Part
24.
"My unusual gift to my unusual friend!"
This is how Dada’s manuscript began.
The entries consisted of some individual paragraphs; in
some places, almost the entire page was filled, while in others, it barely
reached half a page. There were large gaps left between the paragraphs, perhaps
to distinguish writings from different times, as no dates were marked anywhere.
The pages were filled with letters dedicated to Ugo. Dada
would sometimes refer to the past, and other times it was as if they had only
just parted.
Along with the entries, parts of a human body were
sketched. A nose and eyes, sometimes just eyes, half a face with a beard, and
at times without one. Sometimes, a muscular arm and part of a shoulder.
All these sketches looked very much like Ugo and,
clearly, they were.
The Padrone smiled and continued reading.
"I don't know when all of this started, and I
didn't know where it would lead me. Sometimes I think about explaining to
myself who you were and what you represented. However, I always solved every
question with a simple answer. You were! You just were.
You were and existed for me, and that is all I ever
asked of God – just for you to be, I wanted nothing more."
"Sometimes it even seemed to me that, in this 'being,' I was asking
for an infinitely great deal. Perhaps it was so; what would have been trivial
for anyone else to remain a true friend, for you, it might have been
enormous."
"Our
relationship was amazing. Amazing and very easy...
So
easy, to the point that sometimes it was even primitive; perhaps that is why
there were things about you that were sometimes even superficial..."
"Despite having the richest inner world, many
times your behavior was incredibly cold and frozen. If I hadn't known your
inner world so well, I would have thought that both your mind and heart were
frozen. You wouldn't back down just to protect yourself; you would apologize,
but not because you truly felt your guilt, but to make the other person feel
that, despite everything, you were surrendering to them—even though you weren't
actually in the wrong. And at the same time, it could have been the opposite...
that you yourself were the guilty one, and a seriously guilty one at that...
You wanted to make the other person feel guilty, even
when you knew they were right; you would act like their slave, as if they had
conquered you, but in reality, you wanted to turn them into your
subordinate—this was at times...
But when you truly felt remorse in your heart and felt
sorry for hurting someone, you were someone I really wanted to embrace. And at
those moments, I would restrain myself as much as I could; I was even afraid of
my own warmth, fearing that you might freeze up again. But I rarely held back,
and even then, I couldn't fully hide my joy..."
"Who are you to me? Or what do you want from me? What are you
expecting? When I asked you, you were offended. You said, 'Don't you understand
it yourself?' But judging by your cold behavior, I think that you are laughing
at me in your heart, treating me like an old object that you feel sorry for
throwing away, but that is of no use or need—just let it lie in the corner,
maybe wipe the dust off it occasionally. This is when you are cold and frozen;
but when you are warm, you have an amazing ability to thaw a frozen
heart."
"Sometimes I had the desire—and I was
convinced—that I would never write to you again... And then, suddenly,
unexpectedly, like a surprise, your warmth would fall upon me in my dreams. Not
just warmth, but heat, and it would burn with such intensity that I would have
preferred a single sip of water to the entire world... and that sip was
you..."
LEX. Friday, March 11, 2016.
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