Small Narratives

Small Narratives

Anna Ferrari

Cell.: 3492921690

Mail to: anna.ferrari5@icloud.com

Via della Pace, 90 – 20025 Legnano (MI)

To Fausto

Him.

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa[…]

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. […]

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women […] Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

(Middlemarch, George Eliot)

Preface

I am particularly fond of the incipit of Middlemarch, the novel written in the mid-nineteenth century by the English writer George Eliot, a courageous woman for her time, who however chose a male pseudonym instead of her real name, Mary Anne Evans, to publish. These words of her fill me with the hope that there is a place for me too among those who, although humble, have been remembered, and that is why I have chosen them.

Memory is a constant thought, remembering, which for me means “keeping alive”: as long as I remember and I tell those who come after me, then the past will not dissipate, but will be fertile sap and constant companion.

In the same way I long to be someone's memory, out of fear of death, or out of a desire for immortality, which are the same thing.

In this, however, a further feeling participates: affection, I love who I keep in my memories, and I hope to be loved among the memories of others.

This affection, closeness, empathy with others is a deep need, so much so that I happen to feel my spirit joining the person, or being for whom I am feeling true love. It is a way to “touch the soul”, I say, and the sensation if of infinity, of joy and pain at the same time, because we are aware that we are not given to go further, we cannot remain in that condition, it is destined to end, momentarily or forever.

I think this is the main reason for my writing: to tell to exist and to remember and to be remembered. When an idea or a thought comes to mind, I have to put it on paper, for fear of losing it, and until I do it, I am obsessed with it.

My writing is very varied, it can have a great breadth, or be exhausted in a short story, inform through articles, or turn to intimacy when it is a diary.

Small narratives are seven short stories born spontaneously, of different genres, although there is a prevalence of the fantastic or rather the fantastic-real, as I like to call it.

That is, the narrative moves in reality, but at the same time reality is inhabited by fantastic characters and events. The narrative model could be Frankestein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, which contemplates the existence of an imaginary monster in everyday life, which moves between human beings perfectly rooted in concreteness.

Therefore, the collection opens with Black and White, which portrays two domestic animals seen in their natural component, but also conceived in possession of human qualities, without ever being reduced to cartoons, indeed, in Black and White fully preserve their instict.

I am very fond of my pets and often delight in watching them play, or I am amazed when they react intelligently, or they show that they remember, and also they understand, language. If I could, I would live in a countryside, in a large estate with several animals. In their company I am serene, at ease, and many times I would like to smell them, so sincere. We should learn from them to be better and more authentic.

Free will, Macbeth: story of a madman and What must happens, happens are truly fantastic short stories, and deal with the theme of evil in the world, unscrupulous ambition and the impossibility of controlling the mind.

Macbeth, which also preserves the names of the characters from the play of the same name, is slightly inspired by the Shakespearean tragedy, but only as regards the leitmotif: ambition that destroys the dignity of man.

In The 11th commandment: do not judge I am confronted with the problem of how to make ourselves truly known by others, and how difficult it is to explain ourselves and make ourselves seen for what we are, often also because others do not see or do not want to see. The nun, protagonist of the short story, even loses the sense of herself when her actions are completely distorted.

A mother is set at school, and deals with the opposite theme: how it happens that love leads people to reveal themselves more than they would like, and therefore they abandon their roles to be just naked individuals with feelings, concerns, desires.

These short stories are really “small narratives”, in the sense that they even seem to be told in the whisper, intended for those who want to listen, to rely on that irrational part that can be very scary, but which is very rich in suggestions.

It is precisely the irrational that has guided my hand, as if it were the prevailing faculty of ourselves, so it takes so much effort to keep it at bay with common sense, reasoning, civilization.

I believe that irrationality is very important to live a complete life, which must be cultivated in the same way as our conscience. A very popular topic today is mindfulness, that is the capacity for maximum concentration of our being on the present, free from any judgment, to bring everything to consciousness. Not an easy goal, which can also be reached with meditation.

Both have irrational components that are fundamental for their full realization.

I rely on this irrational when I do not understand, when I do not find justifications, remembering the negative capability, the “negative capability” of the English poet John Keats, that is the ability to remain in doubt without necessarily asking why.

There is a bit of all this in these short stories, so, to those who ask, there is certainly a bit of myself, of course, to build a novel, a short story is to create something new, almost, yes we could say, a new life, it is therefore normal that even a little of our blood flows in our narratives.

I wish all readers to have a pleasant time with Small Narratives, and I would be happy if they would like to interact with me (useful addresses are found at the end of the book).

