by David Szalay
The lagoon, when he arrives at it, shines like a sheet of metal. From there he picks up Strada Provinciale 58, which wanders, even quieter, through the wetlands of the Po delta. There is something pleasantly hypnotic about the driving. The interior of the Passat is nice and warm. There is no impatient queue behind him now – he has the landscape to himself, until he joins Strada Statale 309 – the main road along the sea – and pootles in the wake of a truck, not wanting the stress of trying to overtake. The truck wallows in the wind that hits them from the direction of the sea, the sea itself not visible, only indicated by the signs pointing off at frequent intervals to lido this and lido that. Lido delle Nazioni. Lido di Volano.
He nearly misses the turning. He sees the campanile, and suddenly understanding what it is, immediately indicates and turns. The time it took to drive here passed so quickly. He doesn’t feel that he should be there yet. And yet here he is.
Nothing is familiar. If he was here before – and he was – he has forgotten everything. The little track-like road winding away from Strada Statale 309, first seeming to wander in the wrong direction, away from the tall campanile that sticks out above a stand of trees, and then turning on itself and taking him, past a vista of fields stretching to the horizon, to a little lake, a few dumpsters next to a wall, some parking spaces on an apron of tarmac.
He puts the Passat in one of the spaces, most of which are empty. The frigid air shocks him when he opens the door. There is quite a strong smell of dog shit. A sign indicates, surprisingly, that thieves are a problem here. He looks around at the silent, empty scene. The only sound is the quiet shushing of traffic on Strada Statale 309. Thieves? Not now, surely. Anyway, there is nothing in his car for them to steal. He puts on his scarf and locks the Passat.
The campanile is a few hundred metres off. He sees it through the leafless trees. Starting to walk towards it, he is weighed down, somewhat, by a feeling that this is pointless, what he is doing. He feels tired and cold, and he is not actually very interested in seeing this place. That is obvious now that he is here, walking towards it over the frost-blanched tarmac, quickening his step to keep warm. And in fact there does not seem to be much to see. The setting is a sort of sparse park. He passes two modest-looking places to eat, set behind empty terraces on one side of the road that leads to the campanile. Only one of them seems to be open – there is a sign outside, anyway. And it occurs to him that the abbey itself may not be open, on a weekday morning at this time of year.
It is open, however.
What there is of it.
After he has looked it over, he walks back to the place with the sign outside. A very simple place – not where they ate with Alan and his wife when they were here years ago. There is a slot machine with flashing lights. Old posters on the walls. Dusty bottles of wine for sale on shelves. He sits down at a small table. A man puts a paper place mat in front of him, and hands him a laminated menu. The only other people eating there are a middle-aged couple speaking in low voices at another table. German, they seem to be. He quickly scans the menu. He is not very hungry. He wants something hot. He orders soup.
He only spent half an hour looking at the abbey – a series of low brick buildings, very plain, with small windows. A few modest pieces of carved white marble. Inside, it was mostly just empty rooms. There was a courtyard with a square of lawn and a well in the middle. It was all quite evocative. A memorial to a way of life that went on here for a thousand years, a way of seeing the world. One side of the courtyard was formed by the side wall of the abbey church. The whole interior of the church was painted with scenes and figures. He spent some time in there, looking with a historian’s interest at the painted walls, the strange and often violent scenes depicted on them. A man on fire. Naked women. A sort of devil, with suffering people in his enormous oval mouth.
When he had had enough, he stepped out into the porch. The low winter sun shone into the deep porch. Set in its walls were some marble tablets, memorials for the important dead. In a tranquil and unhurried mood, he studied some of these. They were in Latin, obviously, a language he learned a lifetime ago. He is still able, sometimes, to make something of it, and in one of the inscriptions he found five words that made him stand there thoughtfully for a while. A single Latin sentence, on a piece of stone in memory of a man who had died hundreds of years ago.
The waiter puts the hot soup on the table in front of him, and some bread sticks individually wrapped in paper.
‘Grazie,’ he says.
‘Prego,’ the waiter says, as he walks away.
The Germans at the other table have unfolded a map of northeastern Italy. Poring over it, they talk to each other in quiet voices.
The waiter is talking to someone too, though nobody is visible. He speaks again, in a scolding tone. And then a little girl emerges from somewhere and walks over to one of the empty tables where she sits down. She must be … Seven years old? She sits at the table, looking out the window, her feet swinging well short of the floor.
Tony eats his soup – minestra di fagioli. Green leaves of cabbage float in it, huge creamy beans.
Unselfconsciously, and still staring at the window, at the empty stillness of the winter day, the little girl has started to sing something in a soft, lisping voice.
While he eats his soup, he tries to understand the words of the song. She is singing it for a second time now.
‘Gennaio nevicato,’ she sings, her lips hardly moving.
In January it snows.
‘Febbraio, mascherato.’
February is masked.
‘Marzo, pazzerello.’
March is mad, madness.
‘Aprile, ancor più bello.’
April, even more lovely.
‘Maggio, frutti e fiori. Giugno, vado al mare.’
