by André Aciman
He yawned. How many people could the church seat?
He began to count the pews. Starting with the first row and moving back, he counted up to forty. Each row of pews would easily accommodate some twenty people. Two times four is eight. So it would seat a congregation of eight hundred.
He yawned again. A good half of the pews, especially those toward the front, closest to the main altar, bore a miniature white sign with the usual names—Callegari, Callegarini, Benazzi, Tagliati, Putinati, Pimpinati, Borgatti, Felletti, Mingozzi, Bottoni etc.—more or less the same ones you’d find among the poorest workmen and laborers in the surrounding country. And the Cavaglieris? Did they, too, have their own church pew? It was almost worth the bother of going to check.
He realized he was stepping on something, and peered down. Some paper. It looked like a newspaper.
He leaned down, picked it up and sat up again.
It wasn’t a newspaper, but some Catholic propaganda print-out. On the first page there was only a thickly inked woodcut. It showed a hand tightly squeezing some ripe olives. Its rough knotty fingers with enormous nails were dripping with oil. Atop the image in spaced-out capital letters it read: TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW.
He opened the sheet and smoothed it out.
There was a great deal to read within. The font and point size kept on varying to keep the readers on their toes, and even the lay-out changed every now and then. Sometimes the lineation suddenly shifted to short lines centered and arranged in columns as if they were verses of a poem.
“Have you ever closely observed a mole?” he read, staring at the top of the sheet and narrowing his eyes to decipher the tiny italics of the first lines.
“Its forepaws are like spades it uses to dig the earth before it, as you might with a spoon. It uses its back legs to push its body forward. Its head is like a wedge, its nose like a pointed chisel, and both have been created so as not to be broken. Its tiny eyes are almost entirely hidden by its fur, and its ears likewise.
“Do you think it made itself that way, adapting its body to a life underground? And why have other animals that live in a similar way adapted differently? Yes, because of God. But would a God so infinitely great concern himself with such insignificant creatures?
“Don’t listen to the voice of atheistic materialism! But rather observe all that surrounds you with the good, clear eye of a child of God. Then you will agree with St. Augustine who attests: ‘God takes care of every creature He has made as if it were the only one in the world, and of all as if each were unique.’
“There are, however, different kinds of care.
“You take care of your shoes, of your hunting dog, of your parrot, of your potted geranium on the windowsill, of your radio, of your motorbike. And you say to your little girl ‘Careful not to fall!,’ ‘This draft will give you a cold!,’ ‘Are you hungry?’ ‘I run to see why she’s crying . . . ’ And you wrap her tightly in your arms to dry her tears.
“In truth, of all His creatures, God has a very special care for Man, whom he loves with a father’s heart.
“After having provided for your benefit the sun, fruits, stones to build your houses, leather and wool from animals to clothe you, grass and flowers to delight you, He bends down over you to hear the beating of your heart, to calm it with the utter certainty He gives your life.
“He tells you: ‘Take no thought for food or raiment. Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these . . .
“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more think of you! He always provides for your good, be assured, even when things do not turn out as you would have wanted.”
He had arrived at the bottom of the third page.
“The parrot?” he wondered. “What has the parrot to do with all this?”
He turned to the next page. Empty. There was nothing more to read.
3.
HE WENT out by the same side door he had come in by. And almost immediately, having taken a few steps in the dark down the evil-smelling little alley running alongside the church, he found himself once again in the square, beside the sacristy.
Once more he came to a halt.
Gradually widening like a chalice or a funnel the square spread itself before him in all its enormity. To the right, nearby, the shadowy mass of the former local Fascist Headquarters. To the left, no less tall but set farther back, the I.N.A. building, with its dozens of brightly lit windows. In the background, at what suddenly seemed to him a vast distance, so even the thought of crossing it on foot filled him with fatigue, with unbounded boredom, three points of light shone out: two of an equally dull yellow from the cafes opposite each other, the Fetman and the Moccia, and one of a shop window which he had only just noticed, adjacent and to the right of the low tenement block of the Trade Union Hall, and ablaze with the same bright white light of an industrial establishment in full swing as that which flooded the square from the I.N.A. building. There was no fog. During the last half hour the air had instead become crystal clear so that it allowed him to see every detail not only of the monument to the Fallen in the middle of the square but also, behind that, the miniscule bedbug-like carapace of the Aprilia’s roof. He sniffed the air. The smell of urine and incense lingered in his nostrils. Mingling with these and the usual smell of the valleys, was a new odor: of burning, of roasted chestnuts. He looked around in search of the humble iron brazier replete with charcoal which must have been nearby, but without success. Who knows where it was.
He moved on.
He walked slowly, letting his legs carry him toward the center of the square, while the surrounding space and everything within it, the monument to the Fallen, the former Fascist Headquarters, the I.N.A. building, gradually assumed a different, a transformed aspect. Even the Aprilia was changing its appearance. No longer the shell it had seemed just before. One could see the double back window with its trapezoid frame. And within a moment or two, it would be possible to read, white on a black background, the numbers on the Ferrara license plate.
