Don't Move (20 page)

34

The days passed, one after another, with their collection of things that were always either the same or almost imperceptibly different, such as my face. That’s the way time works, Angela, gradually, systematically. An invisible but implacable friction wears us down. Your tightly woven tissue loosens and settles on the loom of your bones, and one day, without a word of warning from anyone, you’re wearing your father’s face. It’s not just because you’ve got his blood. It’s possible that your being is complying with the impulses of a hidden desire, which you know you feel, even though it repels you. This alteration becomes visible in middle age; the years to come won’t add anything except a few inevitable final touches. The face you have at forty is already the face of your old age. It’s the one that will enter your grave.

I always thought I looked like my mother, but in the car mirror one December morning, while I was stuck in traffic, I became my father. Although I continued to detest him—without any precise reason—my misery had provoked my body to take on an appearance very much like his. I suppose the only reason I detested him was that I was used to detesting him, having done so for as long as I could remember. I took off my glasses and leaned closer to the mirror. My eyes floated gloomily inside two purple circles; my naked nose (grooved by eyewear) appeared much bulkier. Its tip had moved in the direction of my mouth, which for its part had narrowed, like a shoreline invaded by the sea. The face I saw was entirely, or almost entirely, my father’s. What was missing was the rampant buffoonery imprinted on his basically gloomy features. That made him unique, and it survived his death. Stone-dead and drained of all intention, his countenance still preserved its late owner’s insufferable arrogance. I was his bewildered, unlovely copy, a sad gentleman with a rapacious face.

On Christmas Day, I was at your grandparents’ house. The
tombola
was going on, and after a while new guests, looking stuffed and sleepy, arrived and joined the game. I couldn’t stay indoors any longer. I passed my counters to my neighbor and went outside for some fresh air. After all the frantic activity of recent weeks, the streets were finally empty and the shops were locked up tight. The weather wasn’t good; it was very cold, and there was no sun. I took refuge in the neighborhood church. It was almost deserted at that in-between hour, but you could still feel the presence of the faithful who must have come in droves to the morning services. I walked to one side, under the vaults, until I reached the niche where the Christmas crib had been set up: a few plaster figures, large ones, almost life-size. The Virgin Mary, wrapped in the long, immobile folds of her mantle, gazed with downcast eyes at the small raised pallet of straw where the statue of the baby was lying. My foolish legs buckled before that cluster of ugly statues with expressions of astonishment on their faces. I plunged into a pathetic dialogue with myself, as if some invisible presence were seeing and judging me. Naturally, nothing happened; God’s not going to discommode himself for the sake of a ridiculous man. And anyway, it wasn’t long before I became distracted.

No light divine shone upon the rigid baby I was contemplating in the gold-studded darkness of the church. His halo was held up by a thin rod of black iron, which had perhaps been reattached—there was a yellow patch, a stain from old glue, on the nape of his plaster neck. Maybe I can’t believe because I see too many things, Angela, too many of the dirty things of this earth, which heaven will never reach. That pathetic statue, for example, which spends most of the year packed in straw and hidden in a wooden box in the sacristy. That’s where the newborn with the deep blue eyes spends the winter; that’s where he passes spring and summer: lying in a dark wooden box while dust and dampness seep in between the staves. His mother—also shut up in a box, also with straw on her face—rests nearby. Plaster extras, trotted out once a year for the sake of fearful, mendacious hearts like mine.

