Three Light-Years: A Novel (6 page)

I bet at home, cooking himself some pasta
al ragù
, he’s whistling. I bet he’s not depressed, he’s not disappointed, and he’s not embarrassed about having been rejected. I have no way of knowing that, I don’t know anything, but I’d swear that, for him, having declared his love was actually cause for euphoria; as though everything else, like experiencing it and hoping it might be returned, would follow as a result. Not least because deep down, very deep down, in the unexplored depths of his consciousness, he doesn’t for a minute believe that he’s been rejected. (Sixteen years later he would use the same blend of self-deception and premonition with me when, at the height of my adolescent rebellion, I told him I didn’t want to see him again. He went away whistling after grumbling that I couldn’t be serious, that I’d have second thoughts and that he’d always be ready to welcome me back.)

*   *   *

Between an ordinary May 8 and an equally ordinary June 3 they continued meeting at the café at lunchtime. Viberti pretended that the confession had cured him of a foolish infatuation, Cecilia seemed satisfied that he had been cured. But it didn’t add up. If they weren’t uncomfortable, why was it necessary to act like they weren’t? On some days appearing nonchalant became a contest.

They talked about the past year as if it were in the distant past, its memory confused, an Arcadia in which they had been young and innocent. Cecilia confessed that Viberti, with his boiled vegetables, shamed her, made her feel guilty, since she, on the other hand, liked rather peculiar sandwiches, peppers and anchovies, curried chicken, smoked salmon. Once, thinking he wouldn’t be there, she’d been caught with gorgonzola and walnut. Viberti confessed the system he had engineered to increase the probability of finding her at the café, always arriving at a quarter to two. He confessed that before he met her he went to eat at twelve thirty, one at the latest. By noon he was usually terribly hungry; he would chew on a piece of gauze to get over it.

They didn’t mention his declaration again, but it was as if his declaration enabled them to speak about new, more intimate things. Cecilia apparently felt freer to talk about what she really cared about—her children. Viberti spoke of his mother’s illness, voicing a sadness that previously he hadn’t wanted to admit he felt.

Meeting elsewhere was out of the question. During those weeks he tried inviting Cecilia to dinner, to the movies, but she told him she couldn’t: “Maybe in five or six years,” she explained. She smiled but she wasn’t joking. All of her time was devoted to her children, and when she spoke of them, when she talked about being locked up in the house with them, she seemed to be describing the valiant resistance of a city under siege or the life of a small community quarantined by the plague.

She said she had a strained but civil relationship with her husband, she said there were no scenes in front of the children when he came to take them for the weekend; it didn’t feel like an exchange of prisoners, no, everything was restrained and disciplined, just as the separation had been restrained and disciplined, after the initial phase. The pain shoved to the back of the closet like an unsightly dress. She said, at first, they went to the park along the river to argue. Viberti pictured them walking, free to raise their voices, hurling insults at each other, as he imagined couples did when they separated, quarreling violently. He imagined them far away from the children’s microscopic surveillance, like secret agents forced to be wary of confined spaces.

“After the initial phase” and “at first” meant that the separation had gone through different stages and only the first had been confrontational and violent. Viberti was too struck and confused by these confidences to wonder if they made sense. There seemed to be no motivating trigger that had prompted them, no betrayal or growing irritation, and Cecilia, on that subject, was silent. But what did he know about real separations, his hadn’t had a motivating trigger either, he hadn’t consummated, he hadn’t sullied himself with wrongs and recriminations, insults and accusations, words to regret and be ashamed of. He felt ashamed, every now and then, though he didn’t tell anyone: he didn’t remember why he had married Giulia, he didn’t remember why they’d split up.

The motivating trigger was missing from Cecilia’s account, and Viberti had no desire to probe. All that mattered was that they had separated for good. He often lingered over another notion: replacing the husband, in the wife’s bed and in the children’s hearts; becoming a father to them. On the whole, though, since he’d never met the little girl, his fantasies revolved around Mattia. He imagined reading him books in the evening. On Sunday they would go to the stadium and he would explain the plays to him. They would bring a big notebook and sketch the actions and movements of the players on the field. Then he would feel dejected. He knew nothing about those children. He knew nothing about children, period.

