At that question, Mr Winningoes had
set with extreme naturalness, George had brought a hand to his mouth, showing
in his eyes an horrified gaze. Then he stood up, with the hand still on his
mouth and ran out the room. I heard his long footsteps, through up the
staircases.
-«I am sorry! I am very sorry indeed»– said the man in a resigned and sincere
tone –“I have tried to gradually introduce you to the difficult matter, in
order not to upset you, but it’s quietly evident that I have not succeeded it.-
"Shall we go to see how your friend is?” – he concluded standing up.
- « May be it’s better if I go first to talk to him on my own! We need to
stay alone for a while» I told Mr Winningoes.
-« As you like» – he said quietly, sitting again.
I followed George upstairs, thinking at Mr Winningoes’ story. I had also
accused an emotional hit to that sorrowful question, although, to say the very
truth, I had expected that point of landing in Mr Winningoes’ discourse.
I saw George coming out from the bath. He stared at me without saying nothing.
I knew he needed to be on his own, so I went to our room and lay down at the
bed without approaching him.
I closed my eyes, trying to dominate
all these emotions. I recalled into my
mind the last accounts had led me to that house, with that strange man who seemed
to fright .George so heavily
It
was Friday, the 9th of November 1979, right the day we were going to meet that
strange Mr Winningoes, as we had soon to discover, when I had followed my
friend on the wide tree-lined roads. On the sidewalks, the leaves, fallen
during the night, had formed a thick and soft carpet, on which George seemed to
walk with special pleasure.
It was a colorless day, of those that are counted so numerous in London,
especially in the winter time. One of those days on which the diurnal light
maintains the same slim intensity, from mornings to evenings, and the night
comes up suddenly unexpected, when the pale and smothered reverberation of the
sun, behind a thick blanket of clouds, has concluded its fatiguing daily cycle.
It blew a fresh and light breeze. But the wind, from time to time, became
impetuous, and by means of violent gusts seemed to push us, like for joking or
as if it wanted to encourage us to go straight ahead. And courage was exactly
what we really needed, as our search of a job was becoming a serious and weary
problem.
- «I don't recognize the London's gone
times anymore» -George had told me, not later than the former evening,
coming out from one of the many jobs agencies we had uselessly visited.
I followed him on his march, absorbed in the noise that our own footsteps
produced on the leaves. The rhombus of an auto dissuaded suddenly my attention.
-« Where are we going to?» -I
asked him.
-« We will try to go this way along»-
he answered turning slightly back his head to me. « This way through we will rejoin the Maida Vale. There are plenty of job’s
agencies up there .»
George knew a lot better than I that zone, being living there for the former
years. He had taken that one-room flat wherein we were living together, with a girl,
now got back to Italy, as he had fleetingly told me, not without a shade
darkening sadly his eyes; and after he did not speak more about it.
Instead,
in that same day that he told me of his passion for the esoteric philosophies.
Actually ‘till then, I had reputed them exclusive knowledge of the eastern
cultures, while George, rightly in the period we met, was studying at one (whose
study he had to introduce me, later on), that he granted to the Huichols, a
direct descending people of the ancient pre-Colombian populations that in the
present state, according to what at that time he told me, were still living in
the north western mountains of Mexico.
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