Clouds Of Smoke... The Story (eBook)

Part seven (black spots at the rest area)

September tiptoed in. Actually, towards the end of August there had been a hint that it was on its way, but it was not enough to beat the high temperature of its predecessor. The African heat brought by the anticyclone persisted undaunted.

The Italian beaches swarmed with the blue, green and white colours of thousands of open umbrellas. The sight from above was baffling; the Beautiful Country, as Italy was named, was a contradiction of highways clogged traffic and, at the same time, beaches still crowded by swimmers.

Zooming in to glimpse inside the cockpit of one of those many cars, we see Giorgio at the wheel of his Cayenne GTS with Sonia sitting next to him. They were returning from a vacation spent in Castiglione della Pescaia.

Judging by the expression on their faces, you could guess that their vacation had not been a great one.

Sonia looked out of the passenger window, vaping her electronic cigarette nervously with her left hand and, at the same time, with the right, she texted a friend on her smartphone.

Giorgio drove trying to stay on the fast lane, occasionally cursing those who, in front of him, braked suddenly when they got too close to the formation of a new queue.

The radio was off. The cabin was cold, not only for the air conditioning. Sonia covered her shoulders with a cotton shirt:

“I’m cold Giogiò! Raise the temperature, please!”

“You’re cold? - Giorgio indicated the air conditioning display – Twenty - two degrees and you’re cold? Are you alright?” He asked, ironically.

“No, you’re right. Maybe I’m sick. I also feel a little nauseated. Can we stop for a while?”  She answered, putting her phone in her purse with a visibly shaking hand.

Giorgio didn’t notice, and grunted: “Okay, can you wait until the first rest area? There's one in five kilometres,” and he turned the air conditioner off.

Sonia pursed her lips: “Yes, but drive slowly, please,” and tuned off her cigarette.

Giorgio moved to the other lane as soon as he found a gap between the cars on his right.

“Could it be that stuff that you’re smoking that’s giving you stomach problems? You’ve been “puffing” since we left!”

“I’m puffing? Hahahahaha! - Sonia answered without looking at him, moving her eyes from the roof to her window - I’ll have to take you to Damien’s someday, so he can explain what this stuff that I “puff” is to you, haha! - But the laughter was interrupted by a sharp cough and a painful contraction in her stomach - Aaah! Stop the car, Giò please!” She put her hand to her mouth, for she was about to throw up.

Giorgio signalled and moved on to the emergency lane, a few meters ahead there was a rest stop and he stopped.

Sonia got immediately out of the car and leaned almost dangerously over the guard rail; she lost her breakfast and coughed several times.

Giorgio went to help her, handing her a package of Kleenexes.

“What the hell...”.

“Wait for me in the car, Giò. - She grabbed the handkerchiefs while she covered her mouth with a hand

-Please, leave me alone for a minute,” she said hoarsely.

Giorgio said nothing. He left her irritably and got back into the car. He knew Sonia, knew she had a strong personality and that she had a high pain threshold. When she had a headache, and told him about it, it had to be an unbearable headache for other people.

Sonia hardly ever complained. If she did it was because she was really in pain. Lately she was often ill.

Once in the car, he put his hands on the steering wheel and turned his head to the left, the cars he had surpassed passed proudly by him.

  “Perhaps, - he thought - they believe I’ve had problems with my car... yeah, yeah, go ahead... you’ll see, I’ll beat all of you!”

Sonia was still bent over the guard rail, throwing up the dinner she had the night before, or what was left of it.

Giorgio turned towards her and worried over the fact that, in such a situation, she hadn’t wanted him close to her.

“Damien will explain it to you - Giorgio closed his eyes and gripped the steering wheel in his hands – someday I'll take you to Damien’s shop... yes, do bring me there. Otherwise I’ll go meet this Damien by myself.”

Sonia turned towards Giorgio. She looked at him silently and seriously through the car window. They stared at each other for a few moments. His gaze asked her a silent question, while she stiffened, and answered his gaze with the tautness of a person who sought to tell you something that you would never want to hear.Giorgio waved her back in, to break the tension; he opened the door and invited her to climb into the car.

