“Ciao, Annamaria.”
His teeth opened in a smile that scared her.
Michele walked past, without taking his hand off his pet carrier. He introduced himself into the villa as if it were his home, even though it hadn’t been for twenty years now. Annamaria heard him climb the stairs. The idea that he could be heading toward his old bedroom sent shivers down her back.
“Home at last!” she heard him shout from the stairwell.
PART TWO
I went mad, with long intervals
of horrible mental sanity
He climbed the steps, carrying his luggage. He walked into the large storage room that had been his bedroom. He felt the weight in the pet carrier slip off balance. The cat’s ear twitched through the cracks. Michele let go of the rolling suitcase, delicately set the pet carrier down on the terrazzo floor. He went to close the door. As he did so, he wondered whether the cat would feel she had been abandoned. And in fact the cat meowed. He bent back over the plastic pet carrier, undid the fasteners.
The room smelled closed off and stale. During his trips back to Bari he had always avoided going upstairs. Caution mistaken for arrogance. The cat slipped out of the carrier. She sniffed the air of an unknown world. The last time I slept here I couldn’t shut my eyes without the nightmares attacking. The cat crept forward until she reached the dresser. She swiveled her ears. To Michele, it seemed as if she were measuring the forces capable of destabilizing her. He looked at the sofa where all sorts of things were heaped. Faded trousers, evening gowns that no one would ever wear again. On a heap of old sweaters he recognized the owl with the eyeglasses. Berruti Optics. Printed on the volleyball team jersey. The cat wriggled under the armoire, vanishing fearfully into the darkness.
That was when Michele felt the blow. Back again in the house where he’d grown up, the Rationalist-designed villa that he’d learned to despise before that which was in it grew capable of destroying him, he was torn apart by the idea of his sister Clara’s death, horrible, impossible to accept because, once the central load-bearing beam was gone, the rest of the building ought to have already collapsed into dust and instead there he still stood, and that is how he registered the shock that undercut the false idea of chronological succession upon which we organize our life and our days. The illusion of that bridge dissolved as it had when he was a child, and it seemed to him to have thrown open the field of vision. Not unlike a presentiment, he sensed above him his father’s face (and in fact, a few hours later, Vittorio emerged slowly through the front door, advancing as if retreating so that Michele would come towards him, son leaning forward and father offended, as if his absence at the funeral could actually be blamed on Michele; he sensed him arriving in that manner, and so it happened), he sensed the awkward reluctance of his sister Gioia (the minute he stepped out of the storage room he found her in front of him. She threw her arms around him with abandon, a dramatic entrance she must have rehearsed. Undecided as to whether she ought to knock on the door while he was unpacking his bags, on edge at the threshold, retreating into the hallway. Him, in my home. She touched his cheek. She said: “Let’s go downstairs.” She walked ahead, showing him the way, as if he were some first-time guest. In the living room she introduced him to her boyfriend. The young man extended his hand; he seemed uneasy. That, too, was in the previous sensation, when he’d imagined Gioia in search of a system for making him feel at home. In the hand that strokes me, the harrow that draws a boundary), and Michele then sensed a more complicated distaste, something he broke down as he ran the zipper on the suitcase, savoring the sensation, finding it identical at dinner (the cold roast on the tray, the old overhead lamp, and the hand-embroidered tablecloth aside, there was the same impatience in the way that Ruggero got up from his seat, made a phone call, and came back looking at everyone as if eating without having to worry about anything else were a privilege they could enjoy thanks to him—the family reunited, thought Michele in the storage room, and the family that evening did in fact reunite).
As they were eating, Ruggero mentioned Engineer Ranieri. He told Vittorio that they had gone together to visit the head of the orthopedics ward at the general hospital. Michele swallowed. He hadn’t seen the engineer in years. Ruggero went on talking. It seemed to Michele that he was bearing down on everything he said, impressing it onto a sheet of carbon paper to make sure the words came out identical to those he would have uttered if Michele hadn’t been there. As if I had come here to interrupt something. The sensation was so intense in the storage room—and so faithful, when Michele sat down at the table—that now he could hardly tell whether he was still imagining it.
