White as Silence, Red as Song

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  My father stops talking, as if through the window he can see that horizon and the lights of a distant harbor, like in a dream.

  “If I had gone to school that day, Leo, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. I got the answers I needed on a day I didn’t go to school. A day in which, for the first time, I searched for what I wanted by myself, at the cost of being punished . . .”

  I don’t know if my father has turned into Professor Dumbledore or Dr. House, but he has understood exactly how I feel. I can hardly believe it. I had to seriously misbehave to get to know who my father is . . . It’s the first time he tells me something about his past. I mean, I’ve known him for about sixteen years, yet I know very little about him—almost nothing that really counts. I’m about to say something, but it’s so cheesy I’m appalled, and fortunately Dad continues.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t go to school today, and you deserve punishment for it because that’s part of owning up to one’s responsibilities. I don’t know why and I don’t want to know. I trust you.”

  The world is changing. I wouldn’t be surprised if any minute now it started turning in the other direction, or if Homer Simpson became an exemplary husband, or if Inter Milan won the Champions League. My father is saying the most incredible things. It’s like a movie. The exact words I need. I wonder why he didn’t do it sooner. A timely reply arrives without my having to formulate the question.

  “I now realize that you’re willing to risk a whole year for what you consider important, and I am sure it isn’t trivial.”

  I remain silent, wondering how it can be that skipping one day of school is enough to change your life from black and white to color. First Beatrice, now Dad. All I manage to say is, “How were you punished that time?”

  My father turns toward me with an ironic smile.

  “We’ll talk about that too. I have two or three tricks to teach you for avoiding certain beginners’ mistakes.”

  I smile back. And that smile between Dad and me is the smile between one man and another. He’s about to leave the room and the door is closing when I find the courage:

  “Dad?”

  He pops his head back in, like a snail.

  “I’d just like to be allowed to visit Beatrice. I was with her today.”

  Dad looks serious for a moment, and I prepare myself for his Don’t even think about it. He lowers his gaze to the floor and then looks up again.

  “Permission granted, but only for that reason. Or else—”

  “You’ll reduce me to the dust of my shadow,” I interrupt. “I know. I know.”

  I smile an almost perfect smile.

  “And Mom?”

  “I’ll talk to Mom.”

  The door has already closed when he says it.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I repeat it twice. The words roll on the floor while I, stretched out on my bed, watch the white ceiling turn into a starry sky. My blood pumps quickly through my veins and sets them on fire. For the first time after a punishment I don’t hate my parents or myself. And the dust of my shadow is stardust.

  Chapter 83

  Not being allowed to leave the house until the end of school means I have over two months of seclusion awaiting me, except for my visits to Beatrice, which Mom has ratified as an addendum to our armistice. Despite my punishment I am happy, because the only truly important reason for going out has been granted. As for the soccer tournament, I’ll think of something . . . And besides, the good thing about this punishment is that I’ll probably end up passing the year. With no distractions and not being allowed out, my occupations have become: studying (mostly with Silvia, who applies herself even though I don’t); spending time on my computer (but in this case too following a schedule determined by the pact of March 21—that is, the day I visited Beatrice and got punished); reading books, or rather, reading one book, the umpteenth book that Silvia has lent me, called Someone to Run With, and at least the title isn’t bad even though it’s about a dog being taken for walks (what a torment!); playing the guitar (occasionally Niko comes over and we play a couple of songs together . . . In the meantime he’s broken up with Alice, or actually, Alice ditched him for someone else); and, incredible as it may sound, looking at the stars.

  Yes, looking at the stars, for the simple reason that Dad has infected me with his passion for astronomy. He knows all the names of the constellations and he can recognize stars, creating invisible silver cobwebs with the tip of his finger that join them up, like the dot-to-dot puzzles in newspapers.

  This may come in handy with Beatrice one day. I want to show her all the stars and invent a constellation for her with her name. What shape will it have? What shape does a dream have?

  Chapter 84

  I walk into Beatrice’s room with my guitar slung over my shoulders. I feel like one of those buskers who meanders through the subway cars, who ends up begging for a little happiness.

  Beatrice smiles: I’ve kept my promise. She is lying facedown on her bed reading, while Elisa is playing on the stereo, her voice bouncing off the walls and looking for a way out through a crack in the partially closed window.

  “So today we start!” says Beatrice, her smile spreading all the way to her green eyes, as if we are about to begin something that is destined to never end.

  “I want to learn to play this song,” she says, nodding toward the stereo.

  “I have waited a long time

  For something that isn’t there,

  Instead of watching

  The sun rise . . .”

  “With a teacher like me it won’t be a problem. I’ll have to come every day though.”

  Beatrice laughs with her heart in her eyes, throwing her head back and putting her hand over her mouth, as if wanting to limit a more open gesture than what she should allow herself, she who could allow herself anything she wanted.

  “I’d like that, Leo, but you know I can’t manage it . . .”

  I take my guitar out of its case as if I were The Edge.

