History (85 page)

For the occasion, Ida gave him a thorough bath in the laundry tub, and dressed him in his most elegant clothes, namely American-style long pants and a new jersey with red and white stripes. They took the tram to the railroad station, but from there to their destination, Ida allowed herself the luxury of a taxi. Not only to avoid tiring Useppe, but also because the Professor had given an address in the Nomentano quarter, not far from the Tiburtino. And Ida no longer had the strength to enter that neighborhood on her own.

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In the past, Ida had ridden in a taxi at least twice (in Alfi cl ), but Useppe was getting into one today for the fi time in his life, and the sudden novelty excited him. \Vithout hesitation he promptly sa t himself beside the driver; and from the rear seat, Ida heard him ask the man : "What's the horsepower of this car?" "It's a Fiat 1100 !" the driver an swered smugly; and again Ida saw the man, having shifted into gear, reply to other unspecifi questions from his customer, his fi pointing to the speedometer: obviously, Useppe had asked him about the car's speed . . . With this, the brief dialogue came to an end. Useppe fell silent, and Ida realized he was swaying his head in the way he usually did to accompany that strange chant of his : wy \vy wy wy? A li ttle later, wanting to evade the sight of those streets, she closed her eyes until their arrival.

They were shown into the side wing of a hospital building, where there was also an outpatients' clinic; thanks to the doctor's recommenda tion, however, the Professor had set their appointment a bit earlier than regular hours. He received them at the very end of the corridor, in a little room that had on the door his name : Prof. Dr. G. A. l'darchionni. He was a middle-aged man, tall and plump, with eyeglasses over his thick cheeks, and a drooping gray moustache. Every now and then he took off his glasses to wipe them, and without those spectacles, his near-sighted face lost its professional gravity and decorum, taking on a swollen, dull heaviness. l-Ie spoke always in the same tone, drawling and academic; however, he ex pressed himself with propriety and respect, and always with good manners, unlike the lady doctor. He was, in short, just an ordinary, distinguished gentleman; but Iduzza, on seeing him, was immediately afraid of him.

He glanced at some no tes on a paper, and said he was to some extent informed of the anamnesis ( the doctor must surely have informed him); before proceeding, however, he wanted some further information from the mother: "Meanwhile, Giuseppe can take a look at the garden . . . your name's Giuseppe, isn't it?"

"No. Useppe."

"Fine, fi Now then, Giuseppe, you go down and have a look at the garden on your own. There's a little animal out there that might interest you." And he thrust Useppe towards a French window leading outside.

The garden was actually a yard, enclosed among the hospital walls, with a few scrawny plants. But in one corner, inside a cage, there was, in fact, a very pretty little animal, who so attracted Useppe's attention that he was even holding his breath. It resembled a squirrel, in miniature, but with out a tail. Its fur was brown with yellow and orange spots; it had very short legs and tiny ears with a pink lining. And it did nothing but run dizzyingly around a wheel suspended in the cage, paying attention to noth ing else. TI1e cage was only a bi t more spacious than a shoebox, and the

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wheel was perhaps six inches in diameter; but making that circle at such a breathless pace, never stopping, perhaps by now, on his dwarf legs, he had covered a distance in miles equal to the circle of the Equator! He was so caught up in his extreme urgency he didn't even notice Useppe's timid calls: And his handsome little olive-colored eyes gleamed, immobile, like the eyes of the mad.

In the beginning Useppe remained standing there in front of the cage, ruminating on ideas of his own. But a little later, the Professor peered out of the French window to call him and caught him with one hand inside the cage, doing something that was clearly the cri of housebreaking. He had decided, in fact, to carry the animal away, hiding him under his jersey, and then, with Bella's complicity, to take him to scamper in a marvelous place of their acquaintance, from where with his swift legs he could run off wherever he liked, maybe even to the Castelli, and America, and every where.

