Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  “Of course.”

  “Did you ever fight?”

  “Oh, sure, we fought a lot.”

  “Laura’s parents don’t speak, because if they spoke they would fight.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Laura. She’s not sure. She thinks they don’t speak so they won’t fight.”

  Pause.

  “When do you two fight?”

  “Now we get along pretty well. But in the past we fought.”

  “That’s why you separated.”

  Her daughter knew the difference between separation and divorce.

  “Yes, that’s why.”

  “And then you’ll get divorced.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I didn’t see you.”

  “You didn’t see us what?”

  “I didn’t see you fight.”

  “We tried not to fight in front of you.”

  “Oh.”

  Pause.

  “You could have though. I wouldn’t have gotten upset. Mattia would have, maybe.”

  What she missed about Mattia was their conversations. Without being aware of it, she talked of little else, she told everyone about their phone calls in great detail. Only her sister proved to be loving or cruel enough to tell her she was overdoing it.

  “Take advantage of this time to get out,” she said. “We can go to a movie, there are outdoor concerts, or let’s go have a drink, that way you can see people.”

  “It’s too hot.”

  “Is the heat wave dangerous?”

  “No, you just have to drink a lot of water.”

  To show Silvia that she wasn’t cut off from the world, she’d have liked to tell her about her relationship with Viberti, if it was a relationship, but she didn’t feel like it. Better to talk about the children, stick to the predictable, the predictable was more satisfying. She told her she’d spoken with two counselors at Mattia’s camp. They assured her that the child was fine and was eating well, in fact “heartily.”

  “They used that word? ‘Heartily’?”

  “Yes, ‘heartily.’ Did you ever think you’d hear them say that about your nephew?”

  “Well, sure, why not?”

  “So isn’t it awful that as soon as he leaves home he starts eating?”

  Without thinking, Silvia said she thought it was perfectly normal. Then she saw the expression on her sister’s face, as if she had stabbed her in the back, and tried to remedy things:

  “Lots of kids are more willing to eat away from home.”

  But Cecilia was still upset.

  “Besides, you think so, too, you’ve told me a hundred times. Didn’t the psychologist say the same thing? Didn’t she say that it’s his way of reacting to what’s happened?”

  Then Cecilia asked, “What reaction did Michela have, in your opinion?”

  Silvia thought for a moment, then said: “She’s not as carefree as she used to be.”

  “I still think she’s over the top no matter what.”

  “Yes, but not like before.”

  “She’s grown up.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And you haven’t noticed anything unusual?”

  “What should I have noticed?”

  “Her relationship with her brother…”

  “What about her relationship with her brother?”

  Cecilia sighed, she didn’t know if she wanted to talk about it at all, she didn’t know if she wanted to talk to her sister about it.

  “Is something wrong?” Silvia asked. “It seems to me their relationship hasn’t changed … They get along all right together, they have fun, they fight, like all kids. Or they ignore each other.”

  Cecilia told her about a few incidents, including the one with the toy cars in the hallway.

  Silvia shook her head. “Don’t do this, please.”

  Maybe she should listen to her sister and stop. Maybe, by voicing certain thoughts she might conjure them.

  “Do you think it’s possible that Michela, in some way … don’t ask me how … encourages Mattia to not eat…”

  Silvia stood up and held her hands out in front of her with a frightened look.

  “… or actually compels him, that she has such influence over him…”

  “Please, that’s enough, please,” Silvia said.

  Cecilia stopped and bowed her head. “All right. I know I’m scaring you, and I know you’re right, I’m sorry, but telling you helps me stop thinking about it.”

  “Right, promise me you won’t think about it anymore, promise me.”

  “I can’t promise you, how can you promise not to think about something? But I promise that when it pops into my head I’ll remember the expression you have now and I’ll ignore the thought.”

