Malacqua

by Nicola Pugliese

  And Carlo Andreoli said well, let’s move on to the most difficult phase, and with his left hand he pinched his cheek stretching the skin from the bottom up in such a way that it was taut over his chin, and from the left side he shaved with his razor, and he felt the blade passing, and with three or four strokes everything was fine and then he repeated the operation on the right-hand side, except that on the right-hand side he had always had greater difficulty, but it went well that morning, yes, it went well. In fact, when he had finished passing the razor over the middle of his chin, he checked that this shave really was a work of art, impeccable, a proper shave lasts you until well into the night, and of course it puts you in a good mood, it is a kind of good omen for the day, and on a day like that one having a good omen was something extremely positive, who knows what would happen, on a day like that, above all who knows what decision he would decide to take. Because it was undeniable that a decision needed to be taken by him personally, since he was the one who knew about those strange things, and about the sorrowful roar that had engulfed the city, and the mystery of the dolls with the black hair and the dress with white yellow green flowers, and in the end after a moment he had a sense that the very life of the city was in his hands right now, certainly, in his hands, insofar as he was vaguely aware that he might be able to do something in everyone’s interest, if he moved in the right direction he would take an important step with considerable consequences for everyone, and it was a responsibility, an insurmountable responsibility that he was now weighing up. And he also reflected that in fact it wasn’t really like that at all, in fact whatever step he took would define nothing whatsoever, he knew only and simply about a certain number of inconclusive things that would in any case have been impossible to connect with real events, with concrete facts, and even if he had told everyone about what little he knew, no general meaning could be taken from it, and no precise clue: they would be fairy tales, ravings, of course, and why not?, wouldn’t he have thought the same if they had come from somewhere else?, if they hadn’t been something that he had touched with his own hands?, what confusion, lads, what confusion, we should just wash our hands of it all, we should just relinquish everything and take a nice trip somewhere. And even if he was thinking that, the silent buzz that he noticed within was a clear signal, and of course unequivocally his brain was working, oh yes, he was leaving behind stupid and inconclusive thoughts and meanwhile his brain was working, and focusing, and in the end he would drag the solution from it, the final response, the right answer, that was it: the answer above all: because that sum of sensations and facts had been pressing against his temples as firm and harsh questions, and even the thought of the city rising up within him was a form of question, and in fact if he pricked up his ears, he was distinctly aware of the faint rattle of the rain, even standing at the mirror with his shaving brush, that was it: at that long and disconsolate moment the rain was falling exactly as it had fallen over the previous few days and as it might again on the fifth day, but that was it: what would happen on the fifth day?, at the end of the fourth day whose course he perhaps knew already.

  In the post office Paola Lecaldano took a deep breath and inserted the plug into the socket, and of course just a few minutes later out the coffee would come, and she would drink it with Ernesto Cozzolino, of the registered post counter, and with Vincenzo Vecchione, the manager of office number 54, and so to speak she took a look back, and Ernesto Cozzolino was copying the details of a registered letter into the appropriate log with his clear, round hand and Vincenzo Vecchione had already begun the cash-flow statement and was recording all the numbers in a column trying not to go outside the designated boxes, and it was ten o’clock in the morning but in fact the only decent coffee of the day was the one that was about to come out of the espresso machine, and having coffee every morning at about ten o’clock with Cozzolino and Vecchione now seemed a usual and normal everyday matter, yes, you soon get used to things, how soon you get used to them, and now suddenly that realisation of hers was not excessively cheerful, and at that moment she saw herself in the office pouring coffee into cups, of course, what else could she do on such a morning, at around ten o’clock, after starting her work regularly the way she did everything?, what else? She saw herself pouring the coffee into the cups and with a sweet tender secret smile she reflected that Mario, at that moment, was in his second class, maybe geography, he really couldn’t stand geography, a stupid notion to make him learn by heart the capitals and the number of inhabitants, and what is the highest summit in the world, what is the deepest point of the sea?, and Kathmandu is inevitably the capital of Nepal. They both woke up at seven o’clock, she ten minutes to in fact, and she went into the kitchen and she put the coffee on the stove with the espresso pot which she had prepared the previous evening, she spent some time looking at her hands in the kitchen by the stove and sometimes