Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

She hasn’t been in that attic since the summer four years ago, the year her father died. She’d had a duplicate key made. At one point she had so many duplicates (building key, apartment key, key to the attic, basement key, key to the garage) that she could no longer remember which key opened which door.

Before going down to her mother’s place, she opens the big plastic bag she’s brought with her. She takes out three ceramic items wrapped in yellowed tissue paper and slips them into the only open carton, on which her mother had written NONNA RE’S CHINA SET with a ballpoint pen, puncturing the cardboard in several places. The tape has been torn off haphazardly and is hanging down the side of the box, like a loose shoulder strap. She strips it off altogether and seals the cardboard flaps with a fresh piece.

She takes the book, goes down three flights of stairs, and stands in front of the door. She hesitates, then rings the bell. No sound filters from inside. Then a light step and the door opens. Surprised, her mother gives a little start and takes a small step back. She was expecting the visit, but seeing her younger daughter makes her anxious every time. The daughter, on the other hand, finds that her mother has aged, even though she saw her just a few days ago. This, too, is a customary reaction.

She says she stopped by the attic (unconcerned that her mother might wonder where she got the key), shows her the book, “It’s for one of Cecilia’s coworkers, one of Papa’s books, see?” Her mother shakes her head slightly, perhaps unconsciously. Too much information, difficult to put it all together, and at the same time of almost zero interest. Why the attic? Why that book and not another one? Why one of Cecilia’s coworkers? Silly questions about things that don’t matter, Silvia will only disappoint her.

But the days when being disappointed infuriated her are gone for good, and gone forever are the days when being disappointed really irritated her, and perhaps the days when being disappointed made her feel bitter were on their way out as well. Now her younger daughter disappoints her and that’s that. “Would you like to come in? I’ve just made coffee.”

They settle in the kitchen, sitting on opposite sides of the table. “Are there still a lot of your father’s books in the attic? I haven’t been up there in a while.” Probably no one has been up there since she was last there, four years ago. Her mother, maybe, is afraid of the attic.

“No, all that’s left are the Urania volumes and some other paperbacks … but Papa loved this one, I remember.”

“Why don’t you take them all with you? Why leave them up there, collecting dust?”

She tells her she saw the carton with her grandmother’s china.

“Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten I’d put it up there. Take it, you and Cecilia. It’s not doing any good there.”

Silvia sips the coffee. It’s very good. She’d like to inherit her mother’s coffeemaker, that’s for sure.

She smiles. “I remember when Nonna Re didn’t know what was what toward the end and was mean to you.”

Her mother frowns at her. But then she, too, smiles, because it was so many years ago, because it’s funny, and even though her mother-in-law could never stand her, what does it matter now.

“What was it she said to you?” Laughing, she mimics her grandmother’s regional pronunciation: “‘Get out of this house and leave my son alone.’”

“Poor thing, she was completely demented. If I reach ninety like she did, I’ll get like that, too, you never know…”

“Or maybe she said: ‘I don’t like my son bringing home a woman like you.’”

Her mother snorts. “As it happened, I was one of the people she no longer recognized. The only thing left was hostility, and that she was finally able to express.”

“Papa used to laugh…”

“I don’t remember him laughing. It seems odd. He was afraid I’d be offended.”

“Your mother didn’t lose her mind, why should you?”

“My mother died at sixty-five, she didn’t have time to lose her mind.”

“If you do, you’ll tell the whole truth then.”

Her mother’s expression doesn’t change, as if she hasn’t heard the remark. After a moment she gets up, takes the empty cups, puts them in the sink, and begins rinsing them.

* * *

Back at home, Silvia writes an e-mail to the nondescript Viberti. She tells him she found the book she’d mentioned to him, quickly reread it, and remembered the reasons why she was so enthusiastic about it: it’s a fantastic story, both in that it’s improbable and in that it’s fabulous — the cook of the title transforms the members of the family he goes to work for into servants, the father into a butler, the mother into a maid, and the son into a cook, then he marries the daughter and lets them support him and serve him happily ever after. The plot isn’t even the most important thing, it’s not a mystery, so she’s not spoiling anything by revealing how it ends. It’s a book worth reading. And the ending is still surprising, colossal .

She includes her cell phone number as well. She thinks she’s done everything appropriately, she’s been kind and she’s tossed out the bait.

Then she plunges back into the book on Hindu mythology, picking up from where Agni reenters Prajapati, who has just given birth to him, Prajapati lying empty and disjointed, Agni filling him and restoring him to life and vigor, re-creating his creator. And so on.

* * *

Occasionally, during the months when he was better, between one chemo treatment and another, her father arranged to see her at a nearby café. He would go out to buy a newspaper, he never ventured farther than the newsstand on the avenue. Silvia told him about a small publisher she’d begun working with, a publisher whose books were a little weird. Her father, amused, pretended to be concerned: weird in what sense ? No, she replied, not obscene weird: strange weird, New Age weird. Like books about witches and shamans, or books on alternative medicine, prophecies, the Templars, or ethnic cookbooks. She didn’t tell her father that she’d read about an herbal treatment for cancer in one of those books, and that when she told Cecilia about it, her sister had given her a withering look, muttering, “Oh, please, give me a break.” She’d felt like an idiot.

During that period she was editing the translation of a book that taught you how to use mushrooms to drug yourself. More or less. It was serious stuff. Initiates who took part in the Eleusinian Mysteries ritual drank a potion in which a hallucinogenic mushroom was dissolved. The mushrooms had names like Amanita muscaria or Psilocybe semilanceata . For a short time she knew all about Claviceps purpurea . She could talk about it for hours, her father nodding quietly, pretending to be interested. The important thing was to talk about something other . Something other than what?

She took him back home. They sat in their usual places in the living room. Silvia waited for a question that would restart the conversation, but she knew that at some point her mother would appear and her father would start to get up, saying: “I’ll just go lie down for a bit.” She would try to help him, but he would rely on her mother, out of habit. Or else, to get rid of her, he would send her to look for an old Urania volume in the attic: Remember the story where Walt Disney was resurrected in the future? Or he would send her to buy batteries for the Walkman that he used to listen to hits from the sixties on cassettes given away by the newspaper: “If I Lose You Too,” “The Boy from Gluck Street,” “I Can’t Stay with You Any Longer.”

* * *