Now, in conclusion, I give the floor to the real protagonists of the book, the short stories, and I am sure they will be able to tell you more and better that what I did.

A.F.

Black & White

Black as usual is lying on her stuffed donut, her front legs fully extended and her head dangling off the edge; White is lying on the sofa on his stomach, with his cock on display, pride of his prowess as a “whole” male and because of his aggression against other alpha dogs.

They sleep soundly, every now and then Black's tail makes a slow waving movement, and she mumbles almost silently, as if she were dreaming, perhaps a mouse, or a small bird, or other cats whose existence it is unlikely to know.

White dreams too. He turns on his side and rolls his paws as if he were running, whimpers several times, wags his tail. I am more sure of his vision, considering his conformation: they are hares, his favorite prey and his worry, since he never manages to reach them. He runs like a desperate, breaks under the bushes, slips into the earthy tunnels, sniffs every strand of grass wildly, yet he returns defeated, yet never beaten down, when he sees me, he wags his tail at full speed and smiles. Yes, White smiles. On these occasions I often get scared, he manages to stay away for even half an hour and I worry, not for him, who always comes back, he never got lost, but because I fear that they may have hurt him or that he ate poisoned food.

I taught him to not to make fun of anything, but he is still an instinctual being, and the wickedness of men stops at nothing, wickedness and ignorance. The forest is carpeted with warning and mementoes of puppies who have been unlucky. When I see him, I stop crying and my heart lightens.

I am apprehensive, like a mother.

I watch them dozing and I photograph them in my memory, as well as on my mobile phone, putting the new impression next to many others, and I think that right now they are two helpless beings, in need of care, warmth, love.

So different, we know that a dog and a cat do not get along, yet the two of them have become inseparable and scramble to pamper each other, hiding them behind a fake, infite “guerrilla” warfare.

When White goes out for his walk, if the weather is nice, Black sits on the corner of the house and is still there when he returns, ready to run up to him and give him a kiss, which White reciprocates, each time looking surprised (I suspect that he does it now to make Black happy).

But it is while they sleep that their hidden nature appears, and their fragility is revealed. White is the most exposed, he who gives you the soul (which they say he does not have) to make you happy, he is an easy prey to the aggression of other dogs, of his own sense of guilt and of fear of abandonment.

Sometimes I look at White with greater intensity, I look at him as if I saw the life inside him, and then anguished images arise in my mind: White alone, lost, unable to look after himself, ready to believe anyone who shows him a little affection.

I go so far in the search of verisimilitude, that at a certain point I can not stand them anymore, I feel a pain that is not only spiritual, even my body reacts, my breathing accelerates, my heart gallops, my stomach spams. I have to work hard to reject these visions, which are capable of taking my breath away, until they disappear and I go back to not thinking about death, like all of us.

Black is different, she conveys more confidence, more tenacity and the ability to fight to survive. I can think of her in the rain, all wet and cold (like in that wonderful movie that is Breakfast at Tiffany's, when Holly goes to pick up Cat in the pouring rain. It is hard to hold back the tears, it is true love, absolute, free. The intimate elegance of Audrey Hepburn and the genius of Truman Capote expressed themselves in an unforgettable film, symbol of the birth of the modern woman, to whom the presence of the cat gives even a greater echo), yet she would get away with it, as shown by her haughty air, her straight tail, the impudence and insistence with which she asks me to feed her when she is hungry.

Black's appearance is deceiving: she seems aggressive, a panther, instead she is sweet and affectionate, soft and smooth like a toy.

What always strikes me about her is that Black never overdoes it.

She always goes out into the garden with caution, she really likes to sit in the center of the outdoor space, observing with her eyes, ears, whiskers. She can stay there for a good quarter of an hour, then, silently, when you forget about her (that is, the spell she set in motion has been fulfilled), she disappears among the bushes.

If it happens that she hears my voice calling her to her table, she does not rush in even once, she does everything with measure and rule, but then she arrives, very much on her own, nevertheless grateful: I caress her, she purrs and straightens her tail, forgetting for a minute the food, her essential necessity. Since she was a kitten, she devoured everything in no time at all.

Black has an easy-going nature, if she is in a place where she cannot go out, she adapts, finds other occupations, does not protest. It amazes me because my other beloved cat was very different, she protested scratching sofas, furniture, rushing from one part of the house to the other making many objects waver. If White occupies her favorite pillow of hers, she gets on her paws on the other one and stares at him, undeterred, but she does not flinch.

