These are sad days for the world of culture and entertainment. Mattia Torre, 47 years old, screenwriter and director, died today, of whom we remember ‘Boris’, the famous TV series from which a film was made. He left due to a long illness a few hours ago.
Mattia Torre was also a writer . From his Di him The vertical line from which the TV series was taken, the autobiographical story of him as a patient of the Roman hospital Regina Elena. In May, In mezzo al mare (Mondadori), an updated version of the collection of “comic acts” published in 2012, which had inspired brilliant monologues such as Perfetta, brought to the theater by Geppi Cucciari , arrived in the bookstore . The opening words of the novel The vertical line.
As soon as I knew I was sick, I immediately thought about my funeral,
> I imagined how it must have been: it must have been very painful. Because the most successful funerals, the ones that remain etched in the memory, are the most painful ones. In this sense, the Catholic funeral was immediately excluded, because the Catholic funeral is not painful enough. Most of the time it is not clear what the priest is saying, he reads from the Bible parables of dubious hold on the public, mentions nonsense episodes from his childhood, and then those organ music is distracting, one begins to think about one’s own affairs and this is wrong, because the thoughts, the emotions of those present must converge in a single, excruciating pain. No Catholic funeral then, and no priests. Only moved friends who maybe tell something about the deceased, something about him, something intimate, touching, anecdotes, targeted anecdotes, about the person, about his qualities that now appear superlative, practically a saint, anecdotes so exciting that whoever wrote them cannot read them, and bursts into tears because the pain is too strong; or even amusing, that is to say that they combine the grief that comic note that makes the pain even more unbearable – “he loved family, friends, char-donnay” – and in fact everyone is crying bitterly, this is my funeral, nobody smokes outside, no, all inside, crowded, there is room for everyone. For the perfect and important funeral that is also physically devastating, you have to go out with a headache and the desire to throw up. You hardly have to feel like living after a truly successful funeral. You must pass the desire to be with others, the faith in the future, the inclination to work, the appetite.
> The corridors of a large hospital, stairs and elevators, an operating room, another corridor, places inaccessible to the public and others full of people waiting, various abandoned humanity, the sick and relatives of patients, and then doctors and nurses. There is no gloom. A hospital and a large factory in which everyone has a role. Among these people, sitting in a waiting room, the air unperturbed, Luigi.
> A doctor calls him, and it’s his turn, Luigi gets up and enters the urologist’s office.
> The urologist and a boy who is twenty-eight but shows twenty-two, Luigi gives him the test tube they gave him in the emergency room and explains that he had, that same morning, an episode of … “hematuria”, he anticipates the young urologist getting up, now, he says, we immediately do a test to see if it is blood or something else. Luigi looks at him: «You are very young», he comments, «it must be his first visits». The urologist smiles: “This is my first visit.” «His first visit ever
», Luigi asks surprised. “Yes,” smiles the urologist. “Well,”
says Luigi, “what they say in these cases
” “And blood,” he replies
> the urologist, “if that’s okay with you, let’s do a cystoscopy right away.” Life is also this: one moment you are at work, or at home, or in traffic, and the next moment you are on the table of a urological office.
> “He sees this gush of blood,
” the doctor explains during the
> cystoscopy while Luigi stifles a scream of pain. “That comes
> directly from the ureter, if you agree to do
> an ultrasound.” The ultrasound is not painful but Luigi is alarmed by the
> look of the young doctor. “All right
” “There is something.” “Something
.” The doctor gets up and goes back to his table, please come, sit down.
> Luigi sits down in front of him. The urologist takes courage, inhales, and speaks: «You have a tumor in the left kidney. It is big, and a big mass. We must operate immediately ».
> The sky breaks and everything turns upside down. The chair of the young doctor is overturned and falls backwards, as is the table from which computer, sheets, keyboard and printer fall, the study is overturned and loses its contours and walls, notions, concepts, thoughts and memories are overturned, everything falls backwards . The objects no longer have form, nothing and more what they used to be, the others are no longer there and there will be more, everything and away, there are Luigi and the disease in an immense white space.
> A tumor
> The urologist does not reply, he breathes. Luigi claims to have made some
> routine analysis a few months before and everything was fine, she has no pain, she has no problems. The doctor explains that the kidney tumor is a subtle, asymptomatic tumor. Breathe in strongly. Luigi is silent. Then he gets up. “May I
” Luigi opens the door of the doctor’s office, outside of him, waiting for him, his wife Elena and his daughter Anita. Elena looks at him and immediately understands something, Luigi takes Anita in his arms, whispers to his wife some words he will never remember again, shocked she looks at the doctor to understand better, the doctor sees her, beautiful, pregnant, everything is upside down for him too.
> “Per aspera ad astra.”
