The Major # 1

FlyingA short story by

Pietro PolsinelliIllustrated by

Matteo Bicocchi

© 2009. Mist&Fog publishers Matteo Bicocchi Pietro Polsinelli

The Major # 1

Flyinghttp://mistandfog.wordpress.com/

The Major # 1

FlyingA short story by

Pietro PolsinelliIllustrated by

Matteo Bicocchi

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He was in a car queue.

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He was in a car queue.

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When he reached the stoplight, it turned red. Someone walking by recognized him, damn, damn. A tall guy, bent on his windshield, and spat on it. Then started gesturing menacing signs.

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Finally came the green light, he started moving without looking at the fellow, who was laughing and insulting. He was making somebody greedingly happy, at least.

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Turned the wiper on to clean it, feeling sick. Sick. Parked behind the town hall, which was an old palace with a tower.

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“Morning, major”. The porter didn’t spit.

Better.

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Reached the office in the tower. A pile of papers to review, mostly just to sign, a pile of protests, protests for everything, for any initiative taken, for any dismissed. And always the others, hanging on the idiotic side of the voters, which seemed to weight so much more than any other.

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The secretaries found him with his face on the piles.

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“Major?” “Yes”, head still on the papers, slowly rotating towards them. “Something’s wrong, major?”.

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Just staring at them, blinking. He could no longer distinguish clearly between the secretaries and the papers to sign: they had become a unified ontological monster.“We’ll be back later..”, a sudden show of delicacy, alone again.

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Got up, silently closed the door. Put a chair against it, pulled the bookshelf, finally even the desk. Nobody seemed to notice, couldn’t hear a sound even with the ear pressed up against the door. Probably they were gone for their never ending coffees at the bar below.

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Then he started handling the papers, finally. Folding airplanes with them. Folding, folding, folding.

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Then clipping the planes together, composing again a large plain shape, larger than himself with arms wide open.

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Opened the window; few people in the plaza below. Windy today, good.

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Had to fold the plane a bit to make it pass through the window;

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then climbed on the window edge, unfolding the plane and holding it on his body, as a blanket.

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An old lady, a tourist, was watching below, increasingly alarmed. When he jumped, nothing came to his mind, but noticing that there was an instant when the plane gave him the feeling of sliding in the air; that was just great. The lady screamed.

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It took two hours to a giggling fireman to disentangle him from the nets which had been put to stop the pigeons. He had just a few bruises, and a catatonic look. The secretaries where watching below, outside the bar, in awe.

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It was a great day for the journalists, below.

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