Close your eyes chapt6

A breath of light wind penetrated between the old wooden hinges greeted Bianca as she awoke. With her eyes half-closed in the half-light, she tried to focus her first precarious attention on the noises of that unfamiliar environment. She noticed how different that sound track was from the usual scratchy background of honking horns and tires she heard in Milan. It was a delicate bouquet made of chirps with a background of crickets that slowly, by dint of listening, became predominant over everything else. In the background, very carefully he could hear the sea. An image of crystalline waves intent on leaving regular grooves in the sand had made her smile unexpectedly. But the smile had faded almost immediately at the thought that nothing about that room felt familiar: the colorful china hanging on the wall, the cherrywood secrétaire and her wrought-iron chair. Everything seemed foreign and hostile to her, even the giant canopy of white cloth and tulle that she had never dreamed of. She who had always slept in her childhood bed now found herself sinking among the pillows, as if in a luxurious hotel room. And right there, breathing in the coolness of the linen she abruptly went back to the night before, to Jorge's reckless driving, to the disappointment of realizing that phantom grandmother had not been there to greet her, and to that pizza, the only good thing that had happened up to that moment. "Who would have thought Spaniards could make such good pizza. Too bad I could only share it with the cat, and maybe it will be like that for the next 75 days..." this thought made her pulse quicken in an initial grip of anxiety, so she straightened up on the bed, slipped on her slippers, and stormed out without even opening a window. She slipped blindly down the hallway, found the kitchen, and there amidst the teal of the wooden doors and the wisteria of the walls towered the wonderful table of local pottery on which someone had prepared breakfast. Between the mandarin and myrtle jams lay a note: "Good morning Bianca! I'm in the garden!" "Lord, please don't let it be Jorge again!" she thought. She decided to face the enemy and stepped through the glass window that separated the kitchen from a veritable patch of green. In front of her was a fountain full of red koi, and behind the fountain, a tanned, hunched back was intent on sorting through some plants grown in a small but well-tended vegetable garden.

The sun burned the shoulders uncovered by her pajamas, and Bianca thought that if she didn't muster up the courage to do something to get that lady's attention (which was probably her grandmother, but she wouldn't put her finger on it), she would end up becoming a statue of salt, as in the story the nun repeated to her in kindergarten. So she cleared her throat, but the result was disappointing: the figure did not move an inch. So she found the courage to move a meter closer and hinted a "hello," but there was no response. Her grandmother must have been deaf as well as workaholic, so she decided to approach again and touch her shoulder. There the woman did the unthinkable: she screamed at the top of her lungs and brought herself straight back by leaping backwards. Bianca on her behalf did likewise and she, in turn screamed again with all the breath in her body, "Bianca... Hello! You scared the hell out of me!" Then she took out her earphones and said, "Sorry! It's just that in the garden I like to listen to music. Do you know Mozart? You don't know how good it is for the spirit!" Meanwhile, the granddaughter continued to stare at her dumbfounded. It was as if an attraction had been triggered in her about the details of that woman's body, whose blood flowed into hers. She looked for similarities in the height and color of her eyes and differences in her much larger breasts and thinner ankles. She had not noticed that she had stopped talking, so instead of arousing her from that trance, she became more affable, like the hostesses in museums who get more affable with older patrons asking to earn their way out, gracefully escorted her along the cobblestone. "Darling do you know Laudanum?" " Mmmhh no..." I nodded unsurely "Oh it's a powerful plant! Ahh the absinthe, the absintine! The drink of the great French poets, of Boudlaire, of Oscar Wilde, of Edgar Allan Poe!" In front of her granddaughter's astonished gaze she continued snappily, "Yes, perhaps you are too young to know them, however... here they use a lot to cure themselves with plants you know?" "And Belladonna, you've never heard of it?" "Belladonna? What's an aphrodisiac?" "No no! Au contraire! If anything, it's a calming agent! And not only that! Do you know that in the old days at high concentrations they used it as a poison and...zanchete! you would die of a heart attack!" At the word heart attack Bianca paled, and Virginia immediately took her by the hand. "But you still have to have breakfast! I'll make you coffee. you drink coffee!!! Vale?" she said it without taking a breath. The helm that in appearance seemed firmly in her hands occasionally slipped through her fingers. "Since I was 14!" Virginia smiled at that unintended assist. "But then you're great!" he told her too enthusiastically and led her back past the fish fountain, heedless of his niece's pouting. As he led her to the glass door he passed his warm hand over his niece's shoulders. Bianca felt a tremendous warmth run through her shoulder blade and collarbone, but she did not take much notice because she thought it was the effect of the midday sun. Transported by that hand she turned her gaze beyond the trajectory defined by her grandmother. She laid her eyes on the roses growing proudly close to the small lime wall that separated the garden from the vegetable garden. She noticed then that where a precise hand must have recently pruned some branches, another somewhat more approximate one had embellished those works in progress by applying pink satin bows. She thought, "How strange, the result is pretty, maybe it's a custom here! Or maybe it's my grandmother who is obsessed with the 80s. Mom used to say satin bows were all the rage!" And as she spoke, the memory of her and Julia dressed as Madonna '80s-style Like a Prayer and Madonna '90s-style Vogue made her smile, especially at the thought that at the party none of her friends understood anything and everyone insisted on calling them the Lady Gagas. Biagi, the class geek under the influence of tequila insisted on calling them Lady Cacas, with the same conviction as an old parishioner reciting a rosary in a prayer group, or so they had laughed about it together. He pushed back his memories, fearing another emotional escalation, and crossed the patio. He noticed his grandmother seated in the cool half-light of the kitchen cheerfully continuing her monologue. Her tone so strangely familiar accompanied a slow, precise manipulation on the coffee pot.

