Even when we do not have a real conscience to rely upon, to confront reality, we know what defines us in this world, in our essence, in our mind and outside it. We could say “It’s our mortality that defines us”, as someone once said – but what is mortality if not an expression and finalization of time? Even an absence of time, in some ways.
Then it is time. It always has been.
Our life is ticking at the pace of the advancing time, following its relentless arrow. We are very linear beings: for us, it is inconceivable to think in a multidirectional time reality, to look at the sides of that arrow course, above and below it, not only behind and beyond. The movement of time and its perception defines us and we cannot escape this simple statement.
The centrality of time in our lives is crucial, at the point that Stephen Hawking uses the matter of having or not having a beginning for the time to prove the existence of a god or denying it. The paramount importance of time is permeating our philosophy, our behavior, our beliefs.

When it comes down to tell a story, despite our simple and unilateral direction in our travel through time, the course of events could be subverted to the capricious desires of the narrator – in an attempt to explore what our lack of perception hides from us. This will to embrace the unknown lead us to a non-linear narrative as a way, maybe, to understand better our deep connection with time and consequently ourselves.
This is a very deep and vast topic, so I will briefly touch it, with the example of four different authors, divided by time and space too.


[This digression contains spoilers… since now it seems that it is proper to say]



Homer
I will begin with Homer – because it is always the case to begin with him. The idea of beginning all his narrative in media res, right in the middle, is the perfect choice to create the sense of a great story. Think about it: it is rare to acknowledge of a story that is right at the beginning and it is mostly something tied to religion lore. Everyone and everything have a backstory, which nobody knows in all the details. To start with a middle placement is not only smart but realistic too.
After we are introduced to the story, we mark our place in the timeline and we try to settle down, but we do know that a character as Odysseus is one that comes with a very noticeable backstory, so we are ready for a ride.
At the beginning of the “Odyssey”, he is blocked in the Ogygia island, for reasons not fully explained, which will emerge later. It is important to know that most of his story is revealed when Alcinous, the king of Phaeax (where Odysseus found shelter after leaving the exile), almost begs him to tell his tale. A magical, strong link is now connecting all the parts of the story into the main character, merging past, present and future in a single person. The sense of legend, the lore behind Odysseus, is now re-connected with the present figure we know as a human being. We do know well how this solid mechanism works: we lived it when our grandfather told us World War II stories, suddenly catapulting a familiar figure we knew since we were babies and we currently know as an old man, into a vast, historical and almost legendary global landscape.
And, oh, what a master was Homer in that. He rightfully invented the cliffhanger, when telling the actual end of the “Iliad” in the “Odyssey”, as a remembrance; he consequently invented the sequel, as the “Iliad” is finally finding its coda in the words of the narrating Odysseus; he invented the spin-off, as the “Odyssey” could be considered the story of a secondary character of the “Iliad”; he cleverly left the finale of the “Odyssey” open, as we know that Odysseus needs to fulfill his oath to Poseidon and thus is leaving us with another, great adventure yet to be told (despite what Dante Alighieri tried to suggest us in his masterpiece).
One last glimpse of what makes “The Odyssey” a special story about time and memory, is the moment Odysseus decides to hear the song from the sirens. We all know that part… but it is not known what the song of the sirens was really about. Some scholars implies sirens can tell all the story of a man by heart and see and know everything in the world. Did Odysseus already know how his story would end, then, bending the rules of his own linear timeline? He certainly didn’t tell, making it one of the most intriguing mysteries of the “Odyssey”.
Aside from all of that, the “Odyssey” still is a perfect example of classical proportion for an early non-linear narration. We do believe that this kind of approach is a relatively modern one, but it is not. We can say it is the way a very inspired story-teller will use if he is very brave or very good at playing with time and our perception of it.

