Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  “Michela thinks it’s your fault?” Viberti asked.

  “They both think it’s the fault of whoever stayed with them, the one who went away was thrown out, he’s the victim,”

  but then,

  “They think it’s their fault, they think they did something wrong,”

  but then,

  “She takes her anger out on her brother, but that’s not the biggest issue, I think,”

  but then,

  “They think he wants to start a new family and have other children; sooner or later they’ll ask me how they should act toward those new siblings,”

  but then,

  “They don’t think anything.”

  Viberti asked (trying not to sound concerned),

  “Does Michela mistreat her brother?”

  “No, she’s gentle and protective, they play together, they get along very well, only sometimes she lets off steam and starts shouting, and won’t let him go into her room anymore,”

  but then,

  “She has a strange way of excluding him, even when she’s not angry with him, every now and then she won’t talk to him and I can hear him asking her the same question ten times,”

  but then,

  “She helps him do his homework, puts away his toys when she sees him lying on the bed reading, she’s actually very caring—she acts a bit like a mother but she won’t let me cuddle with him, she pesters me until I make him get off my lap,”

  but then,

  “I don’t think she’s forgiven me for bringing him into the world!”

  Viberti asked (wondering if he was overstepping his bounds),

  “How can they think that your husband wants to start a new family? Who could have told them that?”

  “No one told them, it’s not true, I think it’s the last thing he wants,”

  but then,

  “No one suggested it to them, the fear of having to share him with other children is so strong they just think that, that’s all,”

  but then,

  “Their grandparents, his parents, may have told them that nonsense and then forgotten it a moment later,”

  but then,

  “If you think about it, though, that’s not the strangest thing, the strangest thing is that they’re not worried that I might want to start a new family, they take it for granted that I’ll always be with them, alone, don’t you see?”

  “And is that true?” He blushes.

  “It is, it is.” She stares into his eyes. “They think that because I let them know it, without having to tell them, for fear of losing them I made them understand.”

  * * *

  One day, during those weeks, and for the first time since he’d met her, Viberti reconstructed the chronology of Cecilia’s life, going back in time: she must have qualified at thirty, had Mattia when she was twenty-six, graduated at twenty-four, had Michela at twenty-three, married at twenty-two. Married at twenty-two. It seemed incredible to him, and even more incredible was the fact that he hadn’t thought about it before. He asked her to confirm his calculations, and she did, and started laughing. “You look shocked, what’s wrong?” Yes, he said, he was rather shocked. Where had she found the energy to do all those things at once? Cecilia smiled again, and didn’t answer.

  * * *

  To tell her about Marta, Viberti began with the nightly homecoming scene. For twenty years, ever since he’d moved to another apartment in the building where he was born and grew up, he’d dropped by his mother’s almost every night, at least to say hello, often remaining in the doorway, just to find out if everything was okay, to let her know that everything was okay. Even after his marriage he hadn’t changed that routine; in fact, Giulia often stayed to chat with Marta, and seemed happy in the company of the older woman, who encouraged her, advised her without pressuring her, was a friend to her. When their marriage ended, for Marta almost nothing changed; she received visits from both of them, brought them together by inviting them both to dinner at least once a week.

  Years passed and Viberti still went home every night faced with the same dilemma: whether to stop by and see his mother or for once pretend he hadn’t thought of it. If he was very hungry and couldn’t wait to make himself something to eat, he’d hop into the elevator and press the button for the fifth floor, but then he would stop in front of his door and jingle the keys in his hand, making up his mind whether to go in or not. Especially in spring, when the afternoons seemed to go on forever, the light at seven o’clock took on a mellow, tender tone that wore him down, enveloped him, left him helpless.

  All he had to do was drop by and say hello, a matter of minutes, but that was exactly what stopped him, the ease with which he could go down three flights of stairs, ring the bell, exchange a few words. Something held him back, a vague desire that surfaced through his resignation, and he didn’t want to give in. Yes, he’d go into the apartment and cook himself the steak he’d bought, put the frozen potatoes in the oven, open a new jar of mustard, uncork a bottle of wine, because the evening meal was the only real meal of the day, at lunchtime he never ate more than a salad or a plate of boiled vegetables. Remember that digestion begins at the time the meal is consumed, never eat too fast, there is no hunger or emergency or work or play that can justify devouring a cup of yogurt in ten seconds, theoretically a mouthful should be chewed at least fifty times, but forty may be enough. Reluctantly, he put the keys back in his pocket and went down to the second floor.

  Gathering his forces to ring the bell, he stood in front of his old door, his first door, the door par excellence, the mother of all doors. And magically, without his ringing the bell, the door opened and his mother appeared in the flesh, mainly bones, with a small watering can in her hand.

  “Claudio.”

  “Ciao, Mama.”

