Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

Still, she remembers her friends’ hostility toward Enrico Fermi, especially toward versions five and six. She thinks it’s partly their fault that she’s in this mess. Carla in particular never missed a chance to belittle him. Okay, so he wasn’t a genius. But maybe she would rather have had a child with him than with an unknown internist. At least the kid would have had red hair.

She tries calling Viberti that same night and the next day, but the cell phone just keeps ringing with no answer. She hangs up before leaving any messages. She thinks of writing him an e-mail, doesn’t get beyond “I need to talk to you,” and deletes it without sending it. She phones Internal Medicine, they tell her that Dr. Viberti is with patients. Then it occurs to her that rather than talk about it over the phone, it would be better to see him. She decides to look him up at home, and incredibly his address is in the white pages; there’s only one Dr. Claudio Viberti in the entire city. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t want to go too far, she wouldn’t want to seem intrusive. At the hospital she’s likely to run into Cecilia, but she knows the place well enough to be able to avoid crossing her sister’s path.

So she shows up at the department’s check-in desk in the late afternoon, hot and tired, and discovers that the doctor has just left. Rather than go back home, she wanders through the corridors, getting lost, asks the way to the ER to make sure she doesn’t end up there, comes out in a parking area strewn with sickly trees, finds herself back outside the main entrance.

And she spots him. Viberti is walking toward her. Then he’s running away.

She watches him move away swiftly, his green Lacoste polo untucked. She’s left standing there with an idiotic smile on her face, not understanding.

She doesn’t understand what’s happened. She doesn’t know if there was eye contact, if Viberti started running when he saw her. It doesn’t seem possible. Why should he run away like that? He can’t know anything. Unless he knows something.

There’s a row of taxis standing under the trees on the avenue. The drivers are all out of their cars, sitting on the benches, water bottles and makeshift fans in hand.

She gets into the first one on line. Inside it’s suffocating, even though the car has been standing in the shade. She’ll lose the baby in that cab, or maybe she’ll fall asleep.

No, she’ll make her way to the nondescript Viberti’s house, she’ll wait for him at the front door, she’ll talk to him. If he wasn’t going home, she’ll wait for him. She’ll find a café with air-conditioning.

She arrives at the address, pays, and gets out. She looks closely at the name plaques on the entry panel. There are a C. VIBERTI and an M. VIBERTI.

She turns. A blue car comes down the street, and it’s him, Viberti, at the wheel, driving with a crazed look; he looks at her, sees her, and keeps on going. In fact he speeds up and has to jam on the brakes at the intersection. Then he turns right.

Yes, this time she saw him. She saw that he saw her. He’s running away.

The first night: maybe he knows he wasn’t careful enough the first night. Maybe he knew it all along and hoped to get away with it.

She feels like giving in to despair, she’d like to think: It’s hot, it’s the first of July, the heat is staggering, suffocating. It’s six o’clock, time to go home. This bastard won’t help me. But she’s not so tired after all and she no longer feels like she’s going to faint. She wants to know why the nondescript Viberti is trying to flee.

She thinks calmly about what just happened. As calm and composed as she’s never been in her life. What’s going on with her? It must be hormonal. Pregnancy has turned off the little panic dynamo that has been droning in her head since the beginning of time.

It makes no sense to buzz Viberti’s intercom, because Viberti is on the run.

She pulls a piece of paper out of her handbag, and leaning against the wall writes:

Dear Claudio, I wanted to talk to you about something important, can you call me? Thank you. Silvia Re (Cecilia’s sister). P.S. It’s really important.

She buzzes the intercom of M. VIBERTI.

“Yes?”

“I have to leave a message for Dr. Viberti, can you open for me?”

She hears conferring in the background. They won’t open.

They open.

On the mailboxes in the building’s vestibule, the name plates say: MARTA VIBERTI, II FLOOR — DR. CLAUDIO VIBERTI, V FLOOR. She hears voices in the stairwell. Instead of slipping her note into the mailbox, she takes the elevator and presses the button for the second floor.

On the landing is an elderly lady wearing a pinafore with tiny blue flowers, and a younger woman who is trying to persuade her to go back into the apartment.

“I was right, you see?” the older woman says triumphantly. “She didn’t believe me, but I knew you’d come up.”

Silvia apologizes with a smile, she didn’t mean to disturb her, she has an urgent message for Claudio, can she tell him to call her?

The lady steps forward, away from the protection and support of the woman behind her; she clings to Silvia, takes her hands, squeezes them. “Of course, I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you, signora, you’re very kind. Tell him Silvia Re was looking for him.”

“I recognized you!” the elderly lady exclaims.

“Let’s go inside now, Mrs. Marta,” the woman looking after her says.

Signora Marta has no intention of releasing her prey. She looks at Silvia, smiling, her blue eyes boring into hers: “How are you?”

“I’m well, signora, I’m very well. And you?” She smiles at the caregiver, to reassure her. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

“I don’t forget people who are…” Marta says, lowering her eyes impatiently, searching for the right word as if it had fallen on the floor, “… people who are nice .”

Silvia squeezes her hands, murmurs a thank-you. “I didn’t forget you, either.” She doesn’t know how to extricate herself, she doesn’t know if she wants to break away from those eyes. “I’m fine, I’ve been working hard and I’m a little tired. I’m working for three different publishing houses. Right now I’m doing a book on Hindu mythology. It’s kind of boring.”

Marta smiles. “We have to do boring things as well,” she says. “If you only knew how bored I was with my husband!”

They laugh, clasping each other’s hands, laughing with relief, together and for their own reasons. The caregiver smiles, too.

“I’ll leave you now, I have to go. But I was very glad to see you again.”

“Me, too, very much so,” the signora says, “come back and see me.” She doesn’t let go.

The caregiver has stepped back, waiting, but as soon as she notices Silvia’s embarrassment she comes forward again and manages to draw them apart. Silvia admires the delicacy with which she guides the elderly woman, barely touching her.

They go into the house without looking back. Marta is saying: “… a friend of Claudio, I recognized her.” The door closes by itself, as if there were someone else hidden behind it. Not the nondescript Viberti, unless he came in through the window.

It’s comfortable in the lobby, very cool. She can’t wait for him there, however, she doesn’t feel like having to put on another act. She goes out the door.

She doesn’t feel like going straight home either. And there are no cafés nearby with air-conditioning and a view of the building’s door.

She sits on a step across the street. She thinks she’s passed the point of no return, the point at which you no longer have enough oxygen to return to Earth and so you let the spaceship drift lazily into a black hole toward Alpha Centauri, light-years away, hoping to find breathable air there.