Scent of a Woman

by Giovanni Arpino

‘I won’t leave him,’ she objected calmly. ‘Where he is, that’s where I stay. Then too, around here they remember my mother. It’s best if they don’t see me. Right? But if you don’t want to, don’t go. I don’t want to force you.’

  ‘Right now?’ I gave in.

  ‘Try. What can you lose? People get up early here, they’re farmers after all. Just think: some nice hot coffee. It would do us all good.’

  I stood up, muscles stinging as they stretched beneath my skin.

  ‘A candle too,’ she was quick to add, ‘it’s always better to have one than be caught without.’

  *

  The old woman kept working the lever of the espresso maker. The drab wrinkled arm pumping away did not prevent her from giving me a half-smile.

  ‘You have to be patient. The water isn’t hot yet. Meanwhile look around. You might see something else. We have everything here. Like in the city.’

  A curtain closed off the shop in back. The small area was cluttered with boxes and display cases, cans stacked in a pyramid stood on the shelves. A large hand scale was tossed on some baskets of vegetables.

  I spotted the telephone over a tower of colourful packages, the directory hanging from a chain.

  Candida, I immediately thought. Ines … I can’t remember her last name. Or else the lieutenant’s house. I just need to hear a voice, anyone’s, to know how things stand. Of course I’ll hang up without a word. Or would this too be a mistake?

  My imagination exhausted, for a moment I chased nameless shadows back and forth through those rooms.

  ‘It’s still not as it should be. But if you want to try it—’ the old woman called me back as she moved down the counter with a cup of coffee.

  As I drank it, I felt every fibre languidly drenched by those few drops of warmth.

  Newspapers, I thought.

  ‘Newspapers? Those we don’t have. Not until later. Around noon, sometimes not even,’ the woman apologized with a toothless frown. ‘Has something serious happened? More wars? What is this world coming to. Tell me, you know more than I.’

  I went out with the package. The bottle of coffee was hot and I had to continually change hands.

  Time seemed endless, a boundless space, more barren and blank than the already sunny sky. But elsewhere, in those rooms down there, messy with dishes and glasses, and back in the barracks, and on my northbound train, that same time was instead fleeing, flashing past much too quickly, robbing me, accusing me.

  The dirt track was steep. I wondered how Sara had managed to drive it so easily. The car and house reappeared after a sharp curve.

  She was still on the step. Seeing me with the package and the coffee, she raised a hand as if to shout ‘bravo’.

  ‘He’s still asleep,’ she said, getting up. ‘Should I try to wake him? Would it be better?’

  ‘Let’s wait. Another hour. It’s early.’

  ‘An hour,’ she agreed.

  She took the bottle, uncorking it eagerly.

  ‘Not even a glass. What a house and what a worthless so-and-so,’ she scolded.

  She drank, pressing her chest against the heat.

  ‘Good. It will still be hot when he wakes up. What are those, marzipan? No croissants?’

  She seemed anxious to do something again, to keep busy. I looked at her, trying to make her see how exhausted I was. Quickly she shrugged. Her eyes looked away.

  ‘Who do you think will come?’ she said softly. ‘Carabinieri or the police? Better the carabinieri, don’t you think?’

  No one will come. I felt it hit me like a thud: no one will look for us, nothing happened, Vincenzo isn’t dead, everything is still going on as usual and we will keep wandering senselessly through this parched air, back and forth like flies, like specks of dust.

  To break the silence I said, ‘Carabinieri. And who would lead them here?’

  ‘My mother. My sister. They’re the only ones. Who else could ever imagine?’ She sighed.

  She tucked her hands into her belt like an awkward boy.

  ‘Exhaustion is a bad counsellor,’ she went on. ‘Let’s not worry about it. Here we are and here we’ll wait.’

  ‘Yeah. Right,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ she smiled briefly.

  ‘Who knows? Maybe there’s still time. Who can say?’ I murmured but without conviction.

  ‘Sure. Of course,’ she agreed quickly, happy to have a pretext. ‘He’ll straighten things out. As soon as he wakes up, he’ll take care of everything. I can already see him. I swear.’

  ‘He’ll straighten things out if the lieutenant is alive. Otherwise what’s left to straighten out?’ I replied.

