She should have thrown us out. We would have liked it. Martyrs.
Instead she asked a question.
What do you think I should do?
To me it was astonishing. But not to the Saint, who was following the thread of his thoughts.
Make her go to church, he said.
She should confess, he added.
He was so frighteningly certain that not even I doubted that it was the right thing to say at that moment. The folly of saints.
Then he told her about us, without arrogance, but with a confidence that was like a blade. He wanted her to know why we believed, and in what. He had to tell her that there was another way of being in the world, and that we believed it was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that without the dizzying height of heaven there remains only the earth, a small thing. He said that every man carries within himself hope in a higher and more noble meaning of things, and that they had taught us that that hope became certainty in the full light of revelation, and a daily task in the half-light of our lives. So we work for the establishment of the Kingdom, he said, which is not a mysterious mission but the patient construction of a promised land, the unconditional homage to our dreams, and the eternal satisfaction of our every desire.
That’s why no marvelous thing must fall in vain, because it’s a stone of the Kingdom, you see?
He was talking about the marvelousness of Andre.
A cornerstone, he said.
Then he was silent.
The woman had sat listening without ever changing her pose, only darting a few quick glances at me, but out of politeness, not because she expected me to speak. If she thought anything, she hid it well. Allowing herself to be humiliated like that, and by a boy, besides, seemed to make no impression on her—she had let him have his say, about her daughter. Without betraying resentment, or even boredom. When she opened her mouth her tone was entirely courteous.
You said that she should go to confession, she said.
She seemed to have stayed there, before the whole speech. That made her curious.
Yes, answered the Saint.
And why should she do that?
To make peace with herself. And with God.
Is that why one confesses?
To wipe out our sins and find peace.
Then she said yes, with a nod of her head. As of something that she could understand. Then she got up.
There must have been a way of putting an end to all that, and the simplest was to thank us, close the door behind us, forget. Smile about it, later. But that woman had time, and she must have stopped being compliant long ago. So she stood there, silently, as if on the edge of a farewell, but then she sat down again, in the same exact position as before, but her gaze was different, with a hardness that she had kept in reserve, and she said that she remembered the last time she had confessed, she remembered when she had gone to confession for the last time. It was in a very beautiful church, of pale stone, whose very proportions and symmetry inclined toward peace. It had seemed to her natural then to seek a confessor, although she had no familiarity with the act, and no faith in the sacraments. But it had seemed to her the right thing to do, to complete that unfamiliar beauty. I saw a monk, she told us. White robe, wide sleeves over narrow wrists, pale hands. There was no confessional, the monk was seated, she sat opposite him, she was ashamed of her short dress, but she forgot about it at the first words, which were from the monk. He asked her what was weighing on her soul. She answered without thinking, she said that she was incapable of being grateful to life and this was the greatest of sins. I was calm, she told us, but my voice wanted nothing to do with my calm, it seemed to see an abyss that I couldn’t see, so it trembled. I said that that was the first sin and also the last. Everything in my life was wonderful, but I was unable to be grateful, and I was ashamed of my happiness. If it’s not happiness, I said to the monk, it’s at least joy, or good fortune, granted as it is to few other people, but to me yes, and yet I am never able to translate it into any peace of mind. The monk said nothing, but then he wanted to know if she prayed. He was younger than she was, his head completely shaved, a hint of a foreign accent. I don’t pray, I told him, I don’t go to church, I would like to tell you about my life, I told him about it, something about it. But I don’t repent of this, I said finally. I would like to repent of my unhappiness. It didn’t make sense, but I was crying. Then the monk leaned toward me and said I mustn’t be afraid. He didn’t smile, he wasn’t paternal, he was nothing. He was a voice. He said that I mustn’t be afraid, and then many other things that I don’t remember, I remember the voice. And the gesture at the end. His hands approached my face, and then one touched my forehead and made the sign of the cross. Lightly.
Andre’s mother had kept her eyes lowered during the story, staring at the floor. She searched for words. But then she looked at us, for what she still had to say.
I went back the next day to find him. No confession, a long walk. Then I went back again, and again. I couldn’t help it. I returned also when he began to ask me to return. It was all very slow. But every time something was consummated. The first time we kissed it was I who wanted it. The rest he wanted. I could have stopped at any moment; I didn’t love him so much, I could have done it. But instead I went all the way with him, because it was unusual—it was the spectacle of perdition. I wanted to see up to what point men of God can make love. So I didn’t save him. I never found a good reason to save him from me. He killed himself eight years later. He left me a note. I remember only that he spoke of the weight of the cross, but unintelligibly.
She looked at us. She still had something to say and it was just for us.
Andre is his daughter, she said. She knows it.
She made a small, treacherous pause.
I imagine that God knows, too, she added. Because he has not been stingy with punishment.