She has all the malice of the cat, given to her by Mother Nature; you do not see her for a whole day, then something soft clings to my legs: it is she who asks me to caress her neck or smooth her hair. She crouches near to her adoptive human mom, and she follows me closely, at a safe distance, (if ever you brush her fur, she should start the big cleaning) never losing sight of me.

When she arrived she must have had two months: she was in the palm of my hand, yet she was very lively, hungry, reckless, and courageous. For a couple of months the whole family was the victim of her assaults on our face: a lobe, a nose, a mole on the surface were all substitutes for the breasts of her feline mother, and she sucked, sucked, with a stubbornness and an insistence from champions, although, or perhaps precisely because it was absolutely devoid of any liquid.

She lived for some time isolated in a room, we did not know how White would react, although we knew his peaceful nature, until, inevitably, they saw each other: White immediately barked, and then tried to smell her. Black has seen fit to get under the bed. For a few days the routine was always the same: he pushing to get to smell her, she spun under the bed. Then, out of the blue, Black took the initiative and walked over to White and rubbed against his paws. He, surprised at first, then welcomed the news with pleasure, since it was possible to play with her. A little rough in his movements and big in size, he might have hurt her, but she, already at that time, defended herself very well and he never took advantage of being more vigorous.

This balance of power did not last long, it was soon clear, even to White, that she was the strongest, that he was a frog who loved to play and who barked to establish his own supremacy (moral and physical), while she did not need external gestures, aware of her own "spiritual" superiority, of her divine indifference, she simply looked at him curiously, wondering what he had to yell so much.

Now that she is a little older, Black has developed some unusual behaviors in a cat: she lies down on the floor, licks shoes, fingers, turns on her stomach to be stroked, on the other hand she has grown up with a dog companion, she has never seen her fellows, so she must have adopted White as her elder brother and, observing him, imitates him naturally. Observing her when he does not notice, it is clear that she does not care about the rules of behavior, White is her brother or hers, and there are no "buts".

Spying on them when they play is a mystical experience. They sniff, nibble, Black ambushes White, White squeezes her between his forelegs in an all-male attempt (nature is truly extraordinary, males are males, in every breed!) to possess her, she meows, squirms and runs away, but briefly, then returns to resume the game or tease White.

And White laughs as she jumps peacefully and happily. He laughs, that's right, this dog is capable of laughing. Amazing!

Mystical because we abandon reason, we adopt other faculties to enjoy their moves, we immerse ourselves in a non-human world and we believe we understand, have insights into their true nature, their truth.

Yet White's proximity can cause extraordinary events to happen.

White arrived because he had fled, indeed he had been taken away from where he lived by his beautiful Labrador mom. Unfortunately it was a place of suffering and dirt and the mother, who did not want her children to suffer like her, one day, there were two, took them around the woods (like the parents in the tale of Tom Thumb) and abandoned them, sure that their fate would be better. A female dog would never abandon her puppies, the Labrador mother must have been desperate, and so she pretended to forget them. White had been seen since the morning that he was chasing cyclists, or that he wanted to play with cars, until he literally landed in front of our house. It seemed that since then he was smiling, maybe it was a new game, he was not scared at all, he watched and wagged his tail, happy to be there.

He was a clumsy puppy, still not very firm on his paws, and the poor thing had ticks everywhere, some had pierced his ear (which for a few months suffered from otitis); the next day we rubbed him vigorously with the pesticide for hours, as instructed by the veterinarian. The owner also returned, to take him away, he looked like the evil ogre, but the young White always smiled, confident in humans, even the worst, like all dogs, unaware that the 'good ones' could disappear from his life. He already loved, as he had shown by the vet: the prophylaxis and vaccination operations were numerous, but at a certain point he no longer rebelled, giving up: "Ok, I understood: you can do what you want to me!".

About the extraordinary nature of certain episodes, when we walk together in the park or in the woods, my mind also wanders, writes, prepares lessons, plans the week, or simply gets lost behind the thought. Suddenly White enters my field of vision: he is different, he is an infinite love, and trying to live that feeling without time and space, to push myself as deep as possible, to see only with the eyes of the interior, I perceive the distinct sensation of seeing and touching his soul; I am convinced that he too heard mine, he understood. The crying thunders uncontrollably, mixed with sobs, an outpouring of deep, almost supernatural emotions.

I am lucky enough to be with them often, it is a panacea: their smells, their movements, the approaches in search of pampering have become essential elements of my life, so much so that their lack becomes an inner emptiness.

White's behavior teaches that a smile, a greeting can turn the world upside down. As Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta says: Peace begins with a smile.