Faulkner
William Faulkner massively used the non-linear approach in “The Sound and the Fury”, which is really a tale about how time works, what its influence our lives and why it defines us. Speckles of events with a meaningful connection with a character are clustered in a single day, and those days fixed in different times, we could say different ages. There is no continuity in narration as there is no continuity in our memory, really. We remember about something that happened when we were 4 and right after a free association leads us to yesterday’s supper or to what our friend told us two years ago about something else. The memory works as a record player stylus, which is randomly flying on a spinning vinyl, engraved with our moments and missing any index. The circular movement it is only a suggestion. The process of placing and giving meaning to those memories is what makes the memory such a good place to enjoy.
The whole concept of what times mean to us is reflected in the title of the novel, which is getting Shakespeare in the mix. Is a quote from Macbeth, where the king drily decides that time means only to us because without it we are nothing and without us, nobody can tell if time is nothing itself:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Vonnegut
The use of a non-linear narrative process is at the core of “Slaughterhouse-Five”, from Kurt Vonnegut. Using an alien abduction as a plot device, the main character is now kicked out from the ordinary space and time continuum after being altered by them. For him the whole concept of linear time is now devoid of any meaning. As a result, he stops to care about and slides into apathy, an acceptance of his fate. As the arrow of time loses its own direction, the human being is lost with it. The experiences are not important anymore, as they are not really part of the memory anymore – nothing but loose pieces, fragmented and scattered all around. Finding himself as a fresh recruit into the terrible wartime in Dresden is not important anymore to him, as he is there now, actually living it without realizing it is the past. He cannot tell the importance the moment will have, as he cannot tell the future apart now. Thus, we know that the inability of the inner self of the present to index the memories of the past is the broken link that leaves us lost forever.
The reader himself starts to lose interest in what is happening to the character in the present. He actually starts to realize, with the uttermost terror, that there is no present, not really. Kurt Vonnegut mastery in dismissing any possible crave for information, to renounce to the plot twist or to any revelation, teaching an important lesson to any storyteller of today. The message is the story, not something inside it.
In “Slaughterhouse n.5” we do know what will happen to the character in the future because we already went there. This is the importance of time and memory: are the experiences of the past less important if we know the outcomes of the future they brought?

Sapkowski
Thus, we reach one of the modern master of this technique Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of “The Witcher” saga. He makes a wide use of the non-linear narration, often revealing the fate of his characters long before the reader can start to figure it out, through clever fake quoting of self-invented pseudobiblia and accounts from minstrels and historians or more directly, via small chapters set in the future.
In “The Lady of the Lake”, which closes the saga, he makes a wide use of flashforwards. Andrzej often creates a large volume of tension by placing the characters in a dangerous situation, while momentarily breaking it giving us an insight of their future, sad or happy that it may be, then coming back at them in the present. This is creating a strong bond through an artificially accelerated time frame, that makes us be close to them by knowing all the moments in life that matter to them and then, their ultimate fate. The case of Rusty, Shani and Iola is the most exemplary one.
Rusty is the master surgeon and healer, who is using the young and unexperienced Shani and Iola to help him to keep the wounded soldiers alive in the medical camp of a huge and bloody battle. The three of them start to know each other, winning their fears, the revulsion, the immense stress of saving or condemning a life, thus overcoming their own limitations and, sometime, finding a new purpose in life. Then we jump into the future, where Iola and Rusty die horribly because of a virulent pestilence they wanted to fight off in another city. Then again, we jump in a further future to see what happened to the third of them, Shani. She is old, a dean of study in a major medical academy, revered by every healer in the country. The character is known for the quote “Stitch red to red and white to white and everything will be alright,” but we know that the very quote is coming from her old master Rusty, spoken on that fatal day on the war medical camp that Andrzej left suspended in time – the day Shani won her doubts and fear and realized she wanted to be a healer for life.
We are deeply touched as the old Shani, it is said, sometimes can be seen to weep when saying that signature phrase “nobody knows why”.
But oh, we do.

To close the circle of the quote I used to open, we have some wisdom from Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame, who is applying so well to what the non-linear narration is trying to convey us by juggling with our very linear nature of human being:

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived.

