When I think about the dark, I think
about the game that I used to play
as a kid.
I'm here, in a house that is not
mine.
I'm here with my friend.
I'll call him... Mario.
I'll tell you later why.
I'm 11, he's one year younger than me.
Mario has a fascinating family.
First of all, they come from the mainland,
and this is always a bit of a
sensation for us islanders.
But there is more.
His mom is divorced, and she lives with
Mario's father, but they are not married.
I'm pretty sure that Mario's mother is the
first divorced woman I met in my life.
And she even has an older daughter from
a previous relationship.
Wow.
Adults talk about Mario's mom in a whisper.
And there is a certain initial reluctance to
welcome them in the neighborhood.
I remember once we were at his place
and I had to go to the toilet.
I went and I saw a condom floating
inside the toilet.
Terrifying.
Fascinating.
So, there is a game that Mario and
I play constantly during the summer when I'm
eleven.
Here is how it goes.
You'll need a house without parents or adult
supervision, windows with heavy shutters, a record player,
scary music to play. Instructions for two players.
Once you are home alone, close all windows,
draw the curtains and close the shutters so
that the room is dark.
Play the scary record on the record player.
Start running around the room screaming at the
top of your voice.
We play this game a lot with Mario.
Did I tell you already that there is
an unspoken mystery around Mario?
I mean, besides his mom being divorced and
all.
Well, Mario is always pale.
I mean, all children from mainland are pale
for us islanders, but Mario is pale in
a specific way.
I find out the meaning of that specificity
one day that someone bullied him at school
and he came home with a cut on
his eyebrow.
He was paler than usual and scared.
All adults were scared, they were fussing around
him, worried, and then they whispered words, hurt,
murmur.
That's what I think was the main issue
with Mario,
the reason why his mother always recommended that
I make sure Mario doesn't strain himself by
performing any activity that makes him sweat.
Sweating was strictly forbidden for him.
I'm a kid, I'm not sure what it
means to have a hurt murmur, but I
take my role as a big sister with
enthusiasm, glad to have an excuse to ignore
those annoying rules that they start telling me
on how a female must behave in puberty.
So here we are.
We have closed the shutters and the room
is dark enough for us to see everything,
but grey.
It is disquieting, because in the dim light
we can easily make out the contour of
the furniture.
I remember a large bed, so it must
be in the master bedroom, but terrifying shadows
follow us behind every corner.
It feels like we stepped inside a real
life black and white movie, but stranger, uncanny.
I don't remember how or who came up
with the idea of this game.
I don't even think we gave it a
name.
I only know that we have been playing
it compulsively, forever and ever, always at his
home, because Mario, unlike me, is very often
home alone.
Anyway, we place the record on the record
player, it is Profondo Rosso, the soundtrack from
the latest Dario Argento horror movie, a movie
we haven't seen because it is rated 16,
but his family has the record of the
soundtrack and we listen to it at an
impossibly high volume, while running around the dark
room and screaming at the top of our
voice, running and curling up on the carpet
next to the bed and occasionally hiding under
the bed, all the while screaming and screaming
and screaming until the song ends, and then
we run to the record player to stop
it before the following song starts, because there
is only one soundtrack for our scary game.
In my memory we have played this game
during the entire summer.
That strange summer when so many strange things
happened to our families.
No one took the time to explain what
was happening to us, the kids, no one
told us why, the strange behaviors by the
adults.
Our game played in the dark.
Although, now that I think about it, I
have the impression that Mario was scared of
darkness, because in that strange summer it happened
that he did several sleepovers at our place.
I mean, this per se was really, really
strange.
He lived around the corner and sleepovers weren't
common back then.
But I remember Mario sleeping in the guest
bed, and I remember him asking for a
nightlamp because he was scared of sleeping in
the dark, and I also remember that he
could only fall asleep if he rolled violently
his head on the pillow from right to
left, from left to right, for what it
felt like hours.
I remember listening to that unfamiliar sound in
the dark of my room.
After all what happened on that summer, our
families lost contact.
His family moved back to the mainland and
we haven't seen each other or spoken since.
I confess that I did think about contacting
him, but then what?
To ask him whether he remembers when we
scared ourselves to death by running like crazy
in the dark, listening to Profondo Rosso?
One last thing.
I haven't explained yet why I didn't reveal
his real name.
I did it on purpose, because I searched
for him on the internet, hoping to find
him, and well, I did find him.
It turns out that, despite the paleness of
his youth, Mario became first Italian and then
European champion in a quite violent contact sport,
so he is well known among people who
follow that sport.
There you go.
From darkness to light, Mario must have overcome
whatever demons he had that didn't allow him
to sleep well in the dark.