Alessandro Baricco - The Young Bride

I wiped my fingers on my dress. I looked at him. He was sleeping.

How long since you haven’t slept? I asked.

He opened his eyes.

For years, signorina.

Maybe he was moved, or maybe I imagined it.

What I miss more than anything else is dreams, he said.

And he remained with his eyes open, awake, looking at me. There wasn’t much light, and it wasn’t easy to see what color they were. Gray, maybe. With bits of gold. I had never seen them.

It’s all very good, I said.

Thank you.

You should cook more often.

You think?

Wasn’t there also a bottle of red wine?

You’re right, I’m sorry.

He got up, and disappeared into the kitchen.

I also got up. I took my glass and went to sit on the floor, in a corner of the room.

When he returned, he came over to pour me some wine, then he stood there, not knowing what to do.

Sit here, I said.

It was an immense chair, one of those places where I had seen him sleeping countless times, while the breakfasts flowed, river-like. If I think about it carefully, it was the same chair from which he had greeted my return, with a remark I hadn’t forgotten: You must have done a lot of dancing, signorina, over there. I’m glad of it.

Do you like to dance? I asked him.

I liked it very much, yes.

What else did you like?

Everything. Too much, perhaps.

What do you miss most?

Apart from dreams?

Apart from those.

The dreams you have in the daytime.

Did you have a lot?

Yes.

Did you fulfill them?

Yes.

And how is it?

Pointless.

I don’t believe it.

In fact you mustn’t believe it. It’s too early to believe it, at your age.

What age am I?

A young age.

Does it make a difference?

Yes.

Explain it to me.

You’ll find out, one day.

I want to know now.

It would be of no use.

Still with that story?

Which?

That it’s all pointless.

I didn’t say that.

You said it’s useless to fulfill one’s dreams.

That, yes.

Why?

For me it was pointless.

Tell me.

No.

Do it.

Signorina, I must really ask you…

And he closed his eyes, letting his head fall back, against the chair. It seemed drawn by an invisible force.

Ah no, I said.

I put down my glass, I got up, and stood over him, my legs spread. I found myself with my sex on his, it wasn’t what I wanted. But I began to sway. I stood with my back straight, I swayed slowly over him, I placed my hands on his shoulders, I looked at him.

He opened his eyes.

Please, he repeated.

You owe me something. Your story will be enough, I said.

I don’t believe I owe you anything.

Oh, yes.

Really?

You weren’t the one who was supposed to return, it was the Son.

I’m sorry.

Don’t think you can get out of it like that.

No?

You’ve ruined everything for me, now I want at least your true story in exchange.

He looked at the exact point where I was swaying.

It’s a story like so many others, he said.

It doesn’t matter, I want it.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Begin at the end. The moment you started sleeping and stopped living.

I was at a table in a Café.

Was there someone with you?

No longer.

You were alone.

Yes. I fell asleep without even nodding my head. Sleeping, I finished my pastis, and that was the first time. When I woke up and saw the empty glass, I knew it would be like that forever.

I wonder about the people around.

In what sense?

Well, the waiters, didn’t they come and wake you?

It was a somewhat rundown Café, with very old waiters. At that age you understand many things.

They let you sleep.

Yes.

What time was it?

I don’t know, afternoon.

How did you end up in that Café?

I told you it’s a long story, I don’t know if I want to tell it, and besides you’re swaying against me and I don’t know why.

To keep you from going back to your world.

Ah.

The story.

If I tell you will you sit on the floor again?

I wouldn’t think of it, I like it. You don’t like it?

I beg your pardon?

I asked if you like it.

What?

This, my legs spread, my sex rubbing against yours?

He closed his eyes, his head slid back a little, I tightened my fingers on his shoulders, he opened his eyes again, he looked at me.

There was a woman I loved very much, he said.

There was a woman I loved very much. She had a beautiful way of doing everything. There is no one in the world like her.