*   *   *

It was difficult to picture the children, plus every time Cecilia described them she revised her description, upsetting the tentative image newly formed in Viberti’s head; she seemed to do it on purpose to derail him. The children had suffered a great deal on account of the separation and they reacted in different ways. The children had different temperaments and each had reacted in his own way, in the only way two children could react, by trying to forget. The children would never forget, it was impossible. The children had acted too much like adults, they had shown a maturity that their parents didn’t possess. The children had acted like children, they had denied and repressed so as not to suffer too much. The little girl had taken on the duty of raising her mother’s morale, the boy had become serious and conscientious, “the man of the house.” The girl was irresistibly appealing, but after wearing you out with her fussing she left you with only one wish: to strangle her. The girl was petulant and self-centered, she never stopped talking, but in the evening, at dinner, after listening to her for half an hour, pretending to be amused, a surge of tenderness would wring your heart. On the one hand the boy, silent, with no appetite, dignified and never capricious, on the other the sister, who tried so hard to submerge everything in a sea of words. On the one hand the obstinacy of the little ingrate who fought back using hunger as a weapon, on the other the mercilessness of the other little ingrate who wouldn’t forgive the mother for having made the father run off.

“Michela thinks it’s your fault?” Viberti asked.

“They both think it’s the fault of whoever stayed with them, the one who went away was thrown out, he’s the victim,”

but then,

“They think it’s their fault, they think they did something wrong,”

but then,

“She takes her anger out on her brother, but that’s not the biggest issue, I think,”

but then,

“They think he wants to start a new family and have other children; sooner or later they’ll ask me how they should act toward those new siblings,”

but then,

“They don’t think anything.”

Viberti asked (trying not to sound concerned),

“Does Michela mistreat her brother?”

“No, she’s gentle and protective, they play together, they get along very well, only sometimes she lets off steam and starts shouting, and won’t let him go into her room anymore,”

but then,

“She has a strange way of excluding him, even when she’s not angry with him, every now and then she won’t talk to him and I can hear him asking her the same question ten times,”

but then,

“She helps him do his homework, puts away his toys when she sees him lying on the bed reading, she’s actually very caring—she acts a bit like a mother but she won’t let me cuddle with him, she pesters me until I make him get off my lap,”

but then,

“I don’t think she’s forgiven me for bringing him into the world!”

Viberti asked (wondering if he was overstepping his bounds),

“How can they think that your husband wants to start a new family? Who could have told them that?”

“No one told them, it’s not true, I think it’s the last thing he wants,”

but then,

“No one suggested it to them, the fear of having to share him with other children is so strong they just think that, that’s all,”

but then,

“Their grandparents, his parents, may have told them that nonsense and then forgotten it a moment later,”

but then,

“If you think about it, though, that’s not the strangest thing, the strangest thing is that they’re not worried that I might want to start a new family, they take it for granted that I’ll always be with them, alone, don’t you see?”

“And is that true?” He blushes.

“It is, it is.” She stares into his eyes. “They think that because I let them know it, without having to tell them, for fear of losing them I made them understand.”

*   *   *

One day, during those weeks, and for the first time since he’d met her, Viberti reconstructed the chronology of Cecilia’s life, going back in time: she must have qualified at thirty, had Mattia when she was twenty-six, graduated at twenty-four, had Michela at twenty-three, married at twenty-two. Married at twenty-two. It seemed incredible to him, and even more incredible was the fact that he hadn’t thought about it before. He asked her to confirm his calculations, and she did, and started laughing. “You look shocked, what’s wrong?” Yes, he said, he was rather shocked. Where had she found the energy to do all those things at once? Cecilia smiled again, and didn’t answer.

