Heaven and Earth

by Paolo Giordano

  On the table were some leftover wedding favors. I got up to get one and went back to the swing. I bit a sugared almond in two and offered half to Bern, but at that moment he started sobbing. I asked him what was wrong, but he was crying so hard that he couldn’t answer. So I took his head in my hands.

  “Stop it, please, you’re scaring me.”

  His face was convulsed, splotched with red under his eyes, and he was short of breath.

  “It was so beautiful . . . ,” he stammered, “the most beautiful day of my life . . . everyone was here . . . did you see? Everyone.”

  He said it as if even then he had a premonition that nothing like that would happen again. And at that moment, for the first time, I understood the depth of his nostalgia, of how much he missed them all: his mother and his father, Cesare and Floriana, Tommaso and Danco, maybe even Nicola.

  I stood up.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, alarmed, as if I too might vanish.

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “It will do you good.”

  Inside the house, I leaned my hands on the table. My dress was stained in the front, and it felt tight. I went into the bedroom and took it off, pulling on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I was about to leave the dress there, on the floor, but I spread it out on the bed.

  Bern had calmed down, and was swaying gently on the swing-chair, staring straight ahead. He took the cup of tea and blew on it. I sat down where I’d been before.

  We stayed like that for a while. Not a word about my having taken off the dress; maybe he hadn’t noticed. He even seemed to have forgotten that he had cried nonstop for ten minutes, and about all the people who had flocked to the masseria, who, until a moment ago, he’d been sure he couldn’t live without. Finally he stood up, lifted the amphora with the money, and hurled it against the concrete patio.

  On our knees we separated the bills from the congratulatory notes and cards, the checks from the shards, opening the envelopes without even reading the good wishes. In the end, the table was half buried in bills; a gust of wind made them rustle and blew some to the ground.

  We started counting. Cesare had never wanted money to be handled at the masseria, and now here Bern and I were, greedily passing it back and forth. If our guests only knew how different our first night as man and wife was from what they imagined! Under the white cotton tablecloth, Floriana’s plastic one was still there, its map marred by ring-shaped burn marks, where piping-hot plates had been placed.

  “Nine thousand three hundred and fifty,” Bern said, after I’d handed him the last bills. He leaned toward me and finally kissed me. “We did it.”

  A hysterical joy grabbed us. All that money, and it was ours.

  We went into the house. We took turns in the bathroom. Still damp from the shower, Bern climbed on top of me and entered me, clumsily shoving his way in, never taking his mouth off mine. Sex had become drained of meaning, ruined by the fear of failure and by the tons of hormones that had been injected, but not that September night. Although we moved more confidently than we had when we were seventeen, lying on the muddy ground of the reed bed, although there were no more surprises in the way Bern sucked my tongue, in the abruptness of my orgasm, or in the way he clenched his teeth surrendering to his, the unexpected frenzy of our bodies was a new revelation, and for a few seconds we didn’t think about the future. For those moments of the night, only we two existed. But it was the last time.

  * * *

  —

  A FEW DAYS later we brought some sugared almonds to Sanfelice. He chewed them one after the other, greedily. With his fingers still sticky with sugar he flipped through the pages of the calendar and announced that we would have to wait until January for the trip. October was not compatible with my menstrual cycle, November was booked, and in December he would be taking his wife and children on a week’s skiing holiday.

  He read the disappointment on our faces and to counter it he redoubled his enthusiasm. But January was perfect! There would be snow, mountains of snow over Kiev! Snow was auspicious, the success rate increased astonishingly. He left us sitting there, speechless, as he searched for statistics on the computer, then he turned the monitor toward us.

  “Look here, February 2008. Pregnancies, one hundred percent.”

  Neither Bern nor I dared ask him whether snow was lucky in general, or only for him. Was there a reason, some scientific evidence? We were too dazed by fear and hope in equal measure. An unqualified one hundred percent, the doctor promised; he said the snow brought him luck, and we believed him. Having reached that point, we were willing to believe anything.

