Thanksgiving arrives and I don’t call home. When Luca phones the next evening, I am still not myself. So much weight in his voice—he’s been gone almost a week, and it must be a nightmare, each day of his father’s dying. I can hear, again, his need and then his disappointment when I say, after a few stilted minutes, that I have to go. My withholding feels like a dare, and I wonder if he will look for someone to fill the void left by my distance. Still, I remain detached. Because I’m not the woman he thinks I am. Something has changed in me. There is a heaviness growing that I can’t get free of, and when I hang up the phone, my apartment hums with its own silence.
This is how it begins. Slowly at first. It creeps in. Without my having invited it, it comes, even as I am still going to the library each day, working out at the club in the afternoons, and cooking elaborate meals in the evenings that I eat. I do eat them. I stop eating in the morning, only the morning. It isn’t so much a decision as it seems to just happen, and once it happens, it is so easy to stay with it. To sleep in a bit later, tell myself that I’m too busy, too busy even for a cup of coffee before I leave or an espresso on my way to work. I’ll save it for lunch, I think, something to look forward to. Anyway, it’s only for a few hours, and I have plenty of energy in the morning. For a couple of days, I leave it at that.
The elation arrives quickly—I’m surprised at how quickly it sets in—and the longer that I wait to eat and the less that I eat, the more it builds. Instead of going to the club or the café on my lunch break, I make my way up into the hills behind the library—strange it hadn’t occurred to me to do this before. I spend the two hours walking, the cold and occasional drizzle refreshing, and Lorenza always comments on the color in my cheeks when I return. I feel awake and alive.
So I start to push it, a little more each day. I eat lunch a little later, and it seeps into the afternoons. It’s so easy. It’s so easy to push it a few more minutes, another half hour, another hour, and then another. And there’s a promise in it—a prize waiting at the end of every minute that I hold out, and so I hold out longer. When I do eat, I’m barely hungry. I shrink lunch to a snack: yogurt, a piece of fruit. It fills me. I do eat in the evening, and so it is easy to say to myself, to anyone who might ask, that nothing is wrong, as I imagine throughout the day the meal that I will prepare, visualize it in detail.
The elation grows and, with it, a sense of clarity, anything nonessential dropping away. The city takes on a glow. It vibrates just slightly, as though I can see the life coming off the buildings, the crowds, the river.
It doesn’t take long. Several days and I’m back to where I was months ago, but I am not afraid. It makes sense that I do these things, and I don’t know now why I’d waited so long. I only eat one thing before dark: a piece of fruit, easily quantifiable. I drink an espresso, but with no sugar, just a boost for the late afternoon. And things are fine, they are always fine, for a while.
At work, I’m filled with energy, high on it. Lorenza asks me to reorganize whole sections of books or catalog members going back decades, and I perform these tasks like some sort of Olympic athlete. I continue walking up into the hills during lunch, feel the satisfying stretch in my muscles, proud of the emptiness that is able to sustain me for an hour or more up and then down, and Lorenza still comments on the color in my cheeks. In the evening, I go to the club and I’m unstoppable, an endless well of energy, burning, burning, burning, the excitement, the power of calories expended. I’m using more than I’m taking in, far more, and this is a triumph. I rarely run into the men I know, but when I do, I greet them warmly, unembarrassed, and confide, with appropriate solemnity, that, no, Luca’s father is not well at all, and, no, I don’t know when he’ll be back.
I e-mail my sister every few days with long and detailed descriptions of the food I’ve eaten or would have eaten. I lie. It’s so easy, and I wonder why I’ve been honest all these months, how I could have become so distracted. Luca calls, his voice sad, and maybe for this reason he doesn’t notice a change in me. I’m glad that he’s not here to interrupt this.
After a week, the fog sets in. But I am not foggy. I am clear. I am attuned, so attuned, my nerves pulled tight, waiting to be struck. And the city responds. It grows louder and brighter, the sounds sharper, the colors more vivid, the light sometimes blinding. Passing voices and distant bells echo long and loud. The statues in Piazza della Signoria twist and turn when I walk by them at night, the floodlights below carving deep shadows into the stone faces of Hercules, Perseus, and the Sabine woman with her sharply pointing finger. They each seem to have something to say, as everything in this city does, and the sensation is so strong that I have to look away. And when I hear, one evening, the man with the lone saxophone playing outside the Uffizi, just the touch of his song—one or two notes—brings tears to my eyes, as anything can now, though I don’t feel sad. Only closer to something—something vital that everyone around me is oblivious to, something that only I can see as the trappings evaporate. I stripped myself of everything. The phrase drifts in, is wise, is true.
And when I’m alone, the fog, and the lights and sounds that penetrate it, feels safe and I feel lucid. But when I’m around others now—with Lorenza or the men at the club or on the phone with Luca—the clarity leaves me. That’s not quite right—I still feel clear, but I know that they won’t understand, and their very presence clouds my own understanding. And so I stay busy at the library but avoid Lorenza’s eyes, my head bowed low. And when, two weeks after Luca’s departure, I bump into Stefano leaving the club and he stops me with a “Hannah, stai bene?” and a look of concern, I stop going altogether, afraid of witnesses who might report something.