He headed toward Cafe Fetman. However, having covered three quarters of the distance, and noticing a group of customers leaving the premises who then stopped to chat in front of the entrance—four of them, all wearing cloaks, who seemed to be paying attention to the Aprilia, and discussing it—so as not to have to get into the car beneath their gaze, he preferred to move to the right toward the brightly lit window beside the Trade Union Hall. Some time before he’d figured out what it was—the taxidermist’s workshop which Bellagamba had mentioned. It didn’t matter. Without now feeling the least bit repelled by the idea, he allowed his legs to lead him, one step after another, to a yard or so from the big glass window.
He stopped there, fascinated.
Hunting rifles, belts full of cartridges, fishing rods, nets, lark mirrors, decoys for the valley, gumboots, woolen fabrics as well as fustian and velvet, and of course the stuffed animals, mainly birds, but there was also a fox, a marten, some squirrels, the odd tortoise: full to the brim with things scattered in what only seemed to be disorder, the window shone before him like a small sunny self-sufficient universe, parallel but unreachable. He was well aware that the pane of glass between him and the interior was what rendered it so. And since the pane of glass, so spotlessly clean it seemed invisible, reflected a part of his own image—barely a shadow, it’s true, but still annoying—in order to be completely rid of this faint residual shadow and to pretend the glass itself wasn’t there, he drew even closer, almost touching the window with his forehead, so he sensed a coldness colder than the evening air.
Beyond the window pane, silence, absolute immobility, peace.
He observed, one by one, the stuffed animals, all of them resplendent in their death, more alive than when they lived.
The fox, for example, which occupied the middle of the window display horizontally, between a pair of matching gumboots standing upright and a half-opened Browning rifle, was twisting its snout to the side, gnashing its teeth as if in the act of turning it had ended up there in that instant; and its yellow eyes, full of hatred, its bright white teeth, its flaming red maw, its thick and luminous russet-blond fur, its bushy overgrown tail all gleamed with an overbearing almost insolent health, preserved by a magic spell from any assault, both now and in the future. Even the squirrels, placed where you’d least expect to find them—there was one whose neat little head, and nothing more, peeked out of a fine leather game bag—although motionless, it still managed to express all the sly grace, the gleeful agility of its nature, like that of Walt Disney’s dwarves, but with something more, something extra, perhaps related to their being there, safe, and forever separate, behind the thick glass. In the violent convergent light of the lamps their black beady eyes shone joyously, feverishly, devilishly with knowingness and irony.
It was toward the birds, however, that his gaze kept on returning.
The ducks, at least a dozen of them in a compact group, were squashed into the forestage of the little theater, so close it seemed he could have touched them, and calm at last and without fear, no longer forced to keep to the heights, suspended on their short trembling wings in the still, treacherous air. The birds of prey, by contrast, with the exception of an eagle owl perched in a central and dominant coign, were farther off, in a long row, on the shelf of a kind of partition which formed the back and sides of the window display. Reading the brass labels at the foot of the fake ebony pedestals on which each of these birds was posed upright, he recognized one by one a kestrel, a buzzard, a peregrine, an osprey, a sparrowhawk . . . These birds were also vivid and shone as if polished with a vitality which ran no risk of decay, but most of all they had become far more lovely than they’d been when they were breathing and blood ran fast in their veins—he alone, perhaps, he thought, was in a position truly to understand the perfection of their final, imperishable beauty, to fully appreciate it.
At one point, the better to see the green on a mallard’s feathers, he had to draw back a fraction. Immediately, reflected in the pane, he once again saw the shape of his own face.
He then tried to look at himself as he had that same morning in the bathroom mirror. And while he was rediscovering beneath his fur cap the same features he awoke to every day—the receded hairline, the three horizontal furrows across his brow, the long, fleshy nose, the heavy tired-looking eyelids, the soft, almost womanish lips, the dint in his chin, the cheeks blurred with stubble—they appeared veiled, distant, as though just a few hours had been enough to sprinkle the dust of years and years over them, he felt a secret thought slowly forming within him, as yet confused but still rich with mysterious promise, a thought that would free him, and save him.
4.
IF MERELY imagining himself dead overwhelmed him with such a sudden wave of happiness, he reasoned, well then, why not actually kill himself? And why not as soon as possible? No, he should do it this same night, in his room, with the Browning or the Krupp. And he already knew exactly how.
He drove on down the road to Ferrara in the cold, clear night lit by the moon.
A little before the Eridania sugar refinery and the Land Reclamation Offices he had stopped at an A.G.I.P. petrol station to buy five hundred lire’s worth of petrol and to have the windscreen cleaned, and now, back in the car, having decided what he had decided, he found it even easier to identify with the stuffed animals in the Cimini shop in Codigoro. Once in a while he shook his head. How stupid, how ridiculous and grotesque life, precious life, became once you saw it through the shop windows of a taxidermist! And how much better, straightaway, he felt at the mere thought of finally being done with all that tedious back-and-forth business of eating and defecating, drinking and urinating, sleeping and waking, of making trips and staying put which life consisted of! Perhaps for the first time in his life, he began to think of the dead without any fear. Only they, the dead, counted for something, only they were truly alive. It would take a couple of years to be reduced to nothing more than a skeleton—he’d read that somewhere. After which the dead experience no further change forever. Clean, hard, very beautiful, they then became like precious stones or the noble elements. Immutable, and so eternal.
