I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) Page 26

  You really ought to see the sequence of expressions that are projected onto the face of that idiot when we get to the table. The gamut, from astonishment to knowingness, from incredulity to pure scandal. It’s like a film trailer. The problem, I think then and there, is that often people don’t have very clear emotions, let alone clear ideas.

  Nives sits down. I don’t, since it’s a table for two and the idiot seems incapable of making up his mind to clear out and free up a place. But he’s already starting to get on my nerves, so unless he decides to get moving, chairs and other things are going to start flying in here.

  “All right then, can you leave us now, please?” she says to him.

  “Is that what you want?”

  What a ridiculous question. I have to say, when someone asks that stupid a question, do they really think they’re going to change the other person’s mind?

  “I need to talk to Vincenzo. Alone. Do I have to tell you again?”

  “I wouldn’t have had any objections, if you’d told me about it in advance,” he protests.

  “We’ve already talked it over, and I told you that I was sorry. I could have rescheduled my meeting with Vincenzo and seen him some other time, whenever I liked. But I don’t want to lie to you again. Right now I want to stay here with him, and I want you to know it.”

  The asshole registers the impact, picks up his napkin, crushes it into a ball, lets it drop next to his plate, and stands up. Such a cornball piece of histrionics that you won’t even find it in a made-for-television movie these days.

  “All right,” he says, “the two of you win.”

  Wow, what a retort.

  I tense my muscles in preparation for a last-minute assault even though, judging from the debate that I’ve just witnessed, the likelihood is decidedly theoretical. In fact, the architect meticulously ignores me (which only makes me sketchier, as if I had “Cut along dotted line” written on me), takes the long way around the table in order to avoid passing in front of me, walks out the door, and vanishes. Nives follows him with her gaze, vaguely sorrowful.

  I sit down.

  For a little while we say nothing.

  The sound of voices all around is overwhelming.

  “I’m not that hungry,” I say.

  “You’re telling me,” she says.

  “You want to get out of here?” I say.

  “And go where?” she says.

  “Search me,” I say.

  “Your place?” she says.

  “What?” I say.

  “Just kidding,” she says.

  “Ah,” I say.

  “But why?” I think.

  Just then a sweaty waiter materializes next to us, with his Bic already poised over his order pad.

  “All right then, what can I get you two,” he says, as if he couldn’t wait to come take care of us. And he wipes the sweat off his brow with the back of his right hand.

  We quickly read the menu, then the young waiter takes our orders with all the focus of a journalist (Nives orders a fruit salad, I order a steak salad, and a carafe of house wine for the table), apologizes for the haste and confusion, and hurries off.

  I pick up a breadstick.

  “What were you trying to tell me the other day?” Nives asks after looking at me for a while, in that way of hers that I know all too well.

  “The other day?”

  “When you walked into the session. Why did you attack me that way? What did I do?”

  I snap the breadstick in half, and with it, I break something else. There really aren’t that many times in your life when your ideas are crystal clear. And I’m not talking about carefully deliberated decisions, with a judicious balancing of pros and cons, those ridiculous processes whereby you look for a sage middle ground that makes the rest of your life miserable. What I’m talking about is the kind of logic-free awareness that makes you say, from one minute to the next, with no conceivable reason: “I’m not doing that.” Full stop. Why not? Because. What do you mean “Because”? Just because. Sometimes you get these moments of intense awareness at the altar. I just had one, even if we’re not at the altar. Suddenly I have no desire whatsoever to talk with Nives about Alfredo, about how upset I am, about me, about the blame I put on her and on myself for the way in which I left her the leadership in the education and rearing of our children, for all the bullshit with which she furnished their lives, and so on and so forth. I don’t want to tell her a damned thing, what do you think about that? Let her come up with her own explanation of my attack, as she calls it. It’ll be my 9/11, let’s say, oh, what an intelligent metaphor I just engendered.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” I tell her.

