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If the story I am about to relate seems incredulous, I, as the protagonist, was far more stunned than you as it unfolded.The 12th of September was like any other day. What I didn?t realize was that it would become a life-changing experience. As my doorbell rang I walked to the door and opened it. In retrospect, I must admit that there was something very familiar about the person standing in my doorway.?Hi,? I said inquiringly after opening the door.?Hi,? he answered in a thick accented Italian, before continuing, ?My name is Patrizio.?Baffled, I answered, ?I?m Patrick.?The retort he made got me even more confused, ?Yes, I know.?As I stood looking at him nonplussed, and confused, Patrizio smiled and asked, ?Patrick, do you mind if I come inside and talk to you??By now, my bizarre barometer had gone into overdrive. ?What the fuck is this all about?? I thought to myself.?Sure? Come in,? I stammered.I was now overcome by an inexplicable feeling of déjà-vu, like a contestant on a quiz show who knows the answer but cannot bring it to mind. Something about Patrizio was incomprehensibly familiar.As we sat down on the stools at my u-shaped kitchen island counter, I politely asked, ?Would you like a glass of wine???Grazie? Thanks,? he then countered, correcting himself.?Red or white?? I responded.?Red, if you have,? he politely replied.As it so happened, I was having a glass of red and had an open bottle, ?I hope you like this wine,? I proffered as I pour a glass for him.?Thanks,? he consciously replied after taking a sip, ?It?s good? Grazie.??Patrick, I have something to tell you, but I don?t know where to start,? he earnestly uttered.?Why don?t you start at the beginning,? I joked, uncomfortably picking up on his anguish.?Was your father?s name Lionel???Yeah,? I replied, now totally perplexed.?Was he in Italy in the second world war?? he gingerly probed.?Yes,? I replied, completely mystified at this point.?Well, I believe you and I, might be brothers,? he tentatively asserted.The Büyükçekmece escort bayan soap-operatic impact of his words practically had me keeling over.?What?? I cried, having got extended to the outer limits of incredulity.Patrizio immediately apologized as he observed my flushed countenance. Not only was I flushed, but it felt like the blood in my body had turned to ice.Calmly, Patrizio now began to map out the full story that had led him to this point.In months before the allies liberated Italy in 1943, my father managed to escape, after their platoon had been captured and he sought refuge with an Italian family who took him into their home. They took care of him until liberation took place. During this period, my father had a sexual relationship with Patrizio?s mother, Francesca. It only got realized after my father was reunited with the allies, that Francesca, unbeknownst to him was pregnant. It the hectic times and in the aftermath of confusion that took place, that she thought she most probably never hear or see from my father again.Luckily, another guy who had always been besotted with Francesca came to her rescue and saved the day. Antonio saved the day by marrying her and saving her family?s reputation.Antonio, Patrizio?s ?father,? happily raised him as his son, and he had a great relationship with Antonio.I, unusually, kept my mouth shut and let Patrizio hold court. The impact of his revelation was so mindboggling in any case that I was stunned into silence.As Patrizio spoke, I had an epiphany. It occurred to me that both my grandfather and father had gone to war as very young men. I had never grasped the relevance of war but understood the circumstances that could force young men into horrors of combat. Neither my dad nor grandfather, both of whom loved to regale friends and family with tales of their youth, ever spoke about the war. It was an appalling subject that had been concealed in the recesses Escort Çatalca of their minds. In deference to them, I realized that is a code of solemn silence between these men, that the rest of us could never, ever grasp. It is as if being privy to man?s inhumanity to other men, they have been stunned into an unspeakable silence.As Patrizio?s story continued to unfold, he told me that his mother had passed away in her nineties several months before. According to him, she was of very sound mind at the time, and when she revealed the full story, he knew that it wasn?t the geriatric convolutions of a diminishing mind.After her death, Patrizio became obsessed with finding out about his biological father. Being well-off, he was able to commence an investigation of the matter. The inquiry proved to be simpler than he thought, and in six weeks he had resolved the matter.He knew that ?our? father had passed away thirty years before and that he had married my mother and had a son, me, in 1958.What had amused him was when he found out my name was Patrick. One of the things his mother had told him, regarding her relationship with my father, was that Lionel had told her that when he had a son one day, he would name him Patrick. Patrizio felt sure that this is how his mother had also named him as a result of the Italian version of his name.There was a sustained respite in Patrizio?s story at this point before he looked at me earnestly and said, ?I hope I haven?t caused you unnecessary grief. I thought long and hard about my visit and seriously wondered about opening Pandora?s box. If you want, we could also have DNA tests done.??Patrizio, I am stunned. Strangely, I always regretted not having a brother,? I said with a friendly smile.Patrizio now got an anxious look on his face as he asked, ?Do you have family pictures for me to look at???Sure,? I replied. ?I?m sorry I don?t have too many, but I don?t have a photographic obsession,? I apologetically Esenler escort qualified, before tentatively adding, ?My father? Our father died before the mobile phone era.?After I retrieved and produced my meagre album of family photos, Patrizio looked at them in solemn silence, with the referential expression on his face of an explorer that had traversed the globe and finally spotted a promised new land.As Patrizio paged back and forth, I allowed him his silent reverie. ?Was Lionel a nice man?? he finally asked.This question by him was the one I had begun to dread as his tale unfolded.Subtlety, I opted for the tactic of answering a question with a question. ?Did you love Antonio?? I asked.?Yes, he was a fantastic man,? Patrizio answered with moist eyes.?Well, I am not going to lie to you, Patrizio. Lionel was a difficult man, and we never got on well.?At this point, I took up the cudgels and decided to call a spade a spade.?Patrizio, I am sorry to tell you that you missed out on nothing with Lionel. He wasn?t a nice person.?Patrizio ruefully shrugged at my revelation. To at least offer him a crumb of comfort, I added an age-old sentiment that had been told to me by my grandmother, Lionel?s mother.Lionel had lied about his age and went off to war when he was seventeen. My father had done so, emulating my grandfather?s history in the first world war. According to my granny, this had a devastating effect on my father?s life. Dad was never the same after he returned home. Much as I despised him, I always tried to imagine the horrors of war on a seventeen-year-old-mind.After this revelation, I decided to spare Patrizio the rest of the tragedy of my parent?s unsuccessful marriage, which lead to my mother?s tragic death at the age of fifty after the hell she had to endure.In one of my less glorious moments in life, I had chased my father away when he attempted to attend my mother?s funeral, a few years after they had got divorced.To quote me, on that ignominious occasion, I addressed my father loudly in the church and yelled: ?Get the fuck out of here, arsehole! Have you come to see your handiwork?... Please fuck off and show some decorum.??Amazingly, I did get on speaking terms with Lionel after that, a year before his death,? I added, in an attempt to diffuse my outburst.