The end of dreams

8

Silvia felt shattered when she left Michelle's flat.

Though she hadn't fallen nor had she collided with an eighteen-wheeler she felt, however, as if that eighteen-wheeler had run her over.

She lurched while getting into her car so she had to lean against the door not to fall to the ground. Nausea was back again and it was even tougher than usual; it increased the sense of prostration she was already being oppressed by. She remembered she had some licorice candies in her bag but as soon as she glanced down into it to find them the nausea augmented; she tried fumbling in her bag but, as usual, any kind of things jumped out of that bag except what she was searching for.

Then she took a deep breath and placed her hopes on the air-conditioning. She fastened her seat belts while she was accurately avoiding to look downward; a second later she started to clutch the steering wheel rhythmically. She knew by hearsay that it was an effective techique to raise the blood pressure. Actually after few instants she began to recover. She looked in the mirror and saw that the alarming lime green which had covered her complexion for some minutes was slowly making room for her face's typical yellow, so she became calm. She turned the stereo on, trying to let her mind wander... but as soon as she heard the first words of a song she broke out into tears.

It was the voice of Eros Ramazzotti, Michelle's best favourite singer; Silvia had always detested him and she inevitably associated him with Michelle.

"What if the radiotherapy should not be enough?" she wondered "the situation is serious. Too serious."

She switched the radio off.

She sank again into the nightmare that had just vanished only in her vain hopes.

Cervical cancer metastases, similar to flags placed over conquered territories, seemed to claim cancer's victory over her young friend.

And there was the alien too.

She would have to deal with abortion in a few days, and she would be all alone while facing such a cruel experience; Michelle would be tackling her own numerous problems for sure, and Diamond was Silvias's only relative. Diamond must not get to know anything about it obviously; in spite of being relatively young (near to her fifties) she was, however, married to a Sicilian stick-in-the-mud.

Diamond would not understand.

There was Andrew too, to be sure, but if he only had known about the baby he would do anything as long as he could persuade her to keep it. He was so blindly in love with Silvia that he'd grow fond of the baby and he'd acknowledge it, without even demanding a DNA test. The alien was Silvia's child, so it would be his own too.

That's what would come into his mind.

Thus Silvia realized she would be bound to make such an odious choice all by herself. She had always thought abortion was like murder, on that account she had always nourished profound respect and pity towards those who had dealt with it before her. Who knows what atrocious inner sufferings those women had gone through before making up their minds!

And now, though it sounded incredible, she was in those poor, wretched women's shoes indeed; she was the protagonist of that totally unexpected and unwanted drama even if she actually desired to bear a child, as long as it was the fruit of the relationship with the man of her life, namely her husband!

She was no natural-born unmarried girl, or interested bride nor would she play either of those roles to legitimize that hoax of fate. She possessed no kamikaze calling, and she was fully aware she had just one life, so she would not waste it.

For those reasons she had decided to have an abortion.

Silvia was in the middle of the most critical situation of her whole life; for hours she had been looking around yet all she saw was pitch-black darkness. For all her efforts she was unable to see any gleams around her.

She entered traffic slowly. Her mind was so dimmed she could just drive at the rate of seventeen miles an hour, else she would crash into something or someone. A few cars were forming a queue behind her, and each time a car passed her the occupants yelled any kind of insults at her.

Life was going on, after all, although she was experiencing her all-time deepest despair.

«They're all running like crazy and they tell me to go to hell without even looking me in the face! Cowards! The World goes on and on, Alien, and it doesn't give a damn about you.»

Silvia found herself caressing her belly, but as soon as she realized that she moved her hand off it.

«Can you understand why it is better for you not to see the light? This world sucks, it's inhabited by ignoble people, and I am part of them. And on top of that we are all destined to suffer horrible pains before we leave this goddamned world! Look at my Pina... I assure you, this is the best choice I can make for you. You just gotta thank me for the action I'm going to accomplish.»

She felt somehow light-hearted, in saying those words.

«You just gotta thank me!» she repeated.

Notwithstanding some brief relief, Silvia was in a piteous state. The heat was unrelenting, it was the third of August and she found such sultriness way unprecedented. The traffic on that day was strangely scarce, so it had taken her barely ten minutes to go back home despite her snail-paced way of driving. Normally she would have taken twice as long.

Fortunately some people kept on vacationing in august, even if the economic crisis had been gripping the country for some years, that's why she was lucky enough to shun her usually intrusive neighbours, who used to stop her repeatedly while she was walking along the short route between the parking lot and her door; they had a trick of pestering her with continuous questions about her mother and her aunt. Sometimes they opted for tiresome narrations concerning their health conditions, which did not interest Silvia at all.

All pretexts were always good so long as they would waste her time.

In spite of Silvia's brusque answers, and the evident vexation they were causing her, they would not stop and, on the contrary, they would reiterate their importunate actions, every single day, to tell her about their dull lives.

At least on that third of August she was spared that nuisance.

After some minutes she reached her apartment on the eighth floor. She could hardly believe she was entering home; she took off her shoes and the coolness under her feet relieved her a little. She took an icy beer out of the fridge and went to the terrace to relax.

Her apartment was a bit old and in rather poor conditions, yet it was able to offer one nice thing, that is to say a marvellous sight from a high position.

Silvia used to spend whole hours on that terrace, which was situated in a privileged position of the building. The scenery she could enjoy from there was not hindered by any skyscrapers; that view consisted of three quarters of sky and just a few little warehouses below that were hardly visible, in fact she had to lean over the balustrade to see them (which she avoided accurately).

Opposite the terrace, almost level with her eyes, and at a distance of a few miles on a bee line, there was the East Bypass for Venice and she could also enjoy the fascinating scene of the airplanes landing on the Linate airport.

Silvia had always been attracted by any flying objects, therefore the time of maximum air traffic intensity, namely six o'clock or thereabouts, was a constant appointment for her.

That evening a pleasant breeze was blowing mildly and Silvia had the impression that she felt more relaxed and tranquil while breathing; the nausea granted her a truce too.

She found such deep consolation that she decided to spend the whole night in the open air.

She placed her air bed on the terrace; she had bought it for her physical exercises but she had not yet used it. Then she chose her softest pillow, sprawled and fell asleep underneath the stars and the jets landing on the Milan airports.