Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Alternately, when she’s a little less depressed, she pictures herself as a loving mother entering her kids’ room (she has to think of them as little kids and they have to be sweet, otherwise it doesn’t work). Every toy they haven’t put away, every notebook left open, facedown on the floor, every sock tossed in a corner. She has to think about their excited or inept or distracted acts, correct them, and smile. And feel a pang and love them despite the mess they manage to make.

But since in reality these writers and translators are neither children nor grandchildren, when she starts getting irritated she feels like slapping them. How dare they? What were they thinking? What makes them think that someone should come and straighten up for them? Do they think I’m their servant ? She often talks to the author or translator as she works, addressing the computer screen as if it were HAL 9000’S red eye, and tells them to go to hell. People with whom, in person, she has an excellent relationship.

She works alone, no one supervises her. If she doesn’t supervise herself, she’s lost. When she gets distracted and loses her focus and rhythm, she storms out slamming the door behind her and goes shopping. If she doesn’t need to shop, she takes a walk around the block. She returns to her desk ten minutes later and quickly picks up the thread. But if she loses it again she’s in serious trouble. She gets up, looks out the window: a lady with a dog is walking down the street. No obligations, a life that lets you take the dog out at eleven o’clock in the morning, immoral, it’s immoral, it shouldn’t be allowed, it disturbs those who are working, with or without a dog.

What’s bothering her? She broods over the question for a few days and finally decides that she has no choice, she must talk to her sister about what her niece told her. It’s a Monday in late May, she spends hours at the stupidest job in the world, she checks to see that she’s made all the revisions, spelling the words out on the screen, tapping them out, as if she were knocking to find out who’s behind them. In the evening she goes out with two of her best friends (the third is living in exile in Barcelona, unless in the end it turns out that they’re the ones living in exile).

* * *

Her friend Carla has a boyfriend and a child, and that night she’s wearing a very elegant black dress, with a stunning neckline. Silvia and Stefania, who live alone and are dressed any old way, notice it and tease her about it. They go to a bar, drink mojitos, and munch on two-day-old canapés, dried-up, shriveled little pizzas, and tasteless jumbo olives. They’re well aware that the canapés are stale, and the fervor they put into chewing goes along with their excitement as they laugh and talk, interrupting one another, discussing the fate of their absent friend Francesca. Sometimes Silvia, Stefania, and Francesca discuss Carla’s fate, and other times Silvia, Francesca, and Carla discuss Stefania’s fate, so it is very likely that Stefania, Carla, and Francesca have discussed Silvia’s fate. What on earth would they have to say about her for hours on end? She recalls many shameful things her friends have told her, but she isn’t sure she remembers all the shameful things she’s told them about herself. They laugh, but they’re really not joking, because the questions that fascinate them are questions of life and death: a life they’re afraid they won’t live, a life that hasn’t begun, a love life, a professional life. They fear the lack of strong, passionate feelings and exciting, long-lasting careers, or an excess of tenuous feelings and precarious careers. An absence of life that is fear of death; that is always there.

Silvia, who laughs and talks loudly and chews like the others, can’t manage to forget Michela’s weeping. They’re thirty-two years old. All three are petite, with dark hair, brown eyes. They know they have a lot in common, but they would never admit they look alike. They laugh and talk very loudly and chew the stale canapés and drink three mojitos but pay for only two because they know the bartender. His name is Rumi, he’s Australian, what kind of a name is Rumi? It sounds like a dog’s name. Rumi, come! They laugh. They sink their molars into the plump olives and all that squirts out is sour liquid. They switch from mojitos to a white wine— still , please, Rumi, not fizzy —and from the shriveled little pizzas to hot pizzas that are much better. New faces provide material to fill any gaps in the conversation (look at how that one is dressed) and after an hour of talking about Francesca’s fate there’s not much left to talk about, or better yet, Francesca’s fate has lost its distinctive features and coincides more and more with their own.

Silvia remembers when, a few years ago, she’d told them laughingly about Michela’s so-called mystical crises. Then she regretted making fun of her with her friends, she felt like a piece of shit and had suddenly turned very serious. Now she doesn’t know if she should tell them what Michela said to her. Still, she can’t help it. Stefania is talking about how companies replace women on maternity leave with temp workers, how suspicious the system makes her, about what a jungle the labor market is, topics she can go on about forever. So when Silvia announces that she needs some advice, Carla displays what might be excessive enthusiasm.

They talk about Michela for an hour, and Silvia listens to them explain what she already knows: it’s absolutely essential that she tell Cecilia what her daughter said. Not just for Michela’s sake, not just for Cecilia. For her sake: she can’t live with that anguish.

“Am I wrong to call it anguish?”

“Call it whatever you want, but go talk to her.”

Then Carla has to get back to her son and leaves them, followed by a trail of desirous, hopeless stares. All that, the dress, for nothing, unless it’s for when she gets back home. Silvia and Stefania find themselves alone; Stefi points out some people they met a few months ago, Silvia turns out to be in a bad mood and says she doesn’t feel like saying hello to them, Stefi insists, Silvia unfairly says something terrible and uncalled-for to her (whether she’d like to entertain them by talking about temp workers), and Stefi gets up and stalks off. It all happens in a few seconds, no time to reflect and avoid it. On top of everything, the song that’s playing just then is “In Between Days” by the Cure, which reminds her of Enrico Fermi and makes her sad. She dashes out, sends Stefania a text message that says: sorry sorry sorry I’ll call you tomorrow .

* * *

When her father got sick, she imagined spending time with him, reading him novels by Philip K. Dick or Ursula K. Le Guin or any other science fiction writer with the middle initial K. She imagined the scene bathed in a sweet, melancholy light, her father immobilized in bed.

But during the months of chemotherapy, her father was no longer the same. He was no longer the same with her. He no longer felt like talking. He seemed to be eager to listen, but it was a ruse. She went to see him every two or three days, her mother always left them alone. Her explanation was that she “took advantage of it to go out,” but in fact she used it as an excuse for not staying with them, so she wouldn’t have to read her husband’s love for his younger daughter in his eyes.

Her father made an effort to chat. His objective in any conversation had always been to avoid talking about himself. Usually he would adopt a diversionary tactic: he’d talk about colleagues, old friends, people he’d met, places he’d seen; he was able to recall entire books. Now he’d become a kind of gentle cop, a kindly but relentless interrogator. He never stopped asking questions and was never satisfied with easy answers.