Now she was very tired and she thought that she didn’t have the strength, she simply didn’t have the strength to keep talking for the rest of the journey.
‘I want to get out,’ she said.
Without saying anything, the man stopped the car. He must have been in a great hurry to get away because he looked at her only once, standing in the rain on the hard shoulder, then immediately pulled away. He didn’t even tell her that she’d left her crocodile skin suitcase on the back seat. Just as well, that suitcase was too heavy for her.
GEORGINA REQUENI OR THE CHOSEN ONE
But if I am nothing, if I am to be nothing, why then these dreams of glory which I’ve had for as long as I can remember?
A coach drawn by four white horses is turning the corner. The decorated gentleman inside, astonished at the sight of a six-year-old girl walking alone and not afraid along a dark street, leans out of the window, and with a dry monosyllable, orders the coachman to stop.
‘Who are you, beautiful child?’
‘I’m Georgina Requeni, Sir.’
‘And I? Do you know who I am?’
Georgina doesn’t know. The gentleman is the President of the Republic, the most important person in the entire country. When the President tells her this, Georgina isn’t taken aback and looks him straight in the eye. That is when the President realizes he’s facing the most extraordinary child in the world and takes her to live with him in a palace surrounded by gardens. He gives her French dolls and real ponies as big as a big dog, and allows her to wear frilly dresses inside the house. From that day, Georgina appears in all the papers and newsreels. She always travels in a crystal carriage. People greet her with deep bows.
‘She looks like a bear in the zoo,’ she hears someone say behind her.
Then she wants to die. She, who at that very moment is smiling to her subjects from the window of her carriage, appears to others a rather stupid girl smiling to herself as she turns and turns in the empty patio. From that day on, her mother and her grandmother entertain visitors with stories of how Georgina walks back and forth across the patio like a bear in its cage. When they find her swirling round and round, they call her to ask why she won’t play like the other six-year-old girls. I do play, Georgina says to herself, I play in my head. And then one day she’s avenged by the President of the Republic, who orders that her entire family be sent to the dungeon.
How wonderful I was! Georgina feels her eyes glisten. She’s thirteen and the memory enthrals her. She takes one small dance step. The window of her room is open, which makes her behave in a very particular way. She lives on the ground floor, and she is certain that some day a handsome young man will stop without her noticing him. He will fall madly in love with the enigmatic girl who does such beautiful things when she is alone. From the corner of her eye she looks towards the window and something happens: a small bird has just landed on the windowsill. Intermittently it preens its feathers, examines with apparent interest the interior of the room and chirps briefly. He likes me, Georgina thinks. She feels observed; this troubles and delights her. She places her hands on her chest and casts a tragic look on the bird: ‘What has brought you here?’ she asks it. ‘Go away. Are you not aware that my husband has found us out?’ The bird flies away in fright. How very funny. Georgina jumps up and hugs herself for joy. ‘How wonderful I am!’ she says. ‘How wonderful I’ll always be!’ Today is a very important day for her: about three hours ago, she went to the stationery store and bought an exercise book with red covers. She’ll keep a diary, like Maria Bashkirtseff, because there’s something that concerns her. One day she’ll appear in a book such as the Wonderful Lives of Famous Boys and Girls. How will the author know the extraordinary things that happened to her unless she writes everything down very carefully? You see, my child, here are the lives of all the children in the world who one day became famous: this is Pascal, the young enlightened genius, and this is Bidder, the marvellous little mathematician, and this is Metastasio, the infant troubadour of Rome, and this is Georgina Requeni, the girl who… The world collapses around her. She is already almost fourteen years old, and she still doesn’t know what she’s going to be. Her father has promised her that when she turns fifteen she’ll be able to take classes of Elocution and Dramatic Art with the teacher who lives on Santander Street, but that is a long time away. Sometimes she remembers that at the age of seven Mozart dazzled a prince, then she feels like ending it all and throwing herself out of a window. But she lives on the ground floor, she’s out of her mind, she’ll be famous and the world will love her. She looks at herself in the mirror. And I will also be very beautiful. She lifts her hair, lets it fall over one eye, half-lowers her eyelids, sees a pimple on her chin and wrinkles her nose, oh well, she’ll be very beautiful and have lovers, thousands of lovers strewn at her feet. How they’ll suffer because of her! No, dear Sir, don’t do it! Don’t kill yourself for my sake! The man kills himself; she is dancing in front of the mirror. She doesn’t know what is happening to her; what she does know is that no one, ever, was as happy as this. She goes up to her image and gives it a kiss. This makes her laugh out loud. She runs to the window and looks up at the sky. ‘God is blue,’ she whispers. The November air, the smell of leaves, of tides; she wants to hug someone very hard and tell him all about her. No, there’ll be no need to talk; he’ll look her in the eyes and know everything, the tragedies she’s been through, her fears, the incredible things she still must do. My God, life is so wonderful. Then she makes up her mind: today is the day to begin. It’s been almost a year since she bought the exercise book. Since she bought it, she’s been waiting for the perfect moment; she believes that every event should be made up of perfect moments. She goes to the night table, opens the small drawer and takes out the exercise book with the red covers. She sits at her desk, and with coloured crayons, she writes on the first page: The Diary of Georgina Requeni. Then she turns the page, takes her fountain pen and writes, ‘I’m fourteen years old. No one can know the feelings in my heart. My heart is wild, and on this day, the whole world is like my heart. Yes! I feel as if my life is going to be wonderful. I feel.’ She stops because she doesn’t know how to carry on. She reads what she has written, and she approves.