I contemplated that Nativity skeptically, like one of those tourists in short pants and sandals who enter churches to escape the sultry weather but then become curious and glance around, taking in their surroundings, the domain of incense and litanies, under the furious eyes of a pious old lady half-kneeling in the first pew, the one closest to the altar. And indeed there was such a woman, on her knees, partially hidden behind a column. There’s always a woman on her knees in a church. I saw the soles of her shoes, and at once I saw my mother. She was a believer, and my father forbade her to practice her faith all her life. To keep from incurring her husband’s displeasure, she got used to praying in silence. She’d pretend to read, gazing glassy-eyed at an open book, but she’d forget to turn the page. Only toward the end, when my father’s absences grew more and more frequent, did she regain her courage. In the dead hours of the afternoon, she’d slip into the modern church that served the neighborhood she loathed. She knelt in one of the side pews, close to the door, the holy-water font, and the noise made by whoever else happened to come in. It was as if she felt unworthy of that holy place. The soles of that woman’s shoes were like my mother’s: the soles of someone on her knees, someone who’s detached herself from the earth in prayer. Italia was a believer, too. She had a big crucifix, draped with a heavy wooden rosary, hanging on the wall of her bedroom, and around her neck she wore a little silver cross, which she sucked on when she was sad. I wondered how she’d spent Christmas Day. I saw part of a panettone lying among the crumbs on the oilcloth table covering; I saw her hand cutting a slice; I saw her swallow a mouthful in the semi-darkness, in that unheated house. Maybe she was looking at a crèche, too, one of those little plastic all-in-one-piece Nativity scenes you can buy in department stores.

Then I forgot. And while I was forgetting, life pressed in on me. In February, I became chairman of Surgery. This was something that had been in the air for a long time. I deserved it. I’d worked in that hospital for seventeen years. I’d been a resident surgeon, then a surgeon, then a chief surgeon. Now I was the boss. Other people were delighted, particularly your mother, but also my colleagues, who organized a party in my honor. This promotion crowned my career, and at the same time it circumscribed my future. I abandoned forever the dream of moving to a poor, disadvantaged country, where my profession could finally become what I had imagined it would be when I was a boy: a constant thrill, a mission. Far from the slow, hypnotic routine of this rich, badly administered hospital, where medicines expire and equipment goes out of date while it’s still in its containers. Where everything happens under anesthesia, and the liveliest thing is the mouse that runs across the kitchen from time to time and makes the cooks scream. Each of us, Angela, dreams about something disrupting his everyday world. You dream about it when you’re sitting on the sofa with your trousers off, amid the benefits of daily life. Suddenly, driven by an absurd rebellious impulse, you look for the bones of the man you would have liked to be. Fortunately for you, however, you’re swathed in a solid, closefitting wrapper of fat, which protects you against sharp edges and the dumb-ass things you tell yourself.

After the director of the hospital congratulated me, I drove home alone, and I found myself reflecting on this change and on how things were arranging themselves. And it seemed to me that this promotion, too, was a precise line on the graph life had traced for me. I thought back on the recent months of amorous stupefaction as on a sort of sabbatical year, an intense, passionate holiday that my heart had granted itself in view of the new cycle of responsibility that was awaiting me. I was starting to feel strong again. And if something terrible had happened, now it was drifting into the air behind me, like a scrap of paper blowing in the wind on the beach at summer’s end.

Meanwhile, it was getting harder and harder for you to move inside your mother, even though her belly was huge. It protruded from her clothes like a trophy, her navel as prominent as the boss on a shield. Elsa didn’t have long to go—less than a month, in fact. She was frequently out of breath. In the evenings, after dinner, I’d put my hand over the esophageal opening of her stomach and gently massage it. She didn’t sleep much, because whenever she lay down, you seemed to wake up. At night, I often found her wide-awake and silent, immersed in her own thoughts, holding vigil over the cocoon of desires from which you would soon emerge. I could tell that she wanted to be alone, and so I peered at her in the semi-darkness, not daring to disturb her. When we walked anywhere, she leaned heavily on my arm. Her form was imposing and clumsy; it touched me to see her reflection in a shop window. I was also touched by the way she behaved, by the stubbornness that never abandoned her. Such haughty ways, in a physique so transformed, were truly comical. Wishing to show me that she could do quite well all on her own, she conducted a much more active life than her condition might have indicated. She dressed with great care, but never in clothes bought from maternity shops, which she couldn’t stand. Her skin had taken on a sheen, her eyes had grown more limpid, and she continued undeterred her ongoing competition with other women.

