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Transcendental meditation is the confluence of an individual intelligence and the cosmic conscience, it allows us to discover ourselves and the divine within ourselves, and permits the body to enter into a state of deep relaxation. It’s easy and natural, at once universal and personal. For normal people it can improve their health, help them reconnect with the primordial energy source, and develop individual potential, but for those who suffer from nervous disorders, it can also serve as therapy. Vanessa knows a Vedic master in Cerveteri who practices transcendental meditation, and she takes Manuela and Mattia to see him. It seemed like a good idea to Mattia, and he insisted he needed it as much as Manuela did. So all three of them enter a bare room—the only thing on the wall is a photograph of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—take off their shoes, and sit on the carpet, imagining they will close their eyes, breathe deeply, enter a state of well-being, and be cured instantly, during the first session, as if by magic.
But the Vedic master, whose disappointingly normal name is Mario, as thin as a rail and of an indeterminate age, disabuses them of this notion. He congratulates Manuela for choosing to embark on the path of transcendental meditation, which is well suited to her symptoms, so much so that even some traditional doctors recommend it, though military doctors often categorically deny the existence of PTSD. But the road to enlightenment is long and complicated. There are seven steps, and only at the end will she and her friend be able to taste the first fruits of their journey. First of all, they have to join the association. Then they have to attend a group presentation in which he will elucidate the benefits of transcendental meditation and offer some initial instructions on how to actually practice it. Next they will have an individual encounter, because meditation is an experience and a wisdom that is transmitted directly, and never through a third party. At that point they can begin their sessions, which last about an hour and a half, and which must take place on four consecutive days. Only after having completed all seven steps will they be able to practice transcendental meditation.
“But I’m already convinced of the benefits, can’t we skip the first two steps and start right in with the individual encounter?” Manuela asks. To her it seems like her last chance. The drugs she was prescribed—tranquilizers and antidepressants—didn’t resolve anything. The cognitive behavior exercises, which she has begun since coming home, don’t seem to be delivering concrete results either. She started showing symptoms only two months after the attack. If they last more than three months, they’re considered chronic. Her three months are already up. She can’t let herself become chronic. She attacked two people for no real reason, sent them to the hospital. She is waiting to be called to police headquarters at any moment, where she’ll be told she’s being charged with assault. She immediately informed her superiors of the deplorable incident with which she had sullied her record, and was greeted with an embarrassed silence. Paggiarin reminded her of the Afghan proverb that says “Don’t take off your shoes before you cross the river.” He noted that those unlucky individuals had ninety days in which to take action, and it was completely pointless to worry about it in advance. “Try and keep calm, Paris, you’ll tough this one out, too, one way or another.” She stood there, phone in hand, pensive. She wanted to try and convince them not to press charges—even though she couldn’t imagine how to go about it. If someone had broken three of her teeth, she would have filed charges, and no prayers or pleas or offers of money would have made her change her mind.
The Vedic master explains with an ineffable smile that the seven steps are required, and in any case he could only teach Mattia, not her, because women must have a female teacher. “What difference does it make?” Manuela asks. “I’m used to working with men, and they’re used to working with me, it’s always been fine.” “My sister has a very manly profession, she’s a rather unusual woman,” Vanessa ventures, “so maybe it could work out.” “I’m sorry,” the master says, “for us there are no unusual women, there are only men and women, it’s a principle of nature, you are one or the other, and one of the aims of meditation—which is a science of being and an art of living—is, in fact, to reunite our masculine and feminine halves in order to rediscover our primordial energy.”
“Okay, we’ll join the association,” Mattia says, tactlessly pulling out his wallet, “but we’d like to start right away. We don’t have a lot of time.” “Unfortunately everyone’s away over the Christmas holidays,” the master explains, “we don’t have enough people to organize a session. You’ll have to come back on January fifteenth.” “Please,” Manuela says, “I really need your help.” She would do anything to be able to sleep again, to rid herself of the nightmares, of the headaches, and of the rage that is devouring her, to restore her body’s natural energy.
