History (106 page)

Useppe was all sweating and breathless, but gripped by such anima tion that this time, despite his load, he preceded Bella towards the room. Immediately, at the fi knocks on the door, Davide was heard inside, exclaiming: "Who is it?!" in a hoarse and threatening voice, almost fright ened. "It's us!" Useppe was quick to reply. But to this, there was no answer, except a kind of feverish grumble, so hollow and uncertain Useppe wasn't sure he had really heard it.

"It's me! Useppe! Useppe and Bella!"No answer. Useppe ventured another little knock.

"Vvavide . . . ? you asleep? \Ve came . . . the appointment
"Who is it?! who is it?! who is it?!!!"

"It's us, Vavide . . . We brought you the wine . . .
"

This time from the little room a kind of exclamation was heard, confused, interrupted by a spasm of coughing. Davide, perhaps, was very sick . . . leaving the fl of wine in front of the door, Useppe went around to the window, followed by Bella, who was panting with the heat, her head down

"Vvavide . . . ? you asleep? We came . . . the appointment . . ."

From inside a movement was heard and a clatter of objects upset in passing. The window was flung open. Behind the grille Davide appeared, an unrecogniza sight. He was grim, distraught, his hair over his eyes, his face livid, pallid, with red patches at the cheekbones. He gave Useppe a lusterless glance, in a blind fury, and shouted at him with a brutal voice, alien, absolutely transfi :

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"Clear out, you ugly fool, you and your lousy dog!"

Useppe heard no more. The window had been closed again. Certainly, at that moment, the earth didn't tremble; but Useppe had exactly the same sensation as if an earthquake had been released from the center of the universe. The
ugly-but-good
cakes dropped from his fi and began to spin around him, in a cyclone of black dust, along wi the rubbish, the col lapsed fences, and the walls, in a thunder of barks that pursued one an other endlessly. A moment later he started running, seeking escape along the path home. "Careful!" Bella pleaded with him, galloping at his side, dragging her leash, "wait before crossing! Can't you see the tram? A truck's coming!! Watch out! There are beams here! You'll run into a wall there . . ." Reaching the top of the stairs at home, the little boy was drip ping from head to foot, as if he had stepped from a fl stream; and un able to pull himself up to the doorbell, he began to whine and call : "Hey, rn . . . rn .
. .
" with a voice so faint it resembled a whimper. Bella came to his aid, emitting loud summonses; and when Ida rushed to the door in alarm, Useppe took refuge against her breast, still lamenting: "Ma . . . rn
.
.
.
" but without giving her any explanati unable to fi an answer to her anxious questions. He avoided looking over his shoulder, and his uneasy and dazed eyes saw nothing. At her caresses, however, he was somewhat reassured, and Ida preferred not to insist with too many questions. For a good part of the aftern the child clung to her skirts, starting if there was a louder noise from the street or the court yards. Finally, with extreme gentleness, Ida asked him once more the cause of his fright, and he fi mumbled some convulsive excuses about a certain truck "that big" that ran over a little boy, and "catches fi and some water, "big and black"; but then all at once he blurted angrily: "You know, rn .
.
. you know . . ." and he hit her with his fi bursting into tormented sobs.

Around fi the western breeze brought some relief. Useppe had huddled on the kitchen fl against Bella, and Ida heard him laugh be cause the dog was tickling his ears and neck with her tongue. The sound of his familiar little laughs considerably alleviated Ida's anxiety; but this eve ning was unlike the other, usual evenings of this fi weather, when Useppe would come back from his great excursions with Bella, fi with hunger and chatter, boasting of his famous
forest
down on the river, and certain friends of his . . . This evening he said nothing, alienated or stupefi and every now and then he turned his eyes from his mother to Bella, as if seeking help or asking forgiveness for some unknown shameful deed . . . With eff feeding him like a little baby, Ida managed to make him swallow some crackers soaked in milk. But all of a sudden, with a furious gesture, he overturned the bowl of food on the table.

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With the darkness, the sultry heat had return During the night, Useppe had an attack. \Vaked by some faint footsteps in the room, Ida found the bed beside her empty, and in the light of the lamp she saw the child walking, spellbound and aghast, towards the wall. A moment before his cry, Bella ( whom Ida, in her old domestic prejudices, sometimes ban ished from the room for the night) burst in, almost breaking down the door with the weight of her body. And as if crazed she started licking Useppe's naked little legs, stretched out, motionless, after the convulsion. This time the attack lasted much longer than usual. Several minutes went by (and it is known that every fraction of time, in certain instances, is stretched to immeasurable enormities ), before the little, celestial smile of his return opened in Useppe's face. And the sleep, which always followed his fi this time also lasted longer than the norm. Except for some brief intervals, Useppe slept through the remaining night of that ferocious Monday and also the following day and night, until Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, over at the Portuense, David Segre's destiny was fulfi

In reality, when Useppe had seen him appear at the window on Mon day aftern Davide, you might say, had already entered his death-agony. Now, in fact, his presumed
ordeal
was about to conclude in fi shameful surrender. Towards evening, somebody heard moans in the room, but paid little attention, because it was no novelty to hear that sullen boy in there shouting curses or maybe laughing, even when he was alone. The fi suspi cions began the next morn when it was noticed that the light, inside, had remained burning, and that he didn't answer anyone's call, while a fl of wine, undoubtedly his property, was still on the ground outside the closed door, where it had already been remarked yesterday ( indeed, a kid of the local gang had considered taking it, but had been restrained by fright, since Davide, among his neighbors there, was deemed a tough char acter ). After a while, the landlady's son was led to force the lock of the window with a crowbar, from outside: an easy task. And then, when the curtain was pushed aside, Davide could be seen sleeping on the bed, hug ging a pillow, and half-sprawled in a defenseless position, which strangely made him seem more fragile, and even physically smaller. His face was invisible. And when, after they called him, he gave no answer, they decided to break open the door.

