The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  But at a certain point they become actual words. I understand them and Zot must understand them too since he squeezes my arm under the blanket. And we listen breathlessly to this warped voice that doesn’t even sound like his. It’s deeper, as if it were coming from far away, rising and falling real weird. Weirder yet is what he says: “The chestnut . . . under the chestnut . . . hurry . . . I’m waiting for you under the V-shaped chestnut tree.”

  I swear that’s what he says.

  EVERYONE IS HAPPY UP THERE

  A faint garbled noise has persisted since they left Ghost House. For a minute Rambo had imagined it was coming from inside the bag on the seat next to him. Moaning, maybe, or maybe the nails of Marino’s mom had thawed out and were starting to move again and scratching the plastic to get free. That’s not it. Clearly that’s not it. To entertain the thought for even a second is ridiculous. But hell, when you’re driving beside a dead woman it’s hard to remain sharp and lucid.

  Anyhow, the noise has a simple explanation: the wheels of the Panda are scraping the frame under the weight of their load. Marino explains it to him, half prone in the backseat, his voice pained but rational. He’s been like this since Rambo arrived at Ghost House with the old lady. On the way there he had thought of a thousand ways of clarifying the situation to his friend, ways of getting it through to him that they had to move out, that they had no alternative and there was no time and they had to do something quick. But Marino was already convinced they needed to do something. He’d even come up with a killer plan.

  He’d sent Rambo to pick up black garbage bags, rope, and the cinder blocks outside Ice Dream Gelato.

  “What cinder blocks?”

  “The ones used for umbrella stands.”

  “What are we going to do with them?”

  “We need weight and Ice Dream has the heaviest blocks. The ones outside the bar in front of the newsstand are heavy too, but that’s too far downtown and someone could see you. Ice Dream is the perfect weight-to-risk compromise. Get four.”

  “Heck, I’ll get five.”

  “Overkill. Four will do. Now get going.”

  And Rambo had gone, and sure enough it was a desert outside the gelato shop and the cinder blocks were seriously heavy. He’d loaded them into the trunk of the Panda and returned to Ghost House, broke his back for good carrying Marino and then Marino’s mom to the Panda, and they were off. Then came this godawful sound, but it’s not her scratching the bag, it’s the wheels abrading the fender of this shitty car in this shitty night and how things will turn out Rambo hasn’t a clue. Luckily Marino knows everything. His degree of pragmatism and clear-headedness is frightening, apart from the occasional mention of partisans that Rambo doesn’t understand, but now is not the time for understanding.

  “We’re going to Bagno Italia. It has access to the sea. We’ll run to the beach and snag the paddleboat closest to the water.

  “Okay. Let’s hope we find a paddleboat with oars.”

  “Now that squid season has begun, it’ll be full of paddleboats. We’ll find as many as we want and pick the one closest to shore.”

  They ride on, all the way to the coastal road, which during the summer is noisy and lit up at night, with cars zipping by, so many that if you drank in the thousand headlights passing by they’d turn into a shimmering river carrying you toward life, toward possibility, toward the future. Now, a month later, there’s nothing but a Panda Italia ’90 struggling to cross it, and on this long stretch of asphalt flanked by closed beach clubs and closed restaurants and closed discos, it’s just the two of them. Or three, if Marino’s mom counts. But maybe she doesn’t count.

  “You sure the sea is our best option?”

  “Yes,” says Marino.

  “It wouldn’t be better if, for example . . . don’t take this the wrong way, but wouldn’t it be better if we burned her?”

  “No. That’s overkill. Mom has to disappear but with the utmost dignity. Setting her on fire is out of the question.”

  “You’ve got a point. But say there’s a storm and she washes back up.”

  “With the cinder blocks that would be impossible. She’ll sink to the bottom and the sand will gradually cover her. If you think about it, it’s the burial of a lifetime, at the bottom of the blue sea instead of underground with the worms. See, Mom loved two things: going to the beach and keeping me out of trouble.” As he speaks, Marino smiles and points upward. “You know, Rambo, I feel like at this moment Mom’s happy up there. I am too. And so are the partisans.”

  JELLYFISH SEX

  If you want to sleep alone, you can take the car and I’ll sleep outside. Really, it’s not a problem,” says Sandro, opening the rear hatch of the jeep.

  This magic hole they call a mouth continues to surprise him. Like a magician’s hat, out come rabbits, flowers, doves. Anything can escape your mouth, except what you’re really thinking.

