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July thirty-first, two thousand twenty. Tomorrow we leave for vacation; seaside destination. Tyrrhenian Sea first and Adriatic Sea later. Island of Elba first and Pinarella di Cervia to conclude. The former partially visited only years ago and the latter a regular stop from when I was a child and now a "summer desire" for my little ones. Between the scents of Tyrrhenian explorations and reassuring Adriatic confirmations, we prepare for this unexpected holiday. Everything is ready but one indispensable companion for vacations under the umbrella is still missing: by gosh I need a good book to read! I can't rely on the Settimana Enigmistica that I eagerly buy every year but which I regularly "detest" after the first day of vacation spent drawing mustaches and sideburns on the unfortunate cover victim (Scarlett Johansson this year), connecting the dots, and reading all the jokes in the hope they bring a smile to my face.
I'm on the island of Elba, the first beach we land on is Biodola and under my arm proudly sits a book with a blue cover - just like the sea in front of me - with a big black flag with a pirate skull with a red bandana in the center. Just above it reads: fabio genovesi – cadrò, sognando di volare. Him, the writer I mean, I discovered last year as a commentator on the Giro d'Italia and I immediately clicked with this almost peer of mine with whom I share a certain mental logical thread.
The book practically read itself under my eyes, which for a few years now have needed two precious lenses to help them focus and it was really a pleasant read which sees the protagonist Fabio (who always speaks in the first person) dealing with civil service as an educator, whose call came unexpectedly at the end of May, pre-summer, when Fabio was already savoring a hedonistic summer with friends who had preceded him to Spain, in Seville, and who recounted to him indescribable erotic deeds. The condoms were already ready in the suitcase, and in the imagination of the young yet inexperienced (but very hopeful) Fabio, perhaps they were even too few given how much his friends seemed to be enjoying themselves.. But then comes a postcard: “Educator. That was written on the postcard, along with a place, and a day.” The destination was a private middle school run by priests, lost in the Tuscan Apennines; a sort of boarding school where the boys studied and lived and Fabio was to act as an educator.
The boarding school, however, seems uninhabited and shortly thereafter Fabio, a Law student not by choice but just out of moral obligation towards his cousin (..), discovers that the school has been without students for a few years and within the structure live (in their own way) a repetitive and slightly dazed caretaker, a handywoman with her daughter who lives among the chickens and has obvious socialization problems, and a surly priest: Don Basagni, the former headmaster of the school, now (apparently) bedridden upstairs, a great peanut eater and rather unfriendly towards poor Fabio who will be forced to carry out Don's Friday personal hygiene duties.
But not all bad things come to harm, and over time the two discover the same musical passion for the Doors and then for cycling and for what was - and still is - the greatest Italian cyclist of all time or at least the one capable of captivating everyone with a personality of his own and sports feats of another era: Marco Pantani! The Giro d'Italia and the music of the Doors will be the fil rouge of this at times tragicomic novel, partly moving, and filled with great memories and identification for me who loved the Doors immensely in my high school years, cheered for Pantani to tears, and in 1998 - as a good anti-militarist - was ready to perform with a sense of duty(!) Civil Service, as a two-year postgraduate Architecture student.
A dive into the past, many memories, some funny, others sad, and the realization that the past doesn't return. No regret though. Luckily there’s a nice pair of glasses and books like this!
“I will fall, I will always fall until the last day of my life, but dreaming of flying”
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