  “Have you already arranged with the secretary for the hotel? We have excellent agreements. I stay at the Premier Palace, but some find it expensive. There’s also a spa. A massage before the embryo transfer is good for you, it helps relax the tissues. For you, no,” he said to Bern, “no massage, just a little elbow grease. Come on, you can do it! And let’s hope it snows galore!”

  * * *

  —

  I REMEMBER ALMOST nothing of the following months, only that I had another round of hormone therapy, somewhat different, less debilitating. The doctor’s secretary phoned us about purchasing the airline tickets, she would take care of everything. So we were choosing the other hotel? Were we really sure? The price difference wasn’t all that much and at the Premier Palace there would also be the doctor, which could be comforting. And would we be taking advantage of the guided tour of the city? From Tuesday (the day of the semen collection) to Saturday morning (the day of the embryo transfer) there wasn’t a whole lot to do. The doctor recommended the tour to everyone, his clients often underestimated Kiev’s attractions.

  On New Year’s Eve we went to Corinne and Tommaso’s, but they weren’t themselves, preoccupied by their little daughter, who had recently been hospitalized. They listened intently for the crackling of the baby monitor and took turns jumping up to check on her in the other room.

  Danco monopolized the conversation, and when he finally fell silent, no one was able to fill the void. Giuliana yawned shamelessly even before midnight, and her sleepiness was contagious.

  Bern and I got in the car right after the toast, grim and envious. “They have a machine to chop the ice,” he said. “Can you imagine how much electricity that thing consumes?”

  But the time to pack our suitcases finally came and then the day of departure. At the airport Bern wandered around full of wonder. Everything was new to him. I had to practically lead him by the hand to the check-in desk and then to the lines for the security check.

  He observed our luggage being carried along by the conveyor belt and then swallowed up. When we reached the gate, he called my attention to a Boeing maneuvering outside the window. As he watched it accelerate down the runway and peel off from the ground, he smiled like a little boy. Who takes the first plane ride of his life at age twenty-nine? I wondered.

  I left him the window seat. He watched the foamy blanket of clouds for almost the entire time. “Imagine walking on it,” he said, pointing out there.

  To save money we had chosen a very inconvenient connection with a wait of almost nine hours in Frankfurt. Bern refused to set foot in one of the fast-food places because he was sure the meat came from intensive breeding, and the other restaurants were simply too expensive. We ate some chocolate first, then some bread miserably spread with mustard and pickles. By the time we finally got on the second plane, I was so hungry that I devoured the sandwich served by the stewardess, and immediately afterward the one she’d left on Bern’s table as well, since he was asleep.

  I tormented myself thinking about the cannula. A few days before Sanfelice had tried to insert it, “a trial run” he’d called it. It didn’t hurt. It was just something that made you clutch the paper covering on which you were lying. “It’s like an obstacle course
with this cervix in the way,” he had said. Then, victorious, he exclaimed, “There we are! We’ll plant the damn thing right here!”

  Would he manage to succeed as easily again? We had chosen to transfer the maximum number of embryos: three at once. So much the better if we had twins.

  * * *

  —

  I WOKE UP with a start before landing. The food was churning in my intestines and I could still taste the mustard in my mouth.

  “Are you ready?” Bern asked. He looked serious, as if he’d been deep in thought after waking up.

  I suppressed the discomfort of my stomachache.

  “Sure, ready.”

  Outside the Boryspil airport, the wind raised eddies of fine icy particles, sharp crystals that stuck to your face. My fingers were so numb that I could hardly put my gloves on. Our escort, Nastja, walked a few steps ahead of us, but unlike us, she did not bow her head to shield herself from the barrage.

  “These are the warmest hours of the day,” she said, with a rather militaristic Italian pronunciation. Her hair was tinted an unnatural red and was very short, with a single long strand hanging on one side. She laughed raucously. “Yesterday minus twenty. First time in Ukraine, huh?”

