“He’s wonderful, do you know him well?”
“No, I don’t know him at all.”
At the end of the concert the audience applauded and applauded. The musicians left the stage and returned, Carrano’s bow was deep and refined, like the curving of a flame pushed by a gust of wind, and his hair of metal fell toward the floor, and then suddenly, when he arched his back and with a forceful motion pulled up his head, returned to order. They played another piece, the beautiful singer moved us with her passionate voice, we applauded again. The audience didn’t want to leave, and the musicians, on the wave of applause, were first sucked back into the shadow of the wings, then expelled as if by some rigid command. I was stunned, I had the impression that my skin was binding my muscles and bones too tightly. This was Carrano’s true life. Or the false one, which now, however, seemed to me more his than the true one.
I tried to release the euphoric tension I felt, but I couldn’t, it seemed to me that the hall had done a headstand, the stage was on the bottom and I was as if high up, looking out from the edge of a hole. Even when one spectator who evidently wanted to go to sleep yelped ironically, and many people laughed, and the applause slowly died away, and the stage emptied, turning a faded green color, and to me it seemed that the shade of Otto had joyously crossed the scene like a dark vein through bright, living flesh, I wasn’t frightened. The whole future—I thought—will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning. But it won’t be worse than the past.
In the taxi Lea asked me at length about Carrano. I answered with circumspection. Then, incongruously, as if jealous that I was keeping for myself a man of genius, she began to complain about the quality of his playing.
“He seemed out of shape,” she said.
Immediately afterward she added something like: he stayed in the middle of the stream, he was unable to make the leap of quality; a great talent ruined by his own insecurities; an artist diffident through excess of prudence. Just as we reached my house, before saying goodbye, she suddenly started talking about Dr. Morelli. She had brought her cat to him and he had asked insistently about me, if I was well, if I had gotten over the trauma of the separation.
“He told me to tell you,” she called to me as I was entering my building, “that he’s thought about it some more, he’s not sure that Otto’s death was caused by strychnine, the facts you gave him weren’t sufficient, you need to speak to him again in greater detail.”
She laughed maliciously from the window of the taxi, as it started off:
“I feel it’s an excuse, Olga. He wants to see you again.”
Naturally I never went back to the vet, even though he was a pleasant man, with a trustworthy air. I was afraid of rash sexual encounters, they repelled me. But above all I no longer wanted to know if it was strychnine or something else that had killed Otto. The dog had fallen through a hole in the net of events. We leave so many of them, lacerations of negligence, when we put together cause and effect. The essential thing was that the string, the weave that now supported me, should hold.
43.
For days after that evening I had to contend with a sharpening of Gianni and Ilaria’s complaints. They reproached me for leaving them with strangers, they reproached me for spending time with strangers. Their accusing voices were hard, without affection, without tenderness.
“You didn’t put my toothbrush in my bag,” Ilaria said.
“I got a cold because they had the radiators turned off,” Gianni protested to me.
“They forced me to eat tuna fish and I threw up,” the girl whined.
Until the weekend arrived, I was the cause of every misadventure. While Gianni stared at me ironically—did that look belong to me? was that why I hated it? was it Mario’s? had he perhaps even copied it from Carla?—practicing grim silences, Ilaria burst into long, piercing cries for no reason, she threw herself on the floor, she bit me, she kicked, taking advantage of small frustrations, a pencil she couldn’t find, a comic book with a slightly torn page, her hair was wavy and she wanted it straight, it was my fault because I had wavy hair, her father had nice hair.
I let them go on, I had experienced worse. Besides, it seemed to me suddenly that ironies, silences, and tantrums were their way, perhaps silently agreed on, for holding off distress and coming up with explanations that might diminish it. I was only afraid that the neighbors would call the police.
One morning we were about to go out, they were late for school, I for work. Ilaria was irritable, unhappy with everything, she was mad at her shoes, the shoes she had been wearing for at least a month and that now suddenly hurt her. In tears she threw herself on the floor of the landing and began kicking the door, which I had just closed. She cried and screamed, she said her feet hurt, she couldn’t go to school in that state. I asked her where they hurt, without interest but patiently; Gianni kept repeating, laughing: cut off your feet, make them smaller, so the shoes will fit; I whispered that’s enough, come on, quiet, let’s go, we’re late.
At a certain point there was the click of a lock on the floor below and the voice of Carrano, smudged with sleep, said:
“Can I do anything?”
I flared with shame as if I had been caught doing something disgusting. I put a hand over Ilaria’s mouth and held it there forcefully. With the other I energetically made her get up. She was immediately quiet, amazed by my no longer compliant behavior. Gianni stared at me questioningly, I searched for my voice in my throat, a tone that might sound normal.
“No,” I said, “thanks, excuse us.”
“If there’s something…”
“Everything’s fine, don’t worry, thanks again, for everything.”
Gianni tried to cry:
“Hey, Aldo,” but I hugged his nose, his mouth hard against my coat.
