Eva Mikula - Loose End

The bartender, upon entering, told me that during the wait they had eaten half the counter: sweets, pastries, chocolates.

That day my story with Biagio actually began. I had started with a good-looking dude who never missed an opportunity to make me notice. Me, the loser who lived in the countryside, on the northern outskirts of the capital, he upper class who lived in the center, the beating heart of the metropolis: “I like to smell the stench of asphalt. All this green makes your head spin, too much oxygen”, he repeated like a broken record.

I would never have gone into Rome, in 50 square meters, leaving my beautiful house of 200 square meters, surrounded by nature. Moreover, I preferred to pay the mortgage and have my own apartment forever, rather than shell out the money for rent every month.

In the end he accepted: together yes, but at my place. It was really very tiring. Nothing suited him. Our tastes were very distant. “Why did you buy a house right here? And why did you decorate it this way? With all this stuff?”.

He liked extreme minimalism: a table, a sofa and a TV. He stood with his breath on my neck to change all the furniture. I did not even think of it remotely, every corner told of me, of the sacrifices I had had to face to give the house the image I dreamed of.

The pressures from him soon began to bother me, I could not tolerate the results of my sacrifices being questioned. “I sweated from my forehead to set up this house. And I don't think you've done much better than me”. However our story went on. Maybe it wasn't the best for me, but I wasn't bad with him. He was a smart, intelligent person with a law degree and work experience in the real estate sector. And then I wanted to become a mother: I became pregnant with a child that we both wanted and desired. Biagio was forty-four, had never married and was very close, perhaps too much, to his parents. For this reason he did not absolutely feel the need to become a father, but he strongly felt the need to give a grandson to mum and dad.

He had benefited all his life from the generosity of his parents, who now pressed him to have a grandchild and he wanted to please them.

In August 2003, 5 months pregnant, as always, I went to visit my parents, while Biagio was busy with his work. At that precise period he was following Saadi Gaddafi, a Perugia footballer, son of the Libyan dictator. His needs were very varied and he needed a legal consultant also for finding the accommodation that had to be suitable to host, on her arrival in Italy, his wife with all the trousseau of companions, dogs and bodyguards. After two weeks in Romania, I returned to Italy by plane.

At Fiumicino, at passport control, they stopped me. According to the border police, I could not have landed in Italy because, being a resident of Rome, I would have needed a work permit. An Italian-style bureaucratic puzzle. Or a spite to Eva Mikula, to the uncomfortable Eva Mikula. Those were the years in which Romanian citizens could enter freely and without a visa for a maximum stay of three months as tourists. I, who had been residing for 8 years and a company started with 8 employees, could not enter. They wanted to send me back to Romania. I called Biagio. He came running.

But they didn't even let us meet. I could only look at him through the windows. I didn't feel well. They only allowed me to take the medicines I needed for pregnancy out of the suitcase. I panicked: the next morning I was supposed to open the company. I imagined the employees waiting for me and the customers having breakfast sitting at the bar.

The next morning, at the change of shift, I tried again to explain the absurdity of what they were doing. I was finally able to get in touch with a lawyer experienced in the legislation relating to entry visas, in force at the time. It turned out that the mystery could have two reasons: total incompetence of the policemen or targeted fury on my name. To think badly... The law, in fact, established that the entry visa was mandatory only the first time for those who entered Italy for work reasons. Or for those who did not yet have an indefinite residence. The lawyer called the border police office. And they let me pass. With the sadness and bitterness of those who feel unwelcome. A woman pregnant with a child with an Italian father who had been paying taxes in Italy for years, forced to sleep on an airport bench. From Fiumicino I went directly to my restaurant bar. There was no time to feel sorry for myself.

A question tormented me: “How can I start a family and manage a business at that pace, with those hours?”. I was at a crossroads: family or work? Biagio did not like the idea that I ran a restaurant, that I worked in a bar-restaurant: “It is not an activity that suits you, an office would be more suitable; a more level job for you, instead of being among people who cannot speak and write, who come to have coffee with muddy construction shoes. You cannot be among these people”. I replied: “Those muddy people feed me.” “What does it mean?” Biagio retorted “Then get married to a butcher who has a lot of money, rather than a distinguished person”. I decided to sell the place.

Francesco was born, an infinite joy, I was finally a mother! My nature, however, could not bend, in fact after a month I was already pawing: I absolutely had to go back to doing something, to work, also because no kind of financial help came from the child's father and I still had the mortgage to pay. It can't really be said that he was the typical husband of the past: he out to work and to bring the sustenance for the family and his wife in the house to take care of the housework and the children.

So I began to ask myself questions. Basically I was thinking, “He's never okay with anything about me, he makes me feel out of place, inadequate”, so my self-esteem started to falter.

I was looking for answers in my memories: what had struck me about him? Why had he somehow managed to win me over? I believe the apparent refinement; a feeling perhaps accentuated by the fact that he came out of the canons of the people I had known and frequented until then. Already from that clutch bag that I took out of his pocket, it was evident that he was a man of good taste, well dressed at least, but his humility and modesty did not dwell in him. I thought he would be, in some ways, a good guide. And I can say that, in some areas, such as the professional one, he went like this.

In the period in which I began to attend it, the story that in spite of myself had brought me into the spotlight of notoriety and that had made me live under protection brought in the courtrooms, very far from the life I dreamed of, was still very well known.

Although it was a past that I still wanted to leave behind, I talked about it to Biagio although I avoided describing too many details. He never judged me. But he too had asked a few questions, and, perhaps for this very reason, I began to ask them too.

Passion, in my imagination, was another thing. Another dream in the drawer? Who knows, you can't have everything in life; someone like me, not a saint with a skirt and dancers, with a regular life in the parlor of mommy and daddy; one who had lived on the edge, in short, a woman already passed through the meat grinder of life experiences, could have ruined her reputation, her balance as a scion of a good Roma family.

Rather, I found myself in the words of Loredana Berté's song: “I am not a lady, one with all stars in life... but one for whom the war is never over”.

I don't know if it was good or not, but Biagio consulted with his friend, the one who acted as a navigator when he came to visit me for the first time in my place. "Don't care about her past of her" he told him "Eva is beautiful, smart, autonomous, independent, she has a welcoming home. In your place I would throw myself headlong".