ONLY CLEMENTINA IS MISSING

ONLY CLEMENTINA IS MISSING

The light of the evening enters the room through the wide window, like a gray veil which spreads over everything.  Yet a short time has passed since from the same window she could see the burning sky of the sunset. Anne is sitting near the window, as if she wanted to be enveloped by the evening which is falling, by the light more and more gray, increasingly darkening , and as she wanted  be wrapped by the play of the shadows , which slip on the walls of the room, on the pieces of the furniture, on the floor. It is evening and soon it will be night. Then she will stand up and close the window shutters. Anne, who is over sixty years old, feels that the evening, the light of the evening, which gradually becomes darker and darker, is in tune with her life, with her age.

Oh, the white coral beads of the necklace she wears suddenly come off and fall, cracking, to the floor. Anne grabs with one hand the ends of the necklace, which is broken. Some beads of her necklace have not yet fallen to the ground , and she wants to prevent them from falling . And with that gesture, which comes spontaneously to her, Anne feels that is as if she were trying to stop time, the unstoppable flight of hours, of days…..

It happened often that Anne thinks about her past life, now that she knows the end can be near. And thinking about her life, she always comes back to wonder what, who has really mattered in her life…..Oh, no, at her age she doesn’t ask more ( no longer) questions about the meaning of life, she prefers not to ask herself if her life has had a meaning. What at first comes in her mind every time she thinks back about her life is that she has never had a family where she has been comfortably, or indeed even a family which hasn’t been a disaster. She remembers that as a child she ran away of home several times, to escape the beatings of her parents and even……hunger. Then she was placed in an institution, a kind of boarding school, and even from there  she ran away. When she was an adult , Anne had the aspiration to create the family which she had never had. Not that she lived badly with her husband and her daughter, but also with them she was not certainly happy. Until a few months earlier, just after she had made her will, her daughter and her grandson tried to kill her, simulating a robbery. And her husband had been an accomplish of her daughter and her grandson. Anne had managed to avoid to be killed just because she had pretended to be dead. It had been a frightening, terrible experience. She had suffered a lot, not only physically. The pain at the thought that her loved ones had planned to kill her had lasted a long time, every day seemed to be more hard, more unsustainable. Then, as time went by, she was happy to be alive, despite everything.

Anne is bathed in the gray light of the evening, falling more and more dark on her. Soon it will be night , and she will shut out, with the window, the darkness of the night. But for now, still for a while, there is still light, even if it is dim. She looks out of the window , and in a space suspended between earth and sky, a space which seems to be from another world, Anne sees again herself as a little girl of ten years, who, run away from the boarding school with Alice, a little girl a few years older than her, is wandering across suburban streets and roads between lawn, looking for something to eat, looking for a place to sleep. Together they two there is also Alice’s cat, Pip, a white wad.

One day, Anne and Alice, while wandering through countryside roads , ( they) had met Paul, a child even younger than Anne. That small child was barefoot, and dressed in tattered clothes, he , crying, asked them to eat, and he kept on repeating, moaning: “ Hungry, I’m hungry….oh, I’m dying for hungry, I hadn’t eaten for days and days….oh, I’m hungry” Anne and Alice had tried to take care of that poor child. Alice had climbed onto a pear tree and onto an apple tree, and onto an apricot tree too, to get him something to put right under his feet. He, Paul, after eating a feast of fruit, kept on complaining that he was still hungry, and that he wanted bread( he needed bread!)

Ah, but where to find bread? Unfortunately they could not find it on the trees, as pears, apples and apricots. While Paul kept on asking, invoking : “ BREAD! BREAD! I want bread!” Alice had said: “ Ah, at least Pip__this was the name of her cat___when he is hungry, he thinks to get food by himself.”

After having washed Paul in a small river, they, continuing to walk aimlessly through the countryside, had arrived, by chance, at a farm where, even if they had been looked upon with suspicion at their arrival, Paul, Anne and Alice had at least been able to eat until they were satisfied  ( until they were full), and also they could wash themselves, and they had also had clothes, even if clothes which were not new and in which, especially Paul, they wallowed, since those old clothes were so loose. Paul could have also a pair of shoes, even those not new.

Then Anne, Alice and Paul had been allowed to sleep at farm, even if they had to be content with sleeping either in the sheep shed or in the barn.  The three children accepted, even if they were afraid it could be a trap to be able to catch them , and to bring them back, Alice and Anne to the poor children asylum, , from which they had escaped, and Paul at home, where a terrible father and a bad stepmother were waiting for him. Since they were very much afraid of being catch, Alice, Anne and Paul, with Pip, spent all day wandering around the countryside, far from homes, and only at night they came back to the farm. Then the farmer’s wife, perhaps moved, had proposed that they pick up fruits ____apples, pears…..____in exchange for food and lodging. The three children, who had become great friends, after some reluctance____since they all were worried above all to avoid to be catched____So, even if they had continued to sleep in the barn or in the sheep shed, they could at least be sure to have food to eat every day. However, the days which the three children spent picking up fruit____mostly apples and pears, but also medlar and apricots____(they) were days of fun, too. Alice, Anne and Paul had turned the toil of their work into fun.  So they chased each other among the trees, and they hid behind the trunks of the trees, they disappeared to reappear suddenly jumping from the apple or pear tree which they had climbed, and they threw each other pears, apples, apricots. Pip was with them , and he too seemed to have a great fun when the fruit  fell , beating, to the ground, when his three little friends, but also the adults busy to picking fruit , started to throw apples, pears, apricots which the others had to pick up not with their hands but with their mouths. Ah, Pip , looking that spectacle, started to whirl his tail, and, with his head raised, he stood with his mouth wide open, as if he too wanted to participate the game( he too wanted to join in the fun) “  Oh, I’m here too! THROW AN APPLE AT ME, TOO!” he seemed to say.

After the fruit picking , the harvest had begun . For the three children, and for Pip too, also it was a great fun. But one day, David, a boy a ltitle older than them, the son of the farmer, had arrived, all out of breath, in the vineyard to look for them. He said them that two gentlemen and a lady had just arrived at the farm, who had qualified as belonging to the municipal police.. And those three…guys seemed to look for two little girls as Alice and Anne, and for a little boy as Paul.

Alice, Anne and Paul, trembling with fear, starting to cry, had begged David not to hand them over those henchmen , and they asked him to help them escape or at least hide, that they would then leave, at night. Also Pip had started to meow loudly, with an angry, imperious meow, as if he too wanted to join the request of his three friends. David, touched, and in contravention of what he had been ordered_____to take the children to the farm at once, since they had to be delivered to…the two gentlemen and the lady….of the municipal police___decided to help them. He knew a hiding place which was perfect for them. David had found into a ditch in the middle of the fields  a den, which perhaps was, indeed had been, a fox’s den. In that den, which only he, David, knew, no one would come looking for them. Alice, Anne and Paul, with Pip, had been hiding into the den some days , during which they did not come out of the den by day, since they had learned from David, who came every day to bring them food, that other…ladies and gentlemen had come to look for them at the farm. Those ladies had qualified as social workers, and the gentlemen as policemen specializing in finding children who had escaped either from home , or from an orphanage, or from a boarding school……Ah, these children are a big problem for our society, they, the ladies and the gentlemen, claimed, very seriously. Those ladies and gentlemen had  subjected both David’s parents and David, as well as the other people who lived in the farm , to long, asphyxiating interrogations. David was scared too, but he didn’t feel like telling the three children that they had to get away from that den too.

Then, one day, she had returned….the owner of the den, a red fox, which had appeared holding a lamb by neck with her fangs.  The three children, and Pip too, had been petrified with fear, each of them having seen himself at the place of the slaughtered lamb. The red fox had stopped at the entrance of the den, before entering. She , standing on the entrance, with the lamb grabbed by her teeth, had looked at them one by one, with the steady gaze of her shining eyes.  It seemed as if the fox was taken the measurements of each of them. The clear eye of the red fox had spent very little time on Alice, as if she had calculated with a single glance: “ No, this is too big for me” The fox’s gaze soon had slipped from Alice onto Anne, on whom it has paused , as if to say: “ Eh, this..yes, I could manage to cut her throat, but let’s see the others first….” And on Paul, but above all on Pip , the fox’s gaze had lingered with satisfaction, as if the animal were already tasting them, savoring them.

They had had to escape.  David had given them a goat, whose white coat was patched with dark stains.  Alice had called the goat Clementina, and Paul had called her Clementina, the blue goat.

They three, together Pip and Clementina, had been happy , for a few more days, until they had been found, and they had been separated.  Since then more than half a century had passed , and they had never seen each other again.

It was dark now in the room, Anne stood up  to close the window.  It had passed a long time and those few months during her childhood she had been happy.  Alice, Paul, Pip and Clementina had been the only family in which she had been fine.

The next day would have been a great day, since she would have seen again Alice and Paul, and Anne hoped , even if absurdly, to be able to see also Pip and Clementina.

Alice lived in Argentina, Paul in Canada. They would have met in Prague the next day.

And the following day in Prague, in the clock square, crowded by people waiting to see the apostles at the stroke of the hour, here they were, Alice and Paul. Anne recognized them , even if she had left them children and now they were old, like her.  Alice held a white cat, identical to Pip, on her arms, although it was impossible it was really Pip.  Only Clementina, the blue goat, was missing.