Not going to the club means that I need to do something else. Dinner cannot happen without it, and I’m smart enough to know that if I stop eating altogether, things will come apart. I need to sustain enough, just enough, to hold it together, to maintain this state of clarity without dropping over the edge. And so I walk more in the evenings, choose restaurants that are well beyond the gates of Florence, get lost on my way, arrive late, order a salad with grilled calamari, or a plate of vegetables, or a winter soup. My stomach hurts when I eat, so I eat less and drink more instead. Then the long walk home, with some regret, looking forward already to the clean slate of the next day when I will do better.
I don’t feel lonely. Still, one evening after a few glasses of wine, I respond to the glances of my young waiter—a boy, really, maybe Peter’s age—whose eyes suggest that I need him, must need someone, sad woman that I am. I let him give me a ride home on his moped, though I know I’ll have to make up for the lost walk the next day, and I invite him upstairs. Once in my apartment, he is no longer a boy. He is aggressive, insistent, and when I feel the weight of him on top of me and tell him to stop, his face grows angry, older, and he hurls words at me in sharp Italian, tells me I’m a lonely old woman, a tease of a whore. But he leaves, and once he’s gone and I lock the door tight, his words don’t touch me. And when Luca calls that same night at the late hour that he said he would, I let the phone ring and ring, half guilty about the boy, though it is more than that. And when he calls again a few days later and leaves a message to tell me that he’s back, would like to see me, would like to know that I’m okay, I don’t respond.
Because the boy was wrong—I am not lonely. I don’t need him or anyone else. Here’s the thing: I am not alone. I have something more than myself. My old friend returned. We have a good grip on each other now. And it doesn’t feel painful or cruel, this grip. It is not threatening, but intimate, immediate, necessary. It is an embrace.
Chapter Twenty
Friday afternoon. We are into December, but today is warmer, so I choose a different path into the hills, the smooth winding road and growing euphoria urging me on. I could walk all day, all night, and not grow tired. But when it is time to turn around, I am lost, surrounded by high walls with no way of knowing where the city is from where I stand. I remain calm—there is nothing t
hreatening here. Being lost is inconsequential, is exciting even. I’ve eaten nothing today and I feel so light now that I could float away into whatever new place this road is taking me. But as I wander up one road and then down another, I curse myself. Because I’ll be late getting back from lunch and my lateness will mean more conversation with Lorenza, when I no longer trust my voice with her, when all that I want is to have her eyes off me. Because I know that she knows something.
I take a wider road, hoping it will lead to a town, however small, or a vista, and when I come upon a shorter wall, I jump up to try to see over it, to see the city or suburbs or whatever lies in that direction, but each leap reveals only a flash of a large home and valleys beyond, all glowing, all trembling, as everything does these days. My head begins to ache and I try another road. After two more bends, I stop and lean back against the wall, ready to give up. Maybe I won’t go back to the library at all. That will solve it.
It is cold but sunny, and I can feel some warmth coming off the stones as my bones press into them. I hear footsteps, a soft pat pat pat from somewhere below, growing louder until I see a figure jogging. I wonder if I’m dreaming. I never see anyone on these walks. As I watch his labored steps, the cadence of his body’s movements become familiar—Sergio from the club. I want to hide then, but there is nowhere to go. There is just this single road surrounded by walls, and me and Sergio.
He glances once and then again before his brow releases and his face opens up, revealing his teeth, and it seems like it’s been so long since I’ve seen anyone from that world that tears almost spring to my eyes. Then I remember my purpose and the feeling recedes.
“Ah! Hannah, ciao!” Two jarring kisses hello. “Che ci fai qui?”
“Just walking,” I say, my head pounding. He looks at me quizzically. “Only I’m lost, I think.”
Sergio nods but must not understand, because he says, “A beautiful day. Ma va tutto bene? We miss you at the canottieri. You are stranger.”
A stranger, he means, though I must also seem strange now. I try to compose my face, to make my features less strange, but I know I still look not quite right. Why is it that the clarity abandons me so quickly, why now, when I most need it? Keep it together.
“Davvero, we are worrying,” he says.
I nod. I’m seeing him through a fog and just following his words is exhausting. I cannot follow them and think at the same time. And I need to think. Because I’m not safe now. Things are coming loose, threatening to fall apart entirely.
“Luca says he also does not see you. He worries for you,” Sergio says then.
Hearing his name startles me. How long ago was it that he called me? A few days? A week? I try to think back, to get a hold of it, but the details are vague, I can’t quite grasp them. And I feel something settling hard in the pit of my stomach now, something like dread.
“His father?” I remember to ask.
“Ah, sì.” Sergio explains that he is okay—well, not okay, but alive—a small miracle, and so Luca is back for now.
As he speaks, I try to find an answer to this moment. I pull apart the pieces, examine them, but my head is a mess. Sergio falls silent, waits. I should say something. But I have no idea what he just said and so I nod and nod. There must be a way out.
