—What kind of laces? I ask him.
—Shoelaces. While we were eating, you asked if I’d copied my way of tying them from him.
—Wait, how do you tie them?
—The way he ties them.
—And how does he tie them?
—A way no one else does.
—And did he know that you tied your shoes like he did?
—No, it was you who made him notice.
I honestly don’t remember this. I ask:
—How did he react?
—He was moved.
—What do you mean?
—He burst into tears.
—I don’t believe it. I never saw him cry.
—That’s what happened.
Labes turns up cautiously. I wonder if he’s come to me or to Sandro. I realize I’d like him to come to me, but only to be able to chase him away. The cat lands with a leap onto my brother’s knees. I say, with a touch of spite:
—You were the one who wanted to meet him. I’m sure of it.
—Think whatever you want.
—And anyway, why did Mom agree to it? She’d stopped acting crazy by then, we were used to the fact that he wasn’t around anymore. She should have said no to him. What possessed her to turn everything upside-down again?
—Forget about it.
—No, I want to know: Why?
—I was the one who insisted.
—You see how you have something to do with it?
—I insisted because you were having such a tough time.
—Oh, how generous of you.
—I was a kid. I thought that if our father saw, in person, the state you’d been reduced to, he’d realize that you needed him and come home.
—So, in your opinion, Dad backed down for me?
—Don’t delude yourself.
—Well then?
—Is it possible that you don’t remember anything?
—No.
—Okay, I’ll tell you something else. The morning we met it was our mother who said to you: Have you noticed the ridiculous way your brother ties his shoes? Your father’s fault, he’s never done it right: Tell him when you see him.
—And?
—This story about the laces involves all of us. Dad came back for Mom, for me, for you. And the three of us wanted him to come back. Get it?
4.
That’s Sandro for you, he knows how to sugarcoat everything in a way that’s reassuring. Look at him now, the way he strokes Labes. He caresses him, he fondles him, the cat’s delighted. He does this with everyone, animals and human beings. He’s Mom’s little darling, and Dad talks only to him about serious matters. This is how he nabs everything—affection, respect, money—and leaves only the crumbs to me. What a poser. And his version of the story about the laces is false, false, false. He had pressed our mother to take us to our father because I wasn’t doing well? And the two of us moved our parent to the point of making him run back home? And our mother worked it on her end? And thus our loving family came back together? Who does he take me for, one of his admirers? I tell him:
—The only ties that counted for our parents were the ones they’ve tortured each other with their whole lives.
Then I get up. I take Labes off his knees, I carry him over to the balcony, caressing him. The cat squirms away at first, then yields. From there, from the balcony, I say to Sandro: Our parents have given us four very enlightening scenarios: first: Mom and Dad, happy and young, two kids frolicking in the Garden of Eden; second: Dad finds another woman and disappears with her, Mom loses it, the kids lose Eden; third: Dad has second thoughts and comes back home, the children try to get back to earthly paradise, Mom and Dad show us daily that it’s a useless effort; fourth: The kids discover that there never was an Eden and that they have to make do with Hell.
My brother scowls:
—You’re worse than our mother.
—You don’t like Mom anymore?
—It’s you I don’t like. She’s passed her defects onto you and you’ve warped them even more.
—Which?
—All of them.
—Give me an example.
—The listing: first, second, third, fourth. Both of you like to build enclosures and confine other people inside them.
I tell him coldly that I was limiting myself to describing the situation we had lived through together. But you have to humiliate me right away, I complain. And without reason: If I’m worse than Mom, then you’re worse than Dad. You never think you have to listen; in fact, you’ve inherited the worst of both of them, because not only do you not listen, but just like Mom you grab onto a tiny detail and you build a mountain of bullshit on top.
