Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Going home was impossible that night, too depressing. Maybe he’d be better off eating in a restaurant. But how could he, dressed the way he was. He was afraid he’d run into an old patient who, out of gratitude, might invite him to dinner. Or that seventy-two-year-old son, the only child, who’d accused him of negligence, and who sent him a letter every year, on the anniversary of his mother’s death, announcing in an increasingly sprawling script that he would never forget.

He recalled clearly now the sense of security he’d felt as a boy when he would stroll around the neighborhood with Mercuri, dressed in tennis clothes, rackets on their shoulders. The peace of mind that Mercuri’s regular presence had given him, and the peace of mind it had given Marta. She no longer felt alone, abandoned with a child to raise; in an emergency there would be that old friend, and the old friend had always been there, he’d never left them. He’d moved away only much later, after retiring at seventy-two. “Well, well, now, don’t tell me you feel betrayed by Mercuri,” Viberti chuckled, “don’t tell me the old man shouldn’t have gone to live on the coast.”

There was a Marian shrine nearby where Mercuri had dragged him many times, on their way back from tennis, to show him the ex-votos that adorned the chapels. Mercuri wasn’t a believer, but he loved the votive offerings, the stories behind them. He told him that in the summer, returning home from the hospital, he’d go into the cool darkness of the church to find a bit of relief and there he would play a little game: he’d imagine a different life, someone else’s life, a dramatic event, an accident, a narrow escape, gratitude to the Madonna, and the idea for the small painting or statuette. Viberti had never felt at ease in the church, obviously because of the shorts. Or because of the danger that always lurked at the end of their tennis matches, the chance that Mercuri would insist on going up to their apartment and would find Marta lethargic.

* * *

I’d like to continue imagining my father’s languid stroll as he slowly made his way home, submerged by the rising tide of memories. But it would mean imagining another man, with a tolerance for melancholy even greater than his. It’s a strange thought, a strange desire. I don’t think it’s a self-destructive impulse, on my part. I think it’s a desire for symmetry, for simplification, just as things start to get complicated, and the unexpected lies in wait. So I continue creating my ex-voto.

Thinking about Mercuri, Viberti finds himself in front of a place that unless he’s greatly mistaken is a Japanese restaurant. What a coincidence, he thinks. He tries reading the menu posted outside, but it’s a text for the initiated and he can’t understand much. Why hadn’t he invited Silvia to eat with him? There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with that. “What’s the harm?” he wonders aloud. He pictures telling Cecilia that he had dinner with her sister, he pictures her surprise and amusement.

He takes the phone from his pocket and calls Silvia. He asks her if one of the Japanese restaurants she mentioned to him is called Hasaki, because if that’s its name, he’s found it. But that’s not its name, it would be too easy. Hasaki is a fake Japanese restaurant, the owners are actually Chinese. Not a bad restaurant, but not a real Japanese restaurant.

Viberti says: “I was rude, I didn’t ask if you wanted to eat something, I’m sorry.”

Silvia is silent, then she says, “Are you inviting me to dinner?”

“Yes, actually, I am,” Viberti says.

Silvia says, “Well, then I’ll be there in five minutes.”

A moment later she calls him back: “Go in and ask for two seats at the counter.”

A moment later she calls back again: “Can I come in jeans?”

What will he say all evening to this crazy woman? Viberti enters the restaurant almost hoping that it will be full, but while the dining room is full, there’s no one at the counter. A Chinese host comes to meet him. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, who can tell. He shows him to a seat. Viberti takes out The Cook , but doesn’t read a single line of it; instead, he watches the real chefs on the other side of the glass, who are cutting the fish with strokes at first slow and cautious, then suddenly swift and brutal, and he doesn’t take his eyes off the spectacle until Silvia arrives.

She’s put on a green skirt in the same creased cotton as the tank top and T-shirt. “I changed after all,” she announces. She’s also put the headband back in her hair.

This woman, Viberti thinks, this woman knows no shame.

She never shuts up. She wants to explain the menu to him. Viberti’s discomfort is physical, as he struggles to get a word in every now and then to show that he’s paying attention. Sitting at the counter is easier, however — he doesn’t have to face his dinner companion and so can keep his eyes on the Chinese cooks, who, pretending to be Japanese, brandish their knives with dexterity, as if the course of the planets and the stars depended on their movements.

“You order for me, let me sample the main dishes,” he says to stem the tide of words.

Silvia orders, and out of the blue, without warning, she’s talking about Cecilia. She says they’re very close, she doesn’t know what she would have done, at certain times in her life, if it weren’t for Cecilia. She isn’t just a sister and she’s not a friend in the traditional sense of the word. She didn’t try to mother her, Silvia wouldn’t have stood for that. She has some issues with the idea of maternity, in particular with the idea of maternal authority. Not with the idea of authority in general. The idea of maternity implies an authority exercised through affection, through the exploitation of affection, which is a paradox. Maybe she was exaggerating, certainly that’s not always the case, and it doesn’t apply to all mothers, of course. Was she exaggerating?

“I see what you mean,” Viberti says, “yes, it seems a bit of an exaggeration. You were saying that Cecilia wasn’t like that, though. How many years are there between you?”

Five, enough not to step on each other’s toes. Cecilia serves as a counterweight, she balances her relationship with her mother. When Cecilia got married and left home, in fact, it was a problem for her. She stuck it out until she got her degree and then got out of there.

“At a certain point it’s time to go,” Viberti says. This is where his monologue would fit in, about the building he’s lived in all his life, but that evening, with that woman, he doesn’t feel like reciting it. He’d told Cecilia the first time they met at the café, so it’s no wonder.

Silvia says that Cecilia is an excellent mother, considering the example they had. Considering the difficulty of the divorce, considering the problems with the boy.

As soon as she says the word “boy” she stops suddenly and looks at Viberti, who wasn’t expecting such an abrupt break or that look; he reddens, thinking that Silvia has read something in his expression.

“Am I talking too much?” Silvia asks.

Viberti smiles. “No, of course not.”

“No, I mean, you know these things, don’t you? You know my sister well…”

He shakes his head and thinks he’s shaking it correctly, with the naturalness and credibility of a consummate actor. “I can’t say I know her well, but I know about the divorce and I met the child, when he was hospitalized. Cecilia tells me things every now and then, but most of the time we talk about work.”

Silvia shakes her head in turn, she says that Cecilia actually doesn’t tell her anything. It’s not a matter of discretion, of privacy — it’s genuine reticence. And this, for her, is her sister’s only fault. Cecilia doesn’t open up as much as she would like, she doesn’t open up enough. But this fault may be what allows them to have a close relationship: she says too much about everything, Cecilia says nothing or almost nothing about everything.