The door closed discreetly, with regret I noticed that Carrano now intimidated me. Although I knew well all that could come to me from him, I no longer believed what I knew. In my eyes the man on the floor below had become the custodian of a mysterious power that he kept hidden, out of modesty, out of courtesy, out of good manners.
44.
In the office that morning I couldn’t concentrate. The cleaning woman must have used an excess of some perfumed cleaning fluid because there was an intense odor of soap and cherries made acidic by the hot radiators. I worked on some German correspondence for hours, but I had no fluency, I was continually consulting the dictionary. Suddenly I heard a male voice coming from the room where clients were received. The voice arrived with perfect clarity, a voice that was coldly acrimonious because certain services, which were costly, had, once the client was abroad, turned out to be inadequate. Yet I heard it from far away, as if it were coming not from a distance of a few feet but from a place in my brain. It was Mario’s voice.
I half-opened the door of my room, I looked out. I saw him sitting in front of a desk, in the background a bright-colored poster advertising Barcelona. Carla was with him, sitting beside him, she seemed more graceful, more adult, just slightly plumper, not beautiful. Both appeared to me as if on a television screen, well known actors who were acting out a piece of my life in some soap opera. Mario especially seemed a stranger who by chance had the transient features of a person who had been very familiar to me. He had combed his hair in a way that revealed his broad forehead, framed by thick hair and eyebrows. His face had become thinner, and the prominent lines of the nose, the mouth, the cheekbones formed a design more pleasing than I remembered. He looked ten years younger, the heaviness of his hips, of his chest, of his stomach had disappeared, he even seemed taller.
I felt a sort of light but decisive tap in the middle of my forehead and my hands grew sweaty. But the emotion was surprisingly pleasant, as when a book or a film makes us suffer, not life. I said calmly to the woman behind the desk, who was a friend:
“Is there some trouble?”
“I’m happy to see you.”
I moved toward him, and Carla mechanically reached out a hand to pull him close to her, protect him. My husband rose uncertainly, it was clear that he didn’t know what to expect. I offered him my hand, we kissed on the cheeks.
“You both seem well,” I continued, and shook Carla’s hand, too, though she didn’t return the clasp, but gave me fingers and palm that felt wet, like meat that has just been defrosted.
“You seem well, too,” said Mario, in a tone of perplexity.
“Yes,” I answered proudly. “I’m not upset anymore.”
“I wanted to call you to talk about the children.”
“The number hasn’t changed.”
“We also have to discuss the separation.”
“When you like.”
Not knowing what else to say, he stuck his hands nervously in the pockets of his coat and asked in a casual way if anything was new. I answered:
“Not really. The children must have told you: I was sick, Otto died.”
“Died?” He was startled.
How mysterious children are. They had been silent about it, perhaps in order not to give displeasure, perhaps in the conviction that nothing that belonged to the old life could interest him.
“Poisoned,” I said, and he asked angrily:
“Who did it?”
“You,” I said calmly.
“Me?”
“Yes. I discovered that you’re a rude man. People respond to rudeness with spite.”
He looked at me to see if the friendly atmosphere was about to change, if I intended to start making scenes again. I tried to reassure him, with a tone of detachment:
“Or maybe there was only the need for a scapegoat. And since I wasn’t going to be, it was up to Otto.”
At that point, in a reflexive gesture, I brushed some scales of dandruff from his jacket, it was a habit of years. He drew back, almost jumped, I said sorry, Carla intervened, to complete with greater care the work that I had immediately suspended.
We said goodbye after he assured me that he would call to make a date.
“If you want you can come, too,” I proposed to Carla.
Mario said curtly, without even giving her a glance:
“No.”
45.
Two days later he came to the house, loaded with presents. Gianni and Ilaria, contrary to my expectations, greeted him perfunctorily, without enthusiasm, evidently the habit of the weekends had restored to him the normality of father. They immediately started unwrapping the gifts, which pleased them, Mario tried to join in, to play with them, but they didn’t want him. Finally he wandered around the room, touching some objects with his fingertips, looking out the window. I asked:
“Would you like some coffee?”
He accepted immediately, followed me into the kitchen. We talked about the children, I told him that, out of the blue, they were going through a difficult time, he assured me that with him they were good, well behaved. At some point he took pen and paper, he laid out a complex schedule of the days when he would have the children, and those when I would, he said that seeing them automatically every weekend was a mistake.
“I hope the money is enough,” he said.
“Fine,” I said, “you’re generous.”
“I’ll take care of the separation.”
I said, to clarify things:
“If I find out that you leave the children with Carla and go off on your own business without paying attention to them, you won’t see them anymore.”
He looked ill at ease and stared uncertainly at the piece of paper.
“Don’t worry, Carla has a lot of good qualities,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it, but I prefer that Ilaria not learn her childish affectations. And I don’t want Gianni to have the desire to put his hands on her chest the way you do.”
He abandoned the pen on the table, said despairingly:
“I knew it, nothing is over for you.”
I pressed my lips together, hard, then replied:
“Everything is over.”
