“One evening we invited Corinne’s parents to dinner. ‘They gave us this house,’ she pointed out, ‘not to mention everything else. And we’ve never officially invited them.’ It made me smile, that qualification, ‘officially,’ typical of her family.
“She asked me at least ten times what I was planning to cook, she was worried. I surmised that she had greatly exaggerated my culinary skills in her father’s eyes. I didn’t reproach her. She had entered the last month of pregnancy and was plagued by leg cramps. She always seemed to be on the verge of collapsing.
“Her parents arrived with a bouquet of pink and white flowers. Her father handed me a bottle of red and ordered me to open it at once. I objected that dinner would be fish. ‘I would prefer to drink this,’ he said, ‘if you would be so kind, Tommaso.’
“The food was fairly good, but Corinne persisted in winning me more compliments than necessary. At one point I met her father’s gaze. He smiled, but it was a smile full of unspoken innuendos, as if to say: Look what we’re willing to do for her, right?
“‘You underestimate yourself, I’m always telling you that,’ Corinne said when they had gone.
“‘If he had been a little less enthusiastic, I might even have believed him.’
“She stared at me, wide-eyed and indignant. She got up heavily from the table and went into the bedroom.
“And then Ada arrived, two nights before the countdown had reached its end. We jumped in the car at four in the morning and less than an hour later she was in Corinne’s arms, while I filled out forms on the floor below.
“She brought a joy that I hadn’t expected, but it didn’t last long, a few weeks, maybe a few months. I’m not saying that afterward I stopped being happy, it’s not that. But the exhilaration over Ada’s birth quickly faded, every day an ounce less wonder and an ounce more discontent.
“The truce with Corinne ended. We resumed being reciprocally offended, as if we had never moved from that evening with her parents. I was constantly asking myself whether I loved her or not, and if so, how much. You can go out of your mind wondering if you love someone or not.”
* * *
—
TOMMASO PAUSED. He let the last allusion fill the air already saturated with revelations.
“In the evening I would hold Ada in my arms. I cradled her to put her to sleep and I could feel that she had imperceptibly gained weight. I looked at the color of her cheeks and thought I couldn’t have generated her. So normal. So perfect. I examined every detail of her, studied her gray eyes, until what I was doing scared me. Then I’d put her back in her crib. If she cried, I let Corinne take care of it. And then I began to spy on her too. As if she were an enemy. Oh, Corinne got back at me later! She humiliated me every way she could. But still, it’s nothing compared to the magnitude of my hostile thoughts during that year. There was the ungainly way she sat, there was the hair she didn’t wash often enough and the crocodile yawns and the odd way she held her fork and her loud voice. There was only one way to stop those thoughts. By drinking just enough, my life in the apartment became tolerable again. At the beginning I would limit myself to having something before going home, at a bar along the way. I drained three glasses of rosé, as if it were medicine, then I got back in the car.”
“It sounds like you’re justifying yourself.”
“Could be. Maybe you’re right, maybe I am justifying myself. But I’m also telling you what happened to me, exactly as I told it to Bern one evening. He was very severe. He said it was shameful, that I didn’t appreciate my good fortune. In fact, no, he didn’t say ‘shameful,’ he used one of those adjectives of his that seemed chosen to hit home. ‘Deplorable,’ that’s what he said. Then he added that I really didn’t deserve a daughter if I couldn’t be joyful over her. It had to do with . . . well, your issue. I already knew about it, but I assure you that before that comment of his I hadn’t even connected the two situations.”
“What issue?” I asked.
Tommaso remained silent long enough to make it clear that he wouldn’t answer, his head slightly bowed.
“What issue?” I repeated.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“You shouldn’t have mentioned what?”
I felt like gripping those hands of his, so pale and limp, and crushing them.
“The insemination. Kiev. Et cetera.”
I stood up. Medea abruptly raised her snout.
Tommaso turned to look at me, with no compassion and no remorse. Then he said, “Please sit down.”