One day she arrived with a small book, used, the cover was a very elegant blue. The great thing was that she had crossed the city to bring it to me, she had seen it in an old bookstore, and had dropped everything to bring it to me immediately, she found it so irresistible, and precious. The book had a magnificent title: How to Abandon Ship . It was a handbook. The letters on the cover were clear, perfect. The illustrations inside laid out with infinite care. Can you understand that a book like that is worth more than a lot of literature?

Maybe.

You don’t find at least the title irresistible?

Maybe.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she arrived with that book. For a long time I carried it with me, I loved it so much. It was small, it fit in my pocket. I went to teach, I put it on the desk, then I put it back in my pocket. I must have read maybe a couple of pages, it was fairly boring, but that wasn’t the point. It was good to hold it in your hand, leaf through it. It was good to think that however disgusting life might be, I had that book in my pocket and next to me a woman who had given it to me. Can you understand that?

Of course, I’m not an idiot.

Ah, I forgot the best part. On the first page, which was blank, there was a rather poignant dedication. It was a used book, as I said, and on the first page there was this dedication: To Terry after the first month of his stay in St. Thomas’s Hospital. Papa and Mamma . Your imagination can wander for days on a dedication like that. It was that type of beauty that I found heartrending. And that the woman I loved so much could understand. Why am I telling you all this? Ah, yes, the Café. Are you sure you want to go on?

Of course.

Time passed, and in that time I lost the woman I loved so much, for reasons that here don’t interest us. Moreover, I’m not sure I understood them. Anyway, I continued to carry with me…

Wait a minute. Who said it doesn’t interest us?

Me.

Speak for yourself.

No, I’m speaking for both of us, if you don’t like it get down from there and have the Son tell you the story, when he arrives.

All right, all right, there’s no need to…

So it was a strange time, for me, it seemed a little like being a widower, I walked the way widowers do, you know, a little stunned, with eyes like a bird that doesn’t get it. You know what I mean?

Yes, I think so.

But always with my little book in my pocket. It was idiotic, I should have thrown away everything that the woman I loved so much had left behind, but how do you do it, it’s like a shipwreck, a lot of things, of all kinds, remain floating on the surface, in these cases. You can’t, really, clean up. And you have to hold on to something, when you can’t swim anymore. So I had that book in my pocket, that day, at the Café, and, look, by now months had passed, since it had ended. But I had the book in my pocket. I had a date with a woman, nothing very important, she wasn’t a special woman, I scarcely knew her. I liked how she dressed. She had a lovely laugh, that’s it. She didn’t talk much, and, there in the Café that day, she spoke so little that it all seemed to me tremendously depressing. So I pulled out that book and began to talk to her about it, telling her that I had just bought it. She found the story strange, but in some way curious, she relaxed a little, she began to ask me about myself, we started to talk, I said something that made her laugh. It was all simple, even pleasant. She seemed to me more beautiful, every so often we leaned toward each other, we forgot the people at the other tables, it was just the two of us, delightful. Then she had to go, and it seemed natural to kiss. I saw her disappear around a corner, with a very attractive walk. Then I lowered my gaze. On the table were our two glasses of pastis, half full, and the blue book. I placed a hand on the book and I was struck by its infinite neutrality. So much love and time and devotion had been deposited in it, from Terry’s time to mine, and so much life, and of the best kind: and yet it was nothing, it hadn’t put up the least resistance to my little infamy, hadn’t rebelled, had merely sat there, available to any other adventure, utterly without a permanent meaning, light and empty as an object that had been born right then, rather than one that had grown up in the heart of so many lives. So I came to understand our defeat, in all its tragic import, and I felt vanquished by an unspeakable and final weariness. Maybe I realized that something had broken, forever, inside me. I felt that I was slipping some distance away from things, and that I would never be able to retrace that path. I let myself go. It was splendid. I felt any anguish dissolve, and disappear. I found myself in a luminous serenity, lightly veined with sadness, and I recognized the land that I had always sought. The people around saw that I was sleeping. That’s the whole story.