Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

I didn’t realize I was making any face. “Me?” I said.

“Yes, you, with your innocent look. What do you think you’re doing? All you do is sell dreams too.”

Selling dreams. That didn’t seem so bad. I just smiled; ultimately, no matter what he said, Carlo couldn’t be really harsh with me, he couldn’t help loving me (that’s how it seemed to me).

Anyway, I think it’s a professional liability of his. This is the way Carlo explains everything, or almost everything. There’s no such thing as individual responsibility, or if there is, it’s only minimal: we’re crushed by things that are bigger than we are, we’re tossed on the waves. The course of our lives is shaped by great historical forces.

Marriage, for example: it’s an anachronistic institution, based on social controls that no longer exist, on traditional values that were completely swept away at least half a century ago, not only swept away but forgotten, suppressed, or — worse yet — served up again in a kitschy version; anyway, everything is supposed to be more flexible nowadays, so why not values too? Such as fidelity: it’s not his fault that he couldn’t be faithful, it’s society’s fault (and is it really a fault at all?).

Carlo and Cecilia met at university; they were both getting advanced degrees in modern history. They were thirty. They lived together for five years. They got married. They had no children for another six years. In the meantime, she became a full professor. Carlo remained an assistant professor (the fault of the university system). At forty they decided they wanted children. They had them. Last year Cecilia walked in on Carlo kissing a student during his office hours in a room in the History Department. Carlo made the following series of declarations: (1) it was the first time it ever happened; (2) it was the third or fourth time; (3) she wasn’t the first girl he’d kissed; (4) he did more than just kiss them; (5) there had also been some fellow teachers; (6) and some friends; (7) and some strangers; (8) even before they had the kids; (9) even before they were married; (10) anyway he was still in love with Cecilia. This episodic series of confessions took five months, and at the end of it Carlo was invited to hit the road.

What fascinates me about Cecilia is her tenacity. She was as persistent as a Los Angeles Police Department detective with a suspected serial killer; she shined the interrogation light in his eyes and she waited. She staged scenes: jealous rage, then indifference, then suicide attempts, then a polar freeze, then a fake attempt at getting back together, then a famous biting episode (“I bit his thing — it was in my mouth and I bit it,” she told me. “Thing?” “Thing, cock, penis, what do you men call it?”); then she feigned forgiveness (which led to the most important confessions); then came the suitcases on the landing outside the door and a changed set of locks.

That’s how history punished my brother, while he was studying history to make some sense of it.

“Papa moved out because his keys didn’t work anymore,” Filippo told me on the phone a few days later.

At 1:00 a.m. I’m waiting near the abandoned factory; I would stay here until tomorrow morning just to catch sight of Elisabetta again, even from far away, while she gets out of a car holding up her long red dress to walk, like a bride. One by one, the big sedans that were parked in the field go past, and by the light of the streetlamp at the intersection I count the gigantic knots of the chauffeurs’ ties: thirty-six. To kill some time I try making a more discreet knot for myself — I’d like to reuse the tie, at least, but I can give the shoes to Witold, if he needs them for going to church on Sunday. At two o’clock I decide there’s no middle ground: it’s either a gigantic knot or a skinny, constipated one that makes the tie into a noose. I could ignore the notion, but I follow it all the way to its logical conclusion: it’s too late, I’ll never learn to craft a proper, balanced knot.

It’s Saturday night in the exurban city (actually, Sunday morning), and no one wants to go to sleep. The stars have disappeared, there’s too much brightness down here; the sky is purplish and there’s no moon, but it must be clear … there’s no humidity, I have my windows rolled halfway down. I should know this intersection by heart now, but, apart from the factory (I’ve grown as fond of it as if it were my own house), I’ve never really observed the other structures: the gravel area where I’m parked, next to the yellow arrow pointing to the Renal estate, is ringed by a white railing that’s almost completely swallowed up by the bushes of forsythia and ceanothus lilac growing behind it. There must be a house back there, though I can’t see it. But I can see the house on the other side of the road, and, while I try to figure out why it never caught my attention before (because it’s like all the others, because it’s not noticeable), the silver Audi A8 turns out of the driveway and flies down the main road.

I turn my engine on instantly; I didn’t see whether the Ka was in front of it, I didn’t see who was sitting next to the driver, but it seems to me that, if Elisabetta Renal isn’t already asleep, she must be in that car. It’s not easy to follow Mosca, though, and I make some fresh enemies by passing on the right side of a truck and failing to yield while merging into a traffic rotary. No matter what I do, the A8 keeps getting farther away, and, seeing it accelerate like that, I wonder whether it’s escaping someone — me, for instance. Maybe Mosca saw me, or maybe Elisabetta did, or Giletti, posted as a sentry in the backseat. So I let them get even farther ahead, for fear they’ll get mad and stop to ask me for an explanation. For fear they’ll jump me and beat me bloody — with that snub nose, Giletti is like a gorilla, or one of those superstrong dwarves out of a fairy tale.

For ten minutes I followed their two red lights, losing sight of them at every curve and then catching up again, until I thought I saw them blink off to the right at a fork, so I very carefully turned right myself. The road ran through ghostly poplar forests and anonymous industrial sheds of reinforced cement, and I began to imagine that up ahead was an enormous tuft of black cotton, which I would plunge into and get swaddled up in and be smothered to death. I didn’t know where I was going and didn’t see any lights up ahead or in back of me; if they were hiding in some excavation, I would lose them completely and forever … shouldn’t I just go home and slip into bed or do something else more interesting than this? After a mile or so I stopped, with my motor running, in the middle of the road. All I needed was to see her for an instant, but that wasn’t possible. So okay. I turned back.

When I get back to the intersection with the main road, the first thing I see is a gray Clio with my brother at the wheel; he drives by without turning his head and disappears into the night. What’s he doing out here — maybe he’s looking for me — something happened to the kids — but why didn’t he call my cell phone — after all, I switched it back on after the book presentation. While turning onto the main road to follow him, I check the phone’s screen to see if there are any messages that I didn’t hear coming in; I bring his number up, and I’m about to call him, but then I stop dialing and begin to brake. Maybe he’s not looking for me, maybe he wouldn’t want to know that I saw him here. And I start to doubt it’s even him … after all, I couldn’t read the license plate.

I keep following him, but more carefully, and slowly I come to understand where he’s going (or maybe I’d grasped it right away).

The girls gather around the campfires on the turnouts that open up along the shoulder of the highway, little groups of three or four; at this time of year the flames serve not so much for warmth as to let them be seen, especially the Nigerians, who occupy the area just before the railroad bridge: on moonless nights they’re almost invisible. And in every group, behind the exhibitionists who bare their breasts at you or gesture obscenely, you can glimpse the shadowy figures who wish they weren’t there, sitting off to the side on a curb, the ones who never step up to the cars that halt, who never bend down to talk through the rolled-down windows, never, unless they’re the last ones left at the fireside. The closer I get to the bridge, the bigger the groups get, and the traffic chokes up in honking lines with flashing rear lights: it’s like a wedding party. It’s market day under the bridge, and on the far side are the Albanians, the Macedonians, the Bosnians, the Kosovars: the white girls.