“Regalini (little gifts) is just another way to say merdate (crap-dumps).”
“Le merdate are escrementi (droppings).”
“Piss is escrementi, too.”
“The fish always piss cacarella (the trots).”
The cowardly kid stays behind on our rock. He screams to the fat girl, who’s now far away at sea. “Carriage! Come on! You have to help me!”
She swims over.
“But how do I hop over you?” he asks.
“Just come in! I’ll catch you!”
“Here I come!”
“You’re such a scaredy cat! Worse than a girl!”
“Manina!” he begs. He wants the girl to hold his hand.
A lady with dyed hair and electric blue rubber shoes swims by slow and passionless.
—
JAMES MURPHY, MY seagull, sighs and stays quiet. He wants me to take his cheating seriously, but all I can see is his power. I tell him that’s the reason he can have me. His frown grows deeper until he dozes off in the cool air-conditioned air, leaving me alone to watch our latest video. I see my tired face, my belly with its horizontal line, yet when I fuck him I look young.
He can’t understand what’s happening to us. James is the champion of literary empathy; these modern Americans are so good at making the reader feel human—they think literature connects us all. They became important under George W. Bush, these writers, emerging as an antidote to his regime, so now they feel obligated to provide a model of absolute virtue at all times to suppress every individual interest, to avoid every class vice. Thus they convince themselves and their readers they have no class vices at all, even as they get big grants from billionaires who indulge them with one hand and take from the poor with the other.
My intolerance spikes during our visit to Santo Stefano. A guide who seems to know every detail and factoid entertains a few dozen tourists in the old prison. For James Murphy the place is a symbolic heaven. He sleeps through half of the ninety-minute-long lecture in a shadowed corner of the courtyard, yet he still manages to note down most of the things I’m able to translate. He writes about the “Rousseau Experiment,” when crooks and prostitutes were sent to the pristine island so they could redeem themselves as noble savages, but ended up falling into greater vice. He’s fascinated by the premise and the design of the prison, which is organized like Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon but based on the blueprints for Naples’s Teatro San Carlo. He tries hard, says that I’m Bentham and he’s the Teatro San Carlo, so if we had a child, blah blah blah. I reply that I’m Bentham and that I’m also the Teatro San Carlo, and he’s just an American, an imperialist.
What rubs me the wrong way is how he obsesses over the seagull or the blueprints when he can’t even grasp crucial details directly in front of his face, such as the wealth of things that one can learn from the short pants and the accent of the forty-year-old guide. The man’s relationship with the prison fills me with great melancholy. He tells us tourists that since none of the convicts liked hanging out con le mani in mano, idling, an old convict was recruited to stand watch. “He smoked his pipe and a domanda rispondeva”—which is untranslatable. It means “he’d answer when asked,” but it means so much more than that. It means he did what he was supposed to do and let the time pass, a way, perhaps, to wait for death to come? No, no—the guide would deny death as a motive. And that is why it’s untranslatable. It’s a way of saying something that, if it were it to be read and restated explicitly, you’d quickly deny having said it.
James will never be able to grasp all the meanings of “a domanda rispondeva,” and I will never love him.
And as he explains the difference between windowless cells and normal cells, the guide uses the expression riscontro d’aria, which means that there’s a double passage for air that creates a pleasant flow between interior and exterior. James is sitting on the dusty ground with his legs crossed, hatless in the shadow. I am struck by a feeling of grief: he cannot possibly know how important riscontro d’aria is for us and how mysterious and familiar the word riscontro really is. We usually use it to mean “double-check,” and it makes the breeze feel vital and alive—an entire institution.
James is a Dostoevskian, so he’s completely won over when I translate Luigi Settembrini’s descriptions of the corporal punishments that occurred at the center of the Panopticon, surrounded by thousands of people screaming, of the rope that was used to whip the prisoners being soaked in tar in the presence of the doctor and the priest. Il battuto chiama la Vergine e i Santi, che poc’anzi bestemmiava. (The beaten calling the Virgin and the Saints, whom he’s been cursing.) Bestemmiava is so much more than “cursing.” James’s constant search for depth makes him look so shallow to me. He doesn’t even know how much he doesn’t know. And if he’s using a funeral as a pretext for running away with me, he shouldn’t get too carried away with an anecdote about torture, he who doesn’t understand a domanda rispondeva or a riscontro d’aria.