Gioia askied: “Would you pass me the water?”
Ruggero lifted the pitcher. Vittorio announced that the meat was tough. The Bari health care service now had the longest waiting lists in southern Italy, which is to say in Europe. That from Ruggero. From under the tablecloth, Gioia typed something on her iPhone. Annamaria got up from the table. She returned carrying the pan with the asparagus. Gioia spoke to her mother about a subscription that needed to be renewed. Swimming lessons. Annamaria hardened. She lifted the asparagus to her mouth. She chewed rapidly, still and silent. Gioia dropped her eyes. Ruggero, too, stopped talking. Annamaria’s gaze grew drier and drier, suggesting to everyone how each grimace merely corresponded to the mere physical effort that had generated it. Clara’s death had broken the first line of fencing and now a new one was being built in its place. Michele clenched the knife in his fist. He’d gladly have driven it into any of their ribs. Ruggero gestured. Annamaria passed him the bottle of olive oil. He dribbled it over his asparagus. Without a word, Vittorio speared another slice of pork. Gioia started checking something else on her iPhone. Vittorio coughed. Ruggero stifled a cough. Michele let go of the knife. The cat was still upstairs. He imagined her coming out of her hiding place, getting acquainted with her new surroundings. Leaping onto the sofa. From the sofa to the mirrored vanity and from there to the floor so that the old shapes could come back to life. And there, rematerializing after all these years, the night stand. The bed on which Clara would sit on Sunday afternoons. These are Alioth and Mizar, he’d told her, pressing the half-smoked cigarette onto the star globe. Annamaria rose from the table. She came back with the fruit cocktail and served out the portions. Ruggero was eating, head low. Vittorio said: “Tomorrow will be a complicated day.” Michele opened his eyes wide. His palm was soft and damp. Gioia had just grabbed his hand under the table and now she was holding it tight. The thief begs his victim to participate in the theft. But there is nothing in nature that truly needs to be destroyed, he thought, not even this small infamous act. Time will pass, and other words, other actions will overlay these ones, no more making them vanish than a fresh coat of paint can eliminate an obscene drawing before yet another rainstorm brings it all back into the light. Every insult avenged. Michele steeled himself. He understood that in just an hour, he’d ask Annamaria if he could sleep in the storage room, instead of the guest bedroom. I’ll tell her to have a bed put in my old room.
So he returned the grip under the table. Gioia smiled, deceived by his fakery. He swallowed. He saw in advance the uneasiness on his relatives’ faces, then he did what was bound to provoke awkwardness. He coughed. Gripping Gioia’s hand still tighter, he looked up and asked: “What is this, a morgue?”
Stretched out in bed. One arm propped behind his neck, the other stretched out in the direction of the armoire.
Jump, don’t be afraid.
In the open window, two poplar trees swayed where he once would have seen an industrial shed behind a row of white houses. Twenty years ago, when the trees were newly planted. The cat peered out from the top of the armoire. She leapt into the void and landed on the mattress. Michele smiled. Out of the scent of jasmine he’d extracted a hint of lead wrapped in a whiff of hairspray and Styrofoam. Beauty parlor, appliance store. The smell of the city wafted all the way out here.
&
nbsp; He’d been back home for three days. Sadness acted on him like a river on rock. Then it was he who became water. Down below, on the ground floor, his father’s wife was chatting on the phone. The cat was sinking its claws into the carpet after eluding an attempted tackle. Annamaria was talking, and the timbre of her voice became that of a woman still young. The red plastic table. The old Grundig with the luminous dials. Denim shirt and shorts that left her bronzed legs bare.
“Half crazy. Luckily I never had to meet her. Though I would have paid good money for a picture of her.”
She lets the phone line wrap itself around her wrist. A body that two pregnancies haven’t robbed of appeal. Michele comes down the stairs. He’s four years old. A rag-doll wolf clutched in his hand.
“He was in a mixed-up phase, I just had the level head to wait it out. I wouldn’t be able to tough it out another time.”