*   *   *

To tell her about Marta, Viberti began with the nightly homecoming scene. For twenty years, ever since he’d moved to another apartment in the building where he was born and grew up, he’d dropped by his mother’s almost every night, at least to say hello, often remaining in the doorway, just to find out if everything was okay, to let her know that everything was okay. Even after his marriage he hadn’t changed that routine; in fact, Giulia often stayed to chat with Marta, and seemed happy in the company of the older woman, who encouraged her, advised her without pressuring her, was a friend to her. When their marriage ended, for Marta almost nothing changed; she received visits from both of them, brought them together by inviting them both to dinner at least once a week.

Years passed and Viberti still went home every night faced with the same dilemma: whether to stop by and see his mother or for once pretend he hadn’t thought of it. If he was very hungry and couldn’t wait to make himself something to eat, he’d hop into the elevator and press the button for the fifth floor, but then he would stop in front of his door and jingle the keys in his hand, making up his mind whether to go in or not. Especially in spring, when the afternoons seemed to go on forever, the light at seven o’clock took on a mellow, tender tone that wore him down, enveloped him, left him helpless.

All he had to do was drop by and say hello, a matter of minutes, but that was exactly what stopped him, the ease with which he could go down three flights of stairs, ring the bell, exchange a few words. Something held him back, a vague desire that surfaced through his resignation, and he didn’t want to give in. Yes, he’d go into the apartment and cook himself the steak he’d bought, put the frozen potatoes in the oven, open a new jar of mustard, uncork a bottle of wine, because the evening meal was the only real meal of the day, at lunchtime he never ate more than a salad or a plate of boiled vegetables.
Remember that digestion begins at the time the meal is consumed, never eat too fast, there is no hunger or emergency or work or play that can justify devouring a cup of yogurt in ten seconds, theoretically a mouthful should be chewed at least fifty times, but forty may be enough.
Reluctantly, he put the keys back in his pocket and went down to the second floor.

Gathering his forces to ring the bell, he stood in front of his old door, his first door, the door par excellence, the mother of all doors. And magically, without his ringing the bell, the door opened and his mother appeared in the flesh, mainly bones, with a small watering can in her hand.

“Claudio.”

“Ciao, Mama.”

Then mother and son turned their gazes to the plants that adorned the light-filled hallway and together they saw the flowerpot saucers overflowing with water, the soil moist, drenched. Marta made an annoyed gesture with her free hand: “Giulia must have watered them,” she said. Viberti nodded.

They stayed in the doorway, and he began apologizing for not having come by to see her, even though they had actually seen each other two nights before. She said nothing, prudently, because by continuing the conversation she might be forced to try to remember when she’d last seen her son.

“You haven’t come to eat, have you?” she asked in alarm.

“No, Mama, thank you, I have everything ready at home. I just wanted to say hello.”

“Everything all right at work? Are the glands se-cre-ting? Dear God, what a difficult word.”

“They’re secreting, all right!” Viberti replied, smiling.

If they went into the house, by then he’d be sitting at the kitchen table while she went out on the balcony to get rid of the watering can. Though she didn’t cook anymore since Giulia had forbidden her to use the stove, the kitchen continued to be her command center.

“Can I offer you anything?” she asked when she returned.

“No, thank you,” Viberti replied.

“Have you heard from Giulia?”

“No, not since dinner Sunday evening.”

“Did you eat at their place Sunday night?”

She’d been there, too, but Viberti never pointed out her mistakes; he thought it wouldn’t do any good, would only humiliate her. Giulia, on the other hand, thought that continually correcting her would serve to stimulate her memory. Giulia was a gastroenterologist, Viberti an internist and endocrinologist, but since he dealt almost exclusively with old people he felt he was more qualified to speak about geriatrics.

Hanging in the kitchen (on the refrigerator, usually, with the same colored magnets that held up Giulia’s notes) were recent photos of the two children that Angélica, the caregiver, had left in Peru, and Viberti made some pleasant comment about how nicely they were growing up. For Marta, those were “grandchildren,” too.