While the Shark is Sleeping

by Milena Agus

  ‘It’s better for them to live, damn it.’ He comes running up. ‘I’m almost a vet!’

  ‘A vet?’

  So we immediately get the puppies out of the dumpster and place them on the guy’s jacket which he’s laid down on the ground.

  ‘God is strange,’ I say out loud to myself. ‘He seems uninterested in anything and then suddenly he appears before you to save five puppies. I’m so happy for them. A vet.’

  ‘And why do you think Jesus Christ’s turning his back on you?’ the guy asks, as he places the last puppy on the jacket.

  ‘My mother’s dead. My father’s gone off. Zia was sick for a period and wouldn’t get up off the floor. A friend, someone I used to be able to count on, has gone travelling around the Mediterranean in a sailing boat. The man I loved is married. Nonno was really on the ball but he died of an ulcer he’d been carrying around with him from a Nazi concentration camp. My brother’s constantly playing the piano and it’s as though he’s not even there. Plus it’s almost Christmas and there’ll be just the three of us at the table and Nonna will cry and Zia will say, “They deserve a kick up the arse, the lot of them!” My brother will stick around just long enough to gulp something down.’

  ‘And you’ve got no curtains left in the house!’ His face lights up at his witty remark.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, you’re a dramatic sort. You know Eleonora Duse, in those scenes where she clings to the curtains, pulling at them, with her arms up in the air and her hair all over her face like you right now?’

  I burst out laughing. What an idea.

  ‘I’ll take the puppies. At my place they’re used to much worse than that. We’ll exchange phone numbers and I’ll keep you informed.’

  I run up the stairs and knock at my brother’s door, gasping for air.

  ‘The strangest thing. I found five puppies in the dumpster and guess who was walking by? A vet. It really is true that God has his strange ways of making you see that he exists. Do you remember that bit of the Gospel that Papà used to read to us when we were losing faith, that part where the women think he’s dead, “And behold, Jesus met them, saying, Greetings!” A vet, can you believe it?’

  ‘Yes. Now close the door, please. Can’t you see I’m studying?’

  So I go into Zia’s room. ‘Zia, it’s a miracle. I found five puppies in the dumpster.’

  ‘Don’t even think about bringing animals into the house. There’s enough of us already.’

  ‘I don’t need to bring them home. Guess who was walking past?’

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  The vet phones almost immediately. ‘They’re doing fine. And what are you up to, puppy number six?’

  I’m trying to squeeze into the welcoming folds of his voice. I find a way in. And from that opening I can see the city shining beneath my windows. It’s cold but I don’t feel it. It’s almost dinnertime but I can happily skip it and I’m not afraid of the night, nor of the Christmas holidays with all us sad Sevilla Mendozas.

  ‘I miss you,’ he says. ‘I don’t know you and yet I miss you. Or maybe I should say I was missing you and then I found you. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy but I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Then let’s start all over again from the beginning: in fifteen minutes’ time, in front of the dumpster.’

  My hair’s so gross; since I haven’t had him ordering me to clip it back, it looks like some hideous hat pulled down over my eyes. And I’m so fat, why did I eat all those sweets and panini? I’m such a piece of shit, why hadn’t I been preparing for the chance to live? I’ve got so many disguises for faking love – white woman, black woman, dominatrix, victim, whore, innocent girl – but not even a halfway decent rag I can put on for true love, just shapeless bags I wear to school. Plus I’m a strange girl, too strange for anyone to really feel good around me, and I’m sad, so sad that I make people around me melancholy. And I’m afraid. I almost wouldn’t go down to the dumpster if it weren’t for the crazy desire to see him again, even just for an instant. So a quarter of an hour is an unbearably long time, and it’s unthinkable that I wouldn’t go down.

  And when I see him coming I run towards him and he runs too and he puts his arms around me and holds me tight and we kiss until we take each other’s breath away and then he unbuttons my woollen coat and my jacket and bends down to bite my tits and he picks me up in his arms and takes me to his car and there we start all over again.

  Every so often he stops and moves away as if to get me into focus.

