Lavabo
I was driving and listening to the radio and I noticed that the traffic reports that day were full of objects on the roads. The sun shone sharply the whole way, and a light wind was blowing. Every few minutes, the announcer reported that somewhere around the tenth kilometer there was an object that the wind wouldn’t blow away, or that in some left-hand lane there was an unknown object of larger dimensions. And drivers phoning in to the broadcast excitedly reported packages of unclear origin, described “something like a blanket,” a washing machine in the middle of the highway that couldn’t be seen in the snow shower, and “something like a wrapped-up armchair,” where one needed to slow down, be careful, and drive at a crawl. By the time I turned off toward the town of M., which I had still not even glimpsed through the sun’s unrelenting glare, I already had a whole list of unknown large objects on the roadways.
And perhaps because I had spent the whole way expecting an unknown object of larger dimensions to appear on my road too, I began to search for such objects in the spring landscape which — after I had left the highway and was drawing closer to the town — surrounded me. They lay scattered everywhere. The countryside was penetrable, and the sun exposed it even more; it surrounded me as if opened twice over, and in the empty, bright space between the branches and trunks of trees, in the fields and vineyards literally breathing the open air, I saw the torsos of slaughtered large animals, both wild and domestic, and the dead bodies of men and women, wrapped in tarps and plastic sheets or half-unwrapped from colored tarpaulins and voluminous, colorful sacks. The large soft bundles gleamed like set-out mirrors scattered across the landscape, and the corners and frayed edges of the fabric, plastic sheeting, and loose straps with which they had originally been tied fluttered and shimmered in the air. Wrapped bodies even lay in the transparent suburban gardens I passed as I entered M., only somewhat smaller and carefully and tightly bound along their entire length and width.
The matter that had brought me to the town was settled in fifteen minutes, perhaps even ten. Although this marked the final resolution of that terrible ordeal I had been living through for the past two years, I felt neither agitation nor relief. I left the office just as I had entered it, determined and ready to head back. And that is exactly what would have happened, had I not noticed, on my way to the car parked in the square, the open church door with a sign hanging on it that read, “Please close the door; pigeons are flying into the church.” I liked the message; it sounded like a kind invitation to me. I sensed that whoever wrote it thought kindly of both the church and the pigeons. If they had wanted to belittle the pigeons, they would not have used the word “fly in,” it seemed to me. But I did not want to go inside; I only grabbed the handle to close it.
But for a moment, just as the door was about to close, I caught sight of a strange, large object that made me open it again. In that first instant, I could only make out that there was something out of place inside, and that fleeting impression immediately took shape in my mind as the words “the white trunk of an old linden tree.” A “white trunk of an old linden tree” is growing in the middle of the church! But the mystery was revealed as soon as I got my bearings in the dim light of the church, which I had entered from a sun-bathed street. Before me stood what appeared to be a statue wrapped in crumpled white paper, secured with plastic tape. Or perhaps some church furnishing they had not had time to unwrap?
I walked several times around the object, which the wind wouldn’t blow away, and after a moment’s hesitation, I tore open the paper at the top to see what was inside. A slit was not enough; I had to keep going, penetrate several layers of paper and tear open a fairly large hole. The package concealed a marble holy water font shaped like a scallop shell. I couldn’t see it clearly; I just felt the smooth spots between the ribs. It occurred to me that a holy water font does not usually have a base; after all, it is typically mounted on a wall or a pillar. I thought of a stone basin on a pedestal and the word “baptismal font.” Or perhaps it was a sink in which the priest washes his hands before or during Mass.
I wanted to see it up close, so I carefully stuck my head into the opening and slid in a little deeper. I held the cold shell with both hands, then stroked it and finally saw its outer surface up close, smooth as ash-colored wax or the muscle of raw chicken meat. The inside of the shell, filled with water, was different—rough, unpolished, and the raised ribs inside it faithfully resembled old bones. I leaned in even further, until my entire upper body was inside the paper case — and there, in that darkness, which the marble shell quietly illuminated, I washed my hands up to my elbows and my face.