  Yet Serena doesn’t answer him, just enters the jeep, so he climbs in and removes the seats, which were designed to make room for shovels, pitchforks, submachine guns, ammunition chests, and whatever other paraphernalia could come in handy for the owner of a tank like that. Or for the two of them to lie down, if this amazing woman, her hair dancing in the moonlight, should say that no, she doesn’t mind if he sleeps there. But no such luck; she just spreads a towel out and sits down and her eyes wander over the metal body of the car and the large side windows and the small windows on the roof framing the stars. Finally Serena’s eyes land on him, and even if eyes that magnificent tell you a million things all at once, each frighteningly profound, in reality Serena says nothing. So Sandro tries to smile, waves his hand, climbs down from the jeep, and starts to close the hatch.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Um, outside. Or in the tent with the kids.”

  “There’s no room in the tent.”

  “True. On the ground then. It’s not a problem. It’s not that cold out.”

  “Right, sure it isn’t,” says Serena. She lies back, crosses her arms behind her head, and looks at him from down there in all her beauty. “Where do you think you’re going? Come here.”

  Sandro swallows deeply a few times, nods, and tries to keep from smiling too much. Go on, Sandro, go on, Sandrino, tonight’s your night. She told you she’ll sleep with you. She said “Come here,” in a voice as steamy as the radiators in Aunt Gilda and Uncle Athos’s house. Athos had fought in Russia and endured such cold weather that he never wanted to endure it again, so they blasted the radiators year-round. Five minutes at their place and fruit would rot. One time they got a goldfish that practically died on arrival, slowly boiled in its bowl. That’s the effect this insanely hot woman’s voice has on him—clearly she’s the woman for him—and she’s lying there in the moonlight asking him to come to her. A woman who the day before only wanted to punch and kick him, and now she’s agreeing to sleep together. Well, not exactly together, but pretty damn close. And Sandro needs to remain calm and navigate this smoothly. Step by step, Sandrino, step by step.

  He gets in the car and closes the hatch behind him as if he were shutting out the rest of the world. Beat it, universe, go screw things up elsewhere. Leave us alone tonight.

  Sandro lies down next to Serena and would like to hurry up and say something intelligent but nothing comes to him. So he racks his brain for something perhaps not so intelligent that will at least fill up the silence, but not even that comes to him. Luckily she thinks of something.

  “Look, now you have to tell me.”

  “Tell you what, sorry?”

  “The story from before. You can’t start to say something like that and just stop; tell me what happened.”

  “Oh, nothing. Actually I was making it up as I went along. Maybe it ends with him turning into a werewolf and killing the bat. Or maybe he finds his way back to the road and is saved. Or maybe—”

&nb
sp; “Who cares about that story? I meant the thing at school.”

  “ . . . ”

  “Come on, that thing before in the church, what I did at high school that you said was one of the most beautiful moments in your life. What did I do? I don’t remember.”

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t even remember that I went to school with you.”

  “It’s not that I don’t remember you; I’m convinced you weren’t there.”

  “What?” Sandro tries to sound offended but can’t help laughing. “Not only do you not remember me, now you want to erase five years of my life.”

  “It’s just I really don’t—”

  “Go ahead. Erase them. You’d actually be doing me a favor. Five shitty years.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Nothing went the way I wanted. I wanted the girls to throw themselves at me and clearly none of you even noticed I was there, and as if to make up for that, all the guys threw themselves at me—to kick my ass.”

  “Kick your ass? Why would they do that?”

  “Because I wasn’t like them. I was a rebel. I was punk.”

  “Wait a second, were you that guy with the red mohawk and the pin in his ear?”

  “No, that was Bindi.”

  “There, see, him I remember. He was hot. Did you have a mohawk?”

  “No, I was—I had long hair. I mean, longish. And I wore this leather jacket with pins.”

  “Huh. I don’t think you were a rebel. If you were I’d have noticed you. I’ve always been into rebels, unfortunately.”

  “Hold up. You were into posers, like your fiancé Fiori. It’s easy to rock ratty clothes and play the guitar on the road when daddy’s a notary and you go home and there’s a housemaid to heat your supper. You know what happened to Fiori? Same thing that happened to all of his kind: he wears a coat and tie to breakfast and dinners he organizes at the Lions Club. Some rebel your friend turned out to be.”