May, fruits and flowers. June, off to the sea.
‘Luglio e Agosto, la scuola non conosco.’
July and August, school is unknown … No school.
‘Settembre, la vendemmia. Ottobre, con la nebbia.’
September, the, er … harvest. October, foggy.
‘Novembre, un golf in piú. Dicembre con Gesù.’
November, an extra jumper. December, Jesus.
Having finished the song, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand. She has auburn hair, pale skin. She sees that he is looking at her. Her eyes are greenish.
He smiles. ‘That was a nice song,’ he says to her, in Italian.
She says, ‘I learned it at school.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well …’ He is not sure what to say. ‘Well done,’ he says.
She shrugs and starts to sing it again, evidently with nothing else to do, staring out the window.
‘Gennaio nevicato. Febbraio, mascherato …’
The Germans are paying for their meal.
They leave and the waiter starts to tidy their table.
‘Un caffè,’ Tony says to him as the man passes with an armful of plates. He acknowledges the order with a single nod. His daughter – if she is his daughter – is still singing.
Novembre, un golf in più. Dicembre con Gesù.
And the Germans are unexpectedly there again. They hurry in, obviously agitated.
The waiter is at the espresso machine, whacking something.
‘Polizei!’ the German man almost shouts. ‘Polizei!’
The waiter doesn’t stop what he is doing. He just turns his head, and the German says something in his own language which the waiter does not seem to understand.
The man tries English. ‘Please, you must call the police,’ he says.
‘You must call the police,’ echoes his wild-eyed wife.
In Italian, the waiter says, ‘The police? Why?’
‘You must call them,’ the man says, still speaking English. ‘Our car … Somebody has.’ And he motions with his fist.
‘Somebody has broken into your car?’ the waiter says, sticking to Italian himself, and so
unding wearily unsurprised.
‘Yes, yes,’ the man says in English, understanding. ‘You must call the police.’
‘Okay,’ the waiter says, unexcitably. ‘I’ll call the police.’
First, though, he takes Tony his espresso – something Tony appreciates, though it evidently exasperates the Germans, particularly the woman, who turns to the door with an outraged sigh. The waiter returns unhurriedly to the bar and picks up the phone, which is attached to the wall next to a calendar with pictures of agricultural machinery.
It suddenly occurs to Tony that his own car might be in danger. He says to the Germans, who are waiting nervously, ‘Do you mind my asking where you’re parked?’
The man stares at him as if he hasn’t understood. However, he then says, motioning, ‘Over there, next to the small lake.’
‘Oh,’ Tony says. ‘I’m parked there as well.’
The man just shrugs, as if he has more important things to worry about than where other people are parked, and turns to the waiter, who is still on the phone saying something about ‘another one’.
When the waiter has finished, Tony is standing there with a ten-euro note in his hand.
Fearing the worst, he leaves and starts to walk towards the small lake and the parking spaces, the insistent smell of dog shit. That sign, warning of thieves – shouldn’t have ignored it. The Passat is in view now and he quickens his pace. It looks okay. Yes, it is okay. In one of the other spaces an Opel estate with German plates has had a window smashed. Poor Germans. Probably on holiday, and now this to deal with. As he tries to find his way back to the main road, he passes the arriving police. Maybe he should have stayed and translated for them, the Germans – they didn’t seem to know Italian, and they’ll be lucky if the police speak English. Not much English spoken out here. Even the tourists in summer are mostly Italian. Well. They’ll sort it out. He is already at the junction with Strada Statale 309. He needs to turn left – he needs both lanes to be clear. He sits there with the indicator ticking, traffic coming from both directions. The sun, already starting to sink, is in his eyes and he lowers the visor. Distant trees melt into the cold yellowish glow of the horizon. Still the traffic comes. His index fingers tap the black plastic of the steering wheel. This is silly now. He stifles a yawn. There is a truck coming from the left. Nothing, finally, from the other side. It is quite far off, the truck. Surely it is far enough for him to pull out across it. Not if he waits. So don’t wait. Do it. Now.
3
Amemus eterna et non peritura.
Amemus – Let us love. Eterna – that which is eternal. Et non peritura – and not that which is transient.
Let us love what is eternal and not what is transient.
4
He is in an unfamiliar room. The light is dim. It seems to be evening, or very early morning. He is lying on a bed, looking up at the ceiling, high above him. There is something up there, some sort of light fitting. Maggio, frutti e fiori. Giugno, vado al mare … His head feels very heavy, foggy. Ottobre, con la nebbia. He does not know where he is. From somewhere on the other side of a door, he hears what seem to be footsteps, voices. The door has a panel of frosted glass in it, and figures slide across it sometimes, dark smudges, animating the facets of the panel for a moment. Amemus eterna et non peritura.
5
It is sunny in the room. Joanna is sitting there. ‘Hello, Tony,’ she says.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘You don’t know where you are,’ she suggests.
She looks tired, he thinks. He says, ‘No. Where am I?’
‘You’re in hospital, in Ravenna.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I am.’
She is sitting on a chair next to the bed.