  I sit on the edge of the bed, near Beatrice, who pulls herself up. I’d like to capture the scent of her movements in a smell recorder, if such a thing existed. I position the guitar on her legs and show her how to hold the handle, which appears a bit oversized next to Beatrice’s fragile body. My arm guides her from behind to help her find the correct grip, and for an instant my mouth is so close to her neck that I wonder what my brain is waiting for to order my lips to kiss it.

  Elisa’s song ends.

  “There, now you have to keep the string pressed down against the fret, putting pressure with your thumb from behind and then plucking the string with your right hand.”

  Beatrice’s lips are pursed in an effort to make a sound come out, a sound that remains dull in the now quiet room, the dull sound made by her weakened body. Her body, which should be filling the world with unheard harmony and an infinite symphony, instead produces nothing but a clumsy note. I place my hand over hers with a delicate pressure. Our hands overlap like mine did when I prayed as a child.

  “Like this.”

  The strings start to vibrate.

  With my body I am allowing Beatrice’s to play.

  Beatrice stares at me and smiles as if I have shown her a treasure that had been hidden for centuries, yet I have simply taught her how to pluck a guitar string.

  She hands me the guitar impatiently.

  “Show me how you do it. That way I’ll learn quicker.”

  I take the guitar as she sits back, curling up and hugging her knees with her arms. I start strumming the chords of Elisa’s song. Beatrice recognizes it and closes her eyes in search of something lost.

  “Why don’t you sing?” she asks me.

  “Because I don’t know the words,” I answer quickly, but the truth is that I am embarrassed to sing out of tune.

  With her eyes closed, Beatrice opens her lips slightly, and a fragile voice flows from her vocal cords like a freshwater spring.

  “And miraculously

/>   I can’t avoid hoping.

  And if there’s a secret

  It’s to do everything as if

  I only saw the sun . . .”

  My fingers become part of her voice that flows over them as if they had become the riverbed of that vocal flow of water. Her song fills every corner of the room, even those that the light never reaches. It shines out of the window, floating around the sleepy city—numbed by its gray and repetitive bustle—softening the right angles of daily life and jaws clenched by pain and fatigue.

  “A secret is

  To do everything as if,

  To do everything as if,

  You only saw the sun,

  You only saw the sun,

  You only saw the sun

  And not something that isn’t there . . .”

  I accompany the last words with a final arpeggio.

  We sit in silence, the silence generated by the end of the song: silence doubled, squared even, where the song lyrics echo like a lullaby that has cradled pointless worries to sleep and reawakened things that count.

  Beatrice opens her eyes and smiles. The world has been painted in the green of her eyes and the red of her hair and the gold of her smile.

  Then Beatrice cries, her smile mixing with tears.

  I watch her closely, my eyes fixed and still, wondering why pain and joy cry in the same way.

  Chapter 85

  The afternoons I spend studying with Silvia constitute, in some cases, the only antidote to the venom of sadness. We study, and occasionally one of Dante’s verses or a philosopher’s saying carries us far away. I tell her about my visits to Beatrice. I recount everything we say to each other and I feel better: my encounters with Beatrice have lodged inside me like a stone to be digested. But digesting stones is impossible. In a way my chats with Silvia act as the enzyme to help break them down. Silvia listens to me attentively, without comment. Even her silence is enough. Though one time she asked:

  “Should we pray for her?”

  I trust Silvia, and if she thinks something is right, I do it. So occasionally we say a prayer. Not that I believe in it, but Silvia does. And so we say this healing prayer for Beatrice:

  “God, if you exist”—I add this bit secretly—“make Beatrice better.”

  It’s not much of a prayer, but the gist is there. And if God is God, he doesn’t need too many words. If God doesn’t exist, those words are pointless; but if God does exist, maybe he will wake up from his long slumber and for once get around to doing something worthwhile. I’ve never said this to Silvia, to not offend her, but it’s what I think.

  Chapter 86

  Beatrice. I go to her place every week. The day always changes according to how she is, because some afternoons she’s too tired. There have been no improvements. After the latest blood transfusions her situation is stationary. Either Beatrice or her mother sends me a message when she’s feeling better, and I shoot off to her house on public transportation. (My Batscooter is defunct since the accident and I doubt it will be reincarnated into anything. And anyhow, even though the damage was covered by insurance, the pact of March 21 states that any discussion of possibly acquiring a new means of transport can only be held after successful completion of the year.)

  Each time I take something that might serve as a distraction for Beatrice. When I go into her room, my aim is to give her a piece of paradise (in a metaphorical sense, because I don’t believe in paradise), but then I find paradise there, because she is there (so maybe paradise does exist, because such splendid things surely cannot end). One time I take her a CD with my favorite song on it.

  “Will you dance with me?” she asks me in a faint voice. I can’t believe it. I hold Beatrice’s fragile body in the light of her room, and I make her float slowly like a bubble that from one moment to the next could drift away in the air. Her hair has grown back enough to smell its fragrance. I squeeze her hand and her waist: a crystal glass that could shatter any moment, even because of the red liquid I want to pour into it.

