Malacqua

by Nicola Pugliese

  And on the night of 24 October, which was 25 October because midnight had passed thirty minutes before, he went up from the print room to the third floor, to his usual editorial office, and saw the corridors. The editorial office was deserted now, with only two or three people keeping an eye on the teleprinters, and the teleprinter rang at frequent intervals, more and more frequent, and the rhythm had changed now, and the turmoil had faded, the shouting. In the silence of that night, from the window his eye drifted towards the harbour opposite. The harbour was peaceful and silent, with very few lights still burning, and only from time to time a train’s rattle in the silence, a rattling train and a few silent cars inside that silence. There was night, only night, floating over the telegraph poles, the neon signs. The trucks passed slowly along the street in the direction of the Autosole dealership and that slow regular movement would continue during the damp hours of the night with photographs of girls in the driver’s compartments and fortune-bringing coral horns and towels folded in two and big pieces of bread and endives. That night floating around. And the rain that was now soft and light, a veil of white linen, and droplets transparently drawn, and now like a caress, the gentlest of caresses on the asphalt, and on the stones, and the wheels of the tram. Carlo Andreoli found himself following the pattern of the water and said perhaps it’s stopping. Because he didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to. Above all he refused, he said emphatically no, it wasn’t possible, and if it was, then he would understand, he would give it a meaning and everything would return into the Great Circle. Because you don’t leave the Great Circle, no one ever leaves, and when someone does leave it means that for him there is nothing left to do, and if he leaves two stout young men with white shirts arrive and forcing him gently take him away and he makes himself comfortable and sits on the bench and smiles at the smiles around him and everything is white very white and from outside come muffled voices, very distant and very irretrievable. With a disconsolate wave of his hand he went and sat at his desk and stretched his legs underneath it before drawing them back, elbows on the desktop, and so many papers around and papers and letters and newspaper pages and headline blocks and lined mock-ups. He sat still and looked. And he didn’t see. Except from within, that hum could be heard, and it was more apparent, much more, now that he was in the silence. And he dialled 257, told them to bring them a very hot mug of coffee. The boy came soon afterwards and for thirty-seven seconds Carlo Andreoli concentrated upon the hot coffee going down his throat. When he had finished he lit a Marlboro. His tongue followed the traces of coffee beneath his palate, his teeth were comfortably hot, his lips unfolded in the hint of a smile. With his cigarette between his fingers he sat and pondered. And he would have liked to, oh yes, he had been trying to for some time, but the key escaped him, escaped him completely, and nothing to be done, and everything was a confused and unrecognisable magma. There were only these facts, there, those facts to float upon and sink beneath and resurface again. He was striving after the impossible, he knew, he knew very well, of course he did, he realised entirely. He said to himself: no point in pressing the point right now: we have to wait, wait patiently, and hold back, and wait for the brain to work of its own accord. Something will come out in the end. Of course, something will come out. And appearing before his eyes now was the face of V, and gentle fingers caressing his chest, V, my love, your sublime body. This remained, this alone, the memory of a tender wound, and loins poised for inventiveness, her woman’s breath in his ears warming his heart. This remained and only this. And no brooding, please, no brooding. Think instead of the cry that rises swells presses. And his phone rings, just at that delicate moment. And on the other hand there was the sweet and tender and caressing V, in Naples by chance, that very day, with her consort who had been supposed to join her from Sicily but who had not turned up. She wanted to say hello to him, certainly, say hello to him, and also meet, of course, meet. Because a woman cannot be alone at night in a hotel room in a city that isn’t hers. How was he?, well?, still married? My love, he wanted to reply, my sweetest companion from Milan, we are a perfect match, tonight. We will light that fire for one more night, yes, we will light the fire for as long as possible, tomorrow is another day, and so much more and so much more he wanted to say. And instead he said: I’ll see you at the hotel.

  ‌

  ‌The Third Day

  The third day of rain was 25 October, a day of pale and unhealthy spite, and consciousness accompanied the tremors. In the first hours of the day the streetlights flickered. Everything was extremely unstable and precarious then, in that moment, with that deep night now gone, of course, and the day that showed no sign of coming, no sign. In Piazza Sannazzaro five stray dogs wandered around, and the rain fell on to the water in the streets, and a faded hiss in the distance came from the occasional ship, and only the silence seemed comfortable. The silence that promised recovery, of course, and voices, people shouting, the rattling of trams, and cars, and policemen, and convulsive traffic. And yet nothing existed at that grey moment, and then the silence promised nothing, you have to go all the way in and plunge in if you really want to re-emerge, because it wasn’t a pale silence, no, a sad silence merely, because behind the windows various eyes were alertly keeping watch, of course, keeping watch, and opaque with sleep they followed the still-falling rain, and that grey, Christ!, that discouraging, inescapable grey, and their breathing was strained and feeble. Nothing reached the asphalt and the volcanic buildings of Posillipo but sad thoughts, disjointed consciousness. Would it end? Would it ever end?