*
Christmas Turkey
Yesterday he was afraid all day, and so he swallowed cutlery.
Was it because of the light of the ending year, which dies already at five in the afternoon — he lied to himself, to comfort himself — that only when he swallowed cutlery did he fear almost nothing? When he swallows silver cutlery, he does not look forward to anything either — but he has not been able to tell the difference for some time now. When he does not swallow cutlery, he is even afraid that guests will ring the doorbell at five o’clock and stay for dinner, that he has a phone call with a colleague ahead of him, or even of a matter as trivial as having to leave home to pick up the glass from the basement window that the wind broke, negotiate a price, and pay for the work. If he felt the guests, the phone call, or the conversation with the glazier were merely a nuisance or simply a distraction, he wouldn’t say he was afraid. But that is the exact description of what he is experiencing. Yes, it’s unpleasant; yes, absolutely everything distracts him, and then it takes him exactly as long to pull himself together as it does for a new dark event to appear on the horizon—but above all, he feels a terrible, unfounded fear that nothing can relieve, except for the cutlery.
It all started sometime in autumn, in September.
The end of the year makes everything worse, and the silver cutlery keeps multiplying. Those horrible family holidays and celebrations that loom over him, and—for no sensible reason, he thought—have to happen during the darkest days of the year.
A year ago around this time, he felt more or less okay, and it’s clear that last Christmas was what broke him. After that, it was only a matter of time. In the spring, he started drinking gallons of sweet lemonade, and everything pointed to him having diabetes. But even repeated blood tests confirmed nothing, and the final diagnosis was psychogenic thirst. When—after a brief period of ordering children’s cough syrup by the case—he progressed to swallowing cutlery, he didn’t go to the doctor. He is able to diagnose his psychogenic craving for cutlery on his own.
As soon as he remembers last year’s Christmas lunch, he immediately has to go to the sideboard.
Everything had been progressing peacefully at first. His daughters — the eldest with her boyfriend — were chatting with his mother in the dining room at the laid table, his wife was keeping to the kitchen, and he made sure his mother’s remarks didn’t reach the kitchen—remarks about how lunch was being served late, how her girlfriends, who had long since finished eating, would soon start calling, and so it would be better not to pick up the phone because she had absolutely no idea how she would explain to them that she was having lunch at a time when normal people were having dinner. He was careful to ensure that the fact that his wife was simply hiding from his mother while preparing the festive lunch didn’t reach the dining room from the kitchen. The long table was lavishly decorated and so full of glassware and lit candles that the dining room glowed with opulent splendor. In the window overlooking the garden, whose lower edge began at table level, gray wet snow was falling, as if flaking away. And it seemed to him that the dazzle of the Christmas table was reflected on him too, and that the scene in the window was not gloomy in the least.
Just then, the dining room door swung open and his wife brought in a turkey on a silver platter. His daughters shot up from the table and ran to the kitchen for the side dishes. They were back in a flash, and the festive lunch was laid out before his mother. At that moment—how could he have thought it wouldn’t happen this year!—his mother transformed into the actress-mother. She stood up, hiked up her skirt, revealing a sturdy thigh with a bruise beneath her panties, in which a festering gash gaped, and declared that this was the last Christmas she would be here with them. She added that she had been waiting all Christmas Day to show them this. And while everyone sat motionless and averted their eyes, the actress-mother let her skirt fall back into place and, into the silence, launched into the carol We Bring You Tidings. In the middle of the carol, she burst into tears. And he, her son, instantly transformed into the actor-son and began to perform, joking that her bruise was the same color as the skin of the Christmas turkey on the table. His mother—with a handkerchief pressed to her face, but cheerfully—replied that he was—which was absolutely undeniable—just like his father, that rascal. And she began to reminisce loudly about how beautiful Christmas used to be when he was little.
Even his wife, who was sitting with her head bowed, was now playing her role — because if she were not playing it, she would at that very moment have smashed her plate on the floor and left the dining room forever. She didn’t do that—after all these years.