"So you got promoted again this year? Considering that math is your Achilles heel, you did very well!"

"Well, thank you..." she replied, hinting an unspontaneous smile. She was embarrassed, not expecting her grandmother to be aware of her school career, and for a moment wondered if she was able to follow her on Instagram or worse. Then she called herself paranoid and reminded herself how much difficulty a decidedly non-digital native 74-year-old lady might have in signing up on some social media, worse still, becoming a 'follower'

"Speaking of heels," Grandma asked, interrupting the circular stream of unanswered questions triggered in her head. "This one I think is gone!" she said, starting to stare at her left heel in the throes of a decidedly vigorous massage. "Honey, did you know that even bones rust?"

"You're kidding, right?" Grandma didn't even answer her, but quietly imparted to her to look after the coffee on the stove, "....because if you've been drinking it since you were 14 years old anyway, you know very well when it's ready. Right? I'll be right back." Bianca followed the silhouette of her grandmother, who not even for a second stopped talking, veering continuously from whining to joking blame on herself. The coffeepot had been mumbling for a while, and when she lifted it from the fire she realized that going over those oh-so-automatic gestures had made her feel, for a moment, at home. A minute later the woman appeared in the doorway carrying a kind of stool that in truth also resembled a kind of African drum, of those she had often seen for sale in the stalls under the subway. Yes, now that she came to think of it, it did look like a djembe, or something like it, because it had a thick ceramic base and no trace of animal skin; it had 4 wooden feet, but more massive than she could remember. In her other hand the woman held a stick with a rounded tip, with here she could have beaten that thing somewhere to create sound. The grandmother, however, wielded it as a primitive man might have wielded a club, and such an inelegant gesture certainly could not have led to any note.

"Here's to us two feet!" Said the woman, staring at her aching heel.

"But what???? What is that thing?"

"What? Can't you see it for yourself? It's a mortar! Don't tell me mortars don't exist in Milan!"

"Of course they exist!" she replied piqued.

"Only I've never seen one like that before!"

"Whatever, you see it now so when you come back you can tell your friends about it."

"Yes, of course." she turned her eyes to the sky and thought about the jaw-dropping news of mortar production in Spain and the higher likelihood that Grandma was in truth scoffing at her.

"But what are you doing with ...er ...the mortar?"

"I die with it!!!"

Definitely her grandmother was taking the piss out of her.

Grandma squinted her eyes so hard that her eyebrows suddenly resembled the outline of a mountain peak. "Come on! Don't make that face! I'll pound lotion on it for my Achilles heel!"