He looked at the ceiling, the floor, I felt that he was dissatisfied. I leaned back in the chair. His chair seemed to have no space for his shoulders, a chair pasted to the kitchen’s yellow wall. I realized that on his lips was a mute laugh that I had never seen before. It became him, the expression of a sympathetic man who wishes to show that he knows what’s what.
“What do you think of me?” he asked.
“Nothing. Only what I’ve heard about you surprises me.”
“What have you heard?”
“That you’re an opportunist and a traitor.”
He stopped smiling, he said coldly:
“People who talk like that are no more virtuous than I am.”
“I’m not interested in what they are. I only want to know what you are and if you were always like that.”
I didn’t explain to him that I wanted to eliminate him from my body, get rid of even those aspects of him that, out of a sort of positive bias or out of connivance, I hadn’t been able to see. I didn’t say to him that I wanted to escape the pull of his voice, of his verbal expressions, of his habits, of his feeling about the world. I wanted to be me. If that formulation even made sense. Or at least I wanted to see what remained of me, once he was removed.
He answered me with feigned melancholy:
“What I am, what I’m not, how do I know.”
Wearily he pointed at Otto’s bowl that was still sitting in the corner, beside the refrigerator.
“I’d like to get the children another dog.”
I shook my head, Otto moved through the house, I heard the light clicking sound of his nails on the floor. I joined my hands and rubbed them slowly against one another, to eradicate the dampness of bad feeling from the
“I’m not capable of replacements.”
That night, when Mario left, I read again the pages in which Anna Karenina goes toward her death, leafed through the ones about women destroyed. I read and felt that I was safe, I was no longer like those women, they no longer seemed a whirlpool sucking me in. I realized that I had even buried somewhere the abandoned wife of my Neapolitan childhood, my heart no longer beat in her chest, the veins had broken. The poverella had become again an old photograph, the petrified past, without blood.
46.
The children, too, suddenly began to change. Although they were still hostile toward each other, ready to come to blows, they slowly stopped getting mad at me.
“Daddy wanted to get us another dog, but Carla didn’t want to,” Gianni said to me one night.
“You’ll get one someday when you live on your own,” I consoled him.
“Did you love Otto?” he asked.
“No,” I answered, “while he was alive, no.”
I was astonished by the frankness and composure with which I now managed to answer all the questions they asked. Will Daddy and Carla make another child? Will Carla leave Daddy and find someone younger? Do you know, when she’s using the bidet he comes in and pees? I argued, I explained, sometimes I even managed to laugh.
Soon I got in the habit of seeing Mario, telephoning him about daily problems, protesting if he was late in putting money in my account. At some point I noticed that his body was changing again. He was getting gray, his cheekbones were swelling, his hips, his stomach, his chest were getting heavy again. Sometimes he tried growing a mustache, sometimes he left his beard long, sometimes he shaved completely with great care.
One evening he appeared at the house without warning, he seemed depressed, he wanted to talk.
“I have something unpleasant to tell you,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t stand Gianni, Ilaria
gets on my nerves.”
“It’s happened to me, too.”
“I only feel good when I’m not around them.”
“Yes, sometimes it’s like that.”
“My relationship with Carla will be ruined if we continue to see them so often.”
“Could be.”
“Are you well?”
“Me, yes.”
“Is it true that you don’t love me anymore?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Because I lied to you? Because I left you? Because I humiliated you?”
“No. Just when I felt deceived, abandoned, humiliated, I loved you very much, I wanted you more than in any other moment of our life together.”
“And then?”
“I don’t love you anymore because, to justify yourself, you said that you had fallen into a void, an absence of sense, and it wasn’t true.”
“It was.”
“No. Now I know what an absence of sense is and what happens if you manage to get back to the surface from it. You, you don’t know. At most you glanced down, you got frightened, and you plugged up the hole with Carla’s body.”
He made a grimace of annoyance, he said to me:
“You have to have the children more. Carla is exhausted, she has exams to take, she can’t take care of them, you’re their mother.”
I looked at him attentively. It was really true, there was no longer anything about him that could interest me. He wasn’t even a fragment of the past, he was only a stain, like the print of a hand left years ago on a wall.
47.
Three days later, returning home from work, I found on the doormat, on a piece of paper towel, a tiny object that I had trouble identifying. It was a new gift from Carrano, by now I was used to these silent kindnesses: recently he had left me a button I had lost, also a hair clip I was very attached to. I realized that this was a conclusive gift. It was the white nozzle of a spray can.
I sat down in the living room, the house felt empty, as if it had never been inhabited by anyone but puppets of papier-maché or by clothes that had never hugged living bodies. Then I got up, I went to look in the storage closet for the spray can that Otto had played with the night before that terrible day in August. I looked for the marks of his teeth, I ran my fingers over it to feel the dents. I tried to stick the cap onto the can. When it seemed to me that I had succeeded, I pressed with my index finger but there was no spray, only a slight odor of insecticide.
The Days of Abandonment Page 17