.

It wasn't typical Mexican, but he had heard it distinctly years before in Argentina.

It was “Volver”, the song by Carlos Gardel.

His words were perfect for the occasion.

“I can hear the blinking of the lights in the distance marking my return.

They are the same ones that illuminated with their pale reflections deep hours of pain...

And even if I didn't want to go back, you always go back to your first love.

The old road where the echo said yours is her life, yours is her love.

Under the mocking gaze of the stars that with indifference see me return today.

Returning, with a withered forehead, the snows of time silvered my temple.

To feel that life is a moment, that twenty years are nothing, that feverish gaze, wandering in the shadows, seeks you and names you.

Living with my soul clinging to a sweet memory that I cry over again.

I am afraid of meeting the past that comes back to face my life.

I'm afraid of the nights that, filled with memories, chain my dreaming.

But the traveler who flees sooner or later stops his progress.

And even if forgetting, which destroys everything, had killed my old illusion, I look upon a hidden humble hope which is all the fortune of my heart.

Returning, with a withered forehead, the snows of time silvered my temple.

To feel that life is a moment, that twenty years are nothing, that feverish gaze, wandering in the shadows, seeks you and names you.

Living with my soul clinging to a sweet memory that I cry over again.”

Eleonora got lost in that melody and didn't listen to anything else from that evening.

Neither the words of his daughter nor those of his granddaughter.

One could say that his journey had another meaning.

A way to understand where she would end up in the last years of her life.

Was it really a comeback?

Yes, just as he had always imagined.

But then why in that place?

He still had one day to figure it out before returning home.

In his head there was the visit to Casa Azul, where Rivera and Kahlo had lived and little else.

She went to bed, in her single room, lulled by a feeling of bliss.

She could say she had been transported to another world, to something she could not define.

Was this already a transposition of the afterlife?

No, or at least she wasn't sure.

The night was not smooth.

Eleonora felt disturbed and saw herself in an imaginary scene, set in Gonnesa.

Completely alone, she had distanced herself from everyone and headed towards the sea.

Her place par excellence, where, even without anyone at her side, she would never feel abandoned.

“Surround me...”

He had told the forces of nature, which did not take long to respond.

The wind began to blow and bring with it larger waves.

The roar of their crashing onto the beach and reef increased the rumbling in the air.

All this would have served to forget, the eternal source of oblivion.

Once the ears and nose were saturated, light was now needed which, reflecting on the surface of the water, would have made it impossible to see.

Rapt in ecstasy, a whirlwind enveloped her.

His figure had disappeared and blended into the surrounding environment, something neither predictable nor logical.

Imaginary sea creatures, celestial peoples, and spirits rising from the earth pervaded her very core.

Possessed by an alien entity, speaking unknown languages, with no other human presence nearby, Eleonora was transformed.

He had completed the metamorphosis necessary for the annihilation of his own ego.

“The powers are mine...”

A flash of light pierced her.

He widened his eyes and bent forward.

Her dream ended at that moment and, for the first time, she felt different.

Alive but not in the same sense as before.

He woke up with the certainty that that day would end with discovery.

He didn't know what it was yet, but he had to try.

Go beyond and see beyond.

He went down to breakfast and no one noticed anything.

He still knew how to amaze and hide his emotions.

Not that she wanted to deceive the others, but it was a way to ease the tension, otherwise she would have worn herself out.

The Casa Azul didn't tell her anything more than the museum, but she was surprised by one small detail.

From something the guide had let slip.

Trotsky had lived there during the last part of his exile.

He had arrived in Mexico City at the invitation of the president at the time, encouraged by a circle of artists including Diego Rivera.

The revolutionary had been a guest of the couple until an argument, after which he left.

There was talk of dark plots.

Of struggles between factions of intellectuals and how Stalin's long hand had manipulated the artists through the use of local agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, now become the FSB after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Eleonora knew the story.

A double attack, the first coordinated by an artist himself.

Attempt failed.

The second, however, was carried out by a lone wolf.

Only one person capable of gaining the trust of the Russian revolutionary, or rather Ukrainian one would say today.

Ramon Mercader, whose name was also related through indirect and acquired ways to the Italian director Vittorio De Sica.

“Look grandma, the attack happened the day before you were born.”

Olga had noticed this detail, right in the section of the museum dedicated to Trotsky.

This sentence, banal in itself, triggered a powerful reflection in Eleonora.

He knew that Trotsky had not died immediately, but the next day.

So the day of his birth.

In his entire life he had never connected that date with Trotsky's death.

It was unique.

“Is the time written there?”

The old woman turned to her granddaughter, who was constantly connected to the Internet and was consulting the Wikipedia page.

“At six forty-eight.”

Eleonora was shocked.

On the birth certificate, which he jealously guarded in his house in Gonnesa, he remembered those numbers.

1848 as a transposition of that Forty-Eight which had happened in Europe a long time before.

A strange coincidence of time and revolutionary dates that suited Trotsky's personality well.

“Apart from the time difference, there is a perfect parallel,” he thought to himself.

His spirit was reawakened and he felt like filling that day.

He had to find his way through the labyrinth of one of the most intricate and vast cities in the world.

“Where was Trotsky’s house?”

Ask the guide.

It wasn't very far away.

He decided to go to that place, after talking to Anna.

He began to hear a whisper.

“Don’t think I’m crazy, my daughter, but I feel like something is happening.

True, you won't judge me for what I do in the next few hours and what I force you to do?

I know you won’t leave me because you consider me old now, but I don’t want to force you.”

Anna got scared.

He had never heard his mother speak like that.