We still made love; her desire seemed unaffected by her toiling breath. She’d lie on her side, and I’d take possession of her large, abundant, welcoming body. I had trouble overcoming my fears—they seemed to be mine alone—when I confronted the vast changes in her, which made me feel puny and inappropriate. The sex we had was gentle, a gift to flesh already heavy with child. I would have gladly done without it. But Elsa demanded attention, and so I gave her what she wanted. I took my place inside her, between the two of you, like a confused guest sitting on a little folding chair at an overcrowded party. I listened in the dark to the sound of the life beating between us, which we had created with the same bodily movements that we were making now, as if we hadn’t ever stopped. I was in my own house, between the legs of the woman I’d known for fifteen years, who was pregnant with my child. Little bears romped on the wallpaper in the former guest room, and a crib stood ready and waiting. Maybe I should have been happier than I was. But intimacy is difficult territory, Angela. I didn’t think about Italia, but I felt her. I knew she was still in my bones; I could hear the sound of her gloomy footfall, like the steps of an aging housekeeper who goes around a castle putting out the lights until only darkness remains.

35

And there we were, entering the chaos at the children’s boutique: two floors with giant windows, which exposed the interior to view from the outside. Your mother had asked me to go with her to this store to help pick out your layette. It was six o’clock in the evening, raining and already dark. Elsa shook the umbrella and left it in the basket by the door. She patted her hair, trying to tell if it was wet, and looked over her shoulder for me. Above our heads hung an army of stuffed animals, stuck on the ceiling with rubber suction cups. In the part of the store dedicated to children’s entertainment, there were plastic toys with blunted edges. The young women at the cash registers wore red envelope caps and red miniskirts and gave every child who left the store a balloon attached to a little plastic straw.

After going up the escalator, we wandered around in a daze, pushing our cart past the merchandise displays, unable to make up our minds. In the infants department, the clothes were so tiny, they made us anxious. It was hot in the store. I was carrying Elsa’s overcoat but still wearing mine. As I unbuttoned it, she started going over the tiny garments meticulously, reading the prices, checking the fabrics.

“Do you like it?” She pulled out a hanger and held up a regal-looking little gown, all taffeta flounces. She turned it this way and that before deciding that it was too fancy for a newborn. She wanted to buy only practical things, things you could change easily and launder in the washing machine. But after taking a few more turns, we laughed, picked up the taffeta dress, and threw it into the shopping cart. And with the same exuberance, we went around collecting little tops, little skirts, terry-cloth rompers, a pair of fur earmuffs, a blue fish you put in the tub to measure the temperature of the water, a floating book, a windmill of little animals, complete with music box, to be fastened to the baby carriage, and a pair of gym shoes size 00, totally useless but too cute to pass up. A smiling store clerk followed us around, ready to answer questions or give advice. Your mother and I were holding hands. Every so often, she gave me a slight poke, because now I was the one who wanted to buy everything. We had a real party in that shop. Suddenly, we found ourselves wishing you’d be born right away, so we could put that fairy-tale dress on you, and those tiny athletic shoes. Now that we had your clothes, we seemed to see you. When the clerk pushed the cart onto the elevator, Elsa, with flushed cheeks and perspiring brow, gave the handle a tap and said, “Well, I believe we’ve got everything.”

And now, just for an instant, she looked a little lost, because we were about to go home with all that stuff. You weren’t there yet; you were still afloat inside her. And she, always so prudent, who had entered the store declaring, “The indispensable minimum”—she, for the first time, had let herself get carried away.

At the cash register, the girl with the red cap smiled and handed me a balloon. Laden with packages, we retrieved Elsa’s umbrella from the basket and left the store. Outside, the street was loud with the sounds of traffic and the falling rain, which splattered on the sidewalk and drummed on the cars stopped at the red light. I’d asked the clerk to call us a taxi, and then we stood waiting for it under the shop’s awning, a bulging canopy where the rainwater collected briefly before it overflowed. There was a small crowd of people around us, also taking shelter from the sharp gusts of what had suddenly become a violent thunderstorm. An umbrella belonging to an inattentive woman was dripping much too close to one of my legs. I squinted to the left, past Elsa’s hair, into the blur of the red and green traffic lights and their shimmering reflections in the pools of water covering the street. I was looking for the illuminated sign atop our taxi, which was supposedly on the way. I had the handles of all the shopping bags wrapped around one hand; the other was still holding on to that ridiculous balloon, which I had not yet managed to get rid of.