What does it mean to be a human?
This seems to be the real, emerging question through the whole idea that Philip K. Dick tries to implant in the reader’s mind while reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Because, of course, it was all about implanting ideas for him, to suggest feelings that creep under the skin, that lurk in the shadows and feed on our minds. They are the most powerful worms, those that excavate inside the thoughts, that create hives and nest into our ordinary reasonings.
What is to be a man? What a better way to answer than using a simulacra of a man, something that actually was man made? It is a matryoshka of Chinese boxes, through the imitation game – one that Dick loves so much: an imitation of an imitation that is, ultimately, the truest of things, isn’t it?
There is a convoy of other ideas and questions right inside the shell of this great story and this one, unmistakable doubt. Most of the real questions we find us to ask ourselves following the hunt of the replicants are, however, unsettling and far from our initial idea of a straight science fiction story, noir vibes and police quest action. This is the realms of doubts and we are lost in it, without a real way to get out than the mirror and looking into ourselves.


[This digression contains spoilers… since now it seems proper to say]


Deckard, the android hunter, should be our reference point as a human being and the best answer to the big, initial question. Nonetheless, he is the worst possible example of human being, defective in empathy maybe beyond help. He uses chemicals to shut down arguments with his wife or, simply put, to make those arguments to be not relevant anymore. He dreams to be ordinary, by being over the ordinary, craving a living animal instead of his artificial one, to be the one who is talked about in the neighborhood – to get a new social status. In order to reach this apparently futile goal, he hunts down man-made beings called androids, who seems to be well capable of being aware and feels like a human being feels. He does it for money and against living and moral beings that potentially could have all he lacks in many regards as a man.
The established world, however, asserts that those androids, made for hard physical labor, are not capable of empathy. Deckard discovers that, maybe, lacking empathy is not one of the traits that can be used above all doubts to discern humans from non-humans. One of his colleagues, Resch, is certain of being an android in disguise, because he ruthlessly kills other androids and lacks any remorse or other feeling tied to this gruesome activity. Only that he is not an android at all, to his own scorn. Deckard, instead, feels down after hunting down and killing a well-known opera singer, an android called Luba Luft, who was an astounding performer. And, of course, a sexual intercourse with one of them clarify that “everything has changed” for him.
What does it mean to be a human, then?