And since there was really no place else I could go, I obeyed him. Medea settled down too, her snout once again resting on her paws.
I said, “Apparently not all secrets are worth keeping.”
“Bern and I told each other . . .”
“Everything, yes, I know.”
Tommaso coughed, then he cleared his throat and went on.
“I kept a supply at home to get me through the weekend. Vodka mostly. In that respect I was different from my father: he didn’t touch the hard stuff, just wine, which got him drunk more slowly and then left him completely wrecked. Mine was progress, in a way.”
He gave me an ironic smile, but I remained impassive.
“I remembered Bern’s words, so I invented a toast: To God’s gifts and to deplorable men! I got so used to it that I still say it today. I repeat the phrase mentally. I don’t know to what degree Corinne was aware of all this. Probably more than I was willing to admit. But she didn’t say anything. Sometimes I caught her furtive, frightened expression again. That side of Corinne was a new development. If there’s one thing I would not have guessed about her, it was that she could be intimidated. I said to myself: She’s right to fear me.
“After the night I’d talked with him, I didn’t see Bern for quite a while. At other times I would have worried, but for the first time I didn’t care that much. Besides, all I had to do was adjust the dose of alcohol and it absorbed that disappointment as well.
“Until one day he showed up without notice. It was early summer. Corinne was at the shore with her parents and the baby.
“‘I’ll open a couple of beers,’ I said.
“‘I can’t stay long.’
“‘Is there someplace urgent you have to be?’
“Suddenly we were both struck by how foolish such distance was, the reciprocal wariness. I felt like hugging him; he noticed and smiled at me, then he sprawled on the sofa and said he would gladly accept a beer, provided it was icy cold. We sipped from the bottles for a while, not saying anything, as if getting acclimated to the intimacy. I felt good. At peace.
“‘The mulberries have ripened,’ he said at one point, and I visualized the huge tree at the masseria and us as little boys, trying to reach the fruit at the top. I was grateful to him for that image.
“‘Will you do something with them?’
“But he ignored the mulberries. ‘Teresa and I are getting married,’ he said. ‘In September. I wanted to ask you a favor for that day.’ Now he’ll ask me to be his best man, I thought, and I’ll accept, of course I’ll accept. I’ll get up from here and give him a brotherly hug, as is appropriate for two adults in these circumstances.
“But instead Bern said, ‘I’d like you to take care of arranging the refreshments. We don’t have much money. We’ll have to try to do it all cheaply, but you’re good at these things.’
“‘Of course,’ I replied automatically, just as I had intended to do, though to a different question.
“‘Teresa already has some ideas. Maybe it’s best if you two meet to talk about it. I’m taking care of the rest with Danco.’
“When he left, the sun was sliced in half by the expanse of sea, a sweaty ball that radiated an orangey glow into the apartment. I remained standing until it was dark, then I acted with a resolve that made no sense. I turned on all the lights in the apartment
, in every room, then I switched on every household appliance. Washing machine, dishwasher, air conditioners, vacuum cleaner, kitchen exhaust fan, even the blender at maximum speed. I grabbed a bottle of white wine from the fridge and left the door wide open so that the refrigerator too would start humming in pain. I went to sit on the sofa again, the bottle in my hands, surrounded by the vibrating noise of everything that had made my life newer and more respectable, of everything that had invaded and destroyed it.
“Oh, it was a special wedding all right! I arrived already well fortified. I had to make up an excuse to get Corinne to drive us from Taranto to Speziale. I had drunk something very sweet, some Baileys, I think; my stomach was churning. Luckily, Corinne was furious with Bern. ‘To pick Danco as his best man instead of you!’ she kept saying. ‘It’s typical of an asshole like him.’ And she was even more indignant that he had asked me to work that evening. For once I was content to listen to her rail against the masseria, against all of you, to have her on my side. I put my hand on hers and kept it there even after she stopped talking.
