To the Wedding (9 page)

The road passes between two large farms, each with its yard, its gate and its square buildings. Outside the towns, every habitation on this plain is built square so as to resist a little the endless space which dwarfs everything. When the signalman and his bike have passed, the two large farms are silent.

I’m on a trolley, Papa, and they’re wheeling me somewhere down a corridor, two men in white, who are thinking
about something else, not about me. Where are you taking me? I ask. To the Endocrinology Unit, one of them says kindly. I don’t understand. It’s a detail, anyway, and on a trolley like this, with wheels which turn in every direction, I’m going to be wheeled out.

In the village of Crescentino a funeral procession winds its way from the church and the signalman is obliged to follow as slowly as the last rank of mourners, men in hats who walk with their heads bowed.

Marella phones. She isn’t weeping any more, so I don’t either. Let’s not call it SIDA, she says, between you and me, just between you and me, let’s call it STELLA.

Nothing hides like flatness. On the plain the signalman is riding across, a man doesn’t know about last night’s violence until he trips over the body.

Marella, I have another letter from Gino: Ninon, it says, Ninon, I understand nothing. You stand me up. You give
back the turtle ring. You drop it in my letterbox without a word. You come all the way to Cremona and you don’t see me. I don’t even know when you’ll get this letter. But I’m going to find you and I’m going to love you. One morning, wherever you are, you’ll wake up and you’ll see my Mercedes with VESTITI SCIC written on its sides outside your front door. And that morning, you’d better get back into bed. NINON + GINO = AMORE.

This one I don’t tear up. I reply to him on a postcard which I put in an envelope. On the postcard I tell Gino he must have a test to see whether he’s seropositive. I say nothing about myself because there’s nothing to be said. It’s obvious. The postcard is of Vialli, scoring.

The signalman is now crossing paddy-fields which extend to the horizon and which shine like a hundred irregular mirrors. On their surface is a green filigrane made of the shoots of the early rice crop. The rice fields were a part of a dream of Cavour’s in which he saw Italy become a rich country. A canal was built for the rice fields. And here, in 1870, the first long, smooth, milky, light Italian rice, which melts in the mouth like no other, was picked and dried and poured into sacks.

I have nothing. All, all, all, all, all I had has been taken.

Nothing moves on the still water. The irregular mirrors reflect the light from the sky. No colours. No clouds. Only the signalman on his bike moves. He is driving very fast.

The gift of giving myself has been taken away. If I offer myself, I offer death. Always, till my dying day. When I walk down the street and the
ragazzi
look at me, I’m reminded how all the while I’m death. Come close enough to me, once, twice or a hundred times and, supposing I love you, you will die. Not if you use a condom, they say. With a condom there’s latex rubber between you and your death, and latex rubber between you and me. Latex solitude. Latex solitude for ever and ever. Nothing can touch any more.

He crosses the silver water, barely reducing his speed when he corners, moving like mercury, seldom upright, often inclined as though listening to the earth, first on one side and then the other, bending over to listen with pity.

All I had to offer, old as the world, God-given, balm for pain, honey for taste-buds, promise for always, silken welcomes, oh to welcome, to welcome, knees turned on their sides, toes extended—all I had has been taken.

There are no walls, no banks or rocks to throw back the sound of the engine, and so for the signalman the noise of his motor is inaudible. He hears only the noise of rushing air—as in a whorled seashell when one puts it to the ear. The faster he drives the louder the rush. And in this shaking, buffeting slipstream fly the voices.

I had to send two photos of myself, a Xerox of my identity card and an electricity bill to prove where I lived.

I too at your pitiful fate, says Euripides, shall spend my sad life in tears.

Then came a letter informing me that my request had been granted and I should present myself at 3 p.m. on Thursday at the Maison d’Arrêt in Nantes.

The signalman’s road goes through a copse of willows. The tree from which Orpheus took a sprig when he went to find Eurydice: the tree whose bark contains salicin, which works as a pain-killer like aspirin.

I found the prison in a narrow street on a hill, about half an hour’s walk from the station.

I ordered a coffee and a sandwich in the nearest bar. I wasn’t sure what I would do when I faced him. How I knew it was him, I couldn’t explain to anybody. All the lab tests I’d gone through were one thing; my body had its own lab, and the results from this lab told me conclusively it was him. It was him and I wanted him to see me, me the one whose life he had ended. There’s no blemish on me yet, and so if he sees me now, he’ll know what he has done and he’ll know the enormity of it. Then I’m going to kill him.

In the prison, two women warders seize my handbag, frisk me and force me to turn round in circles. A dickie takes my papers.

