Francesco

By Enrico Miglino

A clear, lucid and exciting story: a magnifying lens focusing on the dynamics and the oddities of human relationships. A plausible plot among four people, and the complexities of their relationships.
What remains to the reader from an emotional point of view is the amazing feeling of having tried at least once in a lifetime Hector's experience, a character suspended between reality and his own interior world full of memories, but also between a monotonous everyday life without a beginning or an end, and the desire to start again to experience new, strong, intense and unforgettable emotions.
Still tied to a dying relationship, Hector decides to live accepting everything as is and, like a child before the truth, he will surrender to the simplicity of freshness and joy offered by a woman appeared from nowhere. Or maybe from an alternative past.
What emerges is the author's ability to create an atmosphere of life truly lived, and extend the time of the story, so that - as a dress - it will adhere to the unconscious dimension: the descriptions are brilliant brush strokes depictin the inner world of a man forced to fight against his own ghosts or be lulled by his memories.
An immersive and pleasant story that will involve the reader until the last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ediciones Baleares
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9788494141232

Enrico Miglino

Enrico Miglino was born in Turin in 1961, inspired by technology and software development, electronics and engineering, during his life he wrote technical articles for monthly papers, journalistic articles in general, poems, short and long novels.Many of his works have been published and are distributed by the most popular Internet bookshops.His poems have always been hosted on several blogs and web sites on the Internet.In 2007 his poem "Tempi Fermati" was chosen - along with some poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sandro Penna, Giacomo Leopardi and Giuseppe Ungaretti- as one of the five most representative 20th century poems.At the end of 2010, Enrico Miglino left Italy to go and live in Ibiza, Spain.

Book preview

Enrico Miglino

FRANCESCO

Translated into English by Maria Antonietta Ricagno

Assisted by Jim Hibbert

First English Edition, Ediciones Baleares 2014

ISBN 978-84-941412-3-2

All Right Reserved Ediciones Baleares

Ibiza – Spain

The chapters are prefaced by passages from Caroline Eel Rej, Argo Stern, Xenia Brown, Malcom Leopold, Gerylinn Jones, Lucas Abraham, Jonas Lewinson, Alejandro Escondias, Chelsea De Laurie, Allison Bowles, Eliza Cockney, Arthur Melbourne, Albert J. Collins taken from Songs & Poetry from long distance America, Ed. Gal & Imar, N.Y., 1993, courtesy of the authors.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Butterflies are spirits. After waiting and mutations, they embody just one morning in their one-day-life and they’re gone. They come out from dew, they colour the world and steal moments from men.

(Caroline Del Rey)

Héctor never knew how that memory came up again, suddenly remembered and impossible to dispel. Then the memories cropped up, one by one, as if he suddenly had decided to recall – who knows why – a forgotten time.

At first it entertained him, then it started to weigh on him, then to obsess him. Finally, he tried to involve Irene, thinking it would be useful, but he did not manage to.

Every time he broached the subject, he met a brick wall. In the beginning Héctor couldn’t even talk about it, it was so much his own matter, still confused and undefined; then he accepted the fact that it belonged to the past, a past that came back precise and orderly like many photographs, moments and situations, which almost subverted the present and the everyday reality. But Irene seemed completely unwilling, busy with her job, appointments, unpredictable hours. Surely, Irene wasn’t giving the right importance to what was happening.

As for Héctor, he felt some difficulties talking about a distant time, almost unknown, kept buried for what seemed like centuries in the depths of memories.

Bathed in the night, the apartment lost its outline, an undefined entity which Héctor could not connect with the present. He lapsed into memories as if he were telling a fairy tale to an infant before sleeping. The world seemed delimited by a few observable elements in the half-light. Car headlights’ reflections filtered through the roller shutters, some ray of light, leaked from neon signs, traced out a blurry and undefined shape of a few items: the alarm clock, a marked open book, the chromed edge of the bedside table, the uncertain profile of Irene beside him.

– All right, but tell me your stories some other time; now it’s late. – said Irene in a sleepy voice.

'Maybe I’m going too far', thought Héctor, after all Irene is in another world, made of now and tomorrow, with all her programmes and her messes.

He allowed himself to be wrapped by the night, by the sweetness of a kiss, by the companion who hung on to his neck like a little girl, who was scared of the darkness and did not want to fall asleep without a caress or a body near to hers.

A part of him kept thinking obstinately, about thoughts, about the remote past, about that woman so close and so present. Smooth curves, with green eyes and an inscrutable smile, enigma of secrets, loneliness, it was hard to let himself go. Sleepiness always came late; it was liberating for a couple of hours, projecting him into a world of contradictions. Seeing his past emerge, Héctor became prisoner of everyday life and his days, of the things to do. Days were like enemies that stole from him the time for the thoughts, for reflections, for the need to talk. Names and characters of the memory were submerged in sensations of places and things already happened and those yet to be lived, all of them unforeseeable in the same way. He wanted to have a moment of bliss, throwing everything into the corner of the room. It was just him and Irene embraced in a common desire. Sometimes it happens that two people can become as one

The memory, that came up suddenly by stealing his attention from the present, seemed so real. It was another world, a sense of time past, objects and people already gone. A kind of calm company, that supported him, simplifying his existence. Yesterday, like thirty years ago, had already happened, and neither could change, they did not deceive. Past events were making their way with steady calm, a new predefined and safe present, without hitches, acknowledged.

Endless nights were to come, that lulled him into a troubled and light sleep ready to be ended by the slightest noise. The present reality, the tiny objects creating the usual scenery of his days, pushed him to an escape, to an incommunicable memory, so personal, without any story, except for him.

What Héctor had mistaken for a duplicate of his thoughts entered his mind quickly, taking possession of present gestures, to the point that it was part of that present, without discontinuity. That was his present.

With no explanation, in the tangled maze of his thoughts, Héctor was becoming slowly aware of an imminent and inevitable mutation. He could only wait.

The light of the full moon filtered into the room, extending the shadows endlessly. Héctor could choose any interpretation of the