A Silence Shared, page 6
Since I didn’t have a shirt on underneath, I slipped a sweater on over the voile nightgown, and took my spot in the bed after Ada, who had lain down in the middle. The bed was quite wide.
While we were rummaging through the nightgowns, Paolo had got undressed; now he was lying down facing the wall.
The acetylene flame was flickering out, placed outside the door so the room wouldn’t smell. There was nothing in the dark but a red glimmer at the bottom of the woodstove.
“How nice to have Giulia here,” Ada sighed; then she curled up, said, “Goodnight,” and she was already asleep.
A single fur blanket was spread on top of the bed. Soft, warm and light (another relic of old wealth), it had a fabulous name: vicuna.
The stove at the foot of the bed emitted heat, but the siege of the night and the cold was pressing up against the small windows. I lay motionless, the fur weighing lightly and pleasantly on my body, in the warmth and in the faint scent of that bed that wasn’t my own. “Their” bed. I was a bit perturbed, but happy, too. It had been easy: with Ada, everything was easy.
I must have dozed off with these thoughts in my head, because they were still there when something woke me.
Ada had sat up in the bed and was calling out, “Paolo!”
I could feel her climb over his body, saw her strike a match with trembling hands.
I was ashamed to be there, I felt like I was in the way, an intruder. Ada raised the light over Paolo. Paolo, propped up on his side, was pressing both hands against his heart.
“Camphor!” Ada said. Without putting down the lamp, she grabbed her robe off its nail, and moving the lamp from one hand to the other, slipped it on and was about to run off (to call for the Major, I’d find out later). But then she stopped and stood there suspended, seemingly frozen mid-sprint, struck by a sudden thought. Breathing heavily, she turned towards Paolo, then without saying anything, besides a “Sorry” directed at me, she lifted the curtain and was gone.
It took time to boil the needle, and first the stove had to be lit with twigs and brushwood in the freezing kitchen. (She told me, afterwards, how mean things and objects seemed in those moments as they all but fought against her.)
I waited in a state of shock; but Ada’s concern for me had also granted a sense of security, of tenderness.
When Ada, without making a sound, reappeared—pushing aside the curtain with her elbow, the lamp in one hand and the saucepan with the syringe in the other—I jumped out of the bed and went over to her; she handed me the lamp and quickly began to prepare everything.
When she approached Paolo, holding the loaded syringe high in the air, he stared up at her with an interrogative, frightened expression.
She said, “I’ll be able to do it. You’ll see.”
Exhausted, Paolo gave in and closed his eyes. Ada abruptly flung off the covers, furrowed her brow, planted the needle with excessive energy. “For his heart,” she said to me. But she went on staring at Paolo sullenly, until she could finally say: “There, he’s better now.”
Paolo’s breathing was becoming more relaxed. Ada slipped back into bed next to him, on the side near the wall. “It will be easier if I need to get up again,” she said. She had just enough time to add “Goodnight,” and she had fallen back asleep.
Lying with my eyes opened wide in the dark, I listened to her breathing, which was so different when she slept. I couldn’t make out Paolo’s. Instead I heard, a little later, his voice calling out to me softly.
“Giulia.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not tired?”
“No.”
“Were you scared?”
“A bit,” I replied, and a wave of warmth flooded through me; with Ada far away in sleep, I had started to feel alone.
“I was scared too, when I saw Ada with the needle. I couldn’t understand.”
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“Not that much. It was the first time, you know? I’ve always had the injections from the Major. He’s the only one around here who knows how. Ada must have thought that she couldn’t call for him, this time.”
I saw again Ada’s face in the lamplight, perplexed, wide-eyed, her quick glance in which flickered, even in that anxious moment, a hint of laughter.
“She doesn’t want to upset the Fantonis, doesn’t want to offend them. But most of all she didn’t want them to think badly of you.”
