Microcosms (Panther)
Page 29
He let himself be pushed and squeezed in the rolling crowd, closing his eyes. When he opened them again he found himself very close to a woman’s face, a bitter and contemptuous face, the mouth beautiful and cruel, and the nose imperious; the eyes were looking elsewhere, ignoring him. The crowd pressed them, he felt her breast, hard and taut against him, a full, firm moon; the nipple pierced him like a lance, penetrating his flesh, and he let himself go, responding as strongly as he could to the pressure. Her hand, a fine hand with long fingers ending in predatory nails, came up for a second to arrange her hair at the back of her neck and he saw the copper-red tin ring on her ring finger, and then it went back down and disappeared in the press.
As it disappeared he tried to follow the hand with his eyes, looking down there in that fusion of bodies; the soft white foot stroking his own foot belonged to another woman, the shapely leg rose up to a provocative, soft bosom, to a vaguely familiar face that smiled at him brazenly, while her half-moon eye winked invitingly to a man near her. He would have liked to kiss that foot, he let himself be pushed and crushed with shameful pleasure, he tried to get near those breasts and to touch them, in the crush he suddenly had the impression that the hand which had sunk into the tangle was squeezing his penis and testicles.
But what am I doing, he said to himself, this is indecent, in church of all places. The foot, the hand and the two faces had disappeared into the blackness the people formed, the blackness that had pushed him in front of the confessional, with its three wooden arches in walnut. The old gold-coloured velvet curtains opened and he found himself face to face with Father Guido, who stood up and stuck his head out of the confessional. For the first time he noticed that he looked a little like his father, on his face there was almost the same expression of justice and respect. He was no longer ashamed now; he could say anything to Father Guido without embarrassment or feelings of inferiority, as though to an old tree, to that plane in the big open space in the Garden, for example, where the bicycles were, and that little girl just a moment ago, with the ring on her finger, she got on and pedalled with her fine legs and her white ankle socks, then she got off and started playing with a hoop, skilfully making it spin and roll, following the wave painted on the walls, until it crashed into the tree. The plane tree was big, enormous, its branches lengthened and extended beyond the entrance to the Garden, in Via Marconi, the leaves trembled above him.
“Don’t worry,” Father Guido was saying to him, “this is what we’re here for, there’s no need to be afraid.” “So it’s not a sin? If at least we weren’t in church …” “And where else could you be, if you’re tired and you want to rest awhile? There’s shade here, and bread and wine.” Among the inlay work in the confessional a strange design stood out, reminding him of an inn sign. “Do not worry about what people think, it is holy oil that greases the axle of the wheel when something blocks it, like that time with the hub of the bicycle in the open space in the Garden. Rinse yourself in that spring,” and he pointed to a mosaic below the altar, in which under a night-blue sky, which was also the background of a dark and familiar wood, two deer were bent over drinking the purest water from a small spring hidden in the forest, “but do not look down on the mud with which you have dirtied your hands making sandcastles, because it too is destined for humility and glory.”
“Look up,” and he looked up and saw on high, on the walls of the central nave, the large figures with their solemn gowns and imperturbable expressions, Charitas Humilitas Iustitia Oratio Contritio. “I have taught you to look things in the face, peer to peer, because no one, not even God, has the right to make you lower your eyes, least of all now. The mud of the lagoon flows and dissolves, and soon it is as pure as the sea. Do not be afraid.”
The darkness of the church in that moment was a nocturnal sea that enveloped him sweet and fathomless, waters of brown eyes in which he had abandoned himself from the beginning and for ever, they shone in the dark above the Pannonic cheekbones and he was swimming confident and happy, not the brief fits of just before, but a strong overwhelming pleasure, peaceful, the love of a night, of a lifetime. The waters were dark but here and there they were clear too, there was a white beach and pebbles on the bottom that could be made out one by one, like the tesserae of a mosaic, and clear too was the fish drawn in the mosaic with the Greek letters on its belly, A boy put out his hand towards the fish that was sinking through the water, then he started eating chocolate, dirtying his mouth and his face, but the tears that had come when the fish disappeared in the pond washed it all away.
