The Young Bride

by Alessandro Baricco

  In summary, the formulaic scheme perfected by Baretti provided for two sections, of which the first (inhale) was made up of four subsections, and the second flowed with greater freedom but nevertheless respected a certain overall harmony (exhale). It should be noted that this scheme was repeated dozens of times and—as the years passed and further examples accumulated—even as many as a hundred. One can easily deduce the hypnotic or at least lulling effect of this singular recitation. I myself can state that witnessing it was a remarkable experience—rarely boring, always delightful. I mean, I’ve seen much more pointless things in the theater. And there I’d even paid for the ticket. It should not, moreover, be forgotten that, in April of 1907, the brother of a well-known exporter of wine, in a sudden downpour, found that, crossing the square, he was sheltering the Mother under his umbrella, who with the most natural gesture took his arm, pressing her left breast against him, apparently intentionally. (Pause.) Everyone knows that the brother of the well-known exporter of wines deduced from it promises that later, not kept, led him to move to the South, where at present he lives with a dialect actor. It should not be forgotten that, during the 1898 ball for eighteen-year-olds, the Mother took off her shawl and danced alone, in the middle of the ballroom, as if in a sudden fit of girlishness, careless of the fact that one strap of her dress had slipped off. (Pause.) It must also have been his age, but certainly it was there that Deputy Astengo was abruptly stricken by a heart attack, and died while formulating in his mind doubts about having mistaken some priorities in life. It should not, moreover, be forgotten that the esteemed painter Matteo Pani got permission from the Mother to paint a nude of her, which, because of a belated form of modesty, she insisted be half-length. (Pause.) The portrait was later acquired by a Swiss banker who spent the last eleven years of his life writing to the Mother every day, with no response, asking to sleep with her for just one night. Nor should it, of course, be forgotten that on the beach at Marina di Massa, where the Mother by mistake spent the vacation of 1904 as a guest at the Albergo Hermitage, a young waiter who happened to come to her assistance during a fainting spell undoubtedly caused by the heat clasped her tight in his arms, at a moment when the Mother was wearing a simple bathrobe over her bare skin. (Pause.) The waiter on that occasion discovered the existence of further horizons, left his family, and opened a dance hall where even today the entrance displays, without apparent logic, a hotel bathrobe. Similarly we cannot forget that the third son of the Aliberti family, who suffered from a nervous condition, during a private party asked the Mother, who was very young at the time, to strip for him, in exchange for his entire inheritance. (Pause.) The Mother, as we know, took off her blouse, undid her corset, and let him touch her, refusing the inheritance; the satisfaction of leaving the third son of the Aliberti family lying senseless on the floor while she dressed was enough.

  Do you make repetitive gestures? the Doctor asked me (I ended up going to a doctor, my friends insisted, I did it mostly out of kindness toward them). Not in life, I answered. It happens when I write, I clarified. I like to write lists of things, indexes, catalogues, I added. He found the thing interesting. He claims that if I let him read what I’m writing it might turn out to be very useful.

  Naturally it’s a possibility that I rule out.

  Every so often he’s silent, and I, too, as we sit across from each other. For a long time. I assume he attributes to this a certain therapeutic power. He must imagine that I, in that silence, am making some pathway into myself. Actually I think about my book. I’ve noticed that, more than in the past, I like letting it glide off the main road, roll down unexpected slopes. Naturally I never lose sight of it, but, whereas working on other stories I prohibited any evasion of this type, because my intention was to construct perfect clocks, and the closer I could get them to an absolute purity the more satisfied I was, now I like to let what I write sag in the current, with an apparent effect of drifting that the Doctor, certainly, in his wise ignorance, wouldn’t hesitate to connect to the uncontrolled collapse of my personal life, by means of a deduction whose boundless stupidity would be painful for me to listen to. I could never explain to him that it’s an exquisitely technical matter, or at most aesthetic, very clear to anyone who mindfully practices my trade. It’s a question of mastering a movement similar to that of the tides: if you know them well you can happily let the boat run aground and go barefoot along the beach picking up mollusks or otherwise invisible creatures. You just have to know enough not to be surprised by the return of the tide, to get back on board and simply let the sea gently raise the keel, carrying it out to sea again. With the same ease, I, having lingered to collect all those verses of Baretti’s and other mollusks of that type, feel the return, for example, of an old man and a girl, and I see them become an old man standing stiffly in front of a row of herbs, with a young Bride facing him, while she tries to understand what is so grave about simply knocking on the Mother’s door. I distinctly feel the water raising the keel of my book and I see everything setting sail again in the voice of the old man, who says

  I don’t think, signorina, that you have available all the information necessary to be able to judge the most suitable way of approaching the Mother.

  You don’t?

  I don’t.

  Then I’ll follow your advice. I’ll ask for a meeting, and I’ll ask during breakfast. Would that be right?

  Better, said Modesto. And if you trust me, he added, don’t stint on prudence, since you are to deal with her.

