h2>Dating : The Red Folder — A Story of Temptation, Punishment, and Redemption
A short story based on Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.
Have you ever heard the story of “Bluebeard”? A powerful French castle-owner who marries a peasant girl and welcomes her to his mansion only to leave after a few days with a bundle of keys and a recommendation. Out of all these keys, she is forbidden from using the smallest one, but as human curiosity goes, she finds the door and enters the forbidden room. In it, she encounters her husband’s previous wives, dead of an atrocious death. When her husband unexpectedly returns, she is doomed to follow the same destiny. Her brothers, however, rescue her in time and kill Bluebeard.
This story of temptation, punishment, and redemption fascinated hundreds of children throughout the centuries, but how does it translate to the 21st century?
As the train curves on its rails, the spires of the city appear in front of my eyes. Medieval towers, Renaissance golden statues, and modern-day antennas fight for sovereignty over the evening sky. The train starts slowing down, tired of its long journey southward. This is not the last stop, but it is mine. Looking over the city scape at sunset, shielded by the window of the moving train, my memories come back to me. I haven’t been back to Rome ever since I left it. Ever since I gladly left it. There was no love to the love-hate relationship I had with my city. Twenty years had gone by since the evening we packed our car with all our belongings and set out towards a new life, a better life, a haunted life. That never changed. The city of Rome made me haunted, and on my way back to where it all started I could not help but remember.
When I was a little boy in Rome, I lived a life similar to that of most of the other children my age. I would go to school at eight o’clock every morning, cruise through the public buses and the dangerous pedestrian crossings populated by reckless drivers, I would spend long afternoons playing soccer with my friends, play videogames in the evening, and make my mother go crazy about the grades I got in school. I would hitch rides from my friends’ mothers after school, smile at strangers on the side walk, go to the swimming pool on Saturday morning, and to the park on Friday afternoon. Every Sunday I had lunch at my grandparents’ house, and I would lay in their garden looking up at the sky, wondering what all of it was about. All in all, I was identical to any other eight year old. Except… I was not very good at school, textbooks gave me headaches, and I definitely could not understand multiplication. How was it possible that numbers became so big after such a small number was multiplied to them? My father would try to sit me down after he came back from work at six o’clock in the evening, and show me multiple examples of how six times eight was forty-eight, while my mother prepared dinner in the kitchen. My teachers had no patience with me, they told my parents I was misbehaved, I had some learning disabilities, or I was just unfocused. They suggested they should enroll me in a military school, send me to a boarding school abroad, or even to a Catholic school. There were many in Rome.
My parents gave it a lot of thought. They spent evening after evening discussing whether I needed that sort of rigidity or I was just a lost cause. I could hear them arguing in the kitchen, should I be treated like any other child, or did I need a little push. It did not really matter to me, I had my videogames, my friends, soccer. Homework could wait. However, a week after my teachers suggested a change in my education, I walked past the wooden doors of my new school. It was a massive building made of marble, with small windows, long corridors filled with images of saints and popes. Writings on the wall belonged to a language I did not understand. A man walked me to the second floor, where I was introduced to the principal, don Luigi, an old slim man who wore glasses. He smiled at me as I walked into his office, and he asked me to sit down in a brown armchair in front of his desk. The armchair was clearly not built for children, and as I sank into its leather I knew I must have looked ridiculously small in comparison to the backrest. “Welcome, Giorgio,” don Luigi said. His hands were trembling and I could smell his breath from a distance. The entire room actually smelled like it. It wasn’t very pleasant. It reminded me of the smell of old drunks on the street at night, the ones that would never leave me alone, who persistently asked for a few coins. It was that and garlic, old garlic. He introduced the mission of the school and explained the rules, but I wasn’t following. My eyes were glancing at every wooden cross, every faded image framed in glass, every book that saturated the room. He was eloquent and enthusiastic, but there was nervousness in his eyes. Don Luigi took me around the school and showed me my classroom. A dozen children were listening attentively to their teacher, another slim man the same age as my father. There were no women and no girls in the school, the principal announced with a note of pride in his voice. Good, I thought, at least I won’t hear any more conversations about ponies. I grinned, and I saw don Luigi’s face curved in a similar fashion.
I started attending classes the following day, a Tuesday, and by Friday I had made new friends. They were quiet and disciplined, their hair was always perfectly combed, so I continued spending my afternoons with my old friends on the soccer field. I was not tidy, I could not sit quietly on a chair like my new schoolmates, and I surely could not achieve their same grades. But I adapted, I learnt.
Soon enough I started noticing that don Luigi would sometimes walk in the corridor past my classroom and peek inside. The doors of the classrooms had a rectangular glass from where you could look in and out. It would be for a brief moment, but I could smell his breath and his old sweat from inside the room. I learned how to recognize his presence. It would make me shiver. I learned to fear it and to be curious about it at the same time. After all, he was an important man in the school, and I had never received much positive attention in an educational environment. He would sometimes walk in and kindly ask the teacher if I could summarize the lecture for the class. I would stand up confidently and repeat the only parts I had listened to before my mind had wandered off. My teacher would scold me, but don Luigi always winked at me after my performance. Some of the other children would whisper in each other’s ears, but I did not care. For the first time in my life, I was a teacher’s favorite. A head teacher’s, actually. I was proud. And scared.