“When you came back from the ceremony, happy and a little disheveled, just like the day I’d caught you coming out of the reed bed, the alcohol had not yet worn off. When the guests trickled over a few at a time to ask me where they should sit at the tables, I barely understood them. Once everything seemed under way, I allowed myself to leave my station and dance a little. We even danced together, you and I. Corinne grabbed me by the tie. I kissed her, a kiss more fervent than any other we’d exchanged. For a moment we stood unmoving among all the people. I remember thinking: All this can work, I didn’t think so, but it can work. Starting tomorrow you’ll change, starting tomorrow, sure. Bern was right when he reproached me. Then I left her there and went back to preside over the buffet.
“That’s when Nicola came over. If it hadn’t been for my momentary giddiness, he might not have caught me so off guard. And maybe I could have handled things differently. I found him looking for something under the table.
“‘What can I get you?’ I asked him.
“‘Ah, there you are,’ he said, straightening up. He looked a little spaced out. ‘Where’s the hard stuff?’
“I gave him the flask I had inside my jacket and he told me I was a bastard, that he knew he couldn’t go wrong with me. He said it almost affectionately, then he emptied it in one swig and belched.
“‘Here you go, waiter,’ he added, still staring at me. ‘Or, rather, no. It’s not polite to tip waiters, is it? They’re only doing their job.’
“The need to provoke me came to him just then, I’m sure of it. Something about me riled him. There were two bottles of wine open on the table, right between us. He appraised them, then knocked them over with his index finger, first one and then the other, like skittles. The wine streamed over the table, my pants, and my shoes.
“‘Oops,’ he said.
“‘Shithead.’
“‘So what, you have someone to buy you new clothes now, right?’
“I had no clue where he’d gotten that idea about my life, we hadn’t been in touch for a long time. Only later would I realize that he had never stopped spying on us, all of us, when we were together at the masseria and then afterward.
“He said it was really a shame to see a waiter spill wine all over himself, and that it was a good thing Bern had chosen someone else as his best man instead of me. He knew me well, he knew exactly where to strike. I didn’t even answer him, I just threw the napkin I was using to wipe myself at him, that’s all, but he sprang at me like a wild beast. He grabbed one of the bottles and raised it in the air as if he were about to smash it over my head. He held it there for a few seconds, then he started laughing, as if it were all a joke.
“That’s when Bern came over. He must have only witnessed the final scene, when Nicola laughed, because he didn’t seem alarmed or upset. There we were, we three brothers, together, after all those years. Nicola wrapped an arm around Bern’s neck. ‘Here he is, the groom. Three cheers for the groom!’ he shouted. ‘Waiter, three glasses, right away. Let’s drink a toast to the groom!’
“We actually toasted, with Bern seeming faraway and Nicola more and more revved up. Then he glanced around, as if looking for something. ‘It’s over there that we threw the stones, right? That very spot, I think. Yours, Tommi, went as far as that olive tree. Am I right? Is my memory correct, Bern?’
“‘Nicola, not now,’ I begged him.
“Bern still hadn’t said anything.
“‘Why not? Why not now? When do we ever get a chance to exchange a few good memories! So then, another toast to the groom! Refill the glasses, go on!’
“We drank again, slightly more strained.
“‘So then, bridegroom, tell us.’ Nicola held an imaginary microphone in front of Bern. ‘How does it feel to promise fidelity in this cursed place?’
“Bern took a deep breath. He set the glass on the table and started to return to the dancing. But Nicola wasn’t done. Suddenly he turned serious again and asked Bern: ‘Does she at least know where it is she’s getting married?’
“‘We took an oath,’ Bern said quietly.
“Nicola took a step toward him. ‘Because if she doesn’t know, I can always explain it to her.’
“At that point, it was Bern who stepped forward. He looked up at Nicola, without the slightest trace of fear or submission. He said clearly: ‘If you say even one word to her, I’ll kill you.’
“He said it coldly, and Nicola laughed. ‘Let me remind you that I’m an officer of the law.’
“They faced one another for a few more seconds, framed by the ornate coils of the tiny lit bulbs. Then Bern again turned to leave. But Nicola still hadn’t finished and hurled those words after him.”
