The Human Body

by Paolo Giordano

  “Let’s see if Marianna still remembers the name of the Croma,” he’d say.

  “La Musona.” Marianna drew out the vowels and slowly lowered her eyelids, because that game had bored her for some time.

  “La Musona!” Ernesto exclaimed contentedly.

  “That’s right, La Musona.” Nini echoed him softly, smiling innocently.

  To become wholly convinced that Marianna held a special place in our parents’ hearts, all you’d have to do is take a look in the closet of our old apartment, turn on the dim bulb that Ernesto never got around to fixing (it still dangles unsteadily from the electrical wires), count the cartons with “Marianna” written on the side and right after that the other boxes, marked “Alessandro,” mine. Seven to three. Seven cartons overflowing with my older sister’s glorious childhood—notebooks, tempera and watercolor paintings, school exams with astounding grades, collections of nursery rhymes that she could still recite today—and on the bottom shelf just the other three, full of all my junk, stupid talismans and battered toys that I stubbornly refused to throw away when the time came. Seven to three. That was roughly the proportion of affection unwittingly established in the Egitto household.

  I didn’t complain, though. I learned to accept my parents’ biased love as an inevitable, even just, disadvantage. And if at times I gave in to secret bouts of self-pity—inanimate objects had never wanted to talk to me—I soon shrugged off that jealousy, because I too, like my parents, had a special fondness for Marianna and worshiped her above all else.

  To begin with, she was beautiful, with narrow shoulders, nose crinkled up in a mischievous grin, blond hair that would later darken a bit, and a host of delightful freckles that peppered her face from May to September. Kneeling in her room in the middle of the carpet, surrounded by outfits for Ballerina Barbie and World Peace Ambassador Barbie and three My Little Ponies with colorful manes—each element positioned exactly where she wanted it—she seemed to be mistress not only of herself, but of everything that belonged to her. Watching her, I learned to care for small objects in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise: the way she looked at them, the way she attributed personality and import to one or the other just by touching them, all that intoxicating pink surrounding her, convinced me that the feminine world was more fascinating, luxuriant, and fulfilling than ours. That, for sure, made me burn with envy.

  Then, too, Marianna was incredible. She was a slender yet tenacious reed in her ballet classes, before Ernesto insisted that she stop because of the disastrous consequences that dancing en pointe could have on her feet, among them arthritis, seriously debilitating tendonitis, and various other osteopathic conditions; she was a brilliant conversationalist who delighted my parents’ cultured friends (Ernesto’s chief surgeon complimented her at a communal dinner for using the term blandishments properly); but above all, she was a scholastic prodigy. Nini’s greatest source of concern in middle school was trying to avoid the compliments that rained down on her from all sides, from teachers, from other envious parents, even from unexpected acquaintances who had heard of her daughter’s impressive results. There was no subject in which Marianna did not demonstrate a proclivity, and her approach to each discipline was always the same: compliant, serious, and strictly devoid of passion.

  She also played the piano. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at five her instructor Dorothy arrived at our house. An imposing woman, with bulging breasts and belly and an old-fashioned taste in dress, apparently aimed at drawing attention at all costs to her British origins on her father’s side. I was required to be in the entrance hall to welcome her, and again to say good-bye to her, an hour and a half later: “Good afternoon, Miss Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy is more than enough, sweetheart.”

  And later: “Good-bye, Dorothy.”

  “See you soon, dear.”

  She was the first victim of Marianna’s secret wrath. The alliance with my sister, which for a long time (wrongly so) I considered unshakable, was founded on cruel mockery the afternoon when, waiting for the music teacher, Marianna said: “Did you know that Dorothy has a daughter who stutters?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she t-t-t-t-talks like th-this. And she can’t say words that begin with m. When she calls my name she says Mmm-mmm-mm-arianna.”

  She twisted her little face and began mooing loudly. It was a monstrous and irresistible imitation, hilariously naughty. Nini would find it reprehensible: she spent much of her time worrying about unseen ways in which our behavior could hurt others, and carefully avoided any reference to her children in conversations lest she might give the—wrong, totally wrong—idea that she was bragging or making comparisons. If Marianna, talking about a classmate, said, “She does much worse than me, her grades are all so-so,” she immediately seemed alarmed: “Marianna! We mustn’t make comparisons.” Just imagine if she caught her mimicking Dorothy Byrne’s stuttering daughter, with her mouth all screwed up and her eyes crossed!