"But couldn't you give yourself Lasonil like everyone else does?" Grandma mimicked her by rolling her eyes, then said in a resigned tone, "Youth...." Finally she stared at the huge cat lying in the corner of the sofa. "Certosotto at least you are there to understand me!"

The cat answered her with a dry "me," and it seemed to Bianca for a moment that he was really answering the woman. Then Grandma turned to her and stared at her with those intense eyes of hers. She paused for a long time, then everything seemed to stir in the room. "Just watch!" She said. She went to the refrigerator and grabbed some milk and homemade yogurt, which she pointed to proudly, "Jorge brings me this!"

Then he opened a drawer where in a huge cutlery holder he kept an innumerable series of small bags of herbs. From some of them he extracted five bay leaves, two sprigs of arnica and cloves and a handful of clay, then took up the stick again and began to press and impress a rotation on the leaves. These seemed to dissolve at his touch and all that remained was a soft dark green mush, the color of trees in autumn. "Wow how tough she is!" He thought.

"Surely he is stronger than me!" Bianca made an effort to continue to maintain a certain detachment, but curiosity overpowered her thoughts. "Curious! Huh?" He told her, smiling, as with master touch he emptied the whole bowl of yogurt into the mortar. "A little!" White let slip out. "And now for the secret ingredient! Sesame oil! Valuable help against all suffering...but I can't do everything in here!" He took out from the small bottle he had retrieved under the drawer 20 drops, then handed the mortar to Bianca, "While I pour it you stir!" She handed her the mortar, but then just as her granddaughter was about to start her grandmother grabbed her hands to stop her. "Wait girl, you have to stir counterclockwise!" her tone took on more graceful overtones. Then she resumed, moving closer to her granddaughter's ear and almost whispered, "That's the way to do it! Good!" That repeated movement had loosened the tension, so it was easier for Bianca to take the floor again.

"Of course you 'Spaniards' are strange. Yesterday in the car with your friend Jorge there was a radio station calling all the elders in the village. It sounded like a Beghelli service!" "Ah yes! radio island. It's guapa! What's nice here is that the elderly are very respected! Not like with you in Italy that you leave them in truck stops!"

"Grandma I have never seen any elderly abandoned in autogrill, if anything abandoned dogs those are!"

"Dogs, old people, people suffering, in Italy all the same end!"

Bianca suddenly felt that feeling of warmth and familiarity was gone, she felt accused of something without quite understanding what. She began to sense how much she too was accusing her grandmother Virginia, how angry she too was getting, although she did not quite understand why. After all, the woman had done nothing to her, she was not the cause of her ills, it was not her fault that her mother had thrown her there all summer, but this thought only increased the bomb of bile and frustration she was throwing at her grandmother. "What are you talking about! That's not true at all! In Italy we don't treat the elderly badly!!! Besides, why are you taking it out on me!!!?" The woman raised her eyebrows and spread her arms toward her. "But no!" He replied. "I'm not mad at you! On the contrary, I was looking forward to seeing you and getting to know you!" In her granddaughter's eyes, the grandmother suddenly looked disarmed, interjected, and seemed to lose her cocky solidity. Oddly enough, this did not please Bianca, and made her feel lonely and disoriented again. For a few minutes the words between the two seemed to vanish even before they made a sound. It was Her granddaughter who broke that terrible silence, "I love my country." she said, but before she could even continue, her grandmother cut her off. "I believe it, it's where you were born. But Italy is not perfect.

"No, it's not, but it's great to live in!"

"Sure, and it's full of associations that protect dogs, cats, old people and children! Hospitals work great, and if you're an asshole you go to jail too! Sure, right!" Her irritation grew more and more every second: she was already forced to be there in that country, in that house, a crossroads of strange and bizarre people, plus she was forced to hear such heavy criticism of her Homeland. We are okay with that!!!" she made herself strong with that 'we' in which she put all the people she knew well and who made her feel safe. She reiterated it in the lowest tone she could use. She lowered her gaze to look at that woman as little as possible and Virginia finally understood how much she was risking by letting her impulsive temperament lead her. "I'm sorry Bianca. Really, I apologize. I shouldn't have spoken like that about your country..."

