Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

A Perfect Idiot

After having eaten something l ight, which her aunt prepared rapidly whi le l istening to Mel i ’s tale, they returned to the l iving room couch and, sipping a cup of herbal tea, they exchanged other stories and memories, less important for our tale, so a summary wi l l suffice. For example, they spoke about Mel i ’s adolescence, spent on the Corniche des Ol iviers, where there was a bui lding simi lar to the one in L’Escarène, but more modern and less mysterious, it was suited for housing minors without parents or with parents judged unfit, as was her case. “But judged by whom!” Mel i sighed, in an outburst ten years overdue. It was the same problem they had barely spoken of: “The State can decide who is a worthy parent, even when, according to the parameters establ ished by the law, almost nobody is.” Mel i was furious. Was that why she’d left? Maybe when, at the corner of Rue de Foresta, she’d told me she had nothing to lose, she wasn’t referring to a man, but to fami ly. When she was a girl , Mel i had exhibited signs of restlessness, a strong desire for freedom poorly expressed, sometimes confused with the rebel l ion gene, that gene we al l have and which, in her case, expressed itself as a rare case of psychological decompensation, bursts of huge expression as though she were made of only that, and others of total mental absence. These moments of imbalance became, in everyday language, bal l-breaking for

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