March is a special month for the AbanoRitz, chosen not by chance by Terry and Ida Poletto to be dedicated to a dream, a project, a reality: the realization of the Super 8, that we invite you to discover, week by week. Eight authors stayed in our hotel, but more precisely in our rooms at the fifth floor: our Creative Rooms. Eight rooms, eight writers, eight telling.
This week we read Ester Armanino., architect from Genova class 82. Her first novel “Storia naturale di una famiglia” (ed. Einaudi, 2011) won the Kihlgren Debut Novel Prize, the Viadana Giovani Prize, the Zocca prize and the Prize for the Mediterranean Culture in the young telling section. In 2019 her first children book is published: “Una balena va in montagna” (ed. Salani). We brings her in the design room 511 with a flying bed, where Ester is able to make our imagination flying away with
“Sleeping alone”
Back then I was a guest at my father’s house because mine was being renovated. I would check on the status of the work in any spare moment of time. I was rushing from the office to the work in progress, where I would eat a sandwich together with the builders, while talking about plans, junction boxes and various positions. At night, I would fall asleep in the same room as I had as a teenager, while listening to the sound of the demolition which I had recorded, a concrete sound of disarming sweetness. My body had recently got used to being in spaces where only one person would fit. My body had holed up in those spaces as in excluding the possibility that another body might share something with it, so therefore it had become a technical body. With a step, it could measure the gap of a door, with its arms it could simulate the position of kitchen units. The builders would watch it scramble over extension cables and buckets brimmed with rubble or climb up to the top of telescopic ladders to match the flowery motifs of the plasterwork. The builders seemed worried about it. They were saying: “Be careful you don’t get hurt while hitting this or that”, but my body would never have got hurt that way. When I was invited to the AbanoRitz hotel for a short stay at the spa, I said to my body: “I’m sure you will like it here, or eventually you will get to like it.” What was agitating my body was the fact that I had been assigned a completely renovated suite, suite number 511. The double bed with four pillows, the double bathrobes, and only a single seat at the table set for breakfast and dinner, everything was trying to remind me that I was no longer part of a couple and that that was the way the world was, everything set for two. “You’re even going to be able to choose among four swimsuits” I said to my body while we were on the train, but it just turned away to look at the Spring out of the window, a wood of blooming chestnut trees, and a bridge over a ditch. At the AbanoRitz, the porter left my luggage just inside the door and then wished me a pleasant stay. I closed the door and opened the large curtains which were darkening a whole side of the room. Bountiful light came in, everywhere. The room looked out of the west side of the hotel, where bathtubs were collecting the thermal water, gushing out and mixing with mature mud. That spring water had taken twenty-five years to flow down through the Lessin mountains and then re-ascend from the three-thousand-meter deep crystalline bedrock along the volcanic duct of the Euganean Hills. So therefore, that water originated when I was ten years old, in other words the age when being by yourself represents a conquest. I wandered round the two specular bathrooms, turned the hair dryer on and off to see how powerful it was, opened my suitcase to take out one of my swimsuits to wear, checked on the status of my bikini line and legs and wore the spacious soft white bathrobe to play for time. The time had come for me to face the truth, so I dragged my body up to the front of the big suspended bed, definitely a designer piece. “Did you know” I told it “that one European out of ten is conceived on an Ikea bed?” My body did not laugh, though. It missed its building site. It had hardened like the mortar between the bricks of my new wall. So, I took the key and went down to the foyer to meet the other guests, as you cannot be alone in a hotel. You can choose to stay on your own, but that is a completely different concept. Soon afterwards, there were six of us getting acquainted. All by ourselves but in good company, sitting on the loungers of the indoor swimming pool, while watching the outdoor one, where the water jets of the Jacuzzi were making people gape in surprise and pleasure. We talked about books, apartments, dogs, far and near cities, love stories, sex, panic attacks. We watched the sunset while sipping spritzes. One of the girls said: “The sun always keeps its word. As for everybody else, you never know.” It was true. When you are in a couple, you always expect the other one will come back to you, but you cannot take that for granted. However, when you are single, you do not expect anything at all. On the contrary, what may happen might even surprise you. My body laughed at a joke, then approached another body to prod a compound fracture in a wrist which had never healed. At some point, we abandoned our bathrobes and slipped into the thermal steam of the pool. Outside, it was a cool night in mid-April, while inside, it was hot, and the swimming was pool illuminated by submerged floodlighting. I peeked at my body under water. It seemed to be able to make fluid movements and be fond of me again. It was suddenly light, calm and listening to me. When I returned to my room, I undressed and let myself fall onto the double bed. While lying on my stomach, I could hear my heartbeat against the mattress. “Oh my gosh!” I said to my body “you’re still in one piece and functioning!” It was beating precisely, two thumps, strong and grateful despite everything. I closed my eyes and saw the drawings of my house. Much further west, four hundred kilometres away from the healing water spring, the work was progressing in the expert hands of the workers who, while smoking Camel Blues, were preparing mud baths and massages, and the squaring off and leveling of the crooked parts. There would be a lot of space for a lot of “loneliness” in that house. I could organize a party with my friends from the AbanoRitz to soak in the present, continue speaking, touch each other’s compound fractures, tell stories about tattoos and feel happy. Later, though, not at the moment. I opened my eyes again and turned over onto my back. At that moment I was somewhere else, wearing double slippers at the foot of a gigantic bed, immersed in overabundance. It felt good to be there as well. “All it took was trust.” I told room 511, while my body was falling asleep in a state of grace. It felt like there was at least one mending heart in every room and that the hotel was grateful for that ceaseless beating. It seemed like the first time for everything, even for sleeping alone.
© Giovanni De Sandre
