Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

“So, in the end what foods made you feel best?”

“Maybe the eggs with carrots and zucchini. After three days of rice, peas, and chicken I was desperate.”

“But how did you come up with the idea?”

“I don’t know, at the time I was obsessed with food. I had gone to a lecture, a Swiss guy — he wasn’t a doctor or a dietitian — had come to give a talk at the university. I remember going to it by chance, a friend had dragged me along.” She turned to Cecilia, “Enrico Fermi,” then turned back to Viberti: “An old friend of mine, his name was Enrico but I called him Enrico Fermi because in a debate once he had defended nuclear power and we’d almost lynched him, plus he had red hair…”

Cecilia was getting up. “Enrico Fermi had very red hair, yes.”

“Are you going already…” Viberti says.

“Will you call me?” Silvia asks.

Viberti rises, Cecilia has quickly slipped on her jacket and says, “Ciao, see you,” smiling and touching his arm.

Silvia repeats: “Will you call me later?”

Cecilia nods, and the next moment she’s gone.

Viberti sits back down. He’s at a café with a stranger, somehow, for some reason. He can’t afford to be late either, he has appointments. He could have remained standing and said goodbye, then left immediately. But he can’t help it, he has to cover up the awkwardness. Because Cecilia’s headlong flight has made both of them feel uncomfortable, it doesn’t take much to see that. And Silvia does nothing to ease the situation. She keeps staring in the direction in which her sister disappeared.

“You were telling me about this Swiss lecturer … who was he?”

Silvia lowers her eyes. “Yes. Well, he was from Switzerland. I don’t remember his name, something like Fletcher or Frecher. I’m not sure — I had gone by chance with this friend, I mean, I had absolutely no interest in the man’s philosophy.”

“Philosophy?”

“I don’t remember it all that well. It was all based on ritual, he aid that nutrition must observe a ritual, that you should only eat raw foods or boiled stuff, otherwise the foods are injured , you know, by being fried or grilled. I don’t understand why boiling things would be any better, he was a bit of a charlatan — oh, and then he had this idea about a soup bowl…” Silvia takes a sip of tea.

“A soup bowl?”

“According to him you should always eat out of a soup bowl, because the food must be held , it must be embraced , like this—” Her hands form the shape of a shell.

Viberti smiles. Silvia smiles, too.

“Yet later he convinced you.”

“He convinced me?”

“The philosopher.”

“Yes, he was quite fascinating, the way he spoke, the way he described it all. And I got the urge to try it, because among other things he advocated the principle of the one single dish.”

“And did he also tell you to drink tea at meals?”

“No, that’s a habit that I fell into afterward.”

And she starts talking about her passion for green tea, about how difficult it is to find good Japanese tea in Italy (stuff about the product’s perishability and temperature changes during transport), she says that green tea is much more delicate than black tea. She talks about properties that are good for the heart and circulation, others that prevent virtually all types of cancers. “I’ll have to send you the link to a great site, you’ll see, you’ll be converted, too.”

Viberti listens to her. It’s funny how this woman is similar to yet unlike her sister. Then he remembers that he has to get back. But he makes no move to get up. He looks at the sandwich that Cecilia left untouched on the table. Was that all she had for lunch?

“The way you’re looking at that sandwich…” Silvia says.

“How am I looking at it?”

“Like it did something wrong.”

It’s a mortadella sandwich. The pink-and-white slices peek out from the edges of the bread like small naughty tongues. “No,” Viberti says, “I would never eat it, but I don’t resent it. I respect it. It lives in its world and I in mine.”

Silvia laughs. “There’s a fantastic novel you should read, it was one of my father’s favorites, it’s called The Cook . I’ll lend it to you, if you’d like. I’ll give it to Cecilia. It’s about a chef who seduces, or influences, or deceives — in short, who manipulates people with his recipes.”

Viberti stares at her, bewildered, why on earth would that book interest him?

Suddenly Silvia is standing up and putting on her jacket. “Now I really have to go. Write down your e-mail.” She puts a blue clothbound notebook under his nose, hands him a pen.

Instead of writing, Viberti reads a note that jumps out in the center of the blank page, I want her to like me , and is left dazed, staring at the underlined words. Then he looks up.

“Your e-mail,” Silvia repeats, “write it down there. You do have an e-mail address, don’t you?”

Viberti nods, writes down the address, hands back the notebook.

And at that point he, too, can finally stand up, say goodbye, and quickly leave the café.

* * *

He was waiting for Giulia and Marta outside the main entrance and was surprised by the smiling crowd that seemed to drift aimlessly around the hospital, not a forlorn crowd — people with real or imaginary ailments, patients’ families, doctors, vendors peddling useless first aid kits — but the kind of festive weekend crowd you’d find at an amusement park. Giulia had made another geriatric appointment for Marta.

The hospital had been built in the thirties and the prosthetic wings added after the war stuck out from the decrepit body of the original core. The past always in plain sight yet invisible to everyone, like certain traits fathers pass down to their children, similarities you don’t want to see, the past that doesn’t pass away. What did I really teach you? Did I teach you anything useful? Anything concrete? Did I teach you how to tie your shoelaces or how to knot your tie? See, these are the things you get from a parent that stay with you later. No, I’m not kidding. Every time I pack a suitcase I remember the day my mother taught me how to fold a jacket. You spread it out on the bed. You fold one sleeve over and then the other. Then you fold the lower half of the jacket over the upper half. I’ll never forget her graceful gestures.

When Giulia and Marta appeared at the end of the driveway, Viberti saw that his ex-wife was talking while his mother prudently stayed silent. Giulia wasn’t being cruel, and she didn’t need further confirmation of her mother-in-law’s memory loss; Giulia spoke out of compassion because, unlike Viberti, she wasn’t used to being silent. For years she had talked with Marta, for more than ten years they had told each other everything, and it was inconceivable that silence should now descend on them — she had to revive the dialogue, recite the lines for the both of them. Every so often he imagined himself hospitalized in Giulia’s ward, stuck in bed, helpless, forced to listen to her talk.

The parked cars and all the commotion disturbed Marta, who stopped and turned around every few steps, though once they’d passed through the gate Giulia had taken her by the arm, dragging her along. Viberti walked down the entry steps, uncertain whether to go and meet them. He didn’t want to complicate things further. What was his mother afraid of? The ambulances, taxis, motorbikes she heard coming up behind her. Maybe she didn’t remember where to go.

“Here we are!” Giulia chirped with the satisfaction of a mother at her child’s first steps.

“You look very elegant, Mama,” Viberti said, and it was true. Marta’s tastes were simple but refined: that day she wore a charcoal-gray knit suit and a cream-colored blouse; she certainly didn’t look eighty-three years old.