The Revelation, ALbert Russo [grave mercy .TXT] 📗

added maybe to a sense of revulsion?
How easy it is to fall from a pedestal! Those very same people who had always pampered you, appeared all of a sudden suspicious in their motives. What you took with lightness and nonchalance until now had an aspect of severity and you expected a backlash at any moment.
A chapter of my childhood had just been turned and the sweetness of it had been stolen forever from me, as if I no longer had the right to taste the little and innocuous pleasures of life without reservation, like jumping rope, playing marbles, going to the movies on weekends, or simply enjoying an ice cream soda, let alone sharing the whims and the coquettry of my peers. I would acquire the impression that when previously they had just vied with each other for wearing the newest sandals, the most striking hair clip, or for flaunting an LP record of their favorite singer under your nose, they would start sizing me up with a gleam of nastiness in their eyes and I would then feel terribly spare, as if they had the capacity of reading my thoughts, or worse, of spotlighting that monster hidden in my body. I had ceased to play the games of seduction which, even though I never really found them palatable, helped me not to alienate myself from that ‘sisterly’ community.
I sometimes hear that the truth comes out of the mouth of children, but very seldom that they can be mercilessly cruel with each other. Are they really more tolerant than their elders, or is it that they get lost more easily in their own games, and that the second their attention is distracted, they remember to show you their claws? The child is a very conformist animal and he becomes collectively menacing as soon as he notices that you don’t look or don’t act like him.

THE LETTER
My darling Astrid and Leodine,

It is my wish that this letter reach you as late as possible, for I intend to take care of my lovely wife and our precious daughter, and, God willing, of her future brothers and sisters, for a very long time to come. But we never really know what destiny has in store for us. I survived this last horrible war unscathed, for which I shall forever praise the Lord. And something tells me that He keeps a protective eye over me. Nevertheless, I have asked my parents to hand you this letter, in case I should leave this planet before you, my dear ones. Strange, will you think, for someone who has a myriad plans for his family, until at least the year 2000, and who not only wants to be their initiator but also to see them accomplished, surrounded by his grandchildren. So much for an inveterate optimist!
Yet, it behooves me to let you in on an important fact, which, if it won’t be directly apparent in my beloved daughter, might come out in her brothers and sisters, or, much later, with a greater probability, in her own children, for genes have an uncanny way of manifesting themselves. You should consequently know that my great-grandmother was black. She was light-skinned, for an African woman, but it was both her beauty and her human qualities which attracted my ancestor, to the point where, in order to marry her, he had to confuse the issue before the civil administration of the time, going so far as to invent an identity for her, claiming that she was an Anglo-Brazilian aristocrat.
For reasons which may seem selfish and cowardly, I never told you this, my lovely Astrid. I was crazy about you from the first minute our eyes locked, and there was no way that I would let you go to another man. Had your parents learnt about this side of my family, they would never have accepted me as their son-in-law. The white folk, whether they hail from Europe or from America, not to mention those who have settled temporarily in Africa, are loath to mix with other races, as if by doing so, they would lose their honor as well as their soul. And I am not referring specifically to the nazis or to the members of the Ku Klux Klan, here, who share the same horrific values. This view is unfortunately much more widespread, even among the so-called liberal population. Mankind will have to wait generations before acknowledging that we all originate from the same source. But since our present society isn’t ready yet for this truth and since the color of one’s skin is still so prevalent in its choices, I thought it futile and even dangerous for my family, to engage in a personal battle against the majority. This is why I refrained from divulging it. Will you forgive me? No, not for inheriting my genes - I feel no shame about them -, but for having hidden this fact from you, to ward us off that long-standing plague which is called racial discrimination?
So, here, my darlings, is, as far as I know, the missing link to our family history, for I didn’t deem it necessary to go farther back into our genealogical tree.
With all my love and indefectible affection, whatever the circumstances.

Your Greg Imprint

Publication Date: 11-18-2009

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