“And I want you to know that I really admired what you did in the supermarket.”
“Thanks.”
(Go fuck yourself.)
There followed a very short pause.
“Vincenzo.
“What.”
(Aaah!!)
“I love you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
(Ooh, you can’t imagine how much. Esepcially if you forget about those checks I owe you.)
I sat there in a trance for I couldn’t say how many minutes, waiting for my disgust with myself to subside, until I realized that I’d left the window open.
“Do you think this buffoonery is going to do you any good?” the busybody angel asked me from the windowsill. I’d hoped he’d taken his leave, after the way I’d gone to town on him the last time.
“Now’s not a good time,” I told him.
“I heard word for word exactly what you were thinking.”
“Then that means you can hear what I’m thinking about you right now.”
He came over and sat down on a corner of the Jonas, as if I’d said, “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Keep it up and you’ll just be leading her on, you cretin.”
“That’s her problem. I have another woman; it’s not exactly a secret.”
And here I have to say that he surprised me, because he refrained from making comments of any kind. A display of generosity that I didn’t expect from him.
“You know what your problem is? You let things take care of themselves through inertia.”
“Excuse me?”
“But things develop and grow just the same—what do you think? And it’s not as if, when you find them big and fully developed before you, you can just say, ‘Oooh, lookee here.’”
“I don’t . . . understand . . . what you’re talking about,” I stammered.
“I’m talking about you.”
I dropped my head.
“She’s the one who left,” I whined pathetically.
“Yeah, exactly. You see what I’m talking about?”
“I couldn’t move. I was there, she was leaving, and I sat there watching her.”
“Well, what if that was the right thing to do?”
“Seriously?” I asked, astonished and beaming.
“Try and look at it from another point of view: for once in your life you were aware of what was happening to you.”
I felt something like a gust of cool air rushing up from underneath me, like Marilyn on the subway grate in that famous movie. I was tempted to clap my hands, I was so enthusiastic about the idea of successfully reenvisioning my status from a dignified point of view—just like that, from one moment to the next.
“Hey, you know that you have a point?”
He nodded and shrugged (implying that this was hardly a new experience for him), then he hopped down off the Jonas and back up onto the windowsill in a way that I wouldn’t exactly describe as athletic.
“Okay. I’m going, then.”
“What?”
“Well, for today my work is done, I think.”
“You’re already taking off?”
“What do you think, it’s fun to look after you?”
I could have answered in kind, but since he’d momentarily earned my gratitude, I let it slide.
Flap-flap.
Taking advantage of my sudden surge of enthusiasm I went to court, just to take a walk around and enjoy the situation a bit, if you know what I mean.
And in fact I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. Everyone turned and looked. Everyone said hello. Even the ones who’d never said hello before. Everyone congratulated me. Even the ones I didn’t know.
The things they ventured to say as commentary on the hostage taking qua trial made me feel awkward and embarrassed, but to see them cluster around me was a joy, truth be told.
From behind my sunglasses (which I never took off once, and in fact I almost fell down the stairs a couple of times), I gave monosyllabic responses. When someone waved a newspaper in front of my face, as if to say, “You represent us all,” I acted shy and self-conscious.
Just one, shall we say, colleague, an old acquaintance (and pretty old, himself), all things considered a perfectly nice guy, one of those people who could live a peaceful existence if only they didn’t feel they were engaged in some perennial competition with the world at large, walked past me repeatedly, ostentatiously refraining from saying hello.
On what was maybe the fifth flyover he came up to me and extended his hand. His jaws were clenched so tight by the effort he was making that I expected him to crack a molar any minute.
I felt as if I could read the subtitles beneath everything he said to me.
“Very moving stuff, Vincenzo.”
(Oh, how I wish a heart attack would strike you down at this exact moment, leaving you conscious just long enough to see me smile as I pretend to call for help.)
“Oh, gee, really?”
“You were very . . . powerful.”
(My God, I hate you so.)
His gaze had taken on the strange fixed expression that is a premonitory sign of a stroke. His ears had even reddened. Any moment now, I swear, I expected him to collapse twitching on the floor.
Luckily, my old friend Massimo came over and frog-marched me off, in defiance of all the rules of etiquette, forcing me to down another expresso.
My sixth that morning.
VINCENZO SUBMITS
TO PROUST’S MINI-QUESTIONNAIRE
The principal feature of your personality?
Did you get my last name?
The quality you appreciate most in another man?
A sense of humor.
And in a woman?
A warm welcome.
Your biggest defect?
I tend to brood. But my secondary defects are every bit as impressive.
When was the last time you cried?
