He flies away, the young man does. As if the old man’s folly had infected him. As if really, now, in order to sing a song, he felt the need to become the person who wrote it. And the funny thing is that the spectators, the other musicians, the chorus dancers, and the technicians not only don’t seem to notice his absence, but actually seem to be more deeply moved, more engaged, more likely to accompany him.
You’re crazy, old man, he thinks. But what a wonderful craziness it is.
The young man has learned not to display his impatience. When the old man is ready, he’ll speak or he’ll play. There’s no use in insisting. It’s pointless to fill those silences with questions. After all, the old man just wouldn’t answer. He’d continue to calmly stare out the window, which he closed on the autumn outside as soon as he finished the verse with a chord cut off in the middle, without the slightest finesse. A meat cleaver brought down upon that wonderful song. Who knows why, the young man wonders.
The evening has come, dark and charged with expectations. The wind cleanses the air, and now and then raps at the windows, as if it were objecting, as if it wanted to know why it too has been left outside. The young man has the sensation that before long, along with the wind, someone else will knock, having risen in who knows what fashion all the way to their floor to keep an appointment with the old man, right on time. Because it strikes him as more than evident that the old man is waiting for someone. Or something. The old man is seated at the edge of the armchair, his back straight, his hands on his knees, attentive, while the darkness grows denser and denser and the city lights up, designing an earthbound constellation.
Suddenly the old man gets to his feet, as if he’s just identified some precise moment, one which was—only apparently—no different than the moment preceding it and the moment following it. He leaps suddenly to his feet, with a surprising agility, and the young man, immersed in his thoughts and his customary sense of discomfort, is startled, as surprised as if a pistol shot had suddenly gone off.
The old man furiously throws the window open and takes a deep breath, with his eyes closed, as if he hadn’t had any fresh air in who knows how long. Then he turns around, a smile on his wrinkled face, a confidential note in his voice; he resembles someone who wishes to share a torrid secret. “Come here,” he says to the young man. “Come over here, next to me.”
The young man walks over to him, perplexed. He looks out. The street, the low building across the way. A group of kids sitting on a low wall chatting a little further away. And the expanse of buildings, the dark mass of the sea, the line of mountains that can barely be glimpsed. The far-away lights that tremble like candles. But what else is there? the young man wonders. What other stupid image am I supposed to perceive? What’s more, it’s cold out. What’s more, the autumn is gaining the upper hand. What’s more the wind, free to enter the room now, is tossing his hair, scattering the sheets of paper, turning the pages of the books.
“Well,” asks the old man, “what do you see? What do you hear?”
The young man doesn’t know what to say, he just doesn’t know. The city, he ventures hesitantly. Those young people down there, the street. The wind.
The old man gestures impatiently: “In other words, the autumn. We’re talking about a serenade, right? And we’ve already talked about autumn and loss. Because in that song, as I explained to you, there is loss. At the moment when he’s singing, the man who wrote it thinks that he’ll never feel love again. His song is the song of the blinded goldfinch who calls and calls to his mate, but in vain. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Maestro. This is clear to me. Loss. The song is a song of despair, not of hope. I have to imagine that nothing awaits me but unhappiness, that I’ve lost her now for good. And that autumn is the season because autumn contains a core of loss.”
“That’s right,” says the old man. “But what else do you need, for a serenade? Because a serenade is different from other songs. It’s a letter, a message. You’re telling someone something, and in order to tell them, you have to wait for a very specific moment. What moment?”
The young man looks out the window again. His heart is beating loud in his ears; the old man’s enthusiasm frightens him. “The night,” he says. “What I need is the night.”
The old man slaps his back. “Very good. The night. But why the night?” The young man concentrates. “For the silence?” he asks. The old man nods: “Yes, certainly, for the silence. But that’s not all. At night, you know, people either sleep and dream or else they’re up and awake, but still, they dream. It’s at night that we come face to face with ourselves, it’s at night that there are no more excuses. If I send you a message at night, you can’t choose whether or not to listen to it. You have to accept my words and let them in. That’s why a serenade needs the night.”
“Can you imagine a serenade in the morning?” asks the old man with a grimace. “In the confusion of our minds, tangled up with everyday problems? It would seem inappropriate, out of place. ‘I have things to do,’ she would reply: ‘I can’t bother with love right now.’ Or else in the afternoon, when it’s time to make dinner, when the family is returning. Or even in the evening, when people exchange their useless impressions of the day. No, there would be no room for a serenade. It would actually be an annoyance. It wouldn’t reign supreme, and it would leave the doubt that it hadn’t been understood, that it hadn’t even been heard. A serenade is a thing of the night. A serenade is our nocturne. Only a nocturne—that music written for the piano, unutterably sweet and wordless—is barely a lament, while serenades are a cry of despair.
“It speaks to someone, the serenade does. It tells a story.”