Out of embarrassment, the youngest daughter took over the serving. She clumsily pried off a piece of turkey breast and carried it to his mother’s plate. But she rebuffed her, saying she wouldn’t eat that dried-out scrap. Flustered, the daughter jerked the serving toward the neighboring plate, spilling brown fat over the festive tablecloth. The piece of meat, with its skin peeling away, fell into a full glass. Someone sucked in a breath. His wife rose from her chair, but that was all. The youngest daughter burst into tears. Her sisters began circling above the turkey with their cutlery to offer his mother a juicier piece. But the actress-mother did not wait; she plunged several fingers into the grease beneath the turkey, turned it slightly, looked at him, and declared angrily:
“You know very well what I like.”
The actor-son played along, turning everything into a joke, and made a special point of jesting about the most prized part of the Christmas turkey, which had a long tradition in the family. As he did so, he glanced uneasily at his wife, who was once again sitting with her head bowed, and he tried to stroke the hair of his sobbing daughter, who pulled away.
In short, he had so much work to do that his mother’s plate remained empty.
His mother looked at him and raged.
But Christmas lunch eventually continued — thanks to his daughter’s boyfriend, who stood up, briskly turned the turkey, cut off a large piece of the lower meat, and placed it on his mother’s plate. His mother thanked him, stiffened, and, with her eyes fixed on the turkey, began to eat.
All the drawn cutlery returned to its place.
And perhaps it was because it was already getting dark outside the window and the candles on the table had burned down to half their length, their flames blazing a thick yellow; maybe it was the thick light, glittering on the cut-glass dishes, and its contrast with the falling darkness that caused the strangest light he had ever seen to fall suddenly upon the dinner table and all those sitting around it.
His daughters and the eldest daughter’s boyfriend were faintly illuminated in it, while his mother, his wife, and he found themselves in deep darkness, in shadows cast by no one.
He sat in his chair, not moving for fear of bumping into something, and strained his eyes in vain to make out the spot where his plate, his napkin, and his glass with its unfinished aperitif had once been.
*
Last Breakfast at Bagno Classe
… two magnificent black-maned male lions. As we approach them, I suddenly find myself unable to concentrate. Instead, I watch my guides…
Jan Baltus, Elephant Tears
I walked slowly, looking closely. Walking in the still-cool sand, which the sun had already begun to warm, was exhilarating. It seemed to me that distances were growing, human voices were fading and growing faint. When I imagined myself during this walk in that sand, still cool, already warming — how someone might be watching me right now, or how I would later recall this moment; I do this often — I did not see a photograph of the seashore, the waking beaches, the morning surface of the water, and myself in front of it all. I saw a drawing, a simple and meticulous pen-and-ink sketch of myself, walking and looking around—just me, without any distracting surroundings or background. I was alone.
In the distance, two helicopters were droning over the sea.
Sometimes I do not know where to look first, and so it happens that one of my angels has to tug at my sleeve so that I do not miss something. This time I nearly missed a large crab, which was occasionally turned over by gentle waves. It rolled over gradually, segment by segment, delicately connected; it resembled a string of beads strung on an invisible thread. Its thick white claws were covered on top with greenish dots and spots and resembled small trout. At one moment—when a stronger wave turned it over more quickly and it suddenly found itself on its back, stretching toward the sun as if with delight and complete surrender—it looked like the underside of a skull. As I stood over the dead crab, I remembered the lines of a German poet who compared the brightening sand behind a retreating wave to a small dawn. Then I continued on my way. But before I reached the beach bar to have breakfast there as I did every morning, another guide passed over me like a breeze and tapped me on the shoulder, and when I looked up at him, the angel pointed to the marsh that lay beyond the beach, beyond the grass-covered dunes. I was not surprised in the least – I was actually planning on going out there, putting off breakfast and stretching out my last day on the lido. But I would have forgotten.
The network of marshy pools that abound in the Po Delta—and where, I had always imagined, crocodiles surely ought to live—has shrunk beyond recognition in recent years. The sand dunes are swallowing up the delta at an ever-increasing pace. The wilderness full of deep, dark-green water and plants, from which flocks of birds used to take flight—which I saw years ago—now looked like a gray courtyard where a single old heron stands for endless hours, and above which several annoyingly screeching black-winged stilts flutter like pitifully ragged white laundry. As though it had stopped in the sky forever, the sun beat down on the cracked mud.