Just a few days ago, while watching a seventies tearjerker, L’ultima neve di primavera (The Last Snows of Spring), on a local channel. Do you remember it? The tagline on the posters was just appalling: . . . Papà, it’s a shame I’ll never see you again.
I don’t believe you.
That’s smart.
Who’s the one person you met who changed your life?
I didn’t remember that this was going to be one of the questions.
*
Excuse me?
Nothing, forget it.
Recurring dream?
I’m in an old apartment, I relax and get comfortable, then suddenly I remember that I sold the place and I’m filled with anguish at the thought that the new owners may come back from one moment to the next.
The person you’d summon back to life?
Massimo Troisi.
Favorite singer?
Sting.
The song you whistle most often in the shower?
“Oh! Susanna.”
Personal cult film?
The Accidental Tourist.
Favorite actor?
William Hurt.
Favorite actress?
Emmanuelle Béart.
If you had several million euros?
I’d be much better off.
Favorite dish?
Spaghetti with spunzilli and basil.
Spunzilli?
Cherry tomatoes.
Favorite drink?
Amarone.
Hardly an unpretentious wine.
Now that I have several million euros in the bank, what should I drink, Tavernello?
Favorite city?
New York.
Your first love?
A total bitch.
The television show you love most?
The satirica
l variety show Magazine 3.
The transgressions you’re most inclined to forgive?
Misdemeanors and petty felonies.
That’s exactly the answer a lawyer would give.
I didn’t feel like coming up with a moralistic answer.
Favorite song?
Fabrizio De Andrè’s “Verranno a chiederti del nostro amore.”
What would you be doing if you hadn’t become a lawyer?
I’d be a rock guitarist.
Why, do you play the guitar?
No.
*
In that case, sorry?
Will you stop making comments about my answers?
What’s your motto?
If you can’t seize the moment, just take a little extra time.
What kind of motto is that?
Listen, are we done?
I have the impression that you’ve given me a series of nonsensical answers.
Sorry about that.
PREMATURE CAPITULATION
I’m heading toward Assunta’s place when my cell phone starts vibrating, forcing me to slow my pace. Without stopping I pull it out of my jacket breast pocket, already resigning myself to have to answer questions from another journalist.
But it’s a text message.
From guess who.
My heart starts playing a piece of speed metal music.
I stop and lean against the trunk of a Smart car parked sideways between a Fiat Panda and a glass recycling bin, and I hyperventilate.
A, shall we say, matron, who is dragging a wheeled checkered cloth shopping cart behind her, walks past me and stares at me with a lack of discretion that I could even forgive if that indiscreet stare weren’t tainted with disgust. So I ball up my fist and shake it at her, as if to say: “You want to tell me what you’re staring at?” and she keeps on walking.
I’ve had enough of those housewives who go around town expressing their opinions of their fellow man by squinting or rolling their eyes. Why don’t you just stay home, if you find modern society so repugnant? What do you think, that you’re so wonderful to look at?
I take another minute before reading, hating myself for the queasiness I feel at the idea of learning the content of the text message that just a moment from now is going to appear on my cell phone screen, and I finally make up my mind.
I’m here.
The flight went fine.
Kisses. Ale
Ah, the flight went fine, I think to myself.
Wow, what a piece of news.
I shut my eyes, reopen them, and reread:
I’m here.
The flight went fine.
Kisses. Ale
And then once more:
I’m here.
The flight went fine.
Kisses. Ale
The total absence of pathos so completely takes the beauty out of the experience for me that I’m ready to believe in magic: and so I go on compulsively reading and rereading this vapid text, as if I expected it to transform suddenly before my eyes into something else, like maybe:
How handsome you were, stretched out on our bed, so sad, resigned to the fact that what we have together is coming to an end. I was an idiot not to tell you how much I love you, in that moment, not to confess to you that I have no idea why I’ve been so stubbornly pulling away from you in the last few months, when you’re the one thing in this world that I want. Forgive me, and wait for me, confident I’ll come back to you. As soon as I can get away from this stupid trial we’ll lock the doors and close the shutters and make love for three straight days (speaking of which, have I told you you’re getting better all the time?).
Just saying.
Instead the text remains unchanged, indifferent to all my entreaties and/or utopian dreams, just like the objects in front of Massimo Troisi when he tries to move them with the power of his mind in Ricomincio da tre.
I take a deep breath.
What a distinctive flavor depression has.
I resume my stride with my cell phone in my hand, and all around me everything becomes muffled. I stop thinking entirely, I just move my legs and walk.
