Born Twice (Vintage International) (12 page)

Suddenly I hear a feeble cry: Carlo is being consumed by a frothy vortex; he’s panicking; he’s losing his head; he’s calling me in a strange voice. I manage to swim toward him before a wave crashes over me, I come to the surface and grab his arm. His face is green, his mouth twisted in a senseless smile. I grab him under his arms. “Easy now, Carlo, easy,” I say. He offers no resistance, and thankfully he doesn’t pull me down. I swallow water; the sea opens in an abyss beneath us, it crashes over us; I swallow water again while trying to stay close to the light, close to the froth. Carlo is immobile, paralyzed with fear but close by. I dive down and push him to the surface. When I come up, between sprays of water, I see the coastline again, now even farther away. It’s over, I think. How idiotic. We can’t both be saved and I can’t abandon him; we’ll both end up dying. Five minutes ago I was on the beach. The wave picks us up again. I try to hold on to him by his arm, but he slips away and disappears beneath the surface again. I feel his body between my legs so I wrap them around him, dive down and push him up, and come to the surface. I’m shaking. We’re being pulled still farther out by the undertow, and the waves are getting even stronger. I reach for his torso but lose my breath. I’m rasping. I hug him; his eyes are glassy. The swollen waves glide beneath us, the shore only an intermittent strip of land. So this is how you die.

Then I see a dark spot on the water; the surface rises up and forms a point. The crest of a wave breaks beyond us. The tip grows larger; it’s a rowboat. A man is shouting at us, he leans forward over the oars, the boat tips dangerously, it’s about to capsize, it slides back down on a surge, now it’s coming closer. I recognize the lifeguard—Come on, Carlo, you can do it—but he doesn’t move; maybe it’s better that way. I gather my strength as the rowboat comes closer; it’s only a few feet away.

“You dickheads!” the lifeguard shouts. I avoid a breaker as the lifeguard reverses the oars. “Grab him by the legs!” he shouts. I lift Carlo up—he’s as stiff as a cadaver—the lifeguard grabs him under his arms and yanks him out of the water; heaving him on board, he slips back but doesn’t fall. “Damn!” he shouts, and throws me a life preserver. He’s furious. “Now hang on!” he yells, and leans on the oars. The bay is getting closer, the life preserver sinks beneath the waves that crash over my head, I see a mass of bubbles, I breathe, swallow water, and suddenly a shock makes me lose hold of the life preserver. The boat crashes against some rocks, the lifeguard swears, and then manages to free himself, one oar breaks, a wave pushes us, raises us, throws us between the jetties, and we fly through as if on rapids, flung forward. And then, suddenly, we’re in the harbor, where the water is calm and the crash of waves distant. I close my eyes.

“You idiot!” I hear Franca yell at me when we get closer to the beach. I can touch the sandy bottom with my feet.

“Carlo!” Veronica comes running into the water, screaming as if he had died. I rest on the life preserver; the others make their way toward us and carry Carlo to the beach. I’m alive, exhausted, blissful, and giddy.

“A complete lunatic,” I hear the lifeguard say, pointing at me. As I move from the water to the beach, the insults change into admonishments. Franca, Paolo, and Alfredo wait for me on the boardwalk by the cabins. She looks at me sideways, in profile, still trembling. She’s trying to express her rage, participation, commiseration, and exasperation and manages to do so quite well.

Alfredo, because of his age, feels authorized to maintain a haughty silence. Paolo, bobbing along between the festivities and the accusations, slowly asks, “Papa, are you crazy?”

“Who, me?” I reply. “Carlo followed me in!” Franca shakes her head as if face-to-face with extremity.

“What happened to your friend?” the doctor asks me, taking the pipe out of her mouth and tamping at the tobacco with her thumb.

“He was hospitalized for a week,” I tell her. “He’s all right now, but it wasn’t easy.”

“What was the problem?”

I give her some of the details: intestinal infection caused by ingestion of water, five days of fever, recurrent nightmares of shipwrecks and drowning. When he woke up, all he could remember were my exhortations to stay calm and the strange effect they had on him. He said he had never felt so relaxed in his life. It had been as if someone were rocking him like a newborn baby. “I know what you mean,” I told him; we usually say this when we don’t understand what someone is talking about. It had been one of the sweetest experiences of his life, he said. “What about you?” he asked. “I remember that I wanted to protect you,” I told him. “I felt resigned.” I didn’t tell him about the idiotic look on his face. To avoid being pathetic, I also added, “I was ready to knock you out if you had tried to struggle. But there was no need.”

“What happened to the lifeguard?” the doctor asked, putting the pipe back in her mouth and curling her upper lip in a movement that pipe smokers share with horses.

“He received a commendation in the newspaper and a medal for saving two lives. But somehow it just doesn’t seem right.”

“Why not?”

“Because if my friend hadn’t been there, I would have been able to save myself,” I say, caught between vanity and pride. “And if he had been alone, without me, he would have died.”

“Surely you know there are no
ifs
in history,” she says, laughing.

The electric lights are switched off in the gym. The light from the street comes in through the window, between the iron bars.

Fernanda comes to the door. The strictest and most trusted of the physiotherapists, she’s been at the Center the longest. She’s also the most exhausted.

“I’m leaving now,” she says.

“What? You’re still here?” The doctor pretends to scold her. “Go! Leave!”

Fernanda smiles weakly at this slight hint of camaraderie after a tiring day together.

“Have a nice evening, Frigerio,” she says, closing the door.

I say goodbye.

“You have good assistants,” I say to the doctor.

“Yes, very good,” she replies.

