He, looking down, nervously gestured to me to lower my voice. Now he was visibly worried, maybe he didn’t want the children to wake up. I on the other hand heard in my head all the remonstrances that I had kept at bay, all the words that were already on the line beyond which you can no longer ask yourself what is proper to say and what is not.
“I will not lower my voice,” I hissed, “everybody should know what you’ve done to me.”
He stared at the plate, then looked me straight in the face and said:
“Yes, there’s another woman.”
Then with an incongruous gusto he skewered with his fork a heap of pasta and brought it to his mouth as if to silence himself, to not risk saying more than he had to. But he had finally uttered the essential, he had decided to say it, and now I felt in my breast a protracted pain that was stripping away every feeling. I realized this when I noticed that I had no reaction to what was happening to him.
He had begun to chew in his usual methodical way, but suddenly something cracked in his mouth. He stopped chewing, his fork fell on the plate, he groaned. Now he was spitting what was in his mouth into the palm of his hand, pasta and sauce and blood, it was really blood, red blood.
I looked blankly at his stained mouth, as one looks at a slide projection. Immediately, his eyes wide, he wiped off his hand with the napkin, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and pulled out of his palate a splinter of glass.
He stared at it in horror, then showed it to me, shrieking, beside himself, with a hatred I wouldn’t have thought him capable of:
“What’s this? Is this what you want to do to me? This?”
He jumped up, overturned the chair, picked it up, slammed it again and again on the floor as if he hoped to make it stick to the tiles definitively. He said that I was an unreasonable woman, incapable of understanding him. Never, ever had I truly understood him, and only his patience, or perhaps his inadequacy, had kept us together for so long. But he had had enough. He shouted that I frightened him, putting glass in his pasta, how could I, I was mad. He slammed the door as he left, without a thought for the sleeping children.
3.
I remained sitting for a while, all I could think was that he had someone else, he was in love with another woman, he had admitted it. Then I got up and began to clear the table. On the tablecloth I saw the splinter of glass, ringed by a halo of blood; I fished around in the sauce with my fingers and pulled out two more fragments of the bottle that had fallen from my hand that morning. I could no longer contain myself and burst into tears. When I calmed down, I threw the sauce in the garbage, then Otto came in, whining at my side. I took the leash and we went out.
The little square was deserted at that hour, the light of the street lamps was imprisoned within the foliage, there were black shadows that brought back childish fears. Usually it was Mario who took the dog out, between eleven and midnight, but since he had left that job, too, had become mine. The children, the dog, shopping, lunch and dinner, money. Everything pointed out to me the practical consequences of abandonment. My husband had removed his thoughts and desires from me and transferred them elsewhere. From now on it would be like this, responsibilities that had belonged to us both would now be mine alone.
I had to react, had to take charge of myself.
Don’t give in, I said to myself, don’t crash headlong.
If he loves another woman, no matter what you do will be of no use, will slide off him without leaving a trace. Compress pain, eliminate the possibility of the strident gesture, the strident voice. Take note: he has changed his thoughts, changed rooms, run to bury himself in another flesh. Don’t act like the poverella, don’t be consumed by tears. Don’t be like the women destroyed in a famous book of your adolescence.
I saw the cover again in every detail. My French teacher had assigned it when I had told her too impetuously, with ingenuous passion, that I wanted to be a writer. It was 1978, more than twenty years earlier. “Read this,” she had said to me, and diligently I had read it. But when I gave her back the volume, I made an arrogant statement: these women are stupid. Cultured women, in comfortable circumstances, they broke like knickknacks in the hands of their straying men. They seemed to me sentimental fools: I wanted to be different, I wanted to write stories about women with resources, women of invincible words, not a manual for the abandoned wife with her lost love at the top of her thoughts. I was young, I had pretensions. I didn’t like the impenetrable page, like a lowered blind. I liked light, air between the slats. I wanted to write stories full of breezes, of filtered rays where dust motes danced. And then I loved the writers who made you look through every line, to gaze downward and feel the vertigo of the depths, the blackness of inferno. I said it breathlessly, all in one gulp, which was something I never did, and my teacher smiled ironically, a little bitterly. She, too, must have lost someone, something. And now, more than twenty years later, the same thing was happening to me. I was losing Mario, perhaps I had already lost him. I walked tensely behind Otto’s impatience, I felt the damp breath of the river, the cold of the asphalt through the soles of my shoes.
I couldn’t calm down. Was it possible that Mario should leave me like this, without warning? It seemed to me incredible that all of a sudden he had become uninterested in my life, like a plant watered for years that is abruptly allowed to die of drought. I couldn’t conceive that he had unilaterally decided that he no longer owed me any attention. Only two years earlier I had told him that I wanted to go back to having a schedule of my own, work that would get me out of the house for a few hours. I had found a job in a small publishing company, I was interested in it, but he had urged me to forget it. Although I told him that I needed to earn my own money, even a little, even a very little, he had discouraged me, had said: why now, the worst is over, we don’t need money, you want to go back to writing, do it. I had listened to him, had quit the job after a few months, and, for the first time, had found a woman to help with the housework. But I was unable to write, I simply wasted time in attempts as pretentious as they were confused. I looked despairingly at the woman who cleaned the apartment, a proud Russian not inclined to submit to criticisms or suggestions. No function, therefore, no writing, few friends of my own, the ambitions of youth losing their grain like a worn-out fabric. I let the maid go, I couldn’t bear to have her working hard in my place when I was unable to give myself a time of creative joy, intensely my own. So I returned to taking care of the house, the children, Mario, as if to say to myself that at this point I deserved nothing else. Instead look what I had deserved. My husband had found another woman; the tears rose and I didn’t cry. To appear strong, to be strong. I had to make a good showing of myself. Only if I imposed that obligation would I save myself.
