Chapter 6
At that question, the man had set with extreme naturalness, George had brought a hand to his mouth, showing in his eyes a horrified gaze. Then he stood up, with the hand still on his mouth and ran out the room. I heard his long footsteps, through the staircases.
«I am sorry! I am very sorry indeed» he said 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.
« Maybe it’s better if I go first to talk to him on my own! We need to stay alone for a while» I told him.
«As you like» he said quietly, sitting again.
I followed George upstairs, thinking of Mr Winningoes’ story. I had also accused an emotional hit to that sorrowful question, although, I had expected that point of landing of his discourse.
I saw George coming out from the bath. He stared at me without saying anything. I knew he needed to be on his own, so I went to our room and lay down on 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 were 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 unexpectedly, 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 for a job was becoming a serious and weary problem.
- «I don't recognize London's gone times anymore» -George had told me, not later than the former evening, coming out from one of the many job 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 suddenly dissuaded my attention.
«Where are we going?» 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, on that same day he told me of his passion for 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-Columbian 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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