Unsent Letters #17

An Intrigue of Departure, Cinema, and Dry Cleaning

Photo by Nikola Bikar on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

Dear R.,

Many years have passed since you left, slamming the door and vanishing into the night. Your fingerprints were the last ones on that door for days on end; I didn't even bother closing the chain lock at night. Burglars were way down on my list of preoccupations. Not that I’ve ever minded being alone, shut indoors, having no contact with the world, living solely on books and music for long stretches. You can feel someone’s presence long after they’re gone; until, abruptly, you no longer can. And in those days of voluntary reclusion, I wanted -- had, really -- to absorb every tiny bit of yours, like deciding to slow down on a delicious dish or a beautiful book coming to an end. 

Then, one day, you were gone for good: gone from the walls, from the objects, from the sheets, from the air. And I resumed life in its barely tolerable normality, with ups and downs, the occasional blacks and whites, and too many grays. What kept me from writing sooner, I don’t know. I had almost convinced myself that there was no adequate combination of words to please my ever-changing moods. And maybe there’s some vague truth to that. What I do know is that my tendency to resist responsibility, to run from things, played a role. How funny is that -- if there was anyone running that night, it certainly wasn’t me.

Anyway, It’s too late, to be late again, sang David Bowie. But here I am. There's too much rain outside, and my thoughts have nowhere else to go. 

I’m not writing because it was long overdue, though. Yes, there’s that component too, and I understand it’s kind of weird to show up one day, after years of no attempt to get in touch, with a letter that doesn’t even recount what I’m up to and how I’ve been, or how miserable I was those days and all the words I would have wanted to utter and didn’t, or couldn’t. I know I’m the only one to blame for what happened between us, and that I deserved every second of all the unpleasant consequences of your departure. But I’m not writing to talk about this.

I’m writing because I took my blue coat to the dry cleaner’s last week -- the worn-out one that you liked to borrow. Yes, it’s falling apart, but I still wear it with gusto. On my way there, I remembered that you used to leave little pieces of paper in its pockets with things scribbled on them. They were messages meant for me. Some of them were cryptic, like I’m twenty pages away from Jane’s murder, by which, to this day, I still don’t know what you meant. A book you were reading, perhaps? Why, then, write it down on that piece of paper to make it retrievable for me? Others were things you wanted to say to me but couldn’t to my face, like I hate it when you interrupt me. You were shy and non-confrontational, and suffered the unpredictability of my reactions. I collected those paper messages and put them away. Neither of us ever said anything to the other about writing or collecting them. It was something that we both knew but never spoke of.

Then came the time when I found the "Would you go watch a porn together" message. It was pre-Internet, and porn theaters were still around. Red-light movie theaters, as they were called on the back page of Corriere della Sera. Remember how sometimes we would read the titles together, and you laughed so hard your face turned bright red, tears wetted the bottom of your eyes, and your breath failed you? I always marveled at how you -- so composed and quiet and slow-moving in a delicate posture -- transformed into someone else in that moment of little exposure to something you perceived as a world not yours, a world of transgression and supposedly things not right. Instead of clamming up and raising an emotional shell around you, you let yourself go. As a subconscious defense mechanism against those things, you made them funny when you caught yourself liking them. I observed you as carefully as scientists observe their beloved rodents.

We went to Cinema Cielo¹, in Viale Premuda. I knew you were going to choose that one: every time we’d pass there by tram we’d confabulate about it a little. How could a porn theater possibly have such a beautiful name, you said. Once, I did a little research and found out that the place opened in 1927 under the name of Cinema Esperia, changed it to Cielo in 1941, and began to show erotic films in 1980, when -- under a new ownership and management -- it became part of the Milanese red-light circuit that back then included a number of other theaters like Giardini, Impero, and Tiziano. I never told you about these findings; I thought you wouldn’t be particularly interested. Your sole interest was in its name: why it was called Cielo. That, I found out as part of my little research, and told you: when they extensively renovated the venue in 1941, they changed its name to Cielo due to the numerous light points that sparkled in the ceiling, almost evoking a starry sky.

I forget how much we talked about this whole porn film expedition beforehand, or whether we talked about it at all, after I discovered your paper message. We surely discussed the where, the when, and the what. But I’m not sure we ever talked about the why. I decided to assume that you wanted to do it for fun, as an extension of our title-reading activity on the back page of the paper. There must have been more to it. We weren’t that big on talking things through: I’d get impatient and nervous; you’d get embarrassed and reluctant. Between us, there was a tacit agreement that some allegedly sensitive subjects weren’t up for discussion. If anything, they would resolve spontaneously. Our relationship was one big tacit agreement. And as a chronic overthinker and overtalker, I hated this.  