* * *
—
TOMMASO STOPPED TALKING. Maybe he was looking for a way to backtrack, to eat his last statement.
“Which words?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Tell me what he said, Tommaso.”
“He said, ‘I heard that you and your wife are having some problems.’ Bern didn’t turn around. But he stopped, his arms slightly away from his hips. ‘Maybe we were wrong that time. If you need some help, just give a holler. We’ll do like old times.’ Even then Bern didn’t turn around. Another few seconds went by, then he started walking again, very slowly, and disappeared among the guests. Later there was the cake and that speech by Cesare. All that idiotic nonsense about the Book of Enoch. Who could really understand him? Only we three: Bern, Nicola, and I. Because who else could the rebellious angels be, if not the three of us? Fallen from heaven, from that paradise that Cesare had created, and plunged into fornication. Damned for eternity. He took that opportunity to tell us that he had not forgotten, that he knew much more than we wanted to believe, and that as long as we persisted in keeping the secret there would be no hope of redemption for us. His Sermon on the Mount, his final lecture. It was a good party, sure. I had some cake and listened to Cesare and watched the fireworks explode. But I was no longer able to enjoy any of it. And my good intentions for the following day had already dissolved.”
“What did you mean that Nicola had been spying on us the whole time?” I asked. I was still stuck at that point. I had heard the rest, but without really grasping it.
“He kept watch on us while we occupied the masseria with Danco. And even after that, I guess, when you and Bern remained there alone.”
“And later still, as well,” I said, now talking more to myself than to Tommaso.
After Bern left, having burned our entire store of wood in a single night, and I was left to sleep alone in the house, surrounded by the sounds of the countryside and by a silence even more frightening, I often had the impression that someone was out there, that someone was watching me. There was no need to go out looking for him to be certain, or even to listen for the s
ounds any more intently than I already was. But I thought it was Bern. His pride wounded, yet still faithful to the commandment that Cesare had given us on our wedding day.
I must have spoken some of those thoughts aloud, because Tommaso said: “No, it wasn’t him. Bern went back there only once, as far as I know. When he was already living here. And he found Nicola’s car parked on the side of the road. Nicola wasn’t around. That’s how he confirmed that you two . . .”
“That we?”
“It’s none of my business,” he said shortly. “Anyway, I too tried to convince him that it wasn’t like that.”
In the other room, Ada’s breathing had changed. It was heavier now, similar to that of an adult.
“I’m not following any of this anymore,” I said.
“If you would just let me go in order,” Tommaso said, his voice firmer. His right hand went to his mouth and he tapped his bloodless lips repeatedly, as if trying to coax out the next few sentences.
“Remember when we found the solar panels trashed? We thought it was some farmer’s spite work, some rival, who knows. But it was Nicola. Him together with some of his colleagues.”
“You’re just saying that because you hated him. Like Bern.”
Tommaso shook his head.
“And how would you have found out?”
“Nicola told me himself. A few weeks after the wedding, I saw him again at the Relais. He appeared just like that, out of the blue. I went over to a table to take the orders and there he was, smiling, wearing a light brown sports jacket. He introduced me to the three men who were with him, as if I were the reason why they had come from Bari. It was nearly winter, because the tables were set inside. November, maybe? It doesn’t matter. He pulled me to him by the arm and said to his colleagues, ‘This is my brother.’ Then he explained that we had neither a father nor mother in common, no relations, but that was irrelevant, because we were even more intimate than two blood brothers. He said, ‘We jacked off together,’ and his friends thought it was very funny. One of them quipped that I must still devote quite a bit of time to it, since judging by my coloring I didn’t leave the house much. Then they laughed even harder, Nicola included. But when they were finished he pointed a finger at the one who’d made the wisecrack and said that no one should make fun of his brother. I didn’t get it. Last time, at the wedding, he’d done nothing but needle me, and he and Bern had nearly come to blows; now here he was in the Relais’s dining room playing the part of big brother in front of the other policemen in civvies.
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