Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

Changeable weather, rainy afternoon, impossible to work outdoors; Witold appeared on my doorstep and dragged me out to a nursery to look at some plants. We drove back late, my head pounding with the voice of Mario del Monaco — I made the mistake of having a CD player installed with the radio in my E270, and now only Witold uses it, to listen to his operas. I stopped to eat at his house: a funereal atmosphere, everybody dismayed about the war — they’ve organized a rosary service for Good Friday, but fortunately Witold doesn’t have the courage to invite me. So I couldn’t drink; I got back in my car sober and thoughtful and kept the windshield wipers going almost all the way home before I noticed that it had stopped raining.

When I get to the farmhouse I wonder how I’ll get to sleep; I turn on the computer, surf around a few sites, and later, with the screen full of eyes that stare out without seeing me, I make the mistake of clicking on the icon of the garden plan and I stay with it until 3:00 a.m., so I wake up on Wednesday in the worst possible physical state. The sky is cloudy and white, the temperature has dropped back by three months into winter, and I’m worried about the crisis in my closet.

I tumble down the slope of my day, going from the mall to my mother’s house to the parking lot of a giant suburban “hypermarket.”

“My mother cries all the time,” I said to Cecilia.

We were in the usual spot, sitting in her Fiat Regatta. The E270, dark and alien like a stranger’s car, was parked alongside. The Regatta was already full of shopping bags, but I had just arrived; the hypermarket closed at 10:00, so I had all the time in the world. Cecilia was wearing jeans and a light windbreaker with a terry-cloth lining; she was uncombed and had bags under her eyes, and she’d gained weight: it required a stretch of the imagination to find her attractive and desirable, but I couldn’t help it: I was always looking for a solution that would involve me personally, a clever shortcut to becoming a father.

She gave me an inquiring look; she’s always ready to interpret, to find explanations, no matter how unlikely or useless they may be.

“Why does she cry?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at her. “But not about the two of you.”

“Not about that anymore, maybe, because you told me that she was already crying a year ago …”

“Maybe she was crying for some other reason.”

She sighs. She’s never satisfied by any explanation. So, to fill the gap in meaning, she has to move right on to other things: other events, other words, other feelings that need decoding. All around us cars with empty trunks drive up, and other cars depart, overflowing with provisions; that’s the real purpose of this parking lot — all other uses should be prohibited, or at least discouraged.

“You found nothing?”

“No, not this time either.”

“But did you look carefully? Did you check the glove compartment? Notes, condoms, porno videos …?”

“I checked. Nothing.” I pause. “Look, Cecilia, I really don’t think there is anybody — he couldn’t fake it that well.”

“He couldn’t? But he faked it for so long …”

“At my place, he spent two days in an armchair, staring into space; if he’s faking it, he’s never been so consistent …”

“It’s not a question of being consistent.”

“And has he written to you again?” I ask, to change the tone of the conversation and protect Carlo.

“Yes.”

“What does he say?”

“The usual things.”

“What?” I wanted her to tell me, as if repeating it could make her believe it a little bit more.

“That he made a mistake, that he can’t take it anymore, that he needs me, that he wants to talk to me.”

“Talking never hurts.”

I have no idea where this phrase came from. She glares furiously at me. “Talking hurts a lot, for Christ’s sake!”

“Yes, of course, but after all these months—”

“For me, nothing has changed.”

Silence falls for a few minutes — but a nice silence, without any discomfort. Then she sighs and says she has to go. The cars’ headlights sweep over us like a movie camera in a tracking shot: our white faces, our eyes wounded by the flash.

“Did the kids behave themselves?”

I go into detail about everything we did on the weekend; I’ve gotten used to producing different versions for her and for my mother — I know what each wants to hear.

“They’re a couple of angels,” I conclude.

“I always forget there’s no point in asking you if they were good.”

I open the door to get out, and again she says, “Why does Marta cry?”

Why was my mother crying today? She was sitting in the room next to the kitchen, with her sewing box open on the table, which bubbled with needles and spools tumbled together higgledy-piggledy; I’d asked her to stitch a button back onto my jacket, and she held the jacket in her lap, gazing at it pityingly as if it were dying, letting the sleeves hang down while the hem fell open to reveal the torn and threadbare lining. I pretended that the button had just popped off, but in fact I’d bought it at the notions shop in the mall, where I could also have had it sewn on, so I can’t say whether my visit to my mother was an excuse to come and ask her a favor, or whether I was grasping at the button like an amulet that could give me the courage to come see her. In any case, the upshot was that my mother was crying: she starts crying during all my visits recently, and I ought to understand why, but I don’t, and I can’t ask her anymore — I’ve asked her three times, and it only makes her cry more (unless she’s crying for the war refugees, like the way Witold’s wife and sister do).

I spent some time telling her stories about the kids; last Sunday we couldn’t come visit her because Carlo had to get them back to the city before dinner, so there had been negotiations in the days before that, and as I had tried to mediate, I’d suggested that we all meet at lunch, for once, but Carlo and my mother had discouraged me by raising a bunch of objections. I had suggested that they talk directly, but my mother would never call Carlo, and Carlo must have forgotten.

In the opposite corner of the room stands the Schiedmayer upright with a score open on the stand, and I stare at the notes (illegible at this distance) while talking to my mother, like someone on TV reading from the teleprompter: facing one way but with my eyes elsewhere. I tell her what we did on Saturday and Sunday, how much the kids ate, how much we played; I tell her that Filippo speaks so well, and that Momo is so lovable; I tell her that Filippo will always be the best student in his class (some might call him pedantic), that Momo is as sharp as a six-year-old (some might call him a nuisance). And everything I say makes her nod, with her head still bent over the gray tweed jacket, and she traces the genealogies of their personalities — the virtues this one gets from his grandfather, the defects that one gets from his great-aunt — partly because she’s understood by now that there won’t be any more grandchildren: Carlo has done his bit, ruinously, and I won’t ever do mine, to avoid ruining anyone else.

And her eyes keep producing tears that she blots with a white handkerchief balled up in her fist, using quick, precise, repetitive swipes, trying to make it look like a casual, distracted gesture. We sit in silence for five minutes, and then I get up and step out of the room and glance down the hall toward our bedrooms and see the usual shadows, the space just wide enough for two men supporting a third man between them, repeating that gesture for all time. In the living room the French doors are open onto the balcony, the white curtain swollen with air, but the house isn’t sailing, it’s not a boat setting off into the future: it has arrived at its final destination and it has docked forever. I go out, lean my elbows on the railing, and look at the narrow street without sidewalks and the stage set of identical façades, white two-story houses that look like a child’s drawing. A woman passes with shopping bags, raises her eyes, sees me, and doesn’t greet me; even though I think I recognize her, she doesn’t know who I am, or knows who I am but doesn’t like my mother. And, anyway, what am I doing out here on the balcony in this cold that feels like autumn, if I’m not even smoking? A dog goes by, not hurrying, and doesn’t raise his head; a minibus goes by, its windows flashing a deformed reflection of the street, the doors, the ground-floor windows, the parked cars, the dog.