  Sandro unravels; it’s a subject that pisses him off and he’s even raised his voice. Serena remains silent for a minute, long enough to make him worry. Fool, all he had to do was talk and let her talk, crack two simpatico jokes, smile, and gradually snuggle up to her. Instead he got carried away thinking about that asshole Fiori who had once snatched a Dead Kennedys button from his backpack, spat on it, and placed it back. “There,” he’d said, “Tomorrow I’ll wash another for you.” Even today, more than twenty years later, that dick continues to ruin his life, putting poisonous words in his mouth to repel Serena.

  Only they don’t. Fortunately after another moment she starts talking again. “I know he’s rich and sad, but do you know what’s really sad? That I was with him for a year and I left him right after discovering he was rich. Tell me I’m not a fool.”

  “No, Serena, you’re not a fool. You were right to leave him. He may have been loaded, but imagine how depressing your life would have been.”

  “Hah. And look at me now—sheer joy.” She pulls herself up, leans toward the window, and looks out at the dark and the tent surrounded by the dark. It must be peaceful out there, because a minute later she turns back and lies down next to him again. And maybe it’s just him, but he senses Serena’s a little closer now, her hand on the carpet almost touching him.

  “All right, time’s up. Tell me what I did in high school that you liked so much.”

  “Okay. I mean, it’s no big deal, you probably didn’t think twice about it.”

  “Probably not, but now I want to know.” She turns on her side and draws about an inch closer, which may not be much but Sandro can feel her all over his skin.

  And that may explain why he doesn’t know where to start. He takes a deep breath, so deep his lungs hurt, but along with the air he inhales Serena’s scent, which helps him launch into the story.

  “It was the end-of-year senior dance, at that club on the coastal road that’s now been converted into apartments.”

  “La Caravella.”

  “Right, that’s it. You were out in the middle of the dance floor circled by a bunch of guys who were trying to dance with you.”

  “Ah,” says Serena briskly. She looks at him quietly for a moment, then: “And one of those losers was you.”

  “No, I was in a corner with my friends, by the bathroom.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “What I was doing doesn’t matter. I don’t remember. Most likely we were talking shit about everyone who passed by and the commercial music they were playing.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “There wasn’t anything else to do. Besides, no one was paying any attention to us. Anyways, you were off dancing and every guy in school was standing around you trying to catch your eye. The saddest people imaginable. And at one point . . . at one point someone on the dance floor fainted, just dropped to the ground.”

  “What? I didn’t see that. I wasn’t aware.”

  “Of course you were, you were the first person to run over there. You went and—”

  “No I didn’t. Look, I may be an idiot but I would have remembered that. If someone fainted in front of me there’s no way I’d forget it.”

  “In fact he didn’t faint faint. Maybe he just slipped. But you ran over and caught him before he fell, because otherwise . . . otherwise, I don’t know, he may have cracked his skull and . . . ”

  “Well, aside from the fact that that doesn’t seem like such a fantastic feat to me, I don’t think it actually happened.”

  “Of course it did! I saw it with my own two eyes. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Oh really? So what was I wearing?”

  Sandro doesn’t answer her right away. He looks at Serena, focuses on her with all his strength as if he could see through time. He can’t screw this one up. He has to stay calm and not screw this one up.

  “Let’s see, you were wearing the same kind of army pants you have on now, an undershirt and a button-down shirt; I can’t remember whether that was army too or denim.”

  “Good guess. I’ve always dressed like that.”

  “Fine but that’s not my fault. And see, I remember.”

  “No, actually, you don’t,” says Serena. Except she says it strangely. Her tone has changed. In fact Sandro catches it and stops studying her hips and looks back up into her eyes, which shine in the dark with a light he doesn’t like anymore.

  “Of course I do.”

  “No, that’s not what I was wearing. I was in pajamas and gym socks that night.”

  “Yeah right, that’s not true. No way you’d come to the dance in pajamas.”

  “My point exactly. I never went to the dance. I stayed home.”

  “What? That’s impossible. I was there that year. Or maybe it was the year before—”

  “Never went. I already had to see those losers at school; you can imagine my desire to run into them at night. Besides, the principal would announce the winner of Miss High School, and every year it was me. Do you think I had any interest in getting up on stage and . . . No, I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. Plus you’re a fool. I mean, you liked me that much and didn’t realize I never went to the dances?”

  Sandro looks at her. He doesn’t answer yes or no. He tries to come up with the right answer, although clearly there is none. Finally he throws up his hands and looks down. “I don’t know, Serena, I never went either.”

