Ties

by Domenico Starnone

  Vanda looked relieved. Not only could she return to thinking that the cat was still alive, but in the course of her exploration she’d discovered, to her surprise, in the very drawer in which she kept it, her mother’s string of pearls—the only piece of jewelry she ever allowed herself—and under the sink, covered in a layer of detergent, the fifty euros she’d stashed in the kitchen cupboard. Suddenly the thieves seemed stupid to her. They’d rummaged everywhere, they’d shattered everything looking for god knows what treasures, but they hadn’t found the little they might have stolen: the string of pearls, the fifty euros. Well, I comforted her, let’s stop wearing ourselves out. I went back to look out over the balcony of my study, and the one that gave off the living room, to understand how they’d climbed up to the third floor, and meanwhile, without being obvious, I looked for traces of Labes in the courtyard. What was that dark stain on the roof of the first floor? Blood that endured in spite of the hot rain?

  I convinced myself that the thieves—two or three?—had climbed the gutter up to the cornice and then, passing from there, reached our balcony. The shutter had been pulled up by hand, they’d taken the worn glass door off its hinges without breaking the glass and come in. We should have installed bars, I said to myself with regret, glancing around at the surrounding windows and balconies. But why protect yourself if you have nothing to protect? I came back in. In that moment the silence of the empty building was what afflicted me, more than the devastated house. Neither my wife nor I was able to vent, to show someone the damage and the insult we’d withstood, to receive some solidarity and advice, to feel bolstered by a little sympathy. Most of our neighbors were still on vacation. Not a footstep or a voice could be heard, doors didn’t slam. The rainy grayness cancelled everything. Vanda must have read my thoughts. She said, Bring the bags in, I’m going to see if Nadar’s here. And she didn’t wait for me to say yes; it was clear that she could no longer stand being alone with me in the house. I heard her going down the stairs. She stopped on the first floor and knocked on our neighbor’s door. He was a long-time friend, the only one in the building who almost never went on vacation.

  I pulled our bags inside. In the chaos of the house they seemed to me the only clump of order, our only possessions—though the suitcases mostly contained dirty laundry—that weren’t contaminated. I distinctly heard my wife’s voice, and that of our neighbor. She was speaking in an agitated way, Nadar interrupting her now and then with the shrill voice of a well-bred person. He was a retired judge, ninety-one, a very polite man, sharp as a tack in spite of his years. I returned to the landing and looked down the stairwell. Nadar was propped up by a cane. I saw the tufts of white hair on the sides of his skull. He was saying comforting things, using an elaborate syntax and the loud voice of deaf people. He was trying to be helpful. He’d heard some noises, not in the middle of the night, but rather, in the evening. He’d thought it was thunder, it had rained in Rome until yesterday nonstop. On the other hand, he was certain that he’d distinctly heard a mewing. It had gone on all night.

  —Where? my wife asked, pressing him.

  —In the courtyard.

  Vanda raised her head, seeing me at the top of the steps.

  Come down, she shouted, Nadar heard mewing in the courtyard.

  I joined her reluctantly; had it been up to me I’d have closed up the house and gone back to the sea. Nadar wanted to come with us to look for Labes even though I insisted that he stay inside, as it was raining again. We wandered through the courtyard, all three of us calling for the cat. I wasn’t able to focus. I thought: Thank God the water washed away every trace of the blood. I thought: We won’t find him, he’s hidden himself well in order to die in peace. Meanwhile I was looking at our neighbor, slight, bent, the pink skin of his face deeply creased on his forehead and cheekbones. Was that man my future, if indeed I had that much future left? Another twenty years. Twenty: me and Vanda, Vanda and me, sometimes Sandro with the children, sometimes Anna. We needed to put the house in order, get it back in shape, not waste time this way.

  Nadar slapped his forehead. He’d thought of something important. He said to me:

  —They were ringing your bell a lot, the past few days.

  —Who?

  —I don’t know, But I heard the intercom.

  —Of our apartment?

  —Yes.

  I said, jokingly:

  —You hear the intercom of our apartment but not the thieves who demolish it?

