Don't Move (18 page)

“To the flower market.”

“Where?”

“I work there.”

“Since when?”

“Not long.”

In the half shadow, her gray eyes seemed set, like stones, and there was something more adult about the expression on her face. I, on the other hand, had come armed only with my need for her. I said, “How are you?”

“Fine.”

I put a hand on her stomach. “How about him? How’s he doing?”

She didn’t reply, Angela. I caught up her hands and held them against her stomach. I felt her breathing. The weather was already cool, and she was dressed too lightly for the season, for that sunless dawn. I felt the weight of that empty lobby behind us, and the cold penetrating my body through my damp clothes. She let me move her hands about without opposition, without will, like two leaves in the mud. I remembered the red leaf, the first of the autumn, that fell on my windshield when I was parked outside the clinic.

“I had an abortion.”

I looked into her light, impassive eyes and shook my head. With my heart in my throat, I said, “That can’t be true.” I was holding her by the arms, jerking her around, ready to do her harm. I asked, “When did you do it?”

“I did it, that’s all.”

She didn’t seem sad, but I thought I saw pity for me in her stony eyes. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you try to reach me? I wanted it, really. I wanted it. . . .”

“Tomorrow you would have changed your mind.”

Now she was going to leave me. Now that my multiplied life was no longer growing inside of her, I’d lost her. Desperate, I started to cover her with little kisses that fell like hail on her rigid face.
It doesn’t matter—we’ll have other children. Let’s start
tomorrow; let’s start now. Let’s go make love, now, on that chenille
bedspread. I’ll hold you close, and you’ll be pregnant again. We’ll go
to Somalia, and our house will be filled with children: children in
cribs, children in hammocks, children in shawls. . . .

But we were already an old photograph, Angela, one of those photographs ripped down the middle, where two lovers lost to each other forever are separated at the shoulder. Now she would go and clip stems and sell flowers to anyone who came along: to a lover, to someone on his way to the cemetery, to someone who’s just had a child.

“Where did you have the abortion?”

“I went to the Gypsies.”

“You’re crazy! You have to go to the hospital for a checkup.”

“I don’t like hospitals.”

You don’t like surgeons, I thought, and I grabbed one of her wrists. “You have to come with me!”

“I’m all right. Leave me alone!”

She threw off my hand. I wasn’t her man anymore. My hand was the hand of no one in particular. Her face had returned to immobility and emptiness; I caught no glimpse of any of the countless expressions I knew so well. The ashes of dawn entered her ears and slid down her cheeks, which were painted to simulate good health. She was standing in front of me, but she’d already disappeared into her own life, distracted and anonymous, like one of those wet hands that passes you your change in the market. “I have to go,” she said.

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“It’s no use.”

I sat down on the curb while she walked away. I didn’t look at her; I had my head in my hands. And I stayed like that until the sound of her footsteps faded to nothing, and even afterward, when nothing remained but silence. The telephone in her house had rung and rung while she was inside a flimsy trailer just a few yards away, letting some hag, perhaps the same person who taught her fortune-telling, thrust a hook inside her. That was how it had ended, that was what she had come to, with her teeth clamped on a rag to keep from screaming.

29

Why am I telling you all this? I don’t have an answer to that question. I can’t give you one of my brief, precise “surgical responses,” as you call them. I think it’s because life is hemorrhaging and pounding in my temples like the hematoma in your skull. I see it now, Angela: You’re operating on me.

I’m not asking your forgiveness, and I’m not taking advantage of your absence. Believe me, I passed judgment on myself many years ago, sitting on that curb. The verdict was irreversible, fixed for all time, like a tombstone. I’m guilty; my hands know it.

But if you only knew how many times I’ve tried to imagine that lost child. I watched it grow up at your side like an unfortunate twin. I tried to bury it, but in vain. It came back whenever it wanted to, fell in with my steps, slipped into my aging bones. It came back in every defenseless creature I saw, in the hairless children in Pediatric Oncology; it came back in a porcupine I ran over on a country road. It came back in the damage I did to you.