The nearer he got to Ferrara, the lighter and happier, even at times frivolous, his thoughts were. He kept on bursting out laughing.
The fleeting vision of La Montina to the left of the road, on the other side of the Volano stretch of the Po, brought Nives to mind. Immediately he began to think with amusement what would happen to La Montina in a month, or a month and a half, when Nives would establish contact for the first time in person with the property and its employees. He saw the whole scene in splendid detail: the ladylike frown of the widow and heiress, the persnickety pout of her lips in her effort to speak her most fluent Italian, the kowtowing of Benazzi, the overseer, hoping to keep his job, the caps in hand of the farm laborers and cowherds, disposed, at this stage, given the change of political climate, to wipe the slate of the recent past utterly clean, their faces a blend of the sly, the respectful and the contrite. With regard to this—here he broke into a good-natured grin—would Nives come to La Montina alone or else accompanied by the faithful Prearo in the Aprilia? That the two were in cahoots, and had been for quite some time, he alone had been blithely able to ignore, thanks to his inveterate tendency to register nothing that might put his tranquility at risk. So then, why not? Given the solemn occasion, it was likely that the excellent accountant should now and then double up as chauffeur, remaining for the entire duration of the managerial site inspection discreetly apart yet respectfully à côté. Oh, that would really be a scene to enjoy from the beginning to the end. What a shame to miss it! On the other hand, wasn’t it already a satisfying enough prospect to imagine it all and, since, for good or ill, he was the husband, to arrange things so that it should actually take place?
He was so detached from himself and from the world, so relaxed and serene, that just a little way down the road, at the entry to Tresigallo, the name of the town written in big letters on a house wall at the edge of the built-up area struck him as though he had never set eyes on it before. Tresigallo. What on earth could be the source of such a name? That very evening he must remember to look it up in Frizzi or Treccani. They would surely furnish him with some information on the topic.
All the while he was slowly driving through the small town, which also looked dark and deserted. He could clearly recall, some fifteen years ago, sometime around 1930, the Fascist government had suddenly decided to transform this small farming center, one of the least significant in the province, into the site of a propaganda exercise for Ferrarese agriculture. And right on cue, as it happened, the car’s headlights revealed first a vast marble-fronted barrack-like hall similar to the former Fascist HQ at Codigoro, then an endless square at the center of which stood, high above the black basalt plinth that formed its base, a statue in Lazio travertine, and beyond it a large building that resembled the new station in Florence, and constructed, as a still perfectly legible inscription above the entrance proclaimed, for the working of hemp and its derivatives. It was clear that none of this now served any purpose whatsoever. The grand hall with its imperial air, the statue of the gladiator with its naked and muscular buttocks, in all likelihood representing Fascism on the march; the building intended for the manufacture of autarchic fabrics: under the moon, they were all revealed as senseless, just pure and simple stage-settings, and the life of the town seemed more than ever, as it once had been, limited to the small circle of peasant houses huddled on one side of the parish church. He left by the opposite side to the built-up area. “Farewell and safe travels,” he muttered, acceleratin
g along the wide road bordered by trees which led straight to Ferrara. During the course of the day this was the second time he’d wished farewell to something. This morning to those poor ducks, and now to Tresigallo. Once again he broke into a laugh. But it was apt in the end. In the end, Tresigallo would have a future before it. Even with a much narrower scope, the small town would still keep going. He, by contrast—and he thought this without a shadow of sadness, no, rather with calm good humor—where on earth was he going to in his car?
The Prospettiva Arch appeared in front of the bonnet at exactly nine twenty. Before leaving Codigoro he’d remembered to phone home. From that phone booth in Cafe Fetman he’d exchanged a few words with the cook, Elsa: just to say that he was leaving, and meant to arrive within just less than an hour and could she please tell Romeo on the entryphone to open the gates in plenty of time. He himself had made perfect time. Had Elsa carried out his instructions? Given the hour, and the supper to prepare perhaps not—she could well have forgotten. In a moment he’d find out. It was no big deal if the gates were shut. He’d just peep his horn twice.
The moon lit up the entire length of Via Montebello from the intersection with Corso Giovecca right down to the distant, massive, greyish granite arcade sited at the entrance to the Jewish Cemetery. Via Mentana, however, was almost in darkness. As soon as he’d turned the corner, he switched the headlights on full beam. The gates were wide open. In front of them, Romeo was standing, waiting calmly at the curb, with his beret, his grey woolen scarf wrapped round his neck and his hands sunk in his trouser pockets.
He slowed down, taking a quick look in the rearview mirror. He maneuvered onto the left side of the road, and signaled. He turned right. Then, again accelerating, he confidently steered through the gates and stopped in his usual spot right in front of the porch.
He left Romeo to shut the gates and waited for his old parchmenty face to appear framed in the car’s side window, on the other side of the glass. How come Signor Avvocato had decided not to get out of the car? Barely concealed, his stupor was comic and, at the same time, moving.