It was the last day of the inauguration of my exhibition in Venice entitled "Senza radici" ("No roots"). I was feeling contentedly tired, largely due to the emotions experienced during that week.
Every person that entered was an unknown factor; would they stop and talk to me? Would they like my work, in other words my being?
Not long after noon, an odd-looking gentlemen entered; he was rather elderly, jacket and tie, though black and worn, even creased, a folding chair in his right hand, a plastic shopping bag in his left.
I thought that he must be from the retirement home, or some poor soul who had had a bit too much to drink, given that he stopped to look at each picture at length, that he read my poetry carefully.
He eventually came over to the table where I was sitting and drawing to kill time; he spoke to me in English, with an American accent.
His name was Turf, he was from New York but lived in Berlin. He sketched tiny pictures on a notepad, dipping the nib of a fountain pen in an ink well that he kept in his pocket, then spread the ink with the back of the nib.
More than pictures, they were sketches, or more precisely strokes of the unconscious. He told me that he gave his drawings away to children, or exchanged them for a few sweets, that he held his shows on Venetian ferries or in bars, given that it only took him a few seconds to compile one!
His long, tapering fingers like the needles of a printer went up and down his pad, fixing the faces and images of his surroundings.
What most amazed me however was the crucifix made from wire that he took out of the plastic bag. It was wrapped in newspaper, a classic example of poor art - but what art! That sculpture reflected a harmony, the suffering of the history of humanity, told by a few strands of wire …
Before he left, he told me about a certain Cecilia Glinz, his companion in Berlin, who was a film translator, member of the editorial staff of a poetry magazine, and who would certainly be pleased to meet me. And so I did, one night when she came to visit in S. Maria Formosa.
She told me over the phone "I'll meet you in the square at 8.30". "But how will I recognise you?" I asked. "Oh, no problem", she replied, "I'm a typical Cherman lady", flowered dress and hat. I knew it was her as soon as I saw her. She was ailing, but still had a childlike curiosity and a sincere love of anything that concerned art.
She once invited me to hold a concert and an exhibition in Berlin, on the Easter Sunday of I can't remember which year … I was tempted, but I was alone, without a band, and so I turned down the offer. She was quite upset, poor Cecilia.
One day I received a letter from Germany, from Cecilia's family, informing me of her passing away.
The drawing shown is the only one left that I have by Turf; it was a photocopy, on the back of which Cecilia and Turf had written their Christmas greetings.