But it wasn’t her look that struck me; it was the Saint’s, a look I knew, which had to do with the demons. He is like a blind man at such moments, because he sees everything but somewhere else—within himself. We had to leave. I got up and found the right words to smooth over the sudden rush—it seemed I had gone there just for that reason, that must have been what I knew how to do. Andre’s mother was perfect, she even thanked us, without a hint of irony. She shook our hands as she said goodbye. Before we left I caught a glimpse of something—leaning against the wall, in the entrance—that absolutely shouldn’t be there, but that undoubtedly was Bobby’s bass. He plays the bass in our band—his bass is shiny black, with a decal of Gandhi pasted on it. Now it was there, in Andre’s house.
We could come back when we wanted, Andre’s mother said.
What the hell is your bass doing at Andre’s house? We didn’t even wait till the next day to ask. A meeting of the prayer group at the parish church that night gave us the opportunity: we were all there, except Luca, the usual business at home.
Bobby turned red, he really hadn’t expected that. He said he was playing with Andre.
You’re playing? And what are you playing?
The bass, he said.
He was trying to laugh it off. He’s like that.
Don’t give us that bullshit, what are you playing with her?
Nothing, it’s for a show she’s doing.
You play with us, Bobby.
And so?
And so if you start playing with someone else you should tell us.
I would have told you.
When?
At that point it was clear that he was upset.
What the fuck do you want from me? I didn’t marry you.
He took a step forward.
Why, instead, don’t you tell me what you were doing there, and what’s it all about, your going to her house?
He was right to ask. I explained. I said the Saint and I had gone to talk to Andre’s mother. We wanted to tell her about her daughter, that she should do something, Andre was destroying herself and her friends.
You w
ent to Andre’s mother to say those things?
I added that the Saint had explained to her about us, about the Church, and what we thought. He had advised her to take Andre to confession, to talk to a priest.
Andre? To confession?
Yes.
You’re nuts—out of your minds.
It was the right thing to do, I said.
The right thing? Do you hear yourself? What can you understand about Andre? That’s her mother, she’ll know perfectly well what to do.
Not necessarily.
She’s a grown-up woman, you’re a kid.
It doesn’t mean anything.
A kid. Who do you think you are, to go and teach her a lesson?
It’s the Lord who speaks, with our voice, said the Saint.
Bobby turned to look at him. But he didn’t notice that blind man’s gaze. He was too angry. You’re not a priest yet, Saint, you’re a kid, when you’re a priest then you can go back and we’ll let you do your preaching.
The Saint jumped on him: he’s fiendishly agile, at such moments. They ended up on the ground. They were really giving it to each other. It had happened so quickly that I just stood there watching. They did everything in an illogical silence, concentrated, fists in each other’s face. Gripping around the neck. Then the Saint banged his head hard, on the ground, and went limp in Bobby’s arms. Both of them were bloody.
So we ended up in the emergency room. They asked us what happened.
We had a fight, Bobby said. A question of girls.
The doctor nodded, he didn’t care. He took both of them through a glass door, the Saint on a gurney, Bobby on his feet.
I sat waiting in the corridor, by myself, under a poster for those buses where you go to give blood. I went with my father, as a boy. They were parked in the square. My father took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeve. Evidently he was a hero. At the end they gave him a glass of wine and he let me have a taste. I’m eighteen years old and already happiness has the savor of memory.
Bobby came out with two band-aids on his face, nothing complicated, one hand bandaged. He sat down next to me. It was late. There was no need to say we loved each other, but I gave him a pat, so there could be no mistake.
What are you playing with Andre? I asked.
She dances, I play. She asked me, it’s for a performance, of that stuff she does.
What’s it like?
I don’t know. It has nothing to do with what we do. It has no meaning.
What do you mean?
I mean it has no meaning, what we do signifies nothing, there’s no story, or idea, nothing. She dances, I play, it’s just that.
He sat thinking. I tried to imagine.
So it’s not a good action, he said, it’s an action and that’s all. It has nothing to do with doing something good.
He said that it had to do with doing something beautiful.
He struggled to explain, and I to understand, because we are Catholics, and are not used to distinguishing between aesthetic value and moral value. It’s like with sex. They taught us that one makes love in order to communicate, and to share joy. One plays music for the same reason. Pleasure has nothing to do with it, pleasure is a resonance, a reverberation. Beauty is just an accident, necessary only in minimal doses.
Bobby said that he was ashamed of playing like that, when he did it at Andre’s house, it seemed to him that he was naked, and that had made him think.
You know when we talk about our music? he said.
Yes.
That we should decide to play our music?
Yes.
Given that there’s no purpose, only me playing and her dancing, there’s no real reason to do it, except that we want to, that we like doing it. We are the reason. In the end the world isn’t better, we haven’t convinced anyone, we haven’t made anyone understand anything—in the end we’re us, as in the beginning, but true. And behind, a wake—something that remains, that’s true.
He was angry with this thing of the true.
Maybe that’s what it is, playing my music, he said.