The Cook’s blue eyes, his cropped hair, his knuckles have not changed. He’s thinner. The way he is sitting is twisted, and his feet are bigger than ever. I hate him. What does the bastard remember as he watches me approach? His smile is false.

The waves say Shooo! he says, and he nods towards the warder who is stationed on a chair, two metres away.

He wants to warn me not to talk in front of the screw. Talk about what?

You know why I’ve come to see you?

He says nothing.

I’ve come to kill you.

It’s so long ago …

Three years, I say.

I was coming to find you next day …

Once was enough! I tell him.

He lowers his head.

They nabbed me in the restaurant, he says eventually.

I’ve come to kill you. Do you understand?

You haven’t changed a bit, he said, you’re as dog as ever! And he smiles a true smile.

It’s terrible, this smile. It shows all the ravages done. He is not just thinner, he’s skeletal. I think of the soldiers in the train and our tunnel. At the end of his tunnel there is death and his train is almost there. There are marks on his face like burnt paper. I’ll be like this in one year, or two, or three, or four—the last figure is a lie, I’ll be like this soon, very soon.

I live in Italy and I’ve come a thousand kilometres to kill you.

He believes me. The screw is reading, bored.

I’m dying anyway, he whispers.

So am I! I tell him. At the age of twenty-four I’m dying, I’m like you!

When a small fear changes to a big one, the eyes dilate. This happens to his eyes now.

It can’t be, he whispers, his voice gone.

That’s what I said. I said it can’t be! And it is!

Jesus!

Five minutes pass without either of us saying a word. Our eyes go on a tour of one another, moving from exhibit to exhibit: wrists, collarbones, neck tendons, earlobes, hairline, eye pouches, nostril hair, chipped teeth, skull, chinbone. Then our eyes meet. I look into his blue eyes and he looks into mine.

Pardon me, he mumbles.

The same fucking words, I say to myself, the same words they use when they burp or fart or tread on your toe. So I scream as loud as I can.

I must have screamed very loud for the screw is at my elbow with a fist between my shoulder blades, propelling me out of the visitors’ room.

I think what I screamed was: We are ALL going to be pardoned! Do you hear me, Cook? Do you hear me, Screws? We are all going to be pardoned!

The road has been gravelled, so the signalman slows down.

Papa got off his bike and from his leather jacket he pulled out this box which had a ribbon round it. Inside were Les Coussins de Lyon. They were cushions but they were no bigger than the bowl of a coffee spoon! Their colour, a beautiful green with grains of silver in it, made me think of satin. And you could tell by their shape that the tiny cushions would have been as soft as pillows—if they had really been cushions! They weren’t, of course. They were too small and the silver was sugar and the green was mint and the fabric was marzipan. When you bit into one, your teeth went through the skin of marzipan and found truffle chocolate. What I didn’t eat that night when Papa came back from Grenoble, I took next day to school to share with Gyel and Jeanne and Annette, and we all agreed we’d only marry men who could promise us a constant supply of Les Coussins de Lyon!

There is the smell of tar coming off the road.

I have more old friends in the cemetery, Gino, than in the Paradiso Bar. It’s in the natural order of things that I end up there before you do, so long as you don’t fool around. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve handled a lot, Gino. Since your mother died we haven’t had a single argument, you and I. I don’t expect you to trade in my way—you
have your own. And I’m proud of you. But tonight, for once, I have something to say, so listen to me. STOP, GINO. Make a clean break. This is what I have to say. STOP. I don’t know the mina in question, I’ve never met her. She’s French, you said. They’re easily blown, the French. Fly-by-nights. Your mina may be the exception, she may be the best Long-term Lorry on the road, your mina may be as beautiful as Gina Lollobrigida, but she’s condemned. If she’s infected with this abomination, she’s condemned. Worse, she’s dangerous. It’s pitiful if you think about it. She falls in with a band of
cocaini
, they shoot up together, they share a needle, they share a trip, and now they share a death.
Povera pupa!
But this doesn’t stop her being dangerous, Gino. You trade your way, but she’s dangerous. At the drop of a handkerchief, she’ll pass the same filth on to you. Let her go, Gino. It sounds to me as if she is asking you to do the same thing. Agree with her. Let her go … STOP. Otherwise you’ll be in the cemetery first.

Jean Ferrero leaves the main road to go through the town of Casale Monferrato. The street he is taking with its double arcades is very narrow. Over the roofs and in the passages between the houses there is a faint acrid smell of wine. All the wine of the region is delivered and sold here. The arcades beside the road are as narrow as Ninon’s room in Zdena’s flat. On the banks of the Po stands a
château for the Dukes of Monferrato, where Cavour once stayed.