“But what story, Maestro? If it’s night and it’s autumn, if the cold is going to come and with it the rain, if there are no hopes, then what story does the serenade tell? A message is sent in hopes of a reply, I think. For a young man, at least, that’s how it is.”
The young man realizes that he’s said something ugly, but it’s already too late.
The old man doesn’t take his hand off the young man’s shoulder, he looks out into the night. In the glow of the city’s lights, his filmy eye seems to grow damp.
“Those who are at the beginning of their lives hope for an answer. Those who are at the end know that, possibly, that answer will never come. That’s the difference.”
The old man goes back to sit down, and picks up the instrument with the usual fluid movement.
Before starting, he says: “Remember the night, when you sing a serenade. Remember loss, the night, and autumn.”
Then he starts singing.
Si ’sta voce te canta dint’ ’o core,
chello ca nun te cerco e nun te dico:
tutt’ ’o turmiento ’e ’nu luntano ammore,
tutto ll’ammore ’e ’nu turmiento antico.
Si te vene ’na smania ’e vule’ bbene,
’na smania ’e vase correre p’ ’e vvene,
’nu fuoco ca t’abbrucia comm’a che,
vasate a chillo . . . Che te ’mporta ’e me?
(If my voice sings to you in your heart,
what I neither ask you nor tell you:
all the torment of a distant love,
all the love of an ancient torment.
If you feel a desire to love,
a desire for kisses running through your veins,
a fire that burns you like never before,
go ahead and kiss him . . . What do you care about me?)
Loss, thinks the young man, his heart caught in a vise. Night. Our nocturne without peace. The suffering of the flesh, tormented by distance. The awareness of another flesh next to her flesh.
And autumn. Why necessarily autumn?
As if in response, the first hesitant drops of rain wet the sill of the open window.
XXVIII
Ask the rain.
Try and entrust your doubts to those streaming raindrops, ask your questions of the rain hammering down into the street. Tr
y to interpret its uneven sound as if it were a code, as if there were someone capable of answering only in that fashion, using the wind to shift the transparent threads that fall from the dark sky.
Ask the rain.
I’m the man who did it. In any case. Whether I actually did it or not, I’m the man who did it.
Because I wanted it with all my might, I wanted it from the very first second. Ever since I saw him, his fat face and his arrogant expression, coming in and leaving through that well known, that never-forgotten door.
I’m the man who did it, because his filthy hand grabbed her shoulder and took her arm, affirming an infamous possession that cannot possibly have been God’s will.
I’m the man who did it, because all this time I only lived for the moment when I would see the smile once again, that smile he stole from me, hiding it behind false bars.
I can’t even remember, but still, I’m the man who did it. No doubt about it.
I’m the man who did it, because I brought the message with my voice, entrusting it to the night and to the autumn; and if you entrust a message to the night and to the autumn, then you can be sure it will arrive. It was a message of life and love, but also one of damnation and death for anyone who got between the two of us. For the person who actually did get between the two of us.
I’m the man who did it. I remember the anger and the sorrow, I remember the hands and the consistency of the flesh. I remember every single blow, driven by desire and solitude, driven by desire and the return home.
I’m the man who did it. I don’t remember the face, or maybe I just don’t want to remember it. But what I do remember is the night and the wind and the shivering of the chill and the melancholy. I remember the water pouring down.
I’m not the man who did it. But I’m guilty all the same.
That’s what the rain tells me.
Ask the rain.
Try to understand the answer from its sound. Distinguish the words that it utters as it falls into metal recipients left outside in hopes of sunshine, as it lashes the sheets hung out in hopes of a dry wind, as it breaks all its promises.
Ask the rain, as if the rain weren’t a false-hearted liar, as if it weren’t trying to make you think it would never stop, enveloping all desires in a damp tomb.
Ask the rain.
I’m the woman who did it. It’s pointless to lie, tonight, pointless to search for peace, tonight, my first night without him.
I’m the woman who did it, because in the end I lost the battle I’d fought for so many years. Because the castle of crystal and stone that I built day after day simply collapsed at the first shove, the minute I heard that voice.
I’m the woman who did it, because behind my closed eyes, as I pretended to sleep, I felt my heart leap in my chest. I saw my heart take to the air, in flight, like a hungry seagull, to join that other heart which in silence, and without knowing it, I waited and waited for, concealing my smile in a solitude crowded with people.
I’m the woman who did it, because, quite simply, I wanted it to happen. Even though I also wanted all that there was: the serious photograph with me sitting in a chair and him standing beside me, his hand on my shoulder, and the anniversaries and the evenings out at the theater and the work and the luncheons and the dinners.
I’m the woman who did it, because I created my prison with my own hands, as if the most important thing was to have a couple of extra dresses in the wardrobe, to be called Signora, to be no different than my own mother.
I’m the woman who did it, because having his breath on me had always disgusted me. Because even before he dirtied me, I was dirtying myself, with the infidelity of my body and the infidelity of my mind.