In the distance, a helicopter was droning over the sea.
The bar at Bagno Classe was waking up like any other day; the owner was writing today’s specials on the board, and the handsome bartender, the owner’s son, was heating mugs with steam. One waitress was setting out the last chairs in the uncovered section of the bar, while another—surely a seasonal worker, I’d never seen her there before—was arranging pastries and filled panini in the glass display case. The first customers were arriving. Everything as usual. But today, every little thing seemed like a sign to me.
“Caffè, signore?” the bartender greeted me. I knew his name was Claudio.
I gathered my courage, shook my head, and asked for a Negroni.
Amused rather than surprised, the bartender looked up.
“It’s none of my business, sir, but isn’t it a little early?”
I thought I detected a hint of friendly familiarity in his question.
Maybe he knows my name too, I thought. What complete nonsense! I’m just sad, that’s why I’m having these thoughts—that’s all.
“I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. And it doesn’t look like I’ll be coming back,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, and watched as Claudio, with flamboyant gestures, noisily fished a bottle of Campari and a bottle of vermouth from the glass shelf at once, brandishing them both above his head, and with a third and fourth hand rattling the ice drawer for the whole bar to hear. As he did so, he winked at me, and by some magic, a thick, polished glass appeared on the bar. All of it was a sign that the last Negroni he would make me for breakfast this time would be worth it!
I smiled, waited a moment, and then sat down farther from the bar, toward the beaches, so I could have a view. In the distance, two helicopters droned over the sea, their cabins burning in the rapidly rising sun. More and more people came onto the beach and, joyfully, with loud, playful remarks, looking forward to a long, hot day, spread out their lounge chairs and mats. At the water’s edge, children bent over the sand; beside them—already a bit hesitantly, because it was getting late for them—stood those who had just gone for a walk before breakfast. And further out on the water, the first swimmers appeared—and in an instant, they burst into flame. I heard laughter, which drew more laughter, which drew even more. I looked back and saw that at the Bagno Classe bar, a short line had formed—what a surprise!—in front of the handsomest and fastest bartender on the coast. So many arrivals were looking forward to coffee, to the sea and its sizzling beach, to the blazing sun in the sky! Not far from me in the children’s corner a father – I do not think he was Italian – set a boy on the swing and pushed it. The ancient iron swing intersected with the sun’s rays at regular intervals, and each time, for a fraction of a second, the whole thing—child and all—vanished into a blaze. I listened to its monotonous creaking, and it seemed to me that it resembled the cry of a stilt. The difference lay solely in the relentless sameness of that call, composed of several phases. I am the one standing on the beach by the frame, as rusty as the chain and the seat, setting in motion the stilt’s screeching signal, the warning and contented calls of the herons and night herons in the delta, and the entire pine coast, like a child. Like a son. My son is barefoot; his sandals have slipped one after the other into the sand. Captivated, he speeds up the swing’s motion, and his small feet, each time the swing carries them to me, strike me lightly on the wrist, on the chest. It does not hurt, but I feel that he is doing what he can, that this is the strongest blow he is capable of. He cannot kick me so that it truly hurts, but his will has great power. In exactly this way, even now, this place and everything that belongs to it is already knocking against me.
The distances grew, and human voices receded and grew faint. Far out over the sea, two helicopters were burning, and beneath them the offshore drilling platform and the coastal forest. Everything was burning, and the sea breeze was unpredictable. I heard its breath among the flames. My heart hurt. I will never be well. Already I miss it terribly, but not the individual things at all — I miss the way things flow into one another beneath this absolute, exhausting, beautiful sun, the feeling of freedom that comes from the sea, and the flamingos flying from dreams into the air quivering with heat, without noticing the change.
Everything will burn, and the dust will rise and fall back down again. Only strange, gentle kicks will remain, a little like the beating of a heart — and forever after, from time to time, they will return with a pang of longing.
Translated by Nathan Fields