Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  He had everything he needed for dinner; he didn’t have to go out. He didn’t feel like cooking, however, and sitting alone at the table, and spending the evening on the balcony watching the courtyards until it got dark and then trying to find some game on television. He put on his tennis shoes, a green Lacoste polo shirt, and a pair of blue shorts. They weren’t as short as those he used to go out in when he was sixteen, no one wore those anymore. He took his keys, wallet, and phone and squeezed them uncomfortably into the less-than-roomy pockets. He went out hoping not to run into Giulia or his mother or one of her helpers on the stairs. The late-afternoon air was fresh and the temperature mild—things weren’t covered with a gray patina after all but seemed mellow and inviting instead, edges softened and lines blurred, as if everything were clothed in velvet or terry cloth, or a special rubber that would cushion the day’s falls.

  Leaving the house with his shoes caked with red clay put him in a good mood. Not only that, he felt like laughing; he would have liked to laugh with Cecilia, dragging her along on that nostalgic stroll, happy together, down the crowded streets, then under the trees lining the boulevards, around the piazza with the equestrian statue, once streaked with bird droppings and now black and shiny, and then under more trees, dense with foliage and tapered clusters of white flowers, not yet weary of being so laden. March-April: they put out leaves; April-May: they put out more leaves; May-June, they put out too many leaves, or maybe the ones they put out got bigger, and you could tell they couldn’t handle it anymore, they went from florid to obese in just a few days. Right now, though, the trees weren’t yet corpulent, now, at the end of May, they were in full bloom, tall, sound and vigorous, some heavier, others more slender, and walking beneath their still young canopies, through clouds of downy pollen wafting in the air, Viberti reached Mercuri’s old neighborhood.

  He turned onto a street where there’d been an old movie theater, now demolished, where he’d seen many films with his friend: on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, on rainy days or after playing tennis, agreeing to take a chance, as one normally did then, without discussing what they were going to see, because they weren’t actually going to see that movie, but whatever film happened to be playing in that theater. Viberti couldn’t think about that theater without remembering a movie rated unsuitable for those fourteen and under, his first R-rated film (and he was fifteen at the time). Mercuri hadn’t realized it was R-rated, he just took it for granted that they only showed films for everyone there, because that’s how it had always been. And he thought it was a mystery, “I thought it was an Agatha Christie–type mystery,” he later explained to Marta. “You seem upset, was there something upsetting?” his mother had asked him. Viberti replied that, yes, the part about reincarnation had scared him a little, but then he realized it was all a dream, and Mercuri had confirmed it. What had disturbed him (though he hadn’t told Marta) was the reason the film had been rated R: some rather explicit sex scenes (or so they’d seemed to him). He’d never seen a man and a woman making love, though even in the film you didn’t see their genitals, just two naked lovers embracing and moaning and panting like animals. Viberti was almost more embarrassed by Mercuri’s embarrassment, which he could easily sense from the man’s nervous fidgeting in the seat beside him. Emerging into the afternoon light, they hadn’t mentioned those scenes. Mercuri shook his head and repeated, mortified: “What a terrible movie. I thought it was a mystery because it’s called The Mystery of…”

  In the movie there was a young man who kept dreaming about being someone else and being killed, struck with an oar by a woman in the middle of a lake. The woman was on a boat, dressed, while the man in the dream had dived naked into the dark, oily waters of the lake and was laughing, maybe inviting the woman to join him in the water, a challenging laugh rather than a cheerful one, the woman’s face cold and indecipherable, or perhaps upset and furious (actually Viberti didn’t remember the woman’s face, he only remembered the man’s laughter). The young man convinced himself that the dream had really happened; he began searching for the house on the lake that he’d seen in his dream and he found it. The same woman in the dream, forty years older, lived in the house with her daughter. The young man fell in love with the daughter and slept with her, and the mother, realizing that the husband she’d killed forty years ago had been reincarnated as that stranger, killed him too. Quite a story, Cecilia would have said.

  All he had to do was turn the corner to find himself in front of Mercuri’s old house, incredible that his name no longer appeared on the intercom. And after two more blocks all he had to do was turn left again to find the apartment where Silvia lived. SILVIA K. RE read the name on the intercom. Well, whatever it meant, that K. seemed to go along with the headband that made her appear more imposing.

  * * *

  Now that Viberti had arrived he had no desire to go in. The book might not be in the mailbox yet; was Silvia home or had she gone out? The truth was he hadn’t been listening to her. He pictured her out to dinner with Cecilia. He imagined them having a spirited discussion, the kind they would have had the day he’d surprised them together, judging by Cecilia’s mood afterward. So pressing the intercom button wasn’t too much of a commitment, Silvia probably wasn’t home.

  Instead she answered immediately, asked him what he was doing there, told him to come up, buzzed open the door. Viberti thought of an excuse to justify his sudden appearance; after saying he had no time to read he certainly couldn’t pretend he was eager to get the book. The interior of the house was similar to the one in which Mercuri had lived, late nineteenth-century buildings, solid old houses for artisans and clerks and, later on, railway personnel; the station wasn’t far away. The old houses were still solid, though somewhat grimy and a bit moldy, with a dank smell and the reek of vinegary wine rising up from the cellars, the walls saturated with the odors of life spent cooking or washing or smoking a cigarette on the landing. Would-be “vintage homes,” awaiting gentrification. Pointless to make up excuses, he would say he was curious to see the neighborhood again.

