Andrea Canobbio - Three Light-Years

I really don’t know what Silvia and Viberti may have said to each other that day at the edge of the lawn and I have no desire to imagine it; or maybe I know all too well what they said and that’s the reason I don’t feel like recounting it. No, that’s not it: I tried and I’m unable to. Besides, what could they have said? They were two predictable people: Silvia, smiling faintly, tells him she’s pregnant, but she hasn’t come to cause him any trouble; Viberti, dead serious, tells her it’s her decision and that he will do his part in any case.

Then he asks her to please sit down at the stone table and wait for him, just five minutes. He needs to be alone a moment, he has something to tell her. Something important. And he remains at the edge of the lawn, looking out over the valley, gathering his thoughts.

* * *

Silvia has sat down on the wrought-iron chair, without shifting it, her back to the view. Marta has come out of the house, followed by Angélica with the coffee tray. Silvia thanks her, she explains that she doesn’t drink coffee, but she’ll gladly take a glass of water, thank you. And Marta sends Angélica back inside.

Marta doesn’t seem to notice her son’s absence. She’s staring at Silvia with a joyful light in her eyes. Who does she think she is? Really one of Viberti’s classmates? Or maybe she’s mistaken her for someone else. Her son had been married. Has she mistaken her for his first wife?

Silvia compliments her on the house. Such a beautiful location, such a view, such a charming little town. Meanwhile, she feels a chill. Even in the sun it’s too cool, maybe she’s reverted to the anxious, fearful person she’d always been.

“It was my husband’s grandfather who bought it,” Marta says. “My husband was one of the most boring people in the world. Not a bad man. I remember him fondly. Oh dear, ‘remember’ is a loaded word, I don’t know if I told you that I have problems remembering lately.”

Silvia smiles. She takes a sip of water. She smiles at Angélica, who smiles back to let her know she recognizes her. She feels accepted, like an old family friend. She thinks this woman, Viberti’s mother, is the loveliest person she’s ever seen. And she wonders why she has that effect on her. Because you could tell she must have been beautiful when she was young? Because she’s still beautiful, even though she’s more than eighty years old? Because she resembles Viberti? Because her son or daughter might resemble her?

“It’s a small town, quiet,” Marta says. “It’s not fashionable. But you know, at my age, change is impossible. And I don’t travel anymore. I’m too old. Besides, I never traveled. My husband traveled alone, on business. But I never went with him. When we came here he would sit there at the edge of the lawn, and read. Then he’d come back and say he hadn’t read a word, because the view distracted him.”

They laugh. Silvia turns around, following Marta’s direction, and sees my father with his back still turned, his gaze perhaps lost in space or maybe with his eyes closed. She thinks of Stefania waiting for her in the car. She takes her cell phone and tries to write her a text message, but her hands are shaking too much. If it’s a girl she’ll call her Marta, if it’s a boy she’ll name him after her father.

“My father was a bit like that, too,” she says. “He was always reading. We never knew why. We never knew what he was thinking, what thoughts he had, what desires. He was a little boring, too.”

Marta shakes her head and Silvia has the feeling she doesn’t understand, that she’s no longer able to hear, even though she continues speaking.

“It was my husband’s grandfather who bought the house. I never met him, he was already dead. My husband barely remembered him. He must have been a boring man. The men in that family were all boring. I knew my husband’s father. He was completely senile, but it was obvious that as a young man he’d been extremely boring!”

They laugh again. Silvia realizes that she has her right hand on her belly. She realizes that her hand is caressing her belly with a circular motion, and wonders if this is the first time she’s doing that. Maybe she’s just trying to warm up, maybe it isn’t yet a maternal gesture.

Marta notices it, too. She looks at her and asks her with a smile: “Have you already told me what month you’re in?”

Then Silvia stands up abruptly, trembling, and says it’s really chilly, in that mid-mountain town. “I’ll just run and get a sweater from the car, I’ll be right back.” But she doesn’t move.

Marta keeps looking at her.

“I’m at the beginning,” Silvia said. “I’ve only just begun.”

Andrea Canobbio was born in Turin, Italy, where he currently lives. An editor at the publishing house Einaudi, where he has headed the foreign fiction department since 1995, he is the author of The Natural Disorder of Things (FSG, 2006). Three Light-Years won Italy’s prestigious Mondello Prize in 2013.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Anne Milano Appel, Ph.D., is an award-winning literary translator based in San Francisco. Her latest translations from the Italian include Claudio Magris’s Blindly , Goliarda Sapienza’s The Art of Joy , and Giovanni Arpino’s Scent of a Woman . A former library director and language teacher, has been translating professionally for more than fifteen years and is a member of ALTA, ATA, NCTA, and PEN. Many of her book-length translations have been published, and shorter works that she has authored or translated have appeared in other professional and literary venues.