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- Mi dispiace - was the answer.
The vehicle started leaving a considerable cloud of dust behind its wheels. Carlos stood still, sunk in tragedy. In the distance he could still see the sign for the van. Pizzeria Sorbillo.
- Are they Italian? he said to himself, and thought he had to keep reading the guide.
When he approached his suitcase, it was missing. From then on, he was going to travel light of luggage. Fortunately, he had his backpack, wallet and guide with him. He approached the information desk and was told in an understandable francoitaliano about the direction of the pizzeria and how to get there by bus.
That night Carlos had an excellent pizza dinner at Pizzeria Sorbillo, a fairly successful approach to the original house in Naples, under the perplexed gaze of Aphrodite's cousin. Luckily the place also offered rooms and Carlos did not hesitate to stay there. He knew his beloved goddess would be around.
In a spartan room, with a mattress on the floor as the only luxury, Carlos spent a night worried about his African future. To avoid this, he continued to read the Eritrean guide and saw its interesting places, its currency, its languages and its history. Then he understood why his host spoke Italian. Eritrea had been a former Italian colony in Mussolini's time.
The next day, at breakfast, he began a conversation with his cousin.
- Are you Italian?
- Io? No, ci parlo italiano perché mio padre fu soldato con gli italiani tanto tempo fa. Capisci? Mio padre... soldato.
- Okay, I understand. Your father soldier.
- Tu resti qui per quanto tempo? Quanti giorni, capisci?
- I don't know - he said with a shrug - I want to see your cousin.
- Sei veramente innamorato di Afrodita? Amore?
- Yes. I want to live with her. Forever - said the young man, having his index fingers joined together to expand the possibilities of being understood.
- Parlerò con lei. Vieni qui a mezzogiorno. Capisci? Alle dodici qui - he explained with the help of his fingers.
After a long walk to the Catholic Cathedral, also a legacy of the Italians, at 11:30 Carlos was already sitting in the pizzeria, nervously awaiting the arrival of his beloved. He imagined that this would be the final day in his pretensions to fall in love with Aphrodite.
At twelve o'clock, the woman of his dreams came in. She wasn't going alone. She was accompanied by two old men she imagined would be familiar. They sat at another table and seemed not to notice his presence. They were served their food and began to eat, as they discussed quietly, while they glanced briefly at the lonely young man. Even from a distance, though he did not understand what they were talking about, he felt an evident disagreement between Aphrodite and the two men. When they finished eating, the conversation seemed to fade away. At first glance it seemed that the old man sitting in front of the young woman had said the last word.
After Carlos had already eaten two pizzas to spend time and when he felt his hopes were waning, the waiter approached his table.
- Lei è invitato alla tavola dei signori di là. Mi accompagna, per piacere?
The gestures left no room for doubt. He was asking him to go to Aphrodite's table.
After the introductions, he was invited to sit on the free seat between Aphrodite and the more assertive old man, his father. A conversation followed between the father and the young man, which Aphrodite would translate without being allowed to participate.
- I've heard that you are after my daughter. Is this true?
- Yes, I'm completely in love with her. I'm sure of it. I want to live with her.
- But she doesn't want to go back to Europe anymore.
- We can live here. I don't care about that. I just want to know if she wants me. I know Aphrodite now is a widow. We met at a gym in La Ciotat. But I still don't know if she likes me, I mean, if she likes me as a husband.
He told us that your profession, whatever it is because he did not want to describe it to us, is not very honest.
- My life in France is over. I want to start a new life here. I am strong. I can drive. I can work in anything.
- We are Eritrean Catholics and as such we believe that in order for the Most High to forgive the sin of heretics, they must suffer a penance. Would you be willing to do the penance assigned to you by our priest?
- I will do whatever you tell me to win your daughter's love, - he said, staring at her for a long time without blinking at all, though he only got a glimpse of her between surprised and intimidated.
The second old man, the young woman's uncle, who had hitherto remained silent, introduced himself.
- I am the patriarch of Asmara and uncle of Aphrodite. In order for you to aspire to the love of our daughter in faith, you must repent of your sins, fulfil your penance, and be baptized as a new man. Then we can bless your marriage, so that God may give you children to make you happy until the end of your days.
