not I soon found out. The warm air of spring, with its thousand scents of freshly bloomed flowers, shoots just sprung up, saturating my senses for far too long obscured by the harsh winter. Those first days of sun so I had convinced to come out after all this time spent in bed.
The fracture in his right leg was almost completely resolder, and in the last two weeks of convalescence, I decided to face the world. I was amazed by the transparency of the morning air, still fresh and crisp, and watched with amazement the variety of shapes of flowers and grasses, plants and shrubs, trees and insects and birds that had a fixed abode in that park. After two or three days I learned the times of attendance of persons. I always arrived early, around eight o'clock in the morning, to enjoy the peace of that place longer. Around nine, nine and a half, came the first mothers, who with the wheelchair, one with the stroller, some holding hands one or more children. Half an hour later came the turn of the elders, who sat engrossed with the newspaper, or circle were to speak about the vicissitudes of life, all around the fountain.
In the early afternoon, when I got home after eating a light lunch to be recovering, it was the turn of the students. Boys middle school and elementary school children filled with shouts and screams that paradise. Balloons, skateboards, shoes, rope: it was a movement, in a frantic Gymnastic that I suffered in silence, watching the evolution of the boldest. They could make me freeze the blood in the veins, with some risky steps, jumps on the branches, ran among the trees, bike dropped on climbs and descents ... How many fights avoided by a hair, how many tears shed and how many strokes of the mothers to relieve pain! I did not now the case in the old man. There were so many that its presence does not stand out. Yet there was something strange, so much so that my eyes always ended to finalize the glances thrown around from time to time, raising her head from the book leggiucchiavo, too distracted by the movement that was around me and the warmth of the enough sun to concentrate on her figure. It was not a voluntary movement, yet when I tried to do the opposite, I found myself watching it. He was dressed in an ordinary way, and also his face and his body was not special at all: an old man like many others, always sitting little 'aloof and seemingly distracted and deep in thought. He brought with him an old and now worn brown leather bag, from which he took out every once in a long, narrow piece of paper that resembled a baggage cart. It remained to fix it for several minutes, then passed to another. I could not understand why so much interest in old accounts of expenditure, and spent several days without being able to think of something else. Every day this strange ritual was repeated, unchanged, as it was. I tried a couple of times to get up, to simulate a short walk on my crutches, then sit next to him, but then, like he did with anyone who occupied the place next to him, shut his hand on the sneak and if the ticket shoved in his pockets, accompanying the gesture with a sigh. Then waited for a few minutes, scrutinizing, snorted a few times and got up to look for another lonely place.
I did not dare speak to him, lest they end up running away never to return in the garden. Watching him better I realized that did not just fix the leaflets methodically extracted from the bag, where they were treasured, but it seemed to read them. He was checking his expenses? Yet he had never with him or supermarket shopping bags and this intrigued me even more. Sure, he could control his costs, probably with the board had to be careful also to change, but I did not understand how did, in this case, keep in mind all the figures. Do not jot anything, apparently by relying solely on his memory. In the evening, then disappeared. While I was busy reading that I realized only at a certain point no longer there. As I tried not to lose sight of it, it took was a moment of inattention on my part to make it disappear. I turned again to his side and he simply was not there. A few days later, he had already made the evening, a breeze had made troublesome to go home earlier than expected by many people. The old man of the receipts was gone, and I was one of the few remaining undecided ... But now the sun was low on the horizon, and I began to feel cold. I got up, walked and limped toward the exit. In doing so I passed the bench that the old man had occupied that day with wonder and saw a note stuck between the white bench and the low wall that separated it from the back flower bed. I bent down to pick it up, and carefully observed once that I had in my hand, I realized I was wrong. It was not a ticket. The dimensions were more or less the same, but the paper was satin and heavy, like writing paper. He had to make them his own, I decided. The edges longer, in fact, were not perfectly parallel to each other. I turned around to read what was written so interesting and important. There was one word, repeated perhaps ten times, written in shaky handwriting and in large letters: ridicule. I tried to remember what it meant. Mockery ... made me think of something unpleasant: I had read that word combined with the public, public ridicule, and it was not something pleasant. But what does it mean? Because the old man had so many strange slip of paper with a word that was repeated several times? Then so were all those sheets? And why spend so much time to read? But read them, then? All these questions echoes in my head, remained unanswered. That evening, after supper, I did not think of anything else. I was turning that piece of paper in his hands, trying to decide what it was, and more importantly, what to do. I fell asleep so, without knowing it.