  The elevator went only as far as the fourth floor; for the fifth there were the stairs. Attics converted into studios or two-room apartments. A door painted bright red, like a fire exit, opened the moment he set foot on the landing. Silvia was wearing a very loose black tank over another top, a gray T-shirt, and a pair of black jeans with white stitching that seemed brand new. She didn’t have the black headband on, and her hair stuck out wildly in all directions. She was bent forward a bit, massaging her thighs. She said she wanted to stretch the jeans out, they were too stiff and tight. She rarely found clothes that fit her well the first time, she didn’t wear a standard size, either she was abnormal or everyone else was.

  Viberti stood there smiling idiotically. He’d taken a good look at her when they first met and thought she wasn’t as attractive as Cecilia, and maybe that was true, she wasn’t as attractive as Cecilia, but she looked a lot like her. Not only her facial features, but the way she carried herself and the way she moved her hands and her head; he hadn’t noticed it the first time or he hadn’t wanted to see it, and now the resemblance troubled him.

  Silvia lived in a two-room efficiency: the room they were in had a kitchenette, a sofa and TV, an office area with a desk and computer, and an entryway, but all the areas looked alike because every piece of furniture and every inch of wall space was covered in rows of books.

  “Have you read them all?” were Viberti’s first words.

  “Were you playing tennis?” Silvia asked, ignoring the question.

  “Cecilia told me you work for a publishing house,” he said without answering.

  “For three publishing houses.” She waved at the stacks of paper on the desk, as if to say: Go on, get lost.

  “You correct the mistakes.”

  “Basically, yes,” she said, and handed him the chef’s book.

  Viberti took it and thanked her. He leafed through it seeing nothing but yellowed pages, not even one illu
stration.

  Silvia said she didn’t know if it would really interest him—on the phone it had seemed like he couldn’t care less and then suddenly there he was.

  Viberti smiled absurdly, saying “No, no,” and turned to a poster hanging behind the door; he asked where it was from. The writing was Chinese or Japanese, and the poster depicted several small pieces of fish: red, orange, white.

  “It’s a memorial plaque,” Silvia said.

  Viberti didn’t understand, but he was used to not asking too many questions when patients said nonsensical things, so instead he said: “I’ve never eaten sushi in my life.”

  “You’ve never eaten sushi? I can’t believe it!”

  “I’ve never been to a Japanese restaurant.”

  “So you’ve never been to Japan.”

  “Should I have?”

  “There are two good Japanese restaurants in the area, I’ll send you the addresses.”

  Viberti was about to say that they could go there some evening with Cecilia, then it seemed like a dumb idea and he murmured, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

  Silvia said he wasn’t disturbing her, she wasn’t planning on doing any more work that evening. She didn’t say anything else but meanwhile she moved slightly toward the door.

  Viberti followed her. Then Silvia opened the door. So Viberti crossed the threshold and stepped out onto the landing.

  He turned and thanked her again, holding up the book: “I’ll let you know.”

  They said goodbye almost in a whisper, as if they were both embarrassed at not having shown a little more interest in each other. Viberti took the stairs to the ground floor without using the elevator again, wondering if he’d said something wrong, or if he’d done something wrong by not saying anything else.

  But when he got outside he stopped thinking about Silvia and set out walking slowly, lost in thought, toward the neighborhood’s busiest streets, where the market was held on weekday mornings and where restaurants and grocery stores were still open. He could buy something for dinner, even though he didn’t need anything. He passed an old latteria and was surprised that the dairy shop still existed. Through the store windows he saw people inside hurrying to make last-minute purchases, waving the numbers that ensured their place in line. Every so often along the street I see someone who strikes me and I think: In five minutes I’ll have forgotten him. And then right afterward I feel a sort of panic, oh God, I think, now I’ll never forget him. But with patients it’s different: some cases you can’t help remembering, they get under your skin like thorns, and they don’t cause infection, and they won’t come out, they stay there and then they become part of you. Eating alone as he often did didn’t kill his appetite. He would gladly have eaten the marinated cutlets and Easter pie and potato salad with swirls of mayonnaise and those prosciutto roulades in aspic and the meatballs in tomato and mint sauce that he’d just seen in a shop window. He strolled down the street, unable to make up his mind to turn around and head home.

  Going home was impossible that night, too depressing. Maybe he’d be better off eating in a restaurant. But how could he, dressed the way he was. He was afraid he’d run into an old patient who, out of gratitude, might invite him to dinner. Or that seventy-two-year-old son, the only child, who’d accused him of negligence, and who sent him a letter every year, on the anniversary of his mother’s death, announcing in an increasingly sprawling script that he would never forget.