Men, androids and animals
The word “android” is a well chosen one from the author. While in the memorable movie adaptation “Blade Runner” the word “replicant” is used, here we have a classic term, matching an equally classic Science Fiction trope, slightly modified. These are not the Asimov positronic type from the golden era. The word literally hints the nature of these beings: it came from the mix of two Greek words, “ἀνδρ” (“andr”, for “man”) and the suffix “ειδής”, a derivative of “εἶδος” (“eidḗs”, “form, likeness”). It is something with the likeness of a man, but curiously, the word “eidolos” is the root of the English “eidolon”, and similar words in other languages. The definition of that is an idealized person, or thing – a specter, a phantom but even one aspect of reality, as most dictionaries are pointing out.
So, androids could be a different aspect of our reality too, other than simply a simulacra?
This is one of Dick’s favorite theme, the imitation of life, the replica of the real, which, maybe, is important as reality itself.
The Nexus 6 series is a new set of androids, recently produced, capable of being very human-like in all aspects. The Rosen company uses them as a flagship of their production. They are so proud of creating artificial beings so perfect they are almost impossible to tell apart from real humans – so much that they are happy to make the work of police force and bounty hunters almost impossible. It is a sign of their strive for perfection, maybe a corporate wish to create the definitive product, or simply a god-like pulse. Their ultimate goal, it seems, is to invalidate all the psychological tests like the Voigt-Kampff one created to expose the androids and tell them apart from human suspects without invasive surgery.
The mentioned test is completely based on empathy. It is a slow psychological violence on one’s capability of having feelings or to “correctly” address them. But who decides what is the correct way to prove feelings? The test is largely and curiously relying on the reaction about illegal situations with living animals involved. The animals were almost completely wiped out by the pollution resulted from the Third World War, and they are now a very expensive privilege of few. It is very symbolical that Dick uses animals to make them decisive in uncovering artificial beings among humans. He emphasizes how people makes a living animal a powerful mean for a superior social status while, curiously, we still are debating about if they have emotions or even a soul nowadays. Even animals, though, have their artificial counter parts… but artificial animals and artificial humans have different purposes.
The former is an almost an everyday tool, like a car and it is needed for social rating and thus is functional for a human to be more important than another human. Or, better, sometimes it fakes that importance, by making the artificial animal be considered a living one, lying on its real nature – and again, a fake reality seems more important than the reality.
The latter, instead, is needed to lift the humans from one of their main issues throughout the history: hard, physical labor stress. Why we need to have a thinking artificial being to do that is not known, but they do, they think and they think hard. Androids crave survival, as they are programmed to be automatically shut down by an organism failure within few years. They are pushed by instinct, and, sometimes, is not very clear why they act as they do. Exactly like humans.
The lack of empathy is not concerning them, as it is not certain why and when this applies if it does at all. They simply want to keep existing.
It is not known what their feelings for the artificial/living animals related social status are, or if they care about them to be real or manmade. One of the two points, when an interaction between an android and a (living) animal is told, is when Rachel Rosen, former lover of Deckard and a before not-self-aware android, is pushing one to death. She wants to hurt Deckard as he did when he killed the Nexus 6 pack of androids she cared for. Is it this one of the best examples of empathy shown in the book? To kill for avenging a feeling, to amend a loss, to hurt someone, for rage or cold thinking?
It is really emblematic that the second scene with an interaction between an android and a living animal is the one with Pris and the spider. She tortures the little animal, by cutting his legs one by one, just to see if he can cope with the loss and keep on going with his life. It is like the android is trying to see if she can still go on knowing that her own life is at stake, that her time is limited. Is the life force so supreme? How does it feel to crawl instead of walking through the path of life?
This collaterally proves the validity of the Voigt-Kampff test, apparently showing the lack of importance that some androids can feel about living animals. But does it? Androids clearly do not care about social status, having being ripped from it by birthright. They simply do not see the importance of that, and thus this can change the meaning of the scene: it is not lacking feelings or cruelty display, but being dismissive toward the human conventions and rigid social pyramid. Maybe, Dick is telling us that androids are really free of most of the restraints human beings love to apply to themselves. Their struggle is a more primal one, the fight for their lives, while mankind is only striving for social approval.



The Mercerism and the parallelism
The religious issue is another important point of the novel.
The Mercerism is a new religion, based on the figure of Wilbur Mercer, a modern prophet whose a recorded feat of climbing a hill while being hit by stones is the main and ultimate trial for every faithful one: they are called to live this ordeal by a virtual device, that literally puts the viewer, the commoner, in the skin of the prophet while he suffers in his ascension.
It is not by any coincidence that the very Nexus 6 that Deckard hunts seems to be the responsible of exposing the truth behind the very well established religion. Wilbur Mercer was an actor, and the hill ascension scene is a fake one, a studio reproduced environment. Again, another fake reality that became better than reality itself.
Then, we suddenly shift from our original question. It is not anymore about human, and maybe a little bit less about reality. This is deeply connected to what we have discovered by cutting down in bits the meaning of the word “android” before. The real question Dick wants us to crave for, to have it implanted in our mind is… it is really important if it is not real? Does the reality of things really matter?
It is a leitmotiv of all of his novels and stories, mostly, and here is stronger than ever.
What does Deckard learn in the end? He quits the job since the reality of things does not matter to him anymore. The humans in his life have not clearly and out of all doubts presented any evidence to tell them apart from androids, in an interesting turn of events and shift of positions. It is like it is up to them now to show their empathy capability, not anymore the opposite. He still believes in Mercer, at the point that he sees him in the last confrontation with the Nexus 6 and believes he saved him. He does not care of his real existence… he is real for him.
Faith makes reality to be questionable, to shift the point of view and the arguments about it in a different plane, where the reality of things is not relevant and a different logic is applied. It is very ironic that science constructs like the androids are exposing something like religion to his true essence, a philosophical matter, maybe hinting that feelings, like empathy and the mysteries of the human mind, are exactly like that – a non-quantifiable phenomenon. If Mercer is a fake but his philosophy is true, it does really matter if people directs their prayer to him or not?
This emblematic turn of events is heavily reflected on the real nature of the famous TV entertainer Buster Friendly, whose in the novel is strongly suspected to be an android too, as he is a tireless performer. Buster Friendly is the perfect embodiment of the brain washing media action, one of the sub-layers of the novel plus the ruthless power of the corporations and the consumerist ideology – each and every of them often recurring in Dick’s literature. Putting Buster into the android ensemble, the author points again to the same hint. He makes the people laugh, he entertains a whole population and he does it so good that nobody really cares what his real nature is. Again, existence is different from essence, one of the perennial philosophic matter that dwells in every human culture and highlights whether the real question about the existence of God is, somehow, a question about the existence of the benefits from the belief itself.