  Then mother and son turned their gazes to the plants that adorned the light-filled hallway and together they saw the flowerpot saucers overflowing with water, the soil moist, drenched. Marta made an annoyed gesture with her free hand: “Giulia must have watered them,” she said. Viberti nodded.

  They stayed in the doorway, and he began apologizing for not having come by to see her, even though they had actually seen each other two nights before. She said nothing, prudently, because by continuing the conversation she might be forced to try to remember when she’d last seen her son.

  “You haven’t come to eat, have you?” she asked in alarm.

  “No, Mama, thank you, I have everything ready at home. I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Everything all right at work? Are the glands se-cre-ting? Dear God, what a difficult word.”

  “They’re secreting, all right!” Viberti replied, smiling.

  If they went into the house, by then he’d be sitting at the kitchen table while she went out on the balcony to get rid of the watering can. Though she didn’t cook anymore since Giulia had forbidden her to use the stove, the kitchen continued to be her command center.

  “Can I offer you anything?” she asked when she returned.

  “No, thank you,” Viberti replied.

  “Have you heard from Giulia?”

  “No, not since dinner Sunday evening.”

  “Did you eat at their place Sunday night?”

  She’d been there, too, but Viberti never pointed out her mistakes; he thought it wouldn’t do any good, would only humiliate her. Giulia, on the other hand, thought that continually correcting her would serve to stimulate her memory. Giulia was a gastroenterologist, Viberti an internist and endocrinologist, but since he dealt almost exclusively with old people he felt he was more qualified to speak about geriatrics.

  Hanging in the kitchen (on the refrigerator, usually, with the same colored magnets that held up Giulia’s notes) were recent photos of the two children that Angélica, the caregiver, had left in Peru, and Viberti made some pleasant comment about how nicely they were growing up. For Marta, those were “grandchildren,” too.

  Often Viberti would update her on Stefano Mercuri
’s latest. Marta wondered if the weather was nice on the coast, and Viberti always answered yes, though he never discussed the weather with his old friend. The conversations between them no longer followed the same patterns they had in the past: Viberti would talk solely about politics and medicine, Mercuri would describe the satisfaction he got from tending his vegetable garden.

  “Can I offer you anything?”

  A pigeon landed on the balcony railing, swiveled his head around his purple-and-emerald neck as though performing a relaxation exercise, and stared goggle-eyed at Viberti.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Pigeons are one of the world’s great mysteries,” Marta said, shaking her head. She gestured to shoo him away and the movement of her hand was so frail that she seemed to want to detain him, invite him into the house with them.

  If Viberti mentioned an old acquaintance he’d accidentally run into at the hospital, Marta would speak up immediately. “I remember him perfectly,” she would gush with a triumphant smile, and begin telling her son everything the familiar memory had passed on about the man. It was a simple enough trick—all you had to do was steer her toward the most distant memories, because terra firma lay in the past, whereas the present meant stormy waters where nothing remained afloat for long.

  That’s why Giulia was wrong; it was pointless to torment Marta by making her feel at fault, it wasn’t true that all conversation had become impossible, it was just a matter of finding a safe topic to explore.

  “Can I offer you anything?”

  The formula itself was strange, even more than its repetition. Never would his mother, in full possession of her faculties, have used the word “offer” with her son, so formal, so distant, as though the metamorphosis of the lexicon were an early sign of a more general metamorphosis by which all things, plants, animals, and human beings, would one day become new and unfamiliar, an entire planet of aliens, virgin territory to be classified, identified, treated with aloof politeness.

  “A glass of water, thanks,” Viberti said.

  “You didn’t come to eat, did you?”

  “No, thank you, Mama, everything’s ready at home.” He drank a sip of water. “In fact, I’m going now.”

  Marta went out onto the balcony and came back in with the watering can in her hand.

  “I’ll come with you, that way I can water the plants on the landing.”

  “All right,” Viberti said.

  Going out ahead of her, he commented that the flowerpots seemed wet already, maybe Giulia had seen to it. Marta nodded, disappointed. She went back inside and closed the door, forgetting to say goodbye to him.

  His mother’s world. Not yet an alien planet, actually, not yet a virgin land of new and unfamiliar objects. For now, familiar, battered objects that suddenly appeared where they shouldn’t be. The pots on the stove, for example, charred turnips and carrots, dried-up soup, evaporated water, red-hot metal. Who’d turned on those burners? She had, but in a parallel universe, which she’d left without retaining any memory of it. Standing outside the door, Viberti tried to imagine his mother’s mind, to envision the effect of those sudden apparitions. Of those sudden disappearances. Impossible to remember where she’d placed her glasses just a few moments ago. Impossible to find the money she’d hidden away in a safe spot. It was a world of objects with a life of their own. The life that little by little was slipping away from her.

  Viberti went up the stairs, stopping at each landing to glance out the windows. In the courtyard the light had taken on the shade of spent embers. He looked at his watch; some evenings barely ten minutes would have passed since he’d gone down.

