I looked at her, frightened, and she grinned crookedly.
Often, during my nightmares, I have felt an oppressive weight that keeps me from screaming, from calling for help, from running. The same thing often occurs to me in reality as well, and it happens when I can’t keep track of myself and my ghosts.
“Pick it up,” she said to me, nodding to the pen on the desk.
I didn’t move.
“I said pick it up!” Her narrow lips didn’t move, but I understood.
“What do I have to do?” I asked her, half frightened, half curious.
“You know what you’ve got to do. Don’t be an idiot and pick up that bloody pen — hurry up.”
I picked it up and held it as though holding the metal probe of a scientific instrument. I clutched it very tightly.
I went over to him. He was asleep, the sheets wrapped messily around him without covering him up. His lips were half open, his feminine eyelashes very, very long. He looked like a beautiful little girl.
His chest was bare, so I brought the tip of the pen to the skin, with the intention of tearing it. And then eating it and not digesting it.
I brought it a little closer and my eyes filled with tears. I pressed the pen against his chest, but I didn’t plunge it in. I let a drop of blood color his white, white skin.
I remembered a line from a song: “Maybe it’s not quite legal, but you look great covered in bruises.”
I woke him up to make love. To heal his wound.
And mine.
And the deeper he plunged, the more he healed me; the more he healed me, the more ashamed I grew, the more I longed for death, the more he said he was waiting for it.
When he made love to me, pressing me close, drowning his love and desperation inside my madness and desperation, I heard a Sicilian voice call, “Iettiti, Vora, iettiti”—“Blow, north wind, blow.” All my madness floated to the surface, stimulated by my echo. Not the kind of wind that cleans and refreshes but a wind that brings with it detritus and ancient breaths, ghosts, and memories.
Then I disappeared.
Then he disappeared.
Twenty-nine
I remember that in our sitting room was a grotto and in the grotto was a statue of the Madonna.
I remember that she was bleeding and that the child she held in her arms was bleeding, too.
I spoke to her and you came in from the other room to ask me who I was talking to.
I didn’t listen to you and went on talking in a language you didn’t know.
You had a word with Father Pasqualino and he told you to try to record my voice.
You did, but when you played it back the tape was blank.
Then you talked to Dad and he hit you and then he cried, admitting that that morning he himself had seen a man walking unperturbed through the kitchen.
You went to see Father Pasqualino again and he came the following afternoon to bless the house.
As we walked him to the gate I started running and shouting that there were dozens of snakes coming after me.
Then you took me to a psychologist and he told you that I was suffering from depression and hallucinations.
I was five years old and didn’t know those words.
You told me that depression was deep sadness and hallucination was deep euphoria.
When you told Dad what the doctor said, he hit you again and then he broke all the windows in the house.
I remember that in the years that followed, you brought me to your friends’ houses and made me walk through all the rooms, asking me which were inhabited by spirits and which were not.
I pointed to the corners of the house and then I fled.
Until the age of eight I often saw a shadow dashing past me but I could never make out what it was.
I went back to the psychologist and he sent me to a psychiatrist who told me to make my madness bear fruit as a way of freeing it.
I drew, but I couldn’t color anything in without going over the edges.
I bought a guitar, but I was afraid that the strings would cut my fingers.
I wrote and something inside me moved.
I wrote, I wrote, I wrote lots and lots, and then I became famous.
And the thing I had freed came back and invaded me.
Killing me.
Thirty
Once, you and I went for a walk in the country. I had a long stick to help myself climb steep slopes, and every now and then I cynically squashed any lizards that passed close by.
You were pregnant, and your belly was hard and swollen. I was worried that the lizards might hurt you; I was afraid that the whole world might hurt you. So I protected you with my little body and followed you everywhere you went.
We stopped to sit under a big magnolia with white flowers. I remember that the sap spilled from part of the trunk and I stuck my finger in; under the magnolia was a tiny pond in which we bathed our feet. It was spring and the world seemed like Eden.
Countless butterflies and dragonflies swirled suspended between heaven and earth; it was as though they wanted to keep us company but never found the courage to come too close.
“You see those?” you said, pointing to the dragonflies. “They can turn into women.”
“Women?” I asked you, fascinated.
“Yes, women. They come and get you at night in the form of insects and destroy your dreams, they put terrible spells on you, and they can even kill you…,” you said, opening your eyes wide.
“Why?” I cried excitedly.
“They’re women who pray against you. They kneel before a cross and loosen their hair and repeat magic phrases that no one knows.”
“Women on their knees…do you know these magic phrases?” I asked. I wanted to know them, too.
You shook your head and continued: “But I know magic phrases to chase away the ronni ri notti—the night women. They’re the women who turn themselves into dragonflies and fly at night…”
“Oh, yes.”
“The next morning, you know they’ve come because your hair is woven into tiny, almost invisible plaits that are impossible to undo.”
“Impossible?” Now I could only muster single words.
“Not impossible exactly…you have to spray your hair with oil and recite these phrases.” You took a deep breath and your huge belly swelled until it seemed about to burst. “Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday, Sunday the night women will lose their wings.”
I sat there with my mouth open and whispered. “Beautiful…”
“And remember: every time you see a dragonfly, kill it. If you let it live, it’s more likely that you will die.”
We went on splashing our feet in the water while I allowed myself to fill up with the fascination of your stories.
“I hoped you would come back soon,” I say to Thomas as I finish the last of the food from my empty, dirty plate.
“Sorry, I had problems at work,” he replies, embarrassed.
I’m embarrassed by lies and hypocrisy, they make me feel small and insignificant, they make me slide into the certainty that the other person thinks me stupid, inferior, untrustworthy. In this case, mad.
I summon my courage and say, “Please tell me — who’s Viola?”
“Who’s Viola?”
“Who’s Viola?” I repeat.
“Oh yeah, she’s the one who let me have the dog,” he says and points to the little mongrel crouched beside us, gazing up at us with those eyes that I’m seriously starting to love.
“Oh, I get it…and it was so important that you had to store her number on your phone?” I ask harshly.
He shrugs and says, “What’s so important about that?”
I leap to my feet and react violently. “What the hell do you mean, what does it matter? It’s fucking important, that’s what it is!”