  For this reason, since at eight years old my most immediate reactions always emulated those I presumed would be my mother’s, I was initially taken aback by Marianna’s lowing as she stammered out the consonants. Then, little by little, I felt my lips widening. To my horror, I realized that I was smiling. More accurately, I was now laughing outright, with gusto, as if I had suddenly discovered the kind of thing that was really funny. Marianna let out another bellow, m-m-moo, before she too burst out laughing.

  “A-a-and then . . . take a look at Dorothy’s underarms . . . She has dark stains . . . they stink to high heaven!”

  We couldn’t stop: the laughter of one of us set off the other. And as soon as she gave signs of stopping, Marianna would twist her mouth to one side and we’d begin all over again.

  Before that day we hadn’t shared anything. Any possible closeness, or even just complicity, was swept away by the difference in the years that separated us and by the disdainful resignation with which Marianna seemed to tolerate me. The wicked imitation of Dorothy’s daughter was our first direct bond, our first secret. At supper, when Ernesto was detained at the hospital and Nini turned her back to give the unappetizing mashed potatoes one last stir, Marianna would distort her face and I’d nearly swallow my food the wrong way. It would become a habit: picking on certain people we knew, discovering absurd aspects of our regimented lives, and laughing until we collapsed, setting each other off in turn until we no longer had any idea of what had been so funny.

  That afternoon, when Dorothy appeared at the door in a long, dark teal dress with pleated sleeves, we had tears in our eyes. I immediately noticed the rings under the armpits, and though even then I could display a certain restraint when called for, I could not manage to say “Good afternoon, Dorothy” without laughing and spraying her with spittle.

  “It’s a pleasure to find you both so cheerful,” the teacher remarked, somewhat annoyed. She dropped her handbag on the couch and walked purposefully toward the piano stool.

  At that point I left them alone, as usual. Making sure that a carafe of water and two glasses were available on the glass-topped table, I then closed the door to the hallway and went back to my room. After a few moments of silence, I heard the ticking of the metronome begin.

  A good half hour was devoted to warming up: chromaticisms, triplets and quadruplets, sight-reading, Pozzoli exercises and the tendon-breaking ones by Hanon. Then they started on the repertoire. There were a few pieces I particularly liked: Debussy’s Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a Bach minuet whose ritornello is all I remember, and Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 4, whose first part with its soft descending chords filled me with a piercing melancholy. But the one that became my favorite was unquestionably Un sospiro by Franz Liszt, with which Marianna reached the height of her virtuosity and the most evident interpretative intensity. She had already turned fourteen and was preparing for a presentation, her first real performance as a m
usician after an eternity of solitary study. Dorothy had arranged a student recital in a small Baroque church in the city center.

  Marianna practiced the étude ad nauseam, since the piece involved several technical intricacies, including crossing the arms in the complicated opening arpeggio: the left hand, after skimming over two octaves, passed rapidly over the right to complete the melody on the high notes. It was a piece that was almost more beautiful to see than to hear and sometimes, while Marianna practiced, I opened the door a crack and watched her fingers moving gracefully, caressing the keyboard, closely monitored by her constantly shifting pupils. The movement was so swift that you couldn’t believe she was really touching the keys, her right pinky extended so that it stood out from her palm.

  But the critical passage came further on when, approaching the languendo, the score launched into a dizzying descending scale. Marianna stumbled at that point; the tiny muscles of her fingers couldn’t sustain the speed and she would stop, letting the sharp clacks of the metronome tick on. Undeterred, she would resume playing from a few bars back and tackle it again, once, twice, ten times, until she thought she had acquired the correct fluidity. Often, however, she’d stumble again the following day and then she’d get angry and slam her hands on the keyboard, leaving behind a mournful rumbling.