  In his porter’s lodge Salvatore Irace turns the newspaper around in his hands and images flee and news and thoughts go inevitably to the window and beyond, mingled with the streaks of that sweet, gentle insinuating rain, so stubbornly regular, regular, yes, and unremitting. Salvatore Irace reads attentively: a bridge has collapsed at Guardia Sanframondi. He remembered it, certainly, he remembered it well, along with all the houses and all the things and the people in his village. The harsh landscape, that wind that blew and blew remorselessly, so that on some days you couldn’t put your face out of the door. He remembered it. The wind sliced his cheeks, stung his pupils, sandpaper dust fell violently on his eyelids, those red-blotched bony hands with their creaking finger joints withered. And Salvatore Irace wondered if it had really been worth leaving Guardia for this cramped watchman’s hut. Of course his children were safe. Safe, of course, and thriving. Both at school studying, and studying reasonably well. Because he had told them, it’s not all fun, my dear boys, your studies have cost me the sweat of my brow, and if you don’t understand and if you don’t study as you should I will tie you both to your beds at night and belt your faces, you know very well that I will, I will do it seriously, and your mother would do well not to intervene. Because I’m willing to understand everything, to forgive everything, in life, and I don’t want to distress you, I don’t want to do that, but get it into your heads that you aren’t children of the rich, and that you have to study, and you have to improve yourself by your own efforts, you have to make your own way in life, and to build it you have to study, and study, and make sacrifices, and otherwise do as you like, but don’t forget those studies. His two sons have to go to university. And get a degree. Of course, one mighty great degree. And you have to be doctors, because when you’re a doctor everything is solved, absolutely everything. And maybe nothing is solved, nothing whatsoever, if you don’t know what you’re doing, but with a degree behind you, you have a lot of possibilities in life, yes, and bear in mind that your mother and I have another few years here and then we’re coming back to Guardia. To tell you the truth we’re a bit tired as well. Think about it, bustling about all day back and forth, ironing shirts all over the place. Do you think you can spend a whole life like that, do you?, what do you think?, does that seem fair? Salvatore Irace says to himself that perhaps that degree will solve nothing, nothing at all. He saw it very clearly every day, conversing with people who really knew what they w
ere talking about. He shrugged. But what are you going to do?, tell my boys they’ve got to study?, tell them do what they feel because life’s one big mess anyway?, ah, no can’t do that. When you have children you have certain duties too. He remembered very clearly his father belting him in the face because he didn’t want to work the land, he didn’t want to, and instead every day he said one of these days I’m off, I’m leaving everything and going to the city, what do you expect me to do on this stupid land that gives nothing at all to anybody and you have to kill yourself with work? His father took him into the stable, tied him to the rusty iron ring and beat him with his belt for an interminable length of time. But there was nothing to be done about the belt-blows, they didn’t persuade him at all. Oh no, Salvatore Irace was even more bullheaded than Antonio Irace. It was because of that bull head of his that when day came he didn’t stop to think for as much as an instant and he said goodbye. And in truth he said not a word, because he left at night. Now with that rain coming down and coming down again Salvatore Irace turns the newspaper around in his hands and beyond the glass he sees his wife beckoning him because there’s coffee. He gets up for the sake of it, but also sees that water, coming down and coming down interminably, and that desolate grey of the sky, and the daylight that hasn’t come. He wonders at that point, he really wonders: how will it end? Because to tell the truth life has fled, now, and sometimes if he and his wife are left on their own there’s always that dark presence, that sad thought of the life that was once in their life and has now fled; and when this happens he gets up, always, and says I’m going to the garden because I’ve got things to do. And his wife gets up too, and all of a sudden there is the sound of the open tap and the water flowing. She has started washing something. There’s always something to wash, and dry, and tidy away. There’s one more question, with this rain, and a sense of irritation. Nothing serious, oh nothing, but if something ever were to change. Here, all of a sudden everything might melt into air, everything destroyed, everything, years of sacrifice, of effort. But these are strange thoughts. Thoughts that bode ill. Salvatore Irace with his firm stride leaves the lodge, reaches his wife and they drink coffee. There is that habitual silence, in the hallway.

