“This goes in vertically,” he said, “this horizontally.”
I looked at him in puzzlement and he added:
“Be careful, you can ruin the mechanism.”
With renewed impudence he philosophized:
“Locks become habituated. They have to recognize the hand of their master.”
He tried first one key, then the other, and it seemed to me that even he had to force them a little. I asked to try myself. I locked and then unlocked both locks with a firm motion, easily. The younger man said with exaggerated languor:
“The signora has a nice sure hand.”
I paid them and they left. I closed the door behind them and leaned against it, feeling the long, living vibrations of the panels until they died away and everything was calm again.
14
In the beginning there were no difficulties with the keys. They slid into the locks, they turned with decisive clicks, I got into the habit of locking myself in when I came home, day or night, I didn’t want any more surprises. But soon the door became the least of my worries; I had so many things to take care of, I put reminders everywhere: remember to do this, remember to do that. So I was distracted, and began to get confused: I used the key for the top lock in the bottom and vice versa. I forced, I persisted, I got angry. I arrived loaded with shopping bags, I took out the keys and got them wrong, again and again. Then I forced myself to concentrate. I stopped, I took deep breaths.
Pay attention, I said to myself. And very slowly and carefully I chose the key, carefully chose the lock, held both in my mind until the clicks of the mechanism announced that I had succeeded, it was the correct operation.
But I felt that things were taking a turn for the worse, and I was frightened. Having to stay alert in order to avoid mistakes and confront dangers had exhausted me to the point where sometimes simply the urgency of doing something made me think that I really had done it. The gas, for example, was an old anxiety. I was certain that I had turned off the flame under a pot — remember, remember to turn off the gas! — and yet no, I had cooked the meal, set the table, cleared the table, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and the blue flame had remained discreetly lighted, shining all night like a crown of fire on the metal of the stove, a sign of lunacy; I found it in the morning when I went into the kitchen to make breakfast.
Ah the head: I could no longer trust it. Mario expanded, he cancelled out everything that was not his figure, a boy, a man, as he had grown before my eyes over the years, in my arms, in the warmth of my kisses. I thought only of him, of how it happened that he had stopped loving me, of the necessity that he should give me back that love, he couldn’t leave me like this. I made a list for myself of everything he owed me. I had helped him prepare for his university exams, I had gone with him when he didn’t have the courage to appear, urging him through the noisy streets of Fuorigrotta, his heart splitting his chest, I could hear it beating, amid the din of students from city and province, his face going pale as I encouraged him along the corridors of the university. I had stayed awake night after night making him repeat the abstruse material of his studies. I had taken away my own time and added it to his to make him more powerful. I had put aside my own aspirations to go along with his. At every crisis of despair I had set aside my own crises to comfort him. I had disappeared into his minutes, into his hours, so that he could concentrate. I had taken care of the house, I had taken care of the meals, I had taken care of the children, I had taken care of all the boring details of everyday life, while he stubbornly climbed the ladder up from our unprivileged beginnings. And now, now he had left me, carrying off, abruptly, all that time, all that energy, all that effort I had given him, to enjoy its fruits with someone else, a stranger who had not lifted a finger to bear him and rear him and make him become what he had become. It seemed to me an action so unjust, a behavior so offensive, that I couldn’t believe it, and sometimes I thought his mind had been obscured, he had lost the memory of us, was helpless and at risk, and it seemed to me that I loved him as I had never loved him, with anxiety rather than with passion, and I thought he had a pressing need for me.
But I didn’t know where to find him. Lea Farraco eventually denied that she had ever mentioned to me Largo Brescia as the probable place of his new abode, she said I hadn’t understood, it wasn’t possible, Mario would never live in that neighborhood. This annoyed me, I felt mocked. I quarreled with her again. I heard rumors of my husband: he was again abroad, perhaps traveling with his whore. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed impossible that he could so easily have forgotten me and his children, disappearing for months, not giving a damn about Gianni and Ilaria’s vacation, placing his own well-being ahead of theirs. What sort of man was he? With what sort of individual had I lived for fifteen years?
It was summer by now, the schools were closed, I didn’t know what to do with the children. I dragged them around through the city, in the heat, petulant, willful, ready to blame me for everything, for the heat, for staying in the city, for no beach, no mountains. Ilaria, assuming a look of suffering, repeated, in singsong:
“I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s enough!” I often shouted, at home, on the street. “I said that’s enough!” I made a gesture of wanting to slap them, I lifted my arm, I seriously felt like it and restrained myself with an effort.
But they wouldn’t calm down. Ilaria wanted to taste all hundred and ten flavors promised by a gelato maker under the portico of Via Cernaia. I tugged at her and she dug in her heels, pulling me toward the entrance of the shop. Suddenly Gianni left me and ran across the street by himself, amid honking horns, followed by my cries of apprehension; he wanted to see, yet again, the monument to Pietro Micca, whose story Mario had told him in every detail. I couldn’t contain them in the city that was emptying, and raising hot foggy breezes or oppressive humidity from the hills, the river, the pavement.
Once we quarreled right there, in the gardens in front of the Artillery Museum, under the dirty-green statue of Pietro Micca, with the big sword and the fuse. I knew almost nothing about those murdered heroes, fire, and blood.
“You don’t know how to tell a story,” the child said to me, “you don’t remember anything.”
I retorted:
“Then ask your father.”
And I began to shout that, if in their opinion I was no good, they should go to him, there was a new mother, beautiful and smart, certainly from Turin, I would bet she knew everything about Pietro Micca and that city of kings and princesses, of haughty people, cold people, metal automatons. I screamed and screamed, out of control. Gianni and Ilaria loved the city, the boy knew its streets and its legends, his father often let him play near the monument at the end of Via Meucci, there was a statue that they both liked: what nonsense, memorials of kings and generals on the streets, Gianni dreamed of being like Ferdinand of Savoy at the battle of Novara, when he jumps down from his dying horse, saber in hand, ready to fight. Ah yes, I wished to wound them, my children, I wished to wound above all the boy, who already had a Piedmontese accent, Mario, too, spoke like a Turinese now, he had eliminated the Neapolitan cadences utterly. Gianni acted like an impudent young bull, I detested it, he was growing up foolish and presumptuous and aggressive, eager to shed his own blood or that of others in some uncivilized conflict, I couldn’t bear it anymore.
I left them in the gardens, beside the fountain, and set out quickly along Via Galileo Ferraris, toward the suspended figure of Victor Emmanuel II, a shadow at the end of parallel lines of buildings, high up against a slice of warm cloudy sky. Maybe I really wanted to abandon them forever, forget about them, so that when Mario finally showed up again I could strike my forehead and exclaim: your children? I don’t know. I seem to have lost them: the last time I saw them was a month ago, in the gardens of the Cittadella.