  ‘Of course he’s alive. Fools never die. Not even after being shot,’ she snapped fiercely.

  ‘Sara …’

  She looked away from me.

  ‘Okay, okay. You’re right,’ she replied, her voice by then indifferent. ‘Even I know that I don’t always think clearly, that I make mistakes and make things worse all the time. I know it. If my mother could see me, poor woman. She’d have me walled-up alive. You can’t begin to imagine.’

  12

  A parade of ants, big and shiny, moved along a thin trail of dust that zigzagged through the weeds, their abdomens rippling as their legs jostled forward. The orderly line broke up into feverish whirling at the base of a tree trunk, in the mealy opening of a root.

  ‘Go on. Just for a minute. Please,’ she said anxiously. ‘I’ll start waking him up. Let me do it. Then I’ll call you. I’ll call you.’

  I looked up at the sound of an aeroplane. The triangular grey silhouette appeared sharp and bright against the sky, headed towards the city. It veered off into the distance, already silent, the rumble absorbed by then.

  It was eight o’clock. Maybe if I lay down I would be able to sleep a little. But the desire to sleep was both strong and remote. Idle thoughts clogged and plagued my brain, slow to quiet down: whether to put my uniform back on, for example, or remorse at having sent only a single postcard home.

  The shapes of my father, my mother, the Sardinian soldier who slept to my right in the barracks, did not contain any real human features; they were merely fixed points, dots indicating a neutral place which had less and less to do with me.

  No sign of life from the house. Maybe she hadn’t yet been able to wake him, maybe she was just sitting there without rousing him, without calling to him. Mesmerized as usual, of course; as soon as she sets eyes on him she’s lost, a sheepish child. So much for her fine decision.

  Nothing has happened, no one has actually died, I know it, we’re just in a world of our own, cut off for some reason yet still clinging to this last crust of earth by our fingernails, still unaware that before long we’ll be back among the others and it will all be as it was before and we’ll forget, we will forget. My leave has expired – did it expire last night or this morning? – I’d better put my uniform back on …

  I lit another cigarette, my mouth like glue. I couldn’t taste anything any more, my tongue limp, gritty. A spot had somehow got on my sleeve. With two fingers I picked up an ant, choosing one of the largest ones; as it thrashed its legs and antennae frantically in the air, the parade went on with its bustle, rushing around in the dirt, back and forth to the root.

  ‘To hell with you too,’ I said, dropping it among the taller, tangled bushes.

  Now I’ll get a move on, I’ll get up and go over there, I’d better keep an eye on them, not leave them alone.

  I took another look around: the edges of the houses among the locust trees, the distant sea flat in the ashen grey mist, the bright green of the trees.

  The exhaustion I felt was even pleasurable at times, it cautioned me tenderly from every muscle, making me more aware of various frailties, pangs, tremors.

  She appeared in front of the house, her hands over her face.

  I ran to her.

  ‘He doesn’t want me,’ she sobbed without uncovering her face. ‘He doesn’t want me. He chased me away.’
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  ‘But is he all right?’

  She nodded behind her hands, a dry sob.

  ‘Did you talk? Does he remember? Does he know where we are?’

  She shrugged, stepped back blindly until she felt the step behind her heels. She sank down on it.

  It took me a few seconds to tear myself away from there and go inside. My head felt empty, roaring, and though I knew that emptiness was deadly, I fumbled in vain to have a couple of words ready on my tongue, in my brain.

  He was still on the carpet rolls, the blanket thrown off, the coffee bottle between his right hand and his stomach. Sara must have wiped his face with a wet handkerchief, I saw the scrap of cloth tossed in the sink.

  ‘It’s me,’ I said quietly.

  I didn’t seem to feel emotion or fear or pity, I saw him as a human wreck, an unfamiliar presence in a hospital ward.

  ‘Ciccio,’ was all he said.

  And his muscles relaxed.

  I bent down, lit a cigarette, held it within reach of his lips. He leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘Friend,’ he said.

  His voice was hoarse, slurred by the sleeping pill. He removed the cigarette to cough, drink a sip of coffee, then cough again in a lengthy release.

  A couple of inches, give or take, of a slimy liquid remained at the bottom of the bottle.

