Through the swamp.
It's raining cats and dogs. I stop with a smile for the occasion, sheltering under my umbrella Irene, who takes the bus with me every day in Veea Po. It's almost dark, the class council has gone on exasperatingly; I'm restless and nervous, I can't wait to be alone. I look to the side so as not to meet her eyes. She stares at me with a doe-in-pain expression:
Aren't you coming home? It is very late.
No, I have a couple of errands to do.
At this time?
At this time.
Have you notified your parents?
Obvious.
She's starting to get annoying. The fact that there was a love story between us lasting a couple of weeks, the times of which are now in the distant past, does not authorize her to subject me to this third degree. The bus arrives and I pull her back slightly to protect her from the splashes of the puddles, with a cold and courteous chivalry that hurts her.
Thanks, she says sourly I could have done it myself.
It's pathetic when a woman who's dying for you treats you like you want something from her. I watch her climb among the wet coats, in a confused opening and closing of dripping umbrellas. From the window she waves at me: I wave back absentmindedly. Finally she leaves. Irene is a good girl, as well as a pretty girl, but I could never love someone like her. At this moment I have other things to think about, but I still dedicate a few moments to an extemporaneous reflection: you can't choose who to love, you know, the mechanism triggers by itself; the point is that my mechanism doesn't click with good girls. If I were honest with myself I would have to deduce something not too positive about myself, for example that I'm not a good boy, but I have neither the time nor the desire to be honest right now: I'm in a hurry to do something else. Anyway, as I walk on the sidewalk, I can't help but reflect on the fact that good boys and girls are not interesting because they are not authentic: they are just the repetition of a social cliché; it is therefore not clear why they should be loved. I think you can only love those who are in the first or third stage of Enten Eller , the middle one simply doesn't make sense.
I walk away with quick steps in a dust of rain that the wind blows in my face in sudden gusts, I turn around the first block and arrive at the tram stop. It arrives ringing the bell: with two leaps I reach it, I jump on it.
In the crowd of the semi-dark carriage there is a marshy air, saturated with animal breath; I feel that that unhealthy atmosphere seems designed to satisfy some need of my being, but now I don't want to understand which one: the thoughts drip down my neck in warm drops. Perhaps this smooth and rattling ride, this letting oneself be carried away in the lulling drowsiness of an old carriage sheltered from the flood, without responsibility. Yes, maybe this.
Suddenly I glimpse my stop through the foggy window: I ask permission, I sneak between one coat and another and get off; the sharp humidity bites my neck; I hear the tram moving away with its electric whine. As I walk on the sidewalk I watch the rain fall heavily and the smog melt under my steps into an iridescent slime of hydrocarbons. I proceed as in a dream. Turin with the yellowish lights, the arcades, the mud, the rain, the synthetic smells, the passers-by, the cars, the headlights on, the twilight all in half tones, Turin, more than a physical place, is the confused dream of a sick person, a preconscious area of the mind.
As I walk down a narrow alley I hear a faint moan coming from a lower left corner. I look down and see, huddled in a basement window, a uniformly gray kitten, some sort of Carthusian, soaked and shivering. I call him: he comes out of his precarious shelter and takes a few steps towards me on unsteady paws. I bend down and pat him on the head; he lifts his thin tail and stands on tiptoe doing a sort of ballet. On impulse I grab him and put him in my pocket. After a few minutes, wrapped in the well-being of that warm and dry refuge, he falls asleep snoring.
The door of the ordinary and slightly run-down building is ajar. I close the umbrella, shaking it slightly, I go in, I climb the wet marble stairs impregnated with the smell of fried food and read the labels; I'm a bit in difficulty because I don't know her mother's surname, but I know her name is Silvia, and therefore I find her almost immediately. I ring the doorbell. A lady with a pleasant face, gray eyes and hair opens the door: she is wearing a flowered house dress with a white apron tied at the waist. I try in vain to detect a resemblance to Antonia, but there is no trace: Mrs. Silvia no more resembles her daughter than my brother resembles me. She has a thin and petite build, at least ten centimeters smaller than Antonia; she must have been pretty as a girl, probably blonde and with curly hair, but with a fragile and romantic beauty, a bit like a nineteenth-century girl, which has nothing to do with the intriguing and androgynous elegance of Antonia's body.
I show off my good manners, in line with my new good boy appearance.
Good evening ma'am: I'm Emmanuel, Michael's brother. I apologize for the lack of advance notice, but I was leaving school and thought I'd stop by and say hello to Antonia, if I'm not bothering you.