He was still breathing, though imperceptibly, when they found him. But as soon as they tried to raise him up, he emitted a little childish sigh, almost tender, and his breathing stopped.

He had obviously been killed by an
overdose;
but perhaps in injecting it, his desire had not been actually to die. The boy had suffered too much fear and too much cold; and he wanted only some sleep, to heal him. A deep, deep sleep beneath the lowest threshold of the cold and the fear and

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of every remorse or shame, like a hedgehog's hibernation or a baby's pre natal slumber inside its mother's womb . . . Beyond such a wish for sleep there may also have been a wish to wake up again, perhaps later. But waking, in these cases, is a matter of chance and whim : a hypothetical, stellar point which meanwhile in perspective moves away from the earth in a distance of light-centuries . . .

My opinion would be that Davide Segre, by nature, loved life too much to rid himself of it knowingly from one day to the next. In any case, he "left no explanation of his act."

8

Of this fi enterprise of Davide's, neither Useppe, nor Ida, nor Bella ever had any word. After waking from his Monday-night attack, Useppe, as usual in these cases, never mentioned Davide's name again (except perhaps once to Bella? ) and Ida respected

that silence, though she had no idea of its motive. She didn't even notice that the famous flask of wine, formerly kept in reserve for the great Davide, had disappeared at that time from the cupboard.

After the severe heat of the previous days, the sky had clouded over, and from Wednesday to Sunday the weather remained grim and rainy; but Useppe, for that matter, showed no desire to go out. After this last attack, he no longer seemed the same. Even his eyes were clouded, behind a sort of mist that seemed to be all wrapped around him, confusing time and space for him : so he called tomorrow
yesterday,
and vice versa, and he wandered around the house's little rooms as if he were crossing a great plain without walls, or were walking on water. Perhaps, at least in part, these were the consequences of the Gardena] that Ida, during the past few days, had secretly resumed giving him. For some months, in fact, Useppe, who in the past had been so docile about medicines, had begun to reject them furiously, and Ida had to use treachery to make him swallow them, dis guised and mixed with sweets and with nice drinks. But every time, she felt that with this deceit she was off her son and maiming him, no less than when she used to incarcerate him in the house. And since, after his excursions with Bella, Useppe almost always enjoyed a fi natural sleep at night and woke up alert and lively, she-again deceived-had relaxed and almost stopped the cure: so she now blamed herself for his relapse, for not having followed the Professor's orders.

The idea of going back to him at the hospital frightened her too much; indeed, at the very thought, she was fi with superstitious repug nance. But that same Thursday, as soon as Useppe seemed able to move,

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they went to see the lady doctor again. As was to be expected, she scolded Ida for not having obeyed Prof. Marchionni's instructions to the letter. But noting that Useppe, so vivacious the other times, today was motionless, answering her questions irrelevantly, as if under the eff of a stupefying philter, she frowned worse than before. And she advised Ida to give him Gardena! regularly, to be sure, but reducing the dose, to avoid the dangers of asthenia and depression : later, then, it might be a good idea to have another EEG . . . These letters, uttered by the doctor, made mother and child start, together; and the woman, looking at the two of them, shook her head with an almost grim expression. "For that matter," she remarked in a skeptical tone, "an EEG, in the 'intercritical period,' actually explains little or nothing . . ." In reality, she thought that perhaps no science could help Useppe's illness, and she almost had the feeling of deceiving mother and child with her therapeutic suggestions. What disturbed her most, in the child, was the expression of the eyes.

At this point, seeing him fairly suntanned beneath his pallor, she asked the mother if she had sent the child to the sea; and then Ida, blushing all over, confi to her in secret that she was preparing a surprise for him this year: for some time, in fact, she had been laying money aside, to take him to the sea or to the country, in the coming months of July and August. The doctor advised her to choose the country, the hills, in fact, because the sea might make the boy more nerv in his condition. Then, suddenly, she too for some reason turned all red, like Ida, and began saying that perhaps Useppe's present upsets were probably due to his second teeth . . . When this period was past, the child would naturally be nor mal again . . . etc., etc.

In conclusion, despite the doctor's usual shrewish manners, Ida came away from the examination with her heart opened to hope. As they were going down in the elevator, she already became animated and couldn't restrain herself from revealing to Useppe the surprise she was preparing for him for full summer; but Useppe, who had also dreamed of "holidays" as a fantastic myth reserved for others, looked at her with his boundless eyes, saying nothing, as if he hadn't even understood her words. Nevertheless, Ida thought she could feel his little hand throb in hers, and this was enough to give her confi

Meanwhile, the doctor, looking down from her offi window, saw the little couple coming out of the door below. And the sight of that trem bling, almost hopping little woman, who looked twenty years older than her age, and of that little child who, on the contrary, at about six, looked less than four, made her suddenly think, with a sort of cruel certitude: "There go two creatures who don't have much longer to live . . ." But, in the case of one of the two, actually, she was mistaken.

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