{"id":3807,"date":"2022-02-05T10:10:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T09:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nanopausa.com\/?p=3807"},"modified":"2022-02-05T10:10:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T09:10:24","slug":"breadcrumbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nanopausa.com\/it\/breadcrumbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Breadcrumbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A settembre 2021 questo racconto \u00e8 stato pubblicato su Entropy’s The Birds series<\/a>. Parla di una signora anziana – e adoro le signore anziane – e di uccelli – e adoro anche quelli. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Per ora lo trovate solo in inglese, vediamo se poi lo tradurr\u00f2. Spero vi piaccia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interviewer arrived ten minutes late, which was not a good start. She introduced herself as Pauline, and looked twentyish, and disoriented. I know that at 20 one is still a child, especially with these new generations, but when you\u2019re eighty, and by her age you had already discovered two species of birds, and spent all your winters studying their migrations, discovering a new route nobody had noticed, your benchmark is set a little high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked her through the entrance which is full of my watercolor illustrations of birds and heard her speak to herself. She said something like \u2018Hey, Siri, take a note, film the illustrations of the birds.\u2019 I was about to ask her if she wasn\u2019t called Pauline but then I imagined that had to be her nickname. We arrived in the sitting room, which has a huge bay window overlooking the garden. The outside green reflects itself into the room, leaving most guests impressed. And I wanted to impress her, or rather that\u2019s what Margie, my publisher, wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt eighty,\u201d Margie had said, \u201cYou have to play your cards well. And despite your career, your autobiography won\u2019t sell itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t want to do filmed interviews,\u201d I complained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s either you open your own Instagram account\u2026\u201d I raised my brow\u2014at eighty?\u2014\u201dor have someone who\u2019s already popular there interview you. End of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there I was, with this twenty-year-old girl who apparently had hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, whatever that meant, and yet<\/em>, my publisher had stressed that yet, she wanted to interview me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, you\u2019re a hornothologist,\u201d she said with an enthusiastic smile. I looked straight into her eyes, for four very long seconds and then focused on the tray holding a teapot with two cups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOrnithologist, yes,\u201d I smiled politely. \u201cMilk? Sugar?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust black, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sat, hands in my lap, waiting for the first question but she got distracted by the shortbread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you make it yourself?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, the stuff you buy from the stores is always too sugary, especially with my diabetes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, that\u2019s very interesting,\u201d and she started taking pictures of the shortbread from every angle, as if I were no longer there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked at her, wondering whether she was supposed to interview someone else and, by some strange coincidence, had ended up in front of my house in the middle of the forest at the same time when my real interviewer was meant to arrive. She must have understood I didn\u2019t get it because she explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFood, it always does wonders with my followers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m not a cook,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d she replied. All the while, she never looked me in the eyes, she was always focused on her mobile phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, tell me about your work\u2026\u201d she said at last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all in my book. There isn\u2019t much to add to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at me blankly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHaven\u2019t you received the advance copy? I thought my publisher had sent you one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, she did. But I didn\u2019t want to be influenced by it. I prefer to offer a fresh take on things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, you have no idea what\u2019s written in the book?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone whatsoever.\u201d And she was proud of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point she pulled out all her equipment from her backpack. It was mostly little gadgets she attached to the phone: a microphone, a steady cam. I knew those instruments, I had them myself. Except I used them to point them at birds, not at people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She started asking me about my everyday life. What food I liked, mostly. She asked me about my favorite music. And about my routine. When I told her I usually wake up at four when I\u2019m working, she looked at me like she didn\u2019t know that time existed. That\u2019s of course after she realized, I didn\u2019t mean four in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also told me a lot about herself. In fact, she was always talking about herself. At times, I thought I was meant to interview her. Perhaps that had been the agreement Margie had made, without telling me, of course. She showed me her famous Instagram account, which mostly had pictures of herself, sometimes holding a product, or testing it in any case, sometimes standing next to someone. She told me about her business. Apparently, she considered posting pictures of herself a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, my parents are working in an office nine to five every day of the week and hate it, and I do something I love and get money for it. Isn\u2019t it crazy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agreed. And, for the first time, I thought that we had something in common: we were both fortunate enough to do something we love for a living. It made me laugh and she noticed, but I was too shy to tell her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes she flooded me with questions, like she had set her brain free, and was just releasing any thought that came to her mind, unfiltered. They call it brainstorming, and I\u2019ve never really understood it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a picnic in the garden, under the trees. Of course, she was vegan, but at least that I knew so I made her sandwiches with some sort of fake meat my publisher insisted I buy, and with proper meat for myself. I tasted some of the fake meat when I was making the sandwiches, and it reminded me of cardboard, but she made plenty of yummy noises so either it was really good, at least in her opinion, or she was a good actress. Maybe a bit of both, which strangely I appreciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spoke about what it was like being a woman scientist. We spoke about glass ceilings and I made a joke that the only glass ceiling I would like was one that allowed you to look at the birds from below, but avoid having them shit on your head. Or face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This made her laugh. She told Siri too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept wondering whether her followers would ever read my book. Whether they would ever consider buying the book of an eighty-year-old woman who had spent her entire life chasing birds from a distance, listening to their song, observing their nests, their eggs, their mating rituals. And by the end of the day I found myself hoping they would because I was starting to like this girl. We spoke of poachers, of corruption, of research funds. She wasn\u2019t particularly interested in the politics of my research, but she made an effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have one more question for you. I\u2019m sure you covered it all in the book, but let\u2019s repeat it for the camera, shall we?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this time, I had gotten used to having the camera pointed at me, I felt rather at ease, and even professional. I thought I probably looked good, for an eighty-year-old scientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy did you decide to study birds? What was your first inspiration?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, that was not the question I was expecting. Somehow, I had steered clear of that question all my life. Not even my parents asked me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo? How did you decide?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when I told her. I told her of that summer Henry and I spent with our grandparents. Our grandmother took us to a little lake near her house one day. They were renting out pedalos, small ones, just for two. I was twelve then, Henry was ten, and the people renting them agreed to have us go by ourselves. Our grandmother gave us a paper bag full of breadcrumbs for the ducks. And there were plenty of ducks. We were in the middle of the lake and they all swam towards us. I\u2019d never seen animals so greedy. I got scared. They were too many now, and some were trying to climb on the pedalo, or so it seemed to me. I told Henry to pedal with me, we had to escape, and I started to pedal as fast as I could, but every time I looked behind my shoulder, they were there, swimming faster than us, it seemed. I was about to turn to Henry and tell him to pedal faster when I realized: he was still giving them breadcrumbs, and wasn\u2019t even pedaling. He just laughed and laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen did he die?\u201d she asked when I had finished my story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow\u2026? Six months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo he was the \u2018H.\u2019 at the end of the book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou did read the book!\u201d I clapped my hand on my knee, a gesture that made Henry and I laugh when our grandmother did the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow about we start from this, then?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where the story started. Even Margie was pleased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A settembre 2021 questo racconto \u00e8 stato pubblicato su Entropy’s The Birds series. Parla di una signora anziana – e adoro le signore anziane – e di uccelli – e…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,420],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBreadcrumbs — Slawka G. Scarso<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nanopausa.com\/it\/breadcrumbs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"it_IT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Breadcrumbs — Slawka G. Scarso\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A settembre 2021 questo racconto \u00e8 stato pubblicato su Entropy’s The Birds series. 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