A STORY OF DOLLS

A STORY OF DOLLS

Alice and Norma had known each other for a lifetime. They had gone to school together, they had done sports together, skiing and cycling. They had been in the same cultural and environmental associations. Now they were both over forty,  both divorced. Alice had three teenage children, who lived with her. Norma instead had no children and, after the divorce from her husband, she had decided to live with a woman, Adele, who was twenty years her senior. Alice had always felt an instinctive dislike against Adele B., who was a rather well known noir writer.

Adele B., who appeared often on television, whose interviews could be found frequently in the newspapers, had made known that she had found , buried in the garden of the house where she lived with Norma, A DOLL without a leg and without eyes, accompanied with a note with homophobic insults , and even threats, against those lesbian witches. Alice, to whom Norma had assured that the story of the doll , found buried in the garden, made public by Adele, was true, she believed that instead the story had been invented from the scratch, by the famous writer, against whom her dislike increased day by day. So, almost without thinking about it, almost without knowing why she did it, Alice began to tell everyone she knew, who(m) she happened to see, oh, other than a doll…..that there ( that one), Adele B., had instead found a child buried in her garden. Of course, the people  to whom she whispered ( drafted) this insinuation, not that they were willing to believe her certainly. Yet her gimmick did not fail to make a certain effect. After not long there were those who told the story invented by Alice, as if it were true.   Shortly after  (thereafter) the story completely invented by her circulated, was known no less than that told by Adele B., and it took no less credit than this latter. Indeed we could say that not a few people preferred to believe the invented story of Alice that the one told by Adele B. The story, which was a lie, put into circulation by Alice, attracted more, we can say it liked more , precisely because it scared , because it gave way to hypotheses ( assumptions) intriguingly murky and also malevolent.

Once it was ( had been) assumed that Adele B. had found not a doll, but a little girl buried in her garden, who could ever have been to bury the little girl in the garden? People started to wonder.

Since people who believed the story invented by Alice, thought that if Adele B.  had told that she had found a doll buried in her garden, instead of the little girl she had really found, she must have done it so as not to frighten people.

It was ( had been) only when most people believed the story she had made up , and  had started wondering how that poor little girl could have ended up buried in the garden of the well known writer_____yes, people said “ that poor little girl”, as if they had seen her, so much they took for granted that the little girl had really been found buried____( it was only then) that Alice dared to take the next step. She began to insinuate, not with all the people she knew, but choosing the ones she thought would be more….receptive, that Adele B.,  the little girl she had  found buried in her garden, oh, but, of course, she was the one who had buried the poor child. Other than a champion of civil rights, the famous writer had to have pedophile inclinations

Now, since Adele B.,  even thought she was known and appreciated as a noir writer, as a public figure  she didn’t have only supporters, there were those who looked at her with distrust, and even those who really didn’t stand her, the Alice’s insinuation found, so to speak, fertile ground. At first the people she had chosen to propose ( tell) it, had considered the story with a certain sufficiency, as something that could be told about Adele B., _____and that there were those rumors about that woman, they weren’t surprised_____but that, come on, couldn’t be true. However, since those who had heard …..the second episode ( tranche) of the story invented (and put in circulation) by Alice, repeated it, that is,  they told the story to others So,as the story spread, it also found who believed it true. Alice hadn’t thought that the story she had invented almost impulsivity  on Alice B., the rumors she had had put in circulation about the writer could become so popular, could found so many people willing to believe it true ( to take it for real).

Adele B. gave interviews, including on television, in which she declared indignantly that she was the object of a fierce persecution, which used completely invented stories to denigrate her, to discredit her above all as a woman and a lesbian, since long engaged in the battles for the rights of the women and the homosexuals . Now she was pointed out as a pedophile! The writer worked hard to try to defend herself from the persecutions of those slanderous accusations from ( by) which she was submerged. She kept on repeating indefatigably on television, in newspapers, in magazines,  that it was not at all true  that she had found a little girl buried in her garden! She had found a doll! Yes, a doll without a leg and without eyes! And that mutilated doll had been accompanied by a note with homophobic threats. Maybe ( Might be) someone had bothered that she had talked about it, that she had made public her finding. The rumors, the slanders, the persecution, with the infamous accusation of pedophilia , all that had to have been born from there. . First they had spread the rumor that she had found a little girl buried in her garden, then that she was the one who had buried that poor little girl. So it happened that she was accused of being a pedophile , who killed children, after abusing them. Her strenuous attempts at defense , her efforts to dismiss accusations which were only slander, were of no avail . She was insulted and even attacked by people who, loudly, furiously, asked her to be arrested.

Norma, who did not suspect in the least that it was  she who had started the persecution with her invented story,  told Alice that her and Adele’s life had become impossible there in the city, that they were thinking of moving elsewhere , better if abroad. Norma also told Alice that her relationship with Adele had become very difficult, that they two were always fighting. Adele, exasperated by the persecution of which she was the victim, had come to suspect that it was she, Norma, the one who had invented the story at the origin of that persecution.

One day Adele B. disappeared, without a trace. During the search for her disappearance the body of a little girl was found buried in the garden of the house where Adele B. had lived with Norma.  The buried little girl had been mutilated and killed. For all people that was overwhelming evidence ( proof), if there was a need for it, that Adele B, was a pedophile and a murderess. Norma was instead accused and even convicted for the murder of the little girl buried in the garden. She was also suspected of having killed Adele B. and of having hidden or destroyed her body.