Alessandra Grosso - Crystal Stair

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Upon awakening, everywhere only dew and frost. It must have been mid-September. As I walked, my boots sank into several inches of leaves that covered the ground – women’s boots, refined yet comfortable like old cowboy ones.

These musings diverted my attention from a cold and deep sting of nostalgia, loneliness and other sad, intimate thoughts. It was the same intimacy I could feel in the depths of that curious red oak forest, whose falling leaves were blood red.

I soon felt I was being followed, though.

This feeling of being spied on – the perception that something obscure was crowding me and planning behind my back – had been a recurring concern in my late adolescence, when someone had been leaving anonymous messages in my letter box. They seemed to be love messages, but were so ambiguous as to be disturbing.

Despite my foreboding I advanced in the woods, frequently looking over my shoulder since I still didn’t feel at ease; I perceived the mist, the dew and something else I couldn’t entirely identify.

And suddenly, my erratic feelings became nearly tangible; it was real fright then, horror the like of which only children can experience.

I felt helpless and ran away from the man in black boots who was now chasing me, asking like a maniac: “Why?”

...Why? Rather, why are you asking me this question? I wondered.

While running, so as not to give in to panic, I was planning out my enduring survival: it was raw instinct, a sort of natural, prideful detachment that spurred me.

He might kill me, but he would never get inside my head; my mind fought while my body fled.

Running through tree roots, I hoped my merciless pursuer would fall. Not once did I look him in the eyes. Crocodile eyes, focussed and stealthily controlling their prey from under the surface of the water.

Intuition told me that the man was diabetic; intuition, and voices coming from other dimensions, far, far away. But I also knew it by simply looking at his foot wounds; his feet would have to be amputated soon.

My hope came from my determined spirit: the hope that he would tire himself out, that his disease would strike him suddenly while on the chase, that he had a crisis and collapsed to the ground.

I ran, as the tree branches grew lower and more tangled. I bent down then, trusting his tall stature to make the path all the more difficult for him; whenever I could, I grabbed the branches that I left behind me, wishing they would slap his face.

I loathed what he was doing, particularly because of the despair he instilled in me. It was also pride, in part – I admit it: who was he to force me to flee, to gnaw at me when already in the grip of fear?

Meanwhile I went on running, but the speed race had soon become an endurance race, and his strong body seemed to tolerate it rather well.

As for me, my sweat was falling to the ground along with big tears and I could feel my hope crumbling, until I saw someone new in front of me: my grandfather.

I was certain that, sensing my worry, he would project me into another dimension, perhaps a much more intimate and less dangerous situation, and would reassure me.

My certainty would soon prove either reliable or not.

SOLACE AND TROUBLE

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. 5

It was really my dear grandfather – affectionate in his old age, mischievous in his youth.

He had always been a sharp, troublesome person; he was to some extent the typical Italian macho. Dark hair, dark Spanish eyes, sunburnt olive skin, broad shoulders, he wasn’t very tall, roughly my height, but much stronger. Only the hands we had exactly alike, with long and slender fingers; the hands of a baker – this had actually been his lifelong job. He used to get up even before cockcrow to start his work, and he needed nothing but his full, warm baritone voice as company, one that was friendly and reassuring, and which I heard again on my dreamlike journey.

Our meeting was really comforting. He put his calloused hand on my shoulder and whispered not to worry, that everything would work out: he understood me, and knew how difficult my days had been so far. Indeed, thorns and weeds grew along my emotional path, and blisters formed on my feet. I was very dejected.

He knew what I was going through. He had been a partisan leader and had fought Mussolini’s regime. He loved freedom and this was why he had been given his name: Libero. He was free; he was ethereal. He was a spirit now, claimed by a sudden heart attack in 1996.

So sudden that at the time I hadn’t even had the strength to see him before the burial.

Now, though, he was in front of me, just as I remembered him: olive skin, still dynamic and concerned about his granddaughter quickly becoming a young woman.

Yes, a woman; on the inside I would become a woman. I still perceived myself as harmless and naive, but I knew that much had still to occur and that life could be long and full of troubles.

It seems that for each of our talents, God gives us a whip for self-flagellation: mine is guilt. And it was guilt, alongside my tolerance of children, to result in another nightmare.

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My pupils focussed on a child appearing out of thin air and instantly running after me; not even a smiling child: he had fangs and claws that could devour and tear into flesh. The little creature might literally rip me apart. He was also crying – a rather blood-curdling howl – which simply terrified me; it made me sweat and shiver uncontrollably. I had always been very emotional, a true ‘feeler’ in fact – experiencing fear, in this case.

Feelers are sensitive and empathetic people. They love a quiet life, smiles and children; suffer from guilt; keep to themselves.

But I couldn’t shut myself away now since the angry child was chasing me and crying, screaming like the howling wind.

I was afraid to face the beast and, with it, the loss of innocence it stood for. I hadn’t once saved what was worth saving, so my conscience still hounded me. I could do nothing but escape, again.

And I didn’t have the heart to harm a child, so I just ran, despite my uncomfortable heeled boots. They caused a dull pain at my every step, along with skin wounds and blisters. It was a constant torment.

I then fell on my elbows, and was forced to crawl with even more effort on the brown wooden ground; slippery and hostile, it was as cold as the child’s eyes. I knew I deserved this coldness since I hadn’t sufficiently protected children in my life nor loved them enough, and that was why they were all coming back to me in the shape of this monster. A bitter yet productive meeting: I had to pay for my mistakes but I was also ready to admit them.

At that moment another upsetting vision came forwards, of a little girl bound in a rope and being bounced against walls; what was worse, I couldn’t prevent her from getting hurt. She was slippery, seemingly covered in oil – going in all directions, unpredictable.

She was the very picture of the confusion I felt inside my head.

I didn’t know whether to protect her or save myself from the monster that was still chasing me, the little boy trying to grasp me and howling: “Why, mum ?”

The word paralysed me, since – although I love children – I have never seriously entertained the possibility of being a mother and starting a family myself. I have always regarded it as something too far in the future, far from me; a limit to my expressiveness and – I hate to admit it – a loss of elegance for the female body. Although taking care of a child may be rewarding, each time I had my friends’ daughters toddling around I feared that the pests would break something or hurt themselves.