Argento Vivo
Quicksilver. A neurodivergent childhood in 1970s Rome, told in episodes
This book is addressed to the parents of strange children. It is an invitation to watch carefully, because strange children often do not speak; they keep everything inside, and then at some point in life they will explode, tearing themselves to pieces and destroying whoever is near them.
The book
"What's got into you, have you got quicksilver in your veins?" That is what people say to a boy who is always running, indoors and out, so much so that at the market he is walked on a little red harness buckled round his waist. Argento vivo, quicksilver, is the everyday Italian name for mercury: the metal that is liquid at room temperature, that escapes and rolls into a bead the moment it leaves the thermometer, that is toxic, and that bears the name of the god of travellers, thieves, eloquence and dreams. Quite a calling card, for a child.
Argento Vivo is the book Lucio Freni is writing about that boy, that is, about himself, in Rome at the end of the 1970s: police sirens that seemed to weep through the streets, Aldo Moro's kidnapping on the radio, the grandparents who raise him, the pony ride in the gardens of Via di Villa Massimo, the parked cars peered into one by one to see the gear lever. Then the move to a brand-new district with no parish and no merry-go-round, which tears him away "the way you tear down a poster"; the first bully; the pencil case that is perfect on the first day and empty a week later; the yellow recorder at the school concert, with the teacher's instruction to only pretend to play; tennis watched from the kitchen window and never played, because a doctor had said no.
It is not a coming-of-age novel with redemption at the end: the author warns at once that the book does not end well. It is autobiography refracted through fiction, written in episodes, with the voice slipping from third person to first whenever the memory burns too much to be held at a distance. Underneath, one question, addressed to the parents of all strange children: why did nobody go looking for the cause?
The book is in progress and will be published in Italian. This page gathers a preview in English and will be updated on publication.
Excerpts
Argento vivo is the everyday name for mercury… Mercury, named after the god who protects commerce, travellers, thieves, eloquence, athletics, transformations of every kind, speed, dexterity, pharmacy… with wings on his feet, because there is no way to contain it, the mercury that escapes and wriggles the moment it is free of the glass tubes of old thermometers… it rolls into a bead that slides everywhere, a pleasure to watch, a fascinating and contradictory metal that is liquid at room temperature.
But mercury is toxic, so, widening the view… the child is toxic.
Nothing had changed in that place, and that was exactly what made him feel bad. The world had stayed the one he knew, but it was as if it were surrounded by glass. Nothing was as it should have been, and he looked at that space the way a gasping fish looks at the bowl it has always lived in.
A leaf, he wanted to be a leaf among millions of other leaves, to hide the crooked tree in a forest, that was all he wanted. He would stand in front of the mirror to work out what didn't add up in him. He didn't understand that there was nothing wrong with him, and so much that was rotten in the normal ones; in those who melt and dissolve and lose themselves in their collective identity. […] For Argento Vivo, being wrong had become a matter of fact. The world was right.
He had a conscience, so AV followed the order. And mind you, he had tried and tried again to play the recorder, and with the upper hand it didn't go too badly, but the lower one looked like a congress of eels gone mad… […] He had fooled himself that the problem was the recorder, but the teacher had understood the problem perfectly. It was a problem of application and willpower, and since those two goddesses came up in every speech anyone ever made to him, AV answered: Yes, all right, I'll just move my hands.
Quotations
Translated from the Italian manuscript in progress. Page references will be added on publication.
Nothing was. Everything was interpreted. It's called the hypocrisy of the point of view… the past never passes.
Water under the bridge doesn't grind any more, as the wise say… but it went through the mill wheel, it went through, it moved it.
Without the shield of his parents' love, a child is naked, and naked he will receive everything that life gives him. He will need luck, a great deal of luck…
That was the noise of ideas. Ideas that wanted to be heard and took up arms.
With willpower you can do anything. A shitty mantra that has kept Argento Vivo, and so many others like him, company all their lives.
Why do you do it? One should almost never say such a thing to a child, but I understand that it is easier than watching and understanding.
It was as if every idea in his head chased the others and erased the one that had been there a moment before, even putting a felt-tip pen back in its place.
Children's oaths are serious, because for them everything is eternal, nothing comes and goes, minds are not changed, and for those who break oaths there is hell. Grown-ups should learn from children how to be serious.
Seeing often kindles desire; what one never comes to know never enters the "I wish".
Those who write stories, who paint what does not exist, who dream, are of a delightful uselessness. But they are indispensable.
Strange thing, forgiveness: I never know whether I grant it because I love others or because I love myself too little, and I don't even know whether I have ever truly granted it.
On publication. The book will be available in Italian on Amazon, where Lucio Freni's other titles are already listed. Italian page: Argento Vivo.
How to cite
The author
Lucio Freni is an independent Italian writer based in Rome. His books span noir, dystopian satire, philosophical grotesque and epistolary fiction, and include Benzina, Cronache dal Sistema, Il libro del Nulla, Non torna mai nessuno da quaggiù and È tutta colpa di Dio. All titles are published in Italian. Author record on Wikidata.