The Parrots (16 page)

His unsteady, irregular handwriting, the pen wandering
desperately
over the page in search of support, the constant anxious request for the date—What day is it today? What day is it today? What day is it today?—as if with each inscription his brain wiped out the chronology, and his constantly changing signature, as if there wasn’t just one person signing but many, like a primary school pupil doing his first spelling exercises, or a schizophrenic with multiple personalities: all these details revealed with
incontrovertible
clarity that he was merely a beginner, because
professionals
adopt an initial, a cryptogram like a national health doctor’s, or a kind of monogram like the one you find on shirts, and, if they are actually forced to write a whole sentence, always write the same one, all their lives.

It wasn’t just a question of signing, there were also the
confessions
, the outpouring of feelings, because that was another reason—the main one, in fact—why the people waiting their turn had come. A middle-aged woman had declared that she was in love with him, a pensioner had handed him a typed manuscript, a housewife even confessed to him that she never read books because she was too tired in the evening after she had finished her work.

However, there had been a shock during the procession of signatures. Emerging from signing one particular book and handing it back to its owner, he had raised his head and found himself looking at an unmistakable face. A sagging face, furrowed
with deep lines, framing a sardonic smile ruined by yellow teeth: The Master.

The Beginner smiled nervously, completely unprepared for this encounter. During this whole process, with all the public events the three finalists were obliged to attend, The Beginner had become familiar with the figure of The Master. He would have recognized him even in the midst of other people, from a distance, from the back, half-length, in hotel foyers, in terraces laid for receptions, and so on. The same thing, obviously, was true when it came to The Writer.
Never let your enemies out of your sight
is one of the basic rules for achieving victory. Keeping up a conversation at a reception after an event and pretending to listen, while actually following your enemies out of the corner of your eye, observing their movements through the golden lens of your glass, recognizing the people they are talking to (pests, journalists, agents, editors) and—if possible—moving closer while pretending to be searching for something or somebody, maybe saying hello to a stranger or a distant acquaintance within range with the sole purpose of overhearing fragments of conversation…

All skills which are not inborn, but are acquired with the experience of literature and already figured in The Beginner’s armoury. In spite of what The Master and The Writer thought, he wasn’t as innocent as all that.

So from what dark abyss of the bookshop had that stooped figure emerged? In which lair of books had that denizen of the deep been lurking? How had he managed to materialize out of nowhere, with such a sulphurous, unpredictable appearance? But above all—and this question surpassed all the others—what the hell was he doing at The Beginner’s book-signing?

All these doubts crossed, and filled, the distance separating The Beginner from The Master, the former sitting, the latter standing, the older man bold in handing over the book, the young man embarrassed in signing it. And they rumbled, in all their
inappropriate obtrusiveness, in the head of The Beginner with the slowness with which an idiot grasps a concept. Late, too late, when The Master had already disappeared into the crowd and the anti-shoplifting alarm had started ringing…

On the way home, in a half-empty bus driving through the sunset to take him back to The Girlfriend, The Beginner tried to shake off that unpleasant contact, and to think of something else. He thought of the dinner awaiting him, a dinner on the terrace—the first of the season—which The Girlfriend had announced, he thought about his parrot, silent, off its food, and vowed to devote more time to its upbringing (as suggested by the
Manual on the Raising and Care of Parrots
) and thought about various other
pointless
things, whose only purpose was to keep at bay the unpleasant impression left on him by that close encounter with The Master. Hoping to throw it into some well of his consciousness, he decided he would not tell anyone about the regrettable episode. But the apparition presented itself again at every street corner with shameless tenacity: the anti-cholesterol testimonial of a bold advertising poster assumed the semblance of The Master, the siren of an ambulance speeding past on the Via Nomentana modulated into the bookshop’s insistent alarm… every involuntary
distortion
his nervous system imposed on reality helped to evoke the unpleasantness of the incident. Fortunately, his was the next stop.

The Master was sitting on the toilet, his trousers down around his hairless legs (after a certain age, hair deserts the body like rats leaving a sinking ship), his feet wide apart and facing in different directions like the needles of a broken compass, his clogs on the faded tiles. He had The Beginner’s book in his hand, and was looking through it in search of—let’s say inspiration.

He leafed through it without interest, as if it were the phone book of a foreign city in which he did not know anybody. He looked at the pages and they seemed to him like hieroglyphics, Sumerian tablets, Sanskrit inscriptions. However hard he tried, he really couldn’t grasp the meaning of those typographical characters lined up in neat rows. Not that this was particularly surprising, given that The Master did not have the slightest intention of actually reading the book. Heaven forbid! The only thing that intrigued him was the dedication: “with affection”, “with irritation”, “wrong direction”—he couldn’t even read what the hell was written in that dedication… With a modicum of imagination you could even read “big erection” in that rickety handwriting. Could that be the outrageous tribute The Beginner had dared pay The Master?

This thought horrified him. To someone like him, the thought of being mocked by such a novice was truly inconceivable. The suspicion was enough, and the book fell from The Master’s hands to the floor. The Master grabbed the book from where it lay open and face down on the tiles, pulled it up by the spine and turned it over slowly. The book had opened at random at the acknowledgements page.

A long, a very long list of acknowledgements, which overflowed from one page, occupied the following one, moved on
treacherously
as far as the one after that. It was like the end credits of a Hollywood film. The Master started going through these acknowledgements, shaking his head, but persevering, if only to measure the full extent of his distaste.

Beginners. Yuk. Disgusting.

Naïve, amorous idealists, they write acknowledgements longer than their novels and think they are in debt to the whole human race. To the writers who helped them find a publisher, to the publisher who took them on, to the friend who consoled them when they broke up with their girlfriend… They all feel it’s
their duty to thank everybody, a kind of pointless family tree of gratitude, from the mother who brought them into the world to the lowliest doorman in their publisher’s offices.

