Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

I tuck the pistol into the helmet, and the helmet into a stand of hydrangeas, and go back to the middle of the courtyard and turn my head as if I’ve just noticed her; she parks next to the other cars, and I think back to the early days when she used to stop half in and half out of the gate. I go to meet her without smiling; I’m unshaven and my hair is tousled and I fear my hands and T-shirt stink of gunpowder. But even if she smelled it, she wouldn’t say anything today; by now I recognize that anxious gaze fixed somewhere beyond my shoulder — she avoids my eyes and spins around me like a satellite.

An hour later we get to the villa, which makes no impression on me even though I haven’t been there for three weeks; we go in through the greenhouse and up to the second floor, where one of the twins sits in a chair in front of the door to Rossi’s room, waiting like an old-time valet. He immediately rises and gestures for me to take his seat, and I hesitate for a moment, flattering myself with the idea that the door will open as soon as the master of the house hears my voice; but Elisabetta pushes me toward the seat, too, so I give in unwillingly and look at my watch and think that I haven’t got much time.

“Mr. Rossi,” I said. “Mr. Rossi, can you hear me?”

Elisabetta gestured for me to lean toward the door.

“So you came,” he said faintly through the door.

He said that he needed to talk to me but he didn’t want to let the twins or his wife into the room because he knew this time they would take away his key. He made them go down to the garden, and when he saw them by the concrete balustrade on the terrace, he opened the door for me. He was in the old wheelchair, the one I’d seen the very first day, with the foam and the towel-wrapped cushion. Otherwise he was dressed as usual, in his habitual cardigan, where he pocketed the key after double-locking the bedroom door.

He asked me to let the others know that I was in the room, so I went to the window; Elisabetta was looking at the ground with her arms crossed, but one of the twins was on lookout, and when he saw me he touched her shoulder lightly and she looked up and I waved to her. Rossi told me to take a chair. We sat in silence for several minutes.

He starts talking about the garden: he was wrong, it wasn’t the story of Alfredo Renal, right? — it’s his own story, the story of Alberto Rossi. All his life he tried to be as good as his friend, but he believed it was hopeless. Then he realized that he wanted to be something more than his friend: he wanted to be him and also be something else, something more complete. But now he isn’t sure whether the something more isn’t in fact something missing, and in the condition he’s in now, he can’t do without that missing thing.

Without giving me time to react, he goes on.

Because the three arches are the road that bring three different people to the same house.

And the rocks represent the difficulty of moving through the world.

Then there are the roots, which are preserved in a glass vitrine instead of being forgotten.

And the squalid, bleached-out tree trunks show the danger of moral poverty.

Then there is a revelation, a new sense of life, in the water running through the glass tube, all the way to the cistern and its pile of treasures: treasures of the spirit, ready to shine.

“Is that what it is?”

How can I answer?

“I believe that everyone is free to see whatever he likes in it, so why not your life? But I didn’t know anything about you, I couldn’t have done it on purpose …”

He smiles. “No, you didn’t do it on purpose,” he says thoughtfully. “So maybe it’s a portrait of your life. You’ve never told me anything about you. I know that you had two brothers; maybe the three arches have some meaning there? And the roots at the center of the garden are an homage to your father? I hear he was a gardener.”

I shake my head; I don’t think I was trying to say something about myself, at least not consciously.

We hear a knock at the door, and Elisabetta asks if everything’s okay and if we want some coffee. Rossi makes a silent no, as if he’s asking me to turn down the offer too.

Instead of spending the whole morning in this room, I might end up grabbing the key away from him and opening the door.

He starts talking to me about his wife again, whispering so she won’t hear him. Then he asks, “Why don’t you come and live here with us? Elisabetta has great respect for you.”

I smile. “I’m glad to hear that,” I say.

“I’ve already told you that my wife is a very fragile woman?”

“Yes, you told me.”

“It’s her family’s fault.”

“Is it?”

We go on like this for an hour; every now and then, one of the twins knocks and asks whether we need anything.

“Did you know that Alfredo Renal discovered them in prison?”

“The twins?”

“They were swindlers: they exploited the fact that they’re identical. They’re quite devoted to me, have you noticed? They were quite devoted to Alfredo as well.”

I listen to Rossi’s stories without any particular pity; I just sit and listen. I picture Elisabetta outside, and I try to imagine her at my house again or traveling with me, sometime in the future, or at the movies, or at a restaurant. They all seem like old images to me, as if we’ve already had that affair, and in the end she’s decided to leave me and go back to her husband — non-husband … whatever he is to her. Or she’s decided in a huff to leave me because I wanted to keep her on the margins of my life, because I didn’t want her to be involved in it, because I didn’t want to tell her the true fairy tale of the mute old man.

At a certain point Rossi confesses that he’d had to threaten suicide in order to get me brought over here. He chuckles. “I’ll die childless. Aren’t you sorry not to have had children?”

“I have two nephews, whom I see often.”

“I don’t have the strength to go on any longer,” he says. “Alfredo left many things undone, and Elisabetta’s not interested in them.”

He closes his eyes. Lassitude hits me; I rest my elbows on my knees and drop my head into my hands. I, too, close my eyes. Then I open them.

Rossi’s head is bowed down. It looks like he’s asleep.

I reach out to take the key from his pocket.

Suddenly my cell phone began to ring, Rossi awoke with a start, and I pulled my hand back and answered the phone; it was Mosca.

He said they were outside my house and they’d rung the bell — maybe I hadn’t heard it.

“I’m not home. I was expecting you in the early afternoon.”

I had misunderstood: the appointment was at noon.

“Is it noon already?” I asked incredulously, looking at my watch.

“Where are you?”

“I’m working, I’m with a client …”

I wanted to ask him where exactly he was, whether he was near the stand of hydrangeas, whether he felt free just to walk around my courtyard as if the place were his.

“Do you think that you can get here in a reasonable amount of time?”

“No, I really don’t think so; I’m too far away. I’m truly sorry, I was sure you’d be coming after lunch.”

I heard a dog barking and Giletti shouting something in the background.

“No problem,” Mosca said. “Let’s talk later. We can get together another day.” Then I heard him yell “Hello!” and I knew he was calling the terrier, but it was funny to hear it in the middle of a phone call. I thought of the prostitute who said “Hello?” to tell me that supper was ready.

“Pardon me,” he said, “we’ve lost sight of the dog.” I heard him walking across the gravel. “He went into the forest.”

“It’s not really a forest — it’s not very big,” I reassured him.