  ‘My love,’ he says to me. ‘My sixth puppy. Let me look at you. You know you’re beautiful? Your little face, your big melancholy, happy eyes under this tuft of hair, you remind me of someone, a girl I liked when I was little, I think. But I’m talking too much and I can’t go all this time without kissing you.’

  When I sit down to dinner, terribly late, Zia’s fritters have nothing to say to me. Completely mute. And Nonna’s ravioli leave me unmoved. Even the sweets in the sideboard, locked away to help me lose weight. ‘At least eat a bit of fruit,’ Zia says, worried. ‘We’ve got bananas. What’s happened, why won’t you eat?’

  ‘I will never eat again, because my vet is the only thing I want to gorge on,’ I declare, resting my cheek on the table. And in a drunken tone, even though I haven’t touched a drop: ‘My raviolo, my fritter, my chocolate, my tasty banana! How was I able to live like that: without God, without love, without stories to tell?’

  One day my brother appears at breakfast and puts his pile of books on the table, quickly drinks down his milky coffee, looking at his watch because the school doors close at twenty-five to nine. At lunchtime he reappears and with an air of satisfaction he says, ‘Bugger my hands. Bugger the piano. Bugger everything. I beat them up and I even got them to say sorry.’

  To celebrate the event, Zia starts redecorating the house, painting the tiny balcony, all that we have left now. She paints it white, and plants carnation seeds and geranium cuttings in three little red and lilac pots. She even manages to fit a yellow stool there along with a tiny Greek-blue table, where in summer she’ll be able to place her glass if she wants a drink as she looks at the ships. She defends herself saying she’s not a copycat, it’s just that Mauro De Cortes’s ideas, even in a postcard, are always the best.

  My boyfriend only has a few more exams to go before he finishes his degree in Veterinary Science. He studies at Sassari and when he comes back here he doesn’t like being in the city, he prefers to be around where he lives, which is the Capoterra area, which I can see from my windows on clear days. I take an hour to get out there on the Vespa, because I don’t like rushing and missing out on the spectacle that is the Santa Gilla Lagoon, all pink, or purple and gold with the darker violet mountains reflected in the water and the tranquil flamingos lunching or dining. How did I become so happy? The beaches are long and they’re deserted in winter. My vet lives in a house with lots of garden, lots of family and lots of animals. I don’t know his family because I wait for him outside the gate, but I know the animals. They make a fuss over me, wagging tails and miaowing from the other side of the iron fence. Especially Biagio, the oldest dog, who’d be sixty-three if he was a man. He likes me. That’s why my vet often brings him with us to run along the beach and he entrusts the leash to me, or rather, entrusts me to Biagio. And Biagio runs and runs as the waves break over the great rocks on the shore and spray us with salt. And I run too, to the dog’s rhythm.

  So there was this kind of life out there, too, and I had never known.

  My boyfriend calls me by the names of different animals, depending on the situation. I’m his little bunny if I’m afraid, his lioness if I show strength. His bitch in heat when we undress impatiently and bite each other as we make love. Or his kitten, his field mouse, his little purple swamphen. But above all, no offence, I remind him of cows, melancholy and good, who let you squeeze their tits without protest when they need to be milked, to be useful
to mankind. And, no offence once again, and only now during the winter, I remind of him of lambs, meek, useful and because I, too, have a woollen coat.

  I confessed everything to him, including my S&M sex story. And he hugged me and told me that I had accepted that sort of thing because I used to be a delightful dung-beetle, but now I’m another animal.

  I’m happy in this zoo. My vet manages to care for my wounds and pains, which are now almost completely healed. And he always has the right food for my hunger for love, for example: ‘No rush, baby koala,’ when I can’t get going. Or: ‘My whimpering chickadee,’ when I’m laughing and crying at the same time. The first time we made love and we were kissing I kept saying to him, ‘I can’t decide, my love. I can’t decide whether or not to do it.’

  And he said, ‘In the meantime, I’ll start undressing you. You’re glorious. I’ve never seen such a beautiful animal.’

  We don’t like my cunt to be called ‘cunt’ or his cock to be called ‘cock’, so we call them, respectively, ‘The Island of Lakes’, because I’m always wet with desire, and ‘The Island of Trees’, for a similar reason.

  He doesn’t believe in God but he wanted me to say the rosary before his exams, which he took after immersing himself in a period of deep study.