  —Deafness, he said by way of explanation. He was used to paying utmost attention to slight noises, and little or none to loud ones.

  —How many times did they buzz?

  —Five, six. One afternoon I came out.

  —And who was it?

  —A girl.

  Since Nadar would also define my wife as a girl, I asked him to describe her to me. He was vague.

  —Small, brown-haired, thirty years old at the most. She said she had to put flyers into the mailbox. I didn’t open up for her.

  —You’re certain that she buzzed our place?

  —Quite certain.

  —And then?

  —Then last night.

  —It was her again?

  —I don’t know, there were two of them.

  —Two girls?

  —A man and a woman.

  Vanda motioned to me. She was next to the fountain. Her green eyes were prominent on her gaunt face. She said:

  —There’s a dead bird here.

  Only I understood what she meant. Labes is an impressive hunter of anything that flies. I left Nadar and joined her. Her white hair was stuck to her head because of the rain. It doesn’t mean anything, I told her. Go back upstairs, meanwhile I’ll go to the carabinieri. But she shook her head energetically, she wanted to come along. Our neighbor, who continued to assume the authority of a judge even though he’d been retired for twenty years, maintained that he might be of use there. He lined up behind us.

  6.

  We showed up under dripping umbrellas at the nearest carabinieri station and were welcomed into a tiny office by a well-mannered boy in uniform. Nadar introduced himself right away: first name, last name—Nadar Marossi—and above all his position: president of the court of appeals. He briefly recounted what had happened, and he did so with a commanding precision, but then tacked on a story about himself and his career in the course of various complex phases of the twentieth century. The young carabiniere listened as if he’d descended to hell to hear the idle chatter of the dead.

  I tried various times to insert myself into Nadar’s stories and to steer the conversation back toward the state in which we’d found the apartment, but when I finally managed I couldn’t resist; the heroic role of our neighbor had annoyed me, and I wanted to convey to the boy that I, too, was someone special. So I repeated my name to the carabiniere two or three times—Aldo Minori, Aldo Minori, Aldo Minori—to see if it made an impression on him. Since the young man didn’t react, I ended up talking about a TV series from the eighties that I’d created practically on my own, that had given me quite a bit of notoriety. But the carabiniere, who either wasn’t alive then or had been just a child, had never heard of the show or of me. He smiled uncomfortably, and with the authority he now had, which Nadar and I have both lacked for a while, said patiently, Back to the matter at hand.

  I was embarrassed—normally I’m a man who measures his words, without rigmarole—and I repeated that thieves had destroyed our apartment. But again I lost control and went on confusedly about the delivery girl who wanted five extra euros, and the man who’d hoodwinked me the week before, right under our building. Not only that: I pulled in Nadar, pressing him to talk about the girl who’d buzzed our intercom various times during the week, and the couple that had shown up just the night before. He was happy to take over, listing every buzz of the intercom, running back over a great many negligible details. He stoppe
d himself only when the door behind us opened, and before the three of us turned around, someone motioned to the carabiniere. The boy burst out laughing. He struggled to pull himself together, muttering an apology, and in the end he asked:

  —What did they steal from you?

  —What did they steal from us? I repeated, though addressing my wife. And she, who had remained silent this whole time, said quietly,

  —Nothing.

  —Gold? asked the carabiniere.

  —I only have these earrings, but I always wear them.

  —You don’t have other jewels?

  —A string of pearls that belonged to my mother, but they didn’t find it.

  —Was it well hidden?

  —No.

  I stepped in:

  The thieves upended everything but without rhyme or reason, they didn’t even find the fifty euros that my wife had stashed in the kitchen cupboard. The money ended up under a container of detergent they’d overturned, out of spite.