“No men, though.”

“We do fine without them,” she says, looking at me. “It’s better that way.” Then, after a slight pause, she adds, “I’m not a lesbian, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It never occurred to me,” I say.

It’s not true. I thought about it almost instantly. It’s what men love to think when a woman shows authority, firmness, and professional ambition. But by my second visit to the Center I had heard she had fallen in love with a Chilean physiotherapist who ran off with the contents of her safe. It had been a setup that, magnified by its ridiculousness, had left her both embittered and cruel and served to intensify her incisive ways as well as her generosity.

“I admire you,” I tell her.

“And so you should,” she says.

The pipe has gone out. She draws on it emptily, sucking in her cheeks in the totemic way common to all smokers.

“Tell me more about Fano. About the effects,” she says.

“On who, Franca?”

“No, you.” She points at me with the pipe. “You’re the one who interests me.”

“I had a voracious appetite,” I reply. “We had lunch at the restaurant on the beach. After finishing my own plate of pasta, I polished off Franca’s too. She was still shaken.”

“What sensitivity!”

“Whose, mine or Franca’s?”

“Yours,” she says, laughing.

“I also felt an enormous surge of energy,” I continue. “I was happy about myself. I had been ready to die and I didn’t hate the idea. Seems like a good sign, no?”

“Sure, great,” she says harshly. “Don’t give yourself airs.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“If only you could see yourself,” she asserts.

I smile. At moments like these, I like myself enormously. This is getting attractive.

“Anyway, a colleague of yours took care of putting things back into perspective for me,” I say.

“Who was that?”

“Dr. Fazio. Do you know her?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Where does she work?”

“At the Olgiati Institute. She’s a psychiatrist.”

“Since when do you go to a psychiatrist?”

“Ever since I was a child. She’s a childhood friend.”

Finally she lights the pipe again. Vigorous smoke wraps around her face. She breathes in obstinately.

“What did this psychiatrist friend of yours say?”

“That I have powerful repressive mechanisms.”

“That’s what she said?” she comments, waving the smoke away with her hand.

“Yes. I’m not sure if I should be flattered,” I reply. “She used the adjective
powerful,
but she was talking about repression. I’m not sure where I fit in. What do you think?”

She clenched the pipe in her teeth and said professionally, “How old is your friend?”

“Around my age, thirty-six or thirty-seven.”

She thought about that for a moment, the pipe still in her mouth. “I’m ten years older than you.”

“Now who’s thinking about themselves?”

“Me!” She laughs. “You’re right!”

The next evening, at almost the same time, she calls me at home. Franca answers.

“Are you calling to lighten Paolo’s schedule? We do think it’s a bit much,” she says, carefully yet firmly.

She listens for a moment, then says, “No, it’s not about us. It’s him. He seems a little tired these days.”

She shrugs. “So you don’t think we should worry about it?” Then she nods and says calmly, “I see.”

She raises her gaze toward me. “Oh, you wanted to talk to him. Well, goodbye then. And thank you for everything you’re doing for Paolo.

“It’s for you,” she says, passing me the receiver, annoyed.

“Good evening,” I say cordially.

“Your wife is so high-strung,” she says, also sounding annoyed. “Tell her not to be so worried. Paolo’s making progress. He’s giving us all the right signs. We have to keep that in mind.”

“That’s right.”

I signal to Franca to turn off the television.

“Even his reaction was good. I liked it. He called you crazy, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s right.”

“It was deserving and well articulated,” she went on kindly. “But I’m not calling about the child. It has to do with you.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know that this morning I caught myself singing?” There’s a tone of complicity in her voice. “It hasn’t happened to me for years. And do you know why? Because of Fano.”

“Because of Fano?”

Franca looks over with raised eyebrows.

“I thought about what you told me. I thought about what you said you felt for your friend when you thought it was all over.”

“That’s right,” I say, for the third time. I feel slightly embarrassed but I don’t want to interrupt, as I usually do, when someone is speaking well of me. But she has already finished.

“That’s all,” she says. “You should be pleased.”

I’m quiet.

“I am,” she says.

I don’t know what to say. I look for an impossible salvation in a cliché.

“That’s nice.”

“Oh, please,” she exclaims in her usual tone, somewhere between peremptory and friendly. “I’m the one who owes you something. A debt of happiness. Do you know what I mean?”

“Naturally.”

Franca knows we’re not talking about Paolo. She wanders around the living room as if she’s looking for something.

“I thought about what your psychiatrist friend told you, too. What was her name?”

“Fazio.”

Franca raises her head.

“Right. You can tell your friend that she doesn’t understand a thing about you.”

“I’ll tell her,” I say, laughing.

“That’s all for now. I’ll see you soon,” she says, and hangs up.

I look at the phone in my hand, an absent half-smile on my face. Franca notices.

“You told her about Fano.”

“Yes.”

Franca walks over to a window and closes it delicately. “What did she say?”

“That thinking about it made her happy.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“A little.”

Franca crosses over to another window. She leans on the sill and looks out into the darkness. “It’s not that strange,” she says, without looking at me.

“It’s not?” I ask in amazement. Franca’s the one who seems strange.

“No,” she replies soberly, turning toward me. “I think I understand her.”

I wait for her to continue. It’s the second time in a matter of minutes.

But she doesn’t.

Standardized Tests

He has trouble with math.

“I did too, when I was in school,” I say.

“Me too,” Franca adds.

That’s how we console each other after the first round of testing.

“I never understood math at all,” my mother-in-law boldly announces.

I look at her. I’m not sure how to interpret that, whether it’s a good sign or a bad one.