  “What?” she says in astonishment.

  I look at her. I’m proud of myself.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all.”

  She ventures a tremulous smile.

  “Are you going to exercise your right not to answer that question?”

  “Yes. You could put it like that.”

  She torments little balls of bread crumb. But I remain unmoved.

  “Do you want to make me feel guilty?”

  “Cut it out, Nives. I’m sick and tired of you explaining to me what I’m doing.”

  She thinks that over for a while.

  “When did you turn into such a bastard?”

  “Well, I like that one better than I like the one about making you feel guilty.”

  God, I don’t know how long it’s been since I felt so good. Nives is completely baffled. She’s struggling, she doesn’t know what to say or where to look; her hands are fumbling clumsily, her whole body seems to fit her a little too tight. Twenty years of psychology defeated by a simple no. The funny thing is, I swear, I can see it in her face that she is feeling authentic admiration.

  “You said you wanted to have more of a role. That the mother’s exclusive had expired. That you wanted to have a say.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did I ever exclude you from? And how did I do it?”

  “Are you starting again?” I could say to her. But I don’t even bother. I chew my food, and I even enjoy it a little, truth be told.

  “Why won’t you tell me what you’re talking about?” she says in despair after a while.

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  She grinds her teeth, she chokes back tears, she stares into the middle distance and administers a sort of emergency auto-therapy that consists of inhaling, exhaling, and passing in review a series of rapid thoughts that seem to flow past her eyes in a virtual braille that only she can read.

  The exercise must have been successful, because she appears more luminous when she speaks to me again.

  “Okay, it’s all abundantly clear. You want to use me as a punching bag in your aggressivity training. Maybe I’m a masochist, but you know what? Be my guest.”

  Oh, at last, a bit of metaphorical anal sex, I think.

  “You’re too kind,” I say.

  She looks at me and, from one second to the next—I intercept the exact interval of time when it happens—her eyes take on a different light, cunning and crafty.

  “What’s come over you?” I say.

  She leans forward until she’s practically wiping the plate with her breasts, she grabs the two edges of her side of the table, whereupon I assume she’s about to tip the whole thing over onto me, but instead she contracts her belly muscles, lifts her right leg, extends it, uses it to wedge my legs apart under the table, and jams the tip of her shoe straight against my junk.

  “Don’t try to be funny or I’ll crush them for you.”

  I panic, I throw myself backward; recoiling brusquely against the back of my chair, I look around in terror, and I cup her foot in my hands. It’s an unquestionably grotesque maneuver, as well as deeply embarrassing. In fact, people turn to look.

  “Have you gone crazy?” I say. Still, I feel like laughing.

  “You think you have the exclusive on aggressivity?�
�� she says, pressing hard.

  I grab her foot just above the ankle, I try to push it away, but all I achieve is another pathetic recoil, which leaves things exactly the way they were, and only attracts more attention.

  “Would you get that fucking foot off of my balls? Because everyone is looking at us.”

  “There was a time when you appreciated initiatives of this kind.”

  “That was before you left me, you imbecile. And anyway, you used to take off your shoes.”

  “You’ve never called me an imbecile before.”

  “That’s not all I’ll call you if you don’t get your foot out of there.”

  The waiter arrives with our plates. But not even this persuades her to release her grip. If anything, she presses harder.

  “Fruit salad?” the young man asks.

  “That’s for me,” Nives replies without taking her eyes off me, or her foot, more importantly.

  He serves her.

  “Steak salad?” he continues, turning to address me.

  Try to guess, I’d think of saying to him, if I wasn’t otherwise occupied in the head-to-head combat going on downstairs. They always ask questions like that in restaurants.

  He sets my plate down in front of me, and only then does he notice the rigidity of our postures. My face is fire-engine red, and my back is as tense as if I were trying to convince a suppository to find the straight and narrow path. Nives is sitting with her chin resting on the knuckles of her right hand and a mischievous idiotic leer on her face, as if to say: “What were we saying?”