The real question and questioning the real
The doubt called by the title of the novel in a very subtle way is really taking another shape, as we do realize that the point of view is shifted too: it is not if the androids dream of electric sheeps, if they crave to have some of their kind as a social status symbol instead of a living one like we do. It is: does the reality of things really matter?
Is it not the simple fact of being living and aware a statement itself? And this, collaterally, brings us to the other question too, if we do really know what is to be a human being or not. Maybe our values are not so important for others, maybe if they are not, there is no way to measure what is really living.
As humans, we often lack empathy toward other living beings, even the ones inside our species ring. And unilaterally think on reality, neglecting other possibilities, blindly following beliefs like religious ones and personals. Our lack of knowledge about anything in this universe strongly resonates with the deep doubts we are struggling to resolve inside us. So, maybe, we have to move forward and try to draw a line. Does our little, real world really matter and – with this we come back to the cryptic title of this story – do dreaming of fake or real things does really matter?
They are only dreams.
Is it that important that the dreamer is real?
He is only a dreamer.

“Youssef osserva il cadavere gonfio e si guarda intorno. È l’imbrunire e si vede poco. Sulla strada che costeggia il canale alcune finestre sono illuminate. Una luce proviene da un battello ormeggiato a pochi passi. Piove da una settimana. La pioggia è sottile, continua, spazzata dal vento incessante, la temperatura sette gradi sopra lo zero. Nel canale Maliesingel la draga a benna mordente « IHC Merwede » è ferma sui pali di ancoraggio.”

Come tante cose, anche in questa storia gli eventi più grandi e oscuri hanno inizio nei vicoli che tutti noi conosciamo, quelli dietro l’angolo, intorno alle nostre case, nella nostra via. E’ in questo contesto che Antonio Pagliaro ci accompagna, intessendo una fitta trama tra i torbidi canali della olandese Utrecht e i non meno oscuri anfratti della Kalsa, a Palermo. Dentro questa maglia, che si tende tra questi luoghi, rimangono intrappolati come pesci in fuga, destinati a sentire la mancanza d’aria, poliziotti, giornalisti, vittime e carnefici. Proprio dalle acque scure del canale Maliesingel, all’inizio della storia, emerge un corpo e richiama immagini potenti, come il velo della realtà che si squarcia mostrando qualcosa di straordinario sotto al perfettamente ordinario. Come tra le acque di un fiume cittadino che abbiamo sotto gli occhi ogni giorno, che potrebbero nascondere un’infinità di segreti, è proprio qui che dobbiamo cercare, sotto la patina semitrasparente dell’ordinario, che lascia intravedere qualcosa, abbastanza per capire e non troppo per esserne certi. In questa differente area dello spettro della luce, in questo sottobosco malcelato, opera anche il crimine organizzato, soprattutto la mafia – nostra fedele ombra italiana, che ci segue ovunque. Un’ombra che si estende oltre i vicoli di Palermo, che raggiunge qualsiasi posto – basta solamente che la luce che la getta raggiunga la giusta inclinazione.