I let Otto go free, finally, and sat on a bench trembling with cold. Of that book from my adolescence the few sentences I had memorized at the time came to mind: I am clean I am true I am playing with my cards on the table. No, I said to myself, those were affirmations of derailment. To begin with, I had better remember, always put in the commas. A person who utters such words has already crossed the line, feels the need for self-exaltation and therefore approaches confusion. And also: the women are all wet he with his stiff prick makes them feel who knows what. As a girl I had liked obscene language, it gave me a sense of masculine freedom. Now I knew that obscenity could raise sparks of madness if it came from a mouth as controlled as mine. So I closed my eyes, I held my head in my hands and squeezed my eyelids. Mario’s woman. I imagined her ripe, in a toilet, her skirt hiked up, he was on her, working her sweaty cheeks, and sinking his fingers in her ass, the floor slippery with sperm. No, stop. I pulled myself up suddenly, whistled to Otto, a whistle that Mario had taught me. Get rid of those images, that language. Get rid of the women destroyed. While Otto ran here and there, carefully choosing places to urinate, I felt over every inch of my body the scratches of sexual abandonment, the danger of drowning in scorn for myself and nostalgia for him. I got up and went back
along the path; I whistled again, and waited for Otto to return.
I don’t know how much time passed, I forgot about the dog, forgot where I was. Without realizing it, I slipped into memories of love that I had shared with Mario, and I did it gently, slightly excited, resentful. Shaking me back to myself was the sound of my own voice, I was saying to myself, in a singsong, “I am beautiful, I am beautiful.” Then I saw Carrano, the musician who was our neighbor, crossing the street and heading toward the little square, toward the street door.
Hunched, with long legs, his black figure burdened by the instrument, he passed a hundred yards away and I hoped he wouldn’t see me. He was one of those timid men who are insecure in their relations with others. If they lose their composure they lose it uncontrollably; if they are nice they are nice to the point of becoming sticky, like honey. With Mario he had often had words, once for a leak from our bathroom that had stained his ceiling, once because Otto annoyed him with his barking. With me, too, his relations were not the best, but for more subtle reasons. When I encountered him I read in his eyes an interest that embarrassed me. Not that he had been vulgar, he was incapable of vulgarity. But women, I think all women agitated him, and so he mistook glances, he mistook gestures, he mistook words, involuntarily bringing desire into the open. He knew it, he was ashamed of it, and perhaps without wanting to, he involved me in his own shame. For this reason I always tried not to have anything to do with him; it disturbed me even to say to him good morning or good evening.
I observed him as he crossed the square, tall, made even taller by the outline of the instrument case, with graying hair, thin, and yet with a heavy step. Suddenly his unhurried gait had a kind of jolt, and he floundered in order not to slip. He stopped, looked at the sole of his right shoe, cursed. Then he became aware of me and said resentfully:
“Did you see, I’ve ruined my shoe.”
There was nothing that proved it was my fault, yet, embarrassed, I immediately asked his pardon and began calling furiously “Otto, Otto,” as if the dog would excuse himself directly and relieve me of any guilt. But Otto, of a brownish-yellow color, moved quickly through the patches of light from the street lamps and disappeared into the darkness.
The musician nervously wiped his shoe on the grass at the edge of the path, then examined it with meticulous attention.
“There’s no need to apologize, only take your dog somewhere else. People have complained…”
“I’m sorry, my husband is usually careful…”
“Your husband, excuse me, is an ill-mannered…”
“Now you are the ill-mannered one,” I retorted, forcefully, “and in any case we’re not the only ones who have a dog.”
He shook his head, made a broad gesture to signify that he didn’t want to argue, and muttered:
“Tell your husband not to exaggerate. I know people who wouldn’t hesitate to litter this area with poisoned dog biscuits.”
“I’m not going to tell my husband anything,” I exclaimed angrily. And I added, incongruously, just to remind myself:
“I don’t have a husband anymore.”
At that point I left him there in the middle of the path and began running across the grass, in the dark region of bushes and trees, calling Otto at the top of my lungs as if that man were following me and I needed the dog for protection. When I turned, out of breath, I saw that the musician was examining for the last time the soles of his shoes, and then, with his tired walk, he disappeared in the direction of the door.
4.
In the following days Mario didn’t show up. Although I had imposed on myself a code of behavior and had decided first of all not to telephone the friends we had in common, I couldn’t resist and telephoned just the same.