  Afterwards he phoned me and said, ‘I’ve re-emerged, you can put the rosary away, darling.’

  I know he’s wrong to say that, because what else could this beautiful love be but a gift from Mamma up above, or from Nonno, or from my father’s God?

  Nonna says that this boy’s strange and I shouldn’t trust him. That he’s fallen in love in too much of a rush. Besides, we’re too young. And yes it’s true that she and Nonno were young, but then the war had come along and made sure they waited and thought things through.

  On Christmas Eve Nonna’s baking papassine, candelaus and amaretti all night long so that I can take them to my boyfriend’s family who have invited me for lunch.

  I stop at the door. ‘And what are you going to eat? Why are you giving me all the sweets?’

  ‘Go on, it’s late,’ Zia says, pushing me out the door. ‘Unhappiness deserves a kick up the arse!’

  All three of them look out the window and I can feel them caressing me with their gaze – I’m now slim and my hair’s long and well looked after, pulled back with a hairband – until the wall alongside the road is too tall for them to be able to see me.

  With my boyfriend’s family you get everything in stereo. Five puppies in great form come to the door: ‘Say Merry Christmas to your sister.’

  ‘My nonna sends you these sweets that she made, and I brought this for your sisters – The Diary of Anne Frank. I read it over and over when I was their age.’

  ‘That’s great, sweetheart, but Levi’s If This Is a Man would have been perfect too. Something to keep them cheerful, at their age.’

  ‘It’s not sad, it’s full of hope.’

  ‘Of course, darling, don’t worry. No one here will notice anyway. They’ll throw themselves on the sweets. I’ll introduce you to the other animals: my big brother, my sister-in-law, my little nieces and nephews. My little brother, my big sister, my little sisters. And the kids: Chopper, the most generous dog in the world. Shake paws with this beautiful young lady. Isotta’s not here because she’s depressed. The cats too, they’ll come later. And you’re already friends with Biagio.’

  Biagio looks at me sweetly and wags his tail, and when I sit down on a small armchair that someone has pushed towards me, he puts his snout in my lap with his ears in quiet repose. He likes me. Maybe he can sense that I’m afraid of these new things, of life. Maybe he’s anxious too.

  ‘Zio! We want the story about the tyrannosaurus before we eat.’

  ‘Leave him in peace!’ we hear, in stereo.

  ‘Let’s take refuge inside his jumper, the tyrannosauruses are attacking!’ The little ones stretch out his jumper and get themselves to safety. ‘You’ll never get us!’

  ‘Leave him in peace!’ – reprimand in stereo.

  And since everyone does what they like in this paradise, I get up from my little armchair and take refuge under my boyfriend’s jumper as well, sheltered from anxiety, from fear and from tyrannosauruses. The dogs and cats think the same thing as I do and bark and miaow to make space for themselves.

  ‘You’re not allowed to wear my shoes.’

  ‘You’ve got lots more stuff than I do.’

  ‘That’s because I look after it well and I don’t put a top on without having a shower first and I don’t wear my nice shoes when it’s raining.’

  ‘Selfish, stingy, nasty viper!’

  ‘Darling, come out from under my jumper, here are my little sisters in action. My girlfriend has brought you The Diary of Anne Frank.’

  ‘I’m going to the movies later on,’ says the younger brother.

  ‘What are you going to see?’ – question in stereo.

  ‘The latest Hannibal film.’

  ‘We don’t like it’ – verdict in stereo.

  ‘You don’t have to watch it.’

  ‘That’s true. You can go then. We’re not giving you the money, but you can go.’

  That was the first of many times I was invited over by my vet’s family. Nonna would send sweets she’d made, I would take along a cheerful little book for the younger sisters and everyone would laugh at my dramatic temperament. Zia would send the elder brother, who was passionate about history, a book with some new interpretation of unresolved and widely debated issues. Then the elder brother would immediately call Zia to thank her and he’d linger on the phone even if we were all already sitting down to eat. Their parents said that he’d been an only child for ten years until my boyfriend was born, and he used to read and read and as a boy he’d always wanted toy soldiers as presents, so that he could fight wars with them, but then he grew into a pacifist who was interested in conflicts only so as to hate them more. And it was strange that in such a big family there were two only children, because another ten years separated my vet from the youngest brother, so he too, as a boy, used to read and read and had always wanted animal books as presents. Not like his little brother, who had spent all his childhood fighting with his sisters, who fought among themselves but ganged up against him.