  * * *

  She went out with the shy internist one evening because her sister had told her to take advantage of the children’s being away to have a little fun, or maybe because Mattia was doing well and the future looked less bleak than the past, or maybe because she felt guilty for having made Viberti fall in love with her, or because for some nights she’d been imagining him in scenes that were no longer merely fraternal, hand in hand, head on his shoulder.

  She hadn’t dreamed up such detailed fantasies since she was seventeen or eighteen, as if her curiosity had returned, as if the novelty had never worn off. For instance, she wanted to suck his lips as she’d done that afternoon in early June, she wanted to slide her tongue over his eyelids. She wanted to squeeze his cock, feel the blood throbbing, feel its firmness. She wanted him to grab her between her legs as if he wanted to rip her open. She wanted to bite him.

  She came, and her eyes flew open in the dark. Dear God, she really wanted to bite him. But of course she wouldn’t do it. She got up to check the anatomy book to see what one of the carpal bones was called. If the children had been home she would never have masturbated and she would never have gotten up in the middle of the night, turning on all the lights, to go and look for a huge anatomy textbook that she hadn’t opened in who knows how many years, to reread the morphology of the hand bones, sitting at the kitchen table: there, that was it, the pisiform bone, an unmistakable shape.

  At the restaurant she talked for two hours, inundating the shy internist with a torrent of dumb stories, she, too, like Michela, over the top, in fact, she worst of all, the original. Throughout the entire dinner she kept talking and thinking that she wanted to fuck Viberti but that she wouldn’t because it was better that way. She stopped talking only when they were outside in the close, muggy air, under the dark masses of trees that reminded her of the walk a month ago, the dense fog in which she’d felt enveloped.

  She should have immediately called a taxi and gone home, but she went to the parking lot with Viberti as if she’d also driven there. She didn’t say a word until the shy internist stopped looking around for the Scénic and turned to look at her. Then she was forced to admit that she hadn’t come by car and he offered her a ride. She shouldn’t have accepted, but she got into the Passat, where she’d ended up a month ago after wandering around like a sleepwalker. She kept silent, because if she spoke it would break the spell. She knew what she shouldn’t do and she was doing it. Frozen in her seat, her eyes closed, she let Viberti drive up and down the avenue along the river.

  Against the black screen of her eyelids she saw the children running toward her. She had the feeling, vague as a distant memory, that she’d left them at the parking lot so she could go and have a good time. Instead, it was the children who were having a good time without her. Was she jealous? Did it bother her that they were so happy? Child neglect, or children neglecting their parent? Mattia had stopped drawing parking spaces, fortunately. They drove up and down the avenue waiting for her to be ready, like in a waiting room, waiting for a decision to be delivered. Waiting room, waiting lane. Which specialist should they see? Each had become the other’s specialist.

  The seat belt was crushing a nipple, she loosened it. That touch was
enough to rouse her from her torpor. Although a part of her was absent, another part was present and excited, and when her excitement found an opportunity to emerge, Cecilia opened her eyes and looked at Viberti. He no longer seemed so shy, this internist. It had happened too quickly. And it was about to happen again. Viberti stopped the car in a dark side street and she climbed astride him without even waiting for him to unzip.

  And regretting it this time was easier and more abrupt. All she had to do was ignore the phone calls and messages, wait for the children to return from their summer camps, load kids and luggage in the car and join her mother at the shore. Nowhere in the rules was it written that she owed him an explanation, and a period of silence would do them both good.

  PART III

  (2004)

  THE TEA CEREMONY

  In his memory the child’s face had become more and more blurry. He tried to remember back to the days when the boy had been hospitalized, two years before, and found details he thought he’d forgotten almost intact: the notebook with the parking lot sketches, the blue pajamas, the Supercars book, the cover of Pinocchio. He could see certain images again, like the skinny wrist peeking out of the pajama sleeve, or the feet tucked into the blue slippers, or the upward-curving wisps of brown hair falling over his ears, so that his head looked like a pagoda. He remembered images that he couldn’t have seen, the child biting into an apple and leaving two parallel marks on the fruit, as if he were still missing his front incisors (they weren’t missing).

