I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) Page 10

  FLOATING MAGNETS

  As I leave the office I bump into a character who’s lived on the fourth floor, unless I’m mistaken, for a while now. To be precise, I open the main street door for him and let him go ahead of me. He recoils but then accepts the courteous gesture, eyes lowered, intimidated.

  This isn’t the first time he’s behaved this way, as if there were something left unfinished or unstarted between the two of us. When we run into each other on the street he always displays that slight hesitation of someone who’d like to strike up a conversation but never seems to find the right opportunity.

  I don’t think that I interest him sexually (in part because I don’t usually send unwanted messages to queers); what’s more, he has a Polish girlfriend, and I’ve seen them out and about holding hands together (I’ve seen them go upstairs together too, more than once). Instead, I think that whatever attraction there is on his part has to do with my previously mentioned predisposition to prompt strangers to confide in me. I say that even though he’s not a complete stranger to me: I remember him sitting at a counter in the city offices where I used to go when I was still a student to have the signatures notarized for my applications for the civil service exams that I never wound up taking.

  He looks to be fifty, maybe a little older, with the face of a St. Bernard, round and saggy, a mixture of disappointment and who-the-hell-cares-we’re-just-passing-through-this-life, bags under the eyes, bristly mustache, and a potbelly. One of those civil servants that stick in your memory for the courtesy they always showed you and everyone else waiting in line, who have the gift of a smile when you’ve encountered any difficulties in filling out a bureaucratic form (and is there a standardized form on earth that any human being wouldn’t encounter a problem of some kind filling out?).

  In other words, a nice guy, unlike certain bastards you’ll run into. In the clerk of the court’s office located in the courts building, for instance, on the wall opposite the entry, positioned in a way that you can hardly miss it the minute you walk in, right at eye level, there’s a very funny little sign, done on the computer, one of those signs made on a computer that when you see them you can’t help but think how funny the guy who made it must have thought he was, and in the middle of it you see the silhouette of a human head, like something out of a handbook of anatomy, over which looms the following instruction: Make sure brain is engaged before putting mouth in gear (a dotted line with an arrow describes, in a wavy path, the route from the forehead to the mouth). The kind of thing that if you think about it for a second you can just see it, the Oliviero Toscani of civil servants saying to himself: “Okay, enough is enough,” and he sits down at the computer, launches Freehand, redeems his professional category once and for all by pasting over the diagram that masterpiece of a phrase, and then the next day, in the office, he talks to all his coworkers one by one to see if they’ve noticed the new sign and then they each shake his hand, as if to say that it was about time someone clearly stated the way things really work around here.

  Well, I think that it’d be a genuine service to society at large if everyone like that guy were just to jump off a cliff, their bodies never to be found. Let me paint a picture for you: I’m a miserable grunt cooped up in an office that’s as grey as the undershirt I change once a week, but I act as if I’m a man of the world, a sophisticate, because this is where you have to come if you want to get your lawsuit docketed or to pick up a copy of a certificate; and if, by any chance, you don’t know where in the Code of Civil Procedure you might find information you need (as if everyone studied the Code of Civil Procedure back in high school: try asking most people what a Code of Civil Procedure even is, and tell me what kind of answers you hear), then I feel completely authorized to treat you as a specimen of something whose very survival, in a modern advanced society where even small children know what the Code of Civil Proce­dure is, constitutes a mystery to me.

  This is one of those licenses for bureaucratic frustration that ought to be treated with the same severity as violations of the building code. But the most depressing aspect of the whole episode is that in the entire court house there is not one (1) lawyer who has the balls to address the question of the workplace bullying of the discourteous clerks of the court. These are the reasons that an entire professional category goes to hell in a handbasket, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

  To come back to the present, that is to the upstairs tenant who is courting me, I let him go ahead of me and I say hello.

  Whereupon he replies with Buona sera, he flashes me one of those let-me-notarize-that-signature smiles, and he actually gets up the nerve to ask me how everything is going.

  “Not bad, not bad,” I reply.

  After that, he hesitates and, taking advantage of our physical proximity, he manages to find the courage to talk to me. For a few seconds, I’m afraid I’m about to get invited to dinner, but then I discount that theory.

  “You know I have a girlfriend, don’t you?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  That’s the only way to respond to questions that make no sense, especially when they’re posed without a question mark.

  “Ludmilla, my girlfriend. We’ve run into you many times in the street.”

  “Ah yes, why of course,” I say, still unsure what to think about the mental soundness of this character.

  “We live together. In this building, on the fourth floor.”

  “Sure,” I confirm, without a shadow of doubt.

  “Her name is Ludmilla, but I call her Lulla.”

  “Ah.”

  “She’s younger than me. A lot younger,” he says, with a note of concern.

  Well, I wouldn’t say that at first glance, truth be told.

  “Well, good for you,” I reply.

  “No, you’re wrong there, Counselor. You are a lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  There is a very brief moment of silence, during which the guy looks at me as if there were any number of terribly important things that he needs to make me aware of.

  “Do you mind if we use our first names?” he asks out of nowhere.

