While I was watering Anita’s heads, Mario and Alfredo (the original heads need pruning, but these days it seems that the world of young people must be scrutinised through a wall of hair that hangs over the tip of the nose), my attention shifted from staring at an inexorable autumn horizon beyond the curtain to what I thought was a tuft of spider legs perched on the embroidery. I am not particularly bothered by domestic spiders with long legs, because there is no way to convince them to move out, and since they have a reserved and quiet nature, we have drawn up a list of rules for peaceful coexistence, but it seemed that this one was breaking a couple of them, so I turned to give it a stern look. But the backlighting had deceived me. The tuft of hair was a tuft of decaying threads: my fly stitch leaf had exploded! At first, I thought the stitches were poorly secured, but the explosion highlighted the regular breakage of the threads and not fraying. I thought of a thread-eating insect, but the theory did not convince me.

I had scrutinised the embroidery on both curtains, finding other nibbled leaves. I then remembered that curtains are affected by wear and tear from light and heat and that perhaps, after so many years of service, they were beginning to show signs of ageing. But then I realised that… Only the leaves of a single colour were, in unison, literally falling apart! And then I remembered a little-known legend (someone had told it to me and I had listened with a forced, doubtful smile) that yarns (perhaps modern ones, I added) have an expiry date. That is, it seems that at a certain point, suddenly, the fibre degenerates. Boom! Just like that. Like an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, an explosion. I had only had one experience that had alarmed me: rummaging through an old box of sewing yarns, I had found a spool with tufts of thread, as if someone had cut it with a blade, crosswise and lengthwise. But that was a spool I had bought at a market stall, so I shrugged it off.

Now… I don’t expect my embroidery to enjoy the eternity of that monogram, perhaps 5,000 years old, that I saw at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, but this morning a shiver ran down my spine. I hope to prove, sooner or later, that a species of insect is evolving that erodes threads, choosing only delicious shades from the colour chart menu. I would feel much more at ease.