The Young Bride

by Alessandro Baricco

  To restore order to the world, he answered.

  The next day, he instructed that the mourning should last for nine days from the day of the burial. On the tenth day he announced his marriage to the girl, and on the first day of summer it was celebrated with unforgettable joy. Three months later the girl gave birth, without dying, to a son, whom you will soon marry: since then, we’ve all called her the Mother. In the house you know, she became a woman, diligently, and she is the light who allows that man whom we all now call the Father to live in shadow, while he fiercely keeps the world in order. There is something that binds them, but obviously the word love, in this case, explains nothing. The secret they share is stronger, and the task they have chosen. One day, when they had been living together for a year, without ever sharing a bed, they felt strong enough to challenge together the two fears they were accustomed to associating with sex: he of dying, she of killing. They locked themselves in a room and didn’t come out before they were sure that if a spell had been cast on them, they had broken it. That’s why the Daughter, who was conceived during those nights, exists: if fate wanted her crippled and very beautiful, it’s no doubt in order to write a coded message that no one has yet been able to understand. But it’s only a matter of time, sooner or later it will be known. When you put the world in order, the Father says, you can’t decide the speed at which it will let you do so. He wanted me to tell you this story, I don’t know why. I’ve done it. Now don’t look at me like that, and finish your wine, girl.

  But the young Bride sat motionless, her gaze fixed on the elegant Woman. She seemed to listen, with absorption, to words that had been delayed along the way and now were piling up, stragglers, soundless. Instinctively she greeted them with annoyance. She wondered what had happened to that day to make it so weak that it released every secret and shattered the gift of ignorance. She didn’t understand what these people wanted from her, so suddenly avid and generous with truths that seemed dangerous to her. Without thinking about it, she threw out a question, biting into the words.

  If the story is secret, how do you know it?

  The elegant Woman didn’t lose her lightness.

  I was born in Portugal, I teach sex to society girls, she said.

  You.

  Do you need some lessons?

  I don’t need anything.

  You don’t need anything, no.

  Or maybe one thing.

  Tell me.

  Would you mind leaving me alone for a little?

  The elegant Woman didn’t answer. She merely raised her eyes toward the room, but as if she had lowered them onto a chessboard where someone had started a game whose outcome she was able to foresee, with no uncertainty. Then what she did was to take off, very slowly, the splendid red silk gloves she wore, which went up to her elbow, and place them on the young Bride’s lap.

  You want to be alone, she said.

  Yes.

  All right.

  The elegant Woman rose, not disappointed, not hurried, not anything. She must have risen like that from many couches, many beds, many bedrooms, many lives.

  L., too, got up, but not with the same tranquility, she wasn’t familiar with tranquility, as far as I knew. She got up and looked at the time.

  Fuck.

  You have to leave?

  I had to leave a long time ago.

  You did leave a long time ago.

  Not in that sense, idiot.

  When you left you forgot a pack of cigarettes on the bed, half empty. I carried them around for months. Every so often I smoked one. Then they were gone.

  Don’t try anything.

  I’m not trying anything.

  And stop killing yourself in this shitty place that seems like a maniac’s lair.

  Shall I call you a taxi?

  No, I have the car.

  She put on her jacket, and in the reflection of a window smoothed her hair. Then she stood for a moment, looking at me, I thought she was deciding whether to leave with a kiss, but in fact she was thinking about something else.

  Why all that sex?

  In what sense?

  In the book, all that sex.

  There’s almost always sex in my books.

  Yes, but here it’s an obsession.

  You think?

  You know.

  Obsession seems to me a little much.

  Maybe. But evidently there is something that attracts you, in writing the sex.

  Yes.

  What?

  That it’s difficult.

  L. began to laugh.

  You never change, eh?

  It’s the last thing she said. She left without even turning or saying goodbye, it was a thing she used to do then, too. I liked it.

