“I called you down to give you this, first, but you made me mad . . . ” and he came over with a precious heart hanging on a chain.
I swerved instinctively, a step back and sideways, and he stood with the gold tie suspended in the air, the pendant dangling. His forehead was contracted into a crowd of stormy frowns, his mouth reduced to a slash. On his temple the fish bone pulsed, red with rekindled rage. But I also recognized in his eyes a painful, defenseless astonishment. I moved forward with an equal and opposite step, I lifted my chin to receive the gift. The contact of his oddly capable hands as they clasped the chain behind my neck without looking. On my chest moments of coolness in the shape of a heart, then the metal was warmed by the deep blood that moved it with small frequent regular pulses.
“It looks really lovely on you,” Vincenzo said, in a low voice.
With slow fingers he drew on my skin the outline of the pendant, then wanted to go down toward my breasts.
“Here’s your cigarettes,” Adriana arrived, running.
She stopped suddenly; I don’t know what she saw.
“The cigarettes,” she repeated slowly, handing him the pack uncertainly.
She was still holding in her teeth the stick of the cherry popsicle she’d bought with the change. I turned my back to her and unclasped the gift from around my neck, hiding it in my pocket. I almost never put it on, and yet I still have it, a possibly stolen object. I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep it for twenty years, taking it everywhere with me. I’m fond of it. I’ve used it as a talisman on some occasions, my final exams in high school, some important appointments. I’ll wear it again at Adriana’s wedding, if it’s true that she wants to get married. I have no idea who this heart once belonged to.
I avoided being alone with Vincenzo, in those days, but whenever I saw him appear an internal spasm wrung my guts and immediately a kind of languor flooded my stomach. Toward evening he whistled to me through the windows on the garage side, and it took an effort of will to ignore him. After a short, vain wait he came in, silent, furious, slamming the door. He gave off a current that caused the sudden fall of a pot from the hook on the wall, wailing for no reason from Giuseppe, an inexplicable headache in Adriana. I resisted, at a distance.
The Saturday money was enough for a bus ticket. I told the parents the truth, that I wanted to go to the birthday party of a friend from before. I asked if I could stay overnight. They looked at each other for moment, with that apathetic uncertainty.
“I can’t take you, the car won’t start” was the father’s permission. From the strange sound of his voice I realized that he almost never spoke.
I went down early in the morning; from the window I’d seen something bright-colored to pick for Patrizia on the slope behind the building. I couldn’t give her anything else. They were dandelions and some other small yellow flowers that smelled of turnips. I tied up the bouquet with string and went back upstairs to get ready. Adriana knew nothing about my plans, and when she realized where I was going without her she ran to the bedroom to get a drawing I had made for her and tore it up under my nose. To my surprise the mother wanted to come with me to the bus stop in the square, carrying the baby. I said goodbye from the window of the bus and he moved his hands in that repetitive way he had, which didn’t seem like waving.
During the journey the flowers wilted and people in the nearby seats stared at them, maybe because of the smell. As I waited for the door to open on the fifth floor of the building on the northern shore, I no longer even knew whether to give them to her, to my friend.
She rushed at me and shouted with joy, the dogs barked in excitement and the cat came to see. Eyes lowered I apologized for the poverty of the gift, but, hopping up and down, she swore that the best of all her presents was me.
We spent the morning alone, talking nonstop, though I had slightly less to say. I was ashamed to tell her about my new life, and so I asked desperately about hers. I rediscovered the smells of the house, cinnamon in the kitchen, a slightly sour odor of sweat in Patrizia’s room, and in the bathroom her mother’s No. 5 perfume, which she always put on before she went to the office. I was a day late for the birthday party, but in the refrigerator were delicious leftovers, salty and sweet, that we nibbled on for hours, lying on the bed. Pat told me about the swimming competitions she’d won—I would have come in third or fourth if I’d entered. We laughed at the boy with the long nose who’d been coming on to her for months.
“How can he kiss me with that snout?” she wondered, uncertain whether to give him the chance.
“When you weren’t there . . . ”: so began the story of every episode, as if my absence were now an irreversible fact.
15.
The cat meowed, rubbing against his mistress, but it got a distracted caress and nothing to eat. We had forgotten all about the passing day, Pat was still in her pajamas. The sound of the door and then of the keys placed on the shelf in the front hall finally dislodged us from the world à deux we had already reconstructed. Vanda was moved and held me tight for a long time, infusing me with her French perfume. I closed my eyes, lost in the embrace of her white linen shirt as long as it lasted. She knew I wasn’t bitter; I’d forgiven her refusal to hide me in her house without even a thought.
“Let me look at you,” she said afterward, taking a step back.
She found me taller and only a little thinner. By chance she’d stopped at the rosticceria and bought eggplant parmigiana, one of my favorite dishes. She watched me, smiling, while I ate; she’d given up her share with the excuse of a diet that had already been put off too long. In the meantime Pat’s father called: we wouldn’t see him till evening. I ate his share, too, and cleaned the plate with a piece of bread. My friend was surprised—I didn’t use to do that.