- What am I to do? said Carlos, almost interrupting him.
- If you really love Aphrodite you must go to the land of Aphar to do your penance. You'll work first. Then the shaman will give you the sacred drink so that you can wait in full purity for the flower to come out of the tree of the dragon's blood. You will remain there until his flowers come out, bathing in its blood. Bring Aphrodite a bunch of dragon flowers and then you'll be worthy of belonging to our tribe. Are you willing to face the challenge?
- Yes. Whenever you want.
- To the caravan!
They all got up quietly. The patriarch took Carlos by the hand and they began to walk, followed by Aphrodite and her father. The street was full of voices incomprehensible to a foreigner. They were buyng and selling, greeted and laughed, and as they approached their destination, the energy in the volume of the voices increased. At the end they arrived at a large stockyard where about twenty camels remained tied up, who were being saddled and their supplies checked, as they faced a long journey. It was the salt caravan. This time, a young French urbanite without any knowledge of beasts of burden or of the language spoken by the natives would be part of the expedition.
A few hours later the caravan left. For a few days Carlos would be a camel driver for the first time in his life. At his farewell he could take nothing but a long look of interest from Aphrodite, whose image would follow him everywhere during his period of penance.
Sun, wind and dust, days with eternal hours of mechanical leg movements following those of the camel drivers and camels that preceded him, absolute concentration on the absurdity he had gotten himself into, unmoving contemplation of the incomprehensible conversations of his companions while they ate something and drank another cup of hot tea at night,... and again a bolting sun, unbearable, because they were in the hottest place on the planet, the desert of Danakil.
In a few days Carlos got burnt, peeled, burnt again but survived covered with aloe gel, changing his clothes for the same chilaba and turban that the others wore. On the way they only found another caravan travelling in the opposite direction, with the camels loaded with large plates of fossil salt. Among the caravaners they exchanged joyful conversations, laughter and believed that they used the word French several times in their conversations.
Carlos had thought that the end of the journey would be an idyllic oasis of the Thousand and One Nights, but to his disappointment the caravan stopped in a ghost town. Everything around him was part of a lunar landscape dominated by silence and emptiness. They were already in another country, in Dallol, a former mining town from which Europeans had extracted salt and potash in the past. From that past, only the remains of buildings, machinery and railway parts remained in a desert with no tracks.
Over the next few days, all the men worked hard to get as many plates as possible out of a salt lake that had run out of water. Levers, pickaxes, chisels and hammers, everything was good to get salt out of that infernal depression. There were nights when the pain and fatigue kept him awake. Then he lay looking at the brightest moon he had ever seen, while he heard the melancholic songs of the Afar men. Then he saw floating before his eyes the last look of the woman who had changed his life, the day of farewell.
The night before returning with their load, there was a party and everyone danced and sang around a fire made of wood that they had carried there. They even offered him wine, which he hadn't tasted in a while. When they least expected it, a man with black skin, black clothes, and huge eyes staring at them appeared.
- Mr Jean, Mr. Jean - they all said at once, and in a second silence reigned.
The newcomer approached Carlos and for his relief spoke perfect French.
- Are you the Frenchman?
- Yes, me. My name is Carlos.
- I am Monsieur Jean, your shaman. I come from Sudan. I must congratulate you, you have passed your first test: heat, wind, loneliness and work. Tomorrow the caravan will leave but you are staying with me. When the dragon's blood tree blooms, it will be the moment when you can meet your beloved again.
When the first rays of sunshine illuminated the dry land, the caravan returned to its destination with its load of salt, but Monsieur Jean and Carlos took a different path, mounted on small donkeys, which seemed impossible for them to carry a person with them, but theu did. Soon the smell was noticeable. It was a pungent, acidic smell, greatly annoying to the sense of smell, but Monsieur Jean, who preceded him by pointing the way, did not seem to appreciate it.
- What is this smell? Carlos asked.
- You'll soon see - was the laconic answer.
Indeed, as soon as they reached the top of the hill, Carlos could not believe what he was seeing. It was hell on earth. Bubbling lakes, yellow, red, green, red waters, with 1 acidity, where there was no life, because in them sulphuric acid reigned, preventing any cellular life. An apocalyptic yet real vision.