The next morning I rushed into the garden, decided to ask the man, finally, an explanation. I could take advantage of the excuse of wanting to return the package to start the conversation. I sat on my bench all morning without bothering to look at a newspaper I had bought from the newsagent on the corner, constantly distracted by the comings and goings of women and children who were walking around there. About eleven o'clock I thought I had finally spotted in the distance as he approached, but suddenly lost sight of him and imagined him with a confused old man who, for a less superficial, like him very much. I kept thinking about that word, but how hard I tried I could not associate a specific meaning. Passed so the afternoon, and arrived in the evening. Even the shadow of the old gentleman. I had decided, as I watched the people busy in carrying out the same actions every day to search for the meaning of the word in the vocabulary that I had read that slip of paper the day before. I had to have one at home, tucked away somewhere: I imagined dusty and yellowed, since it was been a long time since I had used. I was still at school, and remember a task in class during which I had been a great help. But the gratitude of an object does not last long.
As I dragged on my way home crutches, whose correct use I was resigned to not learning more, trying to remember the word. But I could not get past the first syllable: lu ... Then there was the void. The more I struggled to try to re-emerge from the memories that word, the more I escaped. In its statement had been the shadow, the imprint, just the feeling of his presence, as the groove left on the pillow of a couch by the body until just before he occupied. But I could not trace the imprint body. However I still had the note, which jealously guarded in his wallet. I took it out with caution, still folded in four, but when I explained before my eyes, I had a surprise: the word, which had been repeated several times, had virtually disappeared. There was left in a corner, an "L" almost completely faded. I had lost the word, permanently ... I could not believe what had happened. It seemed incredible that the words would disappear from a piece of paper, I could not believe that it was something like invisible ink, or another trick like that. A harmless old man apparently could not use tools such as sophisticated. Why, then? What was the need to hide the words in that way, even making them disappear?
finally arrived home, the warmth of home and welcomed me giving back for a moment, peace and security. I wanted to understand at all costs, I wanted to unravel the mystery in which I had come across. I tried the dictionary, and it took me several minutes before being able to find it, buried as it was in my library of hundreds of other books. The dusted and while I did the mentally indirizzai a greeting, as an old friend lost sight of for a long time and finally found. I opened the letter l. "The tenth letter of the alphabet, consonant lingual, liquid, implying letter is considered to be female: the elle a elle." So he opened the section dedicated to this letter. La, la, banner, lips, lip, labbrone, lip, lip, Labiatae ... How many words I knew to have met him during of my studies but I had not used more later! Banner, then: banner of the late Roman Empire. Who used that word again? Synonyms: sign, flag. All the banners of the world were retired, replaced by the latest signs and flags. I continued to scroll through the words, reading them one by one, not dwell on them for more than a moment, waiting for one of them did take an association of ideas, removing the veil that had covered the word I was looking for the word of sheet of paper. Lagoon, lagoon, lai ... launch, launch, land ... pass, leave, leaving, leaving ... linked legatee ... linear ... ... locate sumptuous, lucumone, scorned ... Here it is! There was no definition, though. A water stain ruined the page so as to be unreadable, the definition of shame, ludificare and ludo. A yellow spot, which had thickened and inflated the paper, so as to make it fragile. When I lifted the sheet permanently lost those words, in a puff of dust. But what was going on? I could not make sense of those events. An old man who spent his time looking at pieces of paper made by hand, on which were written words rarely used by that time and disappeared after the definition of which had been eaten by negligence on my vocabulary. I did not know, literally, what to think. That he was a writer, a poet perhaps, for inspiration, intent on rediscover obsolete words to enrich his lyrics, or a composer who was attempting to find rhymes for his songs imagining the sound of those same words, verses and poems. As this fascinating hypothesis seemed fantastic and nonsensical, but I could not imagine something less abstract. What was happening was outside the normal course of events, just was not for me to understand. I had no way to review quell'anziano sir, if not hope to meet him again in the park where we had seen the first time. It was already past midnight when I decided to go to bed. It took some time to fall asleep and sleep, when he arrived, he was troubled by nightmares and visions of processions of hooded men dressed in black and sacrificed for the names of blasphemous mountains of books, burning Manzoni, Lem, Dick, Verga, Svevo, Hesse ...
