Nothing that concerns you - Part II

In the meantime, she took an unidentified rectangular white object out of her work basket, a ball of yarn and a crochet hook.
Does it bother you if I continue with the work I was doing while we talk?
No, it doesn't bother me at all.
She gets to work with quick and, it seems to me, quite precise gestures.
I'm learning to knit and crochet little things, she explains so I pass the time and save money. And then I like to make things for the baby, it's much better than buying them ready-made. I'm not good at it yet, you see? This edge for example is a little crooked; but I'm learning quickly: my mother gives me lessons once a week. Tomorrow she'll come here and we'll try to make a cover for the living room sofa: she's chosen a beautiful fabric, white with yellow mimosas.
Mimosas are always yellow, I point out with polite firmness.
Yes, that's true.
What is this you're doing? I ask tonelessly.
A cover, don't you see? She waves it in front of my eyes and starts working again. No, I wouldn't have said that that kind of shapeless trapezium was destined to become a cover.
It's pure cotton, she continues, Martino can't stand synthetic material in contact with his skin: when he sweats he immediately gets blisters.
He too?
Yes, he is allergic, just like you. I would like to add some drawings on the white, but I don't know what.
How about blue puppies?
Do you mean blue poppies?
I sigh, looking up at the sky: goodness me, how obtuse has she become?
Antonia, I tell her in a polite tone, poppies are usually red, except for the opium ones which are of different colors: orange, but also pink, violet and even white. It is the cornflowers that are blue.
You know about poppies, huh?
I know.
And how you happen to know about it?
I can't resist the temptation to correct her direct question.
How "do" you happen...
She smiles slightly.
Okay, how do you happen to know about it?
I study botany in my spare time.
Oh. And why?
So, I feel like doing it. Anyway, I said puppies, not poppies.
For that matter, puppies aren't usually blue.
Oh God, this conversation of ours: the nonsense full of lightness typical of our conversations of the past… Suddenly I see myself standing on the bank of the stream, intent on throwing stones into the water, while she looks at me with a smile caressing Saucepan and I ask her what Alcibiades looked like physically. I realize that I have missed all this so much.
Anyway, why not?, she continues. Blue puppies, it could be an idea.
She goes back to work without giving any sign of having understood the reference to my underwear. I smile, despite everything. A moment later I realize that the blue puppies are not for me and the jaws of jealousy sink their fangs into my heart again.
She glances absentmindedly at my outfit.
Your shirt is crumpled.
Yes, I know, I justify myself I drove in this terrible heat and despite the air conditioning I sweated.
I said crumpled, not sweaty.
It's the seat belt's fault.
Do you wear a seat belt on these country roads? I never do.
Usually not, but there was a police patrol.
Take it off, come on, I'll iron it for you.
That's not the case, Teresa will take care of it.
I'll gladly do it.
But it's all sweaty, you don't iron sweaty laundry.
Usually not, but in this case we'll make an exception. And you know I like the smell of your sweat.
I am surprised, admired and at the same time disgusted (a horrible mix) by the naturalness with which she admits to remembering our sexual past; she talks about it as if it were just this or that, while she imperturbably knits her blanket destined to house my blue puppies. I hoped that at least she no longer remembered it, that a sort of amnesia had erased from her mind those moments of demented exaltation: this would justify the absurd serenity she feels in seeing me again. But no, she remembers it very well.
I wonder how I ended up in this farce. My life was never meant to go like this: there were all the conditions for it to be something serious, and instead here I am, playing the role of an idiot in a tragicomic vaudeville. I feel my brain twisting in the effort to understand. I fall silent, I don't know what to say. It's her again who breaks the silence.
What do you wear underneath?
A cotton tank top.
Then it's perfect: you'll wear the jacket over the tank top.
But it's sleeveless.
Better, you have nice arms. Take it off, come on.
I unbutton my shirt with hesitant fingers: I feel like I'm being tested, and although I know I can pass the test with flying colors, having recovered a decent physical shape, I feel embarrassed. I take it off and offer it to her with a strange shyness.
Great, I'll iron it for you later.
I remain practically bare-chested, in my tank top and elegant linen trousers. I feel defenseless: I immediately put on my jacket, as if to protect myself from her gaze.
Do you want to give me your pants too? She asks, without irony.
No thank you.
Remaining in underwear, a tank top and socks in front of her would be truly excessive.
As you wish, she says, putting my shirt in the basket and returning to focus on her work.


It's clear that she's trying to embarrass me. I don't understand why she does it and I understand even less my state of mind: when I was sixteen I didn't feel the slightest embarrassment in undressing under her eyes and diving naked into the stream; so why do I feel so uncomfortable now? Even more so because Antonia knows every part of my body well.
