Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

The gardener-hunter comes in to take the plates, then goes back out and returns with the second course, a little coin of meat with three chunks of roasted potato. I feel a deep pain, along with deep shame over my hunger and my inability to hide it, to tame it. I’m pained by this evening: by Rossi paralyzed in a wheelchair; by Alfredo Renal, the philanthropist with the ambiguous smile; by Elisabetta, who didn’t finish her tortellini (she ate only six or seven). Shamed by the thoughts piling up in the ignoble corner of my mind (I should ask for guarantees; I should be paid in advance; maybe they’re not so flush right now; or maybe they’ll just be stingy and try to skimp on plants and not grant me carte blanche with the materials), pained by the glances that build fragile suspension bridges from my eyes to hers and his (I think, I’m still in time to walk out of here forever, all I have to do is speak up, they have no power over me, today is April Fools’ Day; then I immediately think, They’ve got me, I’m caught).

Rossi’s eyes are like those of a blind man, shifting from me to his wife without seeing us; he molds his ideal world, wearing a saintly expression of obligatory kindness (as in the photos of Alfredo Renal: I imagine that Rossi doesn’t see the background, and the foreground figures he does see are clearly just posing, retouched by his own hand). Elisabetta Renal doesn’t ever look at her husband, as if she has amputated his whole corner of the table: she slices her scissor-eyes toward her right side, and — snip! — the man in the wheelchair never existed.

When she looks at me, she keeps her eyes locked on mine until I give in and look down. It’s a game, I understand it perfectly, but I’m too tired and disheartened, too floored by pain and shame, to hold her gaze, and I’m also afraid that once again she’ll use her eyes to transmit her chill to me. I look at Rossi, shut up in a glass reliquary like a saintly relic; he misunderstands my glance and calls the servant, who brings me a miniature roll. Tired and depressed, I devour it in less than a second.

Who was the fourth place set for? Were we waiting for someone who didn’t come? Or was it Alfredo Renal’s spot? I thought, They’re crazy, they scare me, but it wasn’t true. Every now and then a fly fell into the halogen lamp that opened toward the ceiling like a brazier, letting off a sizzle and a foul-smelling plume of smoke.

It was as if something terrible was about to happen, some grotesque and terrible event. When the servant twin carried in the dessert, he’d suddenly be completely nude, or dressed as the big bad wolf, chased by the hunter twin. One of Momo’s favorite fables was “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats,” because he identified with the little white goat, the one who saves himself by hiding inside the grandfather clock, and he always liked to claim that role before I began telling the story. I felt like scuttling under the table and hiding there for a while by myself.

“Alberto, you won’t believe what happened to me today,” says Elisabetta Renal suddenly.

She says that she ran into an old classmate and could hardly recognize her because the woman had gotten so old, fat, and sloppy—“she probably drinks”—but the amazing thing is that a few minutes later she ran into that woman’s old boyfriend, who happened to be in the city just by chance, since he moved abroad ten years ago — and even though he came back to Italy occasionally, he hadn’t been here in six years — but that’s not all: he was with his wife, who was young and beautiful and Spanish, and the two of them were radiant, the very picture of happiness, and what made the story even more bizarre was that ten years ago the old classmate — the woman who’s so fat and ugly now — had dumped that boyfriend and hooked up with another guy (the son of an industrialist, who married her and cheated on her and made her miserable), and — just think — her old boyfriend, the one who lives abroad, had tried to kill himself, in despair, when she’d left him.

“Isn’t it incredible that I ran into them, and that they don’t know anything about each other’s lives, and that I’m the only one who knows how it all ended?”

“That is incredible, dear,” said Rossi. “A classmate from which school?”

Elisabetta flushed and shook her head as if she didn’t recall. She glanced around miserably and seemed to be on the verge of tears.

I didn’t know what expression to put on.

We were silent again.

I cleaned my plate (wondering only whether the half teaspoonful of green sauce was merely decorative garnish) while Rossi struggled along with the slice of meat as if it were a whole shank of pork; Elisabetta hadn’t even picked up her fork.

I can’t take the tension, so I say, “You two haven’t told me anything, though; do you have some idea for the new garden? Do you want something in particular?”

“I was afraid you’d ask me that,” says Elisabetta, smiling gratefully just because I’d spoken.

“Afraid? Why afraid?” I smile too.

Rossi does not smile.

“Because I don’t have a clear idea.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I say, and another of my famous phrases pops into my head: “It’s not the client’s job to have a clear idea.”

Rossi doesn’t react. Elisabetta would like to react, but she’s afraid of making a mistake. So I speak — I have to.

“Please at least tell me what you don’t want. What you don’t like in a garden.”

She shakes her head and smiles.

I press her: “There are gardens that are like objects for contemplation, beautiful and a bit chilly, a bit fake, like a seventeenth-century painting. Would you like a garden like that?”

She looks at me as if she’s seeking a hint. But I didn’t pose a difficult question. “Oh no,” she says, “no.”

“Beautiful things get boring after a while,” I add. “At least for me … I mean … often it seems to me it’s in bad taste … to go for beauty alone …”

She looks at me to see whether I’m making fun of her, to see where I’m going with this.

“Then there are theatrical gardens … built as stage sets: the backdrops, the wings … Is that what you want?”

Now she understands how it works. “No, I think not.” But she’s less sure than she was before.

“Quite right,” I say. “Nowadays there’s not … there aren’t the right people or occasions anymore … for filling a stage. The garden itself has to be the show … but it needn’t necessarily be showy …”

I’ve started talking like her, limping, accelerating, and slowing down; at first I can’t find the right words, and then they all come in a rush. An uncertain anger compels me as I speak.

Elisabetta keeps her hands in her lap, twisting her napkin. Rossi seems distracted, staring at the wall behind me.

“Then there’s the tranquil, peaceful retreat … the place to pull away and meditate … the silent refuge … an orderly, symmetrical, unchanging, perfect garden … Do you want a garden like that?”

“No.”

“Good,” I say. “I wouldn’t have designed it for you.”

At this point they don’t know whether they should wipe away their smiles and just feel awkward.

“Then there are the gardens made for walking … I don’t mean just mazes … but gardens in motion, musical gardens …”

“My wife loves to listen to music while driving,” Rossi says suddenly. “She often takes a drive in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep, and comes back after an hour or two.”

Elisabetta picks up her glass full of water and very calmly stretches out her arm and empties the glass onto the carpet. As she puts it back down on the table, Rossi smiles slightly, just as calm as she is. I’m not exactly petrified, because everything happened so fast that the gesture didn’t even surprise me — maybe I’m just slow to react. Now Elisabetta’s looking down at her plate, at the untouched roast and potatoes.