MEETING AFTER A LIFETIME

“ What a beautiful surprise! I’m  so much happy to see you”

“ Oh, from your face I wouldn’t say it at all…You look rather scared, I’d say”

“ Scared? But no! I’m instead so much incredulous, I can’t quite believe that you’re really here”

“ Yeah, how long since we saw each other?”

“It’s been years, many years”

“Oh, you say years! It seems to me it’s been a lifetime! I’ve been thinking about you a lot”

“ I thought about you too. And every time I thought about calling you but…I couldn’t do it”

“ Ah, you thought about calling me, but you didn’t. And didn’t you want to see me?”

“ Oh, of course, many times I got the urge to see you”

“ Then WHY didn’t you run to me as I did? You knew where you find me”

“ Dear George, you know how life is….It takes you into its traps. You find yourself locked up in your own world, between the usual commitments, and between…the same faces”

“ Ah, you seem almost resigned to me, not at all happy with what you call your usual world and…usual faces. So why not try to get out of it?”

“ Oh, if you knew…I tried to get out of the little world that traps me more than once, but…”

“ But…?” “ But I ended going back to it, actually finding myself encapsulated in it”

“How, when did you try to get out of it? Tell me! I want to know”

“ Oh, it’s not easy to talk to you about this….If you knew how many times I thought that together with you I could have a different life, a life like the one I wanted, like that I dreamed of..”

“ It’s the same for me too. I too thought often that with you my life would have been different and, above all, it would have been as I wanted it….But WHY are you looking at me with those eyes now?”

“ What are you talking about? With what eyes do I look at you? They are my eyes of always! Sure, they aged…like me”

“ No, it’s not your eyes that have aged. It’s your look that is no longer what it was then”

“ Oh, how sad this remark of yours makes me feel!”

“ Tell me, WHY does it make you feel sad that I say this?”

“ Oh, because it makes me think that time runs, passing quickly, and so much time passed…probably only a little time remaining “

“ Doesn’t really it make you think of anything other than when I say to you that you no longer look at me anymore like you did then?”

“ Of course ( that) it makes me think of something else too…”

“ At what? Tell me! I want to know it! I need to know it!”

“ It makes me think I was young then and now I’m old, that’s it! I had my whole life ahead of me and now….I’m running out”

“ But it is not at all true that it makes you think only of this! On, say what it makes you think above all!”

“ How insistent and stubborn you are! Yes, it makes me think that I was madly in love with you then”

“ Finally! That is what I wanted to hear from you! And tell me: were you still in love with me when you left me?”

“ Yes, I was still in love with you but I was too hurt by your betrayal. I was still in love with you but I also hated you”

“ That look with which you looked at me then, it is a look that I have never forgotten. It was like a stab for me”

“ YOU…YOU were the one who stabbed me, cheating me with Paula, who was my dear friend.

You’ll never know how bad I was”

“ And do you know how I was when you left me? Do you know what a drifter life I led for years? I became an alcoholic and a drug addict”

“ Oh, but you came out of your hell, didn’t you?”

“ Yes, I got out of it thanks to the woman who became my wife”

“ You were very lucky then! I have two failed marriages behind me, and I have never known a little serenity in my life”

“ Do you blame me for this?”

“ I have to blame myself if anything”

“ Why do you say that?”

“Oh, you know…that ( this) would be too hard to say”

“ Try it, please….Why? Why this silence now?”

“ I feel like I’ve told you too much. I have to blame myself because….I ‘ve always made the wrong choices”

“ Then were you wrong even then, when you left me?”

“ I’m not talking about then but about the choices I made later”

“ Then you chose to leave me”

“Then I had to leave you. I Could do nothing but leave you. I had no choice then”

 “ Then you thought you had no choice….you had to leave me. And now, now what do you think? On, answer! Why don’t you answer?”

“ Oh, stop George! Enough of your questions about then! Stop it! It’s been such a long time since then”

“ But I need to know! I desperately need to know what you think now. Do you still think you had no choice but to leave me?”

“Oh, but now I don’t know what to tell you….Yes, sometimes It happens I think I could not have left you instead….Auff! But George, please, be quiet. Shortly before your arrival I was attacked by my ex-partner and I’m shocked…I’m afraid he’ll kill me sooner or later”

“ Dear Anne, excuse me, I’m sorry….Let me hold your hands among my hands”

“ Now you’re the one looking at me strangely.  What else is there? What more do you have to tell me?”

“ Darling, just before coming to you I killed my wife”                                                                                                                                       

“ Oh, George! I can not believe it! Your wife….wasn’t  she the one who saved you ? who help you to get out of your hell?”

“ Of course, it was her. But then, over time she became the absolute mistress of my life, she became my jailer”

“ Oh poor, poor George!”