At dawn, a small lizard with its tail cut off escapes from a child’s hands. We’re in Valle d’Aosta, near a mountain farm. It’s time to milk the cows, but the routine is interrupted: François witnesses the birth of a goat. The newborn kid seems doomed. To spare him worry, his parents hide the truth. That night, restless, François returns to the stable and discovers the kid has two heads. Soon after, it dies. Shaken, the boy drifts in and out of sleep, haunted by visions and fears. At sunrise, he ventures into the woods where he first saw the creature, waiting for the sun’s rays to work a miracle. And when the light finally touches him, the kid lets out a bleat. François is stunned, and so is his mother, who has come searching for him. The story ends on this fragile, glowing moment: perhaps something, against all logic, has returned to life.
One day, someone gave me a small lizard in a sealed terrarium. Perhaps out of shyness or sorrow, the lizard rarely showed itself. One day, a strange feeling drew me to the glass, and among the little shrubs and stones, I saw it still—lifeless. That day was filled with deep melancholy. The thought that the lizard had never left the terrarium, and had died without a sound, overwhelmed me. Reconnecting with that sense of loss—for a small soul, relatively speaking—gave me a new perspective on things, and a response to the language—and reality—of violence that floods our lives each day. Telling this story through a child’s eyes becomes an ode to empathy. To feel the other, even in its monstrosity, uselessness, or imperfection, is an antidote to the most profound violence. The kind we’re living through daily.
