(My recent assignment for the creative writing course held at Ponte a Serraglio, translated into English)

Franco walked along the river, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat, his mind humming with relentless noise. Thoughts collided—half-formed sentences, memories surfacing unbidden. The water flowed slow and steady, indifferent to the storm inside him.
Occasionally he stopped, leaned over, and watched his reflection tremble on the ripples. A face he barely recognized, distorted, foreign.
This is not me anymore.
“They erased you, didn’t they?”
The voice came from within—Marco’s voice, precise and unmistakable.
Marco. Just the name twisted his stomach, like a sudden hand pressing inward.
It had begun quietly: whispers, insinuations, veiled accusations. He’s unreliable. Better not give him important tasks. Polite smiles in corridors, hollow as air. Then the letter arrived, cold and impersonal: Collaboration terminated due to loss of trust.
In a few lines, his life unspooled.
Debts followed, uninvited. His girlfriend’s patience frayed.
“We can’t afford this. No holidays this year.. The car will have to wait.”
Eventually she left him for someone younger, someone who drove a blue Alfa and never had to count sacrifices.
Franco withdrew from life. He stopped visiting his favorite restaurant; the waiters asked, curiosity barely hidden:
“Where’s your girl?”
He hunted for bargains in discount supermarkets. His clothes frayed quietly—first the hems, then the elbows, tiny holes opening like signs of surrender.
When he confronted Marco, the man smiled the way one smiles at a child who hasn’t yet grasped how the world works.
“Don’t make it so tragic,” Marco said. “These things happen.”
“Happen to whom?” Franco replied. “To me—or to those who climb over others?”
Marco shrugged.
“I’m still here. You’re not.”
The words lodged in Franco’s mind like nails that refused to come loose.
In the days that followed, amid a silent, seething storm, Franco began to plot. His anger transformed: no longer blind, but precise, deliberate, cold.
At night he sat at the table, notebook open and wrote:
Marco’s schedule.
Places he frequents.
People he sees.
“If I do this right,” he murmured, “no one will ever know it was me.”
He paused, reread the lines, and felt a thin chill slice through his chest.
Who am I becoming?
One evening he saw Marco in a bar, laughing, animated, untouchable.
“Franco!” Marco called. “Come have a drink.”
Inside, the air smelled of cocktails, wine, hurried tastings.
“So?” Marco asked. “Recovered?”
“You seem to be thriving,” Franco said.
“One must adapt. Those who fall behind… stay behind.”
Franco stared at him.
“And if one day it were you who fell behind?”
Marco laughed.
“Me? Impossible.”
That laugh sounded like a crooked promise.
The plan sharpened daily, yet the more it took shape, the emptier Franco felt. Sleep eluded him. He woke drenched in fragments of dreams.
Seeking calm, he turned to ancient texts, distant religions. He discovered Hinduism, the writings of its sages. In one volume he read of karma: every action, every word, every intention leaves a trace.
Not revenge. Balance.
If this is true, he thought, then Marco is writing his own downfall with his own hands.
And the world began to move.
A whisper: Marco’s having money troubles.
A newspaper article: alleged theft.
An investigation.
A divorce—explosive, after twenty years of marriage.
Franco read in silence, seated on his bed.
“I didn’t do this,” he whispered. “Yet it feels like my dream walking on its own.”
Weeks passed. Marco fell, piece by piece. His job vanished in a sudden bankruptcy. Friends disappeared. The certainty that had protected him collapsed. He drank cheap red wine now, no longer fine bottles.
Franco saw him once, on a muddy street. Bent. Disheveled. Unshaven.
“Franco,” Marco said. “I… I never thought that—”
“That what?” Franco asked.
“That it would all come back around.”
Franco looked at him. There was no anger left—only calm.
“According to karma,” he said slowly, “no action exists without reaction. No gesture without return. Not to punish. To restore balance.”
Marco lowered his head.
“If I could go back…”
“You can’t go back,” Franco said. “You move forward, carrying what you’ve sown.”
Marco walked away.
Franco lingered. He thought of the plan never used, the nights spent imagining an ending that was never truly his.
My victory was never his fall, he realized. It was my return.
He took modest work. Unremarkable. But he breathed more easily. Lighter, as though he had stopped fighting a current larger than himself.
One evening, at night school, while learning English, he met the woman who would change his life.
Then he understood: karma needs no human hand, no thirst for revenge. It restores. It places each thing back where it belongs. Every gesture, every word, every intention follows its invisible course until it returns as truth.
There is no rush. No clamor. Only balance, quietly reassembling itself.
That winter evening, the sky wrapped in the calm glow of sunset, Franco walked hand in hand with the woman he loved. The struggle ceased. A current larger than himself carried him.
He turned, kissed her gently, and met the depth of her eyes.
What grace, he thought, to have found the way back.
And he understood at last: rebirth is not a conquest, but a surrender—to the secret order of things.