Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

“It was an accident,” I say.

“I’m sure it was.” He draws a circle in the air with his finger. “They throw themselves under the wheels.”

I open the back of the car, and the twins pull out the German shepherd’s cadaver. They take it away with unreal delicacy. They’re just as careful as they were when moving the wheelchair, I think as I watch them, mesmerized.

In less than half an hour we’re sitting in a place called the Sternwood Steak Palace. Witold is talking about Mr. Rossi. He likes him a lot; he considers him a remarkable person. It’s shocking that I forced him to go around the whole meadow in his wheelchair, those poor guys had to carry him around in the hot sun, I’ve got a lot of nerve not even to apologize, not even to show any remorse. But he’s smiling: it’s not a real scolding. Or rather, it’s real but it’s not serious.

“A man of lively wit, not without some singular elements in his character,” he says suddenly.

I stare at him without giving anything away (naturally I can’t place the quote, but if I nail it I don’t want him to think that I made a wild guess).

“Manzoni,” I say confidently.

“D’Azeglio,” he murmurs.

Finally our three steaks arrive.

After two days (two days in which I don’t have any important events or thoughts) I’m in the courtyard of my farmhouse and looking in through my window, spying deliberately on the scene taking place in my living room; deliberately even though the night is cold and windy and I’m in shirtsleeves and in order to see the room from the best angle I have to stand on tiptoes, my spine curved back like half of a Gothic pointed archway. But the spectacle before me is as irresistible as flypaper is to a fly: it’s sweet and somehow definitive.

A man is sitting in an armchair in front of the fire. Two children are playing next to the armchair. Every so often one of the children, the bigger one, raises his head and says something to the man, who gives no sign that he hears him. The other boy, no more than two or three years old, uses a different strategy. Without speaking, he stops playing and goes to rest his head on the man’s knees. The man doesn’t react to this either, but the children don’t lose heart, and a few minutes later they try again, each with his own weapons.

What did I come out here for? Finally I move away, bending down low even though there’s really no need to do so. No one inside the house is going to notice me and be surprised and think that I must have slipped furtively out the back door. I reach the canopy where the cars are parked. I open the driver’s door and huddle down and search the interior of the gray Renault Clio that my brother and the kids came in. I look in the glove compartment, under the floor mats, in the doorwells. I look in the trunk. What am I looking for? Signs, traces of life.

Ten minutes later I’m back in the kitchen as if I’d never left, and I’m preparing dinner for four, so all the burners are on high and the pots are sizzling and steaming and letting out various smells, and I’m in a clean checked shirt and less-than-clean jeans and gray slippers shaped like mice, which the kids gave me last Christmas, and over it all I have an oilcloth apron showing a tiger about to leap on its prey (the tiger’s head covers the apron’s bib, and his back feet touch the ground just at my knees), which was a gift from Carlo. The meaning of the slippers is clear — I’ve always called Filippo and Momo “mice,” and Filippo explained to me that wearing my slippers during the week would remind me of their coming on Friday nights (every other week); but I haven’t yet decided what the tiger means: I’m the tiger (because of my success at work)? Carlo is the tiger (he’s slumbering, but he could awake any minute)? The tiger isn’t anybody, and the meaning is in the apron itself? —i.e., I appreciate your hospitality and I want you to go on cooking for us.

But there could be yet another meaning. Filippo bounces into the kitchen, comes up to me, and says, “ First thing tomorrow let’s go visit Malik.” His eyes show the pleasure he takes in pronouncing the words perfectly.

“Naturally. Durga asked after you.”

He carefully considers my statement, not knowing whether to believe it, but ultimately his desire is stronger than his sense of reality. He smiles, gratified.

I bring the pasta to the table, help the kids get settled, put on Momo’s bib, and go to call my brother. I find him in the same place I last saw him, sunk in the armchair in front of the fire, book open on his lap, still — I imagine — open to the same page, because he’s looking at the fire and he doesn’t appear to have moved a muscle.

My brother is a handsome man. He’s as tall as I am, but he has straight shoulders and the body of a thirty-year-old, a nose less crooked than mine, eyes more intense (more beautiful, more intense: he doesn’t have my whipped-dog eyes). Maybe his eyes, more than anything else, were the weapon he once used in his numerous, remarkable conquests (that, and his ability to stun you with language, back when he still talked). “Carlo,” I say, “it’s ready.” And he is startled. What’s ready? Nothing is ever ready, everything is in a state of perennial incompleteness. Who’s ready? No one, everybody’s always unprepared, taken by surprise. Things start passing you by when you’re young, but you watch them go past, thinking you still have time to catch up. It’s not true. You make a few attempts, and maybe manage to glimpse them again in the distance, unreachable, and so you stumble and break your stride, panting. Sometimes things take a wrong turn, and they run around the same bushes three or four times, like Winnie-the-Pooh, before they see their mistake. Unexpectedly, if fate has decided to reward you, you see the things right in front of you and you can grab them. So I became a respected and sought-after landscape designer, while my brother, at forty-five, is struggling along hopelessly at the university. His one attempt at making money (launching a website about terrorism in the seventies, www.theMoroKidnapping.com) failed for lack of funding.

“Papa: First thing tomorrow Uncle Claudio is going to take us to visit Durga,” says Filippo. Momo mumbles something through a mouthful of pasta; he puts his pacifier in his mouth, pulls it out again, dips it into the sauce, and sucks on it.

“Fine,” says Carlo. “How’s Malik doing? Did his wife have the baby?”

“Not yet.”

The sudden flash of curiosity about my neighbor Malik and his wife has exhausted all his energy. He doesn’t open his mouth again. But Filippo’s presence at the table makes the conversation easier: whenever a silence falls, he takes care of it. Carlo can participate by smiling and shaking his head like a contented and kindly paterfamilias worn out by a long day at work.

After dinner Filippo begs to stay up and play a little longer.

“Maybe it’s time for bed,” I say.

Carlo doesn’t get involved.

Momo says: “Me me, lillonger.”

“He also wants to stay up and play a little longer,” Filippo translates.

Carlo heads toward the armchair.

“So can we?”

“Okay,” I say, “but when it’s time, you’ll go to bed without a fuss.”

“Tonight we’ll just lay the foundations ,” says Filippo.

I dump the leftovers into the trash can and pile the dishes in the sink. For a moment I think he’s using “foundations” to mean some building supports, the understructure of some toy I haven’t yet seen, or some kind of Lego. Then I understand: he’s talking about laying the groundwork for our game. I had promised to act out a battle with our old 1-to-72-scale toy soldiers. From the protection of a pillow-hill, Filippo prepares to massacre my troops, who are marshaled in the open field below. In this preparatory stage, Momo is the wild card. He flings himself on the soldiers that Filippo and I have already set out on the carpet and hits them with his pacifier, detonating deadly missiles on the poor fools. It doesn’t ruffle Filippo; he rights the soldiers, saying, “No, Momo, this one’s not dead yet .”