The most modern techniques in the field of phosphorescence
are at the service of Rapimio and his night. It has become clear that, in the past
twenty years, industry has made great progress in this field, such progress that
it is now possible to furnish an
entire apartment with phosphorescent objects at very accessible prices making it possible to lead a normal life in total darkness. In fact, Rapimio doesn’t tolerate
light: perhaps it’s a defect of his, of his retina, or else of the nerves that
link his retina to his brain or of his own brain. The truth is that light for him is like water for cats: not necessarily fatal, but, in any case, an element
to avoid or to lap up in its right measure at the right moment. Sure, one needs
to leave one’s house to carry out life’s various obligations, at least the more
bothersome ones, those whimpering obligations like a newly born baby abandoned at
one’s door and which, beyond the door, whimpers and scampers until one squashes
it with a frying pan or an encyclopedia that comes to hand. At times one needs
to go out and Rapimio can not simply turn off the sun, nor dim the street
lamps, semaphores, neon adverts and thousands of other manifestations of
electric energy of which this miserable city is so prodigious. So he leaves his
house with a brown visor over his eyes and an umbrella open over his head, a
nice black umbrella that is liable to draw forth comments and foolishly perplexed
glances, especially in the summer. The glances, under the umbrella, are not
visible and Rapimio is deaf to any comments. Being in that glare is a bit like
being in a French Revolution: one can expect everything. One knows that
refraction dulls the brain, so it’s better to rush those few chores one has
under a shower of unsustainable photons, an implacable cosmic flux that the
umbrella – imperfectly lined – holds
back and that, in any case, the pavement and the air itself reflects and shoots
in every direction like machine gun fire, a light that grabs your throat, and
insinuates itself into the brain like red hot lava. And so Rapimio always
returns home from these sorties with their unleashed energy, with a blinding
headache. He closes the door, hermetically sealed by large padded cords, but
for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour he continues to see red. At the end,
though, black wins out and he is at peace again.
In front of the dark, shadowy mirror, with phosphorescent sticks of pasta and other gadgets and
widgets of fitting beauty, Rapimio repairs the broken lighting. Beneath the
bluish green of his supple hair, chemically treated, appears, little by little, the thin line that marks the edge of his empty eyes, of his unreal mouth. The
quadrant of the clock is particularly visible, almost embarrassingly
luminescent, and equally useless, given that Rapimio cares little about time anymore:
in the dark all hours are the same. Portraits of his mother and father hang on
the walls, pure bluish contours of enigmatic figures, to fill up with his
thoughts, or not to do so, as Rapimio sees fit. The most necessary objects are
all phosphorescent: metals, keys and the door handles: in the black living room
two luminous fish inside a cold tub add a spectrally vivacious touch of
tropical life. Many a poet has praised blindness, the conciling tenebra: it’s not necessary to gouge out one’s eyes though, it is enough simply to close one’s windows and cut the wires of the electric
current. Until a few years ago, Rapimio was forced to leave all his lamps lit,
because phosphorescence even of the best varnish doesn’t remain long
if it is not opportunely recharged in light. But one day new radioactive
isotopes, of unlimited fluorescence, appeared. Since they caused well known
illnesses, Rapimio pondered for a moment whether to use them or not. Reason, the advocate of inclination, as always won out in the end. Others get themselves
wounded in battles, as a special treat to themselves. Rapimio, instead, offers himself as a hussar
to alfa, beta and x-rays and even to cosmic rays. He has already lost the point
of two fingers: needles of ice run along his back: he can’t bend his left knee.
And yet, and yet, laying down in his black infinity without distances,
surrounded by greenish pale forms that, at times, seem to get closer and at
others to grow distant, Rapimio has defeated time and with time, suffering,
anxiety, fear.
