Three Light-Years: A Novel

by Canobbio, Andrea

  She didn’t have the courage to enter her father’s room. She stayed in the kitchen and recalled epic fights with her mother. There was a crack in the wood table where her gaze had retreated during those battles. She stood up and went to sit in her father’s place, trying to remember how she looked at sixteen, the clothes she wore. Her father would stand on his head to side with her without irritating her mother. She remembered when she’d invited Enrico Fermi to the house on a Saturday afternoon, thinking her parents wouldn’t be back before Sunday night; he showed up with a tray of pastries, some they ate, some they threw out the window at passing cars, and some they eventually used in a food fight waged throughout the entire house. Until her mother, whom they hadn’t heard come in, appeared in the doorway. The moment their eyes met, Silvia read not anger and disapproval in her mother’s stare, but only shock, and realized that if she had caught her fucking on the kitchen table it wouldn’t have been more consequential.

  She did well in school, so in the end her father forgave her everything. Because he was proud of her, he was very proud of her. And it was in that kitchen that Silvia had found the whole family gathered when she came home from her thesis defense (she hadn’t wanted them to go, maybe her father had been offended): Cecilia with her big belly, pregnant with Mattia; Luca; little Michela running around the room; her father and mother. She couldn’t remember hugging her mother after that day, not even a few months ago, when her father died. She hugged the air four times, repeating the gesture she’d made. Everyone congratulated her; she’d received honors and her thesis had been recommended for publication.

  Then she resumed her pacing around the house, passing the closed door of the master bedroom, each time putting off the act of placing her hand on the handle and turning it. Among the tacky objects her mother adored were two sconces that had cast a dull light in the entry hall from time immemorial: two arms of gilded, worm-eaten wood, the arms of an angel or an infant, which looked like hunting trophies and held the base of a flame bulb in their closed fists. So sweet and disturbing, they might have been cut off some naughty child. Or the child may have been walled up, except for the arms, to keep her still, so she wouldn’t leave the house anymore to go who knows where or with whom. Impossible to know what her father thought of that eyesore. She should have asked him and she hadn’t. Not that he would have said a word.

  She walked resolutely toward the closed door, opened it with an angry gesture, and went inside. Overwhelmed by her father’s smell, which rose above the mustiness and the odor of illness, she raised the shutters and opened the window before her strength failed her. She lay down on the bed covered with a white sheet, rested her head on the pillow without a pillowcase, and closed her eyes. She wished she never had to get up again.

  * * *

  Her father’s worldly possessions weren’t many. The clothes in the closet. A boxful of his works in the attic. A library of science fiction volumes. A rolltop desk with three drawers full of odds and ends. On the bedside table, half buried by packages of medications, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Her father had told her the story many times, from when she was little: the Galactic Empire is in decline, a dark age lasting millennia is in store for humanity, or at least that’s what Hari Seldon thinks, a mathematician who has developed a surefire system of equations to predict the future. Seldon establishes a colony on a distant planet, as far away as possible from the center of the galaxy (where the capital of the empire is located) and names it the Foundation. The Foundation must safeguard human knowledge through the dark age to come, and attempt to shorten its duration. Things go according to Seldon’s plan for several centuries, until the appearance of the Mule, a mutant endowed with higher psychic powers. The Mule is the unexpected, that which no future science will ever be able to anticipate. The Mule defeats the Foundation in battle and conquers what remains of the empire. The only hope for free men lies in an ancient prophecy: for centuries it had been rumored that Hari Seldon founded not one but two colonies, and that the Second Foundation, hidden away at the other end of the galaxy, would save the first one.

  When she was a little girl she barely understood it and at the end she would regularly ask if the Mule was good or bad, and if he was bad, why? It wasn’t clear to her even now. But her father never answered. The Second Foundation was the high point of the story, for him. The important thing was that she understand clearly where the Second Foundation was. Why? That, too, continued to remain obscure. Her father would join the tips of his index fingers together and say: “If the galaxy is made like this,” and he twirled his fingers in the air in opposite directions, moving them apart as if following the thread of a large screw, “like a spiral staircase, see? And the First Foundation is here,” he had no fingers left to point with so he touched his left hand with his nose, “where will the Second be?” After a while, she’d learned to answer: “In the center.” That is, not on the other side, on the right hand. The opposite extreme was the center, the space between his hands (and yet in the galaxy that was where the old capital of the empire was). This story was very important, for some mysterious reason. Listening to her father always generated two conflicting sensations: a feeling of being unique, because he was telling her something he considered important and had chosen to tell it to her; and a feeling of embarrassment, because she was almost certain (not quite) that it was a bunch of crap. And so her anxiety grew, the pins and needles in her fingertips, the shortness of breath.

  The same pins and needles, the same shortness of breath that she now felt lying on her father’s side of the bed, as the summer evening’s air mingled with the air in the room and caressed her bare legs. How many hours had her father stared at the same patch of blank ceiling? In that bed, too, like in the galaxy’s spiral, the location of only one of the Foundations was known. The Second was silent, its position was unknown, nobody knew if it really existed, or if it was just a legend.