I opened my eyes to the snow’s milky light coming in through the small windows, and saw, as though my vision from the night before were repeating itself, Ada pushing open the curtain with her elbow. This time she wasn’t holding the lamp but a basket tray, with tea and slices of toasted bread (Paolo called it scorched bread).
Ada declared, “All’s well!”
She offered Paolo tea, which he turned down since it wasn’t sweetened. I nibbled on the bread, liking its bitter burnt taste.
Ada slipped off her robe, got back into bed, and rested the tray on her knees; she ate her bread for a while, taking little sips of her tea, defying Paolo’s teasing with a sense of gratitude for the things that supported her. She started filling us in: she had instructed Domenica not to bring Nani up to say good morning until she had gone back down and everything was in order.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Paolo asked.
“I’ll make the bed; that way it can seem like Giulia slept on the floor. The only one who comes in here is Domenica.”
Paolo looked sceptical. I didn’t feel embarrassed, but calm, completely under Ada’s protection. She had explained things, she said, to the Fantonis; the wife had been the one to bring it up.
“Last night I could have sworn I heard you.”
“Sure, you know how his heart gets. Last night was a bad one.”
“And you didn’t call Federico? Didn’t he need a shot?”
“I did it.”
“You?”
As Ada told us this I was already thinking, without even knowing why, that I had to leave—and while it was so nice to stay. Maybe it was a fear that I could ruin, by pushing further, the joy I had felt; most of all, it was the need to contemplate, to fully savour that gift, like a child who chooses to go and play all alone with a new present.
“I need to go now,” I said.
Surprised, Ada stopped for a second to think of any arguments she could make against my decision, and she tried out a few, until, as usual, her fear of insisting, of forcing others, won out.
“If you’ve made up your mind, so be it.”
I was annoyed with myself for running off, and yet it felt good to wind up on my own again—just myself and the road.
The road was stretched out like a dead man under the snow. And all around was a sense of amazement and, along with it, gratification, the kind felt by someone who has received an answer, the kind that rests on the face of the dead. The sky, still heavy with imminent snow, met the earth’s purity like murky chaos, negation, nothingness.
When I was on the bridge, and the town appeared black and white before me, I realized that another reason I had left so quickly was my concern that the cousins were worried about me. I knew that the whole thing must have been almost inconceivable to them.
XIX
Now that the piazza had become a snowy desert, on market days the stalls were lined up under the porticoes, turning them into crammed corridors or lanes swept by gusts of freezing air.
The market run by the farmers, once as merry as a fair, had been reduced to an offering of raw and oily brown wool and a few outdated, handcrafted agrarian tools.
I walked along, tossed about by the small crowd of locals who moved blindly like herds, eyes fixed and a bit dazed. A crowd made up of old people and women: younger men couldn’t risk coming down into town, since a few days earlier, “Muti’s men” had torn up the papers of a couple of dozen and then deported them.
I stalled among the slow shoves of the crowd as between the slow-moving flanks of cattle, in front of a stand displaying combs, compact mirrors, inexpensive necklaces.
I picked out a brooch shaped like a squirrel, pinned onto a thin piece of cardboard. They wrapped it for me in a piece of rumpled blue paper.
I pushed the wrapped pin down to the bottom of my coat pocket. The lining inside the pocket frequently came unstitched: as I walked, I checked multiple times with my hand that the gift was still there.
Once I arrived, while kicking my feet against a step to remove the snow, I took out the blue wrapping: it was empty, closed and flat like the shell of a dead insect. I stood there dismayed, but only for a second—the lining inside the pocket, which was uneven from all the times it had been resewn, had little cavities into which the squirrel had burrowed.
Nani was in the kitchen, sitting on her little stool by Domenica’s feet. Domenica was making dough for gnocchi, had mixed the potatoes and flour and was giving big whacks to the kneading tray. Now and then she tossed pieces of potato—the hardest ones which she couldn’t knead—into Nani’s lap, as if to a dog. Nani took them between two fingers and chewed on them methodically, her lips shut, her small body upright, in her usual dignified manner.
