LIFE IS ONLY THE PRESENT

 LIFE IS ONLY THE PRESENT

Carol looked smug at herself in the mirror. Even if she wasn’t particularly vain, it was undeniable that she was a very beautiful woman. Her face, with large and, at the same time, sculpted features, with high cheekbones, , with high and wide forehead, and great eyes with bright specks, golden dots in the green of the iris, the perfect nose, straight, neither too massive, nor too thin, neither too long, nor too short, and with a fleshy mouth, was undoubtedly a beautiful face, even a face that inspired sympathy , cordiality. Also for her body she couldn’t complain. She was tall and slender, she had beautiful legs, a nice cleavage, a thin waist….yes, she was definitely a beautiful woman of….how old she was? Ah, how old she really was Carol just couldn’t tell, she didn’t know, and she didn’t know, since she only remembered the last months of her life.

The first memory she had was a visual image: she could see herself getting off the train at the station in the city she had lived ever since. She had been wearing a smart black coat and pushing a trolley. It had been seven months ago. Before that (then) she had no memories of her life, she couldn’t even imagine what her life might have been like before the day she got off the train of the station in this city. She didn’t even know why she had gotten on that train and why she got off zt the station where she got off.

She remembered that right after she got off the train , she went to the house where she know she was going to live, where she had lived ever since. As she remembered that, just arrived in the city, she had had to go to an office , when they would have provided her with identity documents, that she, who didn’t remember her name, didn’t have. Ah, thinking now about it, it had all been very easy. She had been given an identity card, a passport, a health card, all documents on which there was her photograph, but otherwise with and identity that she didn’t remember was hers. But, since she didn’t remember who she was, since then she had been, for everyone, the one that her identity documents certified . Carol B., born in Montefiascone, on March 3, 1980. Single………

As soon as she arrived in that city, Carol not only immediately had a house to live in, a house of her own, and documents attesting to her an identity, but also for the job ( work) it had all been very easy. In fact, she hadn’t needed to look for a job, which instead had been offered to her the day after she arrived. Carol had since then worked in an architectural firm, and, as she was very skilled in drawing, she also collaborated with a graphics studio.  She did know where, how, she had learned to draw,  as she did know what studies she had done.

She lived alone, but she had a circle of acquaintances , if non friendships, of all pleasant, and even funny people, with whom she was ( felt) at ease. Of course, among these people , there were also those who, like Laura, a neighbor who was a teacher, were much surprised, indeed even  disoriented about that she did not remember anything of her life before her arrival in that city, then that  Carol did not even remember who she was really, it seemed to Laura something too huge, and also unacceptable. Laura kept on bringing out the question again and again , and each time she tried to induce her to investigate her past, to try to find out who she really was.

Laura had even insisted on asking her for the ticket of the train with which she had arrived on the city. Since on the train ticket it had to be for sure the place ( city) where   she had left from, Laura said. Oh, but Carol did not remember of having had a ticket to travel on that train, and besides she had no idea  where she had boarded the train. Carol couldn’t but feel irritation at Laura’s insistence, who arrived so far to suggest  her even to resort to hypnosis to try to remember who she really was.  But Carol didn’t worry at all to know of her previous life, since she was perfectly fine with the life she was currently living. Her life was a quiet, serene, satisfying life.

She had a job that she liked, and which guaranteed her a considerable well-being, she frequented all people she liked…..she couldn’t really intend, even think to investigate her past life, of which she  did not remember anything, exactly as if it had never existed.

It is as my life had begun  a few months ago, not remembering who I was before is like to be thirty years younger, she said herself. And sometime she said it also to Laura, who had remained stunned, not to say scandalized. Oh, but how was it possible she didn’t want to know  who she was? Maybe, her neighbor had insinuated, maybe she didn’t care to know it why in her past there had been something reprehensible, perhaps even criminal.  Carol had always answered laughing heartily at that insinuation from Laura. Even though she remembered absolutely nothing of what her past life had been, she was sure she had not committed something bad, something reprehensible in her past and forgotten life. Then, that she might have even committed something criminal….come on, she couldn’t even think it, she was not a criminal.