Mattia tries to insist, even to bribe him, but despite his association’s humble aspect and evident poverty, the master is a serious individual and refuses, scandalized. Manuela glances sadly at the yogi on the poster. His black eyes are bursting with such otherworldly bliss that it’s almost offensive. He is visibly serene. And that serenity has been denied her.
When they get back in the car, Vanessa says that she had read up on the topic, too. She read on the Internet that ecstasy has been proven to help with PTSD. Manuela could give it a try. She knows quite a few people who sell it. And it’s a fact that it improves one’s mood and suppresses self-destructive tendencies. “You’re out of your mind, Vanessa,” Manuela says. “You’re not on duty,” Vanessa protests. “And it’s not like Mattia’s going to go around telling people, you’re not a police officer, are you?”
“No, I’m not a police officer,” Mattia confirms. “Try it,” Vanessa insists, “one tab’s not the end of the world, it’ll make you feel better, really.” “You don’t have the slightest idea about military ethics, Vanessa,” Manuela sighs. “I wouldn’t do it even if it were my only hope, why can’t you see that? I can’t take shortcuts. I just can’t, end of story.”
“Manuela and I aren’t cut out for chemical substances,” Mattia comes to her rescue. “We’ll keep trying our own transcendental meditation at the Bellavista.” After all, the Vedic master said that meditation is a science of the consciousness, an expansion of the mind. That it’s mechanical rather than intellectual. All of this sounds to him quite a bit like sex.
In room 302, they sit on the bed in the dark, legs crossed and eyes closed, and try an autonomous version of transcendence. They concentrate on freeing themselves of negative thoughts, on contemplating nothing, on breathing in such a way as to oxygenate the brain. “Do you feel your mind expanding?” Manuela whispers after what seems like an eternity. She’s bored. She has never been able to sit still. Or to think, really. Loftiness of the spirit is foreign to her. Hers is a practical, connective intelligence, as her aptitude tests have shown. Mattia feels something else expanding.
“How many women have you slept with?” she asks him afterward, nibbling greedily on his ear. “I don’t know, the only one that matters is the last one.” “More than thirty? More than fifty?” Manuela inquires, not angry, not even jealous. She doesn’t regret Mattia’s past and has no intention of going back to look for it. And she doesn’t want to think about the future—his or theirs. “I liked them all,” Mattia explains. “I’ve always had my own idea of beauty. The body is everything, but it’s also a boundary you have to get beyond in order to arrive at the source. I’m interested in the origin of things rather than in the consequences. I prefer clouds to rain, flames to ashes, beer to foam. I prefer the way a woman moves, the light in her eyes, the shadow of hair at the nape of her neck, the boldness of a jutting chin to the regularity of forms, a pretty nose, or a nice ass. I’ve found a reflection of something in every woman.”
“Maybe because you’re really full of yourself, or a really deep thinker, I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m not so transcendent, though,” Manuela reflects. “The body already says everything, and often it s
ays very little. We’re a mass of cells that join together and reproduce without knowing why. For me, they’re not two separate things, the mind’s nothing more than the brain, the mind’s what regulates the body. The body falls ill when the mind falls ill. And vice versa. If my leg doesn’t heal, I’ll go crazy and they’ll institutionalize me. If my mind heals, maybe I’ll be able to walk normally again, run even.”
Mattia raises the shutters just enough to see that it’s getting dark. From the street comes the distant sound of screeching tires, the echo of a horn, music from a radio speeding by. He searches for her mouth. For a second he tells himself he’s taking refuge in her because only she can make him happy, even though it might not be right or loyal or fair. But then Manuela opens her lips and the thought disappears.