when she felt cold she clutched herself with a shiver in her yellow floral dressing gown and put her hands over the gas along with the pot, and she went into his room, and she clearly noticed that smell of him and the bed, she rested the cup on the bedside table, she woke him up a little, look, here’s your coffee: oh of course: look, here’s your coffee: how many mornings now had she been saying: look, here’s your coffee?, it seemed an eternity rather than two years, only two years, twenty-four months, and how many days exactly?, let’s think for a minute, three hundred and sixty-five days a year makes seven hundred and seventy in two years, right?, and Mario sat up and reached his hand out towards the cup, and for the first few days she had stood and looked at him, drowsy ruffled likeable as he was, but how many days was it now since she had stopped looking at him with that smiling gaze that she had had when they were engaged?, and in short this life now was a strange one, to think that they had thought of it so often in the past, and they had made plans, and everything looked simple on paper, everything looked easy, and in short let us get it into our heads that for the first three years no children and then we both have to work at having a lovely house, and in fact they worked, yes, they worked, and there was that agony of his that came out when the moment came, and we have to do this, we have to do this, my sweetest love, he said it every time, and for once once only she would have liked to have heard him say from within that he was dying for her and collapse on top of her with his heavy breathing on her shoulder, and that weight, on top of her I wish it would happen, and then in the morning they went into the bathroom one at a time and he immediately shaved and everything, and the house, the house, we have to set up a lovely house, but how strange it is, even with two of us working we can’t save a cent, do you imagine we’re going to drag our wedding-present furniture with us to the grave?, oh Mario, my sweetest love, somewhere perhaps we made a mistake and we’re certainly going on making the same mistake because it isn’t possible, it isn’t possible, and after shaving he came back out of the bathroom and sat down on the bed and put on his socks, his shirt and everything, and she from the other side of the bed got dressed as well, she put on her stockings and he didn’t watch her, why is life like this?, why?, when she had made love with her husband for the first time he had watched her getting dressed in the morning and putting on her stockings, and he had watched her the second time as well, and maybe the third as well, and maybe the fourth as well, but then that was it, then that was it for ever, and why?, why?, what could she do to make the miracle come back?, what could she come up with?, was it possible that anything but feeble lamentation could come out of that rotten useless head of hers?, my God, my God, lovely things have such a short life. And in fact perhaps it isn’t work so much, which isn’t so demanding in itself, it isn’t work so much as the unbearable monotony of days, and days, and there was always getting up like that in the morning and coming home at four, and dinner at eight, and television, and always both of them busy, or tired, and listless, and love had got complicated as well, yes, with that thought that you couldn’t do it in the evening, on the grounds that you couldn’t make a sound because
the people next door hear everything and in short what could you do? Paola Lecaldano glanced outside into the distance, beyond the glass door of the counter, and outside a soft neurasthenic rain was coming down, there were strips of grey in the sky, and nothing to be seen apart from a grey blur, and there was damp in the air, and of course somewhere in some other place there was life, real, dense life that was slipping through her fingers day after day just as it was falling through Mario’s fingers, she could see it very clearly: Mario was closing himself away: he was no longer her young lover, her lovely boy, no, now day by day he was becoming a weary man, and Paola Lecaldano heard the coffee gurgling in the machine and she let it go on for a while and then she decided to take it off the heat and with a pot holder that she had brought from home she picked up the pot and poured it into the cups, now they would calmly sip that coffee, and why couldn’t she be doing that with Mario right now?, why, the two of them could still have been young and happy if only they had found the time to have coffee together, to look one another in the eye, if that had happened perhaps they would have turned everything upside down, everything completely upside down, work, the house, the plans for new furniture, and what do you expect of the furniture, now there’s all this time passing and passing interminably with no meaning and there is this sad awareness from within and that grey sky like yesterday and like tomorrow: it isn’t fair, it isn’t possible, flowers are budding somewhere on the branches, and there is a strip of light in the morning, somewhere there is our life that we were about to seize, you remember Mario?, which an evil witch hid in a faraway and difficult place, such a difficult place, I really have the sense that we are going round and round in circles, yes, we are turning and turning and always on the same spot and we come back and we leave without ever moving, perhaps it’s time to say that’s enough, gentlemen, I’m not playing this game any more, but what are you to do, apparently everyone but everyone plays this game, so why be any different?, and who would take the trouble to be different?, and will we really manage to be?, and here we are saying that better times will come, of course, better times are bound to come, you just have to make a few sacrifices and everything will be different, but will it really be different?, I worry that the whole thing is a big swindle, my darling Mario, I’m really afraid that that’s how it is, everyone says that better times will come, I agree, but that isn’t enough to give me confidence, it isn’t nearly enough, because I can see it at home with my own eyes: with every passing day we are extinguished, we are imperceptibly extinguished, and how can we wake up all of a sudden?, how will it be possible to disrupt the order of days and light the flowers of night?, who will give us back the sweet madness of the days of love?, I need to talk to him about it, to tell him all those things out loud, and I will try with all my words to put my case as I must, and of course he will understand, yes, maybe he has understood already maybe these things that I feel and think he thinks too, perhaps he lacks the courage, I can’t identify the mistake, but where is the mistake?, where exactly? She stood there looking at the coffee cups, steam rose from the cups to the window pane, outside there was a desolate greyness, in the air in some ways there was a hint of change, it was there in the muscles of your hands, you could spot it in the restless and distracted expression on your face, in your brain that couldn’t concentrate, that couldn’t linger on a single point, because in fact that persistent question always arose, a confused and inconclusive questioning.

  It was just as he finished shaving his neck, on the left-hand side, that Carlo Andreoli had a brainwave: a sudden flash: a thought exploding in your hands: and he smiled at his reflection in the mirror, and briefly he reflected on the past few days and the falling rain that if he pricked his ear he could still hear from down below, he reflected on the collapse on Via Tasso and the chasm in Via Aniello Falcone, and the black-haired dolls, the velvet bands and the floral dress, the sorrowful voice as if of multitudes that had come down from the arrow-holes in the Maschio Angioino to the city. Then all of a sudden everything was clear. Another day would pass, yes, another whole day of rain, and then at dawn on the fifth day tremulous beams of reddish light would appear on the horizon around Capri, and then that light would brighten as the minutes passed, it would turn yellow, and then slowly to white, a different and exactly identical day would be born over the suffering city, the sun would rise and cast its brilliance, the boys would go back into the streets to play football, all the doors of the whole city would be thrown wide open, young women would walk around with shopping bags, the trams would rattle along their tracks to the Riviera di Chiaia, big stray dogs would chase each other in the Villa Comunale, the shops would lift their shutters, all the children in the whole city would run to all the gates of all the schools, in the streets of Port’Alba and Foria there would be the sharp smell of frying, in Mergellina the fishermen would spend long hours repairing their nets, how is it possible, certainly they would raise their heads to look up and they would stand there in the sun, they would stand there because life does not lie in tortuous thoughts, in the falling rain, in the streaks across the sky, life lies in that warm October sun that comes and draws tenderness on every leaf, that distinguishes the green filaments in the garden, that leaves a white line on the line of the sea, and none of any of that, today’s question is merely black remorse, a vague question without any meaning, nothing, nothing, it doesn’t even exist, and perhaps life would be exactly as it had been before, perhaps no radical disruption would come crashing down to shift the cobbles in the streets and open wounds, the extraordinary event would not take place, it was stupid to imagine that it really might, but you know how it is, sometimes we’re suggestible, oh no, not completely, the days would carry on as before along the merciless street, what would be left?, only that faint echo, that melancholy in the half-open eye checking the light. In the indolence of a new day the city would stretch its arms and its back, it would expand its heart to breathe on the gulf, on the hill the sun would draw the outlines of the houses, the perspective of things would not change, no, not for anything in the world. Carlo Andreoli smiled at his own reflection in the mirror. Within him he noticed a new tenderness, an uncontaminated thought. He let the water out of the basin with traces of foam and black dots, and then he ran icy water that he collected in his hands and threw in his face three four five six times, before drying himself he had a moment’s hesitation, he paused to notice the water slipping from his eyebrows, from his nose, from his chin, from his ears, he felt it on his skin and inside his brain, that icy regenerating water, and a shiver ran down his spine, with the spongy towel he dried his face and that motionless winking face went on looking, how stupid, my God, how stupid.