The Perfect Circle Read online

  You may be poor, as poor as I am, as devoid of a country, as devoid of patience. I’ve seen you suffer, but in the way a stone would suffer: silently and with no danger of breaking.Without tears.Without panic.You suffer quietly, without dismembering north from south, east, west.You suffer methodically, putting evil on one side, good on the other, and listing the ambiguous in the column of things to review, tomorrow. I loved your suffering as much as your happiness, maybe even more, maybe I only loved your happiness when it progressed beyond your suffering. I loved the way your hand settled onto objects, with no hesitation, appropriating them for as long as necessary, then letting them go naturally back to themselves. In the same way you took my body and gave it back to me.

  Loving you meant agreeing to leave you alone, to being alone beside you, and it was knowing that always you would leave at five a.m., whether or not there was a woman in your bed. Not to be responsible for anyone is the way you’ve chosen to be responsible for yourself. It’s an ascetic selfishness.Your solitude is regal, you don’t commit yourself with words. Sometimes you forgive, but you never ask forgiveness.You are grandiose but separate from the rest of men and from whatever it is in you that needs to know them.You don’t know anyone. No one knows you. Except your dogs. Except the echo of the November rifle.

  Hunters hunt because it’s the most adventurous activity they can find on territory civilized earlier by the Etruscans, conquered by the Romans, broken by Fascism, bogged down in shady policies. As for natural enemies, the only ones left are some pheasants, some ducks, and the odd wild boar.

  Hunting does create another enemy though, one that’s more dangerous, more cunning: the other hunter. Because the territory is limited, the other hunter is always too close, and while the urge might be there, you can’t shoot him. Instead you must try to avoid him. The most hardened, like Marco, choose to set out very early, to hunt on weekdays or under unpleasant conditions (rain, cold, mud). As for the more sedentary, they start a rumour that two boar and a whole family of pheasants have been spotted in the third copse on the right at the back of Giuseppe Marconi’s field, or that there’s nothing interesting behind Luisa’s vineyard. Those hunters recognize each other by the time they choose to visit the central bar and by the powerful voice they take on to address the biggest audience possible. Generally they’re the same ones you notice furtively stuffing the trunks of their cars with more woodcocks than the legal limit and on that same night, denying that they’ve shot anything at all.

  A number of them exhibit a wealth of imagination for unearthing the ideal spot for a blind (two planks, two beams, a cardboard roof) to hunt ducks from between the reeds that grow next to the lake. It has to be a strategic place for migration: while the best situated will have at their disposal a complete V of ducks, the others will see at most a sentence written in Braille. But it’s not just a question of appropriating the best location for themselves, they must protect it too. Anything can happen: fires, threats — misspelled and anonymous — theft of roof or floor. Plots are many, and enemies relentless.

  That’s why the law gets involved in hunting problems — as in all other problems for that matter. The law in this country is the art of nabbing those who have the skill to get around it.The essence of the law lies in its inevitable failure, and as a result, it reproduces like a litter of rabbits, it divides, becomes more specific, at times contradicts itself; it takes on encyclopedic dimensions which confirm to the citizen that obedience is impossible.

  There is a limit to the number of rifles a family is allowed to own. The power of the shot is subject to inspection. You must fire towards the sky, never towards the ground. Tuesdays and Fridays are days of rest for the dogs. It’s forbidden to buy or sell devices that imitate the cries of the desired species, but there are some who record the sound of their domesticated ducks — or that of a particularly gifted grandfather. The hunters can’t cross the regional boundary that is marked, depending on the place, by a rope, a sign, a stream, or a hill.Trained from earliest childhood to recognize the boundary, they can’t make a mistake. The difficulty of complying with the regulation though is immense. What is more frustrating than to see the pheasant you’ve pursued from copse to copse suddenly reappear on the forbidden side of the stream with the text of the law tucked under its wing? How can you explain to your dogs that you have to give up the pursuit, how can you overcome their disconsolate look? One day or another most hunters have seen the prey cross the legal boundary. Reactions to this trauma are varied. Some choose to laugh at the law, others ignore it, others come to doubt the existence of God. And others still make up cathartic tales in which the goddamn pheasant becomes more and more beautiful, more and more plump, even becomes, sometimes, a whole family of pheasants — or even a boar.

  The crux of the problem and the principal reason for hostility has to do with the shortage of wild animals.To compensate for it, some associations undertake every summer to raise pheasants in the hundreds and release them a few weeks before the hunting season opens, crossing their fingers that the birds will respect the border and that they’ll survive being out in the wild.

  Over the course of the weeks before the season opens, the hunters get used to their uniforms again. They seem to come straight out of war footage as they stroll around in khaki and leather boots, artfully camouflaging themselves with beards that look like the dry bushes in the undergrowth. They make their dogs walk for an hour or two every day, testing their muscles, increasing their protein intake. They conspire against one another, form teams, and cook up strategies so that no beginner will come and spoil the long-awaited day.The closer it comes, the harder it is for them to concentrate on anything else.

  The hunting season opens gradually. First turtledoves; then ducks, later on pheasants, woodcocks, quail, pigeons, and boar. Most animals perish on the first day. Three hens and a farmer are hit by mistake.The rest of the season is just a bland series of disappointments, of hours spent with ears pricked at the sound of one’s own boots, bawling out the dogs who end up playing among themselves. Conversations, briefly devoted to reckoning the take, move on to the problem of the shortage of animals, and stretch out more and more often over a cappuccino. Those who’d managed to get up at four a.m. in late September get up at nine in mid-October, and by the beginning of December, keep the hunt for Sunday afternoons. They go back to anticipating the opening next season, convincing themselves that it was better last year, muttering that so-and-so exceeded the quota, that the fields are too open, the woods too sparse.

  And so the winter days are filled. With rifles loaded and pants soaked in mud, each man wants to know how many animals his neighbour took, in which copse, on which road; each one thinks that his dog is the best and he’d sell his soul to see his photo in the national hunting magazine. Despite the meagre take from their favourite sport, they’re no doubt happy to feel their seven-league boots advance; to carry deferentially in their frozen hands the metal butt of a rifle they’ll set down on the stroke of one, next to the table where most certainly awaits the pasta prepared by their mother, who’s a better cook than all the others. No doubt they’re happy that around the restricted geography of the genuine territory stretches the infinite expanse of their conversations, for in fact their true territory is nothing but a fantasy.

  Marco devotes most of his time to getting ready for the hunt. When he can’t sleep, he makes his own cartridges. With cold, rhythmical, hypnotic movements he weighs the lead shot on an ancient scale, pours it into an orange tube for the most potent cartridges, red for those the law allows, and a few inconsequential blue ones for Marianne to practise shooting with — one of these days. On some long rainy afternoons he sets himself up in his garage and meticulously paints the breasts of the plastic ducks, taking as model the photos in the hunting magazine he subscribes to. On a former fish-farming site that belongs to his cousin he has built a paradise for raising domesticated ducks. Once the eggs hatch, he brings the babies home where he can look after them and keep them war
m. He puts them in a shoebox which he opens ten times during the journey to check if they’ve moved and if they’re happy.The duck is his favourite animal because, he says, “It looks so beautiful when it flies.”

  On duck-hunting days he gets up at three a.m. — meaning that he doesn’t sleep at all. He attaches a weight to the feet of the tame ducks to keep them from flying away. Then he goes to the back of his cousin’s house, frees his boat from the tall grass where it’s hidden, and