He stares at me, his lips tight, shaking his head, then he looks at his watch. On the one hand he’s afraid he’s gone too far. On the other, he’s thinking that with me there’s no hope, peace isn’t possible, all I can do is argue. I returned to the living room, and before he can get up to go I sit back down on the couch. Labes returns, wanting to be scratched, and to calm him I kiss him on the head. It’s time to tell my brother the real reason I called him. I utter sentences like: After all, what can we do, there’s no escape from chromosomes, it’s neither my fault nor yours, we inherit everything, even the way we scratch our heads. And I laugh, as if I’d said something funny. Still laughing, without any preamble, I announce that I’ve been turning an idea around in my head for a while. I say, let’s ask Mom and Dad to sell this house: It’s worth at least a million and a half. We split it exactly, we can make seven hundred and fifty thousand each.
5.
Sandro looks at me, suddenly interested. There’s only one thing we never argue about. It’s from our mother that we get our obsession with money. Dad earned a fair amount, but he was so consumed by ambition that he barely noticed. For him work was what counted, the need for approval, the fear of losing it. Mom was always the one who took care of the money. She saved it, she hoarded it. She was the one who wanted this house. She made us feel the weight of every penny. Her love for her children morphed into money. She never hoarded it for herself, even less for Dad, but to allow the two of us to live well in the present, and safely into the future. The post-office ledger, the bank account, this apartment, were her ways to tell us she loved us. This is what I thought for a long time, maybe Sandro too. The proof that I love you—our mother showed us every day—is that I don’t spend money on myself, but hoard it for you. The result, for me, is that not having money is further proof of my inability to be loved. That’s why I think I was so upset with Aunt Gianna when she left almost her entire wad to Sandro. At least this is what the doctors told me when that situation drove me to a nervous breakdown and they stuffed me with pills. But it’s so hard to organize my head, there’s always something that doesn’t make sense. This no-money no-love equation is probably correct, but then why, as soon as I have money, do I squander it? Why, as soon as someone likes me, do I drive him away? For that matter, isn’t it the same for Sandro? All those women with money, all those spoiled children, aren’t they the sign of a hole that’s never filled? While for our mother enjoyment—maybe the only thing she enjoyed—meant putting money aside, we feel like we’re doing well only when we’re spending it. We’re identical, my brother and I. And in these times, when there’s no money. And we’re only getting older. I’m fat, I’m getting more wrinkles and gray hairs. I hate Sandro for staying as handsome as a boy: long eyelashes, green eyes, a head full of hair at fifty, still dark, no dye job, athletic build. He doesn’t even exercise. He’s finally listening to me. I ramble, giving him time to process my idea. I say: They’re both part of a generation that was lucky, they went from poverty to a comfortable life, Dad even nabbed a little recognition, they both have a good pension, what the fuck else do they want? See what I’m saying?
At this point my brother blinks as if to e
rase the picture I’m painting for him and asks:
—Why do they have to sell and give us the money?
—It’s our house.
—It’s their house.
—Sure, but we’re going to inherit it.
—So?
—So we ask them to give us an advance on our inheritance.
—And where do they go live?
—We find them a smaller apartment, two rooms and a kitchen somewhere outside the Center, and we pay the rent.
—You’re crazy.
—Why? Remember Marisa?
—Who’s she?
—My friend from Naples.
—What about her?
—She asked her parents to do the same thing and they went for it.
—Mom would never go for it. This is her house, hers down to the smallest detail. And as for Dad, it’s proof that something came of all those years of work.
—But their lives are over.
—I doubt it. They could still go on for another twenty years.
—Exactly. And in twenty years I’ll be sixty-five and you’ll be seventy, assuming we get that far. What will I do, when I’m sixty-five, with half of this house? Think. Don’t turn me into the heartless bitch as usual. They’re two old people. What’s the point of their living in a castle with a view of the Tiber?