“In the town that’s what they do,” I explained, uneasily.
Vanda was gently curious about my natural family and I was less evasive with her. I lowered my guard slightly, then suddenly felt ashamed again. With that shame I began to acknowledge my first parents.
I said the names of the other children, telling them a little about Adriana and Giuseppe. I didn’t know I was describing the two of them with pity and tenderness, especially her. My sister, I called her. About Vincenzo I said nothing.
“And your parents?” Finally we were there.
“I haven’t heard from them, after my father brought me there.”
“No, I meant the ones you’re with now.”
“He works at the brick factory, but not always, I think,” and I broke off. I excused myself and went urgently to the bathroom, but only to close myself in and wait a little, sniffing the perfumed jars. I flushed the toilet and went back. As I’d expected, Vanda was now involved in something else.
Later Patrizia asked her to take us to the port to see the procession of boats: the local fishermen’s festival was on. After Mass at the nearest church, the flagship, decked with flowers, set off with the statue of the saint and the priest, followed by the fleet of fishing boats, all of them, including the smallest, decorated with multicolored flags flying in the wind. Pat and I ran after them, along with the crowd on the pier, then we left them to continue north, skirting the beach. Before returning they would lower a laurel wreath into the water in memory of those lost at sea. The fishermen’s wives were selling fried fresh fish: Patrizia bought a portion in a paper cone, and the tiny bones of the sprats tickled our tongues. At dinner we ate again, in order not to disappoint Vanda, who had made a gratin with fresh razor clams that her husband had brought.
“I saw your father last week,” Nicola said. “He was at a blockade outside the city.”
“Did you talk to him?” I asked anxiously.
“No, he was stopping a truck. He’s let his beard grow.”
“Don’t think about it now,” Pat shook me after a dirty look at her father. “Let’s get ready, let’s go back to the festival.
You can wear something of mine.”
We wouldn’t miss the fireworks display at the end this year, either.
“The car will be useless,” Nicola said, so I got on the handlebars of his bicycle and the two others followed. He pedaled almost effortlessly, ringing the bell to alert the pedestrians who were heading toward the port in increasing numbers. We advanced silently and smoothly, amid the lights and the sugary smells of the first stalls: cotton candy, almond brittle. Sometimes the gaseous overflow of a sewer. Then we couldn’t advance any farther along the wide sidewalk by the shore, and we got off the bikes and chained them to the bars of a beach club. Patrizia and I wanted to go off on our own, so her parents set a time for us to meet them after the fireworks. We waited for the start sitting on the beach in an imaginary first row, as the crowd slowly gathered behind us, expectant. On both sides of us were other kids; a boy with glasses and curly hair who looked like a high-school student leaned forward every so often to look at me sideways.
“That curly-haired guy likes you,” Pat laughed, winking in his direction.
I encircled her shoulders and hugged her hard, for a moment. I couldn’t tell her what I missed, her and the life I’d been sent away from. Maybe she saw the tears that I tried to hide.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and I didn’t answer.
Some preparations announced the show, and a wave of excitement passed through the crowd. We stood up, eyes on the darkness over the sea. The fireworks began quietly, as if at a rehearsal, going off in bursts, and then steadily reaching a crescendo. After a moment of glory, universes of exploded stars faded against the cold background of fixed celestial bodies. Underwater, far from our thoughts, the mute fear of the fish.
Suddenly a live, decisive hand clasped mine, and I turned smiling to Pat, whom I hadn’t seen for a few minutes. It wasn’t her: it was the boy with the curly hair, fireworks reflected in the lenses of his glasses. In my memory I can feel again the spasm in my stomach, slightly diminished at the distance of years. He had chosen me, among all those girls.
“What’s your name?” he said in my ear, with his voice and the sweet breath from his mouth. His delicate features changed color from moment to moment, like the marvels in the sky.
Who knows if he heard the answer in the din of the last round of explosions. I couldn’t read his in the movement of his lips, Mario, maybe, or Massimo. From the hand that he held tight for a few moments a hot shiver traveled through my arm to my heart. Someone bumped into him and the kiss directed at my face was lost in the air. We immediately lost each other, too, in the final crush that cleared the beach. I had to look for Patrizia, and he wasn’t able to stay beside me. He might have been the same age as Vincenzo: he was so different.
I hadn’t slept the long deep sleep of that night since I’d been returned. With the light of dawn the subtle anguish of another day filtered through the blinds, slipped under the covers of the guest bed. I woke up dazed, as if I’d been drunk. In the afternoon I had to go back to the town. I sat at the breakfast table with Vanda, the only one who was already up.
“You haven’t seen my mother in all this time?”
“Never, not since you were with her,” and she served me warm milk and cocoa.
“Have you ever passed by my street?”
“Yes, but the house was always shuttered.” She gave me bread and jam, biscuits in the shape of a flower.
“Maybe they’re treating her in a hospital far away and my father went with her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“They didn’t ask for me back, in the town, and she had no reason to give me back. Maybe she hid the truth so as not to scare me, but in the last weeks she didn’t have the energy for cooking or cleaning. She was in bed and was crying for me.” I stopped to rub my eye. “But I’m sure that when she’s better they’ll come and get me and reopen the house,” I concluded.
