The Sense of an Elephant

by Marco Missiroli

  The van stayed still.

  ‘What is it, Pietro?’ Paola laid a hand on his shoulder.

  The concierge put the vehicle in gear and they set off, slowly at first. He followed a trunk road for a bit, then they came to a roundabout where he slowed almost to a stop, turned into the road that cuts across the city and leads to the sea. Rimini was desolate, grey in the cold, grey also on account of the abandonment resort towns permit themselves in the autumn. Luca lowered his window. The salty air entered and Pietro coughed, pressed his nose against his sleeve as they drove around the ramparts and past the Tiberius Bridge. They skirted the harbour and came to a boulevard with a string of villas. At the end was a piazza, at the centre of which stood a fountain with four stone horses blowing water from their nostrils.

  ‘They’ve got a cold,’ Fernando said, pointing.

  The concierge kept his eyes on the steering wheel and the others said that it would be worth it to get out, it really would. He continued on to a panoramic terrace with a giant camera sculpture in the middle and parked nearby. Paola said, ‘There’s the sea.’

  There was the sea. Without the waves. Without the beach umbrellas. The sand tracked out with old footprints. Further on, the lighthouse was silent.

  ‘Everyone out,’ the lawyer said.

  They emerged one by one. Luca picked up the little girl and crossed the pavement in one long step. The lawyer took off his shoes and socks. Fernando did the same and Paola said to him, ‘You’ll be sick later, put your shoes back on.’

  Fernando took a picture of her and didn’t put his shoes back on, instead he ran for the shore. Pietro set off as well, his nose pressed to a handkerchief. He followed in the footsteps of his son as far as the shuttered concession stand with its tin-plate ice-cream menus.

  Paola caught up with him there. ‘How is it to come back?’

  ‘I’ve never left.’ Pietro removed his nose from the handkerchief and the air burned in his lungs. He passed the stand and walked along the beach, the sand climbing his legs. He advanced and Paola followed, went toward the sea, closer and closer till he came to the water’s edge. There was a band of broken shells, which Fernando and the lawyer picked from. The concierge stopped and the water touched his shoes, I will protect you, my son. Touched Paola’s shoes, Make Pietro fall in love with me. Washed over the bare feet of the lawyer, This is my family. And those of Fernando, Are you at the bottom of the sea, Papa? Kissed the shoes of the doctor, What am I going to do?

  The water receded, and Luca said to Pietro, ‘We have to go.’

  Sara said goodbye to her father as she touched the feather to her nose.

  ‘What did you wish for, honey?’

  She spoke under her breath. ‘That you come back soon.’

  ‘I won’t be long. You’ll have more fun with the others.’

  ‘That you come back soon to our house,’ she said more loudly.

  He entrusted the little girl to Paola and continued with Pietro along the beach. They went back up to the promenade at the fourth beach. A group of tourists stood gazing upwards: the Grand Hotel was an ivory cathedral.

  ‘Let’s take the van,’ said the concierge as he pulled out the keys. The doctor didn’t reply and continued on foot. Passed into the pedestrian area that led back to the fountain of the four horses. The water roared like they were already there. The concierge caught up with him at the entrance to the piazza. ‘Where is the appointment?’

  ‘This fountain is strange.’

  Pietro pointed to the pine grove just beyond. ‘In there in the summer, there’s a course with tricycles shaped like animals. The priests from the seminary would take me there.’

  Luca took a coin from his pocket. ‘It’s a fountain for lovers.’

  ‘For tourists.’

  ‘For lovers, my mother used to say. But she always was the sentimental type.’ He tossed the coin into the water, making the same wish his daughter had.

  They went along the boulevard with the string of villas to each side and took the passageway beneath the station. They came out on to a cobbled street that led to a piazza with a glass dome over the remains of a Roman domus, where they stopped.

  Pietro looked down at the cobblestones. ‘How do they manage to contact you to schedule a visit?’

  ‘They turn to organizations for the terminally ill.’ He shook the leather bag. ‘There are also exceptional cases.’

  ‘The old man from the petrol station’s son.’

  ‘The old man, not his son. If I agree to do it, he’ll take Andrea with him. If I agree this time, I’ll be taking a risk.’

  They stood close, shoes brushing. ‘Why do you do it?’

  The doctor was silent, moved away slightly. ‘Their eyes. It’s enough to look them in the eyes.’ He moved a bit further away. When he reached the edge of the piazza he raised his face to the plaque with its name.

