Reconnect the hosting wires. Many years later. Memories take shape. There is always a first drop of memory on which all subsequent memories are based.
The first guest never gets forgotten, even if you want to. You can almost hear the clack of your personal Memory Recorder being started: memory is the map of the heart.
I see myself again. A student who for the first time in her life took note of the world, crossing it, while the world did not notice her.
I still remember the first guest. I remember everything about that day. It seems like yesterday. I see the leaves dry out and fall, pushed by the November wind, the bare branches and a heavy rain on everything.
Fears and sighs. I hear them all. Whatever I did I could not find peace. I was just way too excited. The excitement of not knowing in advance what awaited me. This waiting was an exercise of faith. I was there, but not quite there, and the part of me that was there wanted to be somewhere else.
The doorbell rings. I open the metal gate. He’s right there. His body in front of mine. My body in front of his, waiting for the void to fill.
He looks familiar and alien at the same time. Backpack from which a small ax emerges from a pocket. A shiver runs down my spine. I image the headlines: "A young girl has been found ripped apart in her house in Milan". Two dirty boots. He’s five-seven, muscular, thin, with a sharp face, unshaven.
He’s a little bit shabby, with a black notebook in his hand with squared pages and rounded corners, betraying the real reason for his going. An object that perfectly matched with his person, a Greek Bruce Chatwin, explorer of the city of Milan (with its customs and traditions), after Patagonia, Australia and half the world. Yeah, no adventure without a moleskine in hand.
But what makes really unique is a primitive woody pilgrim's stick, like a third leg, a traveler on his way to somewhere...
The small unexpected gestures of the first meeting to narrate the true identity of the host and the guest: a basket of fresh fruit on the living room table. He takes an orange. Well, my first surprise is that he rummage in his backpack. He pulls out from a luxurious red velvet bag first a Greek Orthodox prayer rosary, then a Swiss army knife.
He pulls out a specific blade designed specifically to remove the orange peel. That concentrate of miniaturized functionality – he told me a few days later – was for him a sort of Linus blanket from which he would never be separated until the end of his journey.
I no longer host tourists, but Grigoris and his medieval walking stick is the first drop of memory. Priceless and unforgettable. And even now, after all these years, a nameless longing grabs my heart.
