The First True Lie: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

anymore.
    There are presents, of course, but they’re not always enough.
    “Aren’t you going to unwrap your gifts? That one with the red bow is from me; the lilac-colored one is from Grandma; that one with the airplane paper is from Giulia. Merry Christmas, my pet.”
    Already the day after Christmas is better.
    And tomorrow will already be better too. Maybe tomorrow things will be different, my pet. All I have to do is make tomorrow come soon.
    I bring the quilt with the clouds onto the sofa, along with Blue and the koala. The alarm clock quietly beams green Martian codes my way. I try to close my eyes.
    It’s strange to sleep with the light on, but I don’t feel like turning it off tonight; it’s better this way. On the inside of my eyelids I see swarms of microbes crazily moving about, like when you look into a microscope and spot the ones responsible for who knows what disease; or when you stare at a clear sky when it’s really, really clear, inhabited only by millions of quote marks without words, without explanations, without motives.
    At Grandma’s house, where it’s dark even during the day, when the sun comes through the shutters, the dust particles do a dance in the air, glittering like metallic paint. A ray of cosmic dust, penetrating the lazy half light of the afternoon, a sword that shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow and grants special powers, makes me a secret knight of the great disorder’s higher order, a master cherry-stone spitter.
    Deep in darkness, there was also the music room, with its armchairs covered with ghost sheets, the coatrack covered in ghosts’ overcoats, and the forgotten instruments that no one used anymore but that absolutely no one was allowed to touch.
    “Practice on this,” Grandma would say, handing me a mandoline so that I could slice the hard-boiled eggs.
    The piano was opened only for my grandfather’s funeral. Grandma sat down on the upholstered stool, stiffly erect, her eyes bright from crying or from too many toasts in her husband’s honor: “A good man after all.”
    She began to play military marches, bobbing her purple hair from side to side, maybe in celebration of finally having become the supreme commander of the whole shebang. My grandmother has purple hair, a detail that has always really made me laugh.

2
    I hear an ambulance siren, coming closer and closer. It’s here. It’s parked in the living room or under the bed. It’s deafening me. I stick my fingers in my ears, but it’s no use, the noise continues. I wake up in a sweat. The alarm clock bores into my sleep like the drill they used to break up the street down below. I fling a heavy arm out of bed to turn it off. It was only a bad dream. Everything’s all right. Then I remember. Nothing’s all right. Not one single thing. What am I doing here on the sofa?
    Mama didn’t get up this morning either.
    There’s too much silence now that I’ve turned off the siren and the jackhammer that were hollowing out my head.
    Mama’s not getting up anymore.
    Now I remember everything.
    I sit up to think about my new situation. I look at the living-room furniture; it’s familiar and strange at the same time, like being in a hotel or at someone else’s house. Blue gets his purr motor running.
    I have to find some courage.
    I don’t have any.
    I’m in a daze, sitting on the sofa with my legs and arms open wide, waiting for another pair of arms to pick me up, to pose me like she used to for baby pictures, a naked, confused newborn in the middle of the bed, like the picture of Grandpa when he was young, a chubby little grandfather dressed up in frills, looking nothing like the bony old man I knew.
    I tell my feet to shake off this daze, tell my legs to carry me down the hall to see how things are going, tell my head to be a bit more positive. But they’re not listening.
    At times like these it’s usually Mama who comes to get me moving.
    Now I have to get myself moving. I tell myself I have to get