by Erri De Luca
Yes, it did. At the tavern, instead, wine went beyond evening the score and sent it into a spin. Don Gaetano used to go there at night for a little company. And on his way home he would be holding up by the arm a guy overtaken by wine.
“Last night the man leaning against me must have vomited a liter on the streets. They drink without eating, with the pocket change they have they pay for wine without a piece of bread. He apologized to me. ‘Think nothing of it,’ I told him, ‘I am the one who feels sorry for you, for being emptier now than you were before.’ The tavern is better than the theater, every table is a comedy. No tragedies, at the tavern they only offer lighter fare, people with heavy problems keep away.”
After eating he slipped his coat on and went out, saying he would be back late.
“When you’ve finished your business, lock up the loge and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
• • •
The silence behind him, after the closed door, the silence of a Sunday afternoon singed my ears. I placed the cold palms of my hands over them. I inhaled through my nose, there was a passageway but I rinsed it out with warm water anyway. The rose water came out again.
I didn’t mind that I’d broken my nose the day before. When you are called to defend the goal you are responsible for the whole team. The day before freedom Don Gaetano had gone to fight together with the people of Naples. He hadn’t shut himself indoors to wait. He had done the necessary thing and so would I. And if freedom had found him dead the next day? It would have been worse to find him hiding. Freedom has to be earned and defended. Not happiness, which is a gift, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good goalie and block the penalty kicks. Happiness: how dare I name it without knowing it? It sounded shameless in my mouth, like when someone boasts of knowing a celebrity and calls him by his first name, saying Marcello, to mean Mastroianni.
• • •
All I knew about Anna and happiness was that—the name. If she didn’t come, where would I look for her? I shouldn’t have allowed myself certain familiarities. After she’s arrived I’ll be able to tell her what it is, this famous happiness.
I took my hands off my ears. They had heated up my thoughts. The silence was gone. From one balcony came the voice of a radio, from another the clatter of dishes. I was supposed to wash them and I did, then I went out to the courtyard. Above me the clouds were moving upward. The pavement was wet from dripping clothes. The wind had appeared and I was stung by the melancholy of the fading day. I imagined the sunset, the sun descending to earth behind a hill, dragging the enchained clouds along behind it. I went out into the street, I didn’t have a timetable to wait for Anna. Only a remnant was left of the whole day of happiness.
If she didn’t come what should I call this day? I shouldn’t call it at all. It would be an ordinary day, with all the necessary things inside, including a little Greek homework. But I didn’t care for Plato, he had gotten it into his head to write down the dialogues of Socrates: how dare he? Did he take notes in the evening as I do with Don Gaetano’s stories, or did he memorize them? Plato cheated, he put whatever he felt like into the mouth of his teacher and the others. He hid himself behind them. Is that any way for a writer to behave? No, it isn’t. A writer has to be smaller than the subject he is describing. You have to sense the story running away from him every which way, and him capturing only a part of it. Anyone who reads has a taste for the abundance that overflows past the writer. With Plato instead the story is locked inside his enclosure, he doesn’t let even a spurt of independent life escape. His dialogue is lined up in two rows, question and answer, then forward march.
• • •
The thought came to me watching the boys in uniform leaving the Nunziatella military academy two by two. When they were of high-school age like me they studied at the military school. Countering their descent to Santa Lucia came the upward current of Anna’s elastic stride. She went uphill, head held high, a flowing dress wrapped tightly around her, tin foil around a bouquet. She was holding a parcel in her arms, her freshly washed hair followed the wave of her steps. I breathed through my nose to anticipate her smell from the distance. It was early evening, headlights had been turned on. They still couldn’t illuminate, their purpose was to bring out a smile of reply from her. For an autumn evening she was dressed lightly. She wore shoes with heels that pushed her whole body upward. She had given color to her face.
“Let me in,” and she cast a glance behind herself.