The Professor arrived just in time to foil the theft. "No . . . no . . . come now!" he admonished, with his slow voice. But since the little boy wouldn't desist, and indeed looked at him defi the Professor was obliged to pull his arm from the cage, which immediately closed again with a click. Then, still holding Useppe's wrist, he drew him along, reluctant, towards the entrance to the little room where Ida was waiting for them.

At this point, the little animal, which seemed dumb, let his voice be heard, a kind of impercep grunt. And Useppe, turning to look back, gave the Professor a shove and planted his feet on the step. But the Professor, with a minimal eff soon pushed him inside again, shutting the French window behind them.

Useppe's face had begun to quiver, even inside his eyes. "I don't want! I don't want!" he exclaimed suddenly with great noise, like someone tear ing himself from an unacceptable contingency. And in a fl of wrath, which burned him with a dark fl he promptly gave the Professor a punch with his fi , at stomach-level. Ida came forward cautiously . . . "Nothing, nothing, the risks of the job," the Professor said, snickering in his sad way, "now we'll handle it . . . we'll handle it . . ." and calmly he telephoned for a nurse, who appeared in a few moments, handing Useppe in a spoon
something nice and sweet.
As she held it out, her manner was somehow insinuating and smooth, and one would have said irresistible; however, the
something nice and sweet
was violently fl back at her soiling her white coat-by two feverish little hands, which thrust everyone aside.

In fact, Useppe at the moment was rolling on the fl , kicking at the Professor and at the nurse and at his mother, in total rebellion. When he calmed down a little, he took some fleeting glances at the French window,

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as if there beyond, in the little garden, a point of darkness was hidden; and at the same time, Iduzza sa,,· him make as if to rip up the new jersey he was wearing, the way certain sick people in their fever tear the bandages from their ,,·otmds. She remembered having caught him in the same act one summer night two years earlier, in the little room in Via l\ Giorgio, when his illness had showed its fi signs. And the whole develop ment of this illness till today reappeared to our Iduzza in a kind of blood thirsty cavalcade, which galloped across the days and months to ravage her little bastard.

At fi she feared that a new great attack was threatening him at that momen t. And against all logic, she felt an extreme repugnance at the idea that a doctor, especially, should witness it! Her heart turned over like an empty cup with the rapid sensation that the knowledge of doctors not only was of no avail in Useppe's malady, but even off it.

She breathed, seeing that luckily Useppe was calming down; in fact, he had taken on a shy air, like a defendant in contumacy, and he under went with resignation all the further tests to which he was subjected. To the end of the examina tion, however, he opposed a stubborn silence to the Professor's questions; and we can believe he didn't even hear them. I suppose his thoughts were still tending exclusively towards that little tail less animal (but Useppe never again mentioned their very brief meeting to anyone, as far as I know).

When they fi came out of the room, the two passed among a little group of people waiting, almost all on their feet : there was a blondish boy, with very long arms and sagging lips, who jerked constantly; and a little old man with ruddy cheeks, very clean, who never stopped feverishly scratching his shoulders, with a distraught expression, as if he were assailed by revolting insects, never sated. From one room an orderly looked out, and through the half-open door an interior could be glimpsed, bars at the windows and a clutter of beds without blankets, where some people, all dressed, had been fl in disorder. In the space between the cots, a man in shirtsleeves, with a long growth of beard, was pacing furiously, laughing like a drunk, and suddenly he began to stagger. After a brief wait, Ida and Useppe were summoned beyond a glass door which opened onto a stairway. The EEG laboratory was in some basement rooms, equipped with mysterious machines under artifi lights; Useppe, however, displayed neither curiosity nor amazement on entering, and even when they attached the electrodes to his little head, he let them have their way, with a kind of disenchanted nonchalance. It seemed now, when you looked at him, that, who knows when and how, he had already traveled through that basement and undergone those same tests; and he already knew that, for him, any

way, they were absolutely useless.

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Still, on corn home, he announced to the concierge with a certain importance, though in a confi tial tone: "I had a
fafogram."
She, how· ever, was becoming deafer and deafer, among other things, and didn't bother to understand this disclosure.