“Come on, Sonia, let's go to the rest area, we’re close”.

Sonia climbed into the car and smoothed her Bermuda shorts with her hands to compose herself. She adjusted the clip to keep her hair back, lifting it off her neck. She lowered her window. She still needed some fresh air.

Giorgio waited for the right moment and drove off.

At ten-thirty in the morning, the two entered the  parking lot of the rest area near the city of Grosseto.

About an hour later, they were back on the road to Florence and hadn’t even gotten out of the car, in that parking lot.

In that rest area, Sonia finally decided to speak:

“I’m very sick, Giorgio, I have a tumour”.

They had just stopped the car in a shaded parking area; Sonia had her hand on the door handle but didn’t open it.

She said those words as she stared blankly out of her window. Before her eyes, she could only see monsters that appeared as black spots which widened and shrunk, stretched and shortened. The black spots that were actually in her mind and that often appeared following strong pain attacks.

Black spots similar to indelible ink that covered and deleted the wonderful things that she could do and all the things she could enjoy if she hadn’t been ill. Those dark spots that, as she turned her gaze on her companion, covered part of his face, didn’t allow her to see Giorgio's hand reaching out to stoke her cheek.

It took her months to confess her illness to Giorgio, because she didn’t want to admit, first of all to herself (because it would all be real, if she told him), that her illness was invincible. She didn’t want to lose hope.

But she was determined to give Giorgio hope and the possibility to be happy... Even without her.

Sonia’s words were spoken with the same sequence, calm and precision with which one loads a gun, aims and shoots a deadly blow; Giorgio had the same reaction of a person following the scene from the audience of a theatre, but is accidentally hit by that weapon which wasn’t loaded with blank ammunition.All the bright and lively colours of Giorgio’s carefree life, merged, mingled and faded in Sonia’s black spots. His happiness was thrust by force into a washing machine in which there was a damn rag which spread its hateful colour on all the other clothing.

The most painful thing was that Giorgio, in his selfishness and oblivion, thought: “Why did this have to  happen to me?” committing the biggest mistake, or rather horror, to see in the “damn rag”, not the tumour itself, but Sonia.

To the chills she felt, corresponded burning hot flashes for him and, when he embraced her, wanting to offer her comfort, Sonia snuggled in his arms, as if they were a thermal blanket.

But Giorgio’s inner fire was not exactly the warmth of love. It was rather that typical heat that occurs when you do or plan to do something that you will regret forever.

Giorgio’s mistake was to have seen in Sonia, at that moment, the bearer of unhappiness to his life, which until then had all been a magical world, cheerful and as golden as his blonde hair. He was not prepared to deal with that kind of situation.

He had never felt anguish, or real physical pain before. He felt inadequate once he was faced with Sonia’s revelation. But he’d never tolerated losing and therefore, if only for a moment, he thought he might lose his woman, but was soon disgusted by his thoughts and felt the fire of shame burning inside him.

He burnt with rage rather than love. Anger towards who and what he couldn’t explain, (Giorgio didn’t believe in anything except his own family). Who could that witch be, who had offered him such a beautiful and good apple, which instead hid pain, disease, and something that he still couldn’t and didn’t know how to deal with?

When one is unprepared, (Giorgio had often been so in school), he struggles to put together something to say. Therefore, the time that elapsed between Sonia’s words and Giorgio’s answer, was a very long one. A hug was the best way he knew to give an answer. Perhaps it was the best excuse to gain time. However, Giorgio wasn’t stupid; therefore he avoided saying things like: “I'm sorry”, “Hang in there, you'll see...”, “Today medicine works wonders”, etcetera, and etcetera.

He asked “How long have you known?”

“I had the first symptoms iin December; in February I took my first tests. In March, I got the responses; in April, it told me.” 

“Who told you?” asked Giorgio, (who knows why, he thought of Damien).

“The cancer did”, said Sonia, staring into Giorgio’s eyes.

It told her that much one morning. She was in the bathroom. It came out, made itself known in its colour, in its scent, in its grief. She screamed. It shouted. She cried. It kept shouting, from the bottom of the toilet...