“Thank heavens. What an inestimable loss it would be.”
He waved the leaf by its stem, one way and then the other.
“Bern and the people he was with during that last period,” he said, “had a special veneration for trees, didn’t they?”
I nodded.
“I read something about it in the newspapers, but I don’t think I fully understood it. I sense that they weren’t wrong, but I wish Bern had talked to me about it. Maybe we would have arrived at a different solution. We communicated very well together, the two of us. He was always immensely gifted in matters of faith, intuitive, but he tended to be somewhat reckless. Trees can inspire a sense of sacredness in us, I don’t deny it, but they are not endowed with the same soul we have. Yet how magnificent they are. Majestic. Look up there.”
I did it, even though I was already familiar with that angle, I knew it in every season of the year.
“You’re keeping something from me, Teresa.”
“No,” I blurted, maybe too hastily.
We were silent for a very long time. I kept looking toward the house. Cesare’s torso swayed faintly, back and forth, the leaf still in his hands. I had the feeling he was smiling, but I didn’t dare check to see.
And finally what he’d been waiting for from the beginning happened. The confession spilled out at a moment when my mind was perfectly blank, defenseless: “It was him, he killed him.”
It was the first time I’d uttered those words. I hadn’t even been able to speak them to my father. They ignited the afternoon air.
Cesare laid a hand on mine. “My poor Teresa, what a weight you’ve had to carry. I know how much you both loved each other.”
He took a few strangled breaths. Then he said, “I truly think our Bern would want a burial here.”
I looked at him then, I was stunned. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I heard it.”
“Then why do you care about his burial? It makes no sense.”
He bent his head back to look up again. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they seemed filled with gratitude. I had a sharp recollection of how he had been when he was young, all the kind wisdom that emanated from his body.
“Because he’s Bern. My son.”
“But he killed Nicola! He was your son! How can you forgive him?”
“Think about it, Teresa. What would everything I taught you all mean, if I could not forgive Bern now?” He searched for words for a moment, then he recited: “‘If my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ And Jesus answered: ‘I say to you, not seven times but as many as seventy times seven.’ Seventy times seven. I haven’t even started, you see? I really hope you will help me.”
I struggled to regain my composure. “The people there knew that the cave had a way out. They were sure of it. He could still be alive.”
Cesare looked at me intently. “Your hope is moving, and the Lord will certainly reward you. All I ask is that you think about it. If nothing were to change and you should feel it was the right time.”
“Why don’t the two of you do it? If it’s so important. You don’t need me.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be the same. You are his wife. It is you, more than anyone, that he would like to have present.”
“Shall we go back to Marina?”
I didn’t wait for his response. I preceded him to the pergola.
“Are we ready to go?” Cesare asked his sister.
She stood up. She gave me her hand as before, but this time she leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.
“I would have liked to know you better,” she murmured.
I picked up the bowl with the almonds, as if bringing it inside were urgent, then I stood there stupidly and put it back on the table. Marina took one and chewed it. “They’re good,” she said.
I walked them to the car. Cesare fastened his seat belt before starting the engine. “Goodbye, Teresa,” he called through the lowered window.
But now I was the one who wasn’t ready to let him leave.
“Bern talked about some oleander leaves.”
He frowned. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Maybe he was just confused, but it seemed important. Something Nicola also knew about. Something serious.”
Then his eyes slid toward the olive grove. More precisely, though I wasn’t yet able to make the connection, toward the reed bed, rustling unseen behind the trees.
“He was talking about that girl, probably. Violalibera.”
The same old uneasiness and fear exploded in my stomach.
“Violalibera?” I repeated slowly.
“She was a pitiable creature. And the boys were still so young. Bern was never the same after that. I was sure he had told you about it.”
“Yes, of course . . .”
After which they left. If something like revelation really exists in the world, for me it occurred at that instant, as Cesare’s car disappeared down the dirt track, the intensity of his presence still filling the air, and as I heard that lost name, Violalibera, a name that had reappeared after years, popping out of the soil like a capricious weed. The name, it was suddenly clear to me, that encompassed the inextricable tangle of our lives.
* * *
—
THAT SAME NIGHT I went to see Tommaso. The thought that he had a right to know what had happened to Bern nagged me, but I couldn’t make up my mind to face him. Now I couldn’t put it off any longer: if there was anyone who could clarify once and for all what had happened with Violalibera, it was him.
It had started to rain after all, catching drivers off guard, and creating a bit of chaos, so I found myself stuck at the entrance to Taranto. The lagoon on my left was a flat black expanse. I turned on the radio, but the music made me nervous, the voices and commercials made me nervous, so I turned it off and let the din of the rain against the roof of the car wrap around me.