A few days later, Ida went back alone to the Professor, for his opinion. The analyses and the clinical examinations had revealed nothing alarming. Even though slight, and underdeveloped, the child showed no lesions, no aftereff of infections, or organic diseases of any kind. As for the fi of the EEG, they equaled, in Iduzza's eyes, an oracle of inscrutable georn It was a multiple graph of oscillating waves, on broad strips of oblong paper. And the Professor explained as best he could to her that the waves indica ted the rhythmic activity of the living cells :

when the activity ceased, the waves turned fl

The fi was accompanied by a report of a few lines, which concluded: The graph does not indicate anything signifi ant. And in fact, the Pro fessor explained, there was no specifi alteration of the brain recorded. To judge from this report, as also from the preceding clinical examinations, the patient's health would seem normal. However, he added, considering the anamnesis, the practical value of such a result remains uncertain, or rather, relative and transitory. Such cases do not allow the formulation of a precise diagnosis or a valid prognosis. It is a syndrome generally unex plained as far as the cause is concerned and unpredictable in its course

. . . Medicine today can still off only symptomatic remedies ( the Pro fessor prescribed Gardena! ). Obviously, the therapy must be followed sys tematically and regularly. The patient must be kept under constant observation . . .

The Professor had taken off his glasses to wipe them, and at this moment, lduzza thought she heard, from some ward not far away in the hospital buildings, a child's cry. In great haste, with a hollow voice, she asked if, among the causes, there could be an inheri tendency, prema ture birth . . . "It's not impossible, not impossible," the Professor an swered, in a neutral tone, toying with his eyeglasses on the desk. Then looking up directly at Ida, he exclaimed to her: "But is this child receiving suffi nourishment?!"

"Yes! Yes! I . . . the best!" Ida answered, distressed, as if defending herself against an accusation : "Of course," she explained, "during the war, it was hard for everybody . . ." She feared, with this
everybody,
she might have off the Professor, including him in the mass of paupers. And she even thought she saw a certain irony in his eyes . . . It was, actually, only the special obliquity some myopic eyes have. Iduzza, however, was fright ened by it. Now, a woman's cry made itself heard, from some other (per haps imaginary) ward of the hospital. And the Professor's face, without

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the glasses, seemed naked to her, to the point of indecency, sordid and threatening. She had the suspicion that in this complicated place of base ments, passages, stairways, and machines, under his command, a plot was being hatched against Useppe!

In reality, the man facing her was a Professor of no great qualities, who was giving her his own scientifi information with proper impartiality ( and almost free, moreover, because of the lady doctor's recommenda tion ). But Ida, at that point, saw him in the form of terrible Authority, as if all the fear instilled in her, always, by adults, today were condensed in this mask. rD1e lady doctor, even with her bad manners (she treated Ida, truly, like a halfwit), had never seemed a real adult to her; and neither had the doctor friend who had tickled her. From today on, however, she be came afraid of all Doctors. The word
patient,
used by the Professor to defi Useppe, had suddenly pierced her like a slander, which she rejected and which drove her brusquely away from the walls of the Hospital. She didn't want Useppe to be a patient: Useppe had to be a little boy
like other little boys.

She didn't neglect, in any case, to go to the pharmacy that very day to have Prof. Marchionni's prescription fi But then it later occurred to her she had forgotten to ask him if the child was allowed to go out freely, in the daylight hours, under the guardianship of a sheepdog . . . But the fact is that on this question, Ida had already made up her mind. Only on that fi morning after the attack had her hand dared double-lock the front door; then immediately, starting the next day, Useppe found himself free again with Bella.

It was April. And then May June July August, a whole great solar summer opened out for babies young kids boys girls dogs and cats. Useppe had to run and roughhouse in the sunshine,
like other little boys:
she couldn't imprison him within walls. (Had that voice, perhaps, which still pounded in her, unperceived, from some point beyond the threshold of sound, already warned her that her little sprite would not have many more summers? )