I’m the woman who did it, and it hardly matters that I wasn’t there when it happened. Because I actually was there, and it was me who dealt out death, since I hadn’t even managed to give life.
I’m the woman who did it, I feel it tonight and I’ll feel it again tomorrow.
That’s what the rain tells me.
Ask the rain.
Have the courage to entrust your request to that faint murmuring. Recognize the melody of words which only you can understand in the dripping of a broken rain gutter, in the dirty rivulet that rolls along at the foot of a sidewalk.
Ask the rain, which flows through the streets of this downhill city, and while you’re waiting for the answer, it has already gone by, and there’s a new one, bringing new stories.
Ask the rain.
I’m the man who did it. And I did the right thing. I seek the proof in the noise of the falling water that torments my sleepless night, and there I find it.
I’m the man who did it, and it’s right. Because I built everything I have with my sweat and my blood, taking and not leaving, moment by moment, clutching every single fragment of wealth like a mussel clinging to a shoal.
I’m the man who did it, and I couldn’t really do any differently. Because my ruin is not merely my own ruin—and I should have had that position and that property, not he, who only came along later, not he, who stole the esteem and the consideration that rightly belonged to me.
I’m the man who did it: that’s right, because I wanted him to die. And not just some simple, painless death; that’s fine for someone you want to get out of the way, not for someone you want to punish for the suffering he nourished you with, forcing you to swallow it, gulp after gulp, with its flavor of bile.
I’m the man who did it, and it hardly matters whether or not I really did it at all. I dreamt of doing it so many times that there can be no doubt: mine was the hand that dealt the death. It was me.
That’s what the rain tells me.
Ask the rain.
And imagine that the answer comes to you from who knows what heaven where the water vapor has taken refuge, climbing up with the heat from who knows which sea.
Ask the rain, and wait for the answer of an immobile and ironic god, distant and omniscient. As if the truth could be transported on the wind, as movable as this water that will never stop falling.
Ask the rain, which embraces and repels, which stains and cleanses.
Ask the rain.
I’m the woman who did it. I’ll say it again every night, and every night will bring me confirmation of it. I’m the woman who did it.
I’m the one who did it, because I’m a woman and I refused to accept being discarded without so much as the hope of a second thought, without the sweetness of a regret. I’m the woman who did it, and I took revenge for the silence when I only wanted to hear words of love, of the indifference when it would have been my right to sense the caress of two impassioned eyes running over my body.
I’m the woman who did it, and I should have taken my revenge long, long ago. There would have been so many fewer tears and so many more smiles, if only I’d had the strength to turn around and leave on my own two feet, to enjoy the life that I feel flowing in my veins.
I’m the woman who did it, and all it took was a word, the reflection of a thought. It was me who sowed and who planted the mistrust, the germ of an awareness.
I’m the woman who did it, and I did it with the full knowledge that silence corrodes the brain. Because every time that gaze looked out into the void, it dug another yard deeper in the grave in which I lay my heart. Because every time I saw that soul fly elsewhere, I felt that it was taking a piece of my own with it, and that it would never bring it back.
I’m the woman who did it, that’s right. Well, so what? What else would you expect from a woman in love? Tears and pointless moping? A still and innocuous sorrow?
No. Not from me. I’m a woman, and I’m the one who did it.
That’s what the rain tells me.
Ask the rain.
Do it under your breath, perhaps right in the very moment when the tempest rages and the water and the wind take the power of the sea as their own. Because that’s when it will listen to you most closely, when perhaps the whirlwind will be most inclined to reply.
If there is someone close to you, at this time of the night, and if by some chance they aren’t sleeping, just as you aren’t, they will understand that your question makes sense.
Ask the rain.
I’m not the man who did it.
Even though I heard the bones crack beneath my feet, the cartilage shatter beneath my fist, it wasn’t me, no. It was he, with that arrogant smile of his, with his damned ability to always win.
I’m not the man who did it, even though the blood did flow before my eyes, mixing with the mud. And that was how it ought to be: mud into the mud, shit into the shit, and nothing into the nothingness. There was no guilt in treading it underfoot, unless it’s a crime to tread garbage underfoot.
I’m not the man who did it, no, even though it was impossible not to feel a twinge of satisfaction at the thought of causing pain for someone who had given me so much pain, in seeing someone weep and beg after they had made me weep and beg. I’m not the man who did it, if you compare the crime of having lived with the crime of not letting others live.
I’m not the man who did it, and in any case I ought to have done much worse, if with every kick, with every punch, with every drop of blood shed I had hoped to pay myself back for the anguish, the sobs, the moments of damnation that I suffered on his account.
I’m not the man who did it. I’m not the man who did it. I’m not the man who did it.
That’s what the rain tells me.
Go on and ask. Ask the rain.
And the rain will tell you.
XXIX
The next morning, when they came face to face again, Maione and Ricciardi both displayed an unhealthy complexion and two pairs of impressive circles under their eyes, as if neither of them had gotten a wink of sleep.
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 21