I feel very much like Alan Ford in an old comic book story in which Brenda, his not-quite-girlfriend, gives him his walking papers in a letter, and he wanders down the sidewalks of New York with an idiotic smile stamped on his face (the compositions of the great Magnus go on for two or three pages, with the same unaltered drawing of Alan in the foreground, with only the background of each individual panel changing, signifying the flow of life all around him, indifferent to the despair of the protagonist as he moves through it), until suddenly he stops and bursts out sobbing in the middle of the crowd.
I go on walking for I don’t even know how long in this state of dazed self-pity until I realize I’ve long since walked past Ass’s front door.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s losing control of my mental faculties, so I decree that the time has come to rebel: I position my cell phone in front of me as if to take a selfie, I enter REPLY mode, I concentrate long enough to calculate the degree of resentment to inject into the text, then, accompanying myself with a malevolently satisfied smile (and even though I feel as if my thumb has developed a localized case of Parkinson’s), I compose the following text:
Congratulations on your choice of airline.
It takes me a minute to hit SEND, but in the end I press the button. During the sending process I close my eyes, savoring a sensation of vaguely nauseating lightheadedness that is not entirely unpleasant. When I reopen my eyes, and the display confirms the message has been sent, I slip my cell phone back into my pocket as if it were a .44 Magnum with smoke still pouring from the barrel and I look around, ready for new opportunities.
As I head back toward the front entrance of Ass’s apartment building, I compliment myself effusively.
The situation changes radically when, as I’m ringing the downstairs doorbell, I feel the vibration of an incoming text in my breast pocket.
My legs start trembling, but I act cool, calm, and collected, grabbing my cell phone at the exact same moment that Miorita (Ass’s caregiver) answers the intercom saying, “Yes,” without a question mark, in a tone that sounds a lot like, “Did you really have to ring this apartment, with all the surnames listed there?”
“It’s me,” I say.
She thinks it over for a minute.
I still can’t tell if she’s doing it intentionally.
“Ah, Vinshinzo,” she says, in her accent.
“Yeah, Vinshinzo,” I say (meaning: “Do you think you might open the door now or should we carry on this conversation a little longer?”).
The lock clicks open, accompanied by a buzzing sound like a protracted Bronx cheer.
I shoot a distracted glance at Alessandra Persiano’s reply as I push the front door open to go in.
Perhaps I’d have appreciated it if you’d called me to find out if I’d arrived safely. Do you think that sending me a sarcastic response is going to make things easier? Have a good day.
Shit, I think. And I bitterly curse the moment I let myself give in to my anger and send her that cutting text, from which I already disassociate myself.
How solid her point of view looks to me and how infantile my own viewpoint seems to me now. What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back in time and simply chop off that damned thumb if I could.
After all, I say to myself: I had a reasonable position, founded on omissions and things left unsaid; all that was needed was a dry, terse response (like, maybe: “Good. Break a leg in court”) and I would have seemed remote and austere, but instead I had to ruin my facade of indifference with that stupidly hostile sentence, which revealed my resentment and, with it, my weakness. Practically speaking, I handed it to her, as they say, on a silver platter (when really,
for these kinds of offerings, a plastic plate would be more than sufficient).
This is what always seems to happen with text messages: they give you the illusion that you have all the time you need to make your move and foresee the reactions that you’ll provoke, but instead the opposite is true. When you’re texting you feel all strategic, but you’re simply being impulsive in a whole new way.
When I engage in flame wars via text, all I ever do is step in dogshit. And having stepped in dogshit in permanent written form, the dogshit sticks to me as documentary evidence, Exhibit A for the prosecution.
But I’m not emotionally credible as a witness. I tend to have fleeting bursts of rage, and it takes next to nothing to make me see the opposing side’s arguments, especially if the opposing side is the woman I live with.
In other words, I suffer from premature capitulation. I wonder whether this tendency of mine to capitulate so prematurely is the main cause of the emotional shipwrecks into which I periodically steer myself.
I find Assunta curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a double-faced wool cardigan, with the TV turned on. I don’t like the look of her complexion, to tell the truth. How long has it been since the last time I saw her, three days, four? It seems like two years have gone by.
She looks at me sideways, like she’s just read my mind. I barely have time to come up with some diversion before she can broach the subject.
“I didn’t know you watched Mad Men.”
“I like the guy who plays Don Draper.”
“So he’s the reason you watch it?”
“Why else would I watch a show full of depressed people?”
I’m left speechless for a couple of seconds, as if I’d found the compressed review irreverent somehow, then I realize that I endorse it in the most unconditional terms imaginable. I’ve been watching Mad Men from the first season, and I can’t wait to watch the next one, but I don’t think I would have been capable of coming up with such a stark and essential critique.
My Mother-in-Law Drinks Page 27