—
I WAS STARTING to wonder if I was making a point about Americans or about men—he was definitely both a white American and a man: so used to winning that he didn’t need to be aware of who he was in order to keep winning.
—
ONE NIGHT ON the beach, he tells me that he finds me cold. If this were a James Murphy story, this would be the moment when something opens up and reveals the humanity of the characters, their need to be redeemed.
My take is: “Nicola talked to you about me. You thought you needed me. You used a funeral as an excuse, and now I’m here entirely because of you.”
“Not entirely…”
“And you’re waiting for something to be revealed.”
There is a group of teenagers fifty meters from us. They’re good at fighting and at arguing, and I can’t translate their language—the friendly, threatening quips they throw back and forth, a way to kill time before night swimming.
“But I won’t reveal anything, James. You don’t deserve it.”
“I’m frustrated, Daria. I like you a lot. This is good.”
The teenagers head toward the water. The sand is hard with pebbles, so they have to be cautious; they can’t even take a running start. They continue to talk, and I still can’t translate. James is free to move around on the island and learn every trick of the language and maybe even begin to lose his own, the evil English language, which simplifies everything and also seeks to own it all. Most likely, almost certainly, he’ll go back to Cleveland. He’ll begin a new novel, write fifty pages about me, and then he’ll throw it all in the garbage. It’ll be discovered posthumously and included in a collection of unpublished work. The editor will slip my review of The Rockwells into a footnote to try to make sense of my influence on the author. I’ll be alive, an old lady, living in a commune of women.
He leaves his laptop open when he goes to sleep, no password is required, so he wants me to meddle, to find the emails from his family where they beg him to come back. I’m at the desk looking up information on ferries and trains, but instead I find his daughters’ pleas:
“Where did you go, Dad? I’ll be back soon, after exams are over. Will you be back? Mom says she doesn’t know. Why doesn’t she know?”
“I don’t really know what’s going on, but you should come home, Dad.”
“Dad, I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but this thing with the funeral in Rome is ridiculous. Come back. I don’t want Mom to start thinking this poor guy who died was your boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me; I’m just worried.”
“Mom will never say any of this because she’s too proud and she’s already upset about New York. If you want to get a divorce, you can tell me; I’m grown up enough. Kit isn’t, but I am. So be a grown-up, too.”
“Papà, there’s ants at home. Mamma says we have to tell you because if she tells you you won’t believe her. Yesterday we didn’t go to mass so we could stay and get rid of all the ants in the apartment.”
�
�Mamma thinks the ants came from the balcony because one of the plants is sick. We’re spraying it with this white spray; hopefully it’ll get better.”
“Papo, if you’re in America again, we need American guitar picks. Mamma won’t tell us where you went for work.”
“Pa’ I don’t know how to write yet, but I love you. Esther is writing for me.”
“Papo if you don’t come back we’re taking the PLANE to come get you!!!”
I should feel terribly guilty, but I don’t. I started reading these emails as I crouched, then kneeled, in front of the sideboard, this classic Danish piece from the fifties, where Gustavo left his laptop open. No password. His children are precocious, but the emails were clearly written by their mother. Now I’m sitting on an Eames Herman Miller chair, Gustavo’s ugly office laptop on my lap. I can hear him snoring. My legs are stretched out on the black ottoman. I was lucky to have had the idea to ask my parents for furniture money; I’ll get to keep everything.
Since I’ve never really made such a big choice before, I can’t gauge my own courage. I’m figuring it out as I go, and I’ll see where it gets me. For three days—evenings, nights, mornings—we’ve stayed in bed together through the wet summer rain. My friends, I haven’t called you to tell you what’s been happening, but I’m speaking to you now as if you were here in our spare room at four a.m., your backs against the other sideboard—a British model from 1968—the napes of your necks reflected in the horizontal glass. I never invite you over, I never see you; you are just my mother’s clerks.
