Andrea Canobbio - The Natural Disorder of Things

THE FIRST TIME IT WAS HER VOICE, THAT FAULTY AND UNSTEADY RHYTHM — IThypnotized me. If it hadn’t been for that voice I wouldn’t have paid her any attention. She used the formulaic phrases that clients always do: she had heard a lot about me, she’d seen and visited this and that, she was interested, even enthusiastic. They’re always enthusiastic on the phone. Then I see that they’re taken aback when they actually meet me. I guess they’re thinking they have wasted their breath; maybe they ask themselves why I look nothing like my gardens, where I hide all that intelligence and elegance.

I had promised to call her back, to set a date to inspect the site, but I kept putting it off. A week later it was she who called me again, at the same time, apologizing for calling so late; it was as if the ghost of her garden, the naked and abandoned garden, appeared to her in a dream, at the same time of night each week, demanding retribution, and her sense of shame and guilt drove her to seek some remedy.

Again I didn’t have the strength to say no to her; I didn’t want to take on a new assignment, but I couldn’t do without one, and I would have ended up refusing two or three offers at random before being compelled to accept perhaps the least interesting of the lot. I promised her we’d meet that Friday; she shouldn’t worry, I wouldn’t forget her. But in fact that’s just what I intended to do: I was slumped on the sofa in the center of the kitchen, with no energy to clear the table, staring into space, and I lied to her so easily because I’d also finished eating the food on the plate for the guest. Usually I’m lucid as long as I’m at my own place at the table, sitting on the chair: that’s why the guest’s spot is on the sofa, so he can sink into it.

Elisabetta Renal apologized, complaining that she could never reach me when she called my house and didn’t have my cell-phone number — I hadn’t given it to her the first time; I pretended not to notice and didn’t give it to her on the second call either. I stared at a pile of bread crumbs half hidden by the broom that had been propped against the wall several days earlier, and the line of busy ants at work, like a writer’s ellipses heightening the suspense in a sentence … but the coup de théâtre never came. I wouldn’t remember this call the next day, even though it was the second in a week; I wouldn’t remember her and her childlike voice, her apologies for ringing so late, the clichés and commonplaces; I wouldn’t remember how much I liked the way she uttered these social banalities, with a child’s pauses and hesitations and sudden bursts of speed.

Her voice was so beautiful and promising: there was no way that voice could lie. There was no need for it to be rhythmic and regular; no need for it to be balanced; it seemed not to know that it could ever go off balance, that people might ever beg or attack. And for just an instant after hanging up, when I went back to staring into space, staring at the crumbs and at the ants, I imagined listening to her voice in the dark and falling asleep inside it; I imagined her leaning over my ear and pouring words — her stories — into my head.

Five days went by, and I was in the car with Witold; we’d had an argument and maybe I’d offended him, and then something distracted me like a wave of melancholy; I almost rear-ended a truck carrying yogurt, and I stopped and got out to take a closer look at an old abandoned factory. Was it abandoned? I don’t know. The sun was shining in a cloudless blue sky, it wasn’t yet very hot, and the block of reinforced concrete gave off an air of cheerful ruination; there was a touching detail in the courtyard of the watchman’s house: a laundry line strung with faded little pajamas and shorts and T-shirts. My mood had changed now, and I turned back to the car (Witold was bolted into his seat, staring straight ahead) and saw the yellow arrow, camouflaged by an explosion of forsythia, with “Villa Renal” written on it, and then I remembered Elisabetta Renal’s voice and decided I wanted to hear it again.

I shift the car into gear, back up, turn into the road that runs alongside the possibly abandoned factory, and drive in silence for three minutes and thirty seconds, up and down the sulky hills, before Witold, without looking at me, asks where we’re going. I tell him about the two phone calls, and I lie and say that I’d asked around and the client seemed promising: maybe it will turn into a job for the springtime and part of the summer. Witold, with his impoverished-noble profile, his eyes locked on a pair of pollarded willows facing each other across a twenty-yard gap, each one as sad as an only child. After a bit he remarks that one doesn’t go to meet a new client wearing dirty work clothes. I feel that I’ve made an effort to make peace with him; it’s fine with me if he wants to be in a huff, so I say that his innate elegance will save face for both of us. He goes gray and smoky like an illegal building being demolished, dynamited and imploding.

I turn left and pass under a brick archway without any gate or caretaker; we’re on the property, but the house isn’t visible, and we run along beneath the elms, lindens, and horse chestnut trees flanking the dirt road that sinks into a shady little valley. I shout above the crackle and crunch of the tires to say that the fat cows who own this place will produce enough milk to get us through the whole winter, and guffaw because Witold doesn’t like cynicism (not even false cynicism) — he’s a guy with no sense of humor, he doesn’t like a pat on the shoulder, an ambiguous wink, an insinuation (he doesn’t understand insinuations), or vulgarity, whether explicit or implicit. He’s really quite a heavy character. And I’m about to push on and provoke him further when a powerful blow strikes my side window; my Renault R4 wobbles from the impact, but I keep it on the road and try to understand what’s happening.

It took me ten or twenty seconds to see it, maybe because of the dust we kicked up, maybe because it was running alongside the car. It was a dog jumping and butting its head against the car, trying to sink its teeth into the side mirror, where it saw flashes of an enemy dog’s ferocious face. It wasn’t barking, just baring its teeth and throwing itself against the door and the side window, certain it would manage to break through. Witold yelled at me to stop, stop, I might run it over, and I obeyed, sort of: I slowed down sharply, and the dog found himself running ahead, followed by the slow-moving car, surprised and excited as if he’d proved he could defeat us, as if he’d already won.

Then he turned his head, leaping from side to side in a dance of death, challenging me to speed up again, to run him over. I don’t know what came over me, because I wasn’t upset or afraid — I was scared, but not scared of the dog (I felt quite calm and lucid about the dog); what I was actually scared about was the garden of perfectly tended hedges and flower beds that stands in the center of my reasoning mind, a garden that allows for nothing anomalous, asymmetrical, excessive, or banal; from the center of that garden came the impulse to push down on the accelerator, and my right foot acted on the impulse: the R4 speeded up suddenly, and the dog didn’t expect it, he dodged out of the way too late.

I’d never felt what it’s like to run over a dog; I’d hit a rabbit and two cats, but you hardly notice such small animals. A dog makes you feel his death beneath the chassis, and especially with an R4, which is built from the same tin they use for canned tuna, you feel the bones breaking and the fur tearing and the innards bursting, or anyway you’re supplied with a full range of sounds from which you can choose the sounds of a dog breaking apart. When we got out, though, he was in one piece, dead but not bleeding: dust and crushed stone had already smothered the wounds. It was a German shepherd, coated with dirt, eyes wide open.