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The past Monday, the 12th November 1979, it was very early when Mr.
Winningoes had come to pick us up at home, meaning that the results of the analyses
had fully satisfied him in that week end.
George and I had spoken of the events of the preceding Friday for a long time. We tried particularly to guess what kind of
job would eventually have to begin, since Mr. Winningoes had not mentioned it
at all. For how much we spoke of it, however, we didn't succeed in finding a
satisfactory explanation. The most
probable prognostications seemed to lead us at jobs like: cook, waiter, butcher
or grocer generally; and either assistant of infancy or geriatric. But the most
probable reasons were also met with some element of illogical meanings.
George, briefly, suggested that the strange man had to be either crazy or,
at least, a sort of an eccentric and sclerotic subject. Between parenthesis he
made me observing, to retry his own theory, that Mr Winningoes had not even
mentioned the job related with Mr Joking and though he had told us that his
agency was entrusted for getting manpower to the enterprise. I returned that it
would have been up to us to tell him we were sent by Mr Joking and if we had
not done it, for distrust or for our own comfort, could not complain of it. I
didn't really complain of it because I was sure that I could never get an
advance of 100 pounds from any other employer in the world.
He returned beating me point by point. With particular respect to the money got
as advance, he sustained that those banknotes must have been either false or
fruit of sinister business. Neither I could change his mind on the point, the fact
that I easily succeeded on changing all my banknotes, in five different
occasions. I was sure of my opinion. I had already had on my hands some false
banknotes and I knew well, more than one way, to identify them.
The notes that nice fellow of Winningoes had given to us were good. They
were fresh of bank, because I had realized that they had never circulated before,
and rustled and played to gold as they say. If that man was so eccentric (and
so rich) to be amused by paying advances to poor, foreign, jobless men, well,
good for me that, by the way, I was enumerated between those poor chaps.
And, finally, if George, had also to be right and that man was crazy, in
that case, he would not be certain the
first one, in London.
Mr Winningoes
hadn't rung the bell, but he beat at one of the big windows of the room. As he
could have known, at that time, that those were the windows of the room we occupied
in the house, I wondered only more afterwards. That morning, we were so much in excitement,
that I only worried about to wake George and prepare me in my best hurry. We were
finally going to begin our work. And with perspectives of significant and easy
earnings. To the devil George’s pessimism and fears!
On
the other side of the road we immediately noticed a green van, where our new
employer, impatiently, drummed God only knows what rhythm, with the long and thin
fingers. His look was fixed on nothingness and perhaps he was following his
more intimate thoughts. He didn't notice us, in fact, until I reached the
opposite guide’s side beating him slightly on the glass. He got shaken by that
and lengthened with agility to open us the door. Outside it was prickly cold
and was the only sign of the early time, since the sky, as in the previous
days, was a grey, homogeneous cover of clouds that only the night would have
obstructed to our eyes keeping the city under an opaque and thick grey light,
rather similar to those days when the sky, in the Mediterranean countries,
announces the rain in the winter time.
-«
Hello! Is it everything all right?» - Mr Winningoes began happily as soon as we
had taken seat in the van. He didn't seem to expect any answer while turning the
starting key, may be getting back at the thoughts brusquely interrupted a
little before.
- «Good morning»– we both answered.
-«You can put it behind» – he told me, pointing out with the finger my
white-green trip bag I had instead placed at my feet. I put it beyond the
frontal seat. I wanted to do the same with George’s bag but he had already fell asleep, reclined
between the door and the seat with his bag on his womb.
-« There is a beautiful warm here inside »- I happily commented.
-«Yes, it is true» - he plainly responded; and immediately add with fatherly
tone, after peering at George with the tail’s eye :”You did not make too late
yesterday night, did you ?” -.
- «No,
no, we didn’t » - I responded laughing. -« He is always very asleep, but only
early in the morning»-.
In
the meantime I noticed we had reached Edgware rd, suddenly proceeding toward the Maida Vale street (the
second is the continuation of the other in the northwest direction).
Then
the van turned in to Shirland rd, after in to Elgin rd, emerging finally at the
Harrow rd (an immense artery of London traffic that crosses the city from the important
railway station of Paddington up to Wembley Park). As we had crossed this last
road for a brief line, toward north, our guide promptly reversed the direction
and, through a tangled net of roads and little streets, took the direction more
and more toward southwest, passing for Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park rd, up to
Hammersmith rd.
-
“Where have you said we are going to?” - I asked pretending he had said
something about.
-” To
the south of the river Thames” - he answered vaguely. -” We will cross the
river from the bridge of Chiswick, since Hammersmith’s is temporarily closed to
traffic. You know the bridge of Hammersmith, don’t you?.”
- “'
For sure!” - I exclaimed – It’s a very
nice bridge!!!'” -.
-
“And also very old ,” – he added -” They are now restoring it “- concluded finally
with indifferent tone.
