London for ever - 29

Michelle was a Parisian girl. The two had met in London and had always been together. Her charm was not the ordinary allurement that usually circles  on long-limbed French girls, a bit diaphanous, with the features of their faces eternally ingenuous and gentle.

 It derived instead from her rather cheerful and carefree air, symptomatic of those who can live day by day, with no particular moods linked to sentimental events, work issues, or perhaps existential complications. Much more than her  attitude of disenchanted non-chalance, if not of deliberately informal and countercurrent behavior, it was astonishing the  contrast with the almost serious and formal behavior that Giampiero was going through even more than the hated bourgeois he declared to be still in fight with.

Michelle, on the other hand, was a painter and earned her living by selling her paintings and making portraits in Portobello and the other large London-based large markets; Her attendance allowed Giampiero not to lose all contact with a certain kind of culture and alternative minds, to which, though not in the depths of his being, he had been tied.

– “Whoever does not die,  comes alive, soon or later!” Giampiero said to the phone, returning my greeting, “What have you done all this time?”

– “I found a pub that resembles an amphitheater!” I said laughing- “and tonight performs a Rock band with square balls. What do you say?”

– “I say we were thinking about going down the corner to have a drink; But the idea of ​​a bit of good music would be even better. But where are you? “He asked then translating from English, as he sometimes did speaking Italian.

– “I’m here in Paddington Station, in a newspaper store”.

-” I get it. From Notting Hill is a step away. Wait for me to come. Maybe even with Michelle and a Parish friend who comes to visit us. I’ll see you right away!”

29. to be continued…

London for ever - 28

It was Giampiero who answered at the phone. He was a Ligurian friend I met at Tommaso's home, come to London in the same period of his. With Tommaso he shared the long-standing Italian militancy in the non-parliamentary left-wing groups; the same troubled ideological path: from the confused revolutionary militancy among the Maoists and  Marxist-Leninists to the softer Italian groups of  left ideology, such as the Continuous Struggle, Serving the People and Workers Autonomy.  And after that the gradual but inexorable disillusionment. And even without waiting for the 1977’s  second call, he had withdrawn from his mind all his past, reached London, and set up, licking his wounds  and trying to reconstructing himself and his life. Differently from  Tommaso, Giampiero's ancient political and revolutionary anger had dissolved into London's fog. Nevertheless, though  for the rest of his generation London had been  a bridge to the Oriental philosophy, he had continued on  cultivating  his youthful socialist readings in Italian and in English language; and I did not really despise to spend with him long night-time dissertations at his home,  after dinner, when between his flavoured smoking  pipes and my proletarian selfmade  cigarettes, sunk in a large and comfortable armchair, with disarming but at the same time eye-catching social vision, he still prophesied the  advent of  the power of the proletariat as a unique and inevitable solution to the conflicts of the  counteracting social classes of the capitalist society,  already long-standing in the edge of a fall. And it was so much the strength and security of his arguments that I never  doubted  that Giampiero would hesitate, at the time of the announced socialist victory, to renounce to his good and wealthy position in  a multinational transport company, with the smile of the one who feels, nonetheless, victorious. But what of his bohemian and revolutionary past seemed to survive in him more authentic and strong, was his girlfriend Michelle.

28. to be continued...

London for ever - 25

We cut off Leicester Square  and, through a maze of lanes, we hit the Trafalgar Square. We stopped at the center of the huge square, sitting on the edge of an imposing square fountain, whose tall, wide bushes at moments tickled the mouths of the four mighty stone lions that majestic delimited it at its four corners.

 The sky was cloudy and the warm sunshine dominated the great shining and cheerful square that day, as I had never seen before. Along the benches, arranged at regular intervals throughout its perimeter, some retirees were lovingly launched to hungry doves, crumbling bread crumbs or corn seeds, these bought in small bags, directly on the spot, by some street vendors.

In the sun, the many badges that Nancy, as I had found was named the pretty Irish girl, shone on the faces of his black leather jacket. In addition to the rose he had bought shortly before, there was one that depicted a sort of american-style jolly with a red tongue out; Others reported slogans of youthful movements that were in their favor. One in particular,  struck me more than any other, because it depicted a green leaflet asking for "legalize marijuana".

"Do you like to smoke?" He asked me, looking me half-eyed.

 To my assenting  answer she gave me a joint already  packed! It had a truncated-conical appearance, tapered and solid, close to the base, wider on top; it had been packaged with three cigarette papers; The base was closed by a cardboard filter; At the top it had been folded inside to prevent the contents from falling out ; His manufacturer, whoever he was, had been very skilled.