One day after classes, don Luigi walked up to me in the corridor and asked me whether I liked cookies. I nodded enthusiastically. My parents followed an organic diet and at home there was no such thing as a cookie to be found. Or at least, a cookie that didn’t taste like soil. Don Luigi led me into his office, the one I had visited on my first day at the school, and opened one of his wooden drawers, his eyes fixed on my chest. He picked up a pack of chocolate cookies and handed it to me. I took it from his hands and gladly devoured five or six cookies before I remembered I wasn’t alone in the room. Don Luigi was laughing silently, then exclaimed: “I have a meeting to attend, but you stay here and eat all the cookies you want. You can play a game on my computer if you’d like, but please do not open the red folder on my desktop. That is some private business of mine, and I know you will not find anything interesting in it.” Then he winked at me as he left the room. The smell of sweat stayed within the four walls. I did not care, I had entertainment for the entire afternoon. I sat in front of the computer and opened games on a website. I played with Super Mario for a while, then with puzzles, but by the end of “Bubbles” I got tired of the variety. I closed the browser window and saw the desktop folder don Luigi had specifically told me not to open. It was red, an inviting red, and the name under it was “private”. I felt thrilled as I moved the cursor over the folder. I remembered the warning the principal had given me, but I knew he was in a meeting and he wouldn’t be back for a while. I had nothing to lose. I clicked on the folder.
The screen got filled with images. Images of children. Images of naked children. Some of them were my age, others younger. They were crying as they stood naked looking at the camera. Some tried to cover up their faces, but I recognized most of them from the younger children in the school, the ones I would see in the corridors, or in the sober playground where we were allowed to play for just twenty minutes per day. I zoomed out of the pictures and could recognize the crosses on the wall, the shelves filled with books, the wooden desk, and the leather armchair. The pictures had been taken in that same office. I closed the folder window as soon as I heard some steps in the corridor. The steps paused in front of the door, and I smelled the sweat and breath of don Luigi. I opened the browser again and pretended like I was playing a game. Like I hadn’t just looked into his soul. Like I hadn’t just seen my fate. Don Luigi sighed and said a few things about the meeting he had attended. I couldn’t listen, my heart was pounding in my chest.
He reached the place where I was sitting and closed the browser window with the mouse. He saw that the red folder was selected, he looked at me with a smile and very calmly ordered me to take my clothes off. He opened a drawer and extracted a video camera. It was a new camera, the same one my father had. You could touch the screen, turn it inside out, and it could even go underwater. I thought it was a waste in that old office. I hadn’t taken my clothes off and he repeated his order. I obeyed and stripped in front of his eyes. He grinned and ordered me to sit on the armchair as I had done on the first day. He said he liked the leather on my skin that morning, he said it “turned him on”. I did not know what that meant and he showed me. I got scared. I did as he said, I climbed on top of that big leather armchair, and he started recording.
I do not want to go into the details of what he asked me to do, but years later, as I think about the fact on a train back to the city of my childhood, the memories still haunt me. When don Luigi felt satisfied with my performance, he let me get dressed and leave the room. He explained that I deserved it, what he did to me, because I had disobeyed. I had opened the folder he had told me not to open, the only thing in his office that was forbidden. He reminded me that God always observes, and if I misbehaved again I should suffer, that was the only way to repent. I believed him, I walked the long corridors to exit onto the streets and myriad of saints looked down upon me from the walls. Their stern expressions condemning me for disobeying don Luigi’s orders. Condemning me for what had been done to my body in return. I walked quickly, trying to escape the hellish maze of the school before its demons could chase after me. I ran home, knowing I should tell my mother what had happened. I hurried and panted, until I reached the apartment building where we lived. I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor where we lived and ringed the doorbell. My mother found me all sweaty and tired after my run. She asked me whether I was alright. I took a deep breath in, ready to tell her everything. “Yes,” I replied, “I just didn’t want to miss my show on TV.”
My mother sighed and let me in through the door. She shook her head and probably wondered why her son could not be more focused. I never told her what had happened.
I know today that the violence I had to go through again and again was not God’s will. I know don Luigi was a sick individual, who perpetrated violence against dozens of children. I know he was not alone, I know most teachers in that school were with him, just like him. I know he deserved prison, although he ended up being absolved by the Vatican jury when his process came. I know there are sick parts of society that commit atrocities and get away with it. I left Rome after that school year because of my mother’s job. We moved to Switzerland and I found my passion for tech. For my parents’ greatest joy, I started studying so I could get admitted to the Polytechnique in Zurich, where I graduated with honors. I now develop videogames for children and teenagers. I am coming back to Rome after twenty years for my grandfather’s funeral, and as I glance at the sacred churches from the railroad, I know my next videogame will be designed for all the boys who, like me, had to go through red folders. For all the boys who ran home and pretended like their running was vain. They no longer should be silent.