‘And I have to go in a couple of days,’ she says.
‘Okay.’ He still feels woozy and it takes him a while to ask the obvious question: ‘Why am I here?’
‘You don’t remember anything?’
He tries. Then he says, ‘I was at Pomposa abbey. Wasn’t I?’
‘There was an accident. The Passat’s a write-off,’ she informs him.
‘What accident?’
‘They seem to think what happened,’ she says, ‘is you were pulling out of a minor road, and trying to turn left, and a truck was coming, and someone was overtaking it, and you didn’t see them until it was too late.’
There is a longish silence.
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ he says.
‘Well, you ended up in a field, apparently. And if it wasn’t for the airbags we wouldn’t be talking now. You’ve got concussion, the doctor says.’
‘Concussion?’
‘Yes. I think they want to do a CAT scan tomorrow, just to make sure there’s nothing else.’
He feels slightly nauseous. He lies back on the pillow – he has been half-sitting up to talk to her.
‘The car’s in my name,’ she says. ‘That’s how they found me.’
He is staring at the light fitting on the ceiling. His eyes follow the wire across the ceiling to the wall over the door, and then along the top of the wall to a small hole in one of the other walls. He feels strange.
‘I’ve brought you some things,’ she says. ‘Pyjamas and so on.’
‘Okay. How are you?’ he asks vaguely.
The question sounds odd. She hesitates. ‘Fine,’ she tells him. Then she says, maybe feeling that that wasn’t enough, ‘You know how it is, at this time of year.’
He struggles to remember what time of year it is.
Joanna seems distracted by something and turns her head, though in fact there is nothing there, only the pale impersonal space of the small hospital room.
There is, undoubtedly, an awkwardness to this. The way they have lived, for twenty years or more, makes it awkward. They have each looked after themselves, more or less, for all that time. They have not often had to ask the other for help – and when they did it was in a worldly tone, as negotiating equals, and in practical matters – loans, professional favours. Not like this.
Tony seems helpless and dopey in the bed, wearing a hospital smock with a number tattooed on the fabric near his shoulder.
‘I flew out last night,’ she says, turning to him again from the oddly low sink. ‘Ryanair. From Stansted.’
He doesn’t seem interested. ‘Yes?’
‘You know – the flight that gets in about midnight.’
He does know that flight. He arrived on it himself, only a few days ago. The taxi from Bologna airport to the house, half an hour through the wintry darkness. And the house, unused for months, the temperature of a fridge, the olive oil opaque and waxy. Mouse droppings on the floor. Signs of damp in the wall at the foot of the stairs. They had made him feel overwhelmed, somehow, those things. The mouse droppings, the spreading patch of damp. Still in his coat he had sat down on the small sofa in the hall, his breath hanging in the air in front of his mouth …
‘Do you want me to stay?’ Joanna’s voice says.
She is standing now, at the window, looking out. He does not know what there is to see. When he says nothing, she says, ‘The doctor did say at this stage you just need rest. You should try and sleep, he said.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you want me to stay?’ she asks again, moving the emphasis slightly to the word stay this time.
She sits, again, in the chair – a low chair of scruffy green fabric – waiting for him to answer.
‘No, it’s okay,’ he says.
‘You should try and sleep,’ she advises.
‘Yes.’
She takes his hand for a moment. That too feels awkward, holding his dry hand like that. She isn’t sure why she took it. The physical intimacy of it feels excessive, anyway, now that she is holding it. She understands that she has no feel for what to do in this situation. They have lived merely as friends for so many years. She isn’t sure what she owes him in a situation like this. There is no p
recedent for it. The heart op – that long hospital stay – was all organised and prearranged and in the familiar surroundings of West London. She didn’t have to fly across Europe overnight at no notice to appear at his side, surprising him, as she did today. She didn’t have to tell him where he was, and what had happened to him. He never seemed as helpless then as he does now. She had wondered, on the plane, whether she needed to do this, whether it was her place any more. If she didn’t do it, though, who would? She is still holding his hand. She squeezes it – out of embarrassment more than anything else – and puts it down.
‘I’ll look in tomorrow morning,’ she says.
‘Okay.’ He wonders what time of day it is now.
She puts her coat on. It seems to take for ever. Then she says again, ‘I’ll look in tomorrow.’
She has already opened the door, letting in noise from outside, when he says, ‘Joanna.’
She stops in the doorway, very aware now of how much she wants to leave.
‘Thank you.’
She doesn’t know what to say. ‘That’s alright,’ she says finally, and leaves.
An hour or two later – it is already dark outside, the light on the ceiling is on – a doctor arrives. He is very young. Not much more than thirty, by the look of it. A nice-looking man. He asks how Tony feels. ‘Okay,’ Tony says.
‘Do you feel sick?’
‘Sometimes. A little bit.’
‘Headache?’
‘Slightly. Not really.’
The doctor says they will do a CAT scan in the morning. If everything is okay – if there is no haemorrhaging inside his head – he might be able to go home tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. ‘You have been very lucky,’ he says, smiling.
*