I discovered that no one knew anything about my husband, it seemed that they hadn’t seen him for days. So I announced, with rancor, that he had left me for another woman. I thought I would astonish them, but I had the impression that they weren’t at all surprised. When I asked, pretending nonchalance, if they knew who his lover was, how old she was, what she did, if he was already living at her house, I got only evasive replies. A colleague of his at the Polytechnic called Farraco tried to console me by saying:
“It’s that age. Mario is forty—it happens.”
I couldn’t bear it, and I hissed treacherously:
“Yes? So did it happen to you, too? Does it happen to all men of your age, without exception? Why are you still living with your wife? Let me talk to Lea, I want to tell her it’s happened to you, too!”
I didn’t want to react like that. Another rule was not to become hateful. But I couldn’t contain myself, I immediately felt a rush of blood that deafened me, burned my eyes. The reasonableness of others and my own desire for tranquility got on my nerves. The breath built up in my throat, ready to vibrate with words of rage. I felt the need to quarrel, and in fact I quarreled first with our male friends, then with their wives or girlfriends, and finally I went on to clash with anyone, male or female, who tried to help me accept what was happening to my life.
Lea, Farraco’s wife, especially, tried patiently; she was a woman with an inclination to mediate and look for a way out, so wise, so understanding, that to get angry with her seemed an affront to the small band of well-disposed people. But I couldn’t restrain myself, I soon began to distrust even her. I was convinced that immediately after talking to me she hurried to my husband and his lover to tell them in minute detail how I was reacting, how I was managing with the children and the dog, how much longer it would take me to accept the situation. So I abruptly stopped seeing her, and was left without a friend to turn to.
I began to change. In the course of a month I lost the habit of putting on makeup carefully, I went from using a refined language, attentive to the feelings of others, to a sarcastic way of expressing myself, punctuated by coarse laughter. Slowly, in spite of my resistance, I also gave in to obscenity.
Obscenity came to my lips naturally; it seemed to me that it served to communicate to the few acquaintances who still tried coldly to console me that I was not one to be taken in by fine words. As soon as I opened my mouth I felt the wish to mock, smear, defile Mario and his slut. I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail. Is it possible—I wondered with growing resentment—that faithless people like Lea could report everything about me to my husband and I, on the other hand, couldn’t even find out what type of woman he had decided to fuck, for whom he had left me, what she had that I didn’t? All the fault of spies, I thought, false friends, people who always side with those who enjoy themselves, happy and free, never with the unhappy. I knew it very well. They preferred new, lighthearted couples, who are out and about long into the night, the satisfied faces of those who do nothing but fuck. They kissed, they bit, they licked and sucked, tasting the flavors of the cock, the cunt. Of Mario and his new woman I now imagined only that: how they fucked, and how much. I thought about it night and day and meanwhile, a prisoner of my thoughts, I neglected myself, I didn’t comb my hair, or wash. How often did they fuck—I wondered, with unbearable pain—how, where. And so even the very few people who still tried to help me withdrew in the end: it was difficult to put up with me. I found myself alone and frightened by my own desperation.
5.
In parallel there began to grow inside me a permanent sense of danger. The weight of the two children—the responsibility but also the physical requirements of their lives—became a constant worry. I was afraid I would be unable to take care of them, I even feared harming them, in a moment of weariness or distraction. Not that, before, Mario had done a lot to help me; he was always overloaded with work. But his presence—or, rather, his absence, which, however, could always be changed into presence, if necessary—reassured me. The fact, now, of not knowing where he was anymore, of not having his phone number, of cal
ling his cell phone with restless frequency and discovering that it was always turned off—this making himself untraceable, to the point that even at work his colleagues, perhaps his accomplices, told me that he was ill or that he had taken a leave or was abroad doing research—made me feel like a boxer who no longer remembers how to move and wanders around the ring with his legs buckling and his guard lowered.
I lived in terror of forgetting that I had to pick up Ilaria at school; and if I sent Gianni to buy some essential in a local shop, I was afraid that something would happen to him or, even worse, that in the grip of my preoccupations I would forget his existence and wouldn’t remember to make sure that he had returned.
So I was in an unstable condition, to which I reacted with a tense, depleted self-control. My head was completely preoccupied with Mario, with fantasies about him and that woman, with the reexamination of our past, with a mania to understand how I had been inadequate; and at the same time I was desperately vigilant about the obligatory daily tasks; be careful to salt the pasta, be careful not to salt it twice, be careful to note the expiration date of food, be careful not to leave the gas on.
One night I heard a noise in the house, like a piece of paper gliding quickly over the floor, pushed by a current of air.
The dog whined in fear. Otto, although a German shepherd, was not very courageous.
I got up, I looked under the bed, under the dresser. From the dust that had accumulated under the night table, I saw a black shape dart out, leave my room, and enter the children’s room as the dog barked.
I ran to their room, turned on the light, pulled them sleeping out of their beds, and closed the door. My fear frightened them, so I slowly found the strength to calm myself down. I told Gianni to get the broom, and he, a child of deep diligence, returned immediately with the dustpan as well. Ilaria on the other hand began to scream: