Ties. Roberta Mezzabarba
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in the Middle Age. At first when he was assigned that research paper by his Medieval History professor, he thought that it was a strange topic. Once he started working on it, though, he realised that it could be an interesting topic. However what made it more interesting was the fact that there were not so many books that would mention the emotions of the people back in the year 1000.
The librarian working at the University Library saw him hanging from the unsafe ladders digging through the top shelves routing out dusty books that had not been touched in so many years. He saw him bringing them down on the table and browsing through them, frantically looking for something that would help him shed some light on that thick mystery. Quite often all his work would be vain because so many books did not even mention the year 1000; they just displayed some short meaningless information going back a few years before or after the birth of our Saviour.
Guglielmo was experiencing life on two different levels during that period. From one hand he was more natural for him to be similar to young people of his age who were busy organising dances, music, big parties to celebrate the year which was about to end, thus burying what was left of the year 1999. From the other hand, he felt completely isolated from the rest, too busy digging among the ruins of ten centuries searching for a clue, a lead, a feeble light that would help him discover what had frightened people back in the first millennium.
He kept these feelings within himself but he would often wonder why his friends and himself, living in the second millennium, did not have any fear for the new year which was about to begin. It was probably irresponsability that would alleviate every kind of fear, he thought, or too much knowledge was making them unaware of such impending danger?
He did not talk to anyone about his theories, but he would treasure them within himself.
He had a girlfriend named Gemma. They had been going steady for a few months now.
Before going out with her, he had never tested his monogamy. He had even gone out with four girls simultaneously. The amazing thing was that he always managed to keep on top of things, without hurting any of the girls.
Quite impressive.
Since he met Gemma, he felt that she alone could fill the void that all the other girls would cause him. She was so different from the girls he had met sofar. She was not an easy girl, she did not like dark places, she had a wild head of blonde curly hair. They would often sit on the park benches, on cool days in December and Guglielmo was always fascinated by her golden hair, as if his eyes were captured by a shimmering piece of jewellery.
It was early morning on the last Tuesday of the year and Guglielmo was already at the library. He got up that morning and was sure that he was going to find something interesting. He took a tiny volume from the last shelf full of ancient-looking books. It had thin pages which had turned yellow over time and was quite different from the other ones. Guglielmo opened the book and buried himself in those pages:
The image of the year 1000, which is still vivid in modern times, shows people gripped by paralysing fear that the world was about to end […] in people’s minds the millennial set of events have not lost at all their charm to this day […] the Dark Ages, a dark era, subjugated, where gothic superstitious beliefs played an important part […] the first description of the year 1000 terrors appears with the new humanism, which is a reaction to the contempt that the young Western culture had for the dark and barbarous centuries it was coming out of, it rejected them to look beyond barbarity, and place antiquity as its model […] among all that darkness, the year 1000, unlike the Renaissance, displayed an image of death and inane prostration!
He got it!
He found a little something that would help him carry on with his task. He rested the palm of both hands on the open pages of that book and took a deep breath, stretched his spine against the back of that hard chair and threw his head back. Had he not found any information that day, he would have asked his Medieval History professor for an appointment to tell him that he could not go ahead with his research paper.
He went back reading and realised once again how little information was available about that period. During those days of fear, if there was any, that the world was about to end, everyone was too busy selling souls and other goods so they could not describe people’s emotions. Once that frightening time was gone, probably most of them thought that it was out of place to talk about a threat that posterity would have considered unreal. To make things worse, Guglielmo knew only so well that none of the scholars back then would have wondered about the mental condition of the people. Only exceptional or unusual events would have been taken into consideration, whatever was breaking up the regular flow of things.
The wild world, nature almost uncontaminated, men were not so numerous, only equipped with basic tools, struggling with their bare hands against nature powers and earth powers, incapable of controlling them, getting scarce nourishment from them with difficulty, hit by bad weather conditions, lashed periodically by famine and illnesses, constantly tormented by starvation […] an extremely hierarchical society, a large number of serfs, peasants living in extremely poor conditions, utterly subdued to the power of a few families which branch out in more or less illustrious families, which strong kinship ties keep firmly around just one family .
He wanted to find some information, some stories about those people who were distressed by the hardship of their daily lives and by the fear of the end of the world that was looming over them like a dark shadow.
He was so absorbed in his book that he did not even hear any sound but he flinched when he saw a shadow on virtually all the pages of that book. Guglielmo was annoyed and looked up expecting to find the librarian standing in front of him wondering if he had found something for his work.
His face went from annoyed to surprised when he saw Gemma instead, with her arms crossed on her chest and with a half smile on her lovely face.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, motionless, as if they were on the stage of a theatre.
Gemma was wearing a sage green twinset: her beautiful eyes were the same beautiful colour that morning; and they were persistently looking at Guglielmo, peering at every single detail, every gesture, trying to pierce through her appearance in search of some thought that had escaped from her control.
She was a clever girl.
She took a seat beside Guglielmo and placed her hand on his hand. He could still feel the thin pages of that book underneath it. Finding that book gave him some hope to get to know what emotions, worries and frustrations upset the people back in the year 1000.
«I feared you had been gobbled up by a fire-breathing dragon!» she laughed heartily. «I dropped over to your house, and your mother told me that she did not even hear you leave this morning. I thought that you surely had a sudden brainwave while you were sleeping for your research paper. Is there a better place than a library for Guglielmo to get rid of all his morning energy?»
Gemma was getting dangerously closer to Guglielmo. She was well aware of this, she had known that boy for a while now. She was taking a chance standing so close to him… probably it was what she wanted, a bit of flirting first thing in the morning, among the shelves of a library…
She was changing.
Gemma was aware of the change that was slowly turning her from the stage of chrysalis into that of a beautiful butterfly.
She was starting to have strange thoughts, desires that she had never felt before.
Everything was happening because of Guglielmo.
He saw her leaning over towards him from where she was standing with a sensual movement. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, their faces were just a few inches apart, close enough to feel each other’s warm breath. Gemma closed her eyes, she tilted her head slightly, her nose gently touched Guglielmo’s, and a few moments after their lips joined.
It was the same story every time.
It was as if they were taken by magic. Guglielmo’s mind was going off in a moment