  And after a while he realized that he was transforming him, or had already transformed him. His face had become a child’s version of Cecilia’s face. Now he wasn’t so sure that Mattia resembled her all that much. And maybe he’d never see him again. In two years he must have changed a lot. He was ten now, he might be unrecognizable. No, maybe not unrecognizable, but certainly changed. So in that sense he was right: he would never see the child from two years ago again. He didn’t have the courage to ask Cecilia for a picture of the boy. It seemed like a strange thing to do. Then, too, he didn’t want to make her have to look through photos from that time. He tried to remember, but every attempt was hopeless.

  * * *

  It happened one morning in mid-February, at winter’s coldest point, a day that lacked the decency to slip by without leaving a trace; not only was it a Monday, not only was it bitterly cold, but the sky was an intense, bright blue swept clean by the wind. Not one of those gray skies that swaddle the city like a tightly tucked flannel blanket. On days like that, according to Marta, a headache lay in wait, that’s why they called it “high pressure.”

  At ten Viberti was to start examining the fifteen patients admitted to the ward. While waiting for the nurse to let him know she’d finished her rounds of the beds, he quickly calculated their average age: seventy-five (one sixty-year-old lowered it). When the average age of the patients was higher than the national average life expectancy it was a bad sign—one devoid of any scientific basis, but bad nevertheless.

  He had just turned forty-four, and if he were to have a child in a year, he’d be fifty-five when the child turned ten, when the child turned eighteen he’d be sixty-three. He’d have to stay in shape to be able to play tennis at that age.

  He was joking with two residents. He advised them to always tell the family that the situation was difficult; if the patient later recovered, they could then recite the magic formula, “he has a strong constitution,” which made everything all right. A strong constitution that could be passed along genetically was a guarantee that shone brightly on the future of children and grandchildren. A strong constitution made everyone feel better. The nurse came to call them; she overheard his remark and gave him a stern look.

  In some rooms, the shutters were lowered halfway due to the brutal light, but the sun came through the cracks, blades of light on the floor, refracting against the walls. Even in semidarkness, the rooms were full of smothered light. The first patient was a chronic bronchitis relapse. Viberti listened to his back and told the two residents they could reduce the steroids.

  In the bottom of his coat pocket his cell phone began to vibrate against the patient’s side, scaring him and then making him laugh. It was an unknown number. He went out into the hall to answer, he heard Cecilia’s agitated voice and ducked into the deserted dispensary where he could talk quietly. The room was on the other side of the building, and, before his eyes could adjust to the dimness, with the door closed behind him, he thought night had fallen over the world. It was the first time Cecilia was calling him from home. She absolutely had to see him, not at lunch, not in two hours, but that very moment, as soon as possible, she had something to tell him that couldn’t wait.

  Just the idea of her summoning him put him on the alert; it was a call that had to be answered. Not to would mean to break a fragile stability and risk losing what he both feared and desired losing. Calls from people like his mother or Cecilia had to be answered, regardless of fears or desires. Especially calls from Cecilia, with whom he was in love, or at least assuming he was in love with her, as he was in the habit of doing.

  “Has something happened to Mattia?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Can’t it wait until lunchtime?”

  “I’m not coming to lunch, I have the evening shift.”

  “I can’t get away before an hour or so.”

  But she kept insisting and Viberti promised to be at the usual café within forty minutes.

  “Not the usual café.” She asked him to please meet her at a playground halfway between the hospital and her house.

  “I don’t know where it is, wouldn’t it be better to meet in a place I know?”

  She had to go pay the children’s dentist near the playground, then go back home right away. “Please, please.”

  Viberti agreed.

  He completed his rounds in fifty minutes and ran down the stairs. Why was he running? Because he hated being late. “Am I running because I want to see her or only because I hate being late?” He remembered a taxi stand in front of a side entrance to the hospital: if he went out through the main entry, passing the locker room to get his coat first, it would take him more than half an hour.

