Surfaces / Milan

Theatre

The empty chair on centre stage was feeling uncomfortable, as it received the director’s thoughts in waves, thoughts that had been focused on it again and again with increasing carrier rage. The chair missed its bony actor, who was more than two hours late.

The table between the two chairs was stable, as most tables do. The other chair was quite happy, embracing the warm, bored bottom of the actress. Silvia was thin, so no strain on the structure. The actress was increasingly uncomfortable, but it was good that she was constantly generating heat.

She was alone on the stage. Her thick caradelevignic eyebrows. She stared at the three people in the audience: the director, a by now very nervous German woman, the writer, a seemingly calm bearded French man, and the janitor on the back, of unknown nationality; that lean, tall guy seemed to speak all languages, none properly. Sometimes he presented himself as Florentino, sometimes as Florent, Floriano. Puzzling guy, always smiling. Probably the only decent person there.

“That disrespectful punk.”

The director too, finally, seemed to have had enough. Her folding theatre chair had suffered under the weight of so many angry and ugly male directors, so holding this thin nervous woman was a pleasure whatever she did.

A phone ringing from the back of the stage. It was Daniele, of course, the theatre’s giant technician. He talked on the phone disturbing rehearsals, made pranks, and chain-smoked while pretending to work in defiance of all the fire safety rules.

The actress, Silvia, glimpsed at the time. Her lips opened for a private smile, eye sides contracting too, going full Duchenne: it was time to leave and make her planned random encounter with Giulio.

The director ran her fingers through her hair, combing away killer thoughts. Then spoke: “He isn’t coming, is he. Ok, let’s have a break. I need my bourbon and a cigar. You’ll have your awfully boring tea?”

Antonio, not actually listening: “I think we should all calm down. Shall I prepare some great tea for everyone?”

Silvia: “No more tea for me. It’s 6 pm, I’ve been here for four hours. I’m leaving now.”

The stage was set in a former industrial building. This was in the context of a set of hangars and buildings forming the “research centre for energy production and services”, which was also sponsoring the theatrical production. Lambrate, Milan.

A small man was walking outside, elastically driven towards the exit by the bitter, wet asphalt, passing in front of the theatre entrance. Silvia was there waiting for him, wearing a padded coat that gave her the shape of a pear. Her head slightly bent like the pear’s stem, he casually joined her giving a kiss on a protruding, eager cheek.

“Giulio, dear.”

“Dear, dear you say. You are annoying. How was rehearsal?”

Silvia: “There is no way to save this idea. I mean, a theatrical piece from those three beautiful movies? When something turns out so good as the “Before Sunrise” and so on, you are setting an impossibly high standard for what it inspires. Derived work is almost bound to be bad.”

Giulio: “Maybe acting on a bad play can be interesting anyway?”

Silvia: “You do have a twisted mind.” Pitch getting higher, “to have to play these acts is the most boring, horrifying, painful experience ever.” Impossibly high, “oh this poor wasted young beautiful woman actress!”

They both laughed.

Outside

All four of their shoes felt the bodyweight unbalance towards the front of their feet, saying I’m ready to walk.

Silvia: “Where are you taking me?”

Giulio: “I’m taking you nowhere. I’m just going home.”

Silvia: “Why is it we become obsessed with people that we do not care about?”

Giulio: “You mean people that do not care about you?”

Silvia: “I mean people that don’t care about you, and you getting hurt even if you don’t care about them.”

Giulio: “This is getting way too complex for me. I just feel that you are trying to insult me. So nothing new.”

“Not talking about you. I’m not obsessed about you.”

“Oooook.”

“Uff. Let me finish this wonderful, insulting syllogism that is what you deserve.

One hurts because you don’t understand, you don’t get how such a wonderful being like you could not be revered as a goddess by such a despicable being.”

“You definitely made it to insult me again.”

“I’m just describing human behaviour and facts.”

“That is even more insulting. Anyway, see I don’t follow because I don’t like myself when I look in the mirror, so this never happens to me.”

She got really close to him, she taller by 10 centimetres, whispering “do you actually get to see the mirror, you gnome?”