Do you remember judo classes? You didn’t want to go, but I forced you to in my own way—with silence, with those mute reproaches that made you feel bad before you caved in. I drove around that old gym, which featured old equipment, old teachers, a punching bag, and unglued linoleum. I got out of the car and went in. The air was dank with perspiration as I considered the faces of the combatants. I took a flyer with the class schedules. What can I tell you, Angela? It’s a familiar tale. When I was a boy, I would have liked to be a martial arts champion and visit a gym at night, a gym like that one, filled with sleeveless workout shirts and real muscles and tough faces, and there arm myself with an invisible, unfailing strength, which I would dissemble under my well-mannered jacket and eyeglasses. Two moves and your opponent is down; a colleague, perhaps—say that nurse who’s so heavyset it’s scary to look at him. The dreams of a cowardly man, of a feeble little boy. That’s what I could tell you, and it would be true; there
was
that little boy, that little clump of feelings, some praiseworthy, some contemptible. But there was also something else, something unconfessed: the desire to subdue you, to play a crooked trick on you, because my crooked life was falling on your shoulders. The conditions necessary for getting away with it were in place. It was a good sport, for one thing. Your mother was unable to find any contraindications in my paternal face. Of course, you wanted to take dancing lessons, and you bounced around the house on the tips of your toes, with one of your mother’s scarves tied around your waist. You wanted to be a dancer, Angela, but you were too tall for ballet. By contrast, you were just right for judo. It’s a good sport, as I said; it disciplines the spirit. You have to be fair; you have to have respect for the movements and for your comrades, male and female alike. I took you by your little hand, bought you a pair of judo slippers, and took you to that basement gym.

And there you were, with your judogi on and the belt wound around your waist. You fought joylessly, doggedly, resisting only because you hated being thrown. You fought for my sake, because I was watching you. You fought so you wouldn’t land on the mat, so you wouldn’t get kicked in the behind, so you wouldn’t hear the instructor’s heavy voice shouting at you to get up. You fought with tears in your eyes. You didn’t like the judogi—it was stiff; it was a sack. You wanted a nice filmy tutu and some little shoes with plaster tips. You wanted to feel light. And instead, there you were, matched against that classmate they were always saddling you with, the big strong one with the ponytail that snapped like a whip. Big, strong, and agile, whereas you were thin and wooden. I gave you advice: “You have to be smoother in the exchange of techniques.” But you couldn’t be smooth. You were fighting too many battles.

I sat down on one of those little chairs they had—they looked as though they belonged in a kindergarten—and watched the belt promotion ceremony with the other parents. You were sitting huddled in a corner of the blue rubber mat with your legs crossed and your feet bare, waiting your turn. You flashed me a lame smile. You were afraid: of the instructor, of those movements that you didn’t have under control, of the little girls who were more nimble and less damaged than you. When your turn came, you got up and bowed in salute. The instructor called out the movements, and you executed them nervously and uncertainly. Your cheeks were blotchy; you kept biting your lip. When you were the holder, you looked at your opponent and seemed to implore her not to resist, to just let herself go. When you were the receiver, you let yourself go completely, like an empty sack. You took a lot of hard knocks. Sweaty, defeated, with your judogi askew, you made your bow and got your promotion.

“Are you happy?” I asked you in the car. You weren’t happy; you were exhausted. I tried again. “When you fall on a tatami, it doesn’t hurt you, right?” Wrong; it hurt you a lot. You looked at me. Your face was flushed, you were close to tears, and you asked me with your eyes, Why?

Good question. We were at peace—why start a useless war? To make you stronger, to teach you some discipline. But I didn’t make you stronger. I did you harm; I robbed you of strength. I took your gaiety and built a wall around it. Forgive me.

