Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Frank Iodice

my hand for the first time since we’d met. I didn’t have chi ldren, I was obsessed with the idea that I wouldn’t succeed in being a good father because I didn’t have an example to fol low. I’d grown up l ike them, except that I didn’t have a garden. And yet when she gave me her hand and pul led me toward the meadow where the squirrel was supposed to be, I felt she could have been my daughter. Was it a stupid thought, a superfluous romantic idea, or the first step toward the mental process which, a few months later, in a cold courtyard in Padua, would have me so busy that I’d forget not only Don Vito, a man as vulgar as he was efficient, but also the l ibrary project and even Mel i? There was something in that garden that now came back to me, that I sti l l couldn’t explain. At night it was populated with wi ld boars and foxes, and the frogs started their concert as soon as the l ight began to fade. Sometimes, the toads that showed up in front of the door to the house were so large that even the cat was afraid of them. I observed everything and understood that at night observation becomes a fi lter between you and the world. I became convinced that during the day I might see everything without being able to seize it. Sol itude, moreover, helped me look inside myself and observe everything that, as was the case with things on the outside, I wouldn’t have seen during the daytime. Being a custodian—I should have explained this to Don Vito—had been

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