- "What is it?" I asked, smelling it.
- "It's a black Pakistani ", he replied prompting his lighter. - "It comes from Kashmir,  advanced from a party last night. It's very good, smoke it quietly! "

With a burst  of laughs I realized she was right. Smoked in  the morning, furthermore!

- "You have more badges than   the shop!" I said laughing, passing over the joint and continuing to look at his pins. - "And what is this ?! I immediately added, intrigued by a banal white brooch on which a German-language spelling out I had not even noticed before. There was  written: "Das Mütterrecht".

"Let me think about it," she said, concentrating on a complex response. - "It is the opposite of patriarchy." And she smiled, aware and amused by her strange explanation.
She continued after a further moment of reflection: - "Patriarchy is our social order, centered on the father's figure, while in the  Matriarchy the mother is the predominant social figure. 'Das Muterrecht' is to indicate a social and legal system that governed the life organized before the classics of Greece. We do not know exactly when, but before the gods we know establish their power in the world, there was another authority and another law: the natural rules  of life. This is in short the Matriarchate. "

She paused as if to realize whether I was following her speech or perhaps to give me a way to interact.

.- "Go ahead," I said, passing the joint again, "I'm following you with great interest."

25. to be continued...

London for ever - 24

One day  a girl,  who struck me at first sight for her pleasing appearance, stopped to look at some badges, who were showed in a moving showcase in the centre of the shop that housed my sales outlet.

She was tall and slim and had short cut and combed back reddish hair; The green eyes, of a very intense color, stood on a freckled face, with a well-proportioned nose, slightly upside down.

She was standing there, his chin protruding forward, as if she  were short-sighted, rotating  the shopwindow on its four sides, with a little enthusiastic expression on his face.

I felt a sudden impulse; I came up and gave her one of the "badges" that stood down, pinned, like the others, on the velvet covering the exterior walls of the window.

- "This is perhaps the best one," I said, handing it over.

She turned and spoke softly, after watching me for a moment with the badge  in her long, slender fingers, she said,

-" Are you Spanish?"

- "They ask me many," I said, amused - "I wonder why!"

-"An Englishman, of course, would never offer a rose to an unknown person!"

There was no tone of reproach or annoyance in his saying; Indeed, it seemed to me to catch a flattery in the woman's voice.

- "Where do you come from?" I asked in turn.

- "I am Irish, but lately, between one trip and the other, I spent a lot of time in Spain and I repeat it, looking at you, you look like Spanish. You have at least a few Spanish blood in the veins, don’t you? "

- "Well, you can say it! Spain has dominated us for over four centuries and who knows? My official language is Italian anyway! "

- "I did not make it a matter of official idiom," she said, dropping that speech.

- "Do you feel like taking  four steps outside?" I replied immediately.

- "Yes, why not!",  she retorted.

I handed the cash coin and the ice cream lever to the shop manager's store, begging him to look at the machines in my absence. Although the operations of the two activities were separate, there was between us ice cream sellers and the staff of the store that housed us, a  solid and sympathetic relationship.

24. to be continued...

London for ever - 23

I then asked him for news of their repertoire. It consisted of many pieces of its own composition, whose lyrics were inspired by the original and authentic roots of the  rock movement, dealing  with his proletarian origins, class struggle, rebellion against adult society and his most conservative institutions, also singing on sexual freedom. Other songs were better suited to the arpeggios and blues sounds and talked of disappointments, youthful nostalgia, and ideal worlds.

 He told me had composed all those songs  several years earlier when he was still attending the Art School in London (where he had met David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Keith Richard, Pete Townshend and other illustrious names who had established themselves in the world Golden rock music).

But he refused to sell his art and his songs to the star system, convinced that the rock-based unit could only be kept by playing live and sharing in the concert the same emotions; while recording discs meant the opposite, breaking the unity of movement by relegating the divas to a golden loneliness, releasing them emotionally and definitively from their own supporters.

He had chosen to earn his living, at the beginning playing the guitar in squares, streets or subway stations; he had later created his group, gaining with it important spaces in the pubs and clubs of London that allowed him to continue to live the unmistakable emotions that only the concerts can give the artist when the music is flowing well and the audience is relaxed and happy and all, artists and spectators, in those magical moments, forget themselves and their problems.

And you do not care to be none  any more, but you just try to flow forever in that feeling of sweet despair.

Then we  talked of our  lives, as if we had been friends forever. That confidential tone seemed to make him slide to a verge of melancholy.

«In the end, he said, every man has his own life, his fate carved in the brain or perhaps written for him somewhere in the Cosmos! If you believe it, of course! » He added, trying to slit and return to the conversation in that compassed, almost suspended tone we had maintained so far!