  She left beautifully, without even turning or saying goodbye, thought the young Bride as she watched the elegant Woman cross the room. I like it. Who knows how many nights it takes to become like that. And wasted days, she thought. Years. She poured herself some more wine. Might as well. The strange solitude of one who is alone in the middle of a party like that one. My solitude, she said to herself in a low voice. She straightened her spine, pulled her shoulders back. Now I’ll put my thoughts in place and my fears in alphabetical order, she thought. But then her mind was immobile, incapable of setting off on the narrow pathway of thoughts: empty. She would have liked to ask what still belonged to her after that day of stories. She tried. The first thing is that I no longer have anyone. I’ve never had anyone, so it changes nothing. But then her mind became empty again, immobile. A lazy animal. Better for everyone to know, I can finally be myself, better also for me to know, he would have remained a father stuck in my throat all my life, better that he’s dead, better now. One day I’ll understand if I killed him, now I’m too young, I have to be careful not to kill myself. Farewell, father, brothers farewell. But then the emptiness again, not even painful, only uncorrectable. She looked up at the party that was crackling around her, and felt she was a shadow, in her unsuitable dress, an indecipherable move on the sidelines of the game. Nothing mattered to her. She lowered her eyes and stared at the long, red silk gloves she was holding in her lap. Hard to say if they had meaning. She took off her jacket, so she was just in her plain dress, which left her arms bare. She took the gloves and put them on, with care but without purpose, or just glimpsing consequences that were unknown to her. She liked finding a soft seat for each finger, and then pulling the red silk up over her skin, up to the elbow. It did her good to apply herself to a pointless gesture. I could learn a lot of things here, she said to herself. I’d like to return, I have to dress differently, maybe the Father will let me return. Who knows if the Daughter has ever been here. And the Mother, here, as a girl, what a sight it must have been. Glorious. She looked at her hands, they seemed like hands she had lost and that someone had now given back to her. They must be grotesque, with this dress, she thought. It didn’t matter to her. She asked herself what mattered to her, at that moment. Nothing. Then she realized that a man had stopped, and was standing in front of her. She looked up: he was young, he seemed polite, and he was saying something to her, probably something brilliant—he was smiling. I’m not listening to you, thought the young Bride. But the man didn’t go away. I’m not listening to you but it’s true, you’re young, you’re not drunk, you have a nice jacket. He continued to smile at her. Then he bowed gracefully and asked, nicely, if he could sit down next to her. The young Bride looked at him for a long time, as if she had to summarize a whole story without which she would be unable to give an answer. Finally she let him sit down, without a smile. The man began to speak again, and the young Bride remained staring at him without listening to a single word: but when he offered her the glass of champagne he was holding she brought it to her lips, without hesitation. He stared at her, with the air of studying a puzzle.

  You can ask, if you don’t unde
rstand, the young Bride said to him.

  I’ve never seen you here, said the man.

  No, I’ve never seen myself here, either, she said. Nor am I seeing myself now, she thought.

  The man registered the good fortune of having found an inexperienced, pure girl, a circumstance that in that sort of game was rare and presented a very special attraction. Since he knew that it was often a case of a skillful performance he leaned forward to place his lips on the young Bride’s neck and when she instinctively drew back he began to think that luck was really granting him a pleasure that, provided he had some patience, would make his evening memorable.

  I’m sorry, he said.

  The young Bride looked at him.

  No, she said, don’t pay attention to me, do it again, it’s that I wasn’t expecting it.

  The man leaned over again, and the young Bride let him kiss her neck, closing her eyes. She thought that the man knew how to kiss graciously. He raised one hand to touch her face, with a pure caress. When he pulled away, he didn’t take his hand from her face and instead lingered until his fingertips touched her lips, which he didn’t notice he was staring at, in surprise: then her dress stopped seeming to him so inexplicably unsuitable, and for a moment he doubted his own certainty. She knew why, and, surprising herself, took the man’s fingers between her lips, held them a moment, getting hot, and then, turning her head, pushed the man away politely and said to him that she didn’t even know who he was. Who I am? he asked, continuing to stare at her lips.

  You can make up something, said the young Bride.

  Then he smiled, and stared at her for a moment in silence, because he was no longer very sure of what was happening.

  I don’t live here, he said.

  Where, then?

  Nothing, elsewhere, he said. Then he added that he was a scholar.

  Of what?

  He explained it to her, without understanding clearly why, chose his words carefully, and with the wish that she would really understand.

  Are you making it up? she asked.

  No.

  Really?

  I swear.