  Pietro, too, raised his face to the plaque. ‘There isn’t any patient in Rimini, is there?’

  A pale mist floated in from the sea, brining the air and obscuring the walls of the houses. Father and son came together, remained one against the other in the piazza that preserved the past. Then Luca asked Pietro to follow him.

  ‘I’m stopping here.’ The concierge pulled back.

  ‘When my mother was dying she told me that she had had one single passion in life. “Papa,” I said to her. “No,” she said.’

  ‘I’m stopping here.’

  ‘“It was someone I knew before I was married,” my mother said. “The only good secret in my life. The others are all horrible or dull or only known to the Lord.” ’

  ‘You should stop here as well, Luca.’

  ‘“It was the end of a summer by the sea. It all started with a cat and a bicycle.” ’ The doctor’s face surfaced in the mist. At the far end of the piazza stood the eighteenth-century church, beside it a two-storey house with closed shutters. The facade had recently been repainted, dark green rather than yellow.

  Luca went closer to Pietro again. ‘I asked my mother how she came to marry my father. She said, “Papa was the love for a lifetime.” So what was the other? “The other was the love of a lifetime.” ’ The doctor pressed the hair down at his neck. ‘And do you know what my mother said when I wanted to know why her love of a lifetime ended?’

  Pietro looked at him. Luca was a silhouette cut into the white.

  ‘My mother said: “It takes courage to tear a lover away from the Lord. And I’ve always been a big chicken.” ’ Luca looked toward the far end of the piazza. ‘She also said something about me: she said that I was what held her and my father together. She admitted that having a child together had strengthened the relationship.’ He stopped. ‘Was that the church, Pietro?’

  He made no reply.

  And the doctor continued: ‘I knew that my mother had spent her holidays in Rimini until she was twenty-five. When I heard where you were from and that you had been a priest I thought you could have been that someone.’

  ‘What else did she tell you?’

  ‘Nothing else’. He began to walk. ‘What else should she have said?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the church.’

  The mist lifted and Luca said, ‘Tell me what the love of a lifetime is like, Pietro.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve just lost it.’

  Pietro left the centre of the piazza, skirted the Roman domus and stopped under the portico in front of the church.

  The doctor approached him. ‘You met her here?’

  A middle-aged priest came out of the house and hastened to open the church. Pietro stayed behind a column of the portico.

  ‘Don Paolo,’ called a man who was passing, ‘last night I dreamt about God.’

  ‘How was He?’

  ‘A bit tired,’ he laughed. ‘He told me there is something after we’re dead and we’ll all find each other there.’ The man said goodbye and turned the corner.

  The middle-aged priest nodded and before returning inside
said, ‘Of course, if there’s nothing, we’ve really been cheated.’

  Pietro took a step forward and squatted down, rested a hand where the cat had been struck by the witch, picked up a bunch of dry leaves. They crumbled in his hand. ‘Is this enough for you, Doctor?’

  Luca shook his head. ‘Why did you seek each other out after so much time?’

  ‘You want to know?’

  The doctor nodded. Pietro stood up and let the leaves fall. ‘No one ever told me I’d find her again after I’m dead.’

  38

  The mist became fog as father and son arrived at the house of the witch. It had smooth walls now but the plaster already looked patchy. An old woman sat in the front garden, her ankles obscured by the leaves of a fig tree. Pietro tipped his hat and she murmured, ‘I remember you. Give my best to the Lord!’

  They walked around the fenced-in courtyard. At the back was a small summerhouse, through whose window they could see the poster of a singer and a boxy chandelier. ‘Let’s get back to the others,’ Pietro said.

  ‘This was my mother’s house?’

  ‘Let’s get back to the others.’

  They returned down the street towards the sea. Luca called Poppi and the lawyer’s voice blared from the phone, ‘Come quickly, the dolphins have chosen Fernando!’

  ‘They’re at the Dolphinarium.’

  The concierge smiled.

  ‘Did you know that it was Poppi who wanted you at any cost?’

  He nodded.

  ‘There were thirteen of you. All with experience except you and two others. The lawyer insisted with the other owners. “He’s got the right vibrations,” he said.’

  ‘The right vibrations.’

  ‘He would have done anything for my mother. They were great friends.’