Closed up night and day in room 302 without even raising the shutters, eating in the room, thinking about nothing, in other words about everything, until they’re completely drained. January 3 passes in this way, then January 4. Time has stopped, only the variations in the light filtering through the slats tell them if the sun has risen or set, if the moon has finished its journey across the sky. The bed is big, Mattia’s body firm, his breath regular in the darkness. Something opens up inside her as she looks at him, lying on his side, cheek on the pillow, arm over his eyes, forehead bare. A narrow passageway runs between your heart and mine, my love. / I have found the door, and now I know what spring is. The verses come to her suddenly. Who was it who taught them to her? When? My heart is a pool of clear water that reflects the moon. It’s easy and natural, universal and personal. Their bodies finally enter into a state of deep relaxation.
* * *
Vanessa had taken her Yaris to the car wash, so when they pull onto the Aurelia early in the afternoon on January 5, the sun glints on the shiny hood. “Three people and only one license, a world record,” she says, winking to her sister in the rearview mirror. But she doesn’t mind this detour to Torvaianica. Her dance class won’t start up again until after Epiphany, and she doesn’t want to spend too much time alone because otherwise her mind spins back to the parking lot at the old Gas Works, and the mermaid tattooed on the arm of some man she can’t remember. And she doesn’t know what hurts more, the metal of the car hood against her cheek or the vision of her empty purse, the physical violence or the idea that someone she trusted and was happy to meet had betrayed her. Mattia clings to the handle above the window. He’s not used to such spirited driving, or maybe just a woman’s spirited driving. Every now and then he courteously suggests: “You might want to put it in fifth.” “You might want to downshift to third.” “The speed limit might be ninety here.” It’s clear that he’s the driver back home, he’s the one who decides the speed, the gear, the trajectory on the curves. But where is his home?
“You talk like this friend I met in Ibiza,” she says, looking at him askance. She can’t really check his facial reaction because she’s attempting a daring pass, a white van is right on her tail, flashing its lights threateningly, and she has to get back in her lane somehow without running the car next to her, which is going faster than she is, off the road. “He was from Brescia, no, Mantua, maybe you know him, his name was Faustino Silvestri. You can’t not know him, he was really something, he used eyeliner, always wore black, a rose behind his ear, he taught tango in a club, I can’t remember what it was called.” “I’m not from Mantua,” Mattia says. He grips the handle with alarming force. I nearly got him, she thinks.
Manuela is sitting in the back, not listening to them. She stares at the scrubby oleander hedges quivering in the cold wind between the guardrails, the cars racing in the opposite direction, the numbered overpass signs, the ads for restaurants and shops selling garden supplies, furniture, lamps, and bathroom fixtures, one after another for miles and miles along the Aurelia. Six miles to go till the turnoff. Italy is one big, endless store stocked with useless things. If your desires are completely satisfied, you have nothing more to search for. She has to close her eyes. Watching the line in the middle of the road makes her nauseated.
The Torvaianica goalie’s father lives in a three-family house surrounded by a high wall gleaming with glass shards. The black eye of a security camera blinks above the doorbells. No names, only numbers on the gold-plated brass plate. Manuela presses the first button. A foreign voice answers. Manuela says she would like to speak with Mr. Rota. “Who is this?” the voice grows alarmed. Manuela moves so that the camera can see her better. “I’m Sergeant Paris, the woman who attacked him on the soccer field in Ladispoli.” The voice, whoever it belongs to, hangs up. Manuela turns toward Vanessa and Mattia, sitting on the hood of the Yaris. They smile encouragingly at her. Neither of them was especially sold on this visit. But Manuela had been adamant. Who knows what she was expecting. “He’s home, at least, not in the hospital,” Vanessa notes. “That’s already something.”