They both laughed. His face relaxed. He took a longish look at her. She was happiness sometimes. Take a peek.

Giulio: “Are you this evil with your boyfriend, that puzzling actor?”

Silvia: “Piero? My boyfriend?” She laughed the Circean laughter of Greek nymphs. “No no, he is not my boyfriend. When he isn’t acting he is the most boring person ever. Just like you. I have many boyfriends, all better than him or you.”

Energy Research Centre

Giulio was confused, what was happening. Need more time with her.

“Did I ever take you to Zeus’ cave?”

Silvia: “What?”

Giulio: “Here in the research centre.”

Silvia: “Nooo, what is that, take me!”

It was all in the same complex, quite a walk. Giulio opened the metal door which seemed small squeezed within the colossal wall of the hangar. He let her in and followed.

The pavement was raw, cold concrete and seemed to have been so dumbed down by the tests that it had no reactions nor opinions. Light was from glass waves framed in the cyclopic ceiling.

At the centre of the room, a small luxury yacht was held mid-air by iron cables. About 30 feet long, it seemed a toy in this ambience. On the side, a large machine controller.

Giulio: “This is where they bring boats to test them. They throw bolts at them to check their resilience during thunderstorms”

Silvia: “So they build artificial bolts?”

Giulio: “ Well bolts are bolts, there is no such thing as an artificial one.”

Silvia: “You are boring. So that is a machine that creates bolts. That is maaagic.”

Giulio smiled, remaining close to the entrance. Silvia walked around the boat. She hit several cables with her little finger ring, different harmonics expanded. Then started making short loud noises, finding out / discovering how her voice reverberated in the space.

“And what kind of boat is this?”

“A yacht. A ‘personal luxury vessel designed for recreation, relaxation, and comfort of some rich bastard’.”

“Uh, it’s for the rich guys that enjoy life, not boring people like you! I should get to know the owner.”

She tiptoed back, closer to him. “Ok. It’s enough. I want to get back to our discussion about caring so much about people you don’t care about.”

“Oh no no please, that will be more insults.”

“Can’t resist.”

“You could at least phrase it as about caring about people that don’t care about you, making it sound less cruel.”

She got close, a wicked smile.

Giulio: “Ok, let’s at least sit down.”

They sat on the bench behind the control panel.

Silvia: “So many nice buttons.”

“Fortunately power is turned off. Using the power for turning on this machine can dim the lights of Milan, you know.”

Silvia: “Small dick problems there?”

Giulio was taken by surprise, tried to look outraged, but then just shrugged.

Silvia: “Caring. Frustrated desire does not explain it.”

Giulio: “Oh no you’re back at it.”

Silvia: “ It’s a knowledge problem, it’s failing to understand or to accept what you’re doing wrong. What in you is being wrong.”

Giulio silent, thinking: “So we are both about to do that? We both don’t care and so we’ll both become obsessed with each other?”

Silvia: “We are scared of learning. It would reveal our basic ungratefulness towards life? We are not always learning that we are nice. So dwelling on the problem is still better than learning. And we keep being unhappy and moan and gripe!!!”

She laughed, he didn’t.

Giulio: “Let’s go.”

Silvia: “So where are you taking meee?”

“Nowhere. *I’m* *just* *going* *home*.”

“Ok.” Her light shoes felt her body weight moving to the back of the feet, which meant blocking, passive, aggressive. He didn’t know why and how, but he subconsciously read that and knew that it was his turn to pull.

Giulio: “I’m taking the tram too.”

“Are you? I was thinking of walking.”

“It’s seven kilometres.”

“Ok, tram then.”

Milan

The tram ATM Class 1500 was operational since 1929. Not a single piece was the original one, but its character persisted. Proudly yellow, made of steel and wood. Opened its pantograph, let people in. On its back seats Silvia and Giulio. Their bodies cycled between leaning together, then suddenly a widening gap. The back seats voted for “not a couple, yet”. The model 1500 made its customary forward-only effort, started moving.