  Seen from outside, her attitude, unlike mine, might be all right, all things considered; but that something shady is going on underneath this tablecloth even a child would understand. The waiter, in fact, with the discretion of a narcotic-sniffing dog, actually starts to bend down and take a peek; whereupon I tell him to bring me more wine before my steak salad gets cold, and that gets rid of him.

  “Listen, I’d like to have something to eat,” I tell Nives once we’re, so to speak, alone again.

  The witch laughs at me. And she finally removes the weight.

  I regain my composure.

  We start eating in that typical tense aftermath of a prank that’s gone too far, with half your mouth still cramped into a smile that won’t go away. After a while, I notice that Nives is staring at me.

  I cross my legs. Then I look up from my plate.

  Do-o-on’t look at me like that, I think.

  “I wasn’t kidding before,” she says.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why don’t we go to your place, right now?”

  “Nives.”

  “Sorry.”

  Don’t mention it, I think.

  But the outing resumes a few seconds later.

  “I don’t know what’s come over me,” she says. “I’ve never felt like making love with you as much as in the past few days.”

  She spoke quietly, but I still look around instinctively. One thing is certain: you’re not going to catch me back at Il Sergente any time soon.

  “It’s been since that day you broke into my therapy session, and I haven’t been able to think about anything else,” she confesses, at once astonished and liberated.

  I look at her, amazed at the unmistakable fact that she’s undressing me and fucking me with her eyes. I don’t think anything of the kind has ever happened to me before. All right, she’s my ex-wife, but still.

  “My . . . um . . . meat is getting cold,” I say.

  The waiter comes back with the wine. This time he doesn’t ask who it’s for. I intercept it before it touches the table and take a generous slurp. The waiter moves off somewhat uneasily.

  “Why are you so embarrassed?” Nives asks.

  “Maybe it’s because you’ve never been so explicit before.”

  “I thought I’d get a more enthusiastic reception.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  She edges backward with her shoulders, as if my answer were a slap in the face. When she speaks again, she seems to be on the verge of resignation.

  “Are you with someone else?”

  Alessandra Persiano’s nude body, waiting for me in front of the window of her bedroom while I argue on the phone with Tricarico, appears before my eyes like a hologram.

  “Well, another woman, to be specific. But it’s none of your business.”

  “Is that so? And you think you can decide it’s none of my business?”

  “Listen to me, Nives. You have to get it out of your head that you can do with me whatever you want. I’m not your second car, understood? And I’m a little sick and tired of being your stud bull upon request.”

  “I didn’t like that one.”

  “Well, I don’t like you all that much anymore, if you want to know the truth,” I shoot back, completely unintimidated.

  “Ah, now I see.”

  “And stop acting all offended, Nives. You know I’m right. You don’t want to make decisions, and that’s the truth. You’re always very knowledgable when it comes to other people, this thing goes here and that thing goes there, but when it comes to yourself, you like to keep a foot in two different shoes. Well, it’s time to be done with the time-shares. Do you want something? Choose what you want, and act accordingly.”

  I lean back in my chair, exhausted by my summation, and I look at my steak salad sadly. I’m hungry, but to start eating after a diatribe of this kind is aesthetically inconceivable, truth be told.

  Nives looks at me as if she had suddenly been given a new perspective on everything.

  “So you’re saying that if I decided to get back together with you . . . ”

  I turn pale.

  “I have to . . . answer my phone,” I say.

  “But it’s not ringing.”

  “Yes it is, actually, it’s that thing, the, you know, the . . . vibration,” I stammer, struggling for words. I raise my hand to the outside breast pocket of my jacket, and without the slightest idea of what I’m doing, I leap to my feet, as if I had a sudden onset of angina. There is a sudden plunge in the general volume in the room. Everyone turns to look at us.