  As if hypnotized, Bern moved off toward a rotunda in the middle of the parking lot, where the snow was about a dozen inches thick. There were no drifts as Sanfelice had promised, only a hardened layer of ice. Bern laid his bare hand on it.

  “I didn’t remember it,” he said.

  But I didn’t feel like indulging his wonder at the snow, not while my legs and face were freezing, not while that woman was waiting for us at the car and my bowels felt like they were being twisted by a pair of forceps.

  In the car, Nastja sat sideways in her seat to be able to talk to us. “You are worried,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. You have fearful faces. Look here,” she said, rummaging in her purse and pulling out a phone. She showed us a photo of two children. “Both with Dr. Fedecko. My husband, Taras, has a drunken sperm.”

  She puffed out her cheeks to mimic her husband’s sperm. The children in the picture, radiant, were holding a tray full of bills.

  “Thirteen hundred dollars. Won at casino,” Nastja exclaimed. “Taras always wants boys, boys. Only boys. You have selected the sex?”

  Outside the car window, a succession of gigantic buildings on the city’s outer edge began. Was it girls living inside those concrete monoliths who offered their eggs in exchange for money?

  Bern lit up with excitement at the sight of the frozen Dnieper.

  Then, touching my wrist, he said, “Look! Look at that.” On the hill was a group of golden spires.

  “Pecer’ska Lavra,” Nastja told us, “we go to visit it tomorrow. And that up there is the steel lady. Last Soviet statue, ordered by Nikita Khrushchev. See what big tits? Russian woman tits,” she said, her hands making a vulgar gesture.

  The pain in my belly had spread and now extended to my entire lower back. If I didn’t get to a bathroom soon, there would be a disaster.

  “What’s wrong?” Bern asked.

  “How much longer to the hotel?”

  Nastja pointed vaguely ahead. “After bridge comes center.”

  Then she said to herself: “Faces very, very fearful, yes.”

  The columns in the hotel’s lobby were overlaid with a plastic coating that imitated veins of marble. The red carpeting ranged everywhere. The male staff, all in livery, were sitting in the corners with a drowsy air; their eyes followed us as we handed over our passports, filled out the registration forms, and got some final instructions from Nastja.

  “Down here at five o’clock, with a nice jar of sperm. Nastja’s advice: a glass of vodka first, just one, and a slice of salo, lard. The lard makes the semen stronger. Secret of Taras.”

  We rolled our suitcases toward the elevators. I had the impression that everyone knew why we were there.

  The room on the second floor had a single window overlooking a parking lot full of debris. Across from it was a building gutted by a collapse or maybe never completed.

  I locked myself in the bathroom while Bern sprawled out on the chenille bedspread. I filled the tub and remained soaking in it until I melted, even though the water coming out of the pipes seemed to be as contaminated as everything else. But at least it was piping-hot and helped relieve my chills.

  Bern took Nastja at her word. I wanted to stay in the room, crawl under the covers, and wait, but he made me get dressed. We had to go look for the salo.

  Outside, on Khreschatyk Street, columns of cold, harsh Siberian air advanced on us. We walked for more than half an hour, first along a park, then downhill on the avenue that led to the train station. The plaza in front was a huge, treacherous slab of ice, and the humanity that populated it, males only, with caps lowered over their eyes, made me beg Bern to leave there immediately.

  We went back up the same street and ducked into a café that seemed stuck in another century: lace curtains on the windows, wood-paneled walls, blinking Christmas lights. Bern managed to order the lard. The woman brought it to him cut in thick strips, with pickles on the side.

  “It looks disgusting,” I said.

  “It’s for the cause,” he replied, amused, then he picked up a slice of fat between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it into his mouth. My bowels roiled again. Bern ate all the salo on his plate.