  Nevertheless, by a week before the recital she had achieved complete mastery, and it was time to worry about what she would wear. Nini took her to a shop under the arcades and together they chose a sleeveless sheath with matching pumps. For me, a pair of navy blue pants and a salmon shirt—a color that dominated my wardrobe before disappearing entirely to avoid inopportune reminders of my psoriasis-inflamed neck and face. Meanwhile, on tiptoe, I tried to see as much as possible of my figure in the bathroom mirror. I was at least as excited as my sister, probably even more, or so I tell myself today.

  The church was cold and the audience members, about fifty in all, did not take off their coats, making the event seem somewhat temporary, as though everyone might rush out at any moment. Dorothy was dressed at her most elegant and was greeted by warm applause, despite the fact that as of September she had increased the cost of her private lessons by nearly twenty percent. Her daughter sat in the front row, a little to one side, her deformed mouth tightly sealed.

  Marianna was scheduled among the final players, since she was one of the proficient students. I curbed my impatience by focusing on the music. I recognized many of the pieces played by the little girls who preceded her, because Marianna, too, had studied them in the past. None of them seemed to be on her level, or at least as precocious as she had been. Each time a girl took the stage, I held my breath, afraid I might find that she was more talented than Marianna or that she might perform a more impressive piece. But there was no one as gifted as my sister, nor a piece more impressive than Franz Liszt’s Un sospiro.

  Nini was sitting next to me; each time she took my hand and squeezed it. She too was nervous. Silently she studied what the other young pianists were wearing, gauging if by chance she had overdone it with Marianna. She responded politely to the smiles of other mothers seeking complicity, but as though to say: Wonderful, of course, but I can’t wait for it to be over. She’d much rather her daughter’s music practice take place in the living room as usual, in a safe place, because being there that night required a display of emotions well above what she could stand. I was dying to tell her Marianna was the most talented, but I knew what I would have to face. Nini would look all around, terrified, before admonishing me: Alessandro, for the love of God! We mustn’t make comparisons!

  One seat over, much of Ernesto’s face was covered by a scarf. He also wore a raw-wool hat with earmuffs and various layers under his coat. It was the second day of his Absolute Fast (nothing but quarts and quarts of water at room temperature), a self-imposed purification that would free him from a series of mysterious toxins present in every type of food. During the Absolute Fasts, which would last for three years and occurred at six-month intervals, Ernesto took time off from the hospital and spent whole days lying on the couch, surrounded by half-empty plastic bottles, wheezing in distress. On the third and final day he would rave deliriously, asking whoever was around what time it was (the Fast ended at ten p.m.) while Nini kept dabbing his forehead with moist cloths. On the evening of the recital he was still in his right mind, but in that drafty church he felt colder than all the others. Before leaving home Nini had beseeched him to have at least a few tablespoons of broth: “It’s just water, Ernesto. It will make you feel better.”

  “Oh, sure, water laced with animal fats. And salt. You have a strange concept of ‘just water.’”

  If he were to pass out in front of everyone, collapsing over the seats in front of them, Nini would be quick to explain it by citing his numerous night shifts as the cause: Sometimes six or seven a month, truly too many, but when someone asks him for a favor he just can’t say no.

  Ernesto did not faint, however, and sat through the evening with his arms crossed, his breathing labored under the scarf from the lack of nourishment. When Marianna stood up from the front row and approached the piano, he was the first to clap his hands to encourage her. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat, as if to underscore, That’s my daughter, the beautiful young girl up on the dais, my daughter. I thought of the descending scale that had entangled Marianna during the lengthy preparation period, and repeated to myself in silence, Don’t let her stumble, don’t let her stumble.

  My wish was granted. Marianna did not stumble over the scale. It went much worse. Her performance was a disaster from the first cluster of notes. It wasn’t that the sequence was inaccurate—I’d have noticed any false note, that’s how well I knew the piece—but the execution was heavy-handed, wooden, to the point of being irritating, especially in the initial arpeggio, which required suppleness and spontaneity. Marianna’s fingers had suddenly stiffened and were producing staccato-like sounds disconnected from one another, like fitful sobs. Her tenseness made her contract her shoulders and she was hunched over the piano, almost as if she were fighting it, almost as if it hurt her wrists to play it. Nini and Ernesto didn’t move a muscle, they were holding their breath like I was, and now there were three of us who hoped it would all be over as quickly as possible. The Sigh, Un sospiro, had become a Heartache.