They got off at Brera, in front of Fascist era buildings, which with their obsessive regularity still tried to assert their charismatic, revolutionary ninety years old novelty, that the passerby today perceives only as sadness. But there were rays of the descending sun between the eternal grey of Milan’ sky.

Silvia: “Let’s get in this Feltrinelli bookshop.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know yet. Look, the books pushed more and more to the sides. Still, among the coffee whiffs, you can smell their beautiful scent, a mix of paper and dust.”

They sat. She ordered a Spritz. A bit of silence. The floor. The light. The ceiling. The smell. The crowd coming, going.

Giulio: “Some people still get paper books.”

Silvia: “Let me try this: people read books to either find the courage to change or as a personal drug to dumb themselves down as not to change.”

Giulio: “In both cases, you can look at books as plans, plans for the future self.”

Silvia: “Uh you said something almost interesting there, pretty little toyboy. The guy who started this chain, he did have plans too. They didn’t turn out very well though.”

Giulio: “You mean the founder?”

Silvia: “Yes, Marquis Feltrinelli. Family made tons of money with timber sleepers for rails, he squandered some on books, then decided to go full revolutionary and exploded while setting up a bomb.”

Giulio: “I knew that last thing, he wanted to compromise the electrical network, the one I’m working on…”

Silvia: “Ok, boring. What now. I’m taking part in this appalling recreation of Leonardo’s Last Supper. So I have these free entrances to see the fresco. Shall we go?”

Giulio: “Well, I have never been there. Fine.”

Santa Maria Delle Grazie

They stood in front of Leonardo’s fresco.

Silvia: “Seems we could dive right in.”

Giulio: “Yees.”

Silvia: “Do you have any idea about what you are looking at?”

Giulio: “Nope.”

Silvia: “Well, let’s put it simply so even… ok cheap. Look at it this way: each of the characters seems to be in its own three-dimensional cylinder, and they are a crew of a spaceship ready to leave. The room will shoot in space soon. Actually, they were a group of fanatics, and they believed in crazy stuff, so it could fit.”

Giulio: “Looks so much cooler now.” Again, he side checked her. A source of happiness?

Silvia: “You see, since Masaccio, perspective for the Florentines was the assertion of man over fear. For the Flamands — the other financial powerhouse of those times — perspective was the power of the mind over chaos, but of course Leonardo went beyond all that. Perspective was a tool to celebrate humanity in nature.

There are these weak minds, searching for hidden messages in this painting. That’s because they are unable to see its great message.”

Giulio: “What if I’m unable to see it too? What do you think of me now?”

Silvia, not caring: “Look how expressive. How anatomy is put at the service of expression. Reality is very expressive because it does not exist. Here what exists is the group’s emotions — another very vague term — just after Jesus reveals that one of his friends will betray him.”

They slowly walked out.

Silvia: “So here you leave.”

Giulio: “Yes.”

Both not moving. Giulio wanted happiness.

“I’ll walk you home.”

It started raining.

The courtyard

It was a long walk. They finally entered the courtyard. Again a Fascist-era house, when rationalist architects merged “popular house” with “the house for all”. The courtyard surface was plain, proud and attentive.

Silvia turned to him. She looked tired.

Silvia: “You should leave now.”

Giulio put his arms around her neck. Being a smaller man had this advantage, he knew it. In this counter-intuitive position she would feel safe, not push him away. Now say something stupid.

Giulio: “Your endless ramblings make it impossible to kiss you.”

The surface laughed with them when she held him tight and his feet didn’t touch the ground any more.

The bed’s legs felt the changing, oscillatory distribution of weight.

Her eyes followed a looping arch, which went from the tip of his feet to the French window facing the court. There seemed to be no creeps in the house facing hers.

She was happy that she could set the view from the bed to look directly to the outside; she just had to twist when she was on top; the guy appreciated anyway. He being short made it easier to handle.

She felt the tension of his Shakesperian manhood raising, she sped up a bit. The pavement and the light from the window became a unique texture, it was over.

The pavement loved feeling her small feet doing the penguin dance towards the toilet.