Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

He might fall down with me on the playground’s spongy floor. I’m very familiar with that rubbery material, I can almost feel it under my feet as I fall from above, bouncing with my friends. My father bounces with me in my mind, in reality he’s sitting on a bench nearby, reading a newspaper. Whole afternoons, when the weather was nice.

* * *

When she arrives, Cecilia’s face looks very tired. Viberti is freezing and would like to forgive her for everything, but he can’t, because there’s nothing to forgive, and the blame, if there is any blame, is distributed equally between them. There is no blame, why should there be blame?

Cecilia wants to walk along the river, Viberti implores her to go to a café he spotted on the street. They sit at a small table in the back. Cecilia talks about the children, Mattia has a cough, maybe he’s caught the flu, she sent him to school but she’s already sorry. And when he’s sick, it’s even more difficult to get him to eat.

“But you didn’t call me here to talk about that,” Viberti says curtly.

“No, but don’t be mean to me,” she replies, her voice cracking.

“I’m sorry, but try to understand, I have to get back to the hospital, I thought something serious had happened.”

She tells him she hasn’t been sleeping well at night, she’s so tired she collapses at ten, right after turning off the light in the children’s rooms, then she wakes up at two or three and starts tossing and turning in bed. She doesn’t want to start in again with the sleepless nights she had the year before. Every now and then she gets up to check on the children, to see if they’re breathing. “Can you imagine? Something you do with newborns.”

Viberti sighs, takes her hand, squeezes it tightly. He expects she’ll try to break free immediately, because she doesn’t usually welcome signs of affection in public, instead she pulls him to her and gives him a kiss on the cheek. This is why she called him so far away from the hospital, so they could behave normally, for once at least, without being afraid that someone might see them.

“I’m getting to it, okay? I’m getting to it.”

And Viberti thinks she intends to tell him that they mustn’t see each other any longer, that she’s as tired as he is of that friendship which is not only friendship, that there’s no place in her life for such a waste of emotion.

Instead Cecilia says: “When I have to think about something wonderful and good I think of you, at night I think of you and I calm down and fall asleep.”

“Well, better me than a benzodiazepine.”

Cecilia ignores him and continues: “So I said to myself that maybe I’m in love with you. I don’t know. I’m asking you: Do you think I’m in love with you?”

Viberti lowers his eyes. How should he react to that question? By throwing his arms around her, weeping, shouting for joy? But the very fact that he asks himself this question means he doesn’t want to react in any way, it means he doesn’t believe what Cecilia has said, doesn’t believe that she’s really in love with him. He believes she’s very confused, and confused people confuse him, he doesn’t know how to act.

“You don’t seem thrilled,” she says.

He can’t speak, he can’t find anything sensible to say.

“Please, say something.”

He shakes his head.

After a seemingly interminable time he says: “Of course you’re in love with me. I’m in love with you, too.”

Cecilia nods.

“But being together isn’t easy, is it?”

“No, it’s not easy.”

“Not after what you went through.”

“Not after what I went through. What I’m still going through.” She squeezes his hand again. “You see. You understand me. You understand me right away.”

Viberti thinks: Why don’t we try? Why don’t we try being together?

It’s not what she wants. Is it what he wants?

He’s seized by a sudden fit of anger. He doesn’t know why Cecilia lets herself go like that: old, scruffy loafers, a missing button at the neck of her blouse, that shabby backpack.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry you’re feeling miserable. I’d like to help you, but I don’t know how.”

“But you do help me, you help me a lot.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “If you weren’t here, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“If I weren’t here.”

“Yes,” Cecilia says.

“But I am here.”

They remain silent, holding hands, studying the brown ring of coffee left in the bottom of the cups. Cecilia concentrates on trying not to cry. Viberti is startled to have said “I’m sorry you’re feeling miserable.” He’d never realized how miserable she felt, “to feel miserable” means feeling very miserable, otherwise he would have said “I’m sorry you’re not happy.” And even more startled because she didn’t deny feeling miserable (therefore very miserable). She’s aware of it and doesn’t deny it, and she doesn’t talk about it, because it’s too painful to talk about.

He glances around to see if anyone is watching them. A love story that has taken place entirely in cafés. One table among many. A tiny table on which to uncomfortably rest your elbows. The looks of strangers who embroider a wedding canopy around you, the paper place mat acting as the bridal veil, a small bottle of mineral water for the toast.

* * *

Then Cecilia perked up and asked him to tell her the story. Viberti didn’t know what she was talking about.

“The story your mother told you, which had a Cecilia in it, you said it was a scandalous story … I thought about it last night and couldn’t forgive myself for never having asked you about it.”

“The scandalous story … I’m not sure I remember it anymore. Why are you interested?”

“I don’t know, because it has to do with you. I’m interested in everything that has to do with you. And it has to do with me, too, you told me about it the first time.”

“The first time?”

“When you gave me that solemn speech.”

“The solemn speech … Oh yes, the solemn speech, I remember.”

He couldn’t tell her he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to tell her that he couldn’t take it anymore. To cheer her up, to cheer himself up, he tried to reconstruct the story he had heard from Marta nine months ago, but he quickly realized that he wasn’t capable of telling it with his mother’s same rambling pace, her words rich with euphemisms and allusions. He went too fast, often forgetting an important detail, forced to go back and fill in the gap. Right off the bat he forgot a critically important detail. He began telling it halfheartedly and continued halfheartedly. He told the story to finish things in a hurry so he could get back to the hospital.

His narration made it really seem like something an elderly, sick person would make up. Halfway through he felt guilty; Marta didn’t deserve to have her story dishonored that way. Or maybe the story gripped him as it hadn’t the evening he’d heard it, stole the scene and used him as a puppet. He recalled that at one point his mother had said something that made him laugh, and he recited the line as if it were his own: “And now you have to imagine one of those movie scenes with a dying man on his deathbed.” As if the two of them never saw any dying men. Cecilia laughed and said, “Oh sure, I can imagine.”

Now he felt a different urge to tell it, the story no longer seemed so improbable, he was no longer sorry to have told it but he was sorry to be coming to the end. He managed to make Cecilia laugh again, imitating the glowering face of a watchmaker wearing a monocle.

Because at the heart of it all was a pocket watch, locked away in a jewelry box in the drawer of an enormous dresser in the room of a man who is slowly dying. The man has been a widower for ten years, he is no longer able to walk, never leaves the house, and has trouble speaking. His daughter, Cecilia, cares for him with absolute devotion; though she’s only twenty, she spends her days with him and lives as a recluse in a house full of furniture and bric-a-brac, not far from the bank where her father worked before his sudden illness. One day the old man takes a turn for the worse, doesn’t get out of bed, can no longer speak, and must be spoon-fed and washed when he soils himself, like a child. Cecilia prays that he won’t suffer much, but she can’t bring herself to hope that he will die quickly. She watches over him till late, sleeps in an armchair beside the bed, is always ready to serve him.