White. All white. Too much white.
It's still so, sometimes, in the hospitals. They think it gives an idea of cleanliness, of hygiene. And with the modern lights, the modern furniture, even a wiff of future, of technology. But if you hang there too much, maybe you understand why white, for many eastern people, is the color of the death. Of the mourning. Of the end.
Brassens was right. "J'ai bon m'dire que rien n'est eternel, j'n'peut pas trouver ça tout naturel"... I can tell myself that nothing is forever, but I can't find that all natural... How can yoy find it natural, when it happens that way? A routinely operation, they all said. Excluding complications. You never think, when you say so, that complications, sometimes, happens...
I know, that's a very good hospital, expert doctors, careful nurses. I has been here before, in a very bad moment. So I was not prepared to that... He felt bad during the night, thy carried out another operation, and now he is on life support yet. Critical list. Neither dead, nor alive.
A good hospital. He always said: your hospital are just like ours, it all depends on how you falls.
Yes, our hospitals. Ours... He was too generous, maybe...
When we were saying to someone where I came from, there was always a very short moment in wich, If I could have read in the head of those who were facing us, surely I could have read: "This gall has married a passport."
It's not a good sensation. First, because I did not choose a passport, nor a wallet, and even less, as they said once, "I-had-chosen-freedom". I had chosen a man, and I had married him. And I knew that, if you take it seriously (and I did), marriage Is not freedom (for neither). Second, I was not so disgusted about my own country to get a man only in order to skip the rope. Yes, I had eyes for looking and a brain for thinking, and looking and thinking I had good reasons to be unhappy, and quite often I was. But from this to grasp the first stranger, in my humble opinion, there was a long way. Very, very long...
The first thing I liked, indeed, in what had to be my future man (yes: "man". "Husband" does not cover it) was the absence of loftiness, of superiority. No missionary attitude, no attempts to teach me how to live, what to believe, no "I-am-free- and-you-are-not", no American tricks of that kind. Maybe it's because I'm not American, he said. Maybe, but I liked it all the same.
He had understood quite soon one of our antics: we can say all the worst about our country, and we do it ("stranà durakòv": land of fools), but if a foreigner dares to say the same, or even less, we assault him, "fixed bayonnets". Or at least, we cancel him from our lives. It's the famous "Pushkin syndrome", even our best poet was so. On the other hand, he never made us compliments we knew we did not deserved.
In a nutshell, he got used to the lay of our land, very well. Just as one of his friend I knew. But when I knew my man and his friend, his friend was already married. Since a few hours...
We met each other at the party after the marriage of his friend. We were a few people, a s it was normal then. The spouses, the witnesses of the spouses, the parents, and not even all of them... I was one of the witnesses of the bride, and my future man was one of the witnesses of the groom.
Carlo, the groom, was what we call a "goryàci pàren", a "hot guy", but, keep it cool, not in that sense. It means an easygoing boy, extroverted, a bit careless. I am sure he was happy me and my future man mixed well with each other. He had apparently entrusted himself with a mission: to cause the highest possible number of mixed marriages. And there was a reason why. Not business, something nobler. And even a bit crazy...
I remember, a new-year's eve in the middle of the 80es. It was the "new-new-year's eve", the end of the year as even the West knew it. In Russia there is also the "old-new-year's eve", the end of the year in according with the Orthodox calendar, 13 days after the "normal" one. A way as another to balance the absence of Xmas as a holiday, under "socialism". And still some kind of a holiday, now: a bit like "Halloween", but very less gothic, of course...
But that day, that evening, was a "new-new-year's eve", and the TV programs were not so different from those the West is used at, in that date. A big show, celebrities. happy mood, and the count-down for the last seconds of the old year, as a "clou". As tradition demanded, that count-down had to be celebrated on the Red Square, with the "courant" of the watch of the Spasskaya tower of the Kremlin.
Waiting for the "clou", we had lowered down the volume (the same old-played out scenes, all the years...), and we all were busy in our old Russian sport: to talk about the universe and surroundings, as Carlo said once. We were six: Carlo, his wife Galina, me, my parents and my future man.
I don't remember how, but we had come to talk about the second world war, or the "great patriotic war", as we say, and then about the concept of "superior race". Of course my father said there was not such a race, at all.
"It wasn't, it isn't, and it won't be," he said. "The Germans were disciplined, well organized, even brave, but they were not a superior kind of men. And we too are not, of course. Yes, we have beaten Napoleon, and Hitler too, we have faced huge sacrifices to win the war, to rebuild our country, to get the Bomb too, so the Americans cannot dictate to us what to do. But we are not superior at all. We are lazy, we drink too much, and we have other defects. Of course, not even the Americans are superior. Arrogant, but all in all, crybabies, compared to us... No, there is not such a race. And it will never be."
"Do you know what could be a superior race?" asked Carlo. My father looked at him, interested.
"What?"
"You and we."
"We and you?"
"Yes, you and we, Italians and Russians. Not THE superior race, just ONE superior race. Among the other possible ones."
"And why?"
"Because we know how to get away, with everything can happen. We know how to survive and thrive, where the others can't. We both are not without defects, we lack your capacity of endure, to keep the hardest blows, you lack our initiative, our individualism too. But when it comes to inventions, capacity of improvise and adapt yourself, we and you are the best. We were both destroyed, after the war, and now? We are one of the ten richest countries of the world, and you are a superpower too. And you have rebuilt your country without the help of Marshall plan. We know how to rise from the ashes. And we even know how to live..."
"You more than us!" sighed my mother.
"No, madam. We are NOT better than you. Yes, you have the breadlines and we have not, but I guess in a 10 years' time they will be over, if the reforms will go as it takes. I know, your hospitals, especially out of Moscow, are likely places where it's better not to go, but we too have these problems, especially in the south. You have bigger problems than us, but it's the country which is bigger, the problems are on scale. If we should have to reserve such a big amount of our GDP to the defense, we would likely have the breadlines too. And if we would have to manage a country like yours, capitalism or not, it would be fun... postal services, means of transportation... A fine mess, really!" And he was saying those things almost laughing...
"That's what I like of You Italians: you are the only one who speak of themselves as bad as WE do!" laughed my father. "But tell me: it must be something of your country you miss, when you are here. What it is? Oh, besides the sun and the sea, of course..."
Carlo looked at his wife, and Galina looked at him. A glance of cheerful complicity, of trust.
"Since that gall has learnt to cook the pasta not so much, there are very few things which I miss, here. Damn!" He raised his glass to her, as if he was toasting her. "She made of me a potential traitor!"
We all laughed, but my father seemed not so at ease.
A veteran like him was not used to take the word "traitor" so easy...
We kept chatting a bit, mostly in Russian, with me and Galina helping to translate, when Carlo and my future man had some problems (I've heard there were Anglo Saxons, living in Moscow, who BOASTED they did not speak Russian. Silly boys, pretending to be Englishmen in India!). Then we saw the countdown, drink a bit, exchanged wishes for the new year, and then I accompanied Carlo, Galina and my future man down in the street. The "mitrò" was going to close, "domòi", at home, everybody...