  ‘Ciccio,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m here. Are you all right?’

  The cigarette rolled slowly between his lips from one corner to the other then dangled as if he no longer wanted it.

  ‘Who’s there? Is someone with you?’

  ‘No one, sir. Just us.’

  He tried to smile, grateful, but very weak.

  ‘Ice. Get me some ice. To chew. Right away,’ he said faintly.

  ‘There is no ice. Not here,’ I told him.

  ‘No?’ He roused himself slightly. ‘Why not? What’s going on. Here? What does “here” mean?’

  I started talking, trying to be very brief, gradually lowering my tone as if it were just any ordinary story, unrelated, to be told in the most concise way possible, with the economy of a newspaper ad.

  He was leaning his head against the wall. For an instant the cigarette smoke rushed more quickly from his nostrils. When I finished talking he didn’t say a word. The cigarette burned down to a stub. I reached out two fingers; he docilely allowed me to remove the butt.

  ‘We have to decide,’ I said after a while.

  ‘What? Who’s there. Still just you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I went on nervously. ‘Me and Sara. We waited. For you to wake up. To decide. It’s late. Almost nine o’clock.’

  ‘Nine,’ he echoed.

  The grooves of the two lines between his nose and cheeks had deepened as if drawn with indelible ink. He handed me the coffee bottle, I put the whisky flask in his hand. He held it against his cheek, turning it to capture its coolness, but did not bring it to his lips; he pushed it away, refusing it, his right hand trembling.

  ‘I should call Sara. Say something to her?’ I began again. He shook his head, his brow creased.

  ‘She’s outside. Crying. She’s worn out. Shouldn’t we now …’ I continued.

  He reached out his hand, I felt its grip on my arm, but nagging, not strong.

  ‘Give her something to do. Or send her away. If she doesn’t go away, make sure she always has something to do. So she doesn’t think. So she doesn’t hang around me,’ he whispered in anxious bursts.

  ‘But sir, we—’

  ‘She mustn’t stay here. I don’t want her,’ he went on desperately, clearing the gluey mucus from his throat. ‘I’m the one who should go. Go away, vanish, drop dead. Get it? I failed tonight, God damn me. But now I won’t. Now I won’t. You’re my friend. You still are, right? Help me.’

  His fingers went on worrying my arm from wrist to elbow, convulsively.

  ‘Sir, but I—’

  ‘Quiet. For God’s sake. Shut up. Don’t say a word. I can’t disgrace myself. Disgrace myself on top of it all: no,’ he finished, a sharp rasping cough lurking behind every word. ‘I’m not a lion. I thought I was, but no. I’m not. Poor Vincenzino, the mess I got you into …’

  Later on I managed to persuade him. I put the bamboo cane between his fingers, helped drag him to his feet to take at least two steps outside.

  I felt him trembling very faintly at my side, a papier-mâché puppet, his gait hesitant, clumsy for the first time, his cane having given up exploring.

  When he came down the step, he flinched, as if what seemed to affect him wasn’t the sun, the light, but the foul breath, the chafing of some unknown beast.

  ‘No,’ he barely managed to say.

  But he slumped against me, his balance gone.

  I dragged him carefully to the shade of a tree. Sara immediately appeared from behind the house. She was biting her knuckles, her eyes frightened, intent on every little move we made, on him as he slowly folded his brittle legs, sat down on the grass. Even there, he showed no interest in feeling the bark of the tree behind him, the bristly ground around him.

  Resorting to gestures, spreading my arms, moving my fingers, I tried to explain. But Sara, motionless, wasn’t even looking at me, riveted only on him.

  When she decided to return my gesturing, she made a disconsolate, meaningless sign, then squatted on her heels, no longer daring to approach.

  Incredibly long minutes went by, my eyes bewitched by the dizzying sweep of the second hand on my watch. A solitary cicada suddenly broke the silence, high up behind us.

  He was breathing harshly, the grating of each breath of air like screeching on glass.

  ‘No excuse,’ he shuddered.

  I had to hold him up before he lost his support against the tree; he recovered his position but without being aware of his muscles’ movement.

  ‘Feeling better, sir?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Tell me I’m not here. Vanish: make me feel like I’m not here,’ he said through his teeth.