I could no longer follow him.
Put like that, it sounds like colossal nonsense, you know? I said.
It is, he said. But it doesn’t matter to Andre, in fact it’s like anything that can become emotional irritates her. She wanted the bass precisely because it’s the minimum of life. And she dances the same way. Whenever it might become emotional, she stops. She stops a step before.
I looked at him.
Every so often, he said, I do something that seems to me beautiful, strong, and then she turns toward me, without stopping dancing, as if she’d heard a wrong note. She doesn’t care if it’s beautiful in that way. That’s not what she’s looking for.
I smiled. Did you sleep with her? I asked.
Bobby started laughing. You shit, he said.
Come on, you slept with her.
You really don’t understand a damn thing, do you?
Yes, you slept with her.
He got up. He took a few steps in the corridor. We were alone. He kept walking back and forth until he thought the matter was finished. Luca? he asked.
I called him. He might come, he had problems at home.
He should get away from there.
He’s eighteen, you can’t leave home at eighteen.
Who said?
Come on…
They’re simmering there. Is he coming to the hospital, to the larvae?
Larvae is what we call the sick people in the hospital.
Yes. You’re the one who doesn’t come anymore.
He sat down. Next week I will.
You said that last week, too.
He nodded his head yes. I don’t know, I don’t feel like it anymore.
No one feels like it, it’s that they’re expecting us. Can we leave them shipwrecked in their own pee?
He thought for a while. Why not, he said.
Fuck off.
We laughed.
Then the Saint’s parents arrived. They didn’t ask too many questions, just how was Bobby, and when the Saint would get out. They had stopped trying to understand a while ago, they confined themselves to waiting for the consequences and putting things back in order, every time. So they had come to tidy up, and seemed intent on doing so politely, without causing disturbance. The father had brought something to read.
At one point Bobby said he was sorry, he hadn’t meant to hurt him.
Of course, the Saint’s mother said, with a smile. The father looked up from his book and said in a gentle tone something our parents often say. Not at all.
The Saint, however, wasn’t really better, in the end. They wanted to keep him there, for observation—the head, you never know. They brought us in to him; his parents seemed worried by his underwear more than anything else. A change of underwear. That in the details the world is saved is something we believe blindly.
The Saint nodded at Bobby, and he went over. They said something to each other. Then one of those gestures.
I stayed with Bobby to sign the papers for the hospital, for the prescriptions—the Saint’s parents had already left. When we went out, Luca was there.
Why didn’t you come in?
I hate hospitals.
We went toward the tram, shut up like clams in our coats, breathing in fog. It was late, and in the darkness there was only solitude. We didn’t speak until we got to the stop. Because a tram stop at night, in our cold fogs, is perfect. Only the necessary words, no gestures. A glance when needed. We speak like old men. Luca wanted to know and we explained, in that way. I told him about the afternoon at Andre’s mother’s. In those few words it sounded even more absurd.
You’re crazy, he said.
They went to preach to her, Bobby said.
And she? asked Luca.
I told the story of the monk. More or less as we had heard it. Up to the point where Andre was his daughter.
First Luca laughed, then he thought for a moment.
It’s not true, he said, finally.
She was bullshitting you, he said.
I thought back to how the woman had said it, in search of some nuance that might explain. But it was like beating your head against a wall, nothing came of it. So there remained that hypothesis of a priest in hostile terrain—a low blow. It was better before, us here, them there, to each its own harvest. It was the type of field where we knew how to play. But now it was a different geometry, it was their wild geometry.
Are you coming to the show? Bobby asked. He meant the thing with him and Andre.
Luca had him explain, then said he’d rather kill himself.
And you? Bobby asked, turning to me.
Yes, I’m coming, keep three tickets for me.
Three?
I have two friends who are interested.
The usual two shits?
Them.
OK, three, then.
Thanks.
The tram’s coming, said Luca.
But since they had had that fight, they went together to the mountains, Bobby and the Saint. That’s what we do. When something breaks between us, we seek exertion and solitude. That is the spiritual luxury we live in—to save ourselves we choose what in a normal life would be punishment and penalty.
We prefer to seek this exertion and solitude in nature. We favor the mountains, for obvious reasons. There the link between effort and ascent is literal, and the straining of every form toward the height obsessive. As we walk amid the peaks, the silence becomes religious, and the surrounding purity is a promise kept—water, air, earth cleared of insects. Ultimately, if you believe in God, the mountains remain the easiest place to do so. The cold compels us to hide our bodies and fatigue disfigures them: thus our daily effort to censure the body is exalted, and after hours of walking we are reduced to steps and thoughts—the bare minimum needed, they taught us, to be ourselves.
They went to the mountains and didn’t want anyone to go with them. A pup tent, a few supplies, not even a book or music. To do without is a thing that helps—there’s nothing like poverty to bring you close to the truth. They left because they intended to untangle a knot between them. Two days and they would be back.
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