And then one day, you stopped. It was in September, we had just come back from the seashore, and your belt rank was orange-green. You said, “I don’t want to do it anymore. Period. ” I didn’t insist; I let you alone. I was tired, too. I frequently passed that gym, but it no longer interested me. The thrill, the obsession, my unborn son—all that was dead and buried. And all of it fucked-up nonsense, Angelina, the madness of fathers and rapists who don’t know how to grow up. Period.

30

It was just a matter of time. Time would perform its corrosive task and eat away at my remorse until it was reduced to powder. All things considered, Italia had done me a favor, removing a messy complication from my life. She hadn’t wanted to go to the clinic a second time; as far as she was concerned, it was a sham hotel, and its elegance filled her with scorn. I was only partly to blame, having limited myself to leaving her on her own. That abandonment was the beginning of the process whereby I became inured to my own vileness.

One evening, Manlio called me up and we went out for a pizza like two old classmates getting together again. After we sit down, he asks me, “How did things turn out with that girl?”

“She’s all right.”

“And how about you?”

At a table some distance away, a blond woman with her back to me is smoking a cigarette. All I can see is the whitish cloud of smoke around her hair, and the face of the man sitting across from her. From his expression, I try to guess what she looks like. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

I’m waiting for that woman to turn around. There’s a chance she looks like her.

Sometimes I go and pick her up at the market. I arrive when the vendors are taking down the stalls, and she’s standing in the midst of a flood of damaged flowers. She greets me with a movement of her head. She stacks the boxes and carries the pots of unsold plants to a small pickup truck that is covered with green oilcloth, parked behind the stall. I wait for her to finish her work, posted there in my elegant clothes like a stalk among the dewy petals. Italia takes off her rubber boots and slips into her normal shoes. After she’s in the car, we treat each other kindly but joylessly, like two friends whipped with the same stick. Or maybe like parents who’ve lost a child. In any case, we’re a pair of survivors. We’re both walking next to an open wound, and we have to be careful about choosing our words.

“How are you?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Are you tired?”

“No, not at all.”

She’s never tired, but she rubs her cold, chapped hands. She’s grown; in the car, her forehead seems broader, but her shoulders are more hunched. She never sits back completely in her seat. Her necklines are always too low. She’s trying to put up some kind of a fight. She looks through the car windows at the world, which has done nothing to protect us.

We’re like two convalescents, waiting for the time to pass, and meanwhile the traffic is rolling along and the days are growing shorter. The bright lights from the shop windows reflect in Italia’s eyes, apparently without bothering her, for she pays no attention to them. I haven’t touched her again. When a woman’s recently had an abortion, you don’t have sex with her; you leave her alone. Besides, I’m terrified even at the thought of her nakedness, terrified of finding my arms around her again, of clasping that pain she carries inside her, inert under her wet clothes. It’s too cold for her at the market—her nose is red and peeling. She pulls a thoroughly soaked handkerchief out of her pocket and blows that nose. Not long ago, I brought her some vitamins, but I’m not certain she takes them. It’s unhealthy for us to let time pass this way. We’re not friends now, nor will we ever be. We were lovers even before we knew each other. We exchanged flesh in a wild fury. And now such an odd courtesy has sprung up between us. I look at her and wonder what she and I are doing here, becalmed in these still waters. It can’t end like this, without a cry, without anything at all. If a demon is required, let him fall upon us, let him burn us. As long as we don’t have to stay in this limbo.

Maybe a change of scene would do the trick, I think. Her house gives me the creeps. That tobacco-colored coverlet, the naked chimney, her blind dog, and that monkey on the wall, holding the baby’s bottle like a tasteless joke. One afternoon, therefore, I ask her if she’d like to go to a hotel. “So we won’t spend all our time sitting in traffic,” I say.