- What is this? - he asked him
- The entrance to hell. You were going there, but I'll save you. Your sincere love has saved you.
Enduring as he could the unbearable smell, covering his nose, coughing, he followed the shaman to the top of a mountain with trees. He recognized them. They were like the ancient dragon tree of Icod de los Vinos in the Canary Islands, where one of his French clients had taken him for a sentimental getaway as his friend Beatriz called those weekends of intense sex in a hotel.
Following a known itinerary, they finally reached the largest tree in the xerophilous forest.
- Strip naked, completely - ordered Monsieur Jean.
Charles stripped off his light desert clothes and, following the shaman's instructions, stood by the tree. Monsieur Jean pulled out a machete and slashed the tree trunk over Carlos' head. He closed his eyes, frightened, to feel immediately that his body was covered in a red milky liquid.
- May the blood of the dragon deliver you from your filthiness - said the shaman, raising a small cross made of eagle's toenails.
- May the dragon's blood cover you with goodness and human love - he continued, touching a rattle made from a small dried pumpkin.
- May the blood of the dragon open your heart to be reborn in a new reality - he said, bringing a wine pumpkin to his lips.
Carlos, after so many days of unfulfilled thirst, drank the concoction until he emptied the pumpkin. And he immediately began to feel the effects of ayahuasca.
One day passed, one night passed, the next day came and Carlos was still out of this world. His body was a realm of sweating and chills, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, peeing and diarrhea. His mind, completely dissociated from his red-tinted flesh that rolled on the ground, ascended over the trees, strongly inspired the vapours of earthly hell, and ascended with them into a sky far from the planet, overshadowed by distance. He felt the people with whom he had been related and he detected his fear of loneliness, his desire to find meaning in life, he contemplated his trembling, ecstatic, sunken eyes, anesthetized eyes and even dead eyes, to see on the other side the happy eyes of children for whom time is not a concept, eyes of joy and happiness, of acceptance, of interest and belonging. He saw himself as a child with his mother holding his hand, but the mother sank into a sewer without any complaint, as if the sinking had been part of his life forever. The boy became young and then the mouths appeared. He felt the pain of mouths ripping out his eyes, and though they came back in his eye sockets, sadder, more insecure, they ripped them out again and again, until he saw nothing. He heard only the laughter of the thugs who had found such pleasure in his blindness. But there came out a lightning sun in the shape of Aphrodite’z head, and the laughter was fulminated by the rays of lightning coming out of her eyes. From his mouth emerged a fountain of hot urine that was poured over the bodies, destroying them, turned into dust that slowly fell into Dallol's sulphur hell, blowing up millions of multicoloured fireworks that filled the night, making it day. Then he saw himself rising from the depths of the sulphur, in the form of a great transparent serpent with his human head ascending to the aphrodisiac sun, through the mouth of the Sun-woman. That's where it all ended up. A soft, warm snow covered the stars, covered the acidic lakes, covered his eyelids that covered his whole body... And then he knew the meaning of the word peace.
When Carlos became conscious, recognizing the environment in which he was, Monsieur Jean was quietly having tea.
And so many days passed. Charles became immersed in the very broad culture that emanated from the wise shaman, and in turn he told him about his European life, which the master did not know.
When summer came, the dracaena ombet flourished. Bunches of white flowers opened up and beautified such a harsh environment, making people love life of a planet that produces eternal life, season after season.
- The day has come, Carlos. Let's go back to the salt mine.
The journey back in search of his beloved was a constant obsession for him. He had to keep the inflorescence in water so that the sun would not wither its beauty and would devalue the gift so hard to win for her.
He came back excited about his story with a happy ending, but it couldn't be. A bomb on the ground destroyed his illusion, blowing up the camel, the pitcher and the flower. Assaulted by a guerrilla group, in a few minutes the catastrophe flooded the desert and silence saw the lamentations through the smoke. Camel drivers killed, camels and cargo stolen. When the police arrived, they could only count the dead. Carlos wasn't there. His track was gone.
