“Miss, you’ll have to listen to me for a bit because I have a lot to say, so please have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Are you comfortable?”

The young man sitting across from me appears calm, but his gestures betray nervousness. At this moment, he holds the same potential as a sky before a storm; there’s a dramatic intensity in his ardently gazing eyes.

How shall we begin? Well, let’s start.

He asks me several times if I’m alright, if the chair is comfortable, if I’d like something to drink or eat.

He wears glasses, but he tells me he prefers not to – trying to ease the tension that arises when confiding in a stranger – his hands clasped together, avoiding immediate eye contact, needing to gauge if he can trust.

“You’re a journalist, you must tell the truth. Or at least, that’s how one imagines your profession, otherwise you’d just be politicians. Am I right, miss?

Anyway, I’m not sure how much of what I tell you will be published, I know there’s censorship there. But you say you’ll listen to me entirely and report everything I say.

I hope so, miss. After all, you’re young. I should have more hope in the young, I know. But at 46, one feels wary of everything, and the new generations make for easy scapegoats.

But now that I think about it, it’s the fault of the previous ones if we live as we do now. If I have to recount what I do now. It’s certainly not your fault.

He calms down; he’s more composed now. He places a hand on his lap and begins to look at me timidly.

There’s something intimate about the contact between interviewer and interviewee. A new channel of trust opens, yet thoughts are liberated.

Yet, it’s not a relationship akin to that with a psychologist. The latter remains silent, waiting for your expression. My job here isn’t to remain silent but to ask more, to know as much as possible. To ask key questions.

But it can happen – in particular interviews like this one – that the interviewee is a torrent needing a gentle nudge, then they speak for themselves, answering unasked questions.

“My father died when I was 14, I think that’s when I became a man. Some become men when they start working, when they get married, or have a child. I, however, became a man in the worst possible way: by becoming an orphan. It’s ugly, miss, you know. If I still had my father… – he pauses – if I still had him, I’d feel like a son. I know it’s a strange thing for you. Yet, I’m no longer a son. Now, I should think about the family, my mother, my sister.

Well, at 14, I understood it was time to grow up. I was no longer a boy but a man.

So the first step was to find a job to go alongside school.

Don’t look at me like that! I know your generation isn’t used to it anymore, but we always worked, you know. And it didn’t matter if your folks were working. I didn’t have a safety net, miss.

That’s how I started, between one job and another, with a meager paycheck that we tried to stretch alongside what little my mom earned. It had to be enough.

And then… and then it all began. Maybe I’m tired, miss. This is a sad story, it’s ugly to tell sad things now that I think about it. To relive this life like this…”

He pauses for a moment, now he needs to talk to himself.

I realize I’ve ceased to be his unknown interlocutor for some time now. Now, he seeks other answers, treats me as one would a mirror. He doesn’t tell me these things to do me a favor; indirectly, I’m granting him this favor: he wants to be heard.

He has much to say; the tremor in his hands notifies me of it even before his voice can. But now he’s nervous; he must expose himself and is realizing he receives listening on the other end.

It’s not easy to open up completely – confessing defeats and bitterness to a stranger. I’m grateful, but I’m also nervous: I have a significant responsibility. At the end of his story, I’ll have to write; will I do justice to his words?

He comes back to himself, seeks eye contact: sees me again as a mirror.

“When I was twenty, I lost my cousin. I know it’s not relevant, maybe it is, maybe not. Honestly, I don’t know. You can write it, you can leave it. But I want to tell you, because losses are important, they deeply mark a man’s life. And if you want to understand who I am, the reason behind certain scars and bitterness, you must also know my losses.

It was an accident, a head-on collision. But it wasn’t our fault, my cousin was driving, he was sober. He hadn’t had a drop to drink, he promised his mother. But the one driving the other car, he had more than a drop. Completely drunk, he tested positive on the breathalyzer. And imagine, he got away with it, he didn’t die.

I remember the blinding light of that night, it was a moment: a thread between life and death, determining who should die and who should live.

I was supposed to die, miss. I wasn’t supposed to be here. My thread was marked, it was destiny that I should die. But I didn’t die because of him… my cousin didn’t allow it. He threw himself at me, shielded me, he wanted to… protect me. He threw himself at me, he threw himself at me… Christ, I remember every bit of that moment. It could’ve happened yesterday; now I have you before me, but I can still see the lights, I can still feel his body shielding mine. The impact, the crash, the noises. Everything.

In the hospital, as soon as I regained consciousness, my first thought was of him. And then I found out he didn’t make it, that I was supposed to die but I was alive and he wasn’t. And I remembered the light, I remembered his body on mine. The pain of losing something more than your own life. Miss, no one can repay the sacrifice of those we love, remember that. And no one can escape this debt. I don’t know, I don’t feel it as a burden. But I have the responsibility to pay homage to my cousin, every time I waste time, when I’m sad, bitter, I think I could’ve died but I’m alive, that he sacrificed himself for me. And so I tell myself I have to roll up my sleeves, I have to work, I have to make myself count.

So, only nine months later, I was hired by a transport company. It paid fairly well, they said. It’s a secure job, they said. You’ll have a secure paycheck, they said.

Miss, another thing you’ll learn growing up is this: never trust what they tell you. When you’re young, your head gets filled with false promises, idols, and gods. You can’t distinguish good from evil because when you’re young, both are part of life.

I had never driven a truck before, I didn’t know what it meant to carry tons, so for six months, all I did was learn. Despite it not being the life I wanted, I felt like I had to do it. Slowly, that vile monster of habit was nesting inside me. But I had to support my mom, I had my sister. I couldn’t afford the luxury of not settling. Alternatives are for those who can afford them, I couldn’t.

So, when I became independent, my first trip was to Germany. But what a trip! How awful! Just remembering it fills me with infinite sadness. I was just a boy… how many hardships I endured.

It was a town in inland Germany, an endless, ugly mountain road. Narrow, a narrow uphill road. I was alone with a vehicle weighing over ten tons; I felt like I was dying inside. My whole body was tense. I know, I know, it was just a road! But it scared me so much. With the snow falling indifferently. I’ve never hated snow so much.

Once, I loved it; I was happy when it snowed. I thought about friends, holidays, Christmas.

But that first trip made me loathe the snow because it inevitably became my enemy. If I see snow, I think of death.

I prayed on that journey, I prayed to my father, I prayed to my cousin. And I also prayed for my sister. My mother didn’t know I had gone so far. I told her it was an easy errand, near Genoa. She could be at peace, she didn’t have to worry. If only she knew the truth! I couldn’t, I couldn’t. Miss, with time, you’ll understand that you must also lie to those you love. You tell lies for two main reasons: out of love or out of hate. I had to lie out of love, and you do this, you do everything out of love. But now, everything is done out of hatred, what a terrible world…

Anyway, in the end, I reached my destination. That was my baptism of fear; I came back feeling more like a man, but something else awaited me.

Exhausting schedules, miss. Yet, so much responsibility. But it was like constantly walking on a tightrope: ‘either you make it, or I fire you. I’ll find another anyway.’

That’s how I felt, and I had to succeed by force, but if I could go back… I’d tell them off! How much dirty money… I shouldn’t dwell on it, otherwise I’ll get angry and who’ll control me then.

I spent many holidays – Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Easter Monday, Ferragosto – at service stations, far from my family but aware that if I made these sacrifices, it was solely for them.

Everything is for the family, isn’t it? Everything.