A Palermo, dove “basta litigare con la persona sbagliata per condannarsi a morte”, dove ogni parola va misurata, pesata e contemplata, si connettono i fili dell’intreccio olandese, quando l’indagine rimbalza da Utrecht ai nostri vicoli. Qui parte il punto di vista di un altro personaggio, che non è un poliziotto ma qualcuno che sta dall’altra parte dell’indagine, il sicario detto Franz il Tedesco. Il suo è forse il punto di vista più interessante, con i suoi strafalcioni grammaticali e culturali, il suo modo di fare semplice ma cauto. Non è necessariamente un personaggio negativo, quanto forse una vittima culturale della mafia, come ce ne sono tante, perché la mafia non è qualcosa a cui si aderisce, è qualcosa che ti cresce addosso, che ti accompagna per tanto tempo, che si inocula dentro le tue abitudini, il tuo modo di parlare, il tuo modo di vedere. La sua è una storia di piccola e grande mafia, il racconto di un altro pesce intrappolato in una rete troppo grossa, dalle quali maglie difficilmente si esce tutti d’un pezzo.

“Il bacio della bielorussa” è un resoconto sul male, che va oltre il male, come fossero scatole cinesi sempre più scure, fino al punto da non distinguerle più nel buio. La rete in cui si dibattono i protagonisti è qualcosa di reale, che ha i suoi risvolti nella storia ma che il lettore italiano sentirà sicuramente familiare – forse ne è anche stato sfiorato nella vita quotidiana. Sebbene il nucleo della trama, l’interno dell’ultima scatola cinese scura, riveli molto di più dell’apparenza, è il percorso che facciamo per giungervi che fa riflettere. Sono i dettagli a rendere speciale la narrazione, che si incastrano nelle varie dimensioni, giocando soprattutto tra le differenze dei narratori, non solo di visione della vita, ma anche di mondi diversi in cui vivere.

“Poche automobili percorrevano le strade di Utrecht. Era ora di cena, quando gli olandesi si chiudono in casa, accendono i televisori e lasciano le strade della città deserte, bagnate, silenziose.”

Così, scorci del diverso modo di fare italiano rispetto alla metodologia olandese, balzano agli occhi proporzionalmente al modo in cui sono buttati con nonchalance in mezzo al testo. Come quando l’ispettore van den Bovemkamp vuole localizzare l’esito di una denuncia fatta in Olanda e inoltrata in Italia e scopre che, nel momento in cui passa il confine italiano, se ne perde traccia. O lo stupore del sergente De Groot quando il commissario Chiaramonte di Palermo gli conferma che nella commissione antimafia ci sono degli indagati per mafia. O gli inutili tentativi di van den Bovenkamp di far appassionare Chiaramonte all’elfsteden tocht, o di procurargli una bicicletta per gli spostamenti a Utrecht – entrambe cose impensabili per un palermitano.

“Erano le otto del mattino dell’undici maggio. Da un’ora circa pioveva, una pioggia estiva e violenta. I palermitani si erano rifugiati nelle auto, immobili nel traffico, e suonavano i clacson.”

Non solo luoghi comuni, ma piccoli dettagli, come la paura di Chiaramonte nel constatare che gli italiani, all’estero, sono dappertutto. Non è solo un cameriere a suscitargli terrore, ma l’idea stessa che per quanto possa andare lontano da Palermo, ne troverà un pezzo ovunque, anche dove non pensava potesse attecchire. E quel pezzo, come sempre, non puoi mai sapere in che mosaico va ad adattarsi. I diversi punti di vista del romanzo sono brillantemente rappresentati con soluzioni uniche. Franz parla in prima persona, come se ci fosse la necessità di far capire l’idea che sta dietro la filosofia e la cultura della mafia.

“Prima che mi innamoro io si devono asciugare le balate della Vucciria.”

I dragatori del Maliesingel vedono il mondo in modo semplice, monotono come il loro lavoro – punteggiatura stretta e descrizioni secche. Il loro punto di vista è distaccato come lo vorrebbero essere loro quando pescano un cadavere dal canale. In generale, non ci sono frasi ad effetto, giri di parole poetici. Tutto è così, scorrevole e secco, coronato da piccoli ma significativi dettagli quando serve.

