As if it were normal
(September 6, 1997)

Velut prati ultimi flos

On my tombstone you will not write velut prati ultimi flos. The plow has long since passed. You knew the caterpillar, lady: now you will see the butterfly.
The beginning is terrible, obvious joke and poor script. Even the costume designer leaves much to be desired: I am disguised as a young yuppie, as if the imitation of an aspiring career manager could impress the protagonist of the film. And why, then, should I impress her, since I am only going to visit an old friend? However, appearing disheveled is not dignified: I fix my tie and the collar of my jacket; I am the hero of this story, you do not show up sloppy at the end.
I park the BMW next to her house; I look at myself in the rearview mirror until I'm satisfied with what I see; then I turn my gaze to the road to check if the car is blocking the passage, but there's no one in sight on this remote country lane, among stubble as rusty as an old railing, scattered little houses and dust everywhere. There's a damned African wind. I breathe deeply, get out of the car and ring the bell.
And if she now - the sky has turned purple and the wind is wrapping the clouds like skeins of cotton - suddenly an abyss of emptiness opens up before me. I suddenly realize that we haven't spoken since that time. I can't, not today. I turn hastily to leave, but it's too late: the door opens.
Introducing yourself with your back turned, besides being ridiculous, is a strategic mistake: that way she will see me first and goodbye surprise effect. This moment that I spend on the threshold, with the expanse of fields in front of me and the door open behind me, has the fixity of a Magritte painting: I wait in vain for the ironic quip ("the door is on this side"), but I only hear silence. I turn around.
Leaning against the door jamb is a woman who vaguely resembles her, but ten years older and ten kilos heavier, with red hair gathered at the nape of her neck, her body swallowed up by a flowered nightgown, and a gentle cow-like sweetness in her colorless eyes. Gray.
Neither of us speaks.
The silence clings to me like the African wind. I take my handkerchief out of my pocket and wipe my forehead. I smile, but my smile turns into a stupid grimace. I can't say hello to her, I realize that I don't even know whether to address her informally or formally. The stranger, on the other hand, speaks to me simply, as if we had seen each other yesterday.
- Hi - she says to me smiling, without saying my name - Come in, don't stay on the threshold: there's a very annoying wind.
- I don't want to disturb.
Horrible the platitude. Horrible.
- No problem, on the contrary, I'm happy. Follow me.
She turns to lead the way. No surprise, not a flicker in her voice, in her eyes: as if it were normal to see me again after more than a year; worse still: as if my presence were nothing special. I follow her like an automaton and feel like I'm about to faint: a coward's strategy, but it's the only way I can think of to escape this shock. I force myself to react in some way: what do I care what a complete stranger thinks of me? This is not Antonia.
In the modestly furnished house, the stench of fried food and the smell of homely love linger. The stranger is perhaps the protagonist of even more unspeakable existential squalor. I feel dizzy, I feel like I'm going out, I don't know where. I come back to myself, reabsorbing myself like the ebb of the tide. But where is she? I search for her everywhere with my eyes, desperately. Meanwhile, the stranger continues to treat me with great kindness.
- Sit down - she says. She has led me to a small garden at the back of the house, sheltered from the wind. I sit under a cypress tree, a symbolic choice in its own way, and look around. Everything is tiny like in a doll's house, terribly cute: there is also a vegetable garden with carrots, onions, tomatoes and some indecipherable creepers; next to me a white enameled iron table, a swing and a seesaw (a seesaw?). The dust makes me sneeze.
- Bless you!
I look up and see her smiling at me. There she is, for a moment it's really her: I feel a wild surge of joy; but she immediately disappears and the stranger turns to stare at the hill with a wave of her hand as if to chase away a fly.
- How are you? - she asks me generically.
- As you can see.
- Very good, then.
Significantly, I am silent: I certainly cannot say the same about her. A little changed: my big brother was in the mood for euphemisms.
For about half an hour we carry on a terrible conversation based on clichés and meteorological observations, a conventional dance like that of spiders when they are about to kill each other, but without its tragic dignity: it resembles more an eighteenth-century minuet, one of those dances depicted in certain cloying genre paintings. Curtsy, little sliding steps, right-left, forward-backward, five-step figure in the shape of an S, step en fleuret: not a single one of those choreographic flourishes makes intelligible signs on the blackboard of my mind. The only positive aspect of this ballet is the fact that it gives me time to collect my thoughts and to think things over, until I reluctantly acknowledge that this must be Antonia and that something incomprehensible has happened to her during my absence. As I dance a bohemian circle with my lace handkerchief in my hand, I am completely absorbed in an obsessive thought: this is not the woman I loved, I don't even like her physically, I've gotten rid of her, so why does my soul twist? I begin to sense that the death of my love is not the solution to the problem, it is the beginning of a much more serious problem.