  * * *

  In August, when her food ran out, she stole a ceramic centerpiece and six saucers decorated with a leaf-and-pomegranate motif from the attic; she also stole a fruit stand from the same set with a pomegranate split in two. They were pieces from her paternal grandmother’s lovely dinner service; she thought she’d sell them in the fall. It was unlikely that her mother would notice they were missing, she’d banished her mother-in-law’s legacy. Boxes and boxes of items that were nearly new or never unwrapped: a pair of women’s brown gloves in butter-soft leather, for example, or a full, sealed bottle of Ferro-China Bisleri liqueur.

  In the attic she also found her father’s datebooks. Thirty years of appointments, business meetings, deadlines, never a personal note. How could he have resisted the temptation to jot down a thought, a hope, or a regret, or even just a comment on the weather, or the summary of a book. Every so often, an “x” or an asterisk. But there was no mystery: her father was only noting the recurrence of his headaches and when he took his painkillers. She spent hours shut up in the attic, in the acrid dusty heat, in the dim light, sweating profusely. It seemed to her that what was missing from the datebooks was everything that made a life worth living.

  She found the Urania volume that her father had sent her to look for the year before. It was called The Resurrection of Warped Dismay, named after the protagonist, a cartoon producer who died in December 1966, like Walt Disney. She recalled that, according to urban legend, Disney had had himself frozen. And so in the novel, seven hundred years later, in 2666, technology enables the doctors to revive the body of the cryogenically preserved Warped Dismay and cure the cancer in his left lung. In the meantime, however, his cartoons have become the sacred texts of a bloodthirsty fundamentalist sect that has conquered the entire world, and Dismay, appalled and horrified by the cult of Dumbo, Cinderella, and Peter Pan, becomes a kind of Antichrist.

  She remembered afternoons when her father watched tapes of the cartoons with Mattia and Michela, how spontaneous and genuine his enjoyment was. “Come on, Papa, don’t laugh like that,” Cecilia us
ed to tell him. Cecilia had always treated him like a senile old man, which is why as he got older he always felt more comfortable with her.

  * * *

  Then September came, her mother returned from the shore, the refrigerator and pantry were restocked, Silvia started stealing again. One day she was going down in the elevator after making her usual raid, two full shopping bags at her feet. The elevator stopped on the ground floor, the doors opened, Silvia went out into the lobby.

  In front of the mailbox stood a woman with her back turned. She hoped it wasn’t her, but it was: her mother. She’d taken out the mail and was looking closely at an envelope. She turned her head, saw her. She turned her head again, went back to studying the envelope. Before she saw her—if she’d seen her—she was in the same position. But now, reading without her glasses, holding the envelope up to her face, almost hiding behind the white rectangle, there was an intention that hadn’t been there before. Silvia stood still in front of the elevator door, the plastic bags in her hand. Her mother didn’t turn around again, didn’t move. Both women stood motionless for a very long time. Then Silvia walked through the lobby behind her mother’s back and out onto the drive; she opened the front gate and stepped out into the street.

  She made her way painstakingly along the sidewalk, her legs rigid, her joints stiff. The afternoon sun was casting its shadow on the wall and she felt flat and squashed, like that shadow. She crept through the heavy air. She managed to get to the street corner. There were garbage bins there, she stopped in front of them, set the bags on the ground. She couldn’t imagine making it home in that condition. She threw it all away.

  Gradually the muscles of her legs relaxed. She remembered afternoons during her childhood when her mother would have a couple of girlfriends over for tea. They seemed so elegant to her, beautiful in a way that was unattainable. High-heeled shoes, of course, but especially the dark pantyhose, the slim ankles and the curve of their calves. How could they have such gorgeous ankles? She and Cecilia didn’t have them, no use fooling herself.

  She arrived home an hour later. Meanwhile, she’d decided that her mother hadn’t seen her. For four and a half hours she watched old episodes of Friends she’d borrowed from Carla. She went to bed at two. She couldn’t sleep even though she was no longer agitated. Details about her mother’s clothing kept popping into her head. Certain bras with rigid cups. Black slips edged with lace. Very dark stockings. Pastel green twinsets. Later on, during the night, she decided that her mother had seen her. How could she ever live down the shame?

  The following morning Cecilia buzzed the intercom, an unexpected visit, but its purpose was predictable. Silvia waited for her sitting on the couch, eyes lowered, ready to be humiliated. Cecilia walked into the house and didn’t notice her sister’s haggard, guilty face; she was focused on the short speech she was about to make: she and Luca were splitting up.

  “That can’t be!” Silvia said. “You can’t.”

  “Now you have to be the one to help me.”

  “You two are made for each other,” Silvia said. “You can’t break up.”

  “Did you hear what I said? You have to help me now, I’m counting on you.”

  “You’ve always gotten along, what’s wrong?”

  Cecilia’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Are you listening to me?” She took her hands. “It’s over. We can’t live together anymore.”

  They hugged.