  Isotta fell in love with a dog of the same breed, a new next-door neighbour that left bones for her at the front door. She got over her depression, much to the sorrow of Chopper, who had never been able to mate with her because they were different breeds. Biagio, on the other hand, seemed only to have eyes for me.

  During those lunches and dinners, he never let me out of his sight. He’d come to the gate, his tail wagging, and lead me through the garden, stopping to wait if I was too far behind. He’d be on the alert while everyone said hello, and would quietly put his head in my lap only when I sat down on what everyone now referred to as my armchair.

  When it was time to go, the elder brother would say: ‘Thanks, Ma, thanks, Pa. I didn’t even touch the ravioli, but everyone here tells me they were excellent. The dessert too – I didn’t get to see it, but I hear it was divine.’

  ‘That’s because you were on the phone talking about the Isonzo Front and then about the culpability of Marie Antoinette of France and whether they were right to guillotine her,’ his wife would gently defend herself, as she muffled up the children before going outside. ‘It’s because you were discussing El Alamein.’

  Nonna says that ours is an excessive love. That it’s not realistic: always on the phone, a constant back and forth from Sassari. I never think about school, even though this is my last year. Only love, love, love. Nonna also says she reckons you can’t trust someone who confuses animals with human beings. I shouldn’t have told her about how my boyfriend cuddles his dogs and cats when he comes home: ‘Give me your little paws because Daddy loves you. What does Daddy always say? That we’ll never be parted. Never.’

  I decide to let my vet read my stories. He likes them a lot. Only he doesn’t understan
d why they always have to end badly. I often tell him that there’s going to be a death and then he gets angry.

  ‘Shit, darling, you’ve already killed off one, two is overdoing it. Two deaths are ridiculous in any story that’s not a tragedy.’

  I agree. Sure, two deaths are too much. But – my boyfriend doesn’t know this – I could easily die in this story and I wouldn’t feel ridiculous. I only have to think about the fact that one day he might no longer want me so much, that he might feel bored and see me only out of a sense of duty so as not to hurt his sixth puppy, and then I pray to God to kill me now, before my character has to reach the end of this story.

  Suddenly I get terribly afraid that my time at the zoo of the Island of Lakes and Trees is just a holiday. And I start counting the times he calls me darling and I pay close attention to make sure nothing’s remotely different from usual at the zoo. Food’s never enough for me any more and once again I’m always hungry. Worried, I circle the Island, which seems less and less like an earthly paradise and more and more like Hell.

  I tell myself that for some people, love is lasting: for Nonna and Nonno, for example, for his older brother and sister-in-law, for his parents. How can they keep calm, and consider themselves worthy of such a miracle?

  My heart is uncertain, discouraged, and every day I’m amazed to be the person loved. How much easier it was to be the sexual tool of someone who loved another woman, who isn’t part of your story, how much simpler to live within the walls and look elsewhere in postcards.

  Now that I’m out, now that there’s the sun, the sea, abundant food to be enjoyed . . . Maybe if Jesus Christ suddenly appeared in the road and said to me, ‘Greetings!’ I’d be able to relax. He did it for the puppies, but not for me. He leaves me alone. He leaves me to ruin everything.

  I convince myself that my stay here is coming to an end and I know well that having endured the whip, the Japanese stick and the shit won’t be any use to me, because no one has ever got used to being expelled from Eden. So every time we have to part company, I become a pain in the neck like Mamma when she was little and I ask him for more and more caresses and good nights that will reassure me and he says, ‘Good night, puppy’ a hundred times and he caresses me in the doorway but he doesn’t know, poor thing, that it’s not enough for me. Because it’s not what I really want. None of this soothes my soul. Not even the sex games I push him into with stories from my past, when I ask him to hurt me to punish my insatiable hunger for love. What I want is what he says to his dogs and cats. ‘Give me your little paws. We’ll never be parted. Never.’