The couple prepares to perform a pas de deux à la Rameau. If we really have to perform this pathetic imitation of Barry Lyndon, I want the soundtrack to be right: I stop the record player, the needle screeches on the vinyl, Boccherini is silent: I put on Schubert's Trio in E flat, opus 100, second movement, one of the most sublime pieces I know. I'm ready for the candlelit duel of glances.
- By the way, - I begin - congratulate me: I got engaged.
- By the way of what?
Her gaze does not betray the slightest emotion. She has returned to being the teacher who catches the student out by highlighting his expressive inconsistencies. This seems very appropriate to me.
- Of me, of course.
- I won the bet.
- Yeah, what was at stake?
- I don't remember it anymore.
Liar.
She lets out a half smile:
- We've always been a bit forgetful, huh?
I have no more doubts: it really is her. Or rather, it is her, but she ended up inside a cow; this thought suddenly puts me in a good mood: it will be enough to get her out somehow, perhaps by throwing a rope through the bovine's mouth; with a little effort and a good dose of elbow grease I can do it. I wonder how the gentle herbivore managed to swallow her. And what happened to that open, sunny, explosive laugh of hers? Maybe it's because cows don't laugh.
- When is the wedding?
- As soon as possible. My parents would like me to graduate first, but we certainly can't wait five years to get married.
- No, it's clear. What faculty did you enroll in?
- Economy and trade.
- Really?
- Really. Why?
- Your brother was afraid that you would choose some useless faculty, as I did.
- What you're doing is not useless.
- It is, for work purposes, if one wants to advance one's career.
- Right, the career.
- So we'll have another broker in the family. Is it your idea or Arianna's?
She keeps not saying my name.
- We decided it together. We decide everything together.
Childish underlining: in fact it falls on deaf ears.
- I have matured a lot since I have been with her; she is an intelligent girl, full of common sense, qualities rather rare in such a pretty girl.
Matured, common sense, pretty: once upon a time I would have beaten up someone who spoke like that.
She doesn't bat an eyelid.
- Yes, I liked her a lot too.
- Yeah, I forgot you met. What did you talk about?
- About you, of course.
- And what did you say to each other?
- Nothing special. She told me you were fine, that you were happy together.
- Did she tell you this?
- Why, isn't it true?
I hesitate a moment too long.
- Of course it's true: I feel very good with her.
She suddenly bends down to pick up the hair clip that fell into the grass. It didn't escape her, she dropped it on purpose. The little accident is a way for her to stall and avoid looking me in the eyes; she couldn't dissimulate, she couldn't pretend to have forgotten what we talked about for months between one fuck and another on the river, in the barn, in bed. She would be forced to communicate with her gaze what we both know: that being well doesn't mean much, it's just the opposite of being bad. It's like starting from minus twenty and getting to zero, it has nothing to do with happiness: happiness is at plus a thousand, even beyond. I wait for her to get up and look at her with silent reproach.
- What's up? - she asks me, a little surprised.
- I owe her my life. I was in danger, you know.
She looks at me in turn without speaking, with the expression of someone who thinks "you started from minus twenty and now you're at zero, that's all your happiness". She elegantly avoids throwing the own goal in my face. I was expecting something like that and I already have the next line ready:
- Anyway, it wasn't minus twenty: it was minus ten thousand.
What I didn't expect was her firm and calm reply:
- Then we're even.
I am speechless: this means she has suffered too, and more than I thought. I quickly push the thought away, struck by a sudden unease. I understand why the marriage failed: Antonia couldn't accept that my brother was her level zero. He had saved her from me, but that didn't mean she could love him: she could be grateful to him with the gratitude of a dog rescued from the pound, but that has nothing to do with love and is a humiliation that Michael didn't deserve. My stomach tightens at the thought that perhaps I'm not showing Arianna the same respect. I feel the need to talk to someone about it, I feel the need to come clean and Antonia is the only person in the world who could understand me. But she stops the hair on the back of her neck and changes the subject:
- And what about military service?
I feel a thrill of genuine hatred.
- I am exempt. - I reply curtly. - My future father-in-law has some connections.
- Everything according to the most obvious predictions.
- I have nothing against the obvious.
- One wouldn't have said it.
