Джумпа Лахири - Whereabouts [calibre]

“It would be great, one day, to film this procession,” he says. “You can’t always see it, it depends on the position of the sun. But I’m amazed every time, there’s something hypnotizing about it. Even when I’m in a hurry, I stop to watch.”

“So do I.”

He pulls out his cell phone. “Should we try?”

“How does it look?” I ask.

“No good. This contraption can’t capture them.”

We continue to watch the mute spectacle, the dark bodies that advance, never stopping.

“Where are you headed?”

“Work.”

“Me too.”

“Should we have a coffee?”

“I don’t have time today.”

“Okay, ciao, see you soon.”

We say goodbye, separate. Then we, too, become two shadows projected onto the wall: a routine spectacle, impossible to capture.

In the Office

It’s hard to focus here. I feel exposed, surrounded by colleagues and students who walk down the hallways. Their movements and their chatter get on my nerves.

I try in vain to enliven the space. Every week I turn up with a shopping bag heavy with books from home, to fill the shelves. That pain in my shoulder, that weight, all that effort amounts to little in the end. It would take two years, three, to fill the bookcase. It’s too capacious, it covers an entire wall. In any case, my office is now vaguely inviting, boasting a framed print, a plant, two cushions. And yet it’s a space that perplexes me, that keeps me at arm’s length.

I open the door, set down my bag, and prepare for the day. I answer emails and choose what book I’d like my students to read. I’m here to earn a living, my heart’s not in it. I look through the window at the sky. I listen to some music. I read and correct student papers, and in so doing, I revisit the books I once loved so deeply. Occasionally a brave soul knocks on the door to ask my advice about something, or maybe a favor. The student sits in front of me, confident, full of ambition.

Given that I’m always coming and going, my thoughts can’t manage to settle down here. My colleagues tend to keep to themselves, as do I. Maybe they find me prickly, unpleasant, who knows? We’re forced to inhabit close quarters, we’re told to be accessible, and yet I feel peripheral.

I gather that the colleague who used this office before me would sleep here now and then. I wonder, How? And where? On the floor, on a woolen blanket? He was a poet. His widow once told me that he loved the nocturnal silence of this building, when there wasn’t a soul to be seen. If a poem came to him here, she said, he wouldn’t leave until it was finished. At home, in the pretty study furnished by his wife, he felt less at ease. He loved writing here, he didn’t mind the bland color of the walls, the dull carpet. The bleakness inspired him. He was an elderly man, a daydreamer, his head whirling with words that found their proper order in this room. He died two years ago. Not here, but he’s left something of himself behind. Maybe that’s why this room feels a bit sepulchral.

At the Trattoria

I often have lunch at a trattoria close to my house. It’s a hole in the wall, so if I don’t get there by noon I won’t get a seat, and I’ll have to wait until after two. I eat alone, next to others eating alone. They’re people I don’t know, though I frequently encounter a familiar face.

A father cooks, and his daughter waits the tables. I believe the mother died when the daughter was a young girl. This father and daughter share a bond beyond their common blood, one that’s been fortified by grief. They’re not from around here. Though they work all day on a noisy street, they come from an island. They store the sun’s blaze in their bones, barren hills dotted with sheep, the mistral that churns the sea. I picture them together on a boat they’ve anchored in front of a secluded grotto. I see the daughter diving off the prow, and the father holding a fish that’s still breathing in his hands.

Technically the daughter isn’t a waitress, given that she’s almost always behind the counter.

“What can we get you?”

The menu is handwritten on the blackboard in a compact, whimsical script. I choose a different dish each day of the week. She takes the order and then tells her father, who’s always in the kitchen, what to prepare.

When I sit down the daughter brings me a bottle of water, a paper napkin, then resumes her place behind the counter. I wait for my tray to appear, then stand up to retrieve it.

Today, among the tourists and employees who frequent my neighborhood, there’s a young father with his daughter. She’s around ten years old, with two blond braids, hunched shoulders, a distracted gaze. Normally I see them on Saturdays, but there’s no school this week, it’s Easter vacation.

By now I know the drill: the daughter refuses to sleep at her father’s house, she’ll only spend the night with her mother. I used to see them back when they were a family of three, in this very trattoria. I remember when the mother was pregnant with the daughter, and how excited the couple was. I recall how intimately they would speak to one another, and the good wishes expressed by those sitting around them. They would come to have lunch here even after they became a family. They’d turn up, tired and hungry, after going to the playground, or shopping for food in the piazza. I felt a connection with the little girl, an only child like me, seated between her parents. It’s just that my father never liked eating in restaurants.

Last year the mother moved out of our neighborhood, leaving the father behind. And he’s frustrated, I’d say exasperated, by the daughter, who remains so loyal to her mother, who refuses to stay at his place, in the house where she was first raised, in the room always awaiting her arrival.

The daughter plays with her cell phone while the father attempts to speak to her, to convince her. I feel sorry listening to him plead. I feel sorry for the parting of ways between this father and daughter, and for the demise of the marriage. Apparently the mother left because he was cheating on her, a passionate affair that’s already ended.

“How was school last week?” he asks.

The girl shrugs. “Can you give me a ride to a friend’s place tonight?”

“I thought you and I might go to the movies.”

“I don’t feel like it. I want to go to my friend’s.”

“What will you do there?”

“I’ll have fun.”

“And then?”

“I’ll go home to Mom’s.”

The father gives in. He stops trying, this week, to convince her. Now he, too, looks at his cell phone. She only eats part of her dish, and he finishes it for her.

In Spring

In spring I suffer. The season doesn’t invigorate me, I find it depleting. The new light disorients, the fulminating nature overwhelms, and the air, dense with pollen, bothers my eyes. To calm my allergies I take a pill in the morning that makes me sleepy. It knocks me out, I can’t focus, and by lunchtime I’m tired enough to go to bed. I sweat all day and at night I’m freezing. No shoe seems right for this temperamental time of year.

Every blow in my life took place in spring. Each lasting sting. That’s why I’m afflicted by the green of the trees, the first peaches in the market, the light flowing skirts that the women in my neighborhood start to wear. These things only remind me of loss, of betrayal, of disappointment. I dislike waking up and feeling pushed inevitably forward. But today, Saturday, I don’t have to leave the house. I can wake up and not have to get up. There’s nothing better.

In the Piazza

The daughter of two friends of mine lives alone, like me, in this city. But she’s only sixteen. She arrived three years ago with her father, her stepmother, and a stepbrother much younger than she is. The father is a painter and had a big fellowship at an academy up on the hill. I’d met them at one of his exhibits. The painter and his wife used to come to my place for Italian lessons. The daughter never joined them. She attended a high school nearby, and two years later she decided not to return to her country of origin, to separate early from her family and stay on here. She has a room in an apartment the high school oversees, a special residence to house students in her situation.