Gustavo has opened me up, and I feel lonely and exposed. I’ve felt too superior to you over the last few years. I’m speaking to you now, though I haven’t got the courage to call you. I didn’t even call you about Lorenzo and the whore and the GIF she sent.
—
TONIGHT IT’S NOT as hot as it’s been over the last few days, but I haven’t stopped sweating. It’s still raining. The digital barometer Lorenzo hung next to his desk on the other side of the room reads 18°C. I don’t know what to make of the children’s emails. I’m weary and thirsty. I’m being drained of liquids. The unthinkable is happening, and I wish I were sleepy so I could lie in his arms. The children have no idea that their mother is writing those emails.
I go downstairs to have some water and maybe a chamomile tea. I open the fridge and pull out a pitcher of cold water and pour it into a fancy Coca-Cola glass. I add a pack of Polase potassium powder, which I found in the bathroom. I close the refrigerator door and find myself in the calm, moonlit darkness.
I haven’t lowered the electric shade that covers the illegal balcony window, the one that takes up the entire wall that faces my yard. I love looking out at the train depot, at the tracks where the trains coming from Via Prenestina stop before the split that leads them to Naples or to central Rome.
Should this dream continue? Should Gustavo remain in my life and bring me peace? With time, would the kids adapt to this house?
I pour boiling water into a mug with a chamomile tea bag and carry it out of the kitchenette. I sit at the seventies-looking table, the one Lorenzo never liked. I picture it covered in soggy cookies and drops of warm milk. I picture the children sitting at this round table, everyone except Esther, who surely prefers to have breakfast alone on the grass while reading one of my Jane Austen novels. I Maschi would surely start hitting their mugs with their spoons the way they saw someone do it in a movie about a jailbreak…
The citrusy powder lingers in my mouth, and with the chamomile tea in hand, I sit down on the Fritz Hansen egg chair. I tell my friends about Lorenzo’s work trip, the GIF. The whore’s name on Facebook is Chissei Miyake—Whoareyou Miyake—and she’s sent me this GIF of a woman’s gorgeous, sinewy hands grabbing my Lorenzo’s dick. I recognize the little dark spot and the way it bends right.
I get up and try the raw silk chair with the gilded, padded armrests. I’ve picked out some great furniture for this house. I sit down at the round table, my elbows pressing down on the glass as I weep. I feel a dim pain in my chest. Me, a stepmother to five children, it’s like something out of a Grimms’ fairy tale, the only fate for a woman who hadn’t found what she needed until now. Where was I? I love him.
I loved him before we went back to my house straight from the gym, before I did something I’d never done before: signed up for a gym membership knowing that I would trap him there. I loved him before the online chats, before he told me he was scared about the fact that soon his kids would have to start making their own choices in football, in hip-hop, in everything else. I loved him before I saw Lorenzo’s cock in a black-and-white loop. I loved him before we left the gym and rode into the rainy evening, both of us getting wet before we’d made it a hundred meters. I had nothing on over the t-shirt I’d worn to the gym, and though he had a K-Way, he didn’t even have time to insist that I put it on. I loved him before he said, “So what are we going to do now” while I was on the stationary machine, before he waited outside, under an awning, while I showered, before I dared to hug him for the first time as he sat there on his bike. I loved him before we cut through the stale traffic of Porta Maggiore on our respective bikes and I couldn’t even look at him when he stopped at traffic lights a safe distance away from me. And I loved him long before I frantically rummaged through my gym bag for my keys while he stood on the sidewalk shaking with fear, fidgeting, and doing his best not to press me to hurry up there, on the sidewalk, in front of the many gloomy eye sockets of the Roman aqueduct. I loved him before he undressed me and before he sobbed and shook as he fucked me, before I laughed as he squeezed my ass and left bruises, before he climaxed in an XL condom and sobbed again, then shut himself in the bathroom for ten minutes. He was embarrassed by the horrific stench he’d left for me, but he shouldn’t have been. That stench was a kind of scary confession, and the next day he spanked me again, and I laughed again, and he spanked me where I already had bruises—small, raised, red ones and hazier purple ones. He’s the only person to have entered my house since I changed the locks two eternal days ago. I spent the day waiting for him to come back from work. I cleaned the house, tidied it up, raked the grass in the backyard and in the smaller front yard.