We entered quietly, through the main door, into the loge. Violent pulsations beat through my head, the pain in my nose was the tolling of bells. In the kitchen she turned around to give me the parcel, it was bed linen. She took my face between her hands and pushed her mouth retouched with red against mine, breathing deeply. It was an exquisite pain, a sharp pain in the eyes and melting chocolate in the mouth. At that point she noticed how swollen my face was around the nose. “What did you do?” “A kick, yesterday.” She asked nothing more.
“I brought the sheets,” and she headed toward the door leading to the staircase. I lit the candle and closed the city behind us.
• • •
We went downstairs where no one would reach us. Anna followed, resting a hand on my neck. A force came from her body that moved the air.
The kiss was violent, the grip on my neck squeezed me. At the bottom of the steps, I set the candle down on the ground, she took care of the bed. I watched her moving. Rather than acting, she gave orders to things and they carried them out. She unrolled the first sheet in the air and it spread out over the mattress immediately and only had to be tucked in. The same with the second one and the blanket. She came close and started to undress me. My jacket was already off, the buttons of my shirt opened by themselves under her touch, she slipped it off me with a swift move that set both me and the flame swaying. She placed her ear on my taut chest, hollowed to the ribs, she squeezed my hips with her hands, I couldn’t breathe.
“Slow down, Anna, you’re crushing me.”
“Quiet, I’m listening to your blood fill with oxygen.”
She slipped off my belt, I was so skinny my pants fell by themselves. She pushed me to the bed and removed my shoes and socks. I was naked and I slipped between the sheets, she didn’t even take off her shoes as she got into the bed.
I was between her and the wall. She lay on top of me. Her small breasts spread over my chest, her arms closed around my shoulders, blocking me. She wasn’t applying pressure but I couldn’t move. Even my legs were squeezed between hers. I could breathe, but not if she squeezed. I couldn’t imagine so much effortless strength. Is this how women are in happiness? Can they crush in their embrace? The widow didn’t act this way, I was the one who held her.
Anna buried her face between my shoulder and my neck, she rubbed her lips and her teeth, heat passed from her to me, moist, scorching. In my nose I smelled blood mixed with the cinnamon of her sugared-chestnut hair. The more she burrowed into my neck the more I surrendered. I had stopped noticing that I wasn’t breathing. My sex swelled. I craned my neck to make more room for her inside me. For a time I could not measure, she was the rambler that wraps around a balcony. Our organs were separated by her dress and molded to each other. Hers loosened, she squeezed me in her arms, they creaked, she exhaled in short little grunts until a bite that called away the pain from my nose and made it run to my neck. Then she licked me there.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Yes, and no courage will ever feel as good as this fear.”
Anna lifted her head from my neck, her mouth was smeared with red. The candlelight colored her forehead with sunset. The locks of her hair were long clouds dragged along. She looked at me with eyes wide open, bent down with her lips of blood to mine. She pushed her mouth so deep inside mine I felt it in my throat. My sex was a block of wood glued to her womb. She eased up on her kiss, broke away, turne
d me around with a shift of her hips and I was on top of her. She loosed her arms from my shoulders, guided my hands to her breasts. She spread her legs, pulled up her dress, and holding my hips high pushed my sex against the opening of hers. I was something belonging to her that she controlled. Our organs ready, motionless in expectation, they barely leaned against each other, dancers on point. We stayed in that position. Anna looked down at them. She pressed on my hips, an order that thrust me inside. I entered. Not only my sex but me, I entered inside of her, into her depths, into her darkness, my eyes wide open without seeing a thing. My whole body had descended into sex. I entered to the rhythm of her thrusts and held still. While I was adjusting to the stillness, to the pulsing of blood between my ears and my nose, she pushed me a little out and then in again. She did it again and again, she held me forcefully and moved me back and forth to the rhythm of the undertow. Under my hands she shook her breasts, increased her thrusts. I entered as far as my groin and exited almost entirely, my body was one of her gears. She wasn’t breathing, her gaping eyes saw far.