Was it really Eleonora Ricci, the former RAI journalist, his mother and wife of the now deceased university professor of theoretical physics Franco Delogu?

The woman was overwhelmed by her mother's embrace.

He felt an emotional flow run through his body and become one.

He was convinced.

She stared at her husband, who had no power over the matter.

Finally, Olga.

Eleonora took her hand.

He didn't know why, but something had to do with his niece.

“Let’s take a taxi.

We must go to the hospital where Trotsky died and then to the library.”

Nobody asked questions.

The hospital itself was a normal facility.

It had been there for a long time, but nothing remained from 1940, except the foundations.

The structure had been reinforced and the facade redone several times.

He didn't stay there long, but it was enough to still hear the whisper.

A doctor, a nurse, a midwife, a little girl and a mother.

At the Library he walked along the corridors separated by immense shelves.

Here he could hear the sound of students and kids eager to learn.

From there, where would she go?

He didn't know.

She realized she wasn't at the end of her quest, but she looked for inspiration.

He depicted ministerial buildings, post offices and houses.

The taxi took them to their destination following the directions given.

It seemed like a random path, the meaning of which only Eleonora could perceive.

There were threads to be woven and others to be unraveled, a double parallel track on which to make human faculties travel.

He glimpsed characters from bygone eras.

Directors humming at the post office, young officials at the ministries, mysteries and secrets in homes.

In some of them, so much love, in others just oppression.

Joys and sorrows, as in every part of life.

And from there?

Other houses.

Now abandoned, of families that had fallen apart and of sudden deaths.

Destructive fates of massacres and carnage, but above all the hope of a corner apartment seemed to triumph.

From the most absurd misdeeds arose a radiant lineage that had gone elsewhere.

Who was left?

None of them.

No native had been faithful to his origins.

It's strange to think about but what we define as typical of a place depends on history and tradition.

And it only takes two generations to change everything.

Eleonora had noticed this in her family.

Anna was Sardinian as she had lived in Cagliari until she was twenty-five, but she had nothing to do with the inhabitants of Gonnesa and, after just as many years away from the island, she had acquired other habits.

Olga had only a few Sardinian traits in her character and, if she had not returned to the island, she would not have had much to share.

And the next generation?

Practically nothing or just some simulacrum, like the majority of tourists.

The same could be said of other places.

Who was Mexican and who was from the capital?

Who had ancestors from those places but then went elsewhere, for example to the United States, or who had origins of another type but then settled in those places?

The answer, for Eleonora, was clear.

The second category.

It was entrusted with the passage to the future generation.

The woman was looking for those traces.

She felt like she was close, but there was still one piece missing.

He saw a flower shop.

Intense and captivating aroma.

He felt compelled to enter.

He let his sense of smell guide him to explore the affinities.

The rest of her family followed at a distance, with Olga being the bridge between the two consecutive generations.

He saw some pictures on the walls.

From other times and other eras.

It had been a flower shop for a long time and then it had changed into something else, only recently returning to its former purpose.

Eleonora smiled, without buying anything.

He went out of there.

“We’re close,” he said to Anna.

“When I want to be alone, promise me you’ll let me go.

We’ll see each other at the hotel tonight.”

Faced with her daughter's worried look, Eleonora reiterated.

“I have traveled the world in very different conditions.

When going to Libya was an adventure or taking a flight to Buenos Aires required three stopovers.

I can handle myself.”

Anna let herself be convinced, also because their patience was almost at its limit.

The last stop would have been another location, located nearby.

It was a clothing store, but there had been something else there in the past.

Someone who repaired watches.

Here, the time.

Everything was tied to it.

Even Franco's abstruse physics talks were about time.

Objective and subjective time, its nature, its recirculation.

I'm coming back, as the song said.

Eleonora was making just such a transition.

He thought that the world is always renewed, a Revolution ends and a new life begins.

What changes?

Everything changes, but nothing changes.

And what makes it all the same?

Time and dust.

The dust of life flattens everything, from revolutions to ideals, from money to feelings.

The same dust that settles in dark and obscure corners to proliferate.

It is his very nature, since time immemorial and it will never change.

And this is not a bad thing, because in this way the world is renewed.

And what mediated all this?

The observer or the single person.

Everything that happened in the minds and perceived sensations of the observers, as it was all given by the presence or absence of organs capable of absorbing.

The observer became the center of all mystery.

Only those with different eyes, different ears, dissimilar skin could be part of that spectacle.

From every corner and from every cardinal point, even those not catalogued, mixtures of various types were concentrated.

Exotic and bizarre names, given by humans to better tame what was untamed.

No sailor or farmer, rancher or soldier, merchant or clerk could ever have understood the essence of all this.

A single point, far enough from any human experience.

Just one moment, quite remote from everyone's life.

A concentration that had never been seen before and that would vanish as that day wore on.

Harmony is not something that is spread out in abundance, but is rationed out by Nature herself.

It is a long and laborious process, delicate and that can be broken with just one look.

It must be preserved and left to bear fruit.

It must be welcomed and cultivated.

It is the tendency of every sublime and memorable action.

It doesn't matter about the past or the future.

Everything went as it was supposed to go, everything will happen as it is supposed to happen.

The difference is in how.

Our freedom is there.

And now Eleonora felt free, without any constraints and without any constraints.

He was on a quest, perhaps the last one of his life.

To find what?

The balance.

We take it too much for granted that our whole life unfolds following a certain thread that cannot break or hold up, but that is not the case.

We must take care of ourselves and others.

“You can send the taxi away, from now on we'll walk.”

The son-in-law fired the driver.