- Isn't that what you all wanted? Some kind of minor copy of Michael.
There is too much acid in this response and the allusion to my brother is another misstep.
- By the way, how is Michael?
- Why are you asking me obvious questions? I know you met last night.
- Yes, he often comes to visit me. We have remained on good terms.
How good, Antonia? I feel the need to hurt her.
- Anyway, he won't come tonight: he's going out with Laura.
I realize I've overdone it: an ember lights up under the soot.
- I asked you how he is, not who he is with.
Finally a shot has landed, even if it wasn't the one I was hoping for. I look away, I scan the flowers in the garden, the potatoes, the tomatoes, the cypress. I feel her eyes rest on me, I feel her thoughts as if I could read them in her mind. Where has the splendid chrysalis gone? What kind of insect have you become? Short hair, jacket and tie: and Arianna was the midwife of this moth.
Suddenly I hear a voice behind me:
- Run, Emmanuel, run as fast as you can.
I turn around suddenly: it wasn't Antonia who said those words, her face is impassive. She didn't hear anything, it's clear. I'm going crazy, I hear the voices like Joan of Arc. I run a hand through my hair, sweating coldly.
- Who gave you my address? - she asks me.
- Teresa.
- I imagined so.
As we all know, this isn't true, but things turned out so surreally that our hero wouldn't know how to explain it to her.
- Is something wrong, Emmanuel?
“Finally! Finally she said my name!” That alone is enough to flood my heart with sweetness. I lift my head and look at her with gratitude.
- Sorry. I was just following my train of thought…
The conversation has taken a confidential enough turn to justify the next question, which I formulate with apparent ease:
- And Frédéric?
- He got married.
The answer completely astonishes me: I can't hide my amazement.
- Married? And to whom?
- To a branded refrigerator.
- Meaning what?
- A Swiss countess.
- He doesn't live in Italy anymore?
- No, he is in Geneva. He comes to Italy very rarely.
I look at her, feeling a distant sorrow, like the echo of a suffering that is not mine.
- You don't seem to care much.
She stares at me with a strange emptiness, touching the bracelet on her wrist.
- No, I don't really care, actually.
- I think I understand you.
- I don't think so.
She smiles enigmatically. I remain silent for a few minutes and watch her, trying to understand.
She sits composed and dignified amid the rubble of her life like a Madonna amid the ruins of a collapsed church. She looks back at me, reviewing my short hair, my jacket, my silk tie, my trousers and my elegant shoes. What remains of her little boy, what remains of me?
The wind suddenly raises a gust of dust and throws it into my eyes: I close them instinctively, she immediately reaches out to shield my face with her hands. A crack breaks in my heart. She gently shakes the sand off the collar of my jacket.
- You're starting to get the shadow of a beard on your cheeks.
- I shaved this morning - I reply annoyed - Where?
- Here.
She touches the surface of my face, indicating the offending area. A shiver runs down my spine.
- Your hands are frozen.
- You, on the contrary, are very hot.
I can't help myself: on impulse I grab her hand. She tries to pull it away, but I hold it firmly in mine. She's obviously ashamed: it's red and a little swollen, it smells of bleach, her skin is cracked, there's no trace of nail polish on her short nails, not even the transparent one she used every now and then.
A thought flashes through my mind: where have you been all this time, you imbecile ? If instead of letting yourself die like a worm you had behaved like a man, this hand would still be the one you remember, white and delicate, the one you watched leaf through the pages of your schoolbooks, caress Saucepan and scribble her useless notes in a notebook.
I stroke those rough fingers that smell of detergent and the lily scent of Arianna's hands comes to my mind, soft and well-groomed, with perfect nails painted pink.
What does my brother know about me that I don't know myself?
I listen to the thumps of my heart, tortured by an atrocious doubt and at the same time lightened by an unspeakable hope. She doesn't seem disturbed by what is happening, indeed she smiles with a meek look. She doesn't seem to notice anything, or maybe she does, but the door is closed, it is closed from the inside. “Open me, damn it, open me”, I want to see what is behind.
Suddenly a high-pitched, shrill sound bounces in waves through my brain: perhaps the cry of a strangled parrot, perhaps the meow of a cat in heat, perhaps even the wail of a newborn baby. Yes, it is definitely the cry of a newborn baby. I look around with a sense of confused alarm, trying to understand where it is coming from, but there are no neighboring houses and the sound is too close. Antonia frees her hand from my grip, gets up and rushes into the house without a word of apology, freeing herself from my contact.