“Anna,” I called from under her enchanted maneuvers.
“Yes, yes,” were the perfect syllables that came from her lips. I called to her to make her breathe, I called to her to hear “yes.” Her yes called to me and I too was about to say it when a thrust came that plunged me inside her with no turning back. She detached her hands from my hips and from my sex came all the yeses that had run inside her. My yes of emptying and farewell, of welcome, the yes of the marionette that goes limp without a hand to hold the strings. I slid onto my side and saw the bed stained with blood.
“It’s ours, it is the ink of our pact. You placed inside me your initial, which I awaited intact. I will give it a body and a name.”
“Anna, in your hands I know my purpose, this is why I was made.”
She kissed the tip of my lips, passed her tongue over them.
“You have a good flavor, I had to restrain myself from eating you.” She wasn’t smiling.
“Can I kiss you now?”
“No, you are pollen, you must obey me, I am the wind.”
• • •
Is this what happiness is, letting yourself be seized? Anna got up and lay on top of me.
With her legs she locked my arms, holding them still. With her right hand she closed her fingers over my throat, with her left she caressed my face. She started to squeeze.
“Do you want to die for me? Do want to die for Anna the mad?”
Pinned beneath her, I managed to nod yes with my head. She continued to caress and to squeeze me.
“Do you want to die for me, beneath me?”
I could only answer yes with my eyes. I didn’t breathe and I didn’t defend myself. She squeezed harder, I closed my eyes and saw white.
I woke up in the dark, the candle out, Anna vanished. I looked blindly for my clothes, got dressed, and crawled up the stairs. The electric lights were a slap to my eyes, I saw the time, it was nine o’clock at night. Don Gaetano wasn’t back. I went to my room and washed up. I was smeared all over with red. My nose was a secondary pain, my throat burned at the squeeze point. I took a gulp of water that I couldn’t get down.
I swallowed it in spoonfuls. I lay down on the bed. It had happened, the day of happiness, the most awful day of my short life.
• • •
The following morning I missed school. I couldn’t get up. I stopped taking the inventory of the parts that hurt, it was faster to count the unharmed ones. My nose was blocked again and I left it that way. I didn’t want to smell things, I didn’t want to feel.
Don Gaetano dropped by when he didn’t see me come out. He put a handkerchief around my neck. He said that at noon he’d bring me something to eat.
“Don’t bother, I’m coming, it’s just weakness.” It was the weakness that makes you curl up to regain strength. Among the used books of Don Raimondo, I had read one about mountain climbing. It talked about the exhaustion of the summit reached, the impulse to fall asleep on top when it is urgent instead to descend, to avoid being overtaken by darkness far from the tent. I, too, had to descend from the summit of happiness. I never imagined it would be so tumultuous. Anna had been a storm and I did not want it to stop. I did not want the return to calm. The last thing I needed was to be sheltered from her. She was gone, she had moved on to discharge her violent energy. The day after happiness I was a mountain climber swerving out of control on the descent.
• • •
Was I crazy too or was this the ineffable name of love? When someone said it at the movies, the word was wasted. Yet actors specialized in saying it, they had studied at the academy, practiced in front of the mirror, performed before a jury and other audiences to say in the end: I love you.
But what was written on walls and on the bark of trees was better. It had a better chance to arrive. To say it instead was a lump that fell to your feet. To say it was to waste it. Until the previous scene love had appeared in disguise, behind a few embarrassed moves, a cramp of the facial muscles. No sooner is it declared than it is betrayed, denounced by the formula that is supposed to proclaim it. Every I love you at the movies is a fiasco. No one knew how to say it. It was even more impossible for me, illiterate in the sentiments, to get around the word “love.” I was only ready to belong to Anna, a body at the service of one of her urgent moves. I didn’t want to come down from the summit I had reached. I wanted to stay up there to flutter like a pennant.
