I see your mother in the glass—her overcoat, her purse, her face. It’s your mother, who hates hospitals, who knows almost nothing about how they work, who’s never entered an intensive-care unit. A white plastic curtain is pulled to one side, and she’s standing next to it, looking at you. Maybe she’s been there for a while. I shifted my eyes away from you and discovered her, just by chance; at first, I thought she was a nurse. She’s hunched over; her hair’s disheveled; she’s old. You know what she looks like, Angela? You know what she looks like, with that nun’s face? Like a mother outside a nursery, gazing in through the window. Exactly like that: a mother in her dressing gown, her breasts swollen and painful, looking at her newborn child, her little pink monkey. She’s got the eyes of a woman with a slack, empty belly, examining the living flesh that has issued from her body. She’s not sad, she’s numb. And she doesn’t come in; she stays where she is. I get up and go out to her. When I embrace her, she’s a bundle of tremors. And she’s brought the smell of home into that desert of ammonia.
“How is she?”
“She’s alive.”
I help her put on a white coat, a surgical mask, cellophane bags for her shoes, a paper cap for her head. She bends over you and looks at you close-up. She looks at your bandages, the electrodes on your bosom, the tubes in your nose and your veins, the catheter.
“Can I touch her?”
“Of course you can.”
One of her tears touches you first. It falls on your chest, and she blots it with a finger. “Doesn’t she feel cold, lying here naked like this?”
“The temperature in this room never varies.”
“So she can feel?”
“Of course.”
“She’s not in a coma?”
“No, she’s sedated. She’s in a pharmacologically induced coma.”
Elsa nods, openmouthed. “Ah . . . that’s what it is. . . .”
I embrace her again. She seems small and misshapen. Fate has run over her like a bulldozer. She says, “The whole time, I hoped the plane would crash. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her dead.”
After that, she falls silent.
Now she’s sitting next to your bed. She’s recovered a little— she’s not so afraid, not so stunned. She’s like a vibrating jellyfish. The amniotic fluid you and she shared has somehow returned. I can sense the two of you floating toward each other in the silence. Her head may collapse on her neck tonight, but she won’t let go of your hand. And tomorrow she’ll know exactly what to do for you. She’ll know better than me or Ada or anyone else. She’ll be the one who’ll take care of you, who’ll recognize the signs of your recovery. She’ll check the monitors and the drips; she’ll feed you with a teaspoon, she’ll help with your medications. She won’t move her behind from that chair. She’ll lose weight at your side, and then she’ll take you back home. And when your hair grows back, she’ll cut hers to match. And this summer, I’ll take pictures of you two with your short hair and sunglasses, like sisters.
I leave you to her. I leave you both, living, breathing, and attached to each other, as you were in that clinic fifteen years ago. “I’ll be back soon,” I say, kissing her on the head.
Now I’m the one standing next to the plastic curtain and looking through the glass.
Elsa never asked me anything about my long absence; she acted as if I hadn’t ever moved from her bedside. We put you in a baby carrier and took you home. And when your cord fell off, we went back to that pine grove where we’d made love and placed the cord in the fork of a tree to bring you luck. I love her, Angela. I love her for the way she’s been, and for the way we are: two old runners heading for a dusty finish line.
It’s raining outside, but barely. The rainwater’s practically evaporated, and it looks like damp dust motes in the air. I went to my locker and changed my clothes, took a little walk, and here I am in this modern cafeteria, crowded with tables that are always filled during lunch hours. Now the place is almost empty. I consider the sandwiches left over from lunch. I take a seat near the door, near the air. I’m wearing your ring on my middle finger. I got it on—I don’t know when, but it went on—and now I can’t get it off. It’s still raining. It was raining when I made love to Italia for the last time, in a dark corner of this city. When it rains, I feel certain that, wherever she is, she regrets her life. But she was part of me, like a prehistoric tail; something mutilated by evolution, something whose aura I preserve, like a mysterious presence in the void. I’m hungry. A waitress is approaching the table to take my order. She’s got a flat face, a striped apron, and a tray under her arm. She’s the last woman in this story.
Margaret Mazzantini
don’t I move
Margaret Mazzantini was born in Ireland and lives in Italy with her husband, the director Sergio Castellitto. Don’t Move won Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Premio Strega; it is the author’s second novel.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JULY
English language translation copyright © 2004 by John Cullen
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday edition as follows:
Mazzantini, Margaret.
[Non ti muovere. English]
Don’t move / Margaret Mazzantini; translated from the Italian by John Cullen.
p. cm.
1. Cullen, John, 1942– II. Title.
PQ4873.A9532N6613 2004
853’.914—dc22
2003061368
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42559-1
v3.0
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