“You don’t want to throw it into the sea,” Alice says, who is there walking beside him now, on the beach in Biarritz.
“Why not?”
“Because that stuff pollutes.”
“Does that seem like something to say at a time like this?”
Alice moves closer.
“You’re really going to do it?”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to throw it out there? And stand here watching as it vanishes in the waves?”
“As long as it’s the first and last time.”
“I promise. I won’t toss any more old cell phones into the ocean.”
He pulls up her last message on the display.
He sees that half an hour has passed.
He turns off the phone. Brings it to his lips. One more breath. And off it goes.
It’s a long throw. The phone’s arc in the sky is a hushed rainbow.
Then it hits the water and sinks. And, in a few seconds, everything that was in its memory no longer exists.
Enrico continues gazing at the waves for a while longer. The smell of sea salt is stronger here.
He turns, walks to the car. And heads back.
The return trip always seems shorter. It makes no sense, since the distance is the same. But it’s the mind and soul of the one traveling it that are different. And it’s proof that space and time change, depending on what you carry inside you.
Soon after he crosses the border, he stops at an Autogrill. He’s famished and returns to the car with a bag full of tuna sandwiches. He sleeps a few hours in a rest area along the highway, where he meets Costantin, a gigantic truck driver, who each day drives more or less the same distance that he has just covered, and who can’t understand how anyone could find any pleasure in doing that, for no reason, just for the sake of driving, unless someone paid him to do it. Costantin has a thermos of coffee that his girlfriend, Irene, always makes for him. No one knows how to make coffee the way she does. He offers Enrico a cup and listens intently as he tells him about his drive. About having stopped to watch the ocean. About how vast and deep the Eastern Sea is and about the frog who becomes sad when the tortoise shows her how small her pond is by comparison. Maybe Costantin doesn’t fully understand it all, maybe it will take him ten years to understand, as it took Enrico. The truck driver shows him the photo of Irene that he keeps on the dashboard. He tells him that they don’t see each other very much and that he knows exactly where he would go, only he can’t do it. They piss together behind a bush. Then they leave, each going his separate way.
Giulia’s call came a few minutes before he got on the ring road.
“. . . Well anyway, the Evil Sisters never change. But where on earth are you? When did you say you’d be back? Because, if you like, I’ll let you taste the baby octopus soup, with the olives, then you can give me your take on it. And tell me about how it went, okay? I want to hear all about your friends. Better yet, why don’t we invite them here to our place some day? As soon as we’re settled in the new apartment, we could plan a dinner with them. What do you think? Oh, and I thought of something else, but this is really fabulous, so get comfortable and I’ll tell you about it. Do you remember that house in the mountains, in Canazei? Well, the other day this guy called me . . .”
Seven
There are a people who live in Peru, on the high plateau of Lake Titicaca, the Aymara. They are convinced that the future lies behind us. That we all walk backward in life, and that what we see in front of us is our past. To say that something has yet to happen, the Aymara point behind them. And to say that something has happened, they point ahead of them. All in all, I think it is a way to understand the value of what you’ve done, of what you’ve come to know. How important it is to safeguard it as best you can, always keep it there, before you, as it should be, because it’s all you have. And walking backward, step by step, your field of vision widens and you get the impression that you can see things better, understand them.
That morning I woke up early. Outside the reddish tint of dawn still lingered on the trees. I had a few things to do, but it was so early that I rolled up the shutter and stayed in bed, staring out. And it was “one of those moments,” as I called them.
It happens sometimes. It’s as if at some point, everything was composed to perfection, like an orchestra in which everyone is playing a different melody that only at that instant, unexpectedly, becomes the same melody. And it’s never planned or anticipated, like birthdays or holidays, not like Christmas morning or New Year’s Eve or the night of San Lorenzo. No, at first glance, they are always insignificant. But then it seems like something hits you, and you are in that moment. Everything is suddenly in its rightful place, and you feel like you could stay there forever. And I think even dear old William Blake knew this feeling when he wrote to “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.”
I don’t know why, but in the end, you realize that going there is worth a lifetime.
And from the smile that instantly appears on Chiara’s lips as she sits in her usual bus shelter waiting for the bus to school, backpack resting on the ground between her legs, and earbuds carrying Chris’s voice directly into her soul, it’s all too easy to see that this, for her, is “one of those moments.”
The old posters have been replaced, and now there’s one for a yoga center. This year Chiara is taking her final graduation exams. She has some ideas about what to do afterward, but the fact that it is still completely open is a privilege that I hope she can take her time to consider. Meanwhile, she’s about to leave for London, to spend the summer with Margherita. A year has passed since the night Gloria died. At first it seemed impossible to live with that thing. Then the days went by, as they always do, and that thing grew fainter, and it faded away. It happens like that, a situation that at first you think will crush you, you realize one day that you haven’t thought about it for a while and you know you’ll survive. Chiara has already bought a suitcase so big that she herself could fit into it. For now, it’s in her room, standing on the floor. There’s still some time before the trip, but she likes to see it waiting there, right under the poster of Into the Wild.
The house is quiet now. There’s nobody home. The kitchen is spotless. The cup with the roses that her mother uses for her morning green tea is turned over by the sink. In the plate, next to the front door, her father has forgotten his orange lighter. The almond tree in their garden is in bloom, covered in a blanket of white flowers. Among the many things that no one around here will ever know about is the rock that lies at the foot of that tree.
It’s a big rock. There are similar ones around it, but a certain detail would not escape a sharp eye. It is precisely the one: the rock with which I was killed. Gloria left it there, without telling anyone. Maybe she dumped it, planning to get rid of it later. Then she must have thought: What better place than the backyard to hide something like that? I can just hear her, that crazy old woman, saying that certain things mustn’t leave the family. And no one has ever known. No one ever noticed it, during suppers served al fresco, afternoons spent outside reading and watching the world go by, Chiara’s birthdays with cake and candles, summer evenings spent enjoying the cool air, all the life that takes place in a normal backyard, and that has slipped away, in the company of that rock.
No one spotted it, just as no one ever noticed the moth that at times, in the dead of night, comes to rest right there on top of it. It flits around the tree a little. It dances in the light of the small lamp fixture next to the gate. It flutters down, gliding gently, until it comes to settle on that very rock. Sometimes it waits for the kitchen window to open, so it can fly inside and linger in the house a while. When you know the story, you can’t help but stop and think about it. After all, they say strange things about moths. About how they sometimes enter houses. Old superstitions, popular beliefs. There are few people left, these days, who are familiar with them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Riccardo Bruni is an Itali
an journalist who writes for newspapers, magazines, webzines, and blogs. The Night of the Moths is his second novel translated into English, following The Lion and the Rose. La stagione del biancospino (The Hawthorne Season) will be his next translated work. He is also the author of the novels La lunga notte dell’Iguana, Nessun dolore, and Zona d’ombra. For more information, please visit www.riccardobruni.com.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Anne Milano Appel, PhD, was awarded the Italian Prose in Translation Award (2015), the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation (2013), and the Northern California Book Award for Translation—Fiction (2014, 2013). She has translated works by Claudio Magris, Primo Levi, Giovanni Arpino, Paolo Giordano, Roberto Saviano, Giuseppe Catozzella, and numerous others. Translating professionally since 1996, she is a former library director and language teacher, with a BA in Art and English Literature (UCLA), an MLS in Library Services (Rutgers), and an MA and PhD in Romance Languages (Rutgers).
The Night of the Moths Page 20