This thought filled me with energy. I got up from the bed, opened a book, studied. At noon I went to Don Gaetano. He had put vegetables on to cook. “I put in ten.” Outside the autumn was shaking the windows. “The southwest wind, it lasts three days. It won’t let the ships depart. If you’re already at sea you shake, if you’re on an island you could care less.”
The salt air arrived in the alleyways, the city was flavored by the sea. The waves leaped over the breakwater formed by the rocks and swept the waterfront.
After lunch we went out to meet the virgin air, a stranger to land. The oxygen lashed the crest of the waves. Pushed about by the southwest wind, my nose came unblocked. The coats of people who wore them were flapping, anyone with a hat held onto it with one hand. We walked from the port to Mergellina. We barely spoke, the wind snatched away the words.
• • •
’O vient’, the wind, is swifter and smarter in dialect. ’O vient’, I walked and repeated, as I had done with Anna’s name the day before. In the bay an American aircraft carrier floated light gray, an empty road broken off at the bow and the stern. It didn’t fit in with the rest of the bay and the ships at anchor, it didn’t fit in with the volcanic bubbles or the coast that shot from the sea on whaleback. The bridge of the aircraft carrier was a desert road, opposite the crowded city.
• • •
With all the force it invested, the wind had the effect of a massage on me, after Anna. The sky was ruffled with battered clouds, suddenly a jet of light burst through, blinding the foam on the waves. The true color of the sea isn’t blue, it’s white. You had to beat it against the rocks to see it come out. From within, nature must be white, while we are red inside. The sea, the sky, and even fire have a hidden whiteness, which I had seen beneath the fingers of Anna squeezed around my throat.
In Mergellina we entered a cafe, Don Gaetano wanted to buy me a coffee. We had been walking into the wind for an hour, our faces were scoured, our ears numb. The boiling cup warmed the fingers, it was right for the senses gathered around the handle. Leaning against the balcony we sipped the coffee on the tip of our lips, two hornets hovering over a flower.
“She’s not for you.” I was confused by the buzzing of the cafe and of the coffee machine puffing out steam, I didn’t understand what he was saying to me at first.
“That girl is not for you.”
“You’ve already told me and yes, you’re right.” I set the cup down. “I’m not enough of a man for her. For now I serve her purpose. What purpose I don’t know. B
ut I want to serve some purpose. Anna has a force you can’t withstand.”
Don Gaetano looked out the window toward the sea.
“Broken noses can be fixed but blood doesn’t come back. What goes out is lost.”
“What am I supposed to do with my blood? What am I supposed to save it for? It’s yours if you want it.”
Don Gaetano turned toward the counter again and downed the last sip of coffee. “You can do what you want with your own blood, not with someone else’s.”
I didn’t understand and I couldn’t ask. Outside the wind was stripping the white off the sea and scattering it over the street. The throwing of rice at newlyweds.
• • •
We set out. On our return the wind was at our backs, grabbed us by the scruff, landed a few kicks. A bigger wave sprayed us and a fit of merriment seized me and sent me running a few steps. Don Gaetano adjusted his soggy beret on his head. We were alone, ’o vient’ had locked the city into its homes. I imagined it abandoned, the people having fled, leaving doors open and pots on the fire. I could enter any building, sit down in the chair of the bishop or mayor, live in the Palazzo Reale, climb aboard the ships. Even the Americans had disappeared, leaving the aircraft carrier empty in the middle of the bay. The thought made my nose itch. It lasted until I saw them coming toward us against the wind. They were running in a group, T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers. The two of us all bundled up and them half-naked: the city’s inhabitants had disappeared, the Martians had landed. Don Gaetano and I looked at our feet to see if we were on the ground or in the air. For us to run was a serious verb.
We would start running to flee an earthquake, an air raid. To run without being chased was boiling water without pasta. They passed by us focused on their movements, panting into the wind.