She blushed with joy as she took the brooch and showed it to Domenica, who then examined it, pursing her lips admiringly and giving vigorous nods of the head.
“How is he?” I asked her.
Domenica’s face expressed confusion, then concentration as intense as it was useless. “I have no idea,” she said finally.
Upstairs, I found Ada, who was wearing her “mean” face.
She had her back to the woodstove: it was the pose she often assumed when standing still. She warmed her back like this, and always ended up singeing her clothes, a fact that accentuated her peculiar air between aristocrat and gipsy, especially when she wore her orange voile robe lined with black velvet (an item inherited from Paolo’s mother). Paolo, who couldn’t stand untidiness, was always exhorting her—even during his episodes, through gestures—to move away from the fire.
Frowning, Ada was looking down at the floor so as to stand her ground; because Paolo, while slamming his head down onto the pillow, was groaning, “Ada, I’m begging you.” He now felt spasms of pain in his head, which made him gnash his teeth.
“We already did three today,” Ada said sullenly. She was referring to the injections. “I’m not giving you a fourth.”
“You’re right,” Paolo groaned; then he started appealing to her again: “Ada!”
I felt sorry for him, was nearly in pain myself just watching him. Ada seemed harsh to me. And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t help but admire how there was almost an art to Paolo’s tortured expression, an art whose aim was to mesmerize Ada.
When Paolo’s groaning had ceased, but his breaths had begun to come out choked by the onset of an asthma attack, Ada’s expression suddenly changed—from resistant to anxious, heedful. “Just a second!” she said, and feverishly set about preparing everything.
After the injection, Paolo became calm and started to doze off. Ada said to me:
“Please, spend the night here. Stay with me.”
With me: so then, Ada, too, could feel loneliness? I said yes, I would stay, and in the meantime I looked at her, perhaps searching for confirmation that I had understood correctly. But she was already making herself busy, closing the shutters, smiling; she had gone back to being light and active.
There was a soft knock at the door. It was Nani; she tiptoed into the room, as quiet as a mouse, directing her light-coloured, practically white eyes at “Signora Giulia” with shy complicity. She walked over to the bed to let her daddy take a good look at how pretty she was.
Paolo opened his eyes and noticed the new piece of jewellery on her sweater.
“It’s beautiful on you, Nani. But who in the world gave it to you?”
“Signora Giulia,” Nani replied, with her typical seriousness.
“You know, it’s really beautiful, Nani.”
“She’ll end up being a bit shallow like me,” Ada remarked conclusively.
XX
Ada and I were heading upstairs after finishing dinner. Paolo hadn’t come down to eat. Halfway up the stairs, Ada grabbed my hand and squeezed it convulsively, standing still to listen.
I heard, discordant but sweet, the hum of faint voices—the children saying their prayers—but right after, in the stairs’ crypt-like silence, there was also a grating sound, like something being filed down. And in the dark bedroom, while Ada lit the oil lamp with feverish hands, that asthmatic rattle became frightening, similar to the growl of a wild animal.
Now Paolo was lying in tensed agony, waiting for his breath to return. Like a fighter he arched his body to brace himself, wriggled free. It was a show of strength, a battle in which only one of the adversaries was visible.
The Major, having tiptoed in, was probing the situation with his kind and round eyes, which were full of fear, or perhaps only surprise.
Paolo, rendered mute by his asthma, seemed oddly expressive, desperate to persuade, like someone gagged and bound who wants to convince the others of some danger they don’t see, of the urgent need to be afraid and to flee—while they, unable to understand, remain equally mute and motionless.
But Paolo’s eye—the look buried deep in his eyes—was still averse to any kind of entreaty, only distant and sad.
These moments of tension, while we waited for his breath to push its way through, became unbearable. Ada and I were twisting our hands in knots; the Major counted on his wristwatch the seconds as they passed.