I parked the car at an angle, partially blocking someone’s gate, and switched on the emergency lights. I wouldn’t be there long, only as long as necessary. The names on the buzzer panel were mostly foreign: Slavic, Arab, Chinese, grouped as many as six or seven on the same label. Conspicuous in the center was a piece of yellow paper, badly torn and affixed with scotch tape, the initials T.F. written on it. I rang and Tommaso buzzed me in immediately, without asking who it was.
I didn’t know what floor, so I went up on foot. When I got to the fourth floor, the timed lights suddenly went off. The door to my right was partially open and a reddish glow filtered out. Voices could be heard from inside, and I approached them. Four men were seated around a table covered with a green cloth, playing cards. The cigarette smoke had formed a foggy haze. Tommaso appeared in front of me. He had bills in his hand and looked taken aback.
“What are you doing here?”
“You buzzed me in.”
Laughter broke out in the apartment. One of the men said something, and the other voices rose over his. Tommaso slipped out. In the last fraction of a second when he wasn’t blocking my view, I glimpsed a woman in shorts, long bare legs, blond hair loose down her back.
“You have to go!” Tommaso said.
“Who are they?”
“It’s none of your business. People.”
“I can see they’re people.”
“I’m working.”
“Is this what you do?”
“Do you mind telling me what you want from me?”
He grabbed my shoulder, but the contact troubled both of us, and he immediately withdrew his hand.
“Violalibera,” I said, letting the name produce a reaction on his face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He quickly swung open the door and dashed inside. I just had time to stop it with my hand before he slammed it
in my face.
“Tell me what happened, Tommaso.”
“Ask Bern what happened, if you’re so interested. Now go.”
“Bern is dead.”
The words I had done my best to deny to Cesare a few hours earlier I spat out at Tommaso that night. Instantly, the life went out of his eyes. He bowed his head slightly.
“Never come here again,” he said softly.
I took my hand off the door and he closed it. I heard one of the men ask where the pizzas were, then there was more laughter. Soon Tommaso would open up again, he’d question me to find out exactly what had happened, he’d beg me to come in. I just had to wait a little longer. I looked for the switch on the wall.
A few minutes more and the lights went out, I turned them back on. The elevator started moving and someone got off at an upper floor, there was fumbling with the keys. What was I thinking, asking him if that was the work he was doing? What gave me the right? What Tommaso did hadn’t been my business for some time, and probably had never been. When the lights went out for the second time, I left.
* * *
—
AFTER THAT ENCOUNTER I fell into a kind of sickness. Now it seems natural to call it that, a sickness, but in those weeks everything about it seemed perfectly normal. I kept seeing Bern. Not clearly, not there in front of me in the flesh, but rather a heralding, as if each time I were about to see him in flesh and blood. It happened especially when I returned to the masseria in the car. There was a precise instant, just before turning onto the dirt track, when I was sure that I would find him waiting for me in the yard, sitting sideways on the swing-chair, or standing up, his back to me. His position changed, but the way he appeared in my mind was always just as detailed, the certainty that went with it just as intense. When I came out of the ground-floor bathroom. When I stood up straight after having been bent over for a long time in the greenhouse. When a window slammed. At each of those moments I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Bern would be there. I’d say to myself, There he is, not at all surprised. What surprised me, if anything, was not seeing him there shortly thereafter. But even that disappointment was slight, as if he were simply late, or somewhere else, close by at any rate.
I was not concerned about how lucid those presentiments were. Yet a sense of caution kept me from talking to others about them, from seeing others in general. When December came, I told my parents that I would not be back to Turin for Christmas. Maybe later on, I promised. I must have seemed myself, because they did not insist.
I decorated the holly oak with four garlands of lights and they were my only preparations. Despite my lack of interest, on Christmas Eve day I found myself battling with a sadness that seemed to lay siege to the masseria. Around seven I was lying on the couch; darkness had crept into the house since I’d lain down there, and I was considering the possibility of not moving until the following day, until Christmas had passed and everything was back to normal.
When the phone rang, I didn’t rush to get up, but let it go on ringing for a while.
“It’s me,” a voice said, then added something barely comprehensible, as if the caller had abruptly moved the receiver away from his mouth.
“Tommaso?”
Silence.
“Tommaso, what’s wrong? Why did you call me?”
I heard him take two deep breaths. “Oh. Teresa. I hope I’m not disturbing your dinner.”
Was he giggling? The glow from the blinking lights around the holly oak intermittently revealed the objects in the room.
“You’re not disturbing anything.”
“I thought so.”
“Did you call me to make fun of me?”
“No, no. I’m sorry. Absolutely not.”
More deep breaths, then some coughing. He’d moved the receiver away from his mouth again.
“I’m waiting for Ada,” he said after clearing his throat. “Christmas Eve is my turn this year. But I think I’m sick. Well, I wondered, see, if you could come and look after her for me.”
So he needed me. After turning me away from his house, he needed my help. I let a few seconds go by.
“Well?” he pressed me.
As much as I wanted to be unfriendly, I couldn’t do it. Was there really no one else he could call?