And so here we are, in a room completely new to us, a lovely room in the center of the city, with heavy damask curtains and damask walls. She doesn’t even look around; she throws her purse on the bed and goes straight to the window, raising a hand to push the curtain aside. I ask if she wants something to eat or drink, and she says no. I go into the bathroom to wash my hands, and when I return, she’s still there at the window, holding back the curtain and looking out. When she hears my footsteps coming toward her, she says, “It’s really high. What floor is this?”

“The ninth.”

She has her hair pinned up. I draw close to her and kiss the nape of her neck with my lips open and my eyes closed. How much time has passed since I’ve kissed her like this? Already, I’m wondering how I could have given her up for so long. Once again, her warm body is next to mine, and that virgin room will help us to forget.

Now she’ll feel the wetness of my lips on her neck. She’ll balk
at first, but then she’ll be mine again, just as she’s always been. She
can’t give me up; she told me so herself.
When she lowers her arm, the curtain shuts out the daylight and the view of the city. I start to undress her right there, leaning against that stiff, heavy fabric. I take off her jacket, which she’s kept on until now; it’s an ugly faded jacket made of some kind of fluffy wool. It weighs nothing and appears to be held together by mucilage. My fingers brush her breasts, those small, droopy breasts that please me so much. She lets me have my way. “Darling,” she says, “my darling,” and holds me close. I take her by the hand and lead her to the bed. I want her to relax and be comfortable. I take off her shoes. She’s wearing cheap nylon panty hose. I rub her legs and her feet, which are like a mannequin’s. She slips off her skirt herself, folds it carefully, and drapes it over the foot of the brass bed. Then she does the same with her shirt. Her movements are slow; she’s trying to take her time, to postpone the moment of intimacy.

I get undressed in a hurry and throw my clothes on the floor, taking advantage of her averted eyes, because now I feel ashamed. She undoes her side of the bed, lies down, and pulls up the covers. I get in next to her. The bed’s still cold. She’s lying there stiffly, hands at her sides. I throw a leg over her, but it slides off, because she’s left her panty hose on. I say, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I know.”

What a considerate lover I’ve become all of a sudden! How ridiculous I must seem! She didn’t feel the slightest desire to take off her clothes. She would have gladly stayed where she was, looking down through the parted curtains at the world below, wondering if there was a place for her somewhere. When I enter her, she gives a little start, then nothing; she lets me move back and forth in absolute silence. I keep my face buried in her hair. I don’t dare look at her; I’m afraid of meeting her impassive eyes. I let out a loud groan, hoping she’ll take pity on me and respond. But nothing happens. We don’t take off—we don’t even leave the ground. I’ve got blood in my eyes and her hair in my mouth. Despite my efforts, I don’t exactly get carried away, either. I see and hear everything: the soft hum of the minibar; the bathroom fan, which I’ve left on with the bathroom light; the sound of my flesh sliding in and out of hers. This last is the sound that’s truly terrible. Italia’s not here; her flesh is empty, and now I’m a weight inside her, the deadweight of dead love. This embrace is our funeral. I feel my sweaty bulk pressing down on her skeleton. She doesn’t want me anymore; she doesn’t want anything anymore. Her body is a passage that’s closing itself off. At this moment, I understand that I’ve lost everything, Angela, because everything I want is here in my arms, lifeless. I push my chest off of hers, looking for her face. Her eyes move around under her tears like two fish in a very narrow sea. She’s crying; it’s the only thing she’s felt like doing since we entered this hotel room. My shrunken member withdraws, swift as a rat crossing a street at night.

I lie next to her in silence until her weeping becomes gentler, less anguished. There’s a fixture on the ceiling, an oval of whitewashed glass, a blind eye looking down on us with total indifference. I say, “You can’t not think about it, can you?”

A gust of wind blows the window open, and icy air assaults our naked bodies. We stay as we are, unmoving, letting the cold wound us. Then Italia gets up, closes the window, and goes to the bathroom.