For a moment I wonder if my unusual modesty isn't due to a sort of loyalty to Arianna, but I immediately discard the hypothesis. If anything, the opposite is true: it's with Arianna that I've always felt modesty, an unconfessed sense of violation and betrayal of something intimate, too intimate to be shared with her. My body has never really been hers. In fact, for over a year now, my body hasn't belonged to anyone: it's as if I'd been dispossessed of my physicality, repeatedly raped, forced to separate my soul from my body with a brutal laceration; alienating myself from my body is the only means of defense I've managed to devise to survive. I must say that it's not so bad, once you get used to it: you feed it, you take care of it as much as possible, you use it to live, to work, to go for a walk, to sunbathe and to give pleasure to someone else, avoiding as much as possible getting involved in that pleasure. Like a car, in short, an honest car that does its job and needs a little maintenance.
But now I am here, under the eyes of the only woman to whom I have given my soul and my body, and she is taking me apart piece by piece. I suddenly realize that this is a strategy to unmask me: my physical nakedness serves to lay bare my pretense. I suddenly decide to stop her: I tell her that I need to go to the bathroom and I walk away from her for about ten minutes.
After rinsing my face, drying it with a spotless cotton towel that smells of lavender, and having noted in her old-fashioned mirror with a wooden frame that I look decent despite everything, I return to my seat. I feel calmer. She looks up for a moment from her work and a half smile escapes her.
You look very sexy with a jacket and tie on your bare skin, you know?
I took off my tie, I correct her in a neutral tone, and the jacket is not on my bare skin: it's on my tank top.
What's that mark on your hand?
On my way back here I stopped by to say hello to Martino and wanted to pet him, but he bit me.
Then he doesn't sleep.
No, but he's calm: he’s looking at the carousel you hung above his crib. He seems to like it a lot. And then Gino is with him.
I'm sorry he bit you.
It's nothing.
She lowers her eyes to her work. The crochet hook begins its up-and-down swing again, and I find myself suddenly wondering if in that microcosm of small everyday things, little flowers in the garden, crocheted blankets, cats on the sofa, babies in the crib, shirts to iron, lunches to prepare, there might be a little place for me too. After all, I don't take up much space, I'm only six feet tall and I know how to shrink when necessary. Who knows, maybe it would be sweet to disappear into an embrace that smells of milk and fried onion, curled up on the sofa next to the purring cat, wrapped in a soft blanket with my head on her knees, pretending to watch an idiotic quiz on TV. It would be another way of getting lost, like that time in the chestnut woods. I distinctly formulate a thought: you don't need sex to get lost, just being in the arms of someone who knits a shapeless strip of something on your head that tickles your neck deliciously.
The intensity of the desire I feel scares me, I feel my heart in my throat and my head on fire: a year, a whole year of rebuilding an identity is falling to pieces in a few minutes just because an overweight woman is crocheting in front of me, occasionally casting an amused glance at my half-naked body. Obviously this identity wasn't much, but right now it's the only one I have and I can't afford to lose it. I put up a fierce resistance, but after a few minutes I lower my defenses, realizing that they make no sense: the desire to annihilate myself is so strong, it almost gives me physical pleasure. I abandon myself to it with my eyes closed for a few wonderful moments.
Her voice jolts me out of my bliss.
You have nice shoulders, you know that? But maybe I already told you.
Why did she call me back to reality instead of letting me float in my amniotic paradise? And then she knows perfectly well that she had already told me.
Yes, you've already told me. At least a dozen times, in various circumstances that I won't list.
Arianna is a lucky girl.
Very lucky: what's better than a guy with nice shoulders? Besides, I'm lucky too, she has nice tits.
You have to learn to be content with what you have.
I don't agree, but I guess we've already talked about this.
Maybe, I think so. I'll iron your shirt soon.
Her evasive answer irritates me.
Since when did you learn to iron men's shirts? You said you hated ironing shirts.
Well, you know, there's not much difference between a men's shirt and a women's shirt: the technique is the same. First you iron the yoke and the collar, the rest comes naturally.
Thank you for this information, which will be invaluable if I ever have to iron a shirt myself, but my question wasn't about ironing technique.
Meaning what?
I mean, what need do you have to iron men's shirts?
It's another thing my mother taught me.
My tone becomes sharp.
Maybe I didn't explain myself: what need do you have to iron men's shirts if you're not with a man?
She shrugs.
You have to know how to do a little bit of everything in life.
Rubber wall. My irritation grows, helpless as a fly that keeps hitting the same glass.
And Professor Mostarda? I ask suddenly, with a shrill note in my voice.
Who?
How who? The one you would have worked for even for free, don't you remember?
Oh yes, him. I don't know what happened to him.
Look for him. Look for him in the phone book, look for him wherever you like, you'll find him somewhere.
But why should I, excuse me?
I am looking for the right words to express an offensive concept: because there is no other way to save you from the degradation into which you have fallen, my ex-love. I am about to elaborate a decent periphrasis, when she forestalls me:
Weren't you the one who said they were ideal for moles?
Yes, it was me.
And you were right.
I contradict her harshly:
No, I wasn't right, I wasn't right at all, and you know it. I was a sixteen year old moron who doesn't know what he's talking about.
I stare at her with a look full of resentment. She lowers her eyes and says nothing. I keep the rest of the speech to myself, because I can't tell her what I'm thinking.