“I can come over,” I said.
“Ada will be here in an hour.”
“I don’t think I can get there that soon.”
“Well, do the best you can. It would be best if she didn’t see me like this.”
In the dark I looked for my shoes and jacket, then the car keys. As I did so, I knocked over a cup of pens on the desk, but I didn’t even think about picking them up.
* * *
—
WHEN I GOT to the fourth floor, the door was partly open as it was last time, but there was silence. I entered warily.
“In here,” Tommaso’s voice called from another room. He was lying with his head slightly elevated; there were shadows under his eyes and his face was ashen.
He tried to raise his head, but the attempt made him grimace. I noticed the edge of a plastic basin under the bed and recognized the stench that filled the air.
“You’re not sick. You’re drunk.”
“Uh-oh . . . Caught!”
He gave a lopsided smile. A dog was curled up on the empty side of the double bed. He looked at me with a resigned air.
“Why didn’t you tell me on the phone?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t feel as sorry for me.”
“I didn’t come because I feel sorry for you.”
“Oh, no? Why, then?”
“Because . . .”
But I couldn’t finish the sentence. Because we’re friends?
“What a model father, huh?” Tommaso said. “Christmas with hungover Daddy. It’s enough to call the social workers. Corinne can’t wait.”
He tried again to sit up, but he got so violently dizzy that I had to catch him so he wouldn’t topple off the bed.
“Stay down!” I said, beginning to panic. “I don’t know what you could have drunk to put you in this state.”
“I broke all the rules of the responsible drinker,” he said, and groaned, pressing a palm to his forehead, as if to stop something from spinning woozily. “Don’t mix alcohols, don’t switch to a lower proof, don’t drink on an empty stomach. And above all, don’t start before five in the afternoon.”
“What time did you start?”
“At six, actually. But six yesterday.”
Again, the same little giggle that I’d heard on the phone.
“I’ve never seen anyone so drunk.”
He very cautiously removed his hand from his forehead, as if wanting to make sure that his brain stayed put when he moved it. “Then it really has been a long time since we’ve seen each other, Teresa.”
He asked me to lock him in the room. He didn’t trust himself to do it from the inside. I had to swear that I wouldn’t open the door for any reason while Ada was there, even if she raised holy hell to get in.
“If she sees me like this she’ll tell her mother, and if she tells her mother . . .”
“Right, I get it. Should I go down and get her when she arrives?”
“She comes up by herself, that way Corinne and I don’t have to cross paths. Please don’t say anything into the intercom. Just press the buzzer. If she hears a woman’s voice . . .”
“But she’ll tell her that there was a woman here.”
Tommaso pounded his fists on the mattress. “You’re right. Shit, what a mess! What a fucking mess!”
“Take it easy.”
He reeked of alcohol, repulsive. His eyelids quivered. After bringing him a glass of water and locking him in his room, I did my best to make the living room presentable. Before that night, I’d thought that collections of empty bot
tles were an exaggeration seen in films, but now I discovered them in unexpected places throughout the house. I put them all out on the balcony. Medea, the dog, followed me seraphically. Tommaso had wanted her to stay with us, because her presence would reassure the child.
From the intercom’s black-and-white monitor I saw Ada say hello, beaming, convinced she was talking to her father. Corinne stood a few steps back, only her legs could be seen. I pressed the buzzer without saying anything.
Ada was evidently allowed to go up the stairs alone, but not to use the elevator. I listened to her steps getting closer and closer. She’d started out running, but had now slowed up. On the landing I switched the lights back on every time they went out. At those moments she stopped, maybe surprised by that small miracle.
Would she even remotely remember me? Probably not. When she appeared on the landing, so pretty in a woolen beret with a pom-pom, her complexion fair though not as pale as her father’s, I was sure of it. Her eyes revealed the uncertainty that she had mistaken the door, the floor, the building, the day, and she didn’t know what to do. She was about to turn back, but I told her: “He’s here, Ada. Don’t worry.”
She started when she heard her name.
“I’m Teresa, a friend of your dad. He’s not feeling well tonight, he has a bit of a fever in fact, so I’m here.”
She was still hesitant: beneath the beret, all those grave admonitions not to talk to strangers were whirling around in her head and, at the same time, there was no other choice but to trust me.
“We’ve already met,” I said.
Ada slowly shook her head.
“But you were very small, about this big.”
Something about that gesture encouraged her, because she finally let go of her grip on the handrail and took a step toward me. When we went inside, she checked to make sure it really was the apartment she knew. Then she ran to the door of Tommaso’s room and tried in vain to open it.
“He’s resting now. You’ll see him later, I promise.”
But Ada kept doggedly jiggling the handle. Fortunately, Medea came out to her from the kitchen and barked a couple of times, letting the child pet her and rub her cheek on her nose.
Heaven and Earth Page 38