I watch her nude figure cross the room, one hand covering her breasts. I stretch out my arm on the sheet where she’s been lying. The lukewarm outline of her body is still there, and I think that it’s all over, that it has come to an end like this, in a hotel. My thoughts slide into the folds of the sheet. I think about a friend of mine who used to go to a prostitute—always the same one—when he was a young man. By his request, when they made love, she pretended to be dying. I think about all the men I’ve known, men who made love, like all men, and now are dead. I think about my father. He went with all sorts of women, always using extreme discretion, not that it was necessary; after he separated from my mother, he lived alone. Still, he liked to keep certain matters as abstract as possible. He’d choose strange, solitary figures, middle-aged women with few attractions. They all seemed like dullards, but perhaps each of them had her secret ways. One worked as a cashier in a second-class movie theater. She had dyed hair, aquiline features, and large breasts tightly bound inside a rigid brassiere. I saw her only once, when my father took me to a bar that connected with the theater lobby through a glass door. As I observed the woman through the glass, I noticed that my father was watching her, too, but furtively, with a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. They were a child’s eyes, overhung by his bushy old satyr’s brows. He seemed happy with his location, his son on one side of him and his lover on the other. Maybe she’d told him she wanted to meet me. I pretended I didn’t know what was going on. Later, I learned this woman’s name was Maria Teresa, she was married to an invalid, and she had no children. She and my father often went to eat in a little restaurant in the back of a delicatessen; her favorite dish was beef tongue in green sauce. I never found out anything more about her. But now the sheet my hand’s resting on becomes a movie screen, and I watch that woman undress. She slips off her little watch and places it on the marble top of an old bedside table. My father’s by her side, taking off his pants and hanging them on the wooden clothes rack. The perfume on the back of her neck is bitter. In a little pensione in a side street near the delicatessen, where she has just eaten beef tongue in green sauce, my father and the aging cashier with the stricken face make love.

Whatever happened to those two? Like us, they left behind a rumpled, lukewarm bed in a pensione with narrow staircases, where a closing door sends a rush of wind through the crack under the other doors on the same floor. My father smokes while the cashier’s in the bathroom, splashing water into her armpits, puckering her lips, and applying her lipstick. Then she turns off the light, just as she does in her own home. Later, after they’ve gone, a maid comes in, carrying a bucketful of cleaning products in one hand and clean sheets rolled up under her other arm. She opens the windows and throws the dirty sheets onto the floor. Then comes another woman, with her own particular smell and her own particular undergarments, and she undresses by the side of another man. She, too, makes love; she, too, submits to the probing of her insides.

I wonder if my father’s cock was bigger than mine. I never saw it, but deep in my heart, I think it must have been. Meanwhile, he’s still in the coffin, where I left him a few months ago, dark-faced, cotton wool in his nostrils, a flower in his hand. Who put that flower there? The cashier, maybe. No, she wasn’t at the funeral; that was an old affair, years and years ago. They probably broke up, but she continued to eat beef tongue in green sauce with somebody else. Maybe she’s dead, too. Italia’s in the bathroom, and I’m stroking the sheet where she lay. It’s still a little warm. The movie’s over; the screen is blank and wrinkled again. I know I’m going to cry soon, for all the dead lovers, for myself and for her, in there looking at herself in the mirror, like my father’s cashier. When she gives me my turn in the bathroom, I’ll cry. Because she and I are like all those who have been here before. We’ll keep on going, and we’ll die far apart. No one will ever know anything about how close we were, how deeply each of us entered into the other, nor anything of our life together up to now, when I’m lying here with my arm flung out across the sheet where she was lying a little while ago. It’s not warm anymore. We’re needy flesh, Angela, self-duplicating flesh projected onto an empty screen. Or perhaps our energy nourishes another world, a perfect world that lives very near ours, where there’s no need to be afraid or to suffer. Maybe we’re like those black sailors who shoveled coal in the bellies of steamships so that a pair of lovers could have a romantic dance up on the bridge, above the twinkling carpet of the sea. Someone will gather up our dreams, someone less imperfect than we are. We’re doing the dirty work.