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The moment was perfect.
Rufus squatted behind an overflowing dumpster, waiting. He was wearing a balaclava to hide his face.
Then the Pope arrived, advancing slowly, as if in procession. He was carrying an enormous spoon, made of gold, on his shoulder.
Rufus was ready to jump out of his hiding place and attack the Pope with the fork he was holding in his right hand, when he heard him speak to one of his cardinals.
He was speaking in a very low voice, but Rufus was so near that he could hear everything.
“Condoms, for example”, the Pope was saying. “Condoms are alright. I mean, they are not necessarily wrong. Sometimes they are, but not always. God Himself disclosed this truth to me, last night.”
“I’m sure He did, His Holiness”, replied the cardinal.
Rufus was shocked at hearing these words. They changed everything. There was no need, now, to attack the Pope. He dropped the fork, removed the balaclava and walked away, feeling relieved, almost happy, almost a Catholic.
The Pope and his train of Bishops and Cardinals proceeded on, humming silent prayers in a strange language.
In the distance, heaps of rubbish were burning.
Sunday morning in bed, alone, with coffee and a cigarette, was my idea of happiness. Since I had left my wife, I had started down this new path and was quite satisfied with it. Nobody to care about but myself, and a small puppy named Leo. Leo was the birthday present I had bought for my wife, and I had given it to her the night she told me that she was in love with another man. She was crying while making this confession. She had asked me to leave the house, and told me to keep the dog, because it was too hard for her to keep, as it would remind her constantly of me.
It was then that I thought, I’ll name him Leo.
Now I was staying in a little motel off the main highway. The night before I had driven till I was tired, then I had stopped there. I didn’t know where I was exactly.
“We don’t allow dogs in the motel”, the man at the reception desk had said.
“Then why did they let you in?”, I had asked in return.
The man had not replied, but his eyes were full of hatred. He was visibly exhausted, depressed, broke, desperate, frustrated, haunted by recurrent suicidal thoughts, and possibly a toothache. I immediately repented for what I had said. I felt like a jerk.
“I’m sorry”, I had added, embarrassed. “It was a stupid joke.”
“Fucking sorry, yeah”, the man had said.
“My wife has just left me, you know.”
“Oh, well, that explains everything. Your wife leaves you, you call me a dog. You think this is what I am here for, right? Staying here all night, waiting for the first asshole to come in and start abusing me.”
“Ok, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to. Goodnight.”
And I had turned my back on the man, heading for the sliding doors.
“Wait, where are you going? Come back. Stop.”
“I suppose you are not going to give me a room anyway, so I’d better be going.”
“Of course I am. Of course I am going to give you the room. There’s a CCTV camera on the ceiling. We are being recorded. I am being recorded. If you leave now, they’ll ask me questions. I have a bonus on customers checking in during my shift. So don’t be an asshole, and check in. And smile. See? I am smiling too. This is a happy motel and we want our customers to be happy. Smile, you jackass. And leave a generous tip. I wish I could kick you out for what you said, but I can’t. They’d fire me. I’ll have too keep all this anger inside till I get home, then I can let it out in front of my goldfish. His name’s Leo, and he has seen the worst part of me already, so it doesn’t matter. And, oh, I almost forgot: the dog stays out. This is regulation, and I couldn’t change it even if I would, which I don’t.”
“Yes, of course. I understand”, I ad said, while he was signing the register. I had looked around discreetly for signs of a CCTV, but found none. I had tried to smile, too, feeling an idiot. “Do you really have a goldfish named Leo?”
“Of course I have, you asshole”, the man at the reception had replied, smiling radiantly under his tired eyes.
That night Leo, my newly-acquired dog, had slept in the car. It was the first night of his new life alone.
It’s been raining quite a lot for weeks, without a stop. Italians find it hard not to give in to depression in such prolonged depressing weather conditions. The country itself, the ground on which it’s built, seems to be letting itself be brought down, to fall apart a bit at a time, as if lacking hope in its own future.
Whole areas of Northern Italy have been swept away by mud, people have lost houses, and in many cases lives. And the South is drowning in rubbish.
We stand on muddy grounds, drowning, like our economy, our ethics, our government.
Like our Prime Minister, who’s drowning in the mud of repeated sex scandals, past and present corruption charges, and keeps smiling nonetheless.
I don’t know how he manages to keep smiling all the time. Maybe it’s the money, or the underage escorts queuing up to get into one of his parties, or the end-of-life feeling that he has always done exactly what he wanted.
Maybe if we had the same things we’d be just as able to smile our way down too.
I’m back.
After almost one year.