Passed
that we had to the south side of the river our van was soon running along the huge Richmond Park, one
of the big green bellows in London. The transit of men and vehicles was scarce,
which meant that probably it was not eight o’clock yet. I recalled a vision I had
one day, in the peak hours, when London workers return to their houses: I was upstairs,
in a double decker bus, and I imagined
those numerous passers-by disappearing in to the Underground were swallowed by
a voracious Minotaur.
That morning, instead, the red buses, with their mighty tonnage, almost seemed
to fly in the empty roads still shrouded in the fog.
Before falling asleep, in
front of my eyes, I could see a kaleidoscopic series of colored neon signs running
each other: Barclays, Take Courage, Old Inn, Midlands, Guinness, Shovels Ale,
Marks and Spencer, Lloyds, Tesco, becoming progressively confused with the
buildings on which they were posted, forming some funny and unlikely
architectural figures untied to the edges of a fast oil river, crossed by a
phosphorescent wake, on whose trace, our green van seemed, rather, a winged
hull.
As I
woke up, I felt a diffused numbness all over my limbs. George was still sleeping,
stretched to the van-door, with the hands on his bag, still in his womb. I felt,
impelling, the need to stretch my legs.
-
“Where are we?” – said George confused, opening his eyes, as I called him
insistently.
- “ You sleep like a log! Let me go down, please.” -I counter said, pushing him
gently outside.
I
followed him, in his agile leap on the gravelly ground. There was a light
perfumed breeze in the air. We were amazed by the surrounding space. The van
had halted its march at the feet of a groove of cypresses, trough which boughs,
on the left, we could see glimpses of a red bricks building, approached by a
wind mew, that cut in two sides a wide and green lawn. It was from that
direction that we saw Mr. Winningoes arriving.
- “Welcome to Heavengate” - He said coming to meet us.
He wore a celestial, very elegant suit. Only when I saw his dark sun glasses, I
took notice of the long shades of the cypresses at our feet.
- “You will have time to admire the beauties of my park. Now be pleased to come
with me. I will show the house and the immediate proximities to you. Then,
after lunch, we will talk of business” -. This way saying we all soon moved
through the same path he had come from, on the opposite direction.
His annotation about business brought me brusquely at reality.
Coming up I asked him the place we were in, but he seemed not to hear my
question.
I looked at George with interrogative air. Instead of answering, he shrugged on his shoulders, as to mean: “I
told you.”
After a long bend the little street sloped up straightly towards the building.
Seen frontally, it now appeared to be
made of three parts. That central part, raised over three plans taller than the lateral wings. Three high windows, one for
each floor, accented its slender seize. On the top thin, triangulated laces, made
it look like the bell tower of a middle-aged church. The lateral sides departing from the centre, widened in
perfect symmetry, such to give the building a solid and stately aspect. Three steps
led to the ample atrium from the path. The two sides corridors were closed by
bright glass door.
- «You can put your bags there, for the moment» - told us Mr Winningoes,
pointing out two wicker armchairs that
towered the sides of the entry – "we will take first a quick look around
the house.”
After
a short while, the man led us outside that sort of long veranda which ran
around the whole building, as we were going to discover. Some narrow, gravel
driveways, consented to approach a wide spread garden, delimited, on the
opposite side from a tall metallic net, wrapped densely by climbing greens.
From that colored sea a thousand scents of delight inebriated and gratified all
my senses. It was as if they invited my mind to fly, decomposing each other in
those endless tonalities, shattering in that surreal geometry on shapeless sights
of beautiful colors. I heard our guide, lowered on some rare flower, explaining
to George, who followed him with attention, its origins, by means of
scientific, Latin definitions.
And
again the desire to flow conquered me and I still immerged in that colored and
flagrant sea, forgetful of every rational thought, free and fluid, in that
magic world of impalpable stuff.
If only I had succeeded on abandoning myself, definitely on the wings of those
feelings, would I have got lost in the space and in the endless time, or I
would have been able to find again the way to come back? When I gathered from
the ground some seeds, as Mr Winningoes was miming with the arms the landing of
an airplane, I thought for an instant that he was somehow, taking a fool of me.
Instead, through the climbing greens, beyond the garden, he was showing to George
a wide, flat open space explaining to him that it was dealt with a private or
personal airport.
He drove us soon after on the other side of the house. That side of the garden
was different from that opposite one. There were some plants of sunflower, that
dominated the space with their yellow sheets and several other green plants,
with webbed and rough leaves, fixed at the stem in opposite and crossed series.
-
“Helianthus annuus and Cannabis Indica” - he was pointing out to a very
careful George. On the first I didn't pay so much attention to those names. Still
I was rather surprised by the knowledge of the scientific definitions that the
man had shown to possess on the flowers. Then I heard suddenly a sound of
bells, playing somewhere in the meander of my memoirs. But certainly! What a
fool! Cannabis indica. Damn to Latin Language! I took one of the so many
driveways of the garden and I drew near with interesting look.
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