She looks at me with a bit of amazement, but almost immediately her face is illuminated by a radiant smile; she dries her hands on her apron and shakes mine.
What a nice surprise! Come in.
Reassured by that cordial welcome, I place the umbrella against the wall outside the door, wipe my shoes on the doormat and enter.
Come, put down the books. But you're all wet: take off that jacket, I'll put it out to dry.
Thank you.
She's sleeping: I'll wake her up now.
No, please, let her rest. I'll wait in the anteroom.
In the anteroom? And why? Follow me to the kitchen.
We cross the small antechamber. In the dim light of the kitchen, the pans exhale vapors of chicken broth. I've smelled a similar smell on Antonia a few times, mixed with the bitter fragrance of the aftershave she uses as perfume: I feel slightly dizzy. Smell is the most evocative of the senses, and therefore always strikes unexpectedly.
Mother Silvia goes back to the stove, while I sit at the table.
Can I offer you something? A coffee, a tea?
Just a glass of water, thanks.
Don't you want to stop and eat something with us?
Thank you ma'am, I would gladly do it, but my parents are waiting for me for dinner.
I watch the lady come and go from the fridge to the stove and listen to her reassuring chatter, stand near the radiator if you're cold, it's May and it's fifteen degrees, how much you spend on heating, it always rains and it's dark all day, how much money wasted etc. etc. Meanwhile she has put on the water for the tea that I just refused and is making me a cup. I can't help but smile: she read my mind, I actually feel the need for something warm.
Milk or lemon?, she asks me, slicing a lemon. I don't think it's necessary to answer.
Suddenly I jump up and exclaim:
Milk! In a saucer, please.
She remains stunned with the knife in mid-air.
In a saucer?
I hurriedly leave the kitchen and return shortly after with the kitten in my hand; I had completely forgotten about him: luckily he remained calmly sleeping in my pocket.
I found him on the street, I justify myself. He was all wet, he was crying, I couldn't leave him there.
You did very well. How beautiful he is!
She caresses him with a smile and scratches his little head, then offers him milk after having warmed it on the stove, and while the kitten licks it with a small rhythmic noise, she prepares a makeshift bed for him in a basket padded with a few soft, clean rags. Yes, mother Silvia is a good woman.
How is Antonia?, I decide to ask, with the most indifferent tone I'm capable of.
Better, thank God.
She starts slicing some onions on the table.
Sorry if I keep working, but if I don't prepare dinner now she won't eat at the right time. Pull back a little, otherwise your eyes will water. My daughter is very fond of you, you know? She's proud of you, she doesn't like teaching but she makes an exception for you, she says you're a very intelligent boy and you understand things quickly. But your face is all red, are you hot?
Yes a bit.
I'm sorry, I can't open the window, otherwise when she comes to eat she'll get cold. She has to take her medicine in a quarter of an hour, will you wake her up?
Sure. In the meantime, can I give you a hand? So I deceive the wait.
Thank you, you're really kind. You can peel these, if you want.
She points out some potatoes already washed and piled on a tray. I roll up my sleeves, take a knife and start my work, placing the peeled ones on a clean cloth that the lady has spread out on the table and putting the peels in a container that she has placed next to me.
Your brother was here yesterday, you know?
Really?
He's a great guy, my husband would have liked him a lot. Giovanni always said that Antonia was not a marriageable girl, but Michael would have changed his mind.
I put down my first potato and smile at the second.
Why did he say she wasn't a marriageable girl?
Well you know, what he said doesn't make much sense in this case. He wanted a son, and since Antonia was a different girl from the others, he treated her like a boy and expected her to have a career like a boy.
I nod and let her continue.
Even the name he gave her is strange: I wanted to call her Bianca, like my grandmother, but he insisted on giving her an unfeminine name, Antonia.
I like it very much.
She looks at me for a moment. I have to be careful not to make her suspicious: my presence here is already suspicious. I change the subject with casual indifference.
How do I cut potatoes?
Into sticks, if you can; otherwise even larger pieces are fine.
Go for the sticks.
While I carry out my task, I bring the conversation back to the topic that interests me; to throw her off I make a stupid joke, in the hope that she will consider me a bit dumb.
A little girl different from the others in what sense? She always seemed like a girl to me.
In the sense that she didn't curtsy, she didn't play with dolls, she didn't want to do ballet... She was always in the courtyard playing cops and robbers with the boys. She was very good at school: this is also why my husband would have wanted her to have a career.
This time I don't drop the observation.
She's doing it, I object.
