by Tom Rachman
"I should get rid of Marta," she says.
"Don't be mad--she forgot to bring down your paper one day. I'll get it now."
"No, no! Hang on, wait. There's no rush."
"Didn't I come over for that?"
"Yes, but I'm not sure I need it now."
"You can't fire Marta." His mobile phone rings--the digitized sound of a sheep bleating. She frowns: modern technology is not allowed in her house. "Sorry," Dario says, and takes it outside by the elevator.
Massi wanders back in, holding a white rectangular contraption studded with buttons and two unlit gray screens. He must not turn on video games at his grandmother's house.
"Let's go into the kitchen," she says. "And I don't want to see that thing you have there." If you feed children, that works. She sits this one on a chair. His legs dangle and he kicks off one of his Nikes, baring a dirty white sports sock. "What do you like?" she asks. "Are you hungry?"
"Not very."
He hardly eats, this one--Dario said something about that, didn't he? That they struggle to get Massi to finish meals. "Well, you'll have something in my house," she declares and searches the cupboards. "This is grown-up food, mostly." She checks the fridge. "I'll make you pastina in brodo."
"No thank you."
She ignores this and heats the broth. The boy watches his grandmother. Her perfume infuses the kitchen. As the broth simmers, fatty-chicken aroma overwhelms her scent. She turns to Massi, holding a wooden spoon that steams. She sweeps his bangs aside. "You can see now. But your parting is uneven," she says. "I'll fix it for you."
"No thank you."
"I'm good at it." She leans in. He leans back.
He stares at his plastic video game, a Nintendo DS Lite, which he got a few weeks ago. "Can I turn it on?"
"Your food is almost ready."
"I don't want any food."
Ornella doesn't speak for a moment. She switches off the stove. Crushed, she hurries into the living room. She stands motionless, watching the front door, behind which stands her eldest son, laughing into his cellphone.
He comes back inside, still smiling at the exchange that concluded his phone call. "Where's Massi? We should get going."
"I tried to make him eat something. I see what you mean--it's impossible."
Dario is puzzled. "We can't stop him eating."
The boy hobbles out of the kitchen, wearing only one sneaker and engrossed in his video game.
"Turn that off," his father says. The boy does not, stumbling out the front door, too engaged to say goodbye.
"Goodbye," Ornella says nonetheless.
"I meant to tell you who I saw," Dario says, nipping into the kitchen to collect his son's abandoned Nike. "Kathleen Solson." This is his former girlfriend, whom Dario met in 1987 when they were both interns at the paper. "She's back now, back from Washington."
"And how is she?"
"The same. Older."
"I don't want to know anything more."
"This has nothing to do with current events."
"It has to do with the paper. I don't want to know."
"Do you want tomorrow's or not?"
"I'm worried about tomorrow," she says, her voice dropping. "You don't remember, do you."
"Remember what?"
"Marta isn't back until Tuesday."
"And you can't wait till Tuesday to fire her?"
"You misunderstand."
She stands at the bottom of the stepladder, holding it for him. She wants to stop fretting. It's just another date--it's not as if the paper will contain an account of her own life on that day.
He climbs up and looks around the storage space. "It's not here."
"Yes, it is."
He continues searching. "It really isn't. You want to come up and look? It's missing, I promise you."
"I've collected them all," she insists. "I've never missed an edition."
"Well, you'll have to miss one now, I'm afraid. Do you want April 25, 1994? That's here."
"No, I don't. I'm not there yet."
He comes down the ladder and, leaping from the third rung, swoops beside her and kisses her fast on the cheek.
Unprepared, she smiles bashfully, then bats him aside and, catching herself, gets angry. "You could have knocked me over. It's not funny."
The paper's headquarters on Corso Vittorio are a taxi ride from Ornella's home in Parioli. She has never visited, has always been wary of that office, which contains all the world yet is itself contained in a single grubby building. But she has no choice--her storage space does not contain tomorrow, and she must find a copy.
"Che piano?" asks a man with a strong Anglophone accent.
"Not sure what floor," she answers in English. "I'm trying to find the headquarters of the paper."