  He recalled clearly now the sense of security he’d felt as a boy when he would stroll around the neighborhood with Mercuri, dressed in tennis clothes, rackets on their shoulders. The peace of mind that Mercuri’s regular presence had given him, and the peace of mind it had given Marta. She no longer felt alone, abandoned with a child to raise; in an emergency there would be that old friend, and the old friend had always been there, he’d never left them. He’d moved away only much later, after retiring at seventy-two. “Well, well, now, don’t tell me you feel betrayed by Mercuri,” Viberti chuckled, “don’t tell me the old man shouldn’t have gone to live on the coast.”

  There was a Marian shrine nearby where Mercuri had dragged him many times, on their way back from tennis, to show him the ex-votos that adorned the chapels. Mercuri wasn’t a believer, but he loved the votive offerings, the stories behind them. He told him that in the summer, returning home from the hospital, he’d go into the cool darkness of the church to find a bit of relief and there he would play a little game: he’d imagine a different life, someone else’s life, a dramatic event, an accident, a narrow escape, gratitude to the Madonna, and the idea for the small painting or statuette. Viberti had never felt at ease in the church, obviously because of the shorts. Or because of the danger that always lurked at the end of their tennis matches, the chance that Mercuri would insist on going up to their apartment and would find Marta lethargic.

  * * *

  I’d like to continue imagining my father’s languid stroll as he slowly made his way home, submerged by the rising tide of memories. But it would mean imagining another man, with a tolerance for melancholy even greater than his. It’s a strange thought, a strange desire. I don’t think it’s a self-destructive impulse, on my part. I think it’s a desire for symmetry, for simplification, just as things start to get complicated, and the unexpected lies in wait. So I continue creating my ex-voto.

  Thinking about Mercuri, Viberti finds himself in front of a place that unless he’s greatly mistaken is a Japanese restaurant. What a coincidence, he thinks. He tries reading the menu posted outside, but it’s a text for the initiated and he can’t understand much. Why hadn’t he invited Silvia to eat with him? There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that. “What’s the harm?” he wonders aloud. He pictures telling Cecilia that he had dinner with her sister, he pictures her surprise and amusement.

  He takes the phone from his pocket and calls Silvia. He asks her if one of the Japanese restaurants she mentioned to him is called Hasaki, because if that’s its name, he’s found it. But that’s not its name, it would be too easy. Hasaki is a fake Japanese restaurant, the owners are actually Chinese. Not a bad restaurant, but not a real Japanese restaurant.

  Viberti says: “I was rude, I didn’t ask if you wanted to eat something, I’m sorry.”

  Silvia is silent, then she says, “Are you inviting me to dinner?”

  “Yes, actually, I am,” Viberti says.

  Silvia says, “Well, then I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  A moment later she calls him back: “Go in and ask for two seats at the counter.”

  A moment later she calls back again: “Can I come in jeans?”

  What will he say all evening to this crazy woman? Viberti enters the restaurant almost hoping that it will be full, but while the dining room is full, there’s no one at the counter. A Chinese host comes to meet him. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, who can tell. He shows him to a seat. Viberti takes out The Cook, but doesn’t read a single line of it; instead, he watches the real chefs on the other side of the glass, who are cutting the fish with strokes at first slow and cautious, then suddenly swift and brutal, and he doesn’t take his eyes off the spectacle until Silvia arrives.

  She’s put on a green skirt in the same creased cotton as the tank top and T-shirt. “I changed after all,” she announces. She’s also put the headband back in her hair.

  This woman, Viberti thinks, this woman knows no shame.

  She never shuts up. She wants to explain the menu to him. Viberti’s discomfort is physical, as he struggles to get a word in every now and then to show that he’s paying attention. Sitting at the counter is easier, however—he doesn’t have to face his dinner companion and so can keep his eyes on the Chinese cooks, who, pretending to be Japanese, brandish their knives with dexterity, as if the course of the planets and the stars depended on their movements.

  “You order for me, let me sample the main dishes,” he says to stem the tide of words.

  Silvia orders, and out of the
blue, without warning, she’s talking about Cecilia. She says they’re very close, she doesn’t know what she would have done, at certain times in her life, if it weren’t for Cecilia. She isn’t just a sister and she’s not a friend in the traditional sense of the word. She didn’t try to mother her, Silvia wouldn’t have stood for that. She has some issues with the idea of maternity, in particular with the idea of maternal authority. Not with the idea of authority in general. The idea of maternity implies an authority exercised through affection, through the exploitation of affection, which is a paradox. Maybe she was exaggerating, certainly that’s not always the case, and it doesn’t apply to all mothers, of course. Was she exaggerating?

  “I see what you mean,” Viberti says, “yes, it seems a bit of an exaggeration. You were saying that Cecilia wasn’t like that, though. How many years are there between you?”

  Five, enough not to step on each other’s toes. Cecilia serves as a counterweight, she balances her relationship with her mother. When Cecilia got married and left home, in fact, it was a problem for her. She stuck it out until she got her degree and then got out of there.

  “At a certain point it’s time to go,” Viberti says. This is where his monologue would fit in, about the building he’s lived in all his life, but that evening, with that woman, he doesn’t feel like reciting it. He’d told Cecilia the first time they met at the café, so it’s no wonder.