  Well, actually, yes, I do mind, I think then and there. Not that I have anything personal against this guy, quite the contrary. As I said, I actually find him likable; he was (and maybe still is) a courteous civil servant, someone who knew how to treat people and all that. It’s just that agreeing to enter into confidential terms with someone who, in all likelihood, has more than one screw loose, is like signing a blank check for pains in the neck and ass. But how can you say no to someone who asks you that question? I’ve certainly never figured out how to do it.

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well, then,” he holds out his hand. “The name is Giustino. Giustino Talento.”

  “Vincenzo,” I reply.

  “Vincenzo what?

  “Oh, of course. Sorry: Malinconico.”

  “Sorry to detain you.”

  “No problem.”

  And he leaves.

  I step out into the street and start walking along the sidewalk, dragging along behind me, like a heavy wheeled suitcase, that sense of emptiness—no deposit, no return—that oozes out of my refusal to take on Mimmo ’o Burzone’s defense. I puff in stupid exasperation, I glare miserably at the buildings and the parked cars, I let myself slip into a series of baseless but savage critiques of life and the inevitable sorrows it produces. I think of Nives, of how right she was, all things considered, to dump me. I drench her in a new and unprecedentedly generous golden light, attributing a series of unfamiliar qualities to her that I only seem able to glimpse now, knowing perfectly well that this evening, at the very latest tomorrow morning, I’ll retract them all.

  Truth be told, the reason I’m forced to resort to these lifeboats of complaint is that I’m struggling to ward off the intolerable feeling that has been washing over me ever since I turned down the Burzone case. As if I’d acted out the standard skit of virility—the one, just t
o be clear, that has you putting up little or no resistance to the come-ons of a girl that you sort of like but not really, and you let her venture further and further out into the open until she reaches the point of no return and then, just as she’s making an outright offer of sex, you find some despicable excuse and tell you really have to go now.

  And so I sob into my sleeve for three whole sidewalks until a spectacular showgirl type, eighteen, maybe twenty, blonde, super-deodorized, with a Nokia bolted to her ear, bare midriff, and tattered jeans roomy enough to invite a girlfriend to step into them alongside her, overtakes me, leaving in her wake and in my ear a grim and categorical: “Well, you just figure out how to move it back off your schedule: you said we were going and we’re going!” doubtless addressing some Nubian on a two-year waiting list who’s humbly attempting to explain why he won’t be able to squire her to wherever it is he promised to take her.

  I watch her walk, since I’m in the ideal position to do so. She has a deliberately insolent gait, eloquent of the kind of bitchy insolence that is accustomed to having its way.

  Viewed from my vantage point, she’s reminiscent of nothing so much as a very expensive motorcycle, so exquisite is the marriage of straight lines and curves at play here. I’d certainly be willing to lay money that the front view is even better. Her skin has a bronzed shade of tan that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before in my life. She looks . . . orange, this girl.

  Taking advantage of the setting provided by the hem of the cobalt blue panties that peep out over the low waistline of her jeans, a slice of right asscheek offers itself to my eyes—through no fault of my own, now the eyes of a dirty old man. As ashamed of myself as I might be, I’m hypnotized by the detail. The most stupefying aspect of the whole matter is this: the body that’s swaying before my eyes, rather than pleasing me, rather than appealing to my pornographic imagination, interests me. It really does: I feel a yearning to understand, to know more about it. It’s as if a sudden spotlight on current events has suddenly illuminated the landscape before me, unasked, inform­ing me: look at what’s happened while you were getting old. Get a glimpse of what something beautiful looks like now, today, and not the way you remember it. Take a look at how you always overestimated the standard of beauty that applied to your generation. How you always thought that, once your own time went by, time itself would have passed by. At the way you’ve always clutched at your pathetic little culture of the absolute, the beautiful, once and for all. Look at how little you knew. At how you lived with your head turned to look behind you, doing your best to keep things alive that were long dead. Do you think that’s why your wife left you for another man?

  There we go, I knew that sooner or later I’d come back around to Nives. Now even looking at a nice ass becomes my cross to bear.

  The playmate of the month, while I flagellate myself, goes marching on down the sidewalk, berating the unfortunate on the other end of the line who, to all intents and appearances, can’t get a single word in edgewise, until she finally snaps the phone shut right in his face. Then she stops, indignantly, and waits.

  I slow to a halt.

  The cell phone rings immediately.

  Without even bothering to see who’s calling, she slips it into the rear pocket of her jeans and resumes her stride.

  I follow after her, with no idea of why I’m doing it.

  The playmate of this and any month struts briskly along while, like a broken record, the cell phone in her pocket flashes and repeats its intrusive little melody (a horrendous rendition of Carmen), proclaiming near and far the current state of banishment of the unfortunate Nubian who is desperately trying to reestablish contact.

  Annoyed at the persistent ringtone emanating from the pocket of the inert beauty, the passers-by walking toward us glare at her resentfully; instead of ignoring them, she furiously returns their glares, fully entitled to let her goddamned cell phone ring as loud and as long as she chooses.