Vanda drank her coffee thoughtfully. A small brown stain remained on her nose.
“In time it will all be clearer,” she said. “Now try to hold out, at least for the school year that’s starting. Then, with your grades, you’ll have to come to high school in the city, one way or another.”
I nodded, with my head over the milk that was getting cold, and barely a drop in my mouth.
“Now eat. You’ll see they’ll let you come back to us again.”
Later I asked Patrizia if she wanted to go to my house, which wasn’t far. She was excited, as if we were off on a daring mission.
“Shall I bring a screwdriver?” she asked in the low voice of a secret agent; in her view we’d have to force the lock on the gate.
But it was already open, and there were sounds coming from the back. We went in cautiously, Pat imitating the manner of a spy in a film. We walked along the path. The sand had been swept up, the garden tidied, the low grass smelled of recent cutting. A rake was leaning against the wall, with other tools. The house was closed, though, the shutters lowered. Under the eaves my bicycle had been moved slightly, the tire had been filled, the pump was on the ground nearby. Sound of repeated blows from the back, then nothing. Again. Holding my breath, my mouth dry, I was about to meet my father. He often hammered like that, making small household repairs.
At the corner of the house wall a collision, a shout, and I found myself in the arms of Romeo, the gardener. Patrizia instead lost her balance and was sitting on the lawn, looking at us.
“Hey, pretty miss, where’d you come from? It didn’t seem anyone was home. Can you call your mother? I’m done here.”
“My parents aren’t home right now,” I improvised. “Who gave you the key?”
“Your father left it in a café. He telephoned to ask me to clean up the garden before the fall.”
“Do you have the door key?”
“No, not that one,” and he must have become suspicious. “But are you here alone?” and he pointed to the house.
“No, I’m staying with my friend, we came to get some books. Anyway you can leave the key with me, Papa and Mamma will be back tomorrow.” I thought I was lying with some naturalness, but he didn’t fall for it.
“Better if I take it back to the same café, the way I agreed with the marshal.”
So he removed the possibility of going into the garden, at least. I didn’t correct him on my father’s rank.
At lunch I struggled to twist the spaghetti with clams around my fork. Nicola knew how much I liked it and begged me to eat. A listless anxiety made a lump in my throat. On the TV there was talk about new anti-terrorism laws, then a report on the first big new amusement park in Italy, which had recently opened.
“We can’t miss it,” Pat said. “They organize one-day bus trips—we’ll go one of the next times you come.”
And we did go, but many years later. I had just finished a round of exams at the university, I came from Rome and we went together. The lake was an unusual destination for two girls, but Patrizia had been wounded in love and found the landscape of still water fitting for her mood.
“Enough of this morgue, today let’s go to Gardaland,” she decided one morning on the terrace of our little hotel, with geraniums in the windows. At the entrance we mingled with children. I screamed with fear even on the most predictable of rides, the roller coaster, where, at the highest point on the panoramic track, you were still for a few seconds, hovering in space. But nothing brought back the emotion of that night with Vincenzo and Adriana, on the Gypsies’ jangling chair swing.
I got the bus at one of the stops along the sea. They all three insisted on coming with me; Vanda even brought the dogs on leashes. I had arrived with some flowers from the hillside, I returned to the town with a supply of notebooks, underwear, shirts and pants, and a bag to hold them, which would also be useful for school. As we said goodbye a sob escaped me: I couldn’t muffle it. I would have preferred to drown in the blue that was thirty meters of s
and from the sidewalk.
I see myself again, sitting in a window seat, my head leaning against the glass. Nicola had given me a package of cookies and, from the regular rosticceria, a generous helping of eggplant parmigiana. I decided to give it to my sister, in an attempt to mollify her. Maybe that evening we could eat it secretly, she and I, down in the garage. I would give her some notebooks and lend her the bag. The idea of seeing her again, armed with her jealousy, frightened me. Adriana was all I had, at the end of the bus ride. Meanwhile I could cry without embarrassment along the twisting road; the seat next to me remained empty.
16.
She had gone up to the square to wait for the arrival of every bus coming from the city, starting in the late morning. I didn’t see her at first in the half light of the September sunset; she was standing a short distance away. I was already starting toward home when she took a step and I noticed her, fists clenched at the ground, eyes invisible under frowning eyebrows. We stood looking at each other, a few meters apart, and I didn’t know whether to approach that lump of bitter rage and weariness. I felt that she was observing with her voracious rapidity the bursting bag, the packages I had trouble carrying. Then unexpectedly she ran up and hugged me. I put everything down on the asphalt, hugged her tight and kissed her forehead. We went on side by side, without saying anything; she helped me with the bag and the rest of the packages, but she didn’t want to know right away what they contained. She spoke only when we reached the big square, inspecting them with a sweeping glance. But no one was there at that hour, they were having dinner.
“Better hide that stuff downstairs, otherwise it’ll meet a bad end,” and she pointed to the second floor, thinking of Sergio and the other.
A Girl Returned Page 5