  An infinitely long moment of silence. Then: “So why even say that crap?” Serena sits up, looks at him, and appears about to leave, but then stays. “‘You know, in high school you did this beautiful thing that I’ll never forget’—and then you make up some garbage about the end-of-year dance. What was the point? Are you making fun of me? Huh? Is this your idea of fun?”

  Sandro doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything, just looks at her. He’s an imbecile and knows it. This fairy tale about the da
nce was totally pointless, it was bound to blow up in his face, yet he still said it to avoid saying how things really stand. That’s his problem: for him, “how things stand” are meager and lousy, which is why he tries to boost himself up with other stuff, stuff he accumulates in the hopes of looking a little less sad. But then that stuff collapses and all that’s left standing is the squalid truth, caked in dust from messes like this.

  But not this time; this time things can’t end that way. Sandro feels strange, out of breath. He sits with his back to the window and suddenly something crazy and frightening slips out of his mouth, like in that documentary where the guy goes to Costa Rica and eats a piece of fruit, inside of which is a kind of worm, and the insect grows in his body and one day out of nowhere he feels something in his throat, opens his mouth, and out comes this gigantic cockroach.

  Well, the same things happens to Sandro now. Only out of his mouth comes this absurd thing called the truth.

  “Listen, Serena,” he says, trying to look her in the eye. “I’m a fool, but you already knew that, so please don’t get mad. True, I made up that story about the dance, but only to tell you a specific day, a beautiful thing you once did. But it wasn’t like that with you; you were always beautiful. Doing the occasional beautiful thing would be too easy. Take serial killers. When they’re caught, the neighbors on TV always say that they can’t believe it, that he was such a nice guy, this one time he lent them milk, another time he got their cat to climb down from the roof. One time, yep, then the day after he opened folks up with a chainsaw. Do you know how many people I’d run into on the street after school who would wave and smile, then the next morning in front of everyone else they’d make fun of me or draw dicks and swastikas on my Vespa. But not you, Serena. You were different because you were always the same. You were always you, every time I looked at you. And I looked at you a ton. One time I even thought about buying a tiny camera advertised in a magazine, the kind spies used, it said, to take photos of you. I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I mean, I am a little, but I’m telling you anyways: I thought about it. The only reason I didn’t buy it was because they said it would take a month to arrive. It was May and school was almost out. At any rate, I wanted to take pictures of you, but not because you were pretty. I mean, you were pretty, you were beautiful, and you are now. It’s absurd; you’re even more beautiful now. That’s true and you know it and don’t deny it. But that’s not the reason I wanted to take pictures of you. I didn’t want to photograph your ass or your tits and jerk off to them at night. I mean, maybe that too, but that wasn’t my number one motive. My motive was that I wanted to photograph what you looked like when you arrived at school, what you looked like when you left class, when the principal told you that you had to wear the Miss High School sash and you didn’t even answer him. I wanted to take a photo of who you really are, always and only the way you wanted to be, everywhere and with everyone, not worrying about fitting in, not even noticing whether you did or not, and you went on gracing people with this beauty. They may have been idiots and morons and imbeciles, but I promise you they were aware of your beauty. That’s what I wanted to take a picture of, since a picture makes something that is really a moment and which you’ll never encounter again last forever. In fact I never came across anything like it again, year after flat, indistinguishable year. Up until last winter, when I returned to school and met Luca. Luca was like that, just like you, and I may not have a dime but if I did, I’d bet it on Luna growing up to be like that too. You can already tell. You raised two amazing kids by yourself, without a father or anything, and that’s how they turned out. What have I done? You got me. I haven’t done dick. I can’t even say that I succeeded in doing what I wanted to in life, because I didn’t even try, I just put everything off. And I mean everything. On my desk is a letter from a kid in elementary school. I found it in the pine grove one day, attached to a balloon that took this crazy journey and landed there, and all it asked in return was a postcard. But after that long journey the balloon had the bad luck of ending up with a guy like me who brings it home and says, ‘Tomorrow I’ll buy a postcard and put it in the mail,’ then tomorrow turns into the next day, then the next . . . Nine years have gone by, Serena, nine years! What would it have cost me to pick up a postcard and write, ‘Get fucked,’ and mail it? But no, all I did was put it off—the way I did with everything—until one day it’s too late and you can’t even try anymore, the thought alone makes you hang your head. You look around and find you have nothing that you wanted, you don’t even know what it is you want. As a matter of fact, maybe I don’t want anything. Scratch that. I know what it is I want, Serena. I want you.”