  The lighthouse sounded for the first time and they went to meet the echo of the past. Found themselves in front of the anchor monument at the beginning of the breakwater. Along the left side ran a quay where tied-up fishing boats slipped slowly back and forth. The lighthouse sounded again and Pietro plugged his ears. They crossed the street towards the Dolphinarium, a concrete cylinder dividing the open sand from the first official beach. There was no one queuing. Pietro bought two tickets and as soon as Luca joined him said, ‘They’re waiting for us.’

  Only Paola was waiting for them. She was the only one seated around the dolphin tank with her face turned toward the entrance. She held Sara’s feet between her knees while the little girl leaned on the tank wall and flailed her arms. The lawyer was running to and fro and taking pictures.

  Fernando was in a dinghy towed by a dolphin, his glasses slipped to the end of his nose and his beret hanging to one side. Two dolphins leapt over him, spraying him with water, and he fixed his hat. He peered out at the crowd, fearful, looking for his mother. Waved to her and Sara and waved to the audience, then a man in diving gear took the microphone and said, ‘A round of applause for Fernando, a round of applause.’ The few people applauded. Paola gripped the little girl’s ankles. Gripped more tightly and from beneath her sunglasses came two rivulets.

  ‘A final round of applause for Fernando!’

  The strange boy finished his ride, then was led to choose a fish from a bucket. This he brought to one of the dolphins waiting at the edge of the tank. The animal tore it from his fingers and Fernando leapt backwards in fright. The man in the diving gear gave him a souvenir tied with ribbons and told him he could return to his friends.

  ‘He’s coming, Paola.’ Pietro helped her to stand.

  She wiped her face, opened her arms and ran toward Fernando. The lawyer took a picture of the mother with the half smile and the son who pulled away.

  The music from the dance floor stopped and the fog consumed that tiny square of sand as well. Someone said it was time to go home. Someone else had already gone home. Everyone had forgotten the witch and the priest, hidden by the ivy between the huts.

  ‘My son was as small as this.’ She knelt down and picked up a snail shell. ‘I buried him under a tree. The next day I went back and the tree had lost all its leaves.’ The witch slipped off one shoulder strap and then another. The fog entered the ivy and the dress fell.

  The lawyer gave out the room assignments. Fernando protested when he found out that he would be sleeping with his mother. Asked to stay with Pietro, pulling him into a hug. The strange boy cooled down as soon as he saw one of the bartenders at the Grand Hotel, raven-haired and with braids pinned up on the crown of her head. She greeted him. ‘Would you like something to drink, sir?’ He sat down at the bar. ‘Is your name Alice?’

  The doctor collected his keys and went straight upstairs with his daughter to room 316. When they entered Sara shrank down in amazement. There were beautiful flowers on the bedside table and star-shaped chocolates on the bed, a bowl of fruit wrapped in a red ribbon, golden chairs and the sea just out of the window. She explored the room on legs like pogo sticks, disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared on the balcony, a friendly little phantom bursting out of her skin.

  To the concierge went the lawyer in 318. And the latter immediately set things straight. ‘Now don’t get any ideas. I’m no easy conquest.’ Poppi opened one of his suitcases. ‘It took my Daniele two days.’ Winked and collapsed into an armchair. ‘And a lifetime wasn’t enough for him to leave me. These days love affairs are dropping like flies, just look at Luca and Madame.’

  ‘The doctor knew about her and the other man.’

  ‘Good God, even Fernando and his cactus knew. Luca suffers from vertigo but he’s someone who jumps. And then he’s always known what his wife is like.’

  ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Viola? Beauty, she’s got. A brain and a sense of irony, ditto. Sensuality, she’s got in spades, but reliability? That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On her desire to reproduce, my friend. And on what there is on the horizon. Faster flies, more stable ones.’

  ‘She’s different than she appears. She’s just fragile.’

  ‘She’s - different - than - she - appears - she’s - just - fragile.’ He snorted. ‘You could write for the theatre, Pietro. Or become a priest. Think about it …’ He rested his feet on the table. ‘The woman could be exactly what she appears.’

  The mirror on the wall reflected the two four-poster beds and the bouquet of hydrangeas on the coffee table. It reflected the concierge, his chin bowed low on his breast. ‘Tell me what you know about the two of them.’

  Poppi examined the bowl of fruit served with best wishes from the Grand Hotel. ‘A woman would kill to be a mother.’ He hesitated over an apple. ‘They tried to have one for years. I heard the desperation every month when they came up empty.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘For me the child will always be Luca’s daughter and no one else’s. The bond is what counts, not the testicles.’ He selected a cluster of grapes and lowered it into his mouth.