  I’ll be absolutely respectful, I promise you.

  Respect I would take for granted, if you will allow me: what I suggest is a certain prudence.

  In what sense?

  She is a remarkable woman in every aspect.

  I know.

  Modesto lowered his gaze and what he said he said under his breath, with a suddenly melancholy intonation.

  No, you don’t know.

  Then he bent over the row of herbs again.

  Don’t you find that the mint grows very gracefully? he asked with sudden cheer, and that meant that the conversation was over.

  So, the next day, the young Bride approached the Mother during breakfast and asked her discreetly if she would not mind receiving her in her salon that afternoon, to exchange a few words, in private.

  But of course, sweetheart, she said. Come when you like. At exactly seven, say.

  Then she added something about English jams.

  Then, from the Island, a walnut writing desk arrived, followed, in order, one item a day, by thirteen volumes of an encyclopedia in German, twenty-seven meters of Egyptian cotton, a recipe book with no illustrations, two typewriters (one big, one small), a volume of Japanese prints, two more toothed wheels completely identical to the ones delivered days before, eight hundred kilograms of fodder, the heraldic coat of arms of a Slav family, three cases of Scotch whiskey, a rather mysterious piece of equipment later revealed to be a golf club, letters of credence from a London bank, a hunting dog, and an Indian carpet. It was time ticking, in its way, and the Family got so used to it that if, because of abominable breakdowns in the shipping service, an entire day passed without a delivery, everyone suffered from a just perceptible disorientation, almost as if the noontime bells had failed to ring. By degrees they became accustomed to calling each day by the name of the object—usually ludicrous—that had arrived on that day. The first to understand the usefulness of such a method was, it goes without saying, the Uncle, when, during a particularly jolly breakfast, someone wondered how long it had been since a drop of rain had fallen in that cursed countryside, and he, observing in his sleep that no one was able to articulate a plausible response, turned on his sofa and, with his customary authority, said that the last rain, which, moreover, had been disappointing, had taken place on the day of the Two Rams. Then he fell asleep again.

  So now we can say it was the day of the Indian Carpet when, not preceded by the usu
al telegram, and hence causing some bewilderment in the happy community gathered around the breakfasts table, Comandini appeared, out of nowhere, with the air of having something urgent to communicate.

  What happened, did you win at poker, Comandini? the Father asked good-humoredly.

  If only.

  And they closed themselves in the study.

  Where, during those nights I’ve already alluded to, I saw them countless times, and arranged them like pieces on a chessboard, playing with them all the possible games, just to divert my sleepless thoughts, which otherwise would lead me to arrange on a similar chessboard the pieces of my present life, something I would rather avoid. In the end I knew every detail about them, as they sat there, each in his own chair, the Father’s red, Comandini’s black, because of those sleepless nights—I should say, rather, sleepless mornings, although that doesn’t accurately define the fatal hesitation that dawn, too, inflicts on the sleepless, like a ruinous, and sadistic, delay. So I know every word spoken and every gesture made, in that encounter, though I wouldn’t dream of recording it all here, since, as everyone knows, my job consists precisely in seeing all the details and choosing a few, like a mapmaker, who otherwise might as well photograph the world, something which may be useful but has nothing to do with the act of narrating. Which is, instead, choosing. So I willingly throw away every other thing I know in order to save the movement with which Comandini settled himself better on the chair and, shifting his weight from one buttock to the other and, leaning very slightly forward, said something that he was afraid to say, and that in fact he said not in his usual way, that is, with torrential and brilliant eloquence, but in the short space of a very few words.

  He said that the Son had disappeared.

  In what sense? asked the Father. He had not yet dismantled the smile left on his face by the trivial small talk with which they had started off.

  We aren’t able to find out where he is, Comandini clarified.

  It’s impossible, the Father decided, as the smile vanished.

  Comandini didn’t move.

  That wasn’t what I asked you, the Father said then, and Comandini knew the exact meaning of the words, because he remembered very well when, three years earlier, sitting in that same chair, like a pawn in F2, he had heard the Father give some polite orders whose essence was: let’s be sure to keep on eye on the Son, with some discretion, during this English sojourn, and possibly offer him, invisibly, appropriate occasions for deducing by himself the pointlessness of a marriage so without prospects, or sound motives, or, ultimately, good sense. He had added that a bond with an English family, especially one in the textile sector, was to be hoped for. Comandini had not discussed it then, but had tried to understand how far he could go in diverting the Son’s destiny. He had in mind different degrees of violence, in the act that was to change a life, in fact two. The Father had then shaken his head, as if to get rid of a temptation. Oh, no more than a steady escort, he had explained. I would find it gracious enough to preserve a minimal chance for the young Bride, he had explained. And those were the last words he had uttered on the subject. In which, for three years, he had almost lost interest.

  But the things keep arriving here, he objected, thinking of the rams and all the rest.