At last the taxi appears, queued up behind many other cars, and slowly moves toward us. Elsa’s at my side. I turn my head, trying to meet her eyes, but she’s distracted and looking elsewhere. “Here it comes,” I say.

And then I freeze. I shift my gaze back a little, back to a point between me and the traffic, where, in the midst of this vexatious downpour, something has caught my eye, has slipped into my field of vision for a fraction of a second, like a shadow. In fact, I’ve seen nothing, only a shape reflected in the water. But I know for sure, right away. And it’s a jolt in my stomach, a clamp on my throat. Italia’s there, standing in the rain and looking in our direction. Maybe she saw us as we left the shop. We were laughing at my balloon and the overzealous cashier. “What a little tramp,” Elsa had whispered in my ear. “She saw my belly and figured I was out of the running.” I’d laughed at her and slipped on the sidewalk. Elsa lost her balance trying to hold me up, and we both nearly fell. Then we laughed some more, funny and happy in the pouring rain. Now Italia’s looking at Elsa, whose belly swells the front of her overcoat. And I’m still holding that red balloon. I lower it, feeling ashamed, and at the same time I try to hide Elsa’s body with my own. I’m protecting her from those eyes fixed on her from a few feet away. I can’t make out Italia’s expression; she’s in front of a lighted shop window, and her face is in shadow. Her hair isn’t yellow anymore, but I know it’s her, and I know she’s seen us. And I no longer know where I am. There’s nothing but shadows around me, erased by the flashes of light that skim over my face. I’m alone with her in the sound of the rain. She’s out in the open, without shelter; her body is stiff and numb, her woolen jacket is soaked through, and her legs are bare. I raise a hand, and the water pouring from the awning runs down the sleeve of my raincoat. I’m telling her to wait for me. I’m telling her, Don’t move.

The taxi has stopped in front of the store. Elsa’s getting in, clutching the half-closed umbrella over her head. I hold the door and watch her shoulders, her overcoat slip inside. I turn to look at Italia; she’s walking away. I follow her body as she crosses the street, threading her way through the cars as they creep along. The door of the cab is still open. I lean down and poke my head in. Elsa looks up at me, wondering what I’m waiting for. I say, “I’ll see you back at the apartment.”

“Why? You’re not coming with me?”

“I left my credit card in the shop. . . .”

“I’ll wait for you.”

Horns begin to sound from the cars lined up behind the taxi.

“No, go on home. I’ve got a few things to do.”

“Well, at least take the umbrella.”

As the cab pulls away, I see Elsa’s face; she’s looking at me through the rear window. I cross the street. For some reason, I’ve still got a plastic bag filled with baby things in one hand and the cashier’s balloon in the other, along with Elsa’s umbrella, which I haven’t opened because I don’t have the slightest intention of protecting myself. I look up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, but Italia’s not there. I peek into a bar crowded with people on their feet in front of the counter, waiting for the storm to stop. The place smells of wet sawdust and ketchup, and Italia’s not there. Now I have no idea where to look for her, but I’m running anyway. I turn into the first street I come to, which ends in a smaller street running off to one side. It’s dark and narrow, solitary under the torrents of rain. I see her. She’s sitting on some stone steps, leaning back against a large door. She doesn’t hear me because the storm drowns out the sound of my splashing feet. She doesn’t see me because she has her face buried in her hands. I look at the curve of her neck. Her hair’s no longer the color of straw; now it’s dark and very short, clinging to her scalp like a shiny stocking. That’s where I lay my hand, on that incredibly small head, on that wet hair. She jumps; her neck and back recoil, quivering as though she’s received a whiplash. She wasn’t expecting me. Her face is a sodden mask; her teeth chatter behind her compressed lips. For a few moments, I listen to this wild chattering, which Italia can’t seem to stop. I’m standing in front of her, very close to her. My drenched raincoat is heavy on my shoulders, and water is streaming down under my collar, between my clothes and my warm flesh. Out of breath from running, I pant openmouthed as the rain falls on my face. I’ve got a red balloon in my hand. How insignificant she is, how soaked, hugging herself, her white legs splayed out on the steps, a pair of glistening-wet calf-high boots on her feet. It’s awful to see her again, and wonderful. She looks younger. She looks like a sick child. She looks like a saint. The rainwater washes away her features; all she’s got left are her eyes, like two bright puddles, staring at me while the black makeup runs down her cheeks like wet soot. She’s alone, alone with her bones, with her eyes. It’s her, my lost dog.