- «You mean, God, don’t you?» I interjected, seriously.

- « I do not know. Maybe …»he replied without giving too much emphasis to the words, standing up.

- «Shall we go?» He said then to his  friends who had spent time smoking quietly.

  

I followed them in good spirits, though I would have preferred that nice chat did not end there.

Outside, in the street, the insignia  of cinemas, shops, theaters and nightclubs began to shine. London night moved its first steps towards another interlude of triumph and madness against the gray routine of the day.

- «At the next concert in the square I get a glass from you!» - Ruben told me while approaching  with his friends a small street that would bring them home in the Soho district.

- «Be cool!»Phil told me, packing on my shoulder.

- «And also fresh!» echoed Jon lifting two fingers of his right hand in greeting.

«And do not do as Jim did, always putting much water on it!» Ruben said jokingly, turning to his left shoulder and greeting again with a gesture of his hand.

I watched them a little further, with their slouching walk, almost looking to dance with their long hair in the wind and their colorful and eccentric clothing, crossing with a guy in gray dress and black tie, carrying a 24-hour briefcase who  was coming  in the opposite direction.

It was a moment. It almost seemed to me like the man was walk without his head,  carrying it into that square suitcase.

The story of Mr Winningoes - 12

As you certainly know all our mental energy springs by a simple chemical reaction that is continuously produced in our brain. Such reaction, that the physicians define with the name of “synapse”, is originated by the reaction between the liquid whose any  brain is imbued and the cells it copiously contains.

In practice this liquid, that has equal molecular structure in every man, works as a tracing detector of the cerebral process, whose action is, instead, what countersigns a man from another.

The intimate reasons for such different action of the cerebral processing, have seen divided for a long time the humanity.

Manhood has however been until now incapable to intend the true reason for the difference of the beings of its species.

A human being, from the scientific point of view, it is only a product of a casual connection of the basically chemical mixtures that are contained in the cells. And all its activity is coordinated by the cerebral cells.

To succeed on obtaining a distillate of those cells, meant therefore to dispose of a substance of inestimable value.

You can of course imagine, what such an emotion I felt when I injected those drops that were deposed on the fund of the test-tube, to a rat guinea-pig.

The result was amazing, greater and more meaningful than I had been able to foresee myself. The mouse, a normal mouse of averages age and greatness, after spending twelve hours asleep, wakened up again.

Apparently he seemed to be the same as before the injection, but actually he moved in a different manner however.

He had, in a few words, a different air. He slowly started walking and moving its tail upwards, in a way quite unusually for a mouse; furthermore he sniffed and smelled the air and the ground of the cage. And I was much more surprised when I saw him stretching its legs towards and backwards,  forming a tall hunch with his backbone,  then sitting down leaking his pawns and finally resting in leisure with a sleepy way. Its limbs still looked like those of a mouse, but they behaved as belonging to a cat! That was the exceptional result!

The animal seemed restless and took on turning around the cage with his feline behavior. He was surely looking for some food.

I gave him his usual mice food but after he had smelled it for a long time, he started over turning around visibly more nervous and hungrier. I opened a cat tin food and with my great surprise he devoured that meal in a flash.

He grew up constantly in the following days, assuming a double massive structure compared to the same aged of his own race, then his growth seemed to halt.

His epidermis had not suffered either big mutations;  nor  the bony structure, at least externally, showed to have acquired any peculiar characters, except for the moustaches and the legs, that seemed to have changed for a most congenial use to cat’s needing.

In the movements and in the external behavior he moved as a cat though having the semblances of a mouse.

A serious question had bothered me since the first days of the experiment: how would that animal relate with another mice? And how would other cats relate with him? In his more inner instinct had he become a cat or he had remained a mouse?

With much trepidation I moved him to captivity with other mice: they started to squeak very afraid; it was evident that those small rodents had immediately warned the hostile presence.

He had a good time pursuing them and grabbing them as cats make with mice, and at long, exhausted and satisfied, he rested quietly on a side of the big cage, while the little mice, remained farther all afraid and trembling.

He didn't show any interest to pursue them, more than joking  in that way, perhaps because he was not hungry or even because something inside prevented him from doing it.

The thing, after all, didn't interest me and I transferred him afterwards with a real cat, and also there the success arose to me: they behaved as two bosom and jovial friends.

At the beginning I thought to try his reproduction, but actually this would have been only an interesting and suggestive detour from my principal aim.

In order to reach it I had to gather all my efforts, and the results of that first experiments constituted the base of my following job.