  When I try to put myself in his shoes, that’s how I imagine him: standing between one floor and another, in a no-man’s-land, as if, having left his mother’s house, he doesn’t yet have the right to enter adult life. And I want to say to him, come on, hurry up, because I’m there waiting for you in that adult life, you have to turn your attention to me, don’t put it off. But he doesn’t move. Staring at his watch, he studies the hand’s blithe sweep between seven and nine, stubbornly, firmly indifferent to his mother’s fate, and to his.

  * * *

  Cecilia had a vital gift: her attentive gaze. Viberti’s stories really seemed to interest her. One day, he even managed to speak to her about his father. He didn’t remember ever having spoken to anyone about his father’s death.

  Cecilia had walked into a café where he was having a cup of coffee. Not the usual café, and Viberti had immediately thought that she was looking for him, that she wanted to talk to him. But no, she had nothing in particular to say.

  He asked her, “Did you follow me?”

  “You betrayed our café.”

  “If I know you’re not there, I can’t bring myself to go in anymore.”

  Cecilia smiled. “I didn’t follow you. I saw you from a distance and you looked sad.”

  “I’m not sad.”

  Did she feel guilty for making him miserable, was she troubled by not having noticed anything for a year? He didn’t want her pity. Maybe he should tell her, “Don’t feel guilty.”

  But she changed the subject: “Sometimes I wonder why I studied medicine, why I chose this profession. Do you ever feel like that?”

  “Always. Not every single day, but often.”

  “Was it because of your father?”

  “Because of my father?”

  “You told me he died when you were little.”

  “Not really little, I was fourteen … Why would you think I did it for him? He didn’t think very highly of doctors.”

  “You told me he died of a malignant lymphogranuloma.”

  “I don’t remember telling you that.”

  “A few months ago, remember that man…”

  “Sure, now I remember. But my father died in ’75.”

  He began to feel a strange crawling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “We talked about it because you told me that back then they were incurable, for the most part. Today they would have saved him.”

  “I think so. But what does it have to do with my decision to study medicine?”

  “To save him, to be able to save him in the future.” She broke off, gesturing as she tried to explain. “I mean, to save him in your mind.”

  “Oh. Well, could be.”

  The thing that surprised him—he realized later, on his way home—was that the woman had thought of him. That she had reflected on the matter for days, trying to find an explanation for him, to come up with a story that explained him.

  Every so often he imagined his father dying in his parents’ old bedroom. The precise moment. Since that time he’d had occasion to witness the deaths of numerous patients. “Death rattle,” an appalling term, a frantic tumble down the final slope, “you’ve taken a turn for the worse.” He hadn’t been present when his father drew his last breath, because during the long months of the illness he’d been gone a lot, encouraged by his mother to stay away, to take his mind off things. Marta wanted the boy to remember his father healthy, but there wasn’t much to remember.

  As if reading his mind, Cecilia asked, “Was it a long illness?”

  “Yes, quite a few months, but I don’t remember it clearly, I must have repressed it.” He paused. “No, I don’t think I became a doctor because of that. I wanted to follow in someone else’s footsteps, a friend of my father’s I’m very close to.”

  Cecilia had never met Stefano Mercuri, but she’d heard about him at the hospital, and had read some of his articles.

  “And you, why did you become a doctor?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. When I was younger I wanted to swim.”

  “Oh, yes, you told me.”

  She stared at his coffee cup resting on the counter the way she’d stared at the Scénic’s fallen keys on the ground a year ago.

  Viberti touched her shoulder lightly. “Thank you for following me to talk to me. I’m happy when you talk to me.”


  Cecilia smiled. “I didn’t follow you.”

  * * *

  On the morning of Monday, June 3, Viberti wakes up drenched in the relentless light of day and feels an intense desire for fog. Still, he knows that even if it were November he’d have no hope of being satisfied, since these days the fog isn’t what it used to be. The climate has changed, the pollution level has changed, the city has changed. When he was a boy, on his way to school at eight in the morning, he would sometimes be afraid of getting lost. He couldn’t see a thing ten steps in front of him. Figures would emerge suddenly, as if out of the blue, hazy and featureless and chilled. He’d never again encounter such dismal figures, irritated and fearful, and not only because of the fog. Actually, fog and fear weren’t necessarily related in this memory, which was a reassuring, or maybe just nostalgic one; in the fog you could hide, pretend not to see anything and turn the corner. When he got home, Mercuri, the Communist, would often be there. You could discuss things with Mercuri and try to understand what was happening, partly because, unlike other adults, he had no ready-made answers he passed off as “experience,” and his misgivings made things easier to grasp. Reflecting on Mercuri’s misgivings and what politics were like in the seventies and on politics in general, he gets up and, standing in front of the mirror, remembers that he has to go to a critical union meeting that day: the hospital administrator is out of control, somebody has to stop him.