  The urge to sleep with her that I once associated with the thought of her is now distant. Beneath her light clothing her body seems to be part of mine, as if our skin no longer knows which bones and which muscles to cover. Her face, resting in the hollow of my neck, is the missing piece to the disjointed puzzle of my life, the key to everything, the center of the circumference. Her feet follow my steps, which are inventing the choreography designed by the first dance between a man and a woman. It feels as if my heart is beating everywhere, from the tips of my toes to the most northern strand of my hair, and the strength that I find within would be enough to create the entire world inside this room.

  Beatrice only manages a few steps before she abandons herself in my arms. As light as a white snowflake. I help her back into bed. I turn off the stereo. She briefly looks at me with gratitude before closing her eyes, overcome by tiredness, and in that single gaze that closes down, I realize I have everything that she is losing: my hair, school, dancing, friendship, family, love, hope, a future, life . . . But I don’t know what I’m doing with any of these things.

  Chapter 87

  I can’t study and tomorrow I have a math test. I keep seeing Beatrice’s gaze as it turns off, defeated.

  I see it behind the lines,

  between the lines,

  in the white of the lines.

  It’s as if my senses have withdrawn and developed another form of perception: everything that Beatrice is losing I have to live not only for myself, but for her too. I have to live it twice. Beatrice likes mathematics. And now I want to study it, and study it well, because Beatrice is even sad about having to give up that mysterious drivel . . .

  Chapter 88

  At Beatrice’s house I always turn into a new character: first the guitar teacher, now the geography teacher. Who would ever have thought it—me, who has never studied geography and has done nothing but match the names of countries to their metallurgical and steel industries, which, by the way, I’ve never understood the difference between, not to mention the sugar beet fields, which I imagine as full of plants with the sugar packets you get in cafés hanging from them.

  I come and see Beatrice and each time I take her to a new city. Beatrice dreams of traveling, and when she gets better she wants to travel the world, learn its languages, discover its secrets. She already knows English and French; she wants to learn Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. I wonder why Russian, with those unfathomable letters. Isn’t Greek enough?

  She says that knowing other people’s languages helps you see the world better. Every language has a different point of view. The Inuit, for instance, have fifteen words for snow, based on temperature, color, and consistency—whereas to me snow is snow and that’s it. Then you add an adjective to figure out if you can snowboard on it. The Inuit see fifteen different kinds of white in the white I see, and that’s something that terrifies me.

  Chapter 89

  I collect material studying the customs and traditions of a city or nation. I search for images on the internet of the most beautiful places to visit, of monuments not to be missed, perhaps linked to interesting stories. I prepare a PowerPoint presentation and then we look at it on the computer while I pretend to take Beatrice around those streets, as if I am an expert tourist guide.

  In this way we have visited the Golden Ring in Russia, wrapped up in a thousand layers of wool to protect ourselves from the cold; we have rested in the gigantic shadow of Christ the Redeemer, who looks over Rio; we have lingered in silence in front of the Taj Mahal in India, an extraordinarily white building that sits on red sand, built by an Indian king as a token of love for his wife; we have dived into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef after stopping by the Sydney Opera House; we have taken part in a tea ceremony, possibly the first tea I’ve ever drunk in my life, in an unforgettable corner of Tokyo.

  We still want to cruise along the Danube and see an Icelandic geyser; eat Sicilian cannoli on the seafront; take a black-and-white photo on the Sein
e; stroll along Las Ramblas looking at all the artists; hug the Little Mermaid; steal dust from the Acropolis; buy clothes in the Big Apple and wear them in Central Park; cycle along the canals of Amsterdam, making sure to keep our balance so we don’t fall into the water; knock down at least one of the Stonehenge boulders; scramble along the edge of a Norwegian fjord with the risk of being swept away; and stretch out in an immense Irish field thinking that only two colors exist in the world: green and blue . . . We have the whole world to discover and explore, and Beatrice’s room turns into all these places, thanks to our super-low-cost tours.

  “Beatrice, where do you want to go in the summer after you finish high school?”

  Beatrice says nothing and looks up, placing her finger on her nose and mouth like someone searching for a difficult answer.

  “I’d like to go to the moon.”

  “To the moon? A mass of white dust without gravity, immersed in the darkest silence that exists . . .”

  “Yes, but all things that are lost on earth are stored there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you know the story of Astolfo in Orlando Furioso? He’s a knight who sets off to retrieve common sense for Orlando, who has gone crazy for love, so that he can return to fighting.”

  I shake my head and imagine myself as a frenzied Leo who has lost his mind for love.

  “You’ll study it. But it’s just a fantasy,” adds Beatrice, almost sadly.

  “What would you go and retrieve?”

  “What about you?” asks Beatrice.

  “I don’t know, maybe my first guitar. I left it in a hotel in the mountains and never got it back. I was attached to it because I had learned to play with that one. Or maybe my old scooter . . . I don’t know. You?”