"Nice to meet you, I'm Fausto M., I'm eighty-seven years old, I don't know if I will be here in some years."
His composure definitely caught me unprepared.
I met Fausto one Saturday afternoon in August, at the seaside on the Adriatic Coast. He is an old man of good health with modest blue eyes, reserved, very large hands and a difficult smile. He adores ice cream but is always cold.
He doesn't have children and never married, Valentina accompanies him for the holidays. He often asks her where his glasses are, his clothes, if there is enough food at the restaurant. He recommends not to swim in the Yugoslavian Coast which is full of sharks.
Faustino is affected by Alzheimer's disease, a progressive cognitive and chronic disorder.
He told me that he had travelled almost all of the world, except for Australia and Japan, even if he doesn't remember anymore how to speak the languages. With confidence he said to me that the North and South Poles are the most beautiful places to visit.
During our talk he pointed out all, and I mean all of the boats on the horizon and some airplanes that sporadically passed above our heads.
When I left him to return home, he asked me whether we would see each other again, or not.
If memories are subjective and questionable, it is equally the structure that keeps them, the memory.
The personal history of each individual, the entirety of a lifetime, is the emotional inheritance we leave to posterity, or not.
Really, are we all witnesses?