Close your eyes chapt5

Chapter 5

 "Pig bull, I'm alive!" He shouted to himself when with a big thunder the wheels of the cart touched the track. The adrenaline of that stormy journey had not yet melted in her blood and the euphoria led her to care what those people might think, perhaps for the first time in her life. Although, to tell the truth, most of the faces he crossed were still filled with fear. The driver's voice continued to whisper apologies and a couple of elders had begun to curse in Catalan. "This time around..." he thought "If I get off a plane like this, I'll get on it again! Not even if they force me to!" thought Bianca aloud, waiting for the luggage already several minutes late. A gentleman convinced that he is the interlocutor of that rant smiles and receives a nasty look in return. "Now how the hell do you get out of this trap?" "Lucky! That's what they say in Spanish. Right? I didn't have to argue with my mother about which language to choose in high school! Now I don't even know where to turn my ass!" And there she is again, trying to control the squeeze in her stomach and throwing back tears. He took a long breath and began to read the signs. "I read more. I don't understand anymore! This isn't even Spanish, but what is it?" he protested loudly. "He's Catalan! If you have to come out, follow me." She was a lady in her 70s with a strong French accent. The glaring eyes under the thick glasses immediately brought her to the thought of that grandmother she had only seen in pictures. She wondered if she too could be so independent as to travel alone and at the same time give off such a sense of security that she could follow her without asking questions. For all she knew, she could be the mother of the local boss and she was only 16 years old for too short a time. "First time here?" she said, approximating her Italian. "Yes, I'm going to see my grandmother..." she said, wondering if she had already revealed too much information to that direct and affable stranger. "I casino!" The old woman said with a broad smile. "Casino? in the sense that it's messy?" she asked embarrassedly, "No casino, I'm from Corsica. My friends are on the next plane. We courses like to play but there are few casinos, so we go to Barcelona ah!". It's while Bianca thought of that group of cheerful retirees intent on shitting a little pension at the slot machines the lady wisely guided her out duty free until the exit. The doors opened wide in front of her. He grabbed his cell phone, but international roaming hadn't started yet. It was there that he realized he did not know who would come to take her, much less what features she might have. He hoped in his heart to see his grandmother in front of him, to recognize her at the first stroke, and, being able to dream big, to overcome the atavistic embarrassment with a friendly embrace: two patches on the back and off. But he didn't see anyone who could even remember that old picture. He tried to sort the people by age and noticed that there was indeed a fat and crispy lady 10 metres away, but she did not stare at her as she did, so he approached and asked in a too loud voice: "Grandma!?". She answered something in German and Bianca blushed and immediately turned to the other side. Tears had again begun to flow under her eyelids when she heard the voice of a man across the hall. "White!!!! Miss Blanca!" She turned and saw a man in her sixties, bent over on himself, hugging her. He had a lived air and didn't seem to have much to do with personal hygiene. Her hair looked dirty, all brought back from the nape up and she was wearing a plain white tank top, shorts of undefined colour and those brown sandals now out of production and which the Germans liked so much that they persisted in wearing them even in the second millennium. "At least she doesn't have a white sock," she thought exasperated. "But who is it?" "White erm... senorita!" "It's... me" "Hola, buenas! It's Jorge!" "Who???" "Tu abuela ha incaricado de venire a buscarte. Porche ella estas impegnata por... work. Is that okay?"

"Behold!" She got away with it. 'Another wacky bitch. Now we know where my mother got it from..' He thought bitterly. "Shall I take you to your grandmother's house estas bien?" "Good," he said grittedly. Jorge did not let himself be told twice, grabbed the suitcase and led her out. The sun was shining and all the metal frames on the floors of the high-rise car park were shining. They walked on the pedestrian side which remained in the shade and the draughts made the path more than pleasant, but not for Bianca, who felt every step towards the car heavier and tiring.The direct light that ran along the shadow line where the two were mischievously advancing seemed to her a barrier too hard to cross. In it he imagined all the minutes he would spend away from the things he knew, from Giulia, from her beloved couch, from her bedroom, from all the security to which he felt he was entitled. It seemed to make the air unbreathable, as if she didn't have enough lungs to get oxygen, like an astronaut without an aerospace suit. Then she remembered the middle school history teacher and her boring story of the moon landing: 'One small step for man, one big step for mankind?' 'No, gentlemen.' He thought