  It reminds me of a story by Andrea Pazienza in which his comic book protagonist Zanardi is paged repeatedly over a megaphone at a campground. Even though Zanardi’s heard the announcement, he doesn’t budge from his tent. Where­upon a guy with a prominent nose walking by stops, perplexed, and goes: “?” After a moment’s hesitation he peeks into an opening in the tent and says: “Say, aren’t you Zanardi?”; and he says: “Yeah”; and he says: “They just called your name a minute ago”; and Zanardi says: “Oh, okay.” Then when beak-nose moves off, you see Zanardi lighting a cigarette and humming to himself, “Why can’t people mind their own fucking business?”

  I’m also reminded of a woman who sat across from me on a Eurostar into Rome who was just lounging in her seat, eyes closed, with an MP3 player turned all the way up so you could hear it perfectly, even though she had earbuds on and . . . well, okay, let’s go back to the tremendous babe.

  When she just can’t stand to listen to all those bleating requests for forgiveness, she denies the call and turns into an entrance of the subway line.

  I follow her in.

  On the stairs going down, I have the impression she might have shot me a glance.

  She walks down to the tracks, without a ticket. My opinion is that a babe of her magnitude just doesn’t bother to buy subway tickets on general principle, so that detail doesn’t surprise me in the least. I, on the other hand, have been living for many years in the fear that I might from one moment to the next find myself obliged to take some form of public transportation without having time to buy a ticket (or else not being able to find a ticket vendor open, or not having the proper change, or all three things at once), and terrified at the prospect, I always have at least one ticket in my wallet, so I pull it out and punch it. Then I hurry down the steps to the tracks, afraid that the tremendous babe might take advantage of her head start and lose me in the subterranean network beneath the city.

  I get to the platform and look around, but it’s not difficult to find her; in fact the search is made ridiculously easy by the guilty embarrassment that nearly all the men on the platform share, having immediately zoomed in on this particular specimen and then clustered around her, nonchalantly acting as if nothing in particular were going on.

  At that point I join the crowd and act just like the rest of them; in fact, I don’t have any clear idea of what I’m doing here. After a short interval I realize (maybe it’s the wait, the air of uncomfortable, soul-crushing normality hanging over us) that my irritating rational self-consciousness is starting to row upstream, attempting to undo everything I’ve done up to now.

  Hey, did you get a good look at her? I ask myself.

  I sure did, I reply.

  Are you positive? I say to myself.

  Why don’t you just cut it out? I answer.

  No, why don’t you? I say to myself.

  But I’m not doing anything, I reply.

  Don’t try telling me that, I say to myself.

  Anyway, what’s going to happen now is she’ll get on the train and I’ll never see her again, I say brusquely.

  Still, the fact remains that you came down here, I say to myself.

  It’s not the way you think, I reply.

  Oh noooo, I say to myself.

  Whatever, I act all offended.

  You’re letting yourself be deceived by appearances, I say to myself.

  What do you mean? I ask.

  That right there is the beauty of the present day. A Pho­toshop beauty, I say to myself.

  How do you mean, I ask.

  Sure, it’s a retouched beauty, I argue. Based on the correction of defects and the enhancements of good features.

  Um, I answer, rather intrigued.

  But just look at it, the beauty of today, I say to myself. They’re all the same: idiots with tattoos and gym workouts. There are thousands of them just like her, don’t you know that? There isn’t an ounce of individuality, of authentic eroticism, of mystery, of genuine difference; they’re . . .

  Sure sure, of course, I say to mysel
f.

  And that’s how I conclude the dialectical exchange.

  Only now do I realize that I’ve ventured dangerously close to the tremendous hottie, and there’s a straightforward mechanical reason: in fact, while I was engaged in debate with the opposition, the girl has pulled out a set of earbuds and inserted them in her ears, and she’s listening to an old song that I’m beginning to recognize bit by bit. In other words, I’m on the verge of bumping into her just to figure out what song it is.

  There it is, I finally caught the whole melody: it’s “Alone Again”, by Gilbert O’Sullivan.

  Incredible. I’m nonplussed, almost moved at the thought that such a young woman might be enjoying a hit single from my own youth (I was just a child at the time). I interpret the odd circumstance as a metaphysical confirmation of the fact that I had tailed her, the purpose of which I had not hitherto suspected. At this point, I have to talk to her.

  I brace myself, as the train is pulling down the platform and the people are starting to mass along the yellow safety line.

  “It’s ‘Alone Again’, isn’t it?” I ask, with a fairly vacant smile. I point to her earbuds, a deeply pathetic gesture, truth be told.

  She doesn’t glance in my direction even though—I’m positive—she heard me clearly.

  “Gilbert O’Sullivan,” I try again, pathetically.

  She looks at the train snorting to a halt, pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, flips it open, points it right at me, and takes my picture. Then she punches something into the phone and holds the display out just a few inches from my face.

  “Now, can you see the number?”

  I rock back my head. I can see it perfectly: it’s 911.

  She looks me straight in the eye.