"Follow me." He closes the elevator gate after them and nudges the third-floor button with his knuckle. The elevator rises.
"You work there?" she asks.
"I do."
"What's your name?"
"Arthur Gopal."
"Ah yes, I've read your obituaries. You did one on Nixon the other day."
"Nixon died ages ago," he says, confused. "Anyway, I don't do obits anymore. I'm the culture editor."
"A bit too one-sided, I thought. Nixon did some good things, too."
She asks to see Kathleen Solson, and Arthur enters the newsroom to convey the request. Ornella is tempted to follow him in, to view the workings of this place herself. But, no: if you want to keep enjoying sausages, don't visit the sausage factory.
After a few minutes, Kathleen appears. "I'm seeing all the Monterecchis lately. I bumped into your son a few weeks back."
"Yes, he told me." Haltingly, Ornella leans in to hug Kathleen, regretting it the instant she has committed herself. She embraces the younger woman rigidly and fast.
They are silent in the elevator down. Ornella keeps wishing she hadn't hugged Kathleen. It was embarrassing. Was it disloyal to Dario somehow?
"Which way?"
"I can't venture too far," Kathleen says.
They walk along Corso Vittorio, the roadway a blur of buses, taxis, and droning motor scooters. Ornella must speak up to be heard. "I still read the paper religiously, you'll be glad to hear."
"What year are you up to?"
"1994. Which, as it happens, is when we saw each other last."
"Yes--when I left."
"I even remember the date we last met--it was at the hospital when Cosimo got sick, April 24, 1994."
Kathleen's BlackBerry rings. It is Menzies. She issues a few orders and hangs up.
"You were rude to that person," Ornella says.
"No time for politeness at my job, I'm afraid."
"That can't be true." After a pause, she adds, "You know, I sometimes wonder whether I might not have liked to work in journalism. In my next life, shall we say?"
"Did you ever try?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"You could have."
"I tried to get Dario to go into it, but he didn't take to newspapers."
"I know--we did that internship together."
"Where would I have been, had I done something brave like you?" She glances fast at Kathleen, then away. "I'm old now. Fifty-eight. That's the age when a person is at the height of their career, isn't it?"
"Can be."
"You and I are alike," Ornella says. "Don't look so horrified. We're very different in some ways. But in others--" She stops. Ostensibly, she came here to obtain a back issue of the paper and, secondarily, to catch up with a former acquaintance. But she finds herself tempted toward another course: she wants to say something. To talk--to confess, even. To tell this woman about tomorrow, a day in which Kathleen had a walk-on part. "Do you remember my husband at all?"
"I certainly do. I was sorry, by the way, to hear that he had passed--"
Ornella interrupts. "Terribly handsome, wasn't he."
"He was."
"And a baron, you know, though he didn't use the ti
tle. I remember when he and I met, Cosimo was so distinguished. I myself was rather a pretty young thing back then--you can see in the old photos, if you don't believe me."
"You were famous for your looks."
"I was," she says, as if only now learning the fact.
"I should get back," Kathleen says, glancing at a message on her BlackBerry. "I didn't bring a jacket."
"In a minute." She takes a corner of Kathleen's shirtsleeve and leads her across the intersection at Piazza Sant'Andrea della Valle, mindless of the red light, sidestepping honking cars. "So you remember when Cosimo was hospitalized in 1994?"
"Of course--it was such a shock."
"Not really a shock. His problems started weeks before I took him in."
"I didn't realize that."
"Oh yes," Ornella says. "The first clue, I think, was when we were supposed to go on vacation and he just canceled at the last minute. I made the best of it, saying we could enjoy doing things here in the city. But he got furious. I didn't know why. Well, he was drinking, and I suppose that had something to do with it. He actually pushed me into the refrigerator!" She laughs. "The fridge door was open--I'd been getting the pitcher of ice water--and I hit into the shelves. It was strange--he kept shoving me like he was trying to stuff me in there. I knocked over all sorts of things. A jar of capers smashed. I thought, Glass inside the fridge. The cleaner will never find it all. Someone will swallow it by mistake. Such a stupid thought. Anyway, he just walked out, left. I was terrified someone would find out that he'd gone. But since we were supposed to be on vacation no one even noticed--I just stayed inside. Had lots of time to clean up the glass in the fridge."
