Memory street
Up that steep street was the house of D, a schoolmate whose family was acquainted with a relative of mine, a grand aunt who‘d got married to a veterinary doctor, and without any children had the leisure to devote herself to charity works in a prim, well-meaning Catholic milieu. D was the daughter of quite rich parents and lived in a large villa surrounded by a huge, perfectly tended sloping garden at the foot of the ramparts around the ancient city, in a position commanding over the whole neighbourhood. D was always the school mistress’s sweetheart. It will by pure chance but, looking back, I wonder if this attachment wasn’t enhanced by the personal gifts that her mother never failed to present the mistress with at Christmas and on a couple of other occasions during the school year.
Strong of this position of advantage, D behaved accordingly and mostly associated with those she would like to grace with her companionship, while looking down on others who she deemed unworthy. With children the split between girls and boys is rather clear and natural, still, even as a boy, I was aware I was out of her gang.
I must have been about seven when our mistress showed us in the classroom a green and yellow plastic box with a lid that had a slanting edge you could slid up from the bottom and the loose cards would stick out to form a scale of different colours. Each card had in fact a colour-coded stripe that corresponded to a subject and contained a quiz with the answer on the back. I took to this magical object from the start and hinted at my mother how I liked it, without much hope of being indulged, but against all expectations, she immediately bought it for me.
I don’t remember how I happened to be at D’s house that day, maybe for an end-of-the-summer holiday party, but I was there with my card box which I proudly showed around. At the end of the afternoon I remember being in a bedroom, surely waiting for my mother to come round and pick me up. Only D and her brother C were there with me. They said they liked the box. C pulled out one or two cards to look at, but then turned nasty. He had realized how much I was attached to the object that I religiously cherished, nearly afraid of using it for fear of spoiling its newness. D’s brother was now waving a card and cold-bloodedly threatened to tear it, his sister looking on with a wicked grin, visibly amused at the show that was being put on and at the dismal look on my face. She was urging him to go ahead with his cruelty.
I had no choice but to wait for his next move, for if I had jumped at him and tried to snatch the card he would have had time to put his threats into action. The card was a hostage in his hands, and this excruciating situation soon became so poignant that I must have started imploring him to stop the game. After a time that seemed endless, I remember tears rolling down my cheeks while I was staring at the card being torn in two pitilessly.
By the time my mother came I had inserted the spoilt card back into its place and tried to look as happy as I could. I had in fact decided to conceal the incident from her out of pride. Well, no, it wasn’t pride that prompted me to hush it up… It was the fear of making her as sad as I had felt, letting her know that I’d been made a fool of by two worthless brats. I sensed I had somehow betrayed the confidence she’d placed in me, when she had so willingly satisfied my wish for a present I prized so much.
Besides, I was overwhelmed by the misery that came from realising that something had happened which could not be reversed. That very card was irreplaceable, and I felt hopeless for knowing I had crossed a threshold when something that was, would never be the same again.