Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

I didn’t want to go see the damage; Elisabetta came down to say goodbye to us, and we helped her load the last bags into the old Lancia Thema. Rossi came down at the last minute and simply waved to us; he looked very depressed. We left right after they did and spent the rest of the day at the data center garden site, talking as little as possible, taking measurements and making lists of the materials and tools we would need. I felt like I’d been sent to a penal colony: I sweated and drank and drank and sweated, and my head boiled under my straw hat. As we were going home, I decided it was my duty to say something: Witold was gloomy — the Renal job had been special for him too, and it had ended on the wrong note; also, the roads were bubbling with vacation traffic, as if we were the only people on the plains who’d been left out. I began telling him about the plans I had in mind, the clients who had called in the last few weeks, the magazine that wanted to do a story about us. I purposely said “us” because I knew it was the quickest, most direct way to put Witold in a good mood. It did me good too.

At a stoplight I drew up next to a woman driving a yellow Fiat Punto convertible; she wasn’t pretty, but she was smiling as she looked at the road and didn’t notice me spying on her; maybe she was thinking about the evening ahead. For the first time since I’d blown up at him and his wife about the liquor bottles, Witold asked me how I’d be spending the weekend, and whether I’d like to eat with them on Saturday night or at lunch on Sunday. Then all my sadness about Elisabetta’s departure suddenly hit me, and I dropped him off and said goodbye in a hurry, saying I’d get back to him by phone, and I went home to the arid desert of two empty days stretching before me. I could have spent the days drinking cold white wine, but instead I worked late in the empty wing of the farmhouse, fixing up the electrical wiring. I talked to Elisabetta; I sent her text messages that attempted to be funny; I thought about her. The sun was merciless, and there wasn’t a breath of wind; on Sunday night I went to see my mother, and I wished I had the courage to ask her about Mosca at some point, but down on the plain it was even worse than at my place — you just couldn’t breathe — and she was paler and looked older than I’d ever seen her look (she had always suffered from the heat), and maybe just the fact that she wasn’t crying was good enough for me: it was already something.

I was so eager to spend the following weekend with the kids that on my way home from work on Tuesday night I stopped by the hypermarket and bought a huge supply of meat: beef, pork, sausages, ribs. I bought six 1.5 liter bottles of Coca-Cola, all kinds of flavored chips, popcorn, mayonnaise, ketchup, snack foods, pudding, and ice cream. I filled my cart to the brim, and then when I got home I described everything I’d bought to Elisabetta, item by item. She didn’t have much to report: she spent her mornings tanning and then went down to swim in the afternoons, while Alberto was resting. She didn’t want to go far from him, and I wanted to ask her exactly why not, why she felt she had to hold his hand; I didn’t understand it, but I couldn’t have her explain over the phone.

The blow came halfway through the week, when Carlo called to let me know that he and Cecilia had decided on the spur of the moment to spend four days at the beach with the kids.

“Together?” I asked skeptically.

“We got here this evening. I don’t know how it’ll go, but we had to try.”

He was speaking softly; I don’t know where he was, and I hadn’t ever been to Cecilia’s house at the beach, but it can’t have been very big; I could hear the kids yelling in the background.

“Are the kids happy?”

“As you can imagine: they’re wild with joy.”

My stomach clenches — pure jealousy feels like taking a gulp of vinegar by mistake.

“So you’re not coming …”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, I wasn’t sure that—” He breaks off, I hear Cecilia’s voice in the background, and Carlo says, “It’s Claudio … Cecilia says hello …”

“Whatever happened to that girl?”

“Hold on.” I hear him walking through the house. “Kids, do you want to say hello to Uncle Claudio?” The voices and noises get closer to the phone and then fade off. Then he’s speaking softly again. “What in the world were you thinking?”

“Well, it’s not like she could hear—”

“Nothing ever happened to that girl—”

“Are you still seeing her?”

“Listen”—he’s still walking around the house, like a terrorist darting to a new safe house every night—“are you pissed off that I didn’t tell you earlier? I’m sorry, you’re right, I behave like shit, I act like you’re always available whenever we want you, and I know perfectly well that’s not true, that you have a life of your own.”

A life of my own. I’d never considered it.

“No, I’m not mad, it’s just that I bought a ton of meat … and I really did want to know what happened, about that bruise …”

“She’s got a sort of violent father, but — Listen, I’m sorry”—he’s never begged my pardon so many times—“I shouldn’t have dragged you into it—” He breaks off. I hear footsteps and Cecilia’s voice saying to him, “Are you still on the phone?” and him saying again, “It’s Claudio,” as if I were a justification for the length of the call — incredible.

“And have you heard the latest news?” He’s started whispering again like a conspirator.

I tell him that I’ve had a lot of work to do.

“Didn’t you see that the right wing won the elections for the European Parliament? And then just three days later the court absolved Craxi … The wind is changing direction.”

“There’s no wind at all around here: it’s impossible to breathe—”

“It’s going to get even harder to breathe, you wait and see … No one in this country ever pays for what they’ve done, never; they usually just find some scapegoat, every time: Mussolini, or Moro — all the other Christian Democrats got away with it — they have gotten away or they will get away with it … Tambroni, Donat-Cattin, Fanfani, Leone, Cossiga, Piccoli, De Mita, Forlani, Gava …”

I’m stretched out on the sofa in my kitchen, and my brother is on the phone whispering an endless list of names; I close my eyes, I see Elisabetta’s naked breast, I see the girl with the black eye, I see myself standing in the middle of the meadow, with Carlo holding the pistol and me saying to him, “I need you.” And I embrace him, even though brothers don’t do that anymore.

“I have to go now,” I say, interrupting him.

“Yeah, yeah, me too. I’ll say hi to the kids for you … No, wait, Filippo needs to talk to you. His voice is a bit hoarse: he spent too much time in the water.”

“Uncle Claudio?”

“Hi, little mouse. What’s up?”

“My voice is an old Magic Marker: sometimes it gets worn out and you can’t hear it anymore.”

“Wow. We’ll have to buy some new markers—”

“No, no, Uncle Claudio, it was a metaphor .”

“Oh. A metaphor … Listen, pass the phone back to your father—”

Carlo gets back on the line.

I say: “I’m going to call you in a few days; I need to talk to you about something important.”

“The Renals again?”

“No, a different issue.”

Cecilia’s voice is in the background again. But this time Carlo ignores her; he wants to know. “What’s going on — is something wrong?”

“I told you, I want to talk to you.”

“Papa wants to talk to you,” my mother would say, and she would push the wheelchair over near me. Usually I was working in the courtyard of our house, or outside the farmhouse I had just bought; it was the year after he’d had his accident, falling off a ladder that was leaning unsteadily between the branches of a tree. He’d hit his head and had surgery, and the doctors had removed a blood clot; he could walk, he could step from one chair to another and go very slowly up and down the stairs in the house, but he used the wheelchair whenever possible. My mother would push him outdoors for some fresh air, and they would circle me, and then, even without my noticing my father speak to her, without my hearing them approach, there they’d be in front of me, and she would report what he wanted. But she didn’t stay to hear what he had to say to me; she would add that she was going to take the opportunity to get something done, or go and fetch something she’d forgotten indoors. She would leave my father with me, and leave me with my father — and did she really think that we would talk? That he would say all the things he so needed to tell me? Or did she know we would just stay silent while I went on with my work and my father observed my hands, the tools I was using, the pots I was filling with earth, and the trellises I was building for the climbing plants? Maybe she didn’t even wonder. And I never asked her about it, later.