"What a ghastly story. I'm so sorry to hear this," Kathleen says, pausing on the sidewalk. "And I'm impressed that you can share this stuff about Cosimo. But--and please don't take this the wrong way--was there a particular reason you stopped by today? Not that you need a reason. Just that I really should get back."
"It's a fair question. Normally, I don't talk about private things to anyone but my cleaner, Marta."
Kathleen laughs.
"Why is that funny?"
She takes Kathleen's shirtsleeve and leads her onward, farther still from the paper, prolonging this conversation, even if it means dragging the younger woman all the way to Piazza Venezia. "During that period in 1994 when Cosimo was gone," she proceeds, "I got a call from the bank asking about several withdrawals. They told me the amounts, which were staggering--you don't want to know. I still can't understand how he spent that much that fast. Then the police called: a man in his sixties, arrested for cocaine possession. I went to get him and he was talking nonstop. There was an Australian woman he kept mentioning. He'd picked her up during his time away and demanded that we drive around and find her. He had broken a tooth--he'd been in a fight, if you can believe it. Somehow I got us home. He kept talking and talking. He wanted to celebrate. 'Celebrate what?' I said. He poured a full glass of brandy and made me drink it. He wanted to make love. I didn't want to. But we did."
She tugs Kathleen across the tram tracks at Largo Argentina, to the pedestrian island around the Roman ruins. "Then he got angry," Ornella continues. "Said how I was ruining his job prospects. I tried to understand, to follow. He pulled me around the apartment, shouting. He was going to start a painting studio and fuck lots of girls--he told me that, said that to me, his wife. He grabbed me by the bra strap and shoved me, and it ripped. I kept trying to look him in the eyes. When I did, they were blank--it's one of the most awful things I've ever seen. And he choked me that afternoon, April 24, 1994. I remember thinking I was going to die. He choked me so long that I blacked out.
"He wasn't there when I woke up. My throat felt as if it had caved in. I splashed water on my face and tried to cry over the kitchen sink. But I couldn't get full breaths. It was a strange sort of sobbing--lots of swallowing and coughing. Then he was there, laughing at me.
"I'd been holding the handle of the kitchen cupboard to balance myself. He stuck his face close to mine, and I swung the cupboard door into his head as hard as I could. The bang shuddered the door; my hand buzzed; he fell. His hands barely stopped him, and his face hit the floor. His cheek split and blood came out. It dripped on the floor. I remember him putting his finger in the puddle."
"Jesus, this is a horror story," Kathleen interjects. "I didn't know any of this. All I remember was Cosimo being admitted to the psychiatric ward. But Dario told me it was depression."
"Well, there was depression, too. That came later." She lets go of Kathleen's sleeve, her confessional urge suddenly dissipated and replaced by a wash of guilt. "Don't tell any of this to Dario," she says. "Don't mention this if you see him. He doesn't know these details."
They turn back toward the office.
"Actually," Kathleen says, "I remember blood on your kitchen floor that night. Dario and I got there after you'd taken Cosimo to the hospital. We let your maid in. What was her name? Rina? She didn't know what to do. She didn't want to get blood on the mop--she thought you'd be angry--so I wiped it up with a copy of the paper."
"I know," Ornella says. "It's the copy I'm missing. I need you to give me a new one."
"A paper from 1994? I don't know where you'd find one. We threw away our hard-copy archives years ago. It's all digitized now."
"You can't be serious."
The women walk on in silence, arriving outside the office finally.
"Do you remember our conversation at the hospital that night?" Kathleen asks. "When I said I was thinking of going to Washington but that I was undecided. You told me I should. That I should leave Rome, and Dario, and take the job."
"I never said that."
"Yes," Kathleen responds, "you did."
On Tuesday morning, Marta knocks four times and waits. She has keys, so she enters. Ornella appears in her nightgown.
"Oh, sorry," Marta says, bowing her head.