  He made as if to kiss her on the mouth but she drew back and instead of yielding to a kiss took his hand and placed it on her knees, pushing it toward the hem of her dress, but in an indecipherable way, which might seem insignificant, minuscule, a brief flight from a real intention. Nor did she know, at that moment, what she was seeking. But she realized that somewhere, in her body, was the absurd desire to be touched by that man’s hand. Not because she liked the man, he didn’t matter to her: she felt rather the urgency to throw away something of herself, and opening her legs to the man’s caress seemed to her at the moment the shortest or simplest way. She stared at him with a look that meant nothing. The man was silent. Then he pushed his hand under her dress, cautiously. He asked her where she came from, and who she was. And the young Bride answered. While she was trying to remember how far up her stockings went and where the man’s fingers would find skin, she began to speak. Unexpectedly, she heard her own voice, calm, almost cold, uttering the truth. She said she had grown up in Argentina and, surprising herself as well, described her father’s dream, the pampas, the herds of animals, the big house in the middle of nowhere. She told him about her family. It didn’t make sense but I told him everything. He, slowly, with a particular gracefulness, caressed my knee, sometimes holding his palm still and moving only the fingers. I told him that what had seemed easy in Italy had turned out to be much more complicated there, and almost without realizing it I surprised myself by confiding my secret to someone else for the first time, saying that at a certain point my father had had to sell everything he had in Italy to continue with his dream. He was stubborn in his illusions, and courageous in his errors, I said. So he sold everything we had to pay his debts and start again a little farther east, where the color of the grass seemed to him right and the prophecies of a sorceress promised him unlimited and belated luck. The man listened. He looked me in the eyes, then descended to stare at my lips—I knew why. He began to move his hand up under my dress, and I let him do it, because it was, mysteriously, what I wanted. I said there were rules, there, that we didn’t understand, or maybe we didn’t understand the earth, the water, the wind, the animals. There were old wars that we were the last to come to, and a mysterious idea of property, and a fleeting concept of justice. Also an invisible violence, which it was easy to perceive but impossible to decipher. I don’t remember exactly when, said the young Bride, but at a certain point we were all sure that everything was going to ruin and that if we remained another day there would be no turning back. The man leaned over to kiss her on the mouth, but she drew back, because she had to finish uttering the name of a particular truth, and that was the first time she had done so aloud. The men of the family looked each other in the eyes, she said, and the only one who didn’t lower his gaze was my father. So I understood that we wouldn’t be saved.

  Continuing his caresses, the man looked at me: maybe he was trying to figure out if any of what I was saying mattered to me. I was silent, only I stared at him with a charm that hinted of challenge. I felt his hand under my dress, between my legs, and it occurred to me, suddenly, that I could do with that hand what I wanted. It’s incredible how uttering a truth kept hidden for too long makes one arrogant or confident, or—I don’t know—strong. I bent my head back very slightly, closed my eyes, and felt the hand go up between my legs. A small sigh was enough to push it to where the stockings ended and feel it on my skin. I wondered if I was really able to stop it. So I opened my eyes and said in a ridiculously gentle voice that my father, at night, made exactly that gesture, with his rough, woody hand—he sat beside me and while my brothers silently left the room he slid just like that under my skirt, with his hand of weary wood. The man stopped. He pulled his hand back toward the knee, but not brusquely, simply as if he had been thinking about it for a while. He was no longer the father I had known, said the young Bride, he was a broken man. We were so alone that the flight of a falcon was a presence, the arrival of a man from the crest of the hill an event. She was enchanting as she spoke, her eyes were lost in a dim distance, and her voice was firm. So the man leaned toward her, to kiss her mouth, a gesture in which not even he could have distinguished the urgency of desire from the courtesy of a protective gesture. The young Bride let him kiss her, because at that moment she was climbing back up the slope of truth, and any other gesture was indifferent to her—it was somewhere else that she was going. She barely felt the man’s tongue, it didn’t matter to her. She felt, but peripherally, that that hand, under her dress, was approaching her sex. She pulled away from the man’s mouth and said that in the end the only solution that could be found was to come to an agreement with certain people, down there, and this meant that she would have had to marry a man she scarcely knew. He wasn’t even an unpleasant man, the young Bride smiled, but I was engaged to a youth I loved, here in Italy. Whom I love, I said. I barely opened my legs and let the man’s fingers find my sex. So I said to my father that I would never do it, and that I would leave, as it had long since been decided, to marry here, and nothing could keep me from going. He said that I would ruin him. He said that if I left he would kill himself the next day. The man opened my sex with his fingers. I said that I ran away at night, with the help of my brothers, and that I didn’t turn around until I had crossed the ocean. And when the man put his fingers in my sex I said that my father, the day after I fled, had killed himself. The man stopped. They say he was drunk and fell into a river, I added, but I know that he shot himself in the head with his gun, because he had described to me exactly how he would do it, and had promised me that, at the last moment, he would have neither fear nor regrets. Then the man looked me in the eyes, he wanted to know what was happening. I took his hand gently and drew it out from under my dress. I brought it to my mouth and took his fingers between my lips, for a moment. Then I said that I would
be infinitely grateful if he would be so kind as to leave me alone. He looked at me without understanding. I would be infinitely grateful if you would now be so kind as to leave me alone, the young Bride repeated. The man asked a question. Please, said the young Bride. Then the man rose, an instinct made reflexive by his upbringing and without understanding what had happened to him. He uttered some civility, but then he stood there, to prolong something he didn’t know. Finally he said that that wasn’t the most suitable way to entertain a man in that place. I can’t say you’re wrong and I beg you to accept my apologies, said the young Bride: but calmly, without the shadow of a regret. The man left with a bow. Many times, in his life, he would try to forget that encounter, without being able to, or to describe it to someone, without finding the right words.