GIALLO
Yellow, the brightest color, garishly optimistic, the pretty daughter who will never rebel. Pick a bundle of wildflowers that dot the meadow and skip to a picnic with the other girls. It’s before makeup, before politics. When the sun is just waking up, before the white hot of noon when someone suggests they take a dip. They stir a pitcher of lemonade but make it too sweet and attract a swarm of bees, so they grab what they can and run, laughing more than screaming.
A favorite of children’s cartoons, the least of the primaries, the color of caution but not alarm. The kindly public announcement of rain slickers and train cars. The studious yellows of legal pads and highlighters and the rubber gloves that labor behind the scenes to make these precious lives possible. Leave it out in the sun and it’s the cover of an old, tacky paperback. Water it down a bit and it’s a glass of pilsner fizzing on a windowsill, waiting to be served. The urine of the rugby players celebrating a little too much. They stand in a row over the canal, competing to see who can land the farthest stream. The winner is the sandy blonde still wearing his jersey, its grass stains the color of a tennis ball fresh from the tube.
The afternoon is careless like this until the sun is a yolk warbling low in the sky. Long shadows steeple the walls of restored buildings. Taxi drivers catch a nod between fares. Some will wake well into the blue hour, disoriented as they crumple the newspaper they’d been using to block the sun. Though not necessary just yet, the streetlamps are on, bathing the plaza in sulfur. A newer model Dino tears past the line of kiosks, near enough to topple a stand of weeklies with its wind. Street children swipe unfinished treats from tables waiting to be cleared. Cannoli dusted in pistachio, chiffon and mascarpone drizzled in honey, tartes bleeding custard, and Oriental delicacies no one can name. The children eat so much they’ll be sick the rest of the evening but for now they’re invincible and demonic with sugar.
After dark, yellow is the color of overindulgence and untreated fevers, the bile sent to pickle the problem. The decadence of duck fat and the gout it becomes. Choleric stomachs and minds, quick to upset. Their eyes jaundiced from generations of wine at every meal. A vestigial organ of the state that isn’t worth removing until it shows clear signs of infection. The nurse prepares the incision site with a swab of iodine. The skin resists for a beat before yielding to the pressure of the blade and blood wells and runs. It is a quick procedure, textbook, but there are complications and the patient must spend his remaining days in a wheelchair, quilt on his lap splotched with dribbles of piss. The stains accumulate, set into the fabric, turning it practically brown.
This is why the best wealth keeps behind double doors, keeps mindful of its excesses. Private collections of Dutch masters, early works illuminated by dedicated lamps. Bathing nudes. A rare Swedish stamp. A lesser Klimt. Magnums of choice Franciacorta and Trentrodoc in the cellar ready to sparkle. Canary diamonds in the safe. These objects elicit a yellow pride. The knowledge that they exist sheltered from a common glare, their value compounding with each regime. The pull of these objects is so assumed, it’s nearly impossible to pick their cuffs, but some children do. The youngest daughter was an afterthought next to the bold lines her sisters drew, though this is what afforded her the opportunity to slip away. Their mother wasn’t so fortunate, trapped in the labyrinth of wallpaper patterns. Tonics and tinctures in amber bottles that promised to ease her nerves. The color of the ribbon in the hair of the granddaughter she prays for. A return to innocence.
Cowardice is said to be yellow, but there is one for every hue. Red-faced fathers, huffing and puffing at anything foreign. Purple prose to dress up the inconsequential. The silver tongues of convenience and profit. I am the kind of coward who wants to believe yellow is the color of wishes that won’t come true. Cousins getting to play once a year. Of vowels and the soft j found in the French word for our favorite ghost. Say it with me—jaune, jeune, jeu. It is the color of bureaucratic ennui. The flashiest, tackiest cars as well as the dumpiest. Most journalism. Disgruntled ladder climbers, says Benjamin. Cats that might be witches. Bittersweet hellos. A child’s cursive. Landscapes where water is scarce but not absent entirely. Winking when I just wish to be left alone. These are all excuses, weak as tea. By now the wildflowers have wilted, the lucky ones preserved between the pages of a heavy book. A novel that has overstayed its welcome by hundreds of pages. Yarrows, celandines, ragworts, archangels, Leopard’s bane, gentians, and casual aliens with Latin names that are unwieldy but evocative. Yellow is the color of the pills I must take and feeling they’re supposed to quell. The color of unfinished projects left to collect dust.
They sit in a box with moth balls until one day a girl, eleven or twelve, grows restless with a long afternoon stuck indoors and wonders what kind of treasures her grandfather might have stowed in the attic. What she finds is the yellow sadness of an adult world she no longer knows if she wants to know. Not yet. There is still time for inventing words, the loose fit of hand-me-downs, happy accidents, silly faces, not knowing how afraid you should be. An innocence only aware it is a gift because of our constant reminders.
This is what certain men like to take.
This is what our killer likes to take.
by Nick Greer
Nick Greer is a writer from Berkeley. He is the publisher of Goodnight, Sweet Prince, an online zine about side characters in movies and other media. He is currently working on a novel, ‘Post Larva / House of the Painted Wolf’, inspired by giallo and other genre cinema of the 70s. "Giallo," excerpts this project.
Artwork courtesy of Nick Greer