So we went on a Wednesday afternoon. Remembering the title of the film would be too much of a stretch, right now. But I do remember the plot. An evil woman was on the loose to seduce and ultimately kill her male victims by having sex with them nonstop until their bodies would be drained of vital fluids. They’d eventually drop like empty hemp sacks, dead. The initial scene was a dialogue between two policemen where one was saying that they’d found yet another victim not far from there, in the woods, his naked body completely dried out, including his testicles (these words I remember very specifically). We laughed and munched on our popcorn, but kind of in a muted way -- we didn’t want to ruin the solemnity of the event for the rest of the audience. There must have been another ten people in the theater, besides us. I guess you remember what happened about half way through the showing. They turned on the lights, not sure why. Everybody covered their faces or sinked into their chairs, except us two and a gentleman who kept an upright posture and a serious demeanor. He was bold, had piercing blue eyes, and a thick mustache; he must have been around fifty. We joked that he looked like he wasn’t there watching a porn film. He wore a black turtleneck and gazed straight at us. Embarrassed, I looked away. At the end we returned home, and never talked about this again.

I entered the dry cleaner’s with the blue coat folded around my right arm; a buzzer alert went off as I stepped in. No one was behind the counter. Be right there, yelled a voice from the back. I looked at the people passing by out the window, my back to the counter. How can I help you? I heard. When I turned around to face the counter, words failed me: standing behind it was the gentleman we saw at Cinema Cielo thirty years ago. He looked exactly the same, bald with the same mustache, as if time hadn’t passed. He wore the same black turtleneck, and stared at me with the same piercing blue eyes, waiting for an answer. Unable to keep eye contact, I slowly layered the blue coat on top of the counter. Have all pockets been emptied? he asked, before accepting the item. Yes, yes, all empty, I responded. He double checked, and took it. 

Yesterday, I went back to pick up the coat. We met before, didn’t we, I ventured to ask. I’ll go get your coat, he responded, evading my question and disappearing in the back. I waited there fifteen minutes, then twenty, then twenty-five, while all was quiet. Not a noise from the back could be heard. Hello? Is this going to take much longer? I said, out loud. Nothing. I warily stepped behind the counter, and peeked at the back of the shop. On the distant side of the room, a door was open into a dark passage. This must be the way to some sort of warehouse in the basement, I thought. Maybe something happened to the guy down there.

I know you would have left. And I probably would have too, if something wasn’t irresistibly pulling me in like a magnet. I searched for a light switch on the wall right inside the entrance, but my hands found none. All I could see was a feeble light all the way down from where I was standing, the space between me and the light an indistinguishable black continuum. There might have been stairs, or a sloped path. No way of telling. As I started walking, it felt like stepping on something soft and rubbery. When I got close enough, I noticed the light came from a single bulb mounted on the wall, right above a thick red velvet curtain. I have no idea how long it took me to get there, and how deep down I went, but it felt like having reached a place miles below the street level. It felt like the center of the Earth. No noise came from beyond that point. 

When I reached out and opened the curtain, I found myself in the screening room of Cinema Cielo. I stood behind all rows of seats, right below the projection booth window. Lights on, from my vantage point I could clearly see the whole area with no blind spots. The setting was exactly the same as on that Wednesday afternoon of thirty years ago. The same people, occupying the same seats. Among them, you and me, chit chatting and enjoying our popcorn. A few rows behind us, the dry cleaning guy with his turtleneck, mustache, and all. As if sensing my presence, he turned around to gaze in my direction, his eyes fixed on me. Until the lights went off, and the projection started. On the screen, no porn film, no policemen talking about drained male bodies from nonstop sex. Instead, the entire scene from that last night together, when you left slamming the door, was shown. 

What is this? I thought, or said out loud. Am I in a dream? If I am, someone or something will soon get me out of here, and I won’t care if all I’m seeing makes no sense, because that’s the way it is in every respectable dream. I didn’t pay any particular attention to the fact that, right then when I thought or said all that, the room started spinning. And it kept spinning faster and faster. Until I lost consciousness.  

I came back to myself after what felt like an eternity, lying on my bed. And I started to write this letter right away, while the memories were still vivid and full of details. Yet, combining the pieces of this story into a cohesive whole was harder than I thought, and I don’t even know whether any cohesiveness was effectively achieved. But then, half way through the incipit, something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned slightly, adjusted my vision, and on the armchair beside my bed there was the blue coat neatly packed, fresh out of dry cleaning.

I froze.

Quivering, as if pushed by a mysterious force, as if knowing exactly what I was supposed to do, I searched the coat. A folded piece of paper was inside its breast pocket. I opened it and read its content, recognizing a quote from a book I’m reading, in your calligraphy.

"We live for a nanosecond on a speck of dust lost in the cosmos."²

---

"Unsent Letters" is a series released every other week. These are imaginary letters to fictitious or real individuals who may or may not have influenced my life, not always mirroring actual events.

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1. Cielo means Sky, in Italian.

2. From ‘Solenoid’ by Mircea Cărtărescu.