From behind the windows of the French window that separated him from the pavement he watched the comings and goings of the cars and the people passing by on foot. Leaning on his stick, just a bit shaky, fully dressed with the Sunday suit and the cap already on his head, he was waiting for something or someone. After they began to shake his legs a little with fatigue, he grabbed a chair and dragged it over the floor in marble with time, put it in front of the French window and sat down. On the ant-sideboard with the marble base and the windows with old crystal services, he looked at the oxidized silver frame that contained the yellowed photo of his marriage.
He heard a knock on the glass and winced. He recognized his nephew, turned the big key in the lock and let him in.
"Grandpa, what are you still wearing?" It's not Sunday today, where are you going? "
"I'm waiting," he answered in dialect.
"Wait for who?", Libero answered in dialect.
"He said he has to come and get me today ..."
"Aaaah, still with 'grandmother's story that must come back for you! Grandpa is just a dream! No one will come, "said his nephew, annoyed.
At the age of ninety-two, grandfather Michele had lost his mind after his wife died. He had not accepted his sudden disappearance and remained one of the rare widowers at that age because usually men leave first. He often dreamed of his wife and he promised her every time he would come to pick him up tomorrow. Each time he woke up and dressed all the way and waited all day.
"What do you say, he said he comes! Don't piss me off! And if you came to bother me, get out of here now! ", Grandfather Michele continued, always strictly in dialect.
Libero shook his head desperately. It was impossible to convince his grandfather that he was more stubborn than a mule.
"All right, then wait. If he told you that he will come then, "the nephew went on.
Libero sat down at the old table and looked at the oxidized silver frame on the sideboard. Of course his grandparents had been a nice, loving couple. He always remembered them like that, smiling and cheerful. Sometimes they quarreled but they were rarities. On average, the quarrels were limited in a dense exchange of sardonic lines of which both had an abundant repertoire. God cheerful people help him, says an old saying, and this suited them especially.
It was a combined marriage that between Rosina and Chelino, like all the other halls of those times but we see that they had combined it wisely. Perhaps not even today that we can freely choose anyone as a life partner we could combine such a couple. Perhaps too much choice confuses. And in the end choosing, you know, is a renunciation of everything else and who has the balls to choose someone today, giving up everything else, for a "maybe" tomorrow? Should we give up? Should it be limited? We have a banquet of everything available, why take only one course, one dish? And if we don't like the second forkful? In the meantime we decide they will have eaten everything and we will be screwed. Life is not a dinner in a trattoria, where you can enjoy everything calmly, between a chat and the tasting of a glass of good wine, life is a buffet meal where you can reach out and jog, where you have to fill up the flat before the others, where you can't taste before, you can't waste time, you have to load everything, grab, swallow without chewing.
Libero came out of his thoughts and called his grandfather.
"Grandfather ..." he began in dialect and froze without words.
Michele didn't even hear it because he was a little deaf.
Libero would have liked to ask him if he loved his grandmother Rosina but he realized that in the dialect there was no verb to love. He should have used "love" but it wasn't the same thing. He wanted to know if he loved her, if he had ever felt the butterflies in his stomach, if his heart was in his throat when he saw her the first few times, if his tongue dried up in his mouth and he didn't know what to say and how long he tried these feelings. He wanted to know how all those years had always had a smile and endured growing five children in almost want. Libero wanted to know if love had sometimes wavered in doubt and had always been firmly in place. Libero wanted to know if love could really last all those years or if his grandfather, returning from the countryside, sometimes didn't want to find another woman at home. If he had ever regretted marrying and if he had not preferred to be a bachelor instead. He wanted to know if he didn't have any regrets for his youth, if he wanted to do something else instead of agreeing to marry Grandma Rosina, if he didn't dream of another life.