The moment when everything collapses comes in the morning. They are a few lines in a letter that begins with the usual and polite formula “Very nice lady”. A moment ago life wasn’t a flower garden, but it was the one there, yours. A moment later you can no longer perceive that you have one, your heart goes crazy, your breathing is a carousel, your perceptions loosen, your sternum is a hyperbaric chamber, your head is a little boat in a storm, which stays afloat but who knows why. and for how long. And the sense of loneliness is an abyss from sidereal temperatures.
What unleashes the elements is a formal communication, a simple and legitimate business decision: «We hereby communicate the cancellation of the rental contract…». And a little further on, to frustrate what remains of the soul, comes the little formula of “yours sincerely”. Boom. Empty. Silence. Temples that echo. The letter is still there, in the hand, with its beautiful folds to enter the envelope with the transparent window where the recipient appears. It’s a morning in May 2023, and Nadia’s life has drastically changed in just a few seconds.
Freeze image. Let’s rewind ten years. In 2013, Mrs. Nadia is 46 years old and after a lifetime of office work, to reconcile new family needs and aspirations, decides to resign from his company and reinvest his severance pay in a new adventure: a bar inside a shopping centre. We are in the province, south of Milan, a bar is a business, a job, but it is also sociality, relationships, a life choice, a role in the world, a place in the sun. So those 25 thousand euros appear to be a sensible investmenteven if the costs certainly don’t end there: 7 thousand euros of deposit, 1,100 euros of rent, bank costs for the guarantee, professional courses, starting from the precious coffee shop school. But there is the enthusiasm of the new adventure and the much necessary work is rewarded by the satisfactory results. «We certainly didn’t get rich, but the bar worked»is the memory that remains of that time.
February 2020: Covid freezes everything. Life stops for weeks. The bar, obviously, remains closed and even when the first, partial and conditional reopenings arrive, for those inside a commercial structure stricter restrictions apply and there are no outdoor tables that allow for a bit of volume more. The only regular thing is the rent. Which in the meantime has even risen at the rate of 500 euros every two years, also nullifying the effect of state compensation. But the worst comes later: «The war in Ukraine has driven energy costs crazy, which in any case had already increased tremendously before – Nadia recalls – and then followed a surge in all prices which completely changed the parameters in which we had moved up to that moment”. For example? «At the time of Covid the package of bread slices cost 1.10 euros, with the war it reached 2.10; the can of oil we usually bought went from 60 to 150 euros». In short, the numbers no longer add up, and “considering that the rent had also reached 2 thousand euros in the meantime, we started to go under at the end of the month». He urgently needs to shore up the situation with financing. But that’s not enough, «between 2022 and 2203 I saw everything constantly drying up – says the barmaid – and in the meantime I saw that around here, in the shopping center gallery, several shops closed”.
A very worrying situation, “one can’t sleep at night”, but the final blow is, in fact, the letter that arrives on that May morning: the eviction from the shopping center. Technically it involves canceling the lease of a business unit, but in any case, for Mrs. Nadia it is “a deadly blow”. Six months to close the business. «I was struggling with the debts I had accumulated, but I was working – he recalls – everything was based on that bar that I opened every morning, it was a sort of subsistence economy, but it was from there that, little by little and with great difficulty, I was making money to live and to meet deadlines.” But, she herself acknowledges, everything happens in compliance with the laws, there is no violation, “probably because there is a gap in the rules”, he comments bitterly. And at that moment she falls into despair.
«I turned to all sorts of associations, they tell you “you are not alone”but apparently my situation doesn’t fit into any of those that are helped in any way, I only asked for advice, never money, but in the end I found myself really alone because I’m not an employee, I’m not a trader in the strict sense because shopping centers have different rules, I’m nothing.” But there is a thought that prevails even on the blackest of horizons: “My child”. He is the Great Motivation, the one that triggers the determination to aim for a first partial objective: «I went everywhere, I wrote and called everyone and consulted lawyers, just to get to at least to an extensionto at least gain enough time to allow my son to graduate, given that he will have his final exams this summer.”
Few living creatures can be more determined and strong than a mother, and indeed Nadia manages to squeeze out another six months of survival for her bar under the roof of the shopping center. Just enough to keep the illusory swirl of income and expenditure moving and maintain a semblance of normality for the boy’s last months of study. After that the future is an unknown, the Pillars of Hercules of an existence unknown today. No more bars, the thought that moving back at 56 is not easy at all and the ballast of installments falling due for over 13 thousand euros. «I have always honored any debt, I am doing it and I intend to do it to the end – Nadia repeats obsessively – I don’t know how, but somehow I will give it all back. Those loans, however, were essential to survive up to this point. I confess that, precisely because of this feeling of having nothing and no one around me, I thought about suicide several times, because I saw myself crushed, suffocated with no way out.”
With a bitter laugh, she recounts the time she turned to the employment office: «They told me that in fact I already have a job, at least until I have closed the VAT number I cannot be considered. It’s funny, but it was another moment where I felt terribly alone. That evening, I must say, it was good for me to read about Courier the story of that manager who was left at home and how he tried to start again. I will too. I don’t know how, but I will. Now the important thing is that my son manages to graduate and can follow his path, then I’ll think about myself.”
