BEAUTIFUL CONSEQUENCES

By Gian Franco Pepe

Lisa's life, apparently perfect, hidest the lack something else and she, lost in an attempt to
find out, was it ends to get lost more.
She lives in Brazzacco, a village near Udine, with her husband Giorgio and her son
Luca,dividing between family and teacher's work. Her world, to her more and more tight, it
force her to cream her dreams, when instead imagined chasing them, to live with the only
purpose of research happiness.
Then one day she meets Marco, a man capable of mixing her life with one glance.
To reset everything, by doing she born again. Lisa lives their love story, passionate and
tormented, through a diary, inside the what there are words, thoughts, poems, that
accompany her in a journey within herself, made of hopes and lost dreams.
A journey that brings Lisa to understand to have the only desire it happiness, without ever
experiencing it really.

• Language: English
• Publisher: lfapublisher
• Release date: Apr 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835803867

Book preview

Gianfranco Pepe

BEAUTIFUL CONSEQUENCE

- ROMANCE –

Gianfranco Pepe

BEAUTIFUL CONSEQUENCE

Romance

This work is the result of fantasy any reference to facts,

people or places is purely casual

LFA Publisher

Lello Lucignano Editore

Via A. Diaz, 17 -80023-

Caivano -Napoli, Italy

Partita Iva 06298711216

www.lfaeditorenapoli.it --- [e-mail]

Distribuzione cartacea Libro Co. Italia -Firenze -

To my father.

We’re never too old to set another goal or

to dream of another dream.

C.S Lewis

Time is only a conviction

that smokes certainties

and changes intentions in repentance,

when turning back,

we realize that we have lost it.

Chase your thoughts away,

regain control,

no… that’s not the direction.

Go back, start from your steps,

you can’t get involved,

you don’t have to indulge them.

Here reason,

do not be fooled,

many times a gust of wind,

even if pleasant, announces a storm

and you are still in time to take shelter.

SEPTEMBER

I

Each of us knows himself. He knows what are the things that can make him feel good, those that can make him happy and others that are harmful. Yet most of the time, we don’t recognize our malaise or know how to deal with it. We drag day after day a weight of the soul, slowing down, until we completely succumb to our fears, to get to the point where you prefer not to do, not to think, frightened by analysis on the choices made and consequently on you mistakes. It would be enough to make peace with oneself, avoiding to hide behind a wall of repentance, which have as their only solution the contentment of their own life and of flashes of happiness destined to disappear almost immediately. We become so insecure that we get lost, waiting for that moment that will never come, defeated and unable to dream.

The sound of the saxophone of Your latest trick, coming from the clock radio, made her opened her eyes in the warmth of the dark, pleasantly disoriented. With her right hand she turned off the alarm and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. In the yellowish glow of the room, she turned to look at the shape gathered under the covers of her husband, realizing that she was in her bed, in her home, in her world. She lay still for a while, in an attempt to recompose every fragment of her life, then with an efforts she gathered up her certainties and pulled herself out of bed.

In the two meters distance between the bedroom and the bathroom, Lisa felt the anguish dozing with her the night before and tried unsuccessfully to rinse her, together with her face, before putting on her makeup. A little mascara on the lashes, a pencil line around the eyes; she had never liked too much makeup. As a girl, all she had to do was put on a lipstick, look in the mirror just long enough to straighten her hair and go out.

Outside the window, the twilight exploded in the sparkling air of the early morning, animated by the crescendo of tweets, leaving she completely indifferent concentrated in front of the mirror: high school teacher, forty years old, a life spent in regrets. Lisa moved closer to the woman reflected in the mirror. The new wrinkle that appeared around the eyes did not seem to interest her much, she was more careful to check her face in search of the girl who left too quickly, bringing all her dreams with her.

She went downstairs and entered in the kitchen. Saturday was the day when tension could finally be released. The whole week slipped away after dragging her, and she could, in a way, feel free. She put her work bag on the chairs by the table and in her solitude made coffee. While the mocha was muttering, she had placed a pile of notes and checks on the table to quickly tidy up before going to work.

In one compartment of the bag, an orange leather bound diary was hidden under the daily diary and a few sheets, and she touched it feeling the soft contact under the fingers. Desperation came forward, Lisa bent over herself with her forearms pressed against her body, to avoid scream, suffocated almost immediately in tears.

It is always difficult to move forward when it does not see beyond your torment. That constant rethinking of what led you to not be happier. Your start with alternating between moments of calm and those of agitation, between tears and joy, which hide the total lack of ability to stay in balance.