  Pietro looked outside. The sea was a sheet of steel under the last rays of the sun. ‘Tell me what you know …’ – he turned – ‘what you know about me.’

  Poppi put down the cluster of grapes, went to the sliding glass door and opened it. ‘That you’re a very absent-minded concierge who doesn’t like cats, but a more than observant man.’

  ‘What else?’ He followed him onto the balcony.

  ‘I’m a poof, Pietro. And hysterical. I’m alone and speak with a forked tongue. But there’s one thing, my friend, that I’ll never do: reveal the secrets of a lifetime.’

  ‘Celeste.’

  ‘Celeste asked me to send you a letter and to keep you in consideration if you applied. Full stop. Celeste told me that you were a man to depend on, a man with tap-dancing in his past.’ He smoothed his eyebrows with his thumb. ‘The rest I understood on my own. You, Pietro, know what it means to live on the memory of the one you love.’

  ‘At a certain point that comes to an end as well.’

  The lights went on along the pro
menade. From the beach, a group of old men and women pointed offshore to a cruise liner lit up from bow to stern. The fog descended again and voices in the group said it was the Rex, the Rex. The lawyer went back in and rummaged in one of his bags, fished out a suit wrapped in cellophane. ‘For you, Pietro. You’re too charmant not to merit a bit of blue.’ Poppi removed his turtleneck, his shoes and trousers. Beat his fists against his ribs. ‘This is the flesh that separates me from my Daniele?’

  The concierge looked closely at the bones pushing through the skin. ‘All you have to do is wait.’

  ‘To die?’ The lawyer headed to the bathroom. ‘I’ve always been bored waiting.’ He opened the door. ‘Do you know the poet Prévert? A smooth-tongued fellow with a brain: Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle, les souvenirs et les regrets aussi. Dead leaves are collected by the shovelful, memories and regrets as well.’ As he shut himself inside: ‘I’m buried in them up to my neck.’

  The fog entered 318 and Pietro saw no longer. He rested a hand on his ribs, tapped.

  Celeste held the snail in one palm with the dress at her ankles and caressed Pietro’s hands that only knew how to pray. Helped him to remove his sweater, his shirt. The light from the lighthouse returned and she saw the bruises on his ribs.

  Pietro searched his pockets, pulled out a stone rosary and fastened it to his wrist, a strangling snake. ‘I don’t know how to swim very well.’ Stepped out of his trousers.

  ‘It’s because you carry weights around.’ She fingered the rosary and finished undressing him, drew him out from beneath the ivy.

  They ran naked as far as the water’s edge then scrambled up on the rocks flanking the jetty. Pietro held a hand over his sex and looked at the witch’s ballerina ankles.

  They leapt. The water swirled and swallowed her, swirled and swallowed him. Enveloped feet, legs, necks. Celeste held the snail on the surface of the water. ‘Forgive me, my child.’ Released the snail and followed it beneath the water. Pietro turned in every direction, felt the witch moving below. He waited, and as he did so unfastened the rosary.

  Pietro put on the lawyer’s gift and saw that it fit him perfectly. Poppi sang in the shower the Loredana Bertè song he’d played them in the van. The concierge was in blue for the first time in his life. In the mirror he saw how he now matched Mastroianni in both the lines in his forehead and the tailor-made jacket. Pietro buttoned up the jacket and took Anita’s jar out of the backpack. Took the recorder as well and put it in his pocket. My name is Andrea Testi. I am thirty-four years old and I know how to dribble. He left suite 318 and the Grand Hotel. The promenade was awash in fog. The electric signs for the various beaches were smoking. He could see the pale yellow of the street lamps and the red tail lamp of a bicycle that passed near him. Pietro had not been on the jetty since a night thirty-five years ago. He followed the promenade past the Dolphinarium with its shuttered ticket office, past the anchor monument. On the other side of the port, the dance floor had become a harbour for luxury vessels. The only music came from the low crashing of the waves. He rested on the wall that ran along the first stretch of the quay with the fishing boats, separating it from the sand. On the other side was an inlet. He climbed down and approached this narrow arm of the sea. Knelt and removed the lid from the jar, filled it with handfuls of frigid sand, filled it as Anita had asked him, a little at a time. Closed the jar and warmed it between his hands, protected. Held it like that as he turned around, passed the anchor again on his way to the end of the jetty.