He shakes his head, looking at me with sage disapproval. He wants me to feel that I’m in the wrong. He’s done this ever since we were little. The money appeals to him, naturally. I see it in his face. But I know him, I see how he squirms inside. Ideally, he’d want me to do this all on my own—talk to our parents, convince them, sell the house, split the money between him and me, naturally in two equal parts—and meanwhile, I leave him the role of the doubtful son who raises ethical objections, who worries about Mom and Dad. Part of me knows that, if I want his consent, I shouldn’t take him head-on. I have to put up with his scolding with my heart in my hands. But another part of me is getting antsy already. Like it or not, I have my scruples, too. I’m not made of stone. Which is why, if he keeps prodding me, I don’t know where we’ll end up. But he isn’t just prodding me, he’s wounding me.
—How would you react, he asks me, if, in thirty years your children did the same thing to you?
6.
I reply with vehemence. I’ve learned just one thing from our parents, I tell him: that you shouldn’t have children. Then with false calm, choking on my words, I insist: You end up damaging your kids in any case, and so you have to expect them to damage you even more. I know he doesn’t like extreme statements like this, but I use them on purpose. He’s brought four children recklessly into the world. Let’s see how he gets by.
He gets by in his usual way, praising himself. He’s convinced, naturally, that the right road is the one he’s been on: multiplying mothers, multiplying fatherhood, multiplying the nucleus of love and sex. And a confusion of roles. The end, in other words, of the traditional concept of the couple: no monogamy, various women, all of them loved, various children, all of them adored: When I take care of the kids—he tells me with his usual saccharine arrogance—I make sure they don’t want for anything. I’m both father and mother to them.
I try not to reply. I give him time to boast about his grand views. But my brother gets under my skin, no matter how much I try not to let him. And so, at a certain point, I toss out the fact that he’s never really escaped from the disaster that we were raised in, that he unloads the same heartache onto his children that our mother transferred to us: the man who becomes a woman, the woman who becomes a man, the father who becomes a mother, the mother who becomes a father. Domestic cross-dressing, verbal cosmetics, you’re a terrorized little boy. And while I talk, the rage that usually stays put somewhere keeps rising in my chest. I hiss that I support the abolition of children, the abolition of pregnancy and childbirth, yes, ab-o-li-tion. I even want to erase the memory of reproduction by means of the female belly. Our genitals should serve only to piss and fuck. Not only that, I scream—I don’t even know if fucking is all that it’s cracked up to be. And we fight—Labes freaks out, he slips away, we overlap, sentence for sentence, word for word. How many clichés is he capable of unsheathing to defend himself? Pressing close to a loved one at night calms you down, love is better than faith in God, it’s like a prayer in the face of the constant risk of death; having kids lowers anxiety, oh how sweet the joys of one’s brood, how thrilling to see them grow: You realize you’re a ring in an endless chain, those before you and those to come, it’s the only way to feel immortal; et cetera et cetera et cetera.
I listen. He seems to be delivering a well-meaning sermon, but actually his goal is to make me feel bad. He wants me to envy him his happiness for all his offspring. He wants me to regret not having had children, he wants me to suffer. You—he emphasizes—don’t have any and can’t understand, that’s why you’re full of shit. It’s true, I can’t understand, I tell him, losing my calm for good. I can’t understand your blind insemination, I can’t understand all these trembling mares dripping bodily fluids, their ears pressed to their ticking biological clocks. Biological clock, what an inane term. I never heard any ticking. Time ran away, silently, and it’s better that way. Imagine if I had a kid, screaming with pain. If I let myself be cut up under anesthesia and then woke up, disgusted with myself, depressed, overwhelmed by the terror of these little puppets you can’t ignore. Right, you live for them. You’ve made them—cut and paste—and you have to hold on to them, whatever happens. You get offered a nice job abroad, or you need to work day and night for something you care about, or you want to give all the time you have to a man: but no, children stick around to remind you that you can’t, there they are, they need you, little exasperating snakes with their clenched, ferocious writhing. Whatever you do to make them happy it’s always too little. They want you for themselves, and they invent anything to put a wrench in the works. Not only