  He has a series of agents, Comandini explained, scattered around England. I tried to investigate, but they don’t know much about it, either. They have the orders for shipping, that’s all. They’ve never seen the Son, they don’t know who he is. He paid in advance and gave very precise, almost maniacal orders.

  Yes, it’s like him.

  But it’s not like him to disappear in this way.

  The Father remained silent. He was a man who, if only for medical reasons, couldn’t allow himself to indulge in anxiety: moreover, he believed firmly in an objective tendency of things to settle themselves. Yet at that moment he felt a slippage of the soul that he had seldom known, something like the opening of a clearing somewhere in the thick forest of his tranquility. He got up from the chair, and for a moment stood waiting for things to resettle themselves inside him by mechanical means, as usually happened in the case of certain discomforts he felt, especially after lunch. All he got from it was an urge to fart, which he controlled. Whereas he did not lose the sensation that he could now focus better, and review the absurd idea that the Son was disappearing not in England but somewhere inside of him, that where there had been the solid mass of a sojourn there was now the void of a silence. It didn’t seem illogical, because, even though the style of the times provided for a vague, distant, and restrained role for fathers, it hadn’t been that way for him, with that Son, whom he had wanted, against all logic, and who, for reasons whose every nuance he knew, was the origin of his sole ambition. So it seemed to him reasonable to register that in the disappearance of that youth something of himself was also disappearing: he could perceive it like a tiny hemorrhage, and mysteriously he knew that, neglected, it would expand without respite.

  When was he last seen? he asked.

  Eight days ago. He was in Newport, buying a cutter.

  What’s that?

  A small sailboat.

  I imagine that we’ll see it unloaded in front of the gate one of these days.

  It’s possible.

  Modesto won’t be too enthusiastic.

  Yet there might be another possibility, Comandini ventured.

  What?

  He might have taken it out on the ocean.

  Him?

  Why not? If one hypothesizes a certain wish to disappear . . .

  He hates the sea.

  Yes, but . . .

  A certain wish to disappear?

  The desire to become unfindable.

  But why in the world?

  I have no idea.

  I beg your pardon?

  I have no idea.

  The Father felt a crack opening up somewhere inside him—another one. The idea that Comandini had no idea about something struck him without warning, since to that basically modest but marvelously pragmatic man he owed the conviction that every question had an answer, maybe inexact, but real, and sufficient to scatter any possibility of dangerous bewilderment. So he looked up at Comandini, astonished. He saw in his face an unfamiliar expression, and then he heard a creaking in his delicate heart, he smelled a sweetish odor that he recognized, and knew absolutely that at that moment he had begun to die.

  Find him, he said.

  I’m trying, sir. Besides, it’s also possible that we’ll see him arrive safe and sound at the door, one of these days, maybe married to an Englishwoman with milky skin and splendid legs, you know, the creator has given them incredible legs, since he couldn’t dream up for them anything decent in the way of tits.

  The usual Comandini had returned. The Father was grateful.

  Do me a favor, never use that word again, he said.

  Tits?

  No. “Disappear.” I don’t like it. It doesn’t exist.

  I happen to use it often in regard to my savings.

  Yes, I understand, but applied to humans it disorients me, humans don’t disappear, at worst they die.

  That’s not the case with your son, I’m sure.

  Good.

  I feel I can promise you, said Comandini, with a slight hesitation.

  The Father smiled at him, with infinite gratitude. Then he was seized by an inexplicable curiosity.

  Comandini, do you understand why you always lose at poker? he asked.

  I have some hypotheses.

  Such as?

  The most heartbreaking was suggested by a Turk I saw lose an island in Marrakesh.

  An island?

  A Greek island, I think, it had been in his family for centuries.

  You’re telling me you can bet an island at the poker table?

  It was blackjack, in that cas
e. Anyway, yes. You can even bet an island, if you have the necessary courage and the necessary poetry. He did. We returned to the hotel together. It was almost morning, I had also lost quite a bit, but you wouldn’t have said so—we were walking like princes, and without even saying it to each other we felt very handsome, and eternal. The extraordinary elegance of a man who has lost, said the Turk.

  The Father smiled.

  So you lose as a matter of elegance? he asked.

  I told you, it’s only one hypothesis.

  There are others?

  Many. You want the most reliable?

  I’d like that.

  I lose because I play badly.

  This time the Father laughed.

  Then he decided that he would die slowly, carefully, and not in vain.

  At seven on the dot the Mother was waiting for her, doing what she usually did at that hour, that is to say refining her own splendor: she confronted the night only in absolute beauté—she would never allow death to surprise her in a state that might disappoint whoever happened to discover her ready for the worms.

  So the young Bride found her sitting at the mirror, and saw her as she never had before, wearing only a light tunic, her hair loose over her shoulders, falling to her hips. A very young girl, almost a child, was brushing it: the strokes all descended at exactly the same speed, each time burnishing a gilded brown highlight.

  The Mother turned slightly, just enough to bestow a look.