All of a sudden, without even changing expression—only his dishevelled mane gave him a bit of a wild air—Paolo abruptly threw off the blankets, pulled off his pajama top and his wool undershirt, and in two hops was at the window, flinging it open and trying to find some air.
Ada was quick to act: she—with the Major’s help—threw the fur blanket onto him. Paolo collapsed into a chair; he looked around, disoriented yet grandiose (like a mad old king) while his uneven, laboured breath eased back into his exhausted chest.
The Major, who had timed everything, perked up, commenting on the attack’s record time. Even though she knew he had good intentions, that apparent technical interest of his, that sports fan’s enthusiasm, seemed hilarious to Ada who, still wired after all the tension, had turned cheerful (as they say happens in battle, between rounds of fire).
“So you’ve enjoyed yourselves?” Paolo said in a whisper as he saw her laughing, though already he was looking to join in the joke.
“You put on quite the show,” Ada said. “I’d say Giulia won’t have any reason to regret staying over.” And meanwhile she caressed him with her big and long maternal hands, tidying his messy hair. But Paolo wasn’t wild about being touched, not even by her, and he had her give him a comb.
“Good thing you can at least have fun at my expense,” he said, and I could see that he was relieved, serene.
“But you did give us a scare—when you opened the window.”
“Were you afraid I wanted to jump?”
“I was afraid you’d catch pneumonia.”
There was a sound: a thumping knock at the door. “Domenica?” It had to be her.
“Nani is scared of dying,” Domenica announced, not with her characteristic alarmist tone, with which she would have stated that the stove wasn’t lighting, but placidly, as though it were obvious.
“I’m coming,” Ada replied with the same tone of voice, though she did heave a sigh, as if to say: that’s all we needed now.
Paolo, as he often did when Domenica entered the room, had closed his eyes. He opened them when we were alone, and smiled at me.
“Come to bed in the meantime,” and he closed his eyes again.
I took one of the fanciful nightgowns from the drawer, got undressed quickly, and sat down on the bed. Paolo was quiet. The curtain opened and Ada shouted as she walked in:
“Giulia, you have no idea how good that looks on you. You’re breathtaking.”
Paolo came back to life with a start. He didn’t look at me, but at Ada: she could still surprise him.
“Come, look at yourself in the mirror.” Ada took me by the hand, led me in front of the mirror resting on top of the commode, and raised the light in her hand up to my face. Our images emerged on the surface of the old, murky mirror, vague and enchanted like in the water of a pond.
“What about Nani?” Paolo asked.
“The usual. She was afraid she’d die.”
“Has she calmed down now?”
“Oh yes.”
“But how do you manage to console her?” I asked.
“I promise her that she won’t die tonight.”
“And what does she say to that?”
“She makes me repeat it a thousand times. Then when it seems like she has already relaxed and I’m about to go, she calls me back and says slowly, emphasizing each word the way she does: ‘But-I’m-still, still-afraid-of-dying.’”
“She shouldn’t stay downstairs,” Paolo said, concerned.
“She’s perfectly fine downstairs. She was afraid of dying when she slept in here, too. Dying—her! How silly.”
And Ada laughed. I thought that in this case—and it was all for the best—Ada was truly lacking in imagination.
Ada took her spot in the bed. Paolo asked her pleadingly, “Couldn’t we leave the light on just for a little while?”
“There’s probably not much oil left. But it doesn’t matter, we’ll find some more.”
“Okay, put it out then,” Paolo sighed.
“No, no. I’ll get the Fantonis to give me some.”
“You know perfectly well they won’t. Besides, I don’t think they have any extra either.”
“They do, I’m sure they do. And if they don’t give it to me, I’ll take just a little.”
I didn’t say anything, only looked at her, stunned.
“You didn’t think I would?” Ada said.
“In town people point you out, even fear you, for being two raging moralists.”