Annamaria does a half pirouette. She frees her wrist from the phone cord. She drops some ice into her grapefruit juice and shakes the glass. Michele watches her as he walks from the living room to the sofa. He hurls the wolf into the cushions and throws himself after it. He keeps eavesdropping. She says that certain women are worse than sharks. Attracted by the smell of money. She says that the children shouldn’t inherit the sins of the mothers. She pauses. “I’m honestly doing my best.”
Michele feels a film of cold sweat settle over his back. He understands that Annamaria isn’t talking about Clara or Ruggero. He pricks up his ears, convinced he’s caught her out. It doesn’t occur to him that the woman might actually be raising her voice to make sure he can hear, too. What is it that’s so terrible about me of all people?
“A misfortune.”
And so in the end Annamaria tells that story, too. She’s clearly talking to someone who hasn’t kept up on the events of recent years. She utters the word “deceased.” She says that the woman was leading a wild life. That’s why she died bringing the child into the world. Reckless. Maybe taking drugs, who knows. Annamaria thanks her lucky stars. As she does she hits a false note, identical and contrary to the one Michele is convinced he’s detected in the vowels of “misfortune.” “Luckily, the child survived,” she says.
Michele lies there with his head among the pillows. He’s stunned. He thinks about Ruggero and Clara. He intuits that he ought to play with them, that every once in a while they ought to roughhouse, the way siblings do around the world. But those two keep their fighting to themselves. “You damned idiot!” Ruggero had shouted just the other day, slamming his fist down onto the table. Michele would give anything to be included in these fights, but that desire is just a protective shell to keep from now having to touch the other end of the problem. Annamaria. Michele calls her “Annamaria”: while Ruggero and Clara have always called her “Mamma.” He’d never thought about it. But if I call her “Annamaria,” that means I knew. At a certain point they must have told me. How can it be that I’m only realizing it now?
(No one had ever explained anything to me, he’ll realize years later. If they had, I would remember it. As long as he’s a child he’s incapable of understanding, the problem doesn’t really exist, they must have thought, and when things finally come into focus for him, it will be as if it had always been that way. Ruggero and Clara, for their part, will always feel the presence of a boundary beyond which lie dangerous territories, unknown sorrow and shame. They won’t cross that boundary).
Annamaria hangs up the phone. She’s not my mother, the child thinks again, perplexed. If he tries to imagine her now, the woman who brought him into the world, he can’t associate her with anything human. Not a mouth, not a pair of hands. Annamaria emerges from the kitchen. Her footsteps move away. Impossible that she didn’t see me. A malevolent black shape remains carved into the air for a number of seconds, and then vanishes. It reappears inside him. Michele feels his head fill with voices, sounds. They say strange things, phrases so atrocious that he could never bring himself to repeat them. Michele is disconcerted. What ought to glitter in a steady and constant stream of light begins to slide downward. Something is getting turned around in the wrong direction.
On a sunny day a few years later I disappeared from circulation, he thought, looking at the cat on the other end of the bed.
Second grade. After the bell rings, all he has to do is wait for Engineer Ranieri outside the teachers’ lounge. When the engineer doesn’t come, all Michele needs to do is walk through the courtyard and climb onto the school bus. Instead, that day Michele vanishes. When Vittorio phones the school, they tell him that his son never boarded the bus. Engineer De Palo and Engineer Ranieri are unleashed to pound the pavement inch by inch, searching the city in their station wagon.
Michele reappears at four in the afternoon. His father is at work. Annamaria walks from one room to the next in the villa. She’s carrying two gym weights. After her last pregnancy, she’s getting back in shape. Gioia is upstairs with the nanny. Annamaria puffs, lifting the weights toward her one after the other. At a certain point she freezes. Something there, outside the screen. Motionless among the calla lilies, emerging from the still-warm autumn light. And he’s wet. Completely drenched, right in the middle of the garden, as if someone had dumped buckets and buckets of water over him. Annamaria drops her weights. She goes over to the french doors. She opens the screen. To her surprise, she catches herself calling him as she would some wild animal.
“Michele,” she rubs her thumb between the tips of her middle and index finger.
The child turns around. He walks toward her.
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.”
