Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

So Giletti, too, looked toward the bluff that closed off the rear of the horseshoe-shaped pen, and he came closer to the glass and cupped his hands around his face to block out the reflections. He saw a dark mass of rags stirring, and he recognized that it was Mosca trying to stand up. His nose was bleeding, his clothes were torn in more than one spot, and he’d lost a shoe. He had broken his ankle falling from the bluff, but despite the pain he managed to take four wobbly, fainting steps. Durga took off, trotting toward him, and when Mosca saw her he dropped to the ground. While Giletti ran toward the house to call for help, Durga crouched next to the corpse, standing guard, as if she would never let it go.

The policemen’s reconstruction of events was detailed and almost totally complete. They would never find the missing piece. The missing piece was me. Sure, I couldn’t have known what would happen; I didn’t know that Indra would show up at the edge of the woods that morning, making Hello shoot off after him and dragging both the dog and Mosca toward death. But I wanted it to happen, just as I had wanted it to happen to Conti.

I didn’t have to pretend to be pained, or shocked, or even simply surprised about what had happened. I was cold and indifferent through my whole deposition, and nobody asked me why.

But Mosca’s demise has had an odd effect on my imagination. Whenever I thought about Fabio’s death before, I was always distracted by something inside me. Now the image of Durga standing guard over Mosca’s corpse is superimposed on the last hug I gave Fabio, and it makes it possible for me to look directly at that older memory. I picture the tiger-striped dog against the robust form of the man with the receding hairline, and I see my brother and me again, with my father watching us from the door; and then my mother coming in and sitting on the edge of the bed, behind Fabio’s back, and taking him in her arms from behind, squeezing me into her embrace; and me pulling back and leaving Fabio in her lap; and her looking at me and then at my father. My mother is dressed; she hasn’t slept, she spent the whole night shut up in her bedroom, on a chair, rigid, alone. Fabio’s head drops back, and his arm is dangling loosely, and my mother is still supporting his weight, and I lower my eyes because I can’t bear the look that passes between my parents; I lower my eyes and stroke my brother’s hand for the last time.