He wanted to ask something else, but Father Guido shook his head. “Can’t you see how many people are waiting for confession, do you think you’re the only one and that the others have time to waste on your whims?” The queue was indeed long, and in continual disorder with other people breaking into it, people carrying blankets and some even had cooking stoves. Father Guido too came out of the confessional, took off his stole and started fussing around a camp bed for an old man who could no longer stand, brushing off those asking for confession with impatient gestures, as though saying that there were more urgent things. Quick, we’re off, he seemed to say, as he distributed the people among the pews with the grand gestures of an orchestra conductor, as though leading a choir in the conviction that making music was just a question of moving one’s arms up and down.
But he had no time to worry about the priest, so surprised and distracted was he by all those who had come to say goodbye. Everyone was there, school-mates, friends with children and relatives, the concierge from the building opposite, Antonio with the saliva dribbling from his chin at each convulsive jerk of his head. Outside the din increased, a crashing noise as though houses were collapsing, an incredibly strong wind made the church shake like a ship; the air that could just be made out through the windows and the stained glass had an acid colour, intolerable, as though rays of an unknown wavelength were reaching the retina with unbearable violence, announcing something that not even the herald angel, alongside the altar, could imagine. He felt a disgusting taste in his mouth and a weight on his stomach, he would have liked to spit out, even vomit the obscene images that came to him from the dark like bats, the flash of that cruel grimace on his parents’ faces.
Throughout the church people were saying goodbye, shaking hands, some embracing. He squatted down, leaning on a column. He felt his hand being licked, a small tenderly rough tongue that passed over his skin with its salty taste. Buffetto squealed, he took him in his arms, glad that they hadn’t left him outside, in the rain, or alone at home. It must have been Mother who remembered him, she never forgot anyone, maybe she’d run out and picked him up, in that hurricane, she was never afraid of anything. The guinea-pig cleaned its ears conscientiously with its paws, stretched out in a curve in his arms and started dozing, contentedly, oblivious to the chaos.
He was not surprised to see her alongside him, others too were settling down on the floor; he was not completely sure he had recognized her, it was her but not only her, and yet that tender and ironic sideways look, those pronounced cheekbones, that dress with its marine colours – there was no mistaking them. “Your trousers are all creased, I’ll sort them out, I’ve even brought the iron with me,” she told him. The photographs, too, she added and showed him an album, leafing through it in reverse, starting from the last page. “They’ve just taken this one, right now,” and indeed the snapshot showed them there sitting on the floor, next to the column – her with her dress the colour of the sea at Miholaščica and him with Buffetto asleep – looking at the album. Then the hand leafed through the album ever more quickly, Christmas trees, diving from the rocks at Barcola, trips out on the Carso, the images flowed increasingly rapidly, mixed into an indistinct vortex, the speed superimposed and dissolved them, time rose to an uncertain trembling, perhaps it was the light of the candles flickering in the wind blowing through the church.
Go to sleep, she said, I’ll wake you when it’s time. He lay down. Above him the
apse curved like the vault of the sky, a sky of flaming gold that darkened into a night blue. Many stars fell and sank into that blue blackness, they lit up and went out like the flowers drawn for a second by fireworks; up there or down here it was all a flowering, a feast, every single thing that fell into the abyss was the budding of a flower in the darkness, but he was afraid of falling, he held on to the column so as not to plummet. Where the golden sky finished and the blue one began, two large angels held on their outstretched arms two flaming hoops on which there was something written in Latin.
In order to dive into that sea, he was to jump through those hoops, and their tongues of flame. He didn’t want to, he gripped the column, squeezed and crushed some wet leaves whose presence there on the floor was a mystery to him. Jump, they said to him, but he pulled back. “You’ll see, there’s nothing to it,” but this was another voice, or rather two voices, almost identical to his own – his sons who had filled his house, his days, his life – and they told him not to be afraid. So everything is alright, he heard, we can jump, and he took her hand while Father Guido went up to the altar and started the evening service.