  When she had finished, Marianna stood up, red-faced, made a slight bow, and returned to her seat. I saw Dorothy go over and whisper something in her ear, rubbing her back, while the applause around us was already dwindling uncertainly. I could barely contain myself from standing up and shouting, Wait! That wasn’t how she was supposed to play it—I swear she can do much better, I’ve listened to her every afternoon and that piece is breathtaking, believe me, it was the stress, let her try again, let her try just one more time . . . But another girl had already taken her place at the piano and was beginning a Brahms rhapsody with shameless audacity.

  On the way home, we spoke little. Ernesto said a few kind words, complimenting the evening as a whole rather than my sister’s performance, and Nini concluded by saying: “Oh, how exhausting! But now we’ll go home to our nice warm house and tomorrow everything will be back to normal.”

  Marianna continued the private piano lessons every Tuesday and Thursday for a total of thirteen years, with waning dedication, until she failed the entrance examination for her seventh year at the conservatory, a disappointment that was passed over in silence in our house and soon forgotten. By then Nini and Ernesto had bitterly opened their eyes to how greatly their daughter’s true inclinations differed from what they had earlier imagined for her. After that, Marianna never again raised the lid of the Schimmel grand, not even once; when walking through the living room she stayed away from it, as if the beast had tormented her far too long and, even though now dormant, was able to arouse fear and loathing in her. The piano is still there, silent and gleaming. On the inside, the steel strings are no longer taut and have lo
st their pitch.

  Strong Wind, Blackout

  “How long have we been here?”

  “Twenty-five days.”

  “What the hell! A lot longer than that.”

  “Twenty-five, I’m telling you.”

  “Still, it seems like an eternity.”

  • • •

  On the twenty-fifth day after the Alpines’ arrival in Gulistan, the thirty-sixth day since they’d landed in Afghanistan, FOB Ice is attacked for the first time.

  A sandstorm has been raging since nightfall, the air is thick with particles, and a dense orange fog obscures the sky. To go the few dozen yards to reach the mess hall or the toilets, the soldiers have to walk with their head down, eyes narrowed and mouth closed, while their exposed cheeks are scraped raw. The tents quake like shivering animals and wind gusts shriek with a frightening whooosh. The grains of sand whirling crazily in the squall at top speed have electrically charged every obstacle in their path—it’s as if the entire base were suspended over a low-voltage pylon. The molecules’ frenzy has even permeated the mood of the soldiers, who seem more garrulous than usual. Inside the Wreck, the guys of the Third Platoon are talking loudly, over one another. From time to time someone gets up from the benches to approach the only window in the place and contemplate the churning cloud of sand and the twisters writhing in the square outside, like ghosts. “Look at that,” he mutters, or maybe, “Shit.”

  The shouting is especially annoying to Marshal René, who is struggling to write an e-mail to Rosanna Vitale that he can’t seem to find a way to formulate. In his head he’s organized his thoughts systematically, as he usually does, but as soon as he transfers them to words, the logic that holds them together suddenly proves shaky, equivocal. He had begun with a long account of his military venture—the exhausting trip from Italy, the inertia of the days in Herat, the transfer to the FOB—and he even allowed himself a detailed description, poetic in its way, of what he saw during the excursion to Qal’a-i-Kuhna and of the storm currently raging. Only afterward did he get around to the real reason for the message, in a paragraph that began, “I’ve thought a lot about what we talked about the last time,” and continued with increasingly foolish verbal gymnastics just to avoid the word baby at all costs, replacing it with circumlocutions such as “what happened,” “the accident,” or even “you know what.” Reading it over, however, he realized that the initial digression was somewhat offensive, the key issue relegated to just one of several topics, as if it were of little or no importance to him, whereas it is important to him, and he wants it to be clear, so he deleted everything and started over again. He’s now on his fourth attempt and, despite his lexical efforts, despite the fact that he thinks he’s tried every opening to approach what he’s concerned about, he’s failed to arrive at a solution. He’s wondering if there really is a way to say what he wants to say without sounding brutal or vile, or both. In a fit of irritation, he composes the lapidary message: