Synopsis

It's a slow journey, the Intercity train from Palermo to Rome, a journey from another era, interrupted by frequent stops at stations, by passengers getting on and off, chatting and bickering, falling asleep, or, while crossing the Strait of Messina, throwing old objects into the sea. It's because of this slowness that Paride Bruno chose to return on the train he took twenty years earlier, as a boy, to enjoy the life that swirls around those long journeys—the Sicilian couple arguing over a crossword puzzle, the scared and lonely girl seeking companionship, the boy with the intelligent gaze—and, above all, to take the time to reread the heavy folder he carries with him. It contains his many attempts at a novel, all interrupted at the first full stop, because Paride Bruno has tried his hand at every genre and style, but has never managed to choose one, complete the work, and thus call himself a writer. “I am a typical example of how the uncertain and schizoid spirit of the times operates so pervasively, so that, even as I am just living an experience, I feel surrounded by all the things I am losing in that very moment. And I migrate. I transmigrate.” But these very beginnings end up precisely sketching the protagonist's figure: each of the incipits contains a fragment of his life, his obsessions, his fears, and his desires. Each memory is a flower. Step by step, between a chat and a dream, incipit after incipit, Paride Bruno seems to reconcile himself with his incompleteness, with that “flutter of scattered pages” that is, ultimately, life itself.