He really doesn’t know. He can remember neither exactly what drove him not to board the school bus, nor why he is in that state. He did know just a little while ago, but a sudden surge of thoughts must have pushed the information somewhere beyond reach.
That night his father scolds him.
“You frightened us,” he says. “Annamaria spent the whole afternoon trying to find out where you were.”
That’s not true, thinks the boy, avoiding his eyes.
One afternoon Michele forgets to convey the message that his father’s father has been rushed to the hospital for appendicitis. (He picked up the phone before dinner, before anyone else was home.) Another time, he found an address book full of phone numbers in his hands, while Vittorio searched the house for hours, investigating every nook and cranny. He’d be likely to walk away from his own birthday party, if they ever held one for him. It’s clear that the child has a complicated relationship with reality, to say the least.
Certain school assignments are there to prove it. Classroom dictations. When he turns the paper in to the teacher, it’s impossible to say what he’s done. He started writing only after the voice had already been pronouncing the words for some time. Or the opposite: he starts out just fine but breaks off halfway through. Certain times from his papers there emerges a single phrase transcribed faultlessly, something that in any other situation might perhaps have a bizarre oracular value, but which is incomprehensible if the purpose is to evaluate a second grader.
The fact is that his teacher’s voice reaches him from another world. A ghost that you can hear before it returns to its own dimension. Then, quiet falls again, Michele shouts “I’m coming!” to the other voice that calls him from downstairs. Certain afternoons, the sky begins to turn to liquid. High above, holes open, larger and larger, so he can look through them, seeing the rows of desks and, further back, the teacher’s desk. There it’s always morning, while here the sun is close to setting. The sky closes up again, the teacher disappears. Michele finds himself back by the open window. His mother has called him for his snack (a voice so sweet and full of life that it seems brand new to him every time he hears it). As he closes the shutters, Michele reviews the serialized stories that he’s dreamed up in the past few days. That one time his character didn’t board the school b
us and walked to the park instead. After stretching out on the grass, he was caught off guard by the sprinklers. Another time he risked his life for having hidden a powerful mafia boss’s desk diary. Fantastic stories. Adventures.
It would all be fine, except that occasionally Michele remembers that he’s also invented a gray classroom as the sky swings open and that classroom actually reappears. Aside from the shivers from the short circuit, the child is also touched by a suspicion. The afternoons pass, but he’s never once gone downstairs for his snack. His mother has called him, he’s always been right on the verge of leaving the room, but he’s never done it. He hasn’t gone to her, he hasn’t plunged his face into her soft hair. If someone asked him to describe her physically, he’d actually have a hard time. Is her nose pointed or tip-tilted? Are her eyebrows dense or elongated like doll eyebrows? And then, come to think of it, the voice. This wave of warmth that calls his name every day, if it’s not clear to what physical body it belongs, doesn’t it therefore resemble a silence that expands like wine in a pond? A slender body runs in the garden. A black silhouette against the October sun leans over him when Michele turns his gaze elsewhere.
Clara.
And then there was the episode with the shit.
One afternoon his mother calls him for his snack. He shouts: “Coming!” and looks at the sky through the open window. The swallows disappear into the blue belly. Michele turns, sees the teacher’s desk. The room is elongated like the accordion-folded sleeves of certain old cameras. The desks are jumbled together. Salvemini. The teacher has called his name for the second time. Michele raises his hand and says “Present” and immediately regrets it because every action he undertakes on this side threatens to take him away from the other side. He feels something under his shoes. The teacher pronounces other surnames. The girl in the row ahead of him raises her hand. Before lowering it, she turns in his direction. Michele pulls his pens out of their case. There it is again, a strange lump on the footrest. Another little boy turns uneasily in his direction. Michele looks down and is frozen to the spot. He splits the next instant into ten parts, and each of those into ten more to better handle the catastrophe. He’s stepped on an enormous piece of shit and carried it into the classroom with him. They’re all about to notice it and he, watching the progress of events in slow motion, reconstructs the emotional slap in the face that’s about to hit him just before it can happen, a secret sorrow that comes before the full-blown one and defeats it, leaving a part of him inviolate.
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