Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

After supper they usually watch the game show Deal or No Deal . The girl tells her: “I like coming to your house, Aunt Silvia, because we watch dumb programs that Mama won’t let me see.” One evening Michela says they absolutely have to watch at least half an hour of a serialized drama about Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She already missed the first part, if she doesn’t see it tonight she’s in trouble, it’s essential for a history and geography project. What does Mother Teresa have to do with history and geography?

“Because it’s set in India.”

Silvia has never liked India. On top of that, she’s now revising the translation of a book on Hindu mythology that is incredibly tedious. It’s a gigantic tome in which gods with immoderate appetites engage in interminable acts of sexual intercourse for eons. Japanese elegance is a thousand times superior.

She tells Michela it’s okay, as long as she’s in bed by ten. They finish eating and sit on the couch in front of the television. Right away she thinks she’s seen the actress playing Mother Teresa before, though she can’t remember where. She’s a young actress whom they’ve aged by adding some wrinkles here and there, or else she’s the older sister of a young actress whom she’s seen in another film. She takes her laptop and opens it up on her knees, and does a Google search for the actress’s name; she finds it, it’s Olivia Hussey, and she discovers or rediscovers that she played Mary in Jesus of Nazareth (Jesus was really hot in that movie, with his hollow cheeks, prominent eyes, and oiled hair), and so, of course, the choice has a certain logic, the veil suits her. But Hussey was also in Romeo and Juliet , and this is less understandable; or is it?

She starts to tell Michela about her discovery, she turns and sees that the girl is weeping silently, she hadn’t noticed. She weeps furtively, not making a sound, wiping her tears with a handkerchief balled up in her hand. Silvia pretends she hasn’t seen, she turns back to the computer screen. What’s wrong? What should she do? The film seemed so insipid, she can’t imagine that Mother Teresa bent over a dying man could upset the girl.

Maybe, deep down, Michela still wants to become a saint. Maybe she’s just learned to hide her earlier mystical crises.

“Hey, is something wrong?”

Michela shakes her head.

“Is it upsetting you?”

She shrugs. “Of course not.”

“Want me to turn it off?”

“Yes, it’s so boring.”

Silvia laughs, relieved, tells her she thought she was crying because of the film. Though actually it’s much worse if she’s crying for some other reason.

Michela thinks so, too; taking a pillow and pressing it to her face, she begins to sob, letting out everything she’s been holding in until then.

Silvia hugs her. They stay on the couch until half past eleven.

At first there’s an endless list of trivial events that seem totally unrelated. Not to Michela, who fits them together like Lego bricks.

In between there’s a story about a slap Cecilia gave her a year ago, a scrupulous explanation of its dynamics and motivation, and the admission that she hadn’t been nice to her brother, but she didn’t mean anything by it. And the slap is the only thing Silvia remembers later on, because she didn’t think Cecilia ever hit the children, and she can’t imagine it.

Finally there’s the shattering conclusion that her mother can’t stand her, she can sense it, she knows she doesn’t like her whereas she wants so much to make her happy.

Silvia reassures her, strokes her, holds her tight.

In the end the girl gives up, exhausted, even though her aunt’s reassurances haven’t convinced her. How could they? They don’t even convince her aunt.

* * *

I wonder if I’m not giving too much importance to sofas, it seems I want everything to happen around them. Silvia’s is definitely too big for the room it’s in. Silvia salvaged it from the family of a friend who wanted to throw it out. It has enormous arms and perpetually sagging cushions that droop to one side; it’s covered with a large Indian print cotton spread to hide the stains and cigarette burns on the Prussian-blue velvet upholstery. It’s massive, but really only two can sit comfortably there; if you try to put a third person in the middle, after a while the unfortunate soul ends up being squashed by the two on either side, who slowly but inevitably cave in on him. When I think of Silvia, that’s how I see her: a piece of furniture too big for the room that contains her.

As soon as Michela falls asleep, Silvia returns to the living room and carefully writes down her niece’s words. What’s wrong, what should she do? She’s not eager to talk to her sister. She doesn’t know if she has a choice.

She wants to be a good surrogate mother, and she can understand Cecilia, who surely wants to be a good mother. At one point, during the most difficult period of the divorce, Cecilia was afraid to go and talk to the teachers at school: afraid they might say that the boy was malnourished, neglected, tired, dirty. That the fault, glaringly obvious, was hers.

Anything, but don’t act like a teacher. She lies down on the couch, lets her eyes trace the contours of the shadows on the ceiling. Michela arouses something more than simple tenderness in her. To start crying like that, out of the blue! To carry so much anguish inside, hold it in with clenched teeth, and then let it all out with someone she feels she can talk to. To have an inner life and feelings and not be satisfied with living in a state of dormancy.

* * *

Cecilia had been the one to tell her that their father was ill. She’d told her in person and without their mother present (whom she’d told the same way, without their father present). Cecilia, the family’s protector and guardian. Healer as well, though not capable of miracles. Cecilia stopped by to see her the day of the diagnosis and told her: she said he could be treated, the recovery rates were high, that there was no reason to panic and think their father’s case was terminal. Silvia felt like she was going to die, she couldn’t breathe. Ceci gave her a sedative. Then she made her promise not to make a scene in front of their father. She promised, but the next day she went to see her parents and burst into tears. And told her mother to go to hell. She did everything she shouldn’t have done. But wasn’t that what everyone expected from her anyway, that she do what she wasn’t supposed to do, what was better and more reasonable for her not to do?

She wept in front of her sister, wept in front of their father, told her mother to go to hell when she asked her to take it easy and not make things worse (on the other hand she, too, was crying, so what the hell did she expect). Their father got up and withdrew to his room; he’d spent the last ten years mediating, he’d just been diagnosed with intestinal cancer (his other daughter had diagnosed it; when she was little she’d been a wonderful child, always so serious), he didn’t have the strength to intervene that night, he had a right to a little respite. Silvia and her mother suddenly found themselves alone, wept a little longer, in silence, each to herself, then Silvia got up and left her parents’ house without another word. The next day her father called to comfort her; you’d think she was the one who had cancer, that she was the one who needed to be consoled. Her father repeated Cecilia’s lies as if he believed them, maybe he did believe them, maybe they weren’t lies, he didn’t believe them but he was used to believing what he forced himself to believe and so in the end he believed it, yes, he believed it, he believed he would be cured.

* * *

At times of sinking self-esteem she feels like a cleaning lady venturing into other people’s pages. If you’re not familiar with the house, it’s more difficult at first, you don’t know where the dirt is hiding. Your presence shouldn’t be evident. Anyone who comes across the perfect page, after you’ve cleaned it up, shouldn’t be aware of your role, he should think the page was that way to begin with. Pages have a center, sentences a barycenter, they mustn’t lean to one side or the other. You have to dust, straighten, shift, and put things in order. You have to know a lot of graphic marks to show where the corrections should be inserted — a pair of legs, raised arms, heads upright or inverted — and in more pressing cases make up new ones — crowned heads, hands with elephantiasis, the male reproductive organs. And to cancel a correction, the most beautiful mark of all: STET! But it’s a dying art: in a few years she, too, like everyone else, will be editing electronically.