The university career, you mean? That's not a career. They pay them very little, a starvation salary, and then my daughter doesn't have the determination to get ahead. Public exams are all rigged, one gets older and is still there waiting for a permanent position. If you want to make it in that environment, you have to elbow your way out, be the toady of some professor or go to bed with him, and above all get a party card.
Yes, I heard that.
You can't live on dreams and illusions: luckily your brother is a boy with a good head on his neck.
Yes, luckily.
I get up and pour the potatoes cut into sticks into the pan that the lady put on the stove. Then I sit back at the table and comment impassively:
The potatoes are fine. I can switch to green beans, if you like.
Thanks, you are a sweetheart.
I get back to work: my time in the kitchen with Antonia has taught me several things, including the trick for cleaning those boring vegetables. Meanwhile I resume the conversation:
Now that I think about it, I've never heard Antonia talk about her father.
She never talks about him. His death was a terrible trauma for her.
Sorry, I didn't mean to be indelicate.
I'm amazed at how suited I am to the role of the good boy: I'm getting everything right, from physical appearance to attitude to linguistic register. All this is disturbing, it's like opening a window onto the unknown: I wouldn't want Kierkegaard's second stage to treacherously lodge in me.
No, on the contrary, she says. I'm happy to talk about my husband.
She smiles as he slices the aubergines.
My Giovanni was a great man, tall, dark and athletic. As a young man, a very handsome boy, my friends envied me. He came from a small village in Salento and had moved to Piedmont to work as a specialized worker. I am from Val di Susa: I came to Turin because I didn't want to be supported by my parents and there was no work to be found in the valley. We met at the Mirafiori factory and we liked each other straight away: I was pretty then, not as beautiful as him, but pretty. We were very young, but we got married after a month. We had little money: for the engagement he gave me a ring with a diamond so small that it was almost invisible, but I keep it as a sacred thing. He was an old-fashioned southerner, he wanted to support the family alone and wanted me to stop working: I gladly complied, because that job didn't give me any satisfaction and instead I always really liked taking care of our house. We were poor but happy. Then Antonia was born and things got a little complicated: he wasn't happy at first.
I try to hide my disappointment.
Why?, I ask indifferently. Wasn't she a beautiful little girl?
Of course she was beautiful, but he wanted a son, I told you. For two days he didn't even go to see her at Sant'Anna hospital. On the third day he decided to go to the nursery and saw three fathers around the crib of a little girl: they said she was the most beautiful of all. Only then did Giovanni realize that it was Antonia. He came forward all stiffly saying "She's my daughter": since then it has always been a great love.
Did they get along?
Not at all. They had the same character, so they always argued. When he got angry he lost the light in his eyes, but his outbursts cooled off after five minutes; Antonia, on the other hand, sulked at him. She has always been like this since she was little: proud and stubborn. She went to sleep without even wishing him good night. But then, when she suffered from insomnia, she secretly entered the large bed and went to sleep between me and him.
How old was Antonia when…
I stop immediately, fearing I'll make a gaffe. Maybe I should say "when your husband passed away": that's what they usually say. The lady, however, understands immediately.
More or less your age.
She sighs, presses the pedal of the dustbin with her foot to raise the lid and throws the potato peels into it.
I thought she was going crazy, you know?, she continues. Her father was everything to her.
Antonia is very fond of you, I object in a polite tone.
Yes, I'm not saying she doesn't love me, but there was a much closer relationship with him. And she couldn't pretend with her father, she couldn't lie. So, when she learned that he had an incurable disease, to get by she convinced herself that he would recover. He had already lost half his weight and was walking with difficulty, but she pretended not to notice anything. Two months before he died she reproached him for not having taken her to the seaside; that poor man was upset, and then she told him "never mind dad, take me next year". Then… then she started doing absurd things.
Absurd in what sense?
Things she had never done. She had always been a serious girl. She would go out with three or four boys at a time and tell her father it to his face, forcing him to fight like in the old days .
She pauses significantly. In this void I feel all of Antonia's pain pass through, which out of empathy I transmit to myself by burning my finger while I throw the green beans into boiling water.
The night he died, the lady continues in a sad tone, she ran away from the hospital and stayed around until dawn with five degrees below zero. When she got home she didn't say a word for days. Since then she has never set foot in a church again.
She lifts the lid and looks into the pot.
The vegetable soup is ready.
It smells great.
She smiles.
Yes, I think it's good.
Shall I go and wake her up?
Thank you. Tell her that she has to get up: it's not good for her to stay in bed too long, the doctor also said that she has to walk.