At least—and this thought moved what had to be moved in the delicate position he was in—in
his
book and in The Writer’s (which, now that he thought about it, was almost due back at the library…) there weren’t any acknowledgements. Keep it clean, keep it simple.

The Master turned to get the toilet paper but found only the grey cardboard tube. There was no more toilet paper.

He tore a page out of The Beginner’s book and wiped himself with the acknowledgements. As they get older, writers get better, or maybe more ungrateful.

The Girlfriend was in evening dress, as if instead of having dinner at home she was about to go out, as if that long black gown with the slit and those high-heeled shoes were for a date with a man she had only just met instead of with The Beginner, whom she had been with for three and a half years (according to him) or almost four (according to her). Before she had started cooking, she had taken down the parrot’s cage and put it on the terrace, and now in the reconquered space of her little loft she was nervously pacing back and forth between the oven and the table, which was laid with wine glasses and her best cutlery. She kept raising and lowering the lid of the wok and the non-stick white ceramic saucepan to check if the basmati rice and the chicken curry were where she had left them a moment earlier, and opening and closing the fridge door and pouring herself small quantities of white wine which she then drank
apprehensively
before putting the bottle straight back in the fridge. With her heavily made-up, swollen eyes (and the onion she had fried
tonight had little to do with the swelling) she looked like a woman who had things to say.

Because women wait to say certain things. They keep them aside to use at the appropriate moment, like an anti-rape spray at the bottom of a handbag. This time, what awaited The Beginner, whose keys were turning at that very moment in the defective lock of The Girlfriend’s apartment, were unconventional weapons.

One was hidden in her belly, the other beneath the lid of the plate on the perfectly laid table.

“Here I am!”

“…”

“I’m late, aren’t I? Sorry, darling, but they just wouldn’t let me go at the bookshop!”

“…”

“What’s for dinner? I’m so hungry, I…”

“…”

“How smart you look! Are you expecting anyone? Only joking!”

“…”

“I’ll just go and wash my hands and…”

“…”

“But…”

“…”

“Where’s the cage?”

“…”

“What happened to the parrot?”

“Sit down.”

The Beginner at last realized that things were serious. Slowly and pensively, he sat down at the table, throwing an alarmed sidelong glance at the terrace barely illuminated by the
moonlight
: the dark shape of the cage was in a corner, but in that blackness it was hard to say whether or not its mystery tenant was at home.

“I don’t understand.”

“Eat.”

“But…”

The flickering candle flame was between them. The Girlfriend moved the tip of her nose imperceptibly, indicated The Beginner’s covered plate, and with a nod invited him, or rather, challenged him to lift the lid.

“Eat, before it gets cold.”

The Beginner summoned up courage and lifted the lid. At the bottom of the empty plate lay a strange object. A kind of plastic thermometer with one vertical line and one horizontal.

“What’s this?”

“A pregnancy test.”

“What… what…”

“I’m pregnant.”

“…”

“Wait there, let me get the second course.”

“But—”

“Here you are, help yourself.”

The Girlfriend was on her feet in front of The Beginner, holding with one hand—holding it nice and high, level with her prominent cheekbones—a glittering silver tray with a domed lid that looked like a Trojan shield.

She moved the tray closer to The Beginner’s face, put it right under his nose, then grabbed the lid by the knob, and removed it with a theatrical gesture.

The Beginner just had time to see a sheet of paper imbued with the dull colours of an ink jet printer before the colours came together to form an image that struck him at the same time as strange and yet familiar: a photograph of the main entrance of a hotel in London, of a stretch of pavement in London, of a rucksack placed on that stretch of pavement in London, and a young man and a young woman who had just kissed each other in the open air of London.

Then the tray came down on his head with a furious clang. This was followed by screams and tears.

“Now get out,” she said when she had calmed down. “You and that damned parrot.”

When he was small, in the endless prairies of time of his
childhood
, before the world of adults snatched him from freedom with the sadistic institution of school, he would spend whole days playing alone on a sun-drenched veranda, silently concentrating on deploying toy soldiers in imaginary battles. Even though he could not see his mother, and for long periods was so absorbed in his games that he forgot all about her, and even about himself, deep down he knew that her love was watching over him.

He could feel the warmth of her affectionate presence, the invisible gusts of wind stirred by her movements, hear her
walking
down the corridors, crossing the rooms. Now she was in the kitchen, now in the bedroom, now she had gone down into the cellar to get firewood for the stove. He never wondered about her whereabouts, but at every moment he’d have been able to say where she was and what she was doing.

Every now and again she would pass to check up on him, she would look through the doorway, lean in slightly and watch him from the back as he sat on the rug, bent over his battling armies. He would immediately be aware of that gentle intrusion (it was his loyal soldiers who warned him that there was an enemy behind him), but he would pretend he hadn’t noticed and actually increase his concentration on his games, striving to find a difficult balance for the one-legged soldier or for the sniper lying in wait on the roof, pretending to be even more engrossed in the game,
thinking
she would never want to break the fragile spell of his games.

Sometimes, when his deception didn’t work and their eyes and
smiles met, she would pass her hand through his hair and she would ask him what he wanted for a snack. It was always bread and jam in winter, and bread rubbed with tomato in summer.

Now, in the air-conditioned room in the intensive care unit of the luxurious clinic in which The Mother was a patient, The Writer contemplated the carnations wilting in the vase (even though he’d watered them), and looked at his mother lying in the bed, somehow shrunken, enveloped in a spider’s web of sleep. He found it hard to recognize in her that attentive young woman who had passed her hand through his hair and made him so many snacks.