  I saw Sara get up, tiptoe cautiously, gently to our tree, a finger to her lips, having overcome any uncertainty.

  She sat down next to him.

  The gentleness with which she managed to bend his shoulder, soften the remaining tension of his frame until she was able to cradle that head in her lap, made my heart almost painfully skip a beat. His right hand rose a moment to object, but quickly dropped back ineffectually.

  ‘No,’ he moaned, ‘no.’

  ‘Hush,’ Sara silenced him in a soft singsong voice. ‘Hush. Don’t think any more. Not a thought.’

  She smoothed his hair with brief, fearful touches, brushing his forehead as if he were a sick child. Finally, very pale, she encircled his head in her arms.

  I moved over on the grass to put some space between us.

  ‘No, not this,’ he was still moaning. ‘No.’

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered, her gaze lost in the distance. ‘Hush. Why suffer? No more. Not any more.’

  And she rocked him gently.

  ‘Life is draining away. Feel it? Draining away.’ His broken words intermingled weakly with Sara’s hushes. ‘It hurts. But it’s right. Right … I’m a coward, a—’

  ‘Hush,’ she kept saying softly, prevailing over him. ‘You mustn’t think. You mustn’t.’

  ‘I was afraid …’

  ‘We’re all afraid, all of us. Hush. Rest, my angel,’ Sara went on. For a moment her dark eyes strayed to me, quickly passing over me like some annoying obstacle.

  I was no longer moved now, just scared, helpless. I went back to the step in front of the house. The sun was already beating down fiercely.

  They were a single pale spot, dappled with the gentle brush strokes of the tree’s shadow. And I was outside, driven away, overwhelmed by need.

  Shortly afterwards I went back in to put on my uniform.

  13

  I sat on the edge of the tub in the bathroom. The water had run out: little more than a trickle, not even cool, dribb
led slowly through my fingers.

  My military trousers and shirt hung on me like the shabby clothes of a bum. I couldn’t find my tie or my belt. And I seemed to give off the sour, dead odour of spoiled rations.

  Okay, so be it. I will not expect anything any more, attempt anything, I won’t make a move, I won’t think about it any more.

  I rinsed my mouth with a shot of whisky; I started examining myself lazily in the tiny mirror over the sink. The dark stubble of my beard made me look even worse, my cheeks were a greasy grey membrane. Mortified, I started rinsing myself, cupping my hands under that trickle of water, one meagre splash at a time, my eyes hurting at the slightest pressure on my eyelids, the refreshing effect of those few drops quickly gone.

  Maybe I was hungry too, or nauseous somehow. The bag of marzipan had been left somewhere, not to anyone’s taste. As in a very distant, very soft glow, I saw again the table laid the night before, Candida, Michelina, Ines exultant, vying to set out dish after dish, and at each plate his shouting, his laughter, the lieutenant’s gluttonous demands.

  Ines: who knows how much talking she’s done by now.

  They were still there, silent, Sara’s left hand placidly sweeping the air to interrupt the annoying flight of an insect. He sprawled limply as if asleep.

  A cicada was singing. The weeds and grass seemed even more withered in the harsh light, the sky a painful blue. A double white stripe began streaking it swiftly, without any blurring or sounds: a jet plane, almost invisible, at a very high altitude.

  Go ahead: unload it. Open your filthy holds and spew out those hundred or hundred thousand megatons that are in your belly. Blow us up and get it over with, there’s really nothing left to save. Amen. Why tomorrow, when it’s convenient for you? Why not now, right away?

  But even this loss in me and of me, which I bore as it simultaneously demolished me and shaped me, was not true conviction; it was not an absolute desire to obliterate and be obliterated, but only a reflection of a lack of raison d’être, of life, which was elusive.

  A reason for being, and a life that I could no longer make sense of, one distorted and poisoned by what had happened, the trip and him and his furious whirlwind of words, those two shots that still echoed, the lieutenant bloody in his chair, and now, worst of all, harshest of all, the image of the two of them out there: washed pale like a watercolour in the friendly shade of the tree, immersed, unreachable, enclosed in a serenity that was insult and scorn, even if it was only the paltry serenity of a performance.