  Cecilia told her about the last few months: Luca’s coolness, his inability to accept that she had a professional life of her own, and that she couldn’t give all of her time to the family. She didn’t say anything that came close to or even remotely hinted at the abortion. Silvia listened, thinking that sooner or later, through some sudden twist in the story, that chapter would emerge. She listened and waited, as if she were standing at a window. She saw everything go by, but not that. She thought there were plenty of other reasons, and that maybe Luca had made it up. Then she thought, no, he hadn’t made it up. Cecilia didn’t talk about it, but that was easier for her, she was used to not talking about things. For Silvia, on the other hand, talking came naturally. She could have said: I know everything, Luca told me. What difference did it make now? Cecilia’s animosity toward him couldn’t possibly get any greater. She could have spoken, but she didn’t. So, in the end, the abortion didn’t silence her sister. It silenced her. It had to happen sooner or later, that something would silence her. She didn’t talk about it that day; she would never talk about it.

  Before Cecilia left, however, Silvia confessed that she was broke. She was stealing food from their mother’s house. Cecilia laughed: “Good thing you’re here to cheer me up.”

  “You don’t believe me? Ask Mama. She saw me.”

  “No, I believe you. I’ll hire you as a babysitter, meals included. I’ll need one, these next few months. Sound good?”

  And with this conversation, more or less, that terrible year was over and the years of dormancy or cryopreservation began.

  * * *

  She gets back home after riding around the city for three hours, lies down on the couch, turns on the TV, starts the DVD of Totoro. She falls asleep in front of the cat bus with twelve paws. The insistent ringing of the cell phone buried in her handbag wakes her. It’s Stefania; she asks how it went with Cecilia, what she told her.

  “Sorry, I fell asleep,” she says. “Hold on.”

  She goes to the bathroom, rinses her face, looks in the mirror. She peers at her eyes and doesn’t find them as sad and dark-shadowed as she thought.

  She picks up the phone again: “Everything’s okay. She told me not to worry. To take my time and think it over, I have to be the one to decide. She’ll help me, whatever I decide.” She wouldn’t have the strength to confess the truth right now, she’ll tell her later. Anyway it’s unlikely, if not impossible, that Stefi would call Cecilia. Her friends are afraid of Cecilia.

  She cooks a two-portion package of tortellini, seasons it with butter, and adds a few sage leaves. She’s not upset, she’s not worried, she’s relaxed and very hungry. When she finishes eating, it occurs to her what to do.

  She’ll go and find the nondescript Viberti. He, too, is a doctor, he’s a decent person, he’d even called her to tell her it was best they not see each other anymore. Truthfully, she doesn’t necessarily need to know a doctor to get rid of the problem, she knows very well what to do and where to do it. But it’s only fair that he be informed. Suppose he sounds frightened, suppose he tells her: “You don’t want to keep it, do you?” Well, his reaction would be enough to persuade her.

  * * *

  She takes a day off, she admits to her girlfriends that she hasn’t spoken to Cecilia, her sister has enough on her plate. Maybe she’ll speak to her erstwhile lover, he’s a doctor (a coincidence, nothing to do with her sister), he can help her. Make the procedure less painful for her, as Carla said. Her friends are worried about her, maybe it’s not a good idea, he’s too involved, he might upset her, no matter what his reaction is (it’s not clear to her if they’re afraid he’ll convince her to have an abortion or if they’re afraid he’ll try to stop her). And they want to know if she’s told them the whole truth, if she really hardly knew him, if the affair really only lasted three nights, whether they might not get back together.

  But only Carla has the guts to ask her if the guilty party was Enrico Fermi, only Carla has the nerve to say, “Swear to me, please, that you haven’t started seeing him again.” It’s Carla’s voice, strained with emotion, and her face—she looks like she’s about to cry—that stop Silvia from telling her to go to hell. Or maybe not. She’s been so relaxed the last couple of days, so peaceful, that she has no desire to be mean to anyone. She swears to Carla that she hasn’t seen Enrico Fermi for a year and that this doctor is someone else, with a different name and a different face, and that it really was an unpremeditated slipup, terribly irresponsible.

  Still, she remembers her friends’ hostility toward Enrico Fermi, espec
ially toward versions five and six. She thinks it’s partly their fault that she’s in this mess. Carla in particular never missed a chance to belittle him. Okay, so he wasn’t a genius. But maybe she would rather have had a child with him than with an unknown internist. At least the kid would have had red hair.

  She tries calling Viberti that same night and the next day, but the cell phone just keeps ringing with no answer. She hangs up before leaving any messages. She thinks of writing him an e-mail, doesn’t get beyond “I need to talk to you,” and deletes it without sending it. She phones Internal Medicine, they tell her that Dr. Viberti is with patients. Then it occurs to her that rather than talk about it over the phone, it would be better to see him. She decides to look him up at home, and incredibly his address is in the white pages; there’s only one Dr. Claudio Viberti in the entire city. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t want to go too far, she wouldn’t want to seem intrusive. At the hospital she’s likely to run into Cecilia, but she knows the place well enough to be able to avoid crossing her sister’s path.

  So she shows up at the department’s check-in desk in the late afternoon, hot and tired, and discovers that the doctor has just left. Rather than go back home, she wanders through the corridors, getting lost, asks the way to the ER to make sure she doesn’t end up there, comes out in a parking area strewn with sickly trees, finds herself back outside the main entrance.