She managed to take courage, in a minimum time between pain and resignation, while outside the dawn mixed the colors of a new day, for her, equal to the others.

Each of us should know ourselves, or better understand our moods, feel the smallest changes, recognize the closure stages. We end up becoming spectators instead of actors, while everything flows in front without having any chance to interfere, unable to change the course of our life. Let’s start by sinking into that abyss made up of expected opportunities, gradually going lower and lower until reaching the bottom. Yet there is something incredibly true about being one step away from the bottom step, the certainty that from then you can only go up. Turn your back, take a breath and start the ascent, all this with an absurd happiness on you, only because we can glimpse a light, albeit in the distance. Or maybe it is only our imagination that makes us see it, when going up, we realize that it is easier to go down. We then cling to anything that gives value to that effort made against all logic. In the end it would be much simpler to let it go, to consider one’s inability, to submit to defeat, to let the current drag us.

As every morning Lisa wakes up her son, she prepared breakfast and waits for him to be ready to accompany him to school. This was her ritual. Except Sunday, where she loved to shut herself in the bathroom, fill the tube with foam and perfumed oils and immerse herself in. In this microcosm made of silence and thoughts, she felt another woman, and finally her anxieties, her fears, were washed away together with the water.

On the other hand we let ourselves go, It is inevitable when we abandon our dreams, completely sucked into reality. Mind is completely addicted and no longer rebels, but the spirit points through the organism. It wiggles, contorts, sends unequivocal signals. Someone calls these symptoms stress, someone else almost whispering depressive states. We become more and more apathetic, indifferent to life, without urges and push. Everything becomes monotonous, repetitive, a firm body moved by inertia, unable to rebel, to recognize one’s own evil.

She arrived late to school, a small queue, caused by an accident on the highway, had broken her monotony. She hurriedly entered in the teacher’s room, greeting with forcefully chewed good morning, sitting behind the large wooden table in the center of the room.

She was so immersed in herself that she barely noticed the man behind the other end of the table. Sitting among the other professor, he was talking to Marina, his geography colleague, who remained glued to him, while he pretended to listen to her.

He look at her for a moment before smiling at her, then with a nod of his head in a bow, he reaches out to shake her hand. «Pleasure. I’m Marco Zanardi, the new professor of math.»

«Lisa Parussini, the professor of history», she replied in a firm voice, standing on her chair, waiting to give herself a certainty she knew she didn’t have.

She continues not to give him much importance, so closed in her silence that ménages to estrange herself completely. Now addicted to her life, closed between family and school, she had lost all enthusiasm and forced to live in regret of what she wanted to be.

When do you really start to regret? When we realized that we are no longer young, when the light-heartedness of dreams leads us to believe that everything is possible? Or when the things left behind remain as indelible footsteps and we are sure we have walked a little, convinced instead of having gone far? It is not the road traveled that gives us satisfaction, not the satisfaction of having reached a point that makes us feel satisfied, but the obstinacy of always going forward perhaps the real regret lies in not being able to believe anymore.

Lisa felt the insistence of the man she had just met in staring at her and this annoyed her. She had always felt uncomfortable when someone looked at her and this time was no exception. She opened the register pretending to read, adjusted the lock of hair on her forehead with her fingers and crossed her legs under the table. At that moment, out of curiosity, she looked up. He curled his mouth to one side and lightly pronounced his lips, smiling again. He was certainly a handsome man, tall, dark hair, with broad shoulders and well-placed physique. He certainly did gym or maybe swimming. The symmetrical features of his face exalted his thin and overwhelming eyes, his way of smiling mesmerized, enough to force her to concentrate again so as not to look up. He sat sideways on the chair, a little behind the table, his left forearm resting on the backrest and between the fingers of his right hand he was twirling a ballpoint pen, with a safe area, covered with a halo of charm.

Yes, he was certainly a handsome man, yet he was uncomfortable with Lisa.

Her deep eyes fanned her from behind the table, focusing on every detail: the blond hair gathered behind the head, the fleshy lips covered with a thread of lipstick, went down along the shoulders, then the neck, until dwelling on the blouse open slightly in front. Again they went back to the face, thin eyelashes, green eyes, highlighted even more from a pencil outline. They dug and spied more and more a deep down, as if wanting to read inside her.

The embarrassment scene was interrupted by the arrival of the Headmaster. Lisa felt relieved to see him enter, despite not had ever tolerated. At least he had diverted attention to she thought.