  And 25 October was in fact the third day of rain. With this rain coming down like rain coming down. And everything normal, everything normal, in the streets of this normal city. So dark and confused, at any rate, and so unstable, so hard to interpret and even to perceive. There: let’s say that not everyone perceives it, not everyone, and for some things will continue exactly as before. Except this little rain coming down. There has been the collapse, the chasm. But in essence nothing new, nothing extremely unusual, in essence. Because it is a well-known fact that when it rains there are collapses and there are chasms, and people call the fire brigade and the fire brigade comes running, and sometimes they fail to spot the corpse, and yes, all right, this time there are seven corpses, a mournful event, certainly, a tragic event, but also predictable, in some respects, from the ancient perspective of a city that lives its life in a continuous form of multiplication. If there is a multiplication in the numbers of children, and the unemployed, and women in the street, and people who need to be looked after, why not also the dead? Just this, nothing more. Of course, there are things that strike you, of course, they strike you. They leave a mark, they cause debates, and make people talk for several days. For a few months you remember everything, everything down to the smallest details. The fact is known even in the alleys of Montecalvario, even under the bridges of Sanità. Certainly from then on there will be someone who remembers of course, someone who remembers. One day it will be said: you remember the dead on Via Tasso and Via Aniello Falcone? Those poor innocent creatures? Yes, of course, they will say that, along with other things, and other facts. But let us also say one more thing, that life is in the end reabsorbed in tranquillity, collective facts are pondered long enough to be diluted a little and confused, and in the end, off you go!, in the end why do you want us to care about this whole mess and this rain falling as if it had never fallen before, my friends, let us regather, let us regather everything.

  But this in fact would happen later, much later, for now there was a crowd of people on Via Aniello Falcone, precisely on the bend before the bend where the chasm had been identified, and there was another crowd on Via Tasso, just behind number 234 that had collapsed. These black clothes, and these umbrellas. With the water coming down and coming down. And rivulets coming down on the edges, and streaks of light grey, and the still silence and a murmur if you listened carefully. The story ran from mouth to mouth with a few distortions. And this event weighed down the men’s shoulders, and pressed down upon the women’s eyelids. The women wore wedding rings, that distinctive sign, that defence. Then everyone followed their own thoughts. If you leaned slightly against the low wall, and even if you didn’t, in front of you was the city’s expanse of stone leading towards the sea. The sea had fled in a grey streak into the distance, with faint lights, they too softened, level with Capri, Punta della Campanella, Sorrento. That thought collapsed slowly from below along with the filaments of the mourning garb it wore, and regathered, and blurred and that strange mixture was in the air, and in the drain covers, of death and of things to come, of painful consciousness and hope. How strong life is in the presence of death, like a conscious acquisition, and it rebels, and rises serenely to its feet to say no. And perhaps only with that black presence, which in any case drags itself inertly onwards, inertly or almost, and there might be much else to be said were it not right now for this dark and irritating presentiment of waiting. Because there is no point turning round and turning round again: but somewhere someone is certainly getting ready. And it is bound to happen. And perhaps it will be late, then, too late, but for the moment you were hoping for no one really knows where to turn. How do you say to your wife my dear wife everything is going to change now, everything, completely, so forget the new sofa cover, forget the phone bill, the hairdresser’s on Saturday afternoon? My dear wife, something’s about to happen, something that I don’t know and no one knows, something that will throw thoughts into confusion, that will relight the icy fires within the mind, and if that happens you won’t be able to pocket the shopping money, tell lies to your friends and your husband, and neither will there be any point rolling on to one side at night and waiting for a hard presence to grow and press against you, my dear wife. But how can such things be told now? They certainly can’t. Nothing can, for now. All that is left is that hateful embarrassment, and the thought of waiting. That presentiment digs and digs, it blows up the effluent from without. The effluent gurgles on the surface. Oh how it does. And that foul smell that it gives off. And everything was in it, yes, all pus within, and we didn’t realise, or perhaps no, perhaps we realised very well, and perhaps we knew very well, but you know how it is, you avoid looking as much as possible, or smelling either. Because in the end we are all the same, aren’t we?, all painfully the same. Then if there’s this sewage of mine, there is also everyone else’s sewage, right? One’s sewage and another’s are largely identical, there is absolutely no need to discriminate between the two. And it’s the same with self-pity. Probably the best thing is to do nothing at all, with the great mess unleashed hour after hour by this rain that is coming down like rain coming down interminably.