After the chamomile tea I stop by the bathroom, sit on the bidet, and wash thoroughly with cool soap and lukewarm water. I don’t use a towel, letting the water trickle down. I’m naked when I walk into the room, and I dry myself on the clean sheets I’ve placed atop the turquoise Scandinavian love seat. I take a good look at him.
He sleeps naked under the sheet, which covers his whole body. We haven’t lowered the shutters or pulled the curtains closed, and the light from the moon and Quartiere Tuscolano gives the white sheet a warm pallor. I touch a wet part of the bed.
Through the sheet I see his many dark hairs, the curls that fall onto his temple, his bulging dick, which feels so different from Lorenzo’s. He lies there with his hands entwined behind his head. He’s regal: his face is more tired than baggy, and he has the wide eyelids of a lion, a large mouth, a flat nose. He sleeps with his mouth shut. What a king.
I sit on him with the sheet between us, and I feel the puddle forming, my usual puddle, against the sheet. I shut my eyes and feel him get hard. I stroke his damp, bristly cheeks with both hands.
His need is infinite. He won’t even open his eyes as he grabs my hips, feels them. He knows I’ve barely eaten in three days, and he moves me away to touch his dick, pats me on my hips as a way to order me to pull the sheet away, but though I do what he wants, he suddenly sits up, puts me on my knees, and with an unceremonious gesture slides the tip of his thumb into my anus. I don’t complain or tell him what to do. He also puts his index finger in my vagina. I love pressing down with my third eye against the mattress: I’m stuck in a yoga pose. A car passes by, then another with a bigger motor. I let him hold me there up until we hear someone passing by on a bike.
He’s sitting on his side and we’re not talking. He kneels, gets behind me, and takes me, first in t
he normal way, sweet and intimate, two bodies melting perfectly into each. Then the other way, and I’m glad it isn’t too painful, that it isn’t impossible. When he tries to get inside me, I feel a wall forming, the sheer unthinkability of something getting through. Then, suddenly, a thaw: the body caves in, skin against skin no longer violent, everything climbs up to the heart.
I shake and spill as I come. Gustavo wets his hand and puts it inside me for added pleasure. He tells me to sit under the window, and after popping some Maalox, puts his dick in my hand and stands there, watching the trains circle the depot. He puts his elbows on the windowsill. I hold his dick with two hands. Sucking it feels electric. I cling to it and close my eyes.
—
FOR BREAKFAST THE next morning, I squeeze oranges, slice bread, lay out fig jam, and pour American coffee. I can tell that he loves eating breakfast in the nude. We sit at the round table, the cool breeze flowing from the window, desire seizing the air. He touches the new bruises on my legs and shoulders, studies them every morning the way I study new flowers and buds in the garden. Our talk is silly.
“You have to take care of me. Give me sex all the time,” he says, scattering crumbs everywhere, pressing his fingertips onto them to pull them into his mouth.
“You have to take care of me,” I say. “You’re mine. I’ll choke you, and I’ll drown you. I’m Niagara Falls.”
I don’t eat. I drink Polase with one hand and use the other to rub his big thigh.
“Still?”
“Totally. Just order me around.”
“Go drown yourself. It’s an order.”
“Don’t talk like that, or I’ll overflow and pass out.”
“I want you to overflow and pass out, and then you’ll wake up all sticky while I’m in the office.”
“Bad boy.”
“Stop drinking Polase. I want to see you faint.”
I rest my glass. I’m weak and electric.
“Are you drenched?” He swallows some bread and jam, licks his lips, grabs me, takes my shirt off, and though he’s still chewing he drags me to the illegal door and the illegal window and presses me against the unbreakable glass, against the strong frame.
Class Page 24