A white heart. A different time, a new rhythm that gently soothes grief. A journey to Japan

To change the colour of the pain, to pass through it and then, finally, ten years on from that dreadful, accursed day, to try to let it go. To ensure that this pain runs its course, becoming part of one’s existence rather than merely a final element into which everything plunges without any possibility of a break. Although not explicitly stated, this is the desire that crosses the daughter’s mind when she decides to take her mother to Japan; she aims to throw her off the beaten track, or so the mother thinks, by placing her in a challenging situation in a place where she would get lost at every street corner, knowing nothing of Japan, let alone the language. Their aim is to distance themselves from their grief, to immerse themselves in a new world and, at the same time, to try to explore—from a distance, far from any point of reference capable of rekindling anger and destruction—that moment when he died, the instant when his heart stopped beating, leaving only what remains of a family’s life: damaged parts of a mechanism that may no longer be repairable. The mother ventures out, guided by her daughter. Almost comical, light-hearted thoughts take shape within her. These are the thoughts that mingle in the mind when, despite bearing an overwhelmingly heavy emotional burden, it becomes essential to try to make sense of the most mundane things, to grasp that everyday reality necessary for surviving one minute at a time: where to cross the road, where and how to eat. In the hushed silence of the Japanese suburbs, where even footsteps become audible, the mother senses a presence—this time a joyful one—of her missing son: ‘I sense him precisely in the interplay of the city’s light and shadow; I feel him in the silence, and in a gentle, slightly damp breeze—a wind unknown to me. In everything, I perceive a steady rhythm. “This is where I want to be,” I think.’

Silvia Fanfani, soprano and translator, makes her debut with a clear and fast-paced novel, sorrowful yet deeply uplifting, "Un cuore bianco come un chicco di riso" (Ponte alle Grazie) possesses the inherent power of pain that shifts perspective; after having shattered and destroyed, it caresses the contours of things, altering one’s view of the world and finally offering those left behind the chance of a life that is still possible, beyond the evil that life itself is capable of inflicting. The mother thus experiences the unease of a foreign land not merely as an adventurous discovery, but as a potential cure that begins with her daughter, who, in those streets so familiar to her, becomes her mother’s mother—the one who guides and cares for her. The woman embraces this role not as an inevitable consequence but as a necessity she had long felt was missing: that of becoming a daughter once more, thereby freeing herself from every obligation and burden. The novel thus takes the form of a long letter to her son who is no longer with her: ‘I have truly nurtured my own ignorance, an ignorant traveller walking without knowing, indeed, renouncing any form of tourist-like knowledge. I can afford to do so; it is she who guides me. She who, here, ever since she first came here, has never been a tourist.’

The pain of loss is transformed into a heart-wrenching reckoning of possibilities that are no longer within reach, of events lost forever, yet in Japan these are seamlessly woven into the wonder of a daughter who now protects her mother, showing her a new rhythm that remains potentially liveable. A heart as white as a grain of rice possesses the radiant strength of a long, silent walk in a place where external realities, light, nature and all the movement of the world come to converse with thoughts made up of memories and sensations that resurface and begin to circulate once more in the light of the present.