  “What on earth are you doing, Vincenzo?” Nives asks in astonishment.

  “Let me just go outside for a minute so I can answer, excuse me,” I say, completely incapable of putting a halt to this crescendo of ridiculousness; then, behaving in a truly indefensible fashion, I pretend to pull my cell phone out of my pocket as I make my way through the tables and I reach the exit, abandoning Nives to a state of embarrassment from which I can’t even imagine how she’ll emerge.

  My head is actually spinning once I get out into the street. Even though there’s no reason to go on play-acting, I pull out my cell phone, I place it against my ear, and I answer an imaginary caller (for the occasion, I don an intolerant demeanor). I take a first step, then a second step.

  Then I accelerate.

  Then I slow down.

  Then I accelerate again.

  Then I cross the street.

  And finally I leave.

  A KIND OF CLOSET FOR SKELETONS

  Just look at your refrigerator,” she says.

  When she’s wearing it, my I LOVE NY T-shirt makes a completely different impression. That’s partly because it’s all she’s wearing.

  “What’s wrong with my refrigerator?” I ask, standing in the Grigioperla boxer shorts that Alagia gave me for my fortieth birthday, two years ago.

  She pulls open the refrigerator door and explains, as if I didn’t know what she’s talking about.

  “It’s depressing. You’ve got . . . ” And she gives me a rundown of my food supplies, one item at a time: “A bottle of Greco di Tufo with a paper napkin rolled up and jammed into the neck in place of a cork, another bottle of Borsci San Marzano liqueur, a lopped-off length of Galbanino soft cheese, a stick of butter, a package of prosciutto dating back at least to last Wednesday, a package of hot dogs, a squished-down tube of ketchup, a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of pickles wit
hout a top and with a few lilypads of mould floating on the surface, two individually wrapped cheese slices, and an open can of tuna with a coffee saucer on top of it.”

  “Don’t forget my collection of frozen meals on the lower levels,” I point out.

  She doesn’t laugh.

  I grab her by the hand and pull her to me. She wraps both arms around me with a worrisome degree of intensity.

  “Oh,” I say, “what’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t believe for a second that it’s nothing, but the kiss she gives me immediately after that distracts me from exploring the matter in any greater depth. So we go back into my bedroom and we make love again. And it’s more wonderful every time.

  Then I tell her everything. About Tricarico, about the offer that in the end I accepted, about the confirmation of detention hearing and its unbelievable outcome. I leave out nothing, not even the garishly appalling experience in the Love Café.

  She listens to me, and she asks plenty of questions, too. She seems happy for me, even if she’s slightly puzzled about the preliminary judge’s decision to release Burzone. While we’re on the subject, I ask if she too has noticed the striking resemblance to Anjelica Huston.

  “It’s true,” she says.

  Then we do it again.

  When she leaves I stay in bed, wait half an hour, and then text her.

  I PUT A SET OF HOUSE KEYS IN YOUR PURSE, I write.

  Well, I gave it a shot.

  I head into the kitchen, pull out a frozen package of breaded flounder filets, slice a pat of butter into a frying pan, and turn on the tv as the butter starts to melt.

  I leave my cell phone in the bedroom.

  On a local television station, real estate listings scroll by on the screen, just words, no pictures. In the background, I recognize the melody of “Scimmia,” or “Monkey,” an old song by Eugenio Finardi about heroin. Flabbergasted by the absolute lack of any connection between real estate listings and heroin addiction, I continue to listen as I cook the filets. Like a buried flashback my mind is filled with a sort of video clip of this song that was broadcast on Odeon at least thirty years ago. It shows a strikingly young Finardi wandering through an amusement park, his mind evidently elsewhere, because it was just a few days after he shot up for the first time. He could already feel the quicksand of smack shifting under his feet, and he watched the families with little kids having fun, while the song goes: But I kept thinking about it / couldn’t get it out of my mind / and as time went by / it was becoming the most important thing of all.