Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

The worst days came at the end of July when a heat wave like nothing that had been felt in years broke out. The morning was quite bearable. I put on my roller skates and got a little exercise on the brick avenue that went from the front door to the boundary wall. Mama was busy with dinner. At times she even kept the radio on, and this was a good sign — but only talk programs like the news or “Our Listeners Write to Us.” And if there were songs, she immediately changed the station. But the hours after dinner were sultry and monotonous, heavy with sadness and silence. Even the faraway drone of the city quieted. It seemed that on the house and on the garden a bell of misted glass descended in which the only surviving living things were the cicadas. Mama sat down in the armchair in the living room with a damp handkerchief over her eyes and leaned her head back. I was at the little desk in my anteroom — from where I could see her if I stretched my neck — trying to imprint on my mind nix-nivis and strix-strigis in order to take the make-up exam in September. Nena I could hear messing about in her pied-à-terre singing “Banana Boat” to herself or else shuffling along the avenue because she was taking her Belafonte for a walk as far as the main gate, poor beast, and she whispered to him, “Let’s go see a bit of the world, dearie,” as if in front of our house there was who knows what? But the avenue at that hour was completely deserted, not that it was much frequented at other times either. From the street there, beyond the clearing where the first villas sprang up, you could see the city immersed in a flickering haze, and on the left the avenue ended in the yellow countryside punctuated by trees and isolated farm houses. Toward five o’clock, but not every day, the little ice cream cart passed, with a large chest made like a gondola on which were painted the view of San Marco and the inscription Venetian Specialities . There was a little man who pedaled with great difficulty, blew into a brass trumpet to attract attention, shouted at the top of his lungs, “Two cones, fifty francs!’’ And then there remained silence and solitude.

From the time, after it happened, when Mama had taken to locking the gate so that no one could come in and we could not go out, even to see the ice cream man was better than nothing. My teacher had said that it would have been opportune to have me take private lessons, but Mama had replied that it seemed a bit difficult. We all led a very retiring life, she hoped she understood, and that if it had not been for the tradesmen, she would even have had the telephone cut off. She kept it only for that necessity or if sometime one of us fell sick, and furthermore she kept it off the hook all day because she couldn’t stand its ringing. This was perhaps an excessive precaution, because whoever would have telephoned after Aunt Yvonne moved to Lausanne?

Nena had taken harder than I did Mama’s new habit of not going out anymore, but she didn’t have my luck of being able to fill the after-dinner hours with the plurals in ium . She had nothing to do, poor little thing. In the elementary school they don’t take make-up exams in September. For a little while she tried to while away the time in her pied-à-terre , or she dragged her Belafonte on his leash as far as the gate in order to see a bit of the world. But then she got fed up, she even lost the desire to sing “Banana Boat’’ and she came on tiptoe up to my window and said to me, “I’m bored. Come to my pied-à-terre a little while and play 'Visiting.’ I’ll be the lady and you be the architect who comes to court me.” I sent her away in a low voice so as not to disturb Mama, and if she insisted I told her, strix-strigis strix-strigis , which was an offense she understood very well, and she went away with a furious look, sticking out her tongue at me.

But Mama wasn’t asleep and I knew it. I was aware that at times she cried silently with her head bowed. I would see two tears slide down her cheeks under the handkerchief that covered her eyes. And her hands in her lap, apparently motionless, were imperceptibly trembling. Then I would close my Latin grammar for a while, stare lazily at the sepia-colored Minerva on the cover, and then slip out into the garden by the screen door of the back-kitchen and through part of the garage in order not to be involved in Nena’s stupid games in which I would have to be the architect. On that side the grass was rather tall because Tommaso was not able to cut it, and, immersed in the sticky heat, feeling the savoy cabbage brush against my bare legs, I liked to walk there, as far as the metal grating of the low wall that bordered on the open country. I would go to look for lizards, which nested in that part and which sat on the stones motionless in the sun with their heads raised and their eyes pointing at nothing. I even knew how to catch them with a reed snare which a schoolmate had taught me to make, but I preferred to observe those small bodies, uncomprehending and suspicious of the least little noise as if absorbed in an undecipherable prayer.

I often felt like crying, and I didn’t know why. The tears ran down without my being able to do anything about them, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my Latin — by then I knew the parisyllabics and the imparisyllabics from memory. Mama was right after all — for these things there’s no need to take lessons or leave the house, a little study is enough. It was just that I felt like crying. And then I sat on the wall watching the lizards and thinking about the previous summer. The memory that made me cry the most was an image of Papa and me on a tandem, he in front and I behind, and Mama and Nena following us on a tandem shouting, “Wait for us!” In the background was the dark pine grove of Forte dei Marmi and in front of us the blue of the sea; Papa wore white trousers, and whoever arrived first at the Balena bath would be the first to eat bilberry ice cream. And then I couldn’t hold back the sobs and I had to cover my mouth with my hands so as not to let Mama hear. My repressed voice was a weak muttering that was like the sound Belafonte made when he refused to be dragged along on his leash. And the saliva, mixed with tears, soaked the handkerchief that I desperately stuffed in my mouth, and then I felt like biting them — my hands — but slowly, very slowly, in nibbles. How strange! At that point everything was mixed up, and I tasted on my palate, sharp, very distinct, with an unequivocal aroma, the flavor of bilberry ice cream.

It was that taste that succeeded in calming me. I felt suddenly exhausted, without strength to cry anymore, to move, to think. Around me in the grass the gnats buzzed and the ants walked by. I seemed to be in a well. I felt an enormous weight inside my chest. I couldn’t even swallow. I remained staring beyond the hedge at the pall of heat that dimmed the horizon. Then slowly I got up and went into the kitchen again. Mama was still pretending to sleep in the armchair, or maybe she really was asleep. I heard Nena scolding her Belafonte. She said, “You silly thing! How is it possible you don’t appreciate a bow like this? Why do you insist on ruining it, silly? None of the other cats have one.” I raised the latch of the window screen and called to her in a low voice, “Pst, pst, Nena! Come into the house and we’ll have a snack. Do you want bread or ricotta? Or would you rather have jam? I’ll open a jar.” And she ran cheerfully, leaving Belafonte, who tried in vain to untie the bow from his neck, in the lurch. She was completely satisfied that I had finally remembered her. Perhaps she still had the hope she would succeed in convincing me to be the architect.

Mama usually came alive around six. She walked through the house putting in order whatever there was to put in order, moving a knickknack an inch or two, smoothing a wrinkled lace doily under a vase. Then she came into the kitchen, washed the dishes that she had not had the heart to wash after eating, and set about to get supper, but without any hurry because there was nothing else to do all evening. Tommaso would not return before ten o’clock. They would give him some soup at the nursing home, where he spent all his days now because his cousin was sick and the young ladies let him stay with him the whole day. “Indeed, they’ll do a favor for anyone who’ll do their sweeping for them,” said Mama disdainfully.