“Italia . . .”

And her name rolls down that dark, narrow street, between the walls that enclose it. She puts her hands over her ears, shakes her head. She doesn’t want to hear me, doesn’t want to hear her name. I kneel on the steps in front of her and seize her arms. She jerks away and kicks at me. “Go away!” she says through her teeth, which haven’t stopped chattering. “Go away, go away!”

“No, I’m not going anywhere!”

And now I’m the dog, and I shove my nose against her, into her wet lap. There’s a strong odor in those dripping clothes. The rainwater has revived some old smell that was lurking in the limp fibers of her woolen jacket. It’s the smell of a sweaty animal, of childbirth. And I’ve become a child again, kneeling on the steps and shivering while the downpour drenches us. I put my arms around her thin hips. “I couldn’t tell you—I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. . . .”

She shifts her back to get away from my embrace. She’s breathing hard, but she’s not trying to kick me anymore.

I raise my head, looking for her eyes. And now she lifts one of her hands from the top step, reaches toward me, and strokes my face. And when that hand, as cold as the stone it was resting on, touches my cheek, I know that I love her. I love her, my child; I love her as I’ve never loved anyone. I love her like a beggar, like a wolf, like a bunch of nettles. I love her like a scratch in the windowpane. I love her because she’s all I love, her bones, her odor of poverty. And I want to howl at all that rain and tell it that it can’t win, that it won’t sweep me away into one of the gutters running alongside the deserted pavement. I say, “I want to be with you.”

She looks at me with those eyes, which the water seems to have rusted. Her hand caresses my lips; her thumb slips between my teeth. “You still love me?” she asks.

“More than ever, Crabgrass, more than ever before.”

And I lick her thumb, sucking it like a newborn baby. I suck away all the time we’ve spent apart. It’s us again, the couple from last summer, leaning against a door under the water cascading down from the terraces, in the fragrance of a wet garden that must be in the back somewhere, us with our tepid, steaming bodies under our soaked clothes, us in the street again like two cats. My tongue follows the crease between her eyebrows. She takes off her underpants and crushes them in her hand. Her legs are spread apart like a doll’s legs, her feet encased in little boots, glistening wet. I move my back and squeeze myself into her while the water seeps into our warm huddle as into a gazebo or a greenhouse. Our faces are locked together, and down below there’s that viscid pleasure that flings me far away and carries off everything. And I’m no longer afraid that some stranger, outraged by such disgraceful conduct, might come up behind my unguarded back and start kicking me. I’m a fleshy worm, safe inside the body I love. We’re here together; it’s us again, in the twilight of our breathing, we who will not remain, who will die as everything dies.

And then it’s really dark, and there’s really a lot of water. Where shall we go? What will be our fate? What room will welcome us now? We shouldn’t love each other, shouldn’t make love, but we’ve just done so. Like dogs, in the middle of the street. And the sequel is always opaque, difficult, uncertain: a few awkward gestures of adjustment, a caress, a bit more shame. We’ve done it, and we shouldn’t have done it. I’ve got a pregnant wife at home, waiting for me. That doesn’t matter; put your underpants back on, Italia, and I’ll quickly pull up my trousers—awkward doing that with my raincoat on—at this point, it’s more like a wet rag. No one saw us, because there’s not a living soul in this street, which has been pulled out of the world for our sake. Italia gets up. I gaze at her spectral body inside her waterlogged woolen jacket. She looks like a lost mountain goat, alone on a high, narrow ledge during a thunderstorm. And everything’s terrible again. There’s a streetlight nearby, but it’s out.
What if lightning had struck us
while we were making love? A snake of electricity, flung down betweenher and me. A vibrating blue wire, grounded in our pleasure. In that case, yes, it would have all made sense. . . .