“Il bacio della bielorussa” è una storia amara, come ogni noir che si rispetti, dove forse c’è poco da capire e molto da accettare, o rifiutare. È la vita vista in modo diverso, da persone diverse, accomunate da un paio di cadaveri e l’idea che niente è ciò che sembra, soprattutto se decidiamo di non sondare quelle acque scure che, ogni giorno sotto i nostri occhi, ci nascondono di giorno ciò che inghiottono la notte.

Il bacio della bielorussa
di Antonio Pagliaro
UGO GUANDA EDITORE
304 pp.
2015

ISBN 978-88-235-1197-2

“Tutti ricordano che quella sera l’Italia vinse i mondiali di calcio in Spagna, la festa per le strade, i bagni nelle fontane, la gioia di Pertini… Quasi nessuno invece rammenta che quella stessa sera una ragazzina di tredici anni scomparve nel nulla e di lei non si seppe più niente.”

È da molto che non scrivo una recensione su un libro, ma non è cosa comune trovarsi così, nel bianco, umorale, claustrofobico mondo isolato e crudele di un thriller… non se è italiano. La nostra letteratura spazia, ma a volte arranca e si fossilizza; ed è quindi con occhio curioso e mente aperta che inizia il mio viaggio come lettore scelto assieme ad una squadra di altri novantanove, per leggere in anteprima il primo thriller di Massimo Polidoro, “Il passato è una bestia feroce”. Anche se, per via del mio annale interessamento al CICAP e alla sua attività (soprattutto del front man Polidoro), posso dire che è anche con una punta di orgoglio che mi ritrovo in questa posizione importante, ma anche difficile.

Verazzano, un comune come tanti altri, con i suoi piccoli segreti, la sua essenza ermetica, il suo esistere su un piano convenzionale eppure irraggiungibile e distante allo stesso tempo. È il 1982, un anno quasi libero da rimpianti e forse colmo di voglia di rivincita, quando gli italiani avevano ancora poca voglia di guardare altrove per i propri errori e si consideravano già viventi in un’epoca difficile. È in quest’anno che l’Italia trionfa ai mondiali, restituendo un’idea di un popolo ancora capace di essere orgoglioso. Sono gli anni ormai inverosimili e lontani di Pertini, Bearzot, Berlinguer, uomini capaci ancora di guidare e ispirare. Ma sono anche gli anni di piombo, del degrado sociale, della deriva umana. È così che, quella sera in cui il riscatto sembrava iniziare per una nazione intera, Monica Ferreri diviene parte anch’essa di un mondo diverso, ma più oscuro, quello dei bambini che, come scrive Polidoro, “semplicemente vengono perduti”. L’intera adolescenza, forse la vita dei suoi amici, quelli che invece “restano” nel mondo convenzionale, cambia per sempre. Monica scompare, senza lasciare nulla di sé se non per la bici, abbandonata in strada, l’unica traccia che, un tempo, lei era lì, prima di essere cancellata dall’esistenza ordinaria del suo mondo. Monica scompare e nessuno ne sa più nulla, ma lascia dietro di sé il ricordo ai sopravvissuti a quella notte, i suoi amici.

Bruno Jordan, ormai cresciuto, era parte di quel gruppo, i Fantastici Quattro, e ancora oggi ripensa a Monica, al mistero di quell’ultima notte. Ed è forse anche per questo che è diventato un giornalista, a causa di quel mistero violento e terribile, che l’ha spinto a cercare, a ricercare, qualcosa che forse nemmeno lui sa. E la ricerca vera, quella che mette in moto il suo ritorno al passato, inizia per lui quando riceve una lettera da Monica, che doveva essere consegnata decenni prima. Ancora una volta, il lettore è trascinato in un altro mondo, assieme a Bruno questa volta. Il mondo della Verazzano della sua adolescenza, in cui ritorna per indagare sul mistero, è quello del passato che ci aspetta, esattamente dove l’abbiamo lasciato. Perché il passato è una creatura silenziosa ma paziente, che tutto conserva e non butta mai niente, come la madre di Bruno. Proprio per questo, a volte, il passato è una bestia feroce, che sembra dormire, ma che può ancora mordere. Bruno dovrà affrontare questa bestia, perché il suo è un viaggio nel tempo, nelle memorie, che custodiscono forse la chiave di questo mistero.