My recovery came, it was decided the leg to heal and to regain that function to which nature had intended, and I stopped to attend this public garden. My work reabsorbed back, my days were full, dotted with tasks, appointments, visits, and I had no time to think back to what had happened to me.
One day when I had to go from a customer decided to go for a walk, since his office was not far from ours, I found myself to go in the garden, the same animation I had known long before the pervaded, and the shrieks and cries of children distracted me from my thoughts. I decided to forget for a moment the client and the appointment, and I stopped by the fountain that marked, ideally, the center of that spot out of the chaos and traffic of everyday life. I breathed in deeply the warm spring air, enjoying the flight of a bird from one tree to another, and wondering for a fleeting moment, if we had not done everything wrong that we want to force locked up in houses of reinforced concrete ... when I saw him again. He was dressed in the same way as always, with his brown leather bag, the clear coat, gray hair and beard, but like many an old man with that piece of paper in his hand. I stared at him, almost be certain that it would be gone. A shiver ran through the back for a moment I was undecided on what to do, so I approached it with determination, and called him "Sir?". He lifted his eyes from the ticket and looked at me as if he had realized at that moment was not alone in the garden. He folded the note so as not to show me what was written, and held in the palm of your hand. "You found my shame, is not it?" he asked in a calm voice and gentle. "Yes," I confirmed I am unable to avert my eyes from his. "I had lost here, behind the bench," he motioned with his hand went to the place where I had found the ticket. "I looked, I wanted to return ..." I said, removing the portfolios in which it kept the ticket, before being interrupted. "It does not matter, not anymore. I have been negligent, that's the truth. But I have become old, that my hands are not more than once, and these sheets are so small ... always escape me at times. Too bad, because it was a nice word. Derision, scorn, ridicule, no more ridicule on this earth. " I did not catch the last words, as he had whispered to himself. Obviously, my curiosity was noticeable, at least as much embarrassment in front of my man, so I looked and spoke again. "You forget what happened, like everyone else. But in this moment law, however, with an explanation. Maybe able to catch it, maybe not. He has no idea how many words there are in our language? In many ways, and what you can express a concept, an idea, a thought, a feeling, an emotion? In a vocabulary worthy of respect there are at least 42,000 words ... but a normal man of average intelligence and culture will not come to use but a very small village, his having enough for the life of every day, far fewer words. But the fact remains that there are other words. There used to be because those who lived before us, or by a small group of people united by a profession, a profession, so that each of these uses technical terms incomprehensible to the masses. But alongside these there are also those words that the time and fashion, capricious and fleeting, they did fall into disuse. Clivus for slope or hill, colendìssimo for egregious or respectable, swoon to swoon, arrogance for arrogance, chaos and tear, initialed to sign, and I could do hundreds of other examples ... The words come when you feel the need to reveal something, whether it be a fact or an object that did not exist and die when this need is not. Many words disappear just because nobody uses them, although it would still be useful ... But normal people simply use very few words, and less used are destined to disappear, forgotten and not spoken ... I not only just to do what she has noticed. We are many, although we are not sufficient to keep alive all the words are many of us read those words that are likely to disappear, to give them more meaningful, to keep them alive because someone after us, still deciding time to use them. Did you see what happens otherwise. The words disappear, not even the remains of their feeling that they ever existed. "Having said that rose from the bench and slowly but firmly walked toward the exit. I left there with a piece of paper now in the hands of all white , and the unpleasant sensation of hearing a sad speech, even if I did not remember and did not understand why. I was reminded of the customer, I was waiting for half an hour, and walked toward his office. That evening, before returning home, I went to a bookstore and bought a new vocabulary.
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