First of all it was clear that the cerebral muscle, under particular conditions of temperature and environment, like those which took accidentally place that prophetic day in my laboratory, released a particular, liquid and dense substance, containing the fundamental geniuses, that I call primaries; those which are responsible of the most intimate and  proper characters of the race.

It was also evident that such substance appeared able to be moved into another brain,  creating there a new habitat in which to regenerate its cells and with them  repurchase its functions and its aboriginal characters.

I verified more times the exactness of these hypotheses, but only in a direction, that I define evolutionary. The experiment only succeed if the essence of a superior animal, in the steps of the evolutionary chain, was introduced in the brain of an inferior animal, while in the other way down, the phenomenon took place in a lesser and very attenuated tone,  deprived of significant consequence.

I baptized the liquid essence ‘nouchefalon ', and I prepared hence myself to develop in the foreseen direction my experiments.

What would it happen if I  transfused some ‘human nouchefalon ' in to the brain of another man?
12. to be continued...

London for ever - 22

I first met  Ruben in  an afternoon I had decided to have  a pint of lager at the Pub "The Vashel," not far from Leicester Square, before resuming the evening ice cream service. The pub, from outside, seemed likely to be the same as many others: the building occupying the  corner of two streets, smoked glasses to protect the privacy of the customers, massive external dark wood, and gigantic headed  insignia.

But as soon as you came in, it gave you the impression that a ship had flown centuries earlier in that corner of London, as if by magic, and then somebody had the brilliant idea of ​​getting a public exercise, adding the necessary kit furniture, tableware and furnishings, leaving all the rest, the central shaft, the rudder, the tailgate, the bulkheads and the sides of the polished wood in the mirror, along which many cannons for defending a pirates’ assault

Ruben  was there with his group trying the instruments, in view of the concert they had to hold that very night. By the way we knew already each other, but only by sight and we never had a chance to talk together.

The central deck was occupied by a long counter, with many barrooms’ points,  along which numerous wooden stools laid, fixed to the ground with a metal cylinder. 

Facing the counter were arranged in good order several tables, which were also fixed to the ground as if they had been designed to deal with the swings of a navigational vessel. In  a space was available to accommodate the instruments of a band, even though Ruben played the guitar accompanied only by a drummer and a bass player. Very narrow wooden ladders led from the central deck to the stern, where at the bottom the architect had skillfully set up a more intimate and pickled bar, which at that moment was in the shade and desert.

At the counter, being so early, there were not many people. The only servant, after having served the beer, went back to fix some cups and some glasses behind him. The three went on a bit, performing without an apparent order some songs, which sometimes broke down, and then resumed after exchanging some technical commentary.

When they decided for a longer break they approached the counter. I guess they had some drinks at their disposal from the house (the number, in fact, ranges from pub to pub, depending on the generosity of the manager). 

To avoid making a mistake, I wanted to pay one by myself, because I wanted to compliment them.

They gladly accepted the drink and compliments. But before they even drank the glasses they gave me a gesture to follow them towards the bar at the stern.

We took a coffee table in a private corner where I noticed that you could see, without being seen, the transit along the stairs leading there.

The drummer named Jon (without the "h", as he  let me know,  for it came from Jonathan) when he learned from Ruben I was selling ice cream, he said, "You cool!"

The expression, though ambiguous, had been uttered with a kind of spontaneity.  I  spontaneously answered, doing his own gesture, with the index of the right hand facing him and laughing as he had done: "And also fresh!"

Ruben liked my answer, because laughing he said to his friend, "For good. He also sells fresh drinks, not just ice cream! "

The answer was also good for Jon, as he turned to the bass player, "Hey, Phil, hunt out that joint that our  cool friend loves to smoke! Is not this true? "He concluded staring at  me.

- "Sometimes!" I answered, putting on my lips my  handmade cigarette.

- "Try first with this. It's packaged with Lebanon oil, you know?" Phil told me,  passing me the joint and giving me fire with  his cigarette lighter.

- "It's O.K." I replied, passing Ruben the joint after two deep throats.

Ruben told his friends who had already seen me at work, "in the square," as they called Leicester Square, without naming it, and joked that she had always seen me "very busy" (he mimed  the actions I used to serve ice cream at the pitch).

We all got rid of his funny imitation.

He had a broad smile on his teeth, a bit stained  by smoke, which made him  look  older than his youthful appearance, and his thick black hair and a bit crunchy. The look you read in his brown and melancholy eyes was shiny and calm.

- "Did you like the concert?" He asked, perhaps to break the silence, pushing my joint back. I did and I passed by the joint to  the other two, but Ruben pointed out to me that they had set aside and were packing another one.

- "This is all for us two," he added, returning  to me after having smoked for a while.

22. to be continued...