So he shouted to her, "But it's your of country, too!" This time it was Grandma who lowered her gaze, plunged into a sadly contrite expression. Certosotto aroused herself and with feline grace went gently to her arms resting on the table. At that contact the woman dissolved the tension in her raised fists on the table, somewhere between a sign of surrender and one of protest. "Yes it was, and a lot." "With permis!" Jorge's words in the garden allowed the two a respite, although the granddaughter would have gladly done without. On the contrary, the grandmother greeted them with great relief, reshuffled her voice into a more caressing tone, "So dear how did you get on with my lotion?" she asked immediately as soon as the man crossed the threshold. "Very well querida, my wife thanks you!" In the meantime he took the bowl-stool and began to slather on the compress with slow, precise gestures that seemed to calm the tension in the room as well as the pain of that shabby heel. "Y tu Senorita Blanca, did you sleep well at your abuela's house?" Bianca made a strange sound. For her a neither yes nor no to which was almost immediately succeeded by a genuine feeling of curiosity that this man evoked in her. She could certainly tell that he was distinctive but she did not know if he was likable. She understood, however, that he was sincerely devoted to her grandmother. And that gave her another thought. When Jorge unloaded the fruit boxes and went back for more she decided to investigate. "Grandma?" "Yes?" She turned her attention away from the heel. "But isn't it that you and Jorge-" "What!?" He widened his eyes, and his eyebrows for a second lowered menacingly. The cat, who was still under his hand receiving his daily ration of cuddles, seemed to assume the same expression. And then suddenly the silence was broken with a loud and prolonged laugh. Virginia turned back to the cat "Hahaha! but can you imagine me and Jorgi in the moonlight!!!?" " hahaha!!" she repeated herself, "What a romantic idea! Me and Jorge walking hand in hand and his wife chasing us with a frying pan in her hand! Heavy ones though!" He burst into thunderous laughter. "If it weren't for the fact that he trusts me blindly, it would take Carmelita exactly two seconds to lift her hoof and mira what an aim she has! You should see! She recently hit her niece's husband's nose right on the spot!" Virginia abruptly turned her magnetic green eyes on the man who had returned with another tape. "By the way Jorge now how is Jose?" "Oh Senor..." the man suddenly seethed, "Don't worry! That's a wooden head, much harder than your wife's hoof. But you know, wood has to be worked to be useful for something!" The man nodded. It was clear that that conversation echoed many others before and that no one felt the need to include a 16-year-old girl. 'Although at this point it would certainly make the stay at Canet Prison more interesting...' he thought.

'A-ah,' Bianca replied, trying to give herself a detached tone towards the strange duo. "A-ah" her grandmother mouthed to her then turned to her and said under her breath, "And don't expect me to tell you why! Privacy is sacred to me!"

'Damn it! How can she understand that?" The feeling of being read by that woman took hold of his thoughts again. She walked out of the kitchen and to the small fountain. She tried with all her might to wash her face of that questioning air, but she could not. She wondered how she had managed to intercept on thoughts again. No one in her family had tried, perhaps her father, as a child, when their two childhoods could be free to talk to each other in a bubble made up of always silent games so as not to disturb her mother in any kind of activity she was doing. But this had lasted too short a time.

From the moment the bones had begun to calcify by virtue of hormones, reveries about the characters who populated their secret island in the archipelago of the forgotten arts were succeeded by his indoctrination to Jazz. Then at some point that magic broke inexorably.

