We publish the text that the essayist read on Friday 22 July during the trip to Bormio of the Milanese review conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi. The evening was also attended by Michael Cunningham, Nuccio Order and Paolo Fresu
This a story about the omission. What is not there, what is missing, what precedes and follows, if you want the unspoken of the trip to Ibiza of these four kids counts much more than the text I am about to read to you.
It is useless to ask questions.
autobiographical, or not? Would it matter if it were? a story, or the chapter of a novel? It could be a post to put on Facebook? And above all, what does it mean? Why does it take place forty years ago? l, there, in this backdating, the sense of the story? Who are these guys? We are? It’s me?
a tale about omission.
Once as a boy me, Vittorio, Marty and Carlo went to Ibiza.
He graduated and left. She was eighteen, it was the summer of 83. At first he had told himself to go with my father’s Cherokee, which was old and rusty and a pale blue embarrassing, but we liked it very much, and so we all went in procession to ask her.
Father said there was no problem. I could take it, the Cherokee, of course, it was the safest car in the world, but before setting off on such a long journey it was best to have it seen by a mechanic, because it hadn’t been serviced in years, and since it had been given to him, he had only traveled on the Firenze-Mare, back and forth between Prato and Forte dei Marmi.
The mechanic had never seen a car like this before, and had enjoyed inspecting it thoroughly. He had kept her on deck for three days, and in the end he said that in short, there weren’t any big problems, the car was old but healthy, and if you didn’t get mad you could go to the end of the world and he would always take us home, but it was better to be followed by a truck tank of those of the Supercortemaggiore, because it was five thousand and nine in displacement and you could see the fuel needle moving towards the reserve.
The psychodrama started there, because there was little money and they certainly didn’t want to spend all of them on gasoline. He was about to give up, when you go on, hit and drive the mechanic moved with compassion and made available to us the car of his wife, an old woman. Dyane 6 green of those with the gearbox on the dashboard, and we left. At night, I remember, because we were afraid it would be too hot during the day. To orient ourselves we had a map of Europe of the Touring Club, but as soon as we arrived on the coast it was decided that there was no way to take the wrong road, to get to Barcelona it was enough to keep going and keep the sea always on the left. It took three days, so there was no fury.
The mechanic had warned us that with the Dyane at over ninety per hour it was not safe to go, and every hundred kilometers you had to stop for a while to let it cool down, so every now and then we stopped to take a bath. He was super cool. Fear, zero. Also because in those days there was nothing to be afraid of. It was a truly beautiful journey. At night we parked the Dyane by the side of the road, unrolled our sleeping bags and slept under the trees, and in the sky there were stars as bright as I had ever seen, and the dawn was a billion colors, those colors that you see only when you are a boy and then you don’t see anymore. Oh, it was 1983, the best year in the history of mankind!
Ibiza was incredible, an island full of boys and girls our age from all nations. Total freedom. Invisible police, not received. There weren’t even an adult on the beach, and the girls were all topless sunbathing. It was a place for the rich, but money didn’t matter much in Ibiza. It was more important to be there. Having understood the importance of being there, rather than somewhere else. As if it were a secret place. Vittorio said it was in one implausible status quo from the momentor maybe passerbyhe said, it couldn’t last, and when you asked him what it was that couldn’t last, he would spread his arms and laugh and say, All this cannot last, there is no way. Neither do we.
The wine, the drugs, the fashion, the girls, the clothes, the piercings… He was too young. In places it was always the youngest. She always came home at dawn, after going around the discos, and competed to save on everything, even on food and drink … We went to all the openings of shops and discos and we filled our bellies with canapes, drank from the glasses of those who dropped them on the tables to go dancing and at five we smashed with chips and pretzels and olives at the Pacha bar … Things like that, for fools, to have fun … Yes he laughed a lot. We were always all together, we did what we wanted, without thinking. It was really nice… In the disco they always put on Young Turks by Rod Stewart and they danced jumping, all embraced, and sang their hearts out … Young hearts be free tonight, time is on your side… We never slept, there was always an excuse to make a mess … What are you saying, you are guys in a small apartment … Then we went to the beach and tried to sleep there, but there was the sun and the music and the total mess , so in the end we slept very little, and then towards sunset we always went to the Mar y Sol to drink Campari and reason with the Lotus of Goa and Sergio Vari, and to wait for night to come.
I don’t remember how long we stayed there. Two weeks, maybe three. No, two, or maybe even less … When the rent of the apartment ended, it was decided to stay and sleep where it happened, but it was a mistake. Without a home it was impossible to live as one wanted to live we. She washed clothes in the showers of hotels that had swimming pools, and then ran to the beach to dry in the sun, skin and clothes … Basically she stopped sleeping, and lived with her eyes wide open. One night we went to sleep in the Salinas, under the pines, but it drizzled and we got wet, and when we woke up there were three stray dogs sleeping next to us, so we got on the Dyane and went to have breakfast at the Mar y Sol and we were all crushed and could not stand it anymore, and then Marty threw the bomb which in any case was only the twentieth of August, the summer was not over yet and there was always Forte dei Marmi, our house, the land of wine and roses, where we could have exploited the mythical aura of those who had just returned from Ibiza, and as he said it there was a ferry that was about to leave, right in front of us, and then Vittorio did, Let’s start now, diand we got up from the table of the Mar y Sol and launched ourselves with the Dyane inside the ferry, that is literally, while the loading deck was being raised, and when we arrived in Barcelona we immediately left for Italy, very happy because there was a great desire to go back, and then he hurried along the road, no bathrooms, we took turns driving and took a single pull, stopping only to piss, and we arrived at the Fort, like a day later, I think, at dawn, and the mechanic’s wife’s Dyane who hadn’t remembered to stop and cool down died there, in front of the wharf, illuminated by a crazy pink light, I still remember it.
Then none of us went back to Ibiza, I think.
July 24, 2022 (change July 24, 2022 | 21:28)
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