  He went out into the harsh light and biting cold huddled in his white coat; he counted on jumping straight into a taxi, but the stand was empty. It was so cold that the street seemed wider, the houses cowering back, snuggled against one another. Viberti pulled out his cell phone to call a taxi, gave the address to the dispatcher, then dashed into a café to wait. He called Cecilia to let her know he’d be late—he stopped just inside the glass door plastered with stickers for food coupons, brands of ice cream, and images of the Madonna of Medjugorje, turning his back to the room—but Cecilia’s phone was turned off or out of range. He looked up, he’d thought he’d gone unnoticed, but there were only two customers in the café and the barista was staring at him.

  He wasn’t familiar with the places on that side of the hospital, he’d never been in that café. He approached the counter and chose a package of candy. The barista looked suspicious or irritated, as if he knew that Viberti hadn’t really come in to buy candy, as if he considered him a parasite who’d come into his café to keep warm while waiting for a taxi. Viberti had never been able to ask to use the toilet without at least ordering a cup of coffee. He walked to the door to leave, at which point the barista asked him if he was a doctor by any chance. His son had a varicocele and the doctors (he made a vague gesture to indicate other doctors, present company excluded) weren’t able to help him. Did he know a good specialist? Out of the corner of his eye Viberti saw the taxi stop in front of the café. He told the man the name of a colleague, then mentioned another. The barista didn’t seem satisfied. So Viberti took the café’s card from the counter and said, “I might come up with another one, I’ll call you later, I promise.”

  In the taxi he pictured Cecilia waiting for him in the cold, sitting on a swing; he tried to imagine what could have happened—it wa
s the first time she’d asked to see him with such urgency. Nothing could have happened, it was crazy, it made no sense to respond so promptly to calls like that without probing further, without demanding answers. He closed his eyes. Since the time he was a child he’d found sunlight refracted through the windows of a car extremely grating, and in a few minutes he felt nauseous. It was the thought of that light that made him feel sick, he didn’t get carsick. He remembered once when he had to wait for his mother in the car, he’d locked himself in and was so bothered by the light that he wrapped his head in a scarf. Marta got angry when she came back, she told him he could have hung himself (hard to hang yourself in a truck, impossible in a car).

  After a while, the taxi driver asked him if by chance he was a doctor. Viberti diagnosed an irritable bowel syndrome, paid, and got out. The playground was between the avenue and the river, behind a local police station where he’d paid a few fines in the past. There was the standard equipment found in all modern playgrounds, things he would have gone crazy for as a child. Even now he was intrigued by features like the spongy flooring, a great way to protect children from falls. Then, too, what fascinates me are the small improvements, because they make me believe that everything can be improved, always, little by little, and that we mustn’t lose hope. Take the blender, somehow, for some reason, one day it occurred to someone not to have it rotate in one direction only. Press it once: clockwise. Press it again: counterclockwise. That way it juices better. No trace of Cecilia, she must have left already. He took out the phone to call her and apologize for being late and saw that he had received a text ten minutes ago; he hadn’t heard it: I’m on my way. If he’d arrived on time he would have been waiting half an hour for her in the icy cold.

  He blew his nose. The whole thing didn’t make sense anymore. He’d been telling himself that for weeks now. After returning from vacation there had been a “relapse,” and another relapse in December. He’d started calling them relapses to make her smile, so they could laugh about it together, because their relationship was a recurring illness, because they were doctors unable to cure it, but now it was no longer funny. The idea of relapses wasn’t funny, the idea of a serial killer wasn’t funny (a bizarre serial killer who always struck the same victim). And so, freezing to death, he sat down on a big spring rider with a red, blue, and yellow flower-shaped seat and asked himself again: Did I race over here because I wanted to see her, and I couldn’t stand not seeing her, and I’m in love with her, or because I didn’t want to say no, and I was afraid I would regret it, and I’m afraid of being alone forever, and for some time a ridiculous idea has been stuck in my head, that it’s too late, that this is my last chance?