John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“Why?” she whispered. “Why?”

How could he answer? He rubbed his legs. “If there’s anything in this world—” he said.

She did not hear.

He wanted to say, “My dear, my dear, dear child—’

“What do you want from me?” she moaned.

From upstairs someone called, “Chi è?”

She said, “Niente, Mamm à . Dormi, dormi.” She threw him a look of panic. “She takes it hard. She’s eighty. An old witch. But how can you say to her, a time like this, Mama, you old witch?”

“Your husband’s mother?” Hodge said. He had meant to ask if he could send her some money.

Again, she did not hear him, she said weakly, “You want sugar and cream?”

“Thank you,” Hodge said.

“Thank you yes or thank you no?”

“Thank you yes.”

She fixed the coffee and handed it to him. Then she fixed one for herself.

“If there’s anything at all I can do—” Hodge said.

She sat down across from him.

“I have sons myself,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said. “God protect them. May they all grow up and be President.”

After that they sat in silence, drinking their coffee. He looked at her young but wrinkled hand on the table, looked at the gray of her pajamas where the raincoat collar opened to reveal it, looked at the suggestion of hair on her upper lip. His heart went out to her. Then he heard the old woman’s slippers on the stair, and after a while she appeared in the doorway, gray hair straggling down around her face like bad rain, fat shoulders bent from the miserable weight of a lifetime.

“Eh,” she said. “ Il caffé s’ é raffreddato; O é troppo freddo O é troppo caldo. Ma a te che t’importa? ”

“Mama, this is Mr. Hodge,” the girl said. “The lawyer.”

“Sar à inverno presto,” the old woman said. “Di giorno è troppo caldo, e cos ì pare che di notte si sta bene, e a letto si gela.”

“Mama,” the girl said, “have some coffee.” To Hodge she said, without troubling to look at him, “Mama’s deaf as a post. Good thing, for everybody.”

“Coffee,” the old woman sneered. “Coffee for Mama. Cara Madre. Diamole caffè e puo darsi che muore, e noi faremo una festa. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Hodge said.

She stood at the stove rubbing her rear end with both hands and scowling bitterly. “Coffee,” she said. “God forgive.” Then she was silent, looking around her shoulder at him, taking his measure. He realized he had his thumbs hooked inside his suspenders like a banker, and that his glasses were far down his nose. You couldn’t blame her if she didn’t understand that he came to them as a servant. Nevertheless, she came sideways from the stove toward the table and extended her hand, twisted and veined like old cypress root, to the back of the chair at the end. She had her coffee in the other hand. Slowly, steadying herself on the chair, she came the rest of the way. Over her old yellowish blue nightdress she had a black afghan.

“Sta buona, Mammà,” the girl said.

The old woman let herself into the chair. She pointed at Hodge. “Chi è lui?” she said.

“Mr. Hodge,” the girl said. “The lawyer.”

She pursed her lips as if to spit. “Dapertutto,” she said. “In tutti gli armadi, in tutte le foglie.” She studied him, and he took off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. The girl, the dead policeman’s mother, seemed not to be listening any more. She sat with her hands over her eyes, her back no longer shaking, not a muscle twitching in fact; it was as if she were holding her breath or maybe refusing to draw it in. The old woman stretched out her hands like gray branches, and the gray hair hanging around her head was like oak moss around stone. At the ends of her powerful arms, her hands shook like leaves. “When we came to this country the lawyers is all waiting: ‘Mortgage! Mortgage!’ ‘Mortgage you,’ we say. And the police say, ‘Can’t dump the trash. Ten dollars.’ And the priests say, ‘Ten dollars for your sins.’ ‘What sins?’ we say, ‘what sins we made?’ I could tell you. In all the leaves, all the cupboards. We go down and get water, there’s a lawyer sitting there waiting in a boat. We get coal by the tracks, it’s almost dark, all gray in the sky, nothing moving but the what-you-say … pigeons, and there’s a freight car with the door open, it’s full of police. Madonna mia! At night in the house we are looking out the window and there’s priests. All over the yard, little priests all bones and black cloth and eyes like fish. I could tell you.”

“Mamm à ,” the girl said, “sta buona.”

“You think crazy old woman? Ignorant old wop?” she leered.

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

Che la diritta via era smarrita.

E quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte …”

“She knows all of it — so she says,” the girl said.

Hodge said, “What is it?”

“Who knows?” the girl said wearily. “It’s long.”

“Tanto è amara, che poco è piu morte:

Ma per trattar del ben ch’ i’ vi trovai,

Dirò dell’ altre … ”

The old woman had her eyes closed now, hands folded under her chin, head tipped up as though the thing she was saying were a prayer.

“It takes days,” the girl said. “She gets started and she won’t stop. Her father made her learn it for a punishment. This country, they call her a ignorant old wop.”

“I’m sorry,” Hodge said.

“Ah,” the girl said indifferently. “Nobody’s fault.”

He looked at the coffee and couldn’t drink it. The old woman mumbled on, spitting a little, her eyes clamped shut. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning, he remembered. Even so, he wanted nothing.

“Mammà,” the girl said. It had no effect. Outside the kitchen window the light was yellowing after the early gray. It was going to be hot. The narrow stretch of yard between Salvador’s house and the next was unnaturally green after last night’s rain. You could feel the sogginess of the earth underneath. Sparrows flew by and vanished beyond the wire clotheslines at the side of the garage.

He said, “Can I give you money?”

The corners of the girl’s mouth turned down, and the old woman mumbled more loudly for a moment.

“I feel — responsible,” he said. “You were wrong to say it’s my fault, maybe, but I feel, just the same—”

The old woman bowed her head, shutting him out.

“Allor fu la paura un poco queta

Che nel lago del cor m’era durata

La notte ch’ i’ passai con tanta pieta.”

“Please go,” the girl said. “What can you do? It’s all right. Today I am ok.” She stood up.

Hodge nodded and, after a moment, obeyed. On the porch — the old woman still muttering behind them — Hodge said, “If there’s anything—”

“Nothing,” she said. “E’ la vita.” Her eyes were dead. It was as if he had left already.

And so Will Hodge drove angrily now, wounded with helpless wrath and frustration, heading west toward the Indian Reservation.

He hardly noticed at first the figure hurriedly walking beside the road a half-mile ahead of him — looked at the figure, took in all the details, yet hardly noticed it was there. It was a small, more or less unbelievable man in a wide black hat, the kind Amish men wear, and he was hurrying mightily, short legs bobbing, cheerfully stomping through the world, fists swinging harmlessly, big feet toeing out, back bent as though it were imperative that he get there first with the tip of his hat and his (head tipped sideways, like the head of a swimmer) nose. When the Plymouth came in range the young man turned and stuck out his thumb. Will Hodge slowed down, still without thinking. He was hardly more than a boy; in his twenties. He had a beard, wide moustache, some kind of perhaps Indian trinket hanging on his shirt. His face was hidden, because over his eyes he had enormous round sunglasses as black as the Amish hat crammed down on his dangling black hair. Under his left arm he had a black metal box, a suitcase.