by Gianni Micheli – Wednesday June 19, 2024 09:00 am
Summer breaks out and the time that (for some) will become free invites us to read and meet the stories of others without there being others to tell them to us. Then the others put their own thing into it, maybe even funny, but let’s face it: we are only partially interested in it. But other people’s stories really appeal to us. Something flowing. Something that keeps the attention of a lying body that asks, demands, begs for a well-deserved rest. Something of that inconsistent material, medicine for the mind, that is in a book.
But not in just any book.
A thriller! A thriller! A detective story! Something like that. Mystery! Suspense! Adrenaline! Being caught off guard! Imagine… and hope to get the ending wrong! Who will be the killer? Intertwined stories of characters we love – among which certainly the classic Hercule Poirot, the unbeatable Inspector Montalbano, the introverted Inspector Ricciardi, the exiled deputy commissioner Rocco Schiavone and so on – and of deaths that no one gets away with.
I think I’ve always looked at detective stories from the “good” side. More: survivors. Of those who at the end of the investigation, with Angela Lansbury’s smile, rejoice for the culprit defeated by the just punishment and for a happy ending that for some has nothing happy about it.
Always. Until a couple of days ago. When I started thinking about the first ones who disappear – but a lot of them also disappear in the middle and even towards the end -, about those who don’t make it. Most of the time unfairly. I placed myself on the side of those extras who enjoy the life of a few pages, to conclude their sad story, barely mentioned when completely absent, often in the most reckless ways.
And that long succession of books in the bookshop, those detective stories with covers often tinged with red, blood red, gave me back the idea of a walk among the gravestones of a cemetery, no more and no less: the cemetery of the chosen: to give life to a plot, to tickle the evil that lies in each of us, to give substance to the atrocities of the worst. The cemetery of those who are not lucky enough to wear the shoes of a decisive character. Otherwise, the best would have no reason to express themselves. And, therefore, to exist. But the best are needed, we need them. So…
And then here is the dead man, the dead. Hundreds, thousands. Women, men, children, elderly. There’s something for everyone. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents. No one is spared. Parents, siblings, cousins, close lovers and distant friends. And they die badly, more often than not. Bad bad bad that it’s hard for me to even write it (you can imagine it anyway).
Oh well, we won’t be able to do without it. They are indispensable. Our thirst for yellow demands sacrifice. And yet, on the next trip you make to the bookstore, think about it. And when you meet them and read about them dying, without knowing anything about them except the horrendous form of their death, shudder, stop. They won’t be happy about it: they’re dead. Headstones, in the library. But we, at least we, will have placed a flower there.
Gianni Micheli
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