It's too hard to cross. In it he imagined all the minutes he would spend away from the things he knew, from Giulia, from her beloved couch, from her bedroom, from all the security to which he felt he was entitled. It seemed to make the air unbreathable, as if she didn't have enough lungs to get oxygen, like an astronaut without an aerospace suit. Then she remembered the middle school history teacher and her boring story of the moon landing: 'One small step for man, one big step for mankind?' 'No, gentlemen.' He thought. "A huge step for me for sure. Who cares about mankind? And then the darkness that for a minute made her almost blind as she wrapped around the cars in the underground parking lot. All but one, illuminated by a chasm in the ceiling. An '85 panda. She realized that her despair had given way to a certain irony when she said to herself, "Surely that's it." In the car, Jorge became more confident and began to ask her a series of questions. "So you're Virginia's little niece! Very pretty! We finally meet you! And how old are you?" As she spoke and hurriedly drove the car to the exit of the parking lot, Bianca noticed that the tank top, which had been smooth for years, was not really a stain, and that there was no unpleasant odor in the car, except for a very delicate aroma of licorice. That strange imprint from the back of the neck to the two temples had also deceived her about her age and probably had at least 5 fewer than the ones she had given him. As Jorge's tongue melted, the speed increased. 

Bianca kept her eyes wide open on the road.

Then at some point he decided to distract himself by reading the signs, despite the speed. "Arenys de mar" he thought aloud. "Arenc!" he corrected her. "Arenc!" Repeatedly spiked. Jorge, the smiles. "What a stupid man..." he thought. "He doesn't realize I'm messing with him." Then the sign "Canet de mar". "Here we are, doggy. I'm fucked!" she thought aloud. Jorge didn't say a word, 'probably didn't understand what fucked means in Italian' he thought. The car turned a couple of times before reaching the last stretch of road separating them from the finish: a steep climb surrounded by a dry wall too badly placed to contain properly the branches that crept on the body when the old panda raced. In the twilight, Jorge was tinkering with a huge set of keys. No sign of Grandma. Opened the gate they continued for a while along the pine driveway then the old wrought-iron wall lamp led them towards the blue gate. Bianca glanced before moving forward, it was a two-storey white house, with a curious sloping roof and stained-glass windows framing the wooden windows. He could see the details because all the lights in the house were on. He stared at the door, noticed two bells, one was the classic intercom with a flowery ceramic plaque that said "Virginia Girotti", the other was in a really awkward position, about a meter higher than the first. It was a rope tied in a double knot on a bronze ring and it had a very curious handwriting on it. "YOU ALONE PLAY HERE" The writing seemed to be repeated in a dozen different languages, and if it weren't for tiredness, he would have sworn to read it in Greek, Latin, and some sort of cuneiform alphabet. He kept his mouth open for a moment. Her mind was stuck to that you, who complicit in exhaustion, kept playing in her head like a jingle. Then she tried to recover one last glimmer of lucidity and speculated that her grandmother's house had once been a bed and breackfast. 'plausible, we are at the sea'. He concentrated to catch in the distance the sound of the waves crashing on the sandy ridge. "And here we are at home!" Jorge yelled in her ears. He returned heavily to the reality of his most arduous journey. "Here we are," he repeated aloud like an automaton, "I'll have to embrace her!" He thought not without a hint of anguish. But there was no one at the door, neither in the first drawing-room, nor in the kitchen overlooking the drawing-room. No one, just a box of pizza on the island of majolica in the kitchen and a card. "Happy dinner and see you tomorrow morning! Your grandmother." She raised the cardboard tablecloth and felt a desperate desire to be alone, on the contrary Jorge felt that she should accompany that dinner with a few words. "Do you like Blanca pizza? Sculpe! White!" He said earlier that the girl could achieve. "Yes, gracias.." he replied monocord. Then he opened the wrapper, saw the salami, and closed it, clenching his jaw with anger. "Of all the pizzas, the one with salami had to take???" "Why?" He asked Jorge alarmed, "Don't you like it?" . "It sucks!" "Ma esto no es salam