Emmanuel - Part I: The Wind Inside

I wouldn't know where to begin to outline my self-portrait. But I suppose it's essential, since you ask me so insistently. I'll start with a detail: details, as you teach me, are essential in portraits. Do you know the Arnolfini spouses? That incredible detail of the mirror reflecting the scene behind it, revealing the fiction, the carpet, the stained glass window, the clogs, the fruit, the little dog, all reproduced with astounding precision. Flemish painters pay obsessive attention to the smallest details: in their paintings, objects acquire an astonishing symbolic value. Don't you find it fantastic? I do not. I hate Flemish painting. In that picture there are four vanishing points, do you realize? The Italians use a single vanishing point placed in the center of the horizon, everything is perfectly structured and ordered, with precise relationships between the figures and with a single light source that defines the shadows. That's how it must be done. ...

Today Emmanuel does not seem to feel my presence: he holds Saucepan by a paw and looks lazily at the sunlight filtering through the branches. It is very hot again and his shirt is open; I see his chest, furrowed with a trickle of sweat, rise and fall in his breath. The school year draws to a close and my task can be considered happily completed: he has redeemed all his failures and will undoubtedly be promoted, even if he I will have a couple of 'C' grades on his report card. Michael is proud of me; I have received compliments from Mrs Helena and even from the taciturn engineer Kellermann. I too am satisfied, but I don't feel happy. In fact, to be honest, I'm sad: I had got used to looking forward to getting on his uncomfortable scooter with Saucepan in my arms to go to the river, amid jolting, laughter and constant risk of falling. I will miss our afternoons in the fresh air. There is something strange about his silence: I tried to break it with a few sentenc...

He seems a sick angel, his head leaning on the blond halo against the back of the velvet chair. He seems, that is, I seem. I am that sick angel, his reflection in the large English mirror in the antechamber. He looks at himself. I look at myself. He is trying to study philosophy, but the arrhythmic ticking of the pendulum clock exasperates him: it seems to be about to die, his rattle is unbearable. His thoughts wander outside the window whipped by the wind in this horrible May. And in the living room there is Antonia sitting on the sofa with his brother and some friends. And there is Frédéric sitting in front of her. He abandons the Aristotelian syllogism, closes the book and crosses the living room with the air of someone who is there by chance, making himself strong in the fact that after all he is in his house and no one can find fault with it. He reaches the room with the fireplace, which crackles merrily, just stoked by Teresa; despite late spring, it's cold, the exces...

A squat black butterfly with red-flecked wings lands on Emmanuel's hair: he picks it up on his forefinger and observes it. - She's hurt, I don't think she'll make it. Too bad: he only had a few days to live. He throws it in the air and watches it go in an awkward zigzagging flight. - Butterflies fly badly, but it's still better than staying on the ground. Refrain from asking my opinion on the matter; in recent times he always does this: he proceeds by apodictic affirmations of which he is not interested in having confirmation or denial. It's like he's talking to himself. Kurt Cobain's death, a real generational shock, with its absurd succession of copycat suicides, shocked him. He was his favorite musician, a legend for him. He no longer listens to his music, doesn't communicate with anyone and has vertical mood drops; I do what I can to distract and comfort him, but it's not easy. He seems to have suddenly grown by ten years and ...