To be honest, it must be said that the principal Nicola Olivo was unpleasant to most of the school. Grim and with a way all his to want to appear nice, he was famous above all among colleagues for her brazen advances. With a shrill voice, annoying, every word was an allusion, a clear statement of his being a pig. Fat and always sweaty, he spoke to you less than a few centimeters from your face, forcing you to breathe the smell of sweat and cigarettes touched your hands, arms, shoulders, enough to make her feel violated, raped.

Yet that morning, Lisa almost felt like thanking him.

«Good morning everyone!» began the principal. «I see that you already have met Professor Zanardi, our new alternate for mathematics.» Then turning to him, looking at him from above, he added: «I hope that your stay in this school will be best. I’m sure he will be able to live up to the teacher Degano, our esteemed colleague, absent because of maternity leave.» He said those words without worrying too much to hide a slight horror inside them. The teacher Degano was his pupil, a sort of factotum which he managed at will. Her absence was only for him a nuisance. «Follow me into my office professor. I show them the schedule and lesson times.»

Lisa moved her head slightly, giving him a quick glance and realizing she’s being spied on again. She spun around, as if she had been the one surprised to look at him.

Outside, the rain beat on the large windows and on the canopy of iron from the gym below, so strong as to remind her the street percussionist listened to as a girl during a vacation in Florence. The African boy who used dishes, pots and pans jars, produced a rhythmic metallic sound, much more pleasant. The memory gave her a start, looking back on those days far away where she was free and confident.

What happens to dreams? Where had he hidden them? Lisa doesn’t remembered it. She had no memory of his past life, when she was happy, carefree. How many times as a girl had imagined her future: when I grow up I want to... The haste of girl to grow up, she ran together with her dreams, always side by side, always with the same step. Finally a woman, suddenly realizing the truth: she and her dreams had run on two different tracks, two parallel lines that never cross.

It was still early to begin her history lesson. Pending Lisa decided to read the book she bought on some stall days before, in the small market in Piazza XX Settembre in Udine, concentrating to the point of forgetting the noise, rain, school.

The sound of the bell started the lessons. Lisa picked up quickly the books and her notes and went to the door holding them close. When she saw him standing a few steps away from her, say new was embarrassed. How ridiculous you are!

Marco had gone back into the room without her noticing and now he was chatting with the secretary in front of the door. In seeing her approach he waved her hand, giving her the step. «You are welcome.»

Lisa simulated a smile with a grimace of her mouth, then lowered your head looking for the exact place to put your feet. She walked down the corridor to the classrooms, walking among the colleagues and latecomers, with the same rigidity as a soldier during a parade, to avoid looking back. She knew about to be followed by his eyes seeing him come out immediately after her. She entered the classroom quickly, as if she wanted to hide from a danger, meanwhile a voice inside her covered the noise of the benches and chairs shifted between laughter and screams, telling her something not to she understood. One of those voices difficult to distinguish, not to know never whether to listen or ignore them. Maybe she was doing them simply notice the way that man you just met, he had turned his feelings in one fell swoop, giving them an embarrassment different than usual. By now she was used to the fact that men looked at her insistently and sometimes she succeeded even to imagine their thoughts.

Yet he was not at first simulating sinful thoughts, on the contrary he was admiring her, as can be appreciated a painting or a flower of particular beauty.

It took her a while to understand. In reality she hadn’t felt at all in awe, but something new had washed her off what had been normal for her so far, namely feeling clumsy and awkward in front of others.

The truth is that for the first time, in front of a man, she was felt flattered.

AUTUMN

II

The clear air throw the mountains in the distance, until they touched the sky, making them appear so close that they can be reached with a jump. In the blue, milky white clouds, they formed figures and the clear light framed the streets of the center of Udine, where the coming and going of people, gave the impression of many ants busy in their work.

Lisa particularly liked that climate: the typical air of late September that warms you, making you want to do.

Around the tables outside the bars, someone took advantage of the rays of the sun, to take off the sweater and stay in short sleeves, while the noises were closed outside the restricted traffic area, increasing the desolation around her. Under the arcades, hidden in the shadow of Saturday afternoon, Lisa ran her thoughts, occasionally crossing faces that she paid no attention to. Lives other than her who did not imagine the cliffs from which she looked out, seeking meaning in God, or in a cynical destiny cruel. From behind the Ray Bans, she occasionally stopped to watch the windows, a way to rest from the mind’s fancy flights, indulged as the only solution to silence her anguish, that took her breath away by suffocating her. The face contracted by a sudden dense in the heart, she made her eyes narrow for a moment and a memory altered the perception, until it gave the impression to live a déjà vu.

In front