Sergio smiles wide then, as if he’s discovered the solution. “Allora, I see Luca today. I meet him in one hour. Vuoi venire con me?” Go with him? Such an easy idea, and the old me would have said yes right away, would have gone with him to assure everyone that I was fine; would have seen Luca, watched the lines grow like small bursts of light around his eyes; would have had a meal with them and then, perhaps, gone with Luca back to his house, where we might have been full with the idea of being close again, high on it, shy at first and then not as we remembered each other, and I would have tried to be the one who comforted. I can picture all of this and I’m about to say yes, that yes, in fact, I will go with Sergio, but he’s looking at me oddly and I can read myself so clearly in his face, everything written across me.
I cannot go with him. I cannot go back to the club. It is impossible. That world is too distant, leagues from where I stand now, and I can see the chasm, wide between us—it will only grow wider when I am with Luca. I cannot face Luca, cannot face any of them. I’ve been there before and I know how I will look to them, to him. It is all there on Sergio’s face.
“Today, it isn’t possible,” I say, and smile. I draw up all my energy, infuse my voice with it, my voice that sounds suddenly so loud, so unfamiliar. “But soon, va bene? Very soon. Say hello to everyone for me? Tell Luca I will call?”
Sergio looks skeptical.
“Digli che lo chiamo io,” I say, as though it’s a problem of comprehension. Which it is. He doesn’t understand this strange woman standing before him. How could he?
His face doesn’t change, but he says, “Ci vediamo presto, allora?” He offers a hand, plants two more jarring kisses on my cheeks, and continues up the road, breathing hard. I’m breathing hard, too, and I lean back against the wall. Then I remember that I’m still lost.
“Sergio!” I call before he rounds the corner. “Da che parte è Firenze?”
I can hear his laugh, nervous, before he points to the road on my left and throws his arm down twice. “A sinestra e poi dritto.” Another wave and he’s gone.
I walk slowly, my steps lead, the lightness of this bright day evaporated, the fog that has been so pleasant shifting. My heart is beating loud in my chest, pushing the blood fast through my body. I can feel the knot of fear expanding, the world changing, growing dark. The walls are heavy on either side, inching in as though they might swallow me, and by the time I’m back in the city, I am sweating and sick. I breathe slowly, in and out, push it all down—Sergio’s expression, the shifting fog, Luca, the dread, the growing darkness—compress it until I can hold a stone face. But as I approach the library, a bitter taste wells up in the back of my throat. You are stranger. I can’t go in there. I can’t face Lorenza.
I turn around, walk quickly down a side street, moving fast as though the thoughts may stop if I speed up, but they keep on coming, my head filling, my skin flushing. If only I could keep it at bay a little while longer, just a few more days, a few more hours, a few more minutes. I’m not greedy. I’ll take anything now. Anything.
It’s too late, though. The world has changed and I can feel it. That familiar moan. The emptiness around me, the emptiness within me, not static but growing, a void with no center, feeding on itself, a void of my creation. Welcome, I keep saying, again and again. Welcome. Take this body. It is yours. Take this pain. I walk with heavy steps through one of the city’s gates and dig my nails into my hands instead of screaming. A bike races past, bell ringing loud; a voice shouts and I jump onto the curb. The sidewalk ahead comes sharply into focus before it drops away, a camera shutter closing to a point, and the moment, the day, the last few months, begin to dissolve. I am here, then I’m underwater, the pressure in my head beating, nausea setting in. Tears pool into my eyes, threaten to spill over, and my insides pitch one way and then the other. Don’t, I think, don’t, but I can’t keep it down. I duck into a bar, keep my eyes averted. Don’t look. I walk to the back, into the bathroom, into the stall where everything comes up fast and hard. There’s nothing in me and still it comes, with a loud retching that must shake the whole bar, followed by tears that I let run and run until there are no more. I sit on the dirty floor, exhausted, thinking about all the bathroom stalls that I’ve disappeared in, all the floors, toilets, walls that I’ve knelt on, bent over, leaned into.
And then I feel, again, that moan, distant but deep.
Look at me.
I close my eyes tight, but something breaks. Something has broken.
Look.
I am at the bottom. Just like all those months ago when I arrived as deep and as low as I would go.
Look at me.
I can feel it on top of me, ahead of me, the weight of it. I keep my eyes
shut, waiting for it to disappear, but it remains, large and looming.
Look.
It is too late. It will not be ignored.
Look at me.
My heart picks up, my mind moves. I snap my eyes open, go to the faucet, wash my face. Back through the bar—“Prego, signora”—but I keep going, out into the street. I walk toward the center, weaving through side streets, keeping my head down. I walk until my legs are shaking and my skin feels slick under my clothes. I walk until a thunderous roar engulfs me. I look up. I’m in the piazza in front of San Frediano in Cestello. The church’s doors are closed, the gate locked, but it sounds like there is a great force inside, a waterfall rushing or a supernatural being breathing loud. I stand there and stare, listening to this roar. It is as though the church is filling with the sea, the doors about to burst and wash me away. After everything, this is how it will end. I back up, away from the roar, and the sound changes. It is coming from behind me now. It is the river, pouring across the spillover, the pounding echoing off the church’s facade. There are no demons here. And no answers, either. I’ll go home.
Florence in Ecstasy Page 22