  The young man assumed a disgruntled expression, and then he started talking chiefly to Nadar. They’re gypsies, he said, kids who get in through the windows and balconies. They pile furniture against the door in case the owners come back, and they start rummaging everywhere. They look for gold, ladies and gentlemen, and if they don’t find any they get their revenge by demolishing everything. I clarified that there was no furniture against the door, that the door hadn’t opened easily because of the all the debris stuck under it. Then I added, Maybe you should send someone to have a look, say, for fingerprints. At this point the carabiniere grew less patient. He made it clear, in a firm tone, with the diction of a well-educated boy, that TV was one thing and realty another, that things of this kind happened all the time, that we were lucky not to have been murdered in our sleep. He said that the government was cutting back the police force and beefing up the army, something that, in a phase of increasing hardship, was detrimental for the safety of citizens and, possibly, even for democracy. He made it clear that being a judge in the past, talking on TV in the past, only proved that if today’s world was such a mess it was also our responsibility. He advised us, in the end, to put bars on the windows and resort to an alarm system that would immediately signal any infraction to the nearest police car on duty. Even if, he added with unmasked irony, I don’t see the point, given that you have nothing to steal.

  My wife fretted in her seat:

  —The cat’s missing.

  —Ah.

  —What if they’ve taken him?

  —Why would they?

  —I don’t know, to ask for a ransom?

  The carabiniere smiled at her with a warmth he hadn’t conveyed either to me or to Nadar. Anything is possible, Signora Minori, he said. But now banish upsetting thoughts from your mind and focus on the positive: this is a great opportunity to reorganize your apartment, get rid of what you don’t need, rediscover useful things you’d forgotten about. As for the cat, maybe he took advantage of the situation to go looking for girlfriends.

  I laughed, so did Nadar.

  Vanda didn’t.

  7.

  We went back home. It was no longer raining. It took some effort to rid ourselves of our neighbor, who wanted to come up and check out the disaster in person. He’s an old fool, my wife said, getting angry. He bored the carabiniere with his bragging, and you weren’t any better. I didn’t object. It was depressing to admit, but she was right. I helped her to at least straighten up the kitchen a bit, but she soon sent me away. I only complicated her job. I withdrew to the balcony off my study. I hoped, after so much rain, that the air would have cooled down, but it was still sultry, with foul, bothersome drops that wet my hair, my shirt.

  Vanda called me to dinner, perhaps a bit too loftily. We didn’t say much. At a certain point she again brought up the idea of calling the children, and I objected, saying they already led complicated lives, better to leave them in peace, at least while they were on vacation. Sandro must have only just arrived at his in-laws’ in Provence, and Anna was most likely on Crete with some new boyfriend. Let’s not disturb them, I said, trying to protect them, but she wanted to send a message to both anyway, something along the lines of: We had a break-in and we can’t find Labes. Anna responded immediately, in her usual, truncated way: Oh God, poor you, sorry, don’t wear yourselves out; while Sandro, also in his fashion, got back to us an hour later with an extremely detailed text. He’d been at our place the night before, as agreed. He’d stayed from nine to nine thirty. He told us to tell the police that at that hour the house was in perfect condition, and Labes in excellent health. He wrapped up with affectionate words suggesting that we go to a hotel at least for the first night.

  Vanda was more comforted by the messages from her children than by my presence, which seemed to be getting increasingly on her nerves. After dinner we turned to straightening up the bedroom, and I suddenly remembered the story about the taxi driver and my wife’s reaction. I was gripped by the fear that, in the chaos of misplaced objects, she’d stumble upon something of mine that might sadden or offend her. As soon as the bed was minimally useable, I convinced her to lie down.

  —And you?

  —I’ll deal with the living room for a while.

  —Don’t bang around.

  I went straightaway to check if the heavy metal cube that I’d bought many decades ago in Prague was still in its place, at the top of the shelves in my study. It was the same object that had caught the attention of the solenoid girl, an object lacquered in blue, twenty centimeters wide, twenty high. Vanda had never liked it, but it meant something to me. When we’d moved into this house, I’d taken it upon myself, after a lengthy quarrel, to position it high up, along with other decorative objects that we didn’t particularly care for. Apparently to satisfy my wife, I’d pushed it far back, so that one saw little or no part of it from below. In truth I wanted her, over time, to forget about it. Vanda didn’t know that you just needed to firmly press the middle of one of the facets so that it opened like a door. She also didn’t know, naturally, that this was the object’s feature that had inspired me to buy it; I wanted to protect my secrets inside. I ascertained with relief that, although it now hovered dangerously over the edge, it had remained in its place.