Two years later, Aphrodite was among her usual group of French tourists, telling them the history of her country while accompanying them on the monumental circuit of Asmara. It was a very hot day, so at noon they stopped at an open-air bar under a plastic roof that provided shade and partially mitigated the heat. On national television, the news was on. A flashing Latest News sign appeared on the screen, and then a hooded man chained a bearded white prisoner to the camera. It was Carlos.
- Read - said the hooded man urgently.
Carlos obeyed immediately.
- The African Revolutionary Movement, in the face of France's imperialist attack on our Muslim brothers and sisters, and after refusing to withdraw its crusaders from the Middle East despite successive threats that such an expansionist policy would cause the suffering of its population, and refusing to negotiate the release of its people by an exchange of prisoners, has tried and sentenced to death the French citizen Carlos, born in La Ciotat, as a representative of the attacking power. May Allah take him to His bosom.
A tense silence followed the statement. The hooded man put a curved knife in front of the camera and grabbed the hostage by the hair.
- Aphrodite, I love you! - was heard rumbling before the desperate gaze of the guide, expanding the image in a few hours to the whole world.
The blood spurted out under a head where only the image of Aphrodite bathed in purifying dragon blood, attached to his own, remained momentarily.
The following week, the front page theme of the beheading, present in all media, provoked a national crowd in the cemetery of La Ciotat. The heartbroken mother, overwhelmed by the media event, accompanied by Aphrodite in all black, could do little more than insistently repeat:
- Thank you, thank you very much.
And life continued on the planet, as the contradictions of an unjust system made standard are repeated and even extended.
TALE OF THE MOTHER OF THE 7 DWARFS
Sant’Alfio, Sicily (Italy)
DECEMBER 1995
It all started on Black Friday. Alessia and her husband, Massimo, went down to the shopping centre near Catania, where the announcement of the pre-Christmas sales deeply attired the compulsive cravings of her husband, hardly contained after a period of summer tourist boom. In their village, there were more and more people who sooner or later would ascend Etna from their village, after having a soda or a cup of coffee, buying the appetizing sweets that the husband made and were sold by Alessia with her usual spontaneity and joy.
After taking one of the trolley and, in imitation of so many other consumers, pushing or rather leaning on it, they entered the overheated hall. Before entering the larger stores, several people offered accessories at stalls along the corridors, hoping to take a few crumbs of the wallets filled already for a short time in the pockets of the mass arrivals of mountain people that Friday.
Alessia was particularly impressed by a mushroom stand. They were not the typical seasonal mushrooms that attracted Sicilians, more and more gourmets, more and more eager to try new flavours. It was a botanical stand, an extension of the usual florist's shop, perhaps the idea of the florist after having made a big profit in All Saints' Day. In there different types of mushrooms with pleasant colours were offered, as if they were flowers, the flowers of the forest in autumn, each with explanatory info. Although Massimo didn't seem to pay any attention, the usual outing for the marriage meant that everything had to be done together, so if one stopped, the partner had to also stop and wait until the object was left or bought, in order to continue together to the next point of interest, because that was a couple who get along fine. In that place, a dwarf with oriental features passionately explained the virtues of each specimen, as if it were a treasure.
- Black truffle and white truffle / aroma for the throat.
Alessia sniffed like a dog, trying to catch something of the scent of that exquisite mushroom.
- Russula white foot, purple foot / the first is good, the second is bad.
People smiled at the occurrences of the simple couplets that the charlatan shaman hawked.
- Amanita caesarean, amanita muscaria / one delicious, the other devilish....
- Look, Massimo. That's the dwarf mushroom. How pretty! It sounds like a fairy tale.
- But I don't think it's edible, is it?
- I'm going to ask. Excuse me, excuse me! Can that red and white mushroom be eaten?
- This one? The amanita muscaria?
- The one with dwarfs in fairy tales.
- It has been consumed for thousands of years. It has been the inspiration for religions and literature. You can travel and dream with it. It's the mushroom of the gods.
- It's poisonous, isn't it?
- It is not food for the stomach, but it is for the mind.
- And can be found somewhere?
- In the pine forests under the volcano.
- What's the matter, Alessia? You're not going to go and pick non-edible mushrooms, are you? - her husband scolded her.