"Of course, every family has its skeletons in the closet. Eh Bianca?" Grandma had caught up with her and was staring at her intently with a charitable air. She no longer felt able to respond with her head slipped in confusion to echo Grandma's words. For a while she had the distinct feeling that through those words her grandmother was telling her something whose meaning escaped her. It was there that Virginia drastically ousted that dumbfounded state by shrugging one of her shoulders, "Uè! bella mia where are you with your head? You didn't have a joint before breakfast, did you?" "Ahahaha!" again that belly laugh broke into the silence between the three of them. She just couldn't get used to that irreverent language. It immediately flashed in her mind that one time she gave two shots to a joint on a field trip to the palace of Parma with her school. Her group managed to extricate themselves from the teachers to the only truly coveted destination: the loo. Thanks to the abundant presence of repeaters in the two classes, the smoke hidden in shoes and backpacks, wrapped in yards of tin foil was certainly not in short supply, and the younger ones took turns and in an almost religious silence entering through the swinging door to inhale 2-3 puffs. The game lay in getting out while avoiding snickering, a daunting task, especially in front of a platoon of spectators lined up for a ticket in front of the bar. Bianca and Giulia also played along, more so Giulia insisted ad nauseam because this too, according to her, was pure scientific research. "A joint has never killed anyone. It's statistics!" They locked themselves in the bathroom, and after inhaling ample puffs (according to Canestrari of Brazilian yellow smoke), while Giulia was cringing, she had noticed with horror that her visual pattern had dropped by a third. She desperately tried to stare at her comrades, but quickly realized that their faces and consequently their entire heads were also severed from the eyes up, and since none of these attempts led to an improvement in the situation, before long the palpitations increased. With her forehead beaded with a cold sweat Bianca fell prey to her first panic attack. She began fanning herself with sweeping gestures of her arms and spinning in circles to try to calm herself, but to no avail. Then she began, first timidly, then in a gradually louder voice, to call for help. Seeing her in agitation Julia, decided it was time to leave the premises, and a companion of hers with her pupil so dilated that it had changed color decided to grab Bianca and began to wander around the palace grounds. The whole perimeter of the park. No less than three times. At the end of which her arm became numb from the low flow of blood the grip allowed her. Bianca turned and in a hoarse, deep voice cried out for help again. "Giulia will soon pull it off!!!" Her partner, Salvatore known as "Caterpillar" for his uncontested physical dominance among males, had not let go for a moment in his rescue attempt. She had since associated cannabis with a broken television set and the burning pain in her right arm that she felt immediately after being freed. That memory was forcing her into a more meek smile than she would have liked, so she quickly refocused her attention on the talk between her grandmother and the man. They were talking about the Catalans' attachment to their land and how much they still suffered from their lack of independence from Spain. grandmother was teasing Jorge benevolently, for this "but it's been three centuries! "Jorge you have to explain to me how it is possible that in this country people are born and raised who are still pissed off about this expropriation!", and from there a debate was born that over time Bianca would discover was always more or less the same, in truth a kind of skirmish between the two that they themselves used in empty moments to reconfirm their state of confidence. Meanwhile, she had noticed that the Certosotto cat had taken advantage of this lack of attention to get under her fingers. So while her grandmother continued to talk and Jorge continued to argue about the expropriations and unjust taxation in the land of Catalonia, Bianca finally decided to lay her gaze on that magnificent example of Black Chartreux that her grandmother loved to affectionately define as "the Carthusian" due to its silhouette. not really for a competition. "You're Italian, you can't understand!" Jorge said with a resigned tone. "Grandma, have you ever thought about attaching a switch to this cat's belly? Look, he cleans your whole house you know!"

"Ha ha! I see that the prankster spirit has finally returned! I couldn't wait to hear a famous white joke with my own ears! This statement sounded like a real invasion of the field.

He cursed himself for having accepted even a single moment of living the relationship with this unknown grandmother as if it were normal. So he stiffened, turned around on his warm tone and said: "How do you know that I like to joke!? I mean you and I never even saw each other's faces before this trip! Are you groping!? Look, it's not by pretending to know me that you make me like you more!" The tone became more and more abrupt. Then, little by little Bianca proceeded with her attack, the anger was diluted into a growing and unexpected anguish, each word brandished her heart in its fist, more and more alert. "Bianca please! take it easy! Your mother and I spoke on the phone from time to time and then I know you! He said it with a firm and desperate tone at the same time. Faced with such solemnity and suffering, Bianca fell silent, clamping her lips together with a bite. "Oh no, she's just like her mother…" thought the grandmother.

The ringtone of an incoming message both forced and allowed the two to leave the field. It was Giulia. The tightness in her stomach from the previous day reminded her again of the 74 days that separated her from her.