  8.

  I carefully closed the doors that separate the living room and the study from the bedroom. The fresh scent of rain and basil was finally drifting in through the open balcony doors. Now that Vanda slept, and I no longer felt obliged to reassure her, anxiety quickly took hold of me. As of late every little worry becomes an obsession, entering my head and growing out of proportion. I can’t drive it out. In that moment, I sensed that the man who’d taken one hundred euros from me, and the woman who’d nabbed five, were about to have their turn. It suddenly occurred to me that the two could have been in on it together, that together they’d organized the invasion of my house or, more simply, that they’d sold my address to thieves. The hypothesis seemed increasingly sound, and the next thing I knew, the couple that, according to Nadar, had buzzed our intercom assumed their faces. I imagined them dissatisfied after the first round, I thought that maybe they’d already decided to send in other people, more skilled, or to come back themselves. I won’t go to bed, I told myself, I’ll wait up for them.

  Me? Wait for them? And to confront them how, with what strength, what determination?

  The years were beginning to weigh on me. Not only had I learned that I ran the risk of mistaking two stairs for one and falling, that my hearing was worse than Nadar’s, that I could no longer count on my reflexes when facing any kind of urgency or danger. There was more. I would convince myself, let’s say, that I’d just taken some medication, that I’d turned off the gas or the faucet, but actually I’d only thought about doing it. I’d confuse a moment in a dream from God knows how long ago for something that had really happened. More and more often, while reading, I’d mang
le words, so much so that recently I’d had a lapse in front of a printed page fixed to doorway. It appeared to say LEGAL SUICIDE THIS WAY, when it actually said LEGAL STUDIO THIS WAY. As for the past few days, it was clear that people perceived, more clearly than I did, the unraveling of my defenses, and took advantage of it. Which was why I felt ridiculous. I said to myself, you’re old, you’re delirious, straighten things up a bit and go to bed.

  But I didn’t know where to start. I scouted out my study and the living room. In the end I decided to move everything to be tossed out into to the foyer. I checked the status of the two computers which, miraculously, still worked, while various devices for watching films and listening to music no longer did. I pushed away, with a broom, what was scattered on the floor—books, shards of vases and knickknacks, old photographs, old VHS tapes, records, countless notepads of Vanda’s, CDs and DVDs, papers, documents, various objects, in brief, what the thieves had overturned from the loft space, the drawers, the shelves—to the edges of the two rooms.

  It was hard work, and when I was done I examined the slightly cleared spaces with satisfaction. At that point I decided to move on to sort through the materials in my study. I sat on the floor, letting out a groan or two, and I heaped together the shards with the shards, the books with the books, the papers with the papers and so on. At the start I worked swiftly. I was grieved that several books had been split in two, that they’d lost their covers, that they were in tatters. Anyway, I carried on, setting the books that were in good shape to one side, the ruined ones to another. But then I made the mistake of leafing through one of them and almost against my will, I started to read passages that, who knows when, I’d underlined. I was intrigued. Why had I circled certain words? What had prompted me to put exclamation points next to a passage that I now found, in rereading, insignificant? I forgot that I was putting things back in order so that Vanda wouldn’t get depressed when she woke up. I forgot that I was there, in essence, because I wasn’t sleepy, because it was hot, because I didn’t feel safe, because I was afraid the thieves would return, that they would threaten us, that they would tie us to the bed and beat us. Instead I was engrossed by what I’d underlined. I read entire pages, struggling to recall the year I’d devoted to this book or that (1958, 1960, 1962, before marriage, after?). It wasn’t the written conscience of the authors I was chasing after—they were often names I’d forgotten, aging pages, concepts by now no longer used in contemporary culture—but rather, my own conscience: What had seemed right to me in the past, my convictions, my thoughts, my Self in the making.