“[…] c’era qualcosa che mi spingeva a continuare. Era la consapevolezza che se non avessi cercato io di capire che cosa era successo a Monica non lo avrebbe mai fatto nessuno. La sua storia sarebbe finita definitivamente sepolta dal tempo e il suo mistero non sarebbe più stato svelato.”

Devo dire che ho gradito molto la lettura di questo romanzo, nonostante spesso si rivelino prevedibili agli occhi di chi conosce bene le meccaniche narrative che li caratterizzano. Eppure, come si dovrebbe sapere, non è il plot twist, né lo sono le idee alternative o l’originalità molto spesso a decretare il successo di una narrazione simile (o anche dissimile)… a volte è proprio il modo scelto di raccontarla. Chi ha vissuto quegli anni sarà facilitato all’immersione in questo “cold case”, un caso disseppellito oggi ma radicato negli Anni Ottanta. Tramite piccoli contatti culturali e facenti ormai parte dell’immaginario collettivo, il lettore si troverà catapultato in quel mondo distante eppure vicino, come lo è sempre quello dei ricordi, dei sogni di un tempo perduto. Chi, invece, quegli anni non li ha vissuti, sarà stimolato da un mondo “per sentito dire”, ma anche una dimensione facile da comprendere, perché il passato, anche se può non sembrarlo, è uguale per tutti, al di là del suo collocamento nel tempo. A volte, il complesso narrativo s’inceppa nella trappola delle spiegazioni di troppo e alcune scelte di registro forse non sono azzeccatissime, eppure, come primo thriller da parte dello scrittore, non ci si può proprio trattenere dal definirlo molto ben fatto. La tecnica c’è, il sistema pure, i personaggi pulsano e l’atmosfera è presente se non addirittura protagonista. Una cosa che ho piacevolmente notato è la presenza in background di Massimo, la conoscenza del mestiere – l’indagatore del mistero, chi va a caccia della verità e cerca di andare sempre oltre le apparenze. Questa presenza è anche tecnica, con citazioni che rimandano alla sua attività professionale ben gradite e integrate con l’intero affresco. Il valore del lavoro di ricerca dietro l’opera, in ogni caso, è evidente e la caratterizza, discostandosi da altre opere simili ma sicuramente più superficiali. Parto sempre un po’ prevenuto sui thriller (soprattutto quelli italiani), ma questa volta sono rimasto piacevolmente sorpreso e la lettura è stata scorrevole e appassionante. Se siete rimasti colpiti da “Uomini che odiano le donne”, inoltre, consiglio ancor più la lettura. Questo è un viaggio che vale la pena di fare. Volevo anche accennare che questo libro è stato sorretto da una campagna di lancio del tutto unica, fortemente voluta da Massimo, in cui cento lettori scelti dai partecipanti al suo sito hanno avuto in anteprima la copia del libro. Da qui è poi partita una campagna di tutto rispetto sui social network, che ha accompagnato il libro fino a oggi, il giorno del suo lancio. Ho avuto l’onore di fare parte di questi cento prescelti, la “Squadra di lancio”, e definirei l’operazione brillante e ben congegnata da tutti i partecipanti, Massimo incluso, ovviamente. In un panorama editoriale difficile come quello italiano, dove i processi editoriali sono spesso chiusi e condizionanti, dove tutti scrivono e nessuno legge, è stata una ventata d’aria fresca.

Chiudo invitandovi a rimanere anche voi rapiti da questo caso freddo, reso gelido dalla neve di Verazzano, dove Polidoro ci guida con il suo senso del mistero, attraverso il medium del passato, il suo linguaggio, il suo valore umano e assoluto. E, non dimenticatelo, anche le bestie feroci possono essere accarezzate, se si inizia a comprenderle.

Links: Sito ufficiale Massimo Polidoro Twitter Pinterest

Credits Per la modifica alla copertina: Enrica Michelon Booktrailer: Stefano Beltramo

Ricorda il passato. Ricorda Monica.