are you not your own person—that old saying is bullshit, too—but you can’t even try to belong fully to anyone else, by now you really only belong to them. And so, I scream, having kids means giving up yourself. Take a look at yourself, for once and for all, and see how you really live. Now you run to Provence, to Corinne’s, to give her back the kids, then you’ll go to Carla’s little girl, then to Gina’s boy. Oh, what a great dad, what a lover. But are you happy? And they, when you get there, when you leave, are they happy? I have a vague memory of when Dad came to see us on the weekends. I don’t remember exact events but an unbearable feeling of unhappiness stuck with me—that’s for certain—and it’s never gone away. I wanted my father for myself. I wanted to take him away from you and Mom. But he wasn’t any of ours, he was there and yet he wasn’t. He’d given up me, you, Mom. And I quickly realized he’d done the right thing. Away, away, away. Our mother, to him, was the negation of the joy of living, and us too, you and me. Don’t fool yourself, that’s what we were, the negation, the negation. His real mistake was being unable to give us up for good. His mistake was that once you’ve taken action to hurt people profoundly, to kill or, in any case, permanently devastate other human beings, you can’t go back. You have to accept the responsibility for the crime through and through. You can’t commit a half-crime. But he’s nothing, he’s just a little man, numbed inside. He resisted as long as he felt he was in the right, as long as he felt he had others’ approval. Then, as soon as everything started to settle and the approval ebbed, as soon as the fizz died down and he felt remorse, he caved. He came back and delivered himself to Mom’s sadism. And she said to him: Let’s see what your intentions are. I don’t trust you, I’ll never trust you, I won’t ever believe that you came back for me and for the children; I won’t believe you because I know it in my bones, in the deepest part of my being, the cost of a final choice like that. Which is why, every minute, every hour, I’ll put you to the test. I’ll put your patience, your faithfulness, to the test. I’ll do it in front o
f the kids so that they see, so that they know the man you are. Say yes or no: Do you want to sacrifice your life to us the way I sacrifice mine to you? Are you prepared to put the three of us first all the time? To hell with loving each other, Sandro, to hell with reconstructing the family. Our parents destroyed us. They lodged themselves in our heads, and whatever we say or do, we keep obeying them.
At this point, given that I’m stupid, I can’t help it and I burst into tears. That’s right, I cry, I cry like any idiot, without knowing why. I’m enraged with myself for this fragility. My brother knows how to take advantage of it. But he doesn’t. He seems shaken by my monologue, he tries to calm me down. So I tamp down my sobs, I dry my tears. My voice turns meek, I complain that no one loves me, not even Mom, not even Dad. They’ve never loved me, I say. And I’m pissed at the gratitude that children owe their parents, for the life they received. Gratitude? I laugh. I shout out: It’s our parents who owe us a compensation. For the ways they’ve damaged our brains, our feelings. Don’t you think? Then I blow my nose. I murmur, patting my hand on the couch, Labes, come here.
The cat surprises me: He leaps up and settles by my side.
7.
I’m tired. Crying has given way to a headache, I suffer from them like Dad. But the tears have also had a positive effect. I feel that the distance between me and Sandro has diminished, and if play my cards right, he’ll be the one to bring up my proposal next. Caressing Labes, I decide to reveal a secret to my brother, something I discovered by chance a while back, when, for work, I was leafing through a Latin dictionary. I tell him what the name means; it means misfortune, it means ruin. He looks skeptical. He knows Dad’s official version, that Labes is the beast of the house. To convince him, I go to the study, immediately trailed by the cat, and pull out the dictionary. Man, it’s hot. When I’m back I sit down on the floor. I find the word, I underline it along with its definitions, then I nod to Sandro. I want him to say something about that wretched discovery. He joins me, unmotivated. Well, he says softly, why would he have done that? He doesn’t say anything else, he seems distracted. I insist: What kind of man invents games like this for his own amusement? Is he depraved? Or just unhappy? Do you realize what it means to want to hear, continuously, through this house, a word that sums up how you feel inside, a word you chose, and that your family uses without knowing what it means? He smiles, faintly, I don’t know if it’s because he’s siding with me, and he finally goes back to talking about selling the apartment.
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