He has no sense of the passing of time and his manifestations of pure joy when we (his parents?) return home flood our hearts, cancel the discontent, the disagreements of the day. And let it not be said that he will spare himself: you could go out and come back ten times in a day and he would run to meet us as many times, jump on us, give us his famous “flying tongue” basins.

He is never angry, in no case does he pout, sometimes he allows himself to be a little offended or sad, after a scolding. But it is so unnatural for him not to receive smiles and caresses that it is enough for me to look at him, as soon as the (false) anger is gone that he humbly comes to have his head caressed, to be readmitted into the magic circle of our love.

Looking at Black you notice all the things she can say: for example, even if we are independent and autonomous, we can give a lot of love, we can allow ourselves some pranks, which knowingly obeying is not humiliating. And then the best activity we can engage in is taking care of ourselves, licking our wounds, smoothing our fur.

Black and White. They entered my existence without asking for permission, they found the door already open, and now it would be unimaginable to conceive life without them. The days are modulated by moments of play, pampering, food shared with them. Black and White never back down, as if they knew, from ancestral traditions, that humans are a little exaggerated in the manifestations of affection, sometimes more exaggerated than White himself.

By taking care of them, you feel Life, the strength of Life, you learn even more to respect the diversity of others, but also not to give discounts to those who behave badly, use violence, verbal or physical, to those who do not care account of the needs of others. They do not even know what disrespect for Life is, they are Life. They may in some cases be or become aggressive, in defense, because they are forced or trained (which is the same thing), but they never use gratuitous violence; they do not know how to keep a face, they do not know rancor, they do not know what envy is, and not even slander. They are pure, intact, instinctual beings, it is true, but also endowed with a particular type of intelligence, which can be highly developed. And then they remember, they learn, they imitate. Coincidence would have it that they were of two opposite colors, but compatible, they look good together and love each other, they miss each other.

I do not know anything about the relationship, if any, between Black and White and the famous whiskey.

Black and White are unique, the only and best examples of Black and White. As in a premonitory dream, I see them always being together, and keeping me with them; in that way, even then, with the two of them next to each other who spite each other, I will not be afraid, on the contrary I will be happy.

The little girl on the bus

A sunny and lazy spring Sunday. We sit at the breakfast table trying to slow down any activity that takes us out of this stupor: washing, dressing, looking good, going out. If we could, we would slow down time, but that flows, inexorably, independently of us.

I surf the Internet with my tablet, Elias is dedicated to general cleaning in the shower. I like looking for new books, finding interesting articles. I have developed a list of volumes, as usual the expense is considerable, at least for my possibilities, but I can never reduce the sorting. With great effort I remove two, of low cost, just to feel less guilty, but the situation does not change much.

EBooks would be cheaper, but I need paper, and I want to see the bookcase shelves, already full, become overcrowded, with the aim of making piles on the floor as well. It is an accumulation drive, and I understand that I like to see its fruit. The amount of digital books is not calculable, and I do not like that. If you love, you want to be able to touch.

Of course they criticize me, about the accumulation, let's take some away, they whisper as if to themselves (they no longer dare to pronounce the word "let's throw"), but I do not listen to them, at most I try not to enter the bookstores, or not to attend the Internet. But then it always happens that, almost by chance, I come across an intriguing title, a compelling plot, a familiar character and so my list is still extended by several units, which will soon pass from the state of desire to that of possession.

I just closed the Safari window, which gives me another appetite: sweets. Sweets to create. I take my cell phone and ask my cooking app, many tempting proposals, but with ingredients that are too sophisticated. In the end I opt for the classic tart. I do not do anything with my hands, and if I really have to, I wear latex gloves, I can not bear to feel them smeared. With the mixer I prepare the dough, then I spread it in the terracotta pan and cover it abundantly with voluptuous strawberry jam homemade by my mother, finally I make the toppings with the shapes of the biscuits, the moon, the heart, the star, the bell. The appearance is really nice. I bake, the recipe says 40 minutes at 180 °, in static mode. I sit and wait. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that I could also make a blancmange: the tart for breakfast, the blancmange as dessert. Why not? I check and I realize that I am missing the main ingredient: almond milk. Patience, for this I am willing to make a derogation from Sunday laziness and I will go to the supermarket nearby to buy it. The exception to myself is not so difficult, what weighs me the most is to fail to speak. My husband and I have promised ourselves not to go to the large distribution on Sunday, because working conditions seem unacceptable. While I am here I doze, waste time, spend money, linger, there are people who work, people who still have their own home, some loved ones, but have to sell their time to their employer.