Only that which has no sense has a sense: it finds the sense in itself. It is the only possible rebellion against the rules of the Demiurge.
And now I finally remember where I met you. I was at the scriptorium in Fleury and I was doing the only thing that made sense in that barbaric era: I was copying Petronius; you were that apprentice with long red hair just arrived from the far North, shy and introverted, who observed the master's work without raising his gray-green eyes from the manuscript, without saying a word. Then for a moment you raised them and immediately lowered them again meeting mine. That look struck me like a javelin. I don't remember your name exactly, but I think it was Antaine. It's possible that we were gay at the time.
 
I try to resume the conversation, but she raises her hand to gather her hair at the nape of her neck; suddenly something strikes me: the bracelet that shines on her wrist. It's a Cartier, the diamonds are real. She has never worn expensive jewelry, she can't afford it: it's a gift from a rich man, the one for whom she learned to iron shirts.
And suddenly I can't pretend anymore: she reads disgust and hatred in my tense face.
I hate you I hate myself for having loved you, and where is your soul, where is your soul, I was about to die for you, for this useless thing, your chariot has skidded and you are buried under the rubble love, you will roll underground for nine thousand years and I can't wait for you all this time, I have always been waiting for you at the wrong station, but what can you understand you squalid stud cow stupid breeding cow, if I had known before I would have strangled you while we were making love, oh yes I would have done it my love, if this was the only way to save you from yourself.
She understands that I am about to say something irremediable: she puts her work in the basket and places her index finger to her lips in the signum harpocraticum. Some inexplicable mental short circuit brings to my mind Dosso Dossi's Jupiter the Butterfly Painter: from this detail I understand that I have lost my mind. I breathe heavily in an attempt to oxygenate my brain, but hyperventilation makes things worse: I feel like I am about to faint. Antonia notices and holds out her hand:
Come here.
I accept her invitation without hesitation. I come, or rather I collapse with my knees in the grass, forgetting about my elegant cream-colored linen trousers. I cling to her like a castaway to a buoy, a fat soft buoy in the shape of a cow. I sink my face into her warm and unrecognizable breast and suddenly I feel at home. As she rocks me in her arms I run my lips up her neck and touch it, humming a kind of prenatal song in her ear. Suddenly I glimpse behind her, on the wall, a portable stereo; even in that state of narcosis, I can't help but wonder what the hell she's listening to: perhaps some lullaby for the baby, what else? Antonia is not able to listen to music alone, she is not able to listen to music without me: I am the only link between her and music, which is to say between her and life, so much so that without me she has become this sloppy and shapeless thing that I like so much anyway. It has always been like this, I exclude that things could have changed, that someone else could have made her listen to music in my absence. And if there was, I would kill him.
Antonia...
She strokes my hair.
Tell me.
Can I play a record?
She hesitates, then answers me:
Better not, Emmanuel.
No, don't worry, it's not what you think, it's not because of that.
My portable stereo isn't that great, she tries to justify herself, remembering the effect listening to music with me has always had on her.
It's not just any record. Please.
She hesitates. I breathe against her breast that tastes like curdled milk, fighting the temptation to stick my nose under the fabric to find out what other trouble the little intruder with the easy bite has caused. I push aside the edges of the gown with my lips without going any further and leave her there waiting for something I won't do, so she can learn to say that it doesn't matter anymore to love "in that certain way". I feel her about to give in.
All right, put it on.
I reach out to the old record player and insert a CD that I've been carrying in my pocket for a few days, I don't even know why. The notes of This Is The Day spread through the air of the garden: I haven't listened to it since that time with Antonio. I am overcome by such deep emotion that my eyes fill with tears. Every erotic temptation disappears, swept away by a wave of bitter regret. It was the music I had chosen for our wedding, but I can't tell her. I bury my face in her belly trying to hide my sobs, but she notices and leans over me.
How beautiful this song is, she whispers in my ear, and I nod without being able to speak. My tears flow uncontrollably, wetting her flowered nightgown. Finally I can listen to it with her, even if in conditions so different from those I had dreamed. Finally every chord, every single note falls in the right place. She understands beauty, I communicate it to her and she gives it back to me multiplied by a thousand: that's why her, that's why only her.
Months of ice melt at her touch. She understands everything about me because, even though she has forgotten, she cannot help but love me.
You don't play the guitar anymore?, she asks me suddenly. I shake my head and a sharp pain pierces my sternum: only now do I understand how much I missed strumming my songs.
You should start again, you were very good, she tells me, unable to understand my mediocrity, or perhaps able to see something greater beyond it. I had forgotten that this is precisely why I loved her.
Caress my shoulders, since you like them so much, I whisper through tears.
She smiles and caresses my arms and shoulders with her slightly rough hands.
The African wind blows away the clouds and the last remnants of lies. She continues to caress me and a blue light flashes in my mind that heralds a nervous breakdown. I feel perfect happiness: finally, finally I am dying in the arms of the only woman I have ever loved.
Roll the credits, write the end, write it now.