"You left me in a terrible situation Sunday without my paper," Ornella says. "Absolutely unforgivable!" She wants to retract this. Instead, she retreats into her bedroom.
She dresses and returns to the living room, shifting framed photographs as if her outburst had not happened. "If I sit here," she explains to Marta, "I can see Massi when I look up from reading the paper. And if I sit over there, I can see Cosimo. Or should I put Dario here? You know, if you don't move pictures about, you stop noticing them."
Marta, who is brushing rubbish into her dustpan, nods politely.
Without another word, Ornella withdraws to her room.
"You want paper today, Signora Ornella?"
"No," she says through the closed bedroom door. "Thank you."
She hears the front door shut, and so emerges. Marta has left a note, asking for a particular brand of cleaning fluid and more paper towels. "How on earth," Ornella says, "does this girl get through so many paper towels?" She checks for dust under the sofa. While she's bent down there, snooping about, a drop of liquid plops onto the wooden floor. She touches her face; it was a teardrop. With a hard sniff, she gains control of herself. She wipes off the floor with her bare hand, dabs her eyes, stands.
Dario will come if needed, but she won't beg him. Her other son, Filippo, avoids her totally--he picked up his father's intellectual contempt for Ornella. And the grandchildren? They seem to be afraid of her.
She misses Cosimo. Their last decade together consisted of doctors and medicine, moments of hope and months of hopelessness. (She never told Dario and Filippo how their father really died, that he was discovered with a note saying, "Enough." She informed everyone that he had died of heart disease. In a corner of her mind, she knows that her sons know. It is the same corner into which she has secreted all manner of knowledge that she, at once, knows and does not know: about the existence of mobile phones, about the Internet, about what people think of her.)
She opens the stepladder below the storage space. She reaches the top and the two doors, behind which lie her papers. She has never climbed up here.
She opens both doors and inhales--the storage space has a metallic smell, a scent she had vaguely considered to be that of her fingers. The space is high and deep, and filled nearly to capacity. More than ten thousand papers. Over a hundred thousand pages. A half-million articles. All those labored lines, placed up here to wait their turn.
The turn of tomorrow has come, and it has gone. Nowhere will she find a copy of April 24, 1994. She must move on to April 25. But skipping a day has a peculiar effect: these stacks seem far less authoritative all of a sudden--less like the paper and more like plain paper. She smacks a pile on the left, the side she has read, and yanks out a few copies. She tosses them down from the storage space.
In the air, the folded pages separate; sheets float gently to the floor.
She pulls out more, a thick pile this time, and drops them. They hit the floor with a thud and splay out. She pulls out still more. She dumps newspapers until her arms ache and the floor around the ladder is heaped high.
She considers the piles still remaining in the storage space, the unread papers. She slides off the one on top, April 25, 1994, and tosses it to the floor. She hauls out a handful more, then another.
She keeps this up for almost an hour until, her hands black with ink, knees wobbling on the top rung, she is done. The storage space is empty; the floor is an ocean of black-and-white.
She climbs down, unsure how to step off. She treads on papers and, losing her footing, thrusts out her arms, jewelry tinkling, and flops gently atop the lot. She slides a little way down the heap, gasps, then comes to a halt, laughing. "Silly girl!"
A boldface headline catches her eye: "... Afghan Capital." She tugs out the edition, which tears slightly under her. The headline reads, "Taliban Fighters Capture Afghan Capital" (the paper of Sept. 28, 1996). She digs through the pile and picks another paper at random: "In Record, Dow Closes Above 6,000" (Oct. 15, 1996). And another: "Clinton Beats Dole to Win 2nd Term" (Nov. 6, 1996). She is lying on 1996, it seems.
She pushes these aside, digging down to 1998: "Clinton Denies Sex with Intern" (Jan. 27, 1998); "A 'Titanic' Haul as Ship Flick Sinks 11 Oscars" (March 24, 1998); "Scores Killed in Twin Attacks on U.S. Embassies in East Africa" (Aug. 8, 1998); "House Impeaches Clinton" (Dec. 20, 1998).