A rainy afternoon

A friend told me that, after the last violent storm a few months ago, finding herself in her car to take the city underpass of Porta Palazzo and realizing that the enormous mass of water that was accumulating in the lower part began to rise level and flood it, taking the descent began to slow down to evaluate whether to continue. Behind her a car had begun to flash nervously in the mirrors and immediately, crossing the double solid line in the center of the carriageway, had passed it in anger as a raised middle finger poked out of the window.

At that point she had stopped and in the front row she had been able to enjoy the scene that every motorist outraged by the vandals hopes: splashed in the middle of the ford, the author of the overtaking did not know what to do. She immediately thought that divine justice sometimes gives great satisfaction and she took a big sigh of relief when the driver managed to escape from the window. Now, all dull and soaked, he had lost all bravado as she watched helplessly as her rumbling toy was sinking. At that point she, with a silent and cautious U-turn, had begun to go up the tunnel with a hint of satisfaction painted on her face; she did not seem almost real, in front of her incredulous eyes of her a form of rare and unexpected moral compensation had suddenly become evident that repaid her for a long series of road abuse that had always gone unpunished. Not police, police, T-Reds and hidden cameras but the pure and simple force of nature, with the complicity of a true idiot, she had performed the miracle ...

What a divine sight! She immediately thought that she had been lucky that afternoon because only on television or in the cinema, following the times imposed by the narration and the screenplay, fate, in the form of a silent executioner, manifests itself and operates on things and on men. It has ways and times that escape us and we rarely manage to read; but that rainy afternoon no, in the dangerous misadventure a sound lesson had been imparted. In these times of unbridled indifference and widespread arrogance, this episode of real life and dreams that one-off come true in front of our eyes came to mind; they say that one learns by making a mistake and perhaps that arrogant young man driving under the tunnel on an afternoon of torrential rain will not forget his lesson, a little for the fright, much more because he lost his beloved car.

For him the circle is closed, idiotic transgression of the most banal rules of common sense and immediate and heavy punishment; it is a bit sad to think that perhaps only for this reason he will have learned something ... If he had managed to ford that flooded stretch in his heart he would have gained the confirmation of being a genius at the wheel, ready and charged for a new road idiocy at the expense of his neighbor.

NP Giugno-Luglio 2021

Michelangelo Dotta