“Inventory of what remains after the forest burns”: the footprints on “inhabited” objects in Michele Ruol’s debut

In the history of Mother and of Father there are events that determine a Before it’s a After. The birth of Greater and then that of Minorfor example, or the accident that involves them, but also apparently marginal episodes hijack their lives, like ours: hands that touch by chance and then stay just longer than necessary, or the casual opening of a chat others.

Michele Ruolan anesthesiologist who writes for the theater and has published short stories in literary magazines Useless and Effe – Periodical of Other Narratives, in the debut Inventory of what remains after the forest burns (TerraRossa) leads us into the intimacy of its characters through the imprints left on the objects of the house in which they lived, managing to continually make us change our minds about the idea we have about each of them – and perhaps also about the one we have of ourselves.

The author is also present in multi-voiced collections, such as Love in the time of the apocalypse (Gilead), ed Paolo Zardi, And The Veneto of the future (Marsilio), edited by Alessandro Zangrando. The text Birchproduced by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano for the podcast Primer for the new worldwas published in the book of the same name published by Il Saggiatore.

Inventory of what remains after the forest burns it’s his debut as fiction author. The ideal reader? Who has the courage to contemplate a fire and above all, after, of remove the ash; those who love to listen to the echoes of the stories of those who owned them in objects…

Courtesy of the publisher, above ilLibraio.it we publish an excerpt from the book:

29. black qwerty keyboard

A week had passed since the funeral, Mother couldn’t sleep. Going to the kitchen to drink some water she had seen a bluish light coming from Minore’s room.

Minore had spent hours playing GTA on that computer: it was on day and night.

Mother had unplugged it and taken the drops. Since then he had remained off.

She restarted it more than a year later, the morning she decided to send the papers to the accountant to close the VAT number. After sending the email she didn’t feel better, but somehow lightened, emptied. She had been staring at the monitor for several minutes. Then, without knowing what to look for, she clicked on explore resources. She chose files in no particular order, depending on what the names and dates inspired her: she had found photos of school trips, term papers, role-playing game rules.

Then she noticed that the browser opened with a list of frequently used sites. Mother had clicked on the first icon. The home page of a social network had appeared: she had asked her to confirm the saved password, she had pressed send. For a moment she remembered the times in which she had taken his cell phone away as punishment, and the ease with which Minore had circumvented her embargo.

Mother had spent the rest of the morning scrolling through her page. She was full of photos she had never seen, places she didn’t think he had been, with people she didn’t know she hung out with. Most, however, were photos of details that, taken out of the whole, became almost abstract – the dead skin of a blister, melted ice cream, a chipped tile, the paw of a stuffed animal sticking out of the dumpster. She couldn’t say if they were beautiful: they were disturbing images, but somehow also suggestive.

Mother had read all the comments, scrolled through the names of the people who had liked it. She was about to close everything when she noticed a section dedicated to chats. There were several messages sent to Minore that had not yet been viewed.

Many were the same, they said:

REP.

And then:
Have a safe trip brother.
Teach angels to play GTA.
Save me a seat in the back row.
You will always be with us.

The last unread message was a question.

What scares you most in the world?

Mother had retraced the messages they had sent to each other. She understood that they knew each other, that there was intimacy, or had been there: Mother struggled to focus on the type of relationship. Her messages arrived at irregular intervals, at the strangest times. They were photos, sentences of a few words or dozens of lines. Minore’s answers were often sharp, ironic. He usually came back with more questions – personal, frivolous, philosophical.

The day before the accident she had written to him:

Thank you for yesterday.
You could not have been there, but you were.
Will you be there?

And what is it, a grammar question?

Fuck you.

We will always remain friends.

Fuck it squared.
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known you so I could get to know you all over again.

If you want, we’ll go again.
Sea or mountain?

Sea.
Favorite color?

Petrol green.
Is it better to spend one day as a lion or a hundred as a sheep?

Doggy style.

1 to 0 for you.
Do you ever think that you were born in the wrong time? Like if you’re out of step, late, and you would have been better off living in the 70s, or in the Renaissance, so to speak.

Everyday. I would have liked to live in ancient Greece. I would have been a priestess and I would have spent my days smoking pot and giving absurd answers to those who asked for oracles at the sanctuary.
You?

I don’t know. The Middle Ages would have been cool too. As the second son I would have been a knight, or at least I would have learned to distill alcohol in a convent.

What scares you most in the world?

Mother had stayed for a few minutes, then on impulse she had written:

The poplars.

(continue in library…)

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