SECOND WRITING PRIZE WINNER –
SUMMER 2022
is CARLO CORONELLA
of Genoa, Genova – ITALY
THE GOOD LAWYER
By Carlo Coronella
Finally, it was morning. Tonight Mr. A had such a terrible nightmare that he still could not fully realize if he came out of it or not, safe and sound, now under the illusory protection of a woolen blanket. Certainly, those dark corners where the walls met around him, looked strangely familiar despite their shyness. Presently he just enjoyed that peaceful sense of creative emptiness that pervaded his most intimate soul, while waiting for a cascade of sunken recollections to invest his way. He felt as if he was born again as if he were almost free from his self-shared conditioning. During that short and cut-off event, he could not define the border lines of the shapes, their beginnings as well as their ends, and he could not perceptively identify a color from all the other close ones, because his deepest layer of sensitive attention momentarily opened its organic doors to the whole source of universal inspiration. What it could look like either a profound spiritual experience or the pitiful consequences of a recent attack of madness, actually it was more like an unexpected journey towards what it is, in an all-encompassing something devoid of both limiting concepts and burningly romantic ideals. In other words, Mr. A briefly became like a newborn baby again or like a young foreign language student, who could not yet recognize the rich distinction among the many different strings of words. He was the painter and the canvas at the same time, the black and the white outline of his fate. In that almost angelic and non-existing state, there was neither blue against red nor red against green, that associative spectrum of interdependent shades dissolved in a blank, which did not let space for any other symbolic elaboration.
In the meantime, right near him, the curly and reddish head of a sleeping woman, whose name could not recall yet. Nevertheless, he surely noticed that he could not refrain from making a clumsy smile while looking at her beautiful countenance. But very soon he came back, that hard-working lawyer that always tried to do the right thing. Waiting for his immediate attention, and carefully attached to the greyish fridge door, an incredibly complicated and chaotic spider net of multicolored post-it that did not allow him any potentially harmful forgetfulness. Written on those tiny pieces of paper, some italic indications of a few future actions that had to be taken such as the purchase of a kilogram of oranges for Miss B’s breakfast, his dear wife, or the morning appointment with his father’s cardiologist, doctor… oh, I cannot remember his name right now! and so on and so forth.
While he was drinking a nice cup of coffee, standing more or less firmly right in front of a first-floor city window, an old man passed by. He was alone and held a wooden stick. He did not exactly seem to know where he was going. He looked like a lost child that was desperately looking for his dear parents. Who knows, maybe for him, for those sunken eyes, the world was not so different from the one that he had already experienced before, namely when he just woke up amid a world of continuous on and off. Perhaps, if he had had more willpower as well as the necessary imaginative inspiration, he could even have pretended to be part of a far away and long-forgotten land, loaded with thousand-eyed skeletons made of stony bones and whose hearts remained sacredly hidden. As a wanderer above the sea of fog, who steps upon a recurrent indefinite and moves among the grass of doubts, he could have only encountered constantly fresh portions of the all-embracing truth. In other words, his partial blindness did not permit him both any analysis and any subsequent labeling classification. There was nothing usual surrounding him. What a wonderful creature that thing is! And that is exactly why he knew wonder and why he vigorously refused the absolute impression of what should be considered normal, that narrow notion that denies perfection due to the undeniable manifestation of sorrow.
But it was already too late to keep wondering so Mr. A had to take his black coated suitcase in order to leave for the courtroom. Meanwhile, his last nightmare shamelessly returned but this time to blinding light. However, at the present moment, his monkey mind was obviously much more vigilant than before. Therefore, that unpleasant fantasy of him being a vagabond, roaming under a stony bridge that he never saw, was soon turned into a pleasant dream filled with loud applauses, reassuring handshakes, and admiring compliments.
That very morning he had a very important penal case to win, hence all those images were just the flawless representations that he needed to see. And so the chemically enhanced lawyer was getting on his five meters car when he glimpsed the distant and hazy character of that same old life of before. As soon as he drove closer to him, Mr. A instantly understood that the white-bearded elder was still like a wrecked statue, with his feet perfectly motionless on the cemented sidewalk.
But that street was completely straight so what was the problem? Since the old man approached him, Mr. A’s brown eyes opened at such an Alexandrian pace that there was almost no skin left around them. That old man wanted to know where they were, and right after that, he kindly asked him if he could help him to reach his son’s house. However, Mr. A did not have any time left. His golden watch clearly expressed it. The features of his face were evident enough to make that wrinkled gaze understand that maybe he exaggerated a little with his meaningless request. Embarrassed, the old man slightly bent his back and said a very humble sorry. Again, Mr. A had the awkward impression that he was looking at a child, one that was mortified even if his parents did not even open their mouths. But now Mr. A truly had to go and so he went away. From the rearview mirror, the curved shape of the old man gets smaller and smaller until the size of a disappearing point. I am not an evil man, he thought, I just do not have the time! All of a sudden, a new picture violently made its way in front of his fragmented vision, that of a very well-dressed lawyer who sat comfortably on a velvet armchair, this one put slightly behind a large desk. The top of which was ruled by a glassy plate that brought his carved name: President Mr. A.
He must have gone utterly crazy because he knew, he knew it so much well, that he had to attend that bloody legal affair! After all, he could not even think to disappoint his client, the judge, his chief of staff, and especially his beloved wife. Why could not he be like a cloud, always spontaneous and never making mistakes? Where did all that wisdom come from? So far, he assumed that he knew where he was going, in fact, the direction seemed reassuringly crystal clear since his first high school year. From that bottom view, the chronic and foggy vision of a straight ladder, whose highest step pushed for a peculiarly common idea of success.
But then, thanks to the mask of an unexpected turnaround of the wheels, Mr. A made that tiny spot of cotton skin become the very main figure within his current frame. That arched old man could have been either his father in a couple of years or even himself in a not-so-remote future. Trains come and go but passengers must decide which to take because experience is made of lucky intentions. That was the echo of a natural law that had no democratic borders.
And thus the young lawyer turned the projector off to be present with that chain of unrecorded moments which did not know any slavery. Just as he was helping the old man to get into the blueish vehicle, his wife came outside and started running towards his moved face, as if she were an autumn leaf torn by a gentle breeze.
Only later, during that small and shared trip by car, Mr. A discovered that there was something that that old man was not able to forget, and that was the bittersweet piece of memory of his dead son, whom he went to visit once a year, right for the occasion of his birthday.
~by Carlo Coronella
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