Balloons
a true fable inspired to real facts
They say they will never come back. Ever.
They will disappear in the sky getting smaller and smaller like thousands of tiny pinpricks.
They will disappear sucked by sky’s sweepers: the black holes.
This is the fate of balloons: escaping from a fatty finger of weeping toddlers and getting lost in the
space.
Mario was a good man.
Life has been unkind to him.
Ripping him a son, too soon. Too unnatural because sons are supposed to survive fathers.
His job helped him to force to smile and move forward.
He was a janitor, a smiling one, not belonging to those ones who squeeze their lips into a severe
line. Not belongings to those ones who are always hasty at making children entering at school.
Primary school, in addition.
Mario had got a large and overblown face where a generous mouth opened up into a warm smile.
Always.
His knotty hands tighten green and tiny hands that wanted not to leave mommy’s ones.
He used to bring in his pockets some shaped-unicorns candies to offer to dry tears. Tears every
kid pours because they do not wish to go to school, because they are scared of growing up, because
growing up is a huge fatigue meaning separating from mammy or daddy and staying into a cold
nothing.
For a while.
But, Mario was there to fill that void.
To the grown-ups, he told funny jokes.
To the little ones, he gave away kisses and hugs.
If someone skinned his knee, while playing in the garden, Mario cured his little patient with
loveliness. And if the bleach was burning a little, he made up magical nursery rhymes as a new
wizard of Oz. And the magic never stopped because, he always gave his “children” a balloon. Not a
usual one. But in the shape they liked the most.
When he was younger, when life was kind to him, he worked as a clown into a circus where he met
his wife, a trapeze artist. A love at first sight while Mario was watching at her beautiful dragonfly
hovering upon a protection net.
They married into the circus.
The lion tamer as a priest.
Two contortionists as best men.
Magician flower as a wedding bouquet
The wild African elephants bellows as soundtrack.
It was perfect, as the way they loved each other, suspended into a world with no time or space.
But the envy witch of the fate was ready to cut their happiness, because you get to burn to shy (they
said this was “her” reason, afterwards).
Nine moths after, they were blessed with a child. The child of the circus, the sign of youth and life
and hope. The witch stole the life of the son of Mario and his wife.
As an heritage of his first life, Mario saved up his mastery at modelling balloons, transforming them
into a sword, a frog, a dog, a flower, a cat, a knight or a princess. When the cure of a wounded knee
was over, he offered to his little heroes a whatever-shape-you-like balloon.
He got hand of gold because he got a gentle heart.
Everyone loved Mario and he loved them back, at first. Because, he thought, they saved him. Those
children represented an infinite chance to act as a putative father. And he felt himself blessed and
gifted as the grief that stopped his time once, was melt away.
He has been working at the same school for thirty-five years.
Now was time to retire. To do that journey to Santiago de Compostela with his wife. Or renting a
little house and ending his days as a fisherman. That tiny house in that little island next to Sicily. He
could feel the warmth of the sun on his face. He could hear the light fizzing of grasshoppers, in
summer. Oh, he was ready to leave. To start a new beginning in peace and gratitude.
But Gods were rolling his dice onto another green carpet. And by a medical examination, Mario
realised his life would be ended up in sorrow.
Another one to bear. To leave his wife alone.
A cancer. That was the form of the dice.
Fourth grade. Pancreas.
Death, in one word.
Grief, if you prefer tenderness.
The last day at school, he went knocking to each of the fifteen doors of the school rooms, carrying a
huge bag. As Santa.
The last day before saying goodbye, he gave each of his adopted children a balloon. A deflated one.
The grown-ups asked him where he was going. He answered to a place they could not go with him.
Not yet.
The little ones gave him back drawings.
So he left the school. Gently and smiling as he started.
So he began his acquaintance of morphine. How to self-administer it. And he died.
The news arrived with the cold wind of the North, on a cold morning of December, fogging the
joyful dressed-up schools windows for Christmas to come.
Adults decided to go to the funeral.
The grown-ups and the little ones to blow up Mario’s balloons. All of the them.
The day came. The day of the funeral. The wind was domed, as the lion of the circus.
The sun was shining in the sky with its best ever smile.
The clouds were hidden, nobody might say where exactly.
From above the school garden seemed as a pointillism artwork, coloured in red, green, blue and
yellow.
From the bottom, you could see a field of hard-working hands and mouth, blowing up the balloons
and knotting them to border the air inside making them come to life. To fly.
And the bell rang into a solemn stroke. And that was the signal.
Lots of balloons began to fly. The same rhythm as soldiers into a parade thanking their general for
the last battle, that one for a a war to be won.
All the noses were up not to miss the moment.
No tears to dry
No snots to clean.
All the children were looking at this magnificent show of letting go.
With happiness and gratitude.
Few days after the parade. Few days after the funeral when the sorrow was still wet as fresh paint in
your new house, they saw them. They saw the balloons twisted in the chimney of a house.
The house of Mario.
Nobody knew how it happened.