And then how could her total memory loss be explained? Something must have happened to cause her amnesia. And why, since she had arrived in that city, from who knows where, no one from outside had come to looking for her? Even these questions from Laura hadn’t led Carol to worry, or to suspect, that something bad had happened in her past and forgotten life. Not only she could, not remotely, think that she could have  committed something criminal, but she couldn’t even think that she could have been the victim of some kind of violence.

For weeks, for months Carol had continued not to be worried at all that she remembered absolutely nothing of her past. Indeed the complete forgetfulness of her life until she had arrived in that city, (it) gave her a feeling of lightness,, of endless youth, since her life ….had begun so recently.

In the meantime Laura had continued to insist with her questions, with her insinuations too.

“ Ah, it it had happened to me to not remember…..not even who I am ( was), I would be desperate” Her neighbor often repeated, sighing.  However Laura was not able to persuade her to commit herself to remembering her past at any cost, using any means or expedient. Resorting even to hypnosis, or trying to reconnect with her past life through something, some name, some image, some object that could refer to her past, that could help her to find the thread, that is, the continuity ( of her) with her past. Laura’s insistence could not have done anything. Carol felt good in the life she was living, she didn’t feel as a lack to not remember her past.

But Laura, perhaps driven by curiosity, perhaps by some concern, had started to investigate to find out who Carol really was, from where she had come, what her life had been in the past.

“ Listen, don’t you remember if the journey you took on the train, which brought you here, was long or short ?” Laura, thoughtful, had asked her, a day. But she, Carol , did not remember anything about that trip ( journey), since her memories started from when she got off that train.

“ You know, I asked you this question….since I have remembered that a few days before your arrival here, in our city, some events…..rather remarkable events, indeed terrible events had happened in Tarquinia “ Laura added, looking at her insistently, with an inquiring gaze “ So it came to me to think….. Could it not be that you came from Tarquinia?” Laura asked.

“ Why, what had happened in that…..in that place?” Carol asked, while she did not even remember having ever heard that name, Tarquinia, as well as she did know where and at what distance this…..Tarquinia was from Melzi, where she had arrived by train just over seven months earlier. After informing her that Tarquinia was a small town about eighty kilometers from Melzi, which was important, famous for a great Etruscan necropolis ( brought to light by the archeological excavations) Laura, with a frightened face and a breathless, anguished tone, told her ( Carol) that , after a while when it was spoken of Etruscan tombs which had been looted , in Tarquinia a truly terrible triple murder had taken place. The corpses of the victims, who had been stabbed, then had been beheaded and even mutilated, had been found in the tomb of the lionesses, one of the most famous, and even most visiting tombs in the necropolis. The crime had taken place during the night , and the investigators had not been able to understand how it had been possible for the victims, and for whom had killing them, tearing up their bodies, to access to the tombs at night, when the necropolis not only was closed, but also was equipped with a very efficient surveillance system.  The victims of that horrendous crime had been three Swedish tourists, the mother with her two very young daughters. There were those who had wanted to see something symbolic in the fact that the three women had been killed right in the tomb of the lionesses. Some people had claimed that horrible crime had been a sacrifice committed to seek communication, indeed a way of accessing to the world of death. And there were those who had assumed that a woman had committed the crime.

Laura , while she was telling, had been looking at Carol with a look which was more than inquiring, as if she had wanted to extract something hidden and secret from inside her.

Carol, who until then hadn’t worried at all about her past, which she didn’t remember, began to feel that past, shrouded in darkness, at first as a terrible, threatening emptiness, then to feel that something scary had happened in her past, something unbearable to remember. And ever since then she was afraid she might remember her past, it was better it remained wrapped in darkness.