  There was still time; he wanted to walk. It was the excitement of his first trip abroad, so far from Speziale, except for the mysterious year he’d spent with his father in Germany, too young then to remember it except in confused flashes, and which he never spoke about in any case. Even the clouds of condensation that came from our mouths seemed extraordinary to him. I decided to let his exuberance rub off on me. It was our honeymoon trip after all, bizarre, troubling, but still our honeymoon. As far as Danco and the others were concerned, at that moment we were in Budapest, being tourists. I could at least pretend it was so.

  When we returned to the hotel the other couples were gathered around Nastja in the lobby lounge. The woman spread her arms out to us and in an embarrassingly loud voice exclaimed: “Here they are, the two missing ones. Jar, quickly!”

  She asked Bern if he needed magazines or photographs, she had plenty in her bag. He refused, though fascinated by such boldness. He asked me to wait for him there.

  Nastja led me to the armchairs, practically forcing me into the only vacant one. The lady beside me turned to me and said, “Yesterday my endometrial thickness was fourteen millimeters. Sanfelice says it’s perfect.”

  She didn’t say her name, didn’t offer her hand, didn’t choose words generally used to start a conversation, she simply told me the thickness of her endometrium, then added: “It’s the seventh time we’ve come. But it was always thinner. Besides, did you see how much snow there is on the streets?”

  I kept staring at the closed doors of the elevator at the end of the hall, until Bern reappeared. He crossed the empty lobby and handed the sample to Nastja, in front of everyone, without a trace of embarrassment.

  “The latecomer,” she said, then studied the jar against the light. “Good, good, there is a lot. Do you know what they say here in Kiev? That you must always stock up for a dark day. Because sooner or later it comes. It always comes. Cherniy den’, the dark day.”

  * * *

  —

  A BLIZZARD KEPT us confined to the room for two days. The gusts were so violent they made the windowpanes shudder. The wind was called buran, the driving snow was purga. Bern found it amusing and kept repeating it: buran, purga, purga, buran.

  I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I lay on the bed, staring at the damp stains on the wallpaper, trying to guess its original color. Lying next to me, Bern studied the travel guide. Occasionally he’d read something aloud, then he’d loo
k for a pencil and underline the passage that interested him.

  But on the third day, the day before the transfer, the sun was shining, dazzling because of the snow, though it provided no warmth. Nastja was waiting for us in the lobby, for the guided city tour. I didn’t want to go, but Bern couldn’t see why: we were there, we had the whole city at our disposal, and it was such a radiant day.

  “Brave souls,” Nastja said, spotting us. “Let’s go.”

  The city seemed hostile and frightening to me, just as at first: the underpasses with their stifling shops, the homeless prostrate from alcohol, then down into the subway, on escalators so long and steep they seemed to lead to the bowels of the earth, the names of the stops written in that incomprehensible alphabet. Bern and Nastja were always a few steps ahead of me, closely engaged in a conversation that I had neither the strength nor the desire to follow. A suffocating heat inside the buildings, a paralyzing cold outside; I tried to cover my mouth and my nose with my scarf.

  On the Andriyivskyy Descent, I lost my balance twice. Bern turned to look at me with a strange indifference, almost as if he were annoyed. He was attracted by the stalls and insisted on buying a gas mask from the Cold War era, which Nastja helped him put on.

  “Danco would like it,” he said. But we were short on money and we weren’t sure if anything like it could be found in Budapest, so he left it there.

  I looked at the young women around us. They were as beautiful as Sanfelice had promised, tall and slender, with dark hair and very pale complexions. It could be her, I told myself, meeting the clear gaze of a passerby. What will her name be? Natalija? Solomija? Ljudmyla? And will she have other children? I couldn’t stop those thoughts and I didn’t dare confide them to Bern. He would have told me to stop being silly, he would have quoted Sanfelice’s words the way he used to quote the psalms.

  I persuaded him to take a taxi to the hotel. Nastja backed me, I had to be rested for the following day.