The Vertigo Game

2. Electric dance

2. Electric dance

4 February.

In a side street off piazza Ferretto in Mestre, well within the pedestrian area, different people are talking at the same time, but can’t hear each other; they are one in front of the other, but can’t see each other. It’s as if they were invisible. Nobody can either see or hear everyone else: it’s a group of people imprisoned by the solitude in fear, with words rising like smoky figures from a fire and riding the air molecules that bounce all over like the ball in a game of squash.

Advanced in her years, a woman coming home on her electric trike keeps going round and round in circles, turning in on herself. The lady’s torso heaves forward as her head swings uncontrollably: they have just driven a large steel nail into her neck with a nail gun, almost piercing it from one side to the other, killing her instantly. The nail head is protruding from the skin, reminiscent of an unlikely piercing. She was a very thin lady; as much may be understood from the sunken face, the neck and hollow wrists emerging from her jacket.

Someone is thinking of connecting this attack with the murder of the other elderly man that took place a few miles from here: the other victim had been shot in the head.

At last, a man comes out of that throng of people and turns the electric motorcycle off, stopping for a moment and a deep breath because he also wants to do something else, something harder: he puts his hand over her face and closes her eyes.

At the same time and a few yards from where the crime took place, a gospel choir concert has started at piazza Ferretto. The boundless and deeply delicate energy of dozens of people is conveyed in the voices that, in unison, reach the same heights at the same time, flying through the air as if this were a huge swarm of birds.

These voices are directed by a portly gentleman wearing a long white scarf about the neck. He’s moving his baton quickly, energetically, whimsically, powerfully and without stopping, making one think of a middleweight boxer as they’re landing a combination of hooks and uppercuts. Around the stage, a large and orderly audience listen to them, involved. The choristers are all Italian and white, although singing in English, putting great passion into it, sounding like black singers.

The lyrics speak of God, the Earth, loss … and death.

Armand can feel the old lift move as it’s going up and his skin of his body can feel the vibration even before his eardrums pick up on the noisy rattling. ‘My partner Mara has come back from her shopping,’ he’s thinking. He opens the front door of their fifth-floor flat where they’ve lived together for decades: it’s a small blessing, saving Mara the trouble of looking for the keys in her handbag. He leaves the door ajar, as he has many other times, going back into the study to finish the email he was writing to a friend of his from the WWF; he’s a paying member. Armand has a long white beard and a fully shaved head; he prefers to shave the few hairs left on his head off every two or three days. It’s as if he’d changed his head with his face to compensate for his baldness.

His completely bald head and long beard starting from the earlobes make him look like a hermit.

Armand and Mara have lived together across two centuries and millennia, both as vegetarians and active in many cultural associations, too evolved for the banal world of today that’s more and more technological yet coarser. They were part of the Protests of ’68 and “flower children”, as they were called in the Sixties and Seventies, living through decades full of social upheaval, seeing the world progress through their youth, experiencing the great optimism inherent in the beauty of change. They’ve felt police batons on their shoulders and backs over and over, like thousands of other protestors. The blows those batons dealt didn’t hurt that much: the black marks that would stay on their skins for a long while afterward reminded them of the courage they’d had in protesting and, compared to today’s brutality, these were little more than light slaps.

They lived through the slow progression of rights for students, workers, women … all of it was beautiful, exciting even.

Then, year after year, slowly yet unstoppably, the world began regressing that little bit more every time. After progress came the implosion of the human race: today’s person has folded in on themself, like a rag upon the floor. Such are the waves of time, the alternation of hills and valleys on the path of humanity, without beginning or end, where ─ sooner or later ─ we go through the same stages.

Armand and Mara are ill at ease at this age of decadence, pessimistic about the future of society, thinking it will be made of the past: they can see a “medieval future”!

On the fifth floor, the walls of the apartment they live in tell their story of a couple of free spirits, told through photos of themselves and their myths and travels.

There's a picture of Fidel Castro at age thirty that some Cuban friends of theirs sent. Hung on the walls are various tastefully framed silk paintings, recalling many journeys through India, Nepal and China. On the central coffee table of the sitting room are two sandalwood sculptures: one represents the god of good fortune Ganesh, half man, half elephant; the other is Hanuman, the personification of wisdom, honesty and strength, depicted with a monkey’s face; both are Hindu deities. They’ve had these for forty years to remind them of their journeys to the East they’ve gone on together.

It’s a nice and well-kept apartment over ninety square metres in size, with four spacious rooms, two bathrooms and hundreds upon hundreds of books of all genres with which they’ve filled three entire bookcases: two large ones in the study and one in the guest room. They must’ve piled up the last texts they’ve bought on the study floor; they’ll perhaps be buying another bookcase.

Armand and Mara have been together for fifty years: they met with the student protests of ’68 in full swing, shaping each other by feeding on dreams. They’ve always lived as man and wife, but never wanted to marry and, had children been born of their union, the couple wouldn’t have had them follow any kind of religion; they embraced the illusion and necessity of being unconventional: following the rule of not following the rules, so to speak. They engaged with society throughout their life and shared an enthusiasm for their rôles as teachers: both taught literature at secondary school until they reached pensionable age.

All was well until a few years ago, when Mara began to show the first signs of multiple sclerosis: a changeable disease of many forms, impossible to predict, accompanied by visual disturbances, strong feelings of numbness in the limbs and exhaustion. She follows an exacting course of treatment and strict controls; she only managed to take a few steps today and this with the help of a walking stick.

The two police officers, alongside a man in plain clothes to whom they notably showed deference, ─ awe, even ─ have knocked on the half-open door and come in.

‘Hello,’ they say. ‘May we come in?’

They ask if he is Mr Armand Scarpa.

They’re thinking now’s not the time, given what they have to tell him, to ask him why ever he should have a French-sounding name. Going back to their offices, one of the officers ─ the more curious of the two ─ will ascertain that Armand was born in Bruges in Belgium, where his parents emigrated before the Second World War and managed a chocolate factory before returning to Veneto for good.

‘Yes; what’s happened?’ answers an astonished Armand.

‘Would you mind sitting down, please?’ they say, pulling him up a chair.

They are there to inform him a vile and inexplicable attack has taken place, proving fatal. Mara’s not coming back. They’re at pains to explain what happened not far from where they are.

‘It’s best you don’t see her, not right away. You’ll be able to see her at the mortuary to identify her tomorrow, where they’ll ask you to come with a family member’.

“Mara’s not coming back!” Armand repeats to himself within, his life now being like a “geological age” reaching its end.

“We’re going back to the age of the dinosaurs: reptiles will take the place of mammals, and these are coldblooded creatures: primordial, pitiless and brainless”.

‘Have you children?’

They don't.

‘Any relatives, both of you?’

They haven’t got any nearby; they live in other cities and haven’t heard from either of the couple in years.

‘Do you have friends?’

‘Yes, hundreds, all online’.

He thinks they are virtual friends and yet seem more real than those in the flesh that he comes across every day on the street, up and down the stairwell, in the shops and offices. Or, at least, he interacts more with them: distance is no bar and it’s easier to say things without seeing each other.

‘Is there anyone to help you, materially speaking?’

They weren’t very attached to their neighbours; not at all, for that matter.

He says he doesn’t need anybody.

Armand just can’t get the tears out. Not even when these men leave does he wail or despair, nor does he talk to himself or run to look through their photos and videos of their travels or their diaries. All of this is not a good sign.