After five minutes, the voice comes back over the intercom: “Mr. Rota does not wish to see you.” “Please,” Manuela insists, “tell him I would like to apologize and to ask how he is.” The edge of a curtain in a third-floor window is raised. Someone is looking out at the street. “I don’t think he’ll file,” Mattia says. “He was the one who attacked Traian with the umbrella. A girl was killed with an umbrella, they can say it’s a deadly weapon. And he’s better off not going to trial against a wounded soldier.” “Manuela will never forgive herself for this screwup,” Vanessa says. “I know her. She wants to be perfect, she doesn’t let herself make even the slightest mistake. She thinks she’s somehow to blame for those three guys’ deaths, I don’t know if she told you. The support-group psychologist told me. He says that Manuela was obsessed with the idea when she was in the hospital. That when they had to tell her that those three actually weren’t in the hospital as they’d led her to believe at first, but had been dead and buried almost a month, she had a breakdown, they had to sedate her because she wanted to throw herself out the window, she even broke the glass, she tried to cut her throat, but her hands weren’t strong enough, she barely scratched herself, if you look you can still see the scar. She can’t forgive herself for not having saved them, for being alive instead of them. But it’s crazy, I read all the articles, I even talked to her commander, Captain What’s-his-name, really stiff, like he had a stick up his ass, he met with the victims’ families, you could see he was really broken up about losing his best men because of some stupid ceremony that shouldn’t even have taken place, because that school wasn’t even ready, I don’t know if Manuela told you, but they wanted to inaugurate it anyway, even though the roof was still missing, no desks, just an empty shell—it was a chain of unfortunate events, the people who were supposed to be there weren’t, and the people who were there shouldn’t have been. You know, one of the soldiers who was killed, the youngest one, the driver—my sister had left him at the base so he wouldn’t have to take this last risk, his father told me, he just can’t wrap his head around it; Manuela had chosen someone else from her team, someone who’d volunteered, but for some reason the guys who were supposed to film the ceremony were stuck at another base, I don’t remember why, and at the last minute the commander asked that kid to go with Manuela to film it, and so he went. In six months he’d never even gotten out of the Lince, can you imagine? All the other guys who are still alive have to deal with the fact that they’re here instead of someone else. A guy with a vest full of TNT blew himself up, or someone blew him up as soon as the Italians got close. Such unbelievable atrocities. What could Manuela do? How could she have kept him from doing it? She’s good at her job, really, she’s the best. You know what my mother says? That she has an economy car and a luxury sedan. I’m the economy car. She thinks of me as a nonentity.” “A mother would never think such a thing,” Mattia comforts her. “You don’t know my mother,” Vanessa says. “Why don’t you introduce us,” Mattia retorts. He smiles happily, as if he really wanted to meet Cinzia Colella. What a weird guy.
The Torvaianica goalie’s father
doesn’t come out. His wife stands on the doorstep and gestures for Manuela to leave, then closes the door. When she realizes that Manuela is still there, in the camera’s eye, she opens the door again. She’s a tall woman, hair pulled back in a chignon, nice clothes and jewelry, as if she were going out, but slippers on her feet. “You cracked his rib and broke a bone in his hand,” she shouts, “he can’t work for thirty days, isn’t that enough for you?” Manuela approaches the gate, and a dog growls. “I would like to apologize,” Manuela says, “if I could crack my own rib and break a bone in my own hand to make it up to Mr. Rota, I would; tell me what I can do.” “We’re not in the Middle Ages,” the woman says, “it’s not a question of retaliation, an eye for an eye; there’s the law, the judge will decide how much it should cost you.” “I know, but I’d still like to speak to him,” Manuela says. The dog growls. “You did what you did, you set a fine example for those kids. I know who you are, they told us. I’m sorry. But it doesn’t give you the right to beat someone up. You could have really hurt him.”
On the third floor, the person behind the curtain stays and watches until she gets back in the car. Manuela is pale, serious, expressionless. Mattia keeps quiet, doesn’t comment on her defeat. He understood almost nothing of what Vanessa said. Manuela never talks to him about what happened. What words could she use? Only the flesh speaks the truth. “Where is it the other guy lives?” Vanessa asks, because she doesn’t feel like sitting there stewing in front of this rich, merciless man’s home and have him see that an Italian army sergeant lets herself be driven around in a banged-up car. Manuela had written the madman’s address on a piece of paper torn from a notebook. She wads it up in her hands, and as Vanessa grinds the gears and heads back toward the intersection, she drops it out the window.
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