THE UNEXPECTED GUEST( CHRISTMAS UNEXPECTED)

Theirs was little to say it was an extended family. Lucy and Albert had married very young and had two children, Daniel and Carol.

They had divorced in their early thirties. Lucy had married Therese and had two other children, Tony and Luce.

Albert had married Frank and they too started a family. Using the rented womb they had two children, Rosamunde and Telesio.

Meanwhile, Carol and Daniel also had children with their respective partners.

When they all got together, theirs was more a tribe than an extended family.

That Christmas they had all decided to meet in an old farmhouse that  Frank and Albert had restored and which was in the open countryside.

Christmas dinner was proceeding in great merriment and festive mood when they heard two knocks at the door. At sudden. Silence. Who can it be? They all wondered since the nearest houses were miles away and the road (street) was several miles away too. It was Albert who had gone to open the door, and a little ago he had returned to the living room followed by a barefoot young man in ragged and dirty clothes.

“ My dear friends, today is Christmas and at our table, there will certainly be the room ( the place) for this new friend, who is tired and very hungry” Albert announced.

“ You are very hungry, aren’t you, Rafael?” he asked, addressing the unknown young man.

“ Yes, I’m very hungry,” the unexpected guest said. They asked Rafael if he wanted to take a bath before sitting at the table, but he preferred to sit at the table dirty and sweaty as he was, if they allowed it. They agreed. It was Christmas after all and Christmas only comes once a year.

Rafael began to eat with insatiable greed, which left them all amazed, and incredulous. Eh, HUNGER, real hunger, not appetite is something even frightening that none of them knew about. They asked him how long it had been since he had eaten. Rafael said he hadn’t eaten for days and days, he had even lost count of the days. He said he had been robbed while he was in Argentina. While he continued to eat insatiably he spoke, in bits and pieces, of his journey, a sort of world tour mostly on foot, but he had also traveled by train and ship. Not by plane because it was too expensive.

They asked him WHY he had embarked … on his world tour which he intended to continue to any cost. “ I travel because I’M LOOKING FOR A PLACE…a place I haven’t found yet” They wanted to know what was the place he was looking for. “ I don’t know since I haven’t found it yet. Only when I find it will I know.”

There was no television in Albert and Frank’s house ( farmhouse). For the news, there was a radio in the kitchen.

While Rafael continued to binge and tell about his journey across the world, Lucy went to the kitchen to make coffee. She heard on the radio news that A PRISONER had escaped from Saint Martin prison. The escaped convict was twenty-eight years old, he was a multiple murderer who had escaped even before. During his escapes, he killed again. He used to walk barefoot and presented himself as a tireless traveler. It was easy to be fooled by him. The police warned that he was a dangerous subject.

Lucy immediately put the news to Albert and Frank. The three wondered what to do. Should they call the police? Should they prevent their unexpected guest from leaving until the police arrived? To take such a decision, fraught with consequences, it would have been necessary to inform everyone present. But this would have frightened them, it had ruined their Christmas party. And then if Rafael wasn’t the dangerous multiple murderer who escaped from prison?

Oh, it was Christmas , it was an oblige to be charitable and welcoming…But if Rafael was really the escapee they all were in danger.

Meanwhile, in the dining room, the hungry young man kept on talking about his travel. He had been to Crete, he had seen the palace of Minosse. In Rome, he had been enchanted by the Coliseum. In Paris, he had spent days and days in the Louvre, days and night indeed since he had remained locked inside even at night.

The younger, girls and boys and children started to sing “ YOU COMES DOWN FROM THE STARS”. The fire crackled in the hearth, under the large fireplace.

The lights of the Christmas tree, a great stir, flashed on and off.

It had started to snow. Luce and Rosamunde, unaware of the news given by the radio ( news) began to prepare the bedroom for Rafael, who certainly couldn’t get back on the road in that weather. Seeing the enthusiasm with which the girls busied themselves to welcome Rafael, Lucy felt her heart squeeze and exchanged looks full of apprehension with Albert and Frank. They three meet every thirty minutes in the kitchen to hear the latest news from the radio ( news).

The dangerous escapee had not been captured but there was a shepherd who had said he had seen him in the wide plane where also the renovated farmhouse of Albert and Frank was located.

It was Therese who first found it strange that Lucy, Albert, and Frank went into the kitchen every few minutes where they turned on the radio. She followed them and threatened to start screaming if they did not tell her their secret. They had to let her know what they knew but asked her not to tell about that trouble any one of the others. Therese promised. She too listened to the radio news in which it was said that the dangerous escapee was missing an ear lobe.

Despite the promise made to Lucy, Albert, and Frank, Therese was scared. When she saw that Rafael was missing his left earlobe ____the young man had started singing SILENT NIGHT ___she couldn’t hold back a scream. “ Mom, what’s going on? Are you well?” Luce asked her. Therese, shocked, and trembling, broke her promise and told Luce what she had learned…in the kitchen.

Luce was shocked too and she started crying. Rosamunda rushed to her aid. So Luce ended up telling her of the atrocious suspicion that Rafael was a dangerous murderer who had escaped from San Martin prison. With a kind of unstoppable word of mouth soon everyone present at the

Christmas party learned of the prison escapee, who was probably that funny guy of Rafael. Everyone now began to look at the young man with different eyes. Now their eyes, their looks expressed fear, terror, but, at the same time, also a sad disappointment because they were too sorry to have to think that the unexpected guest on Christmas day, that nice barefoot globetrotter, was indeed a dangerous multiple murderer….who could have killed all them.

While all the adults gathered in the kitchen to make a decision about what to do since not everyone agreed that they should notify the police, the very young and the children locked themselves in their rooms. Some of them ran out, despite it was snowing.

When they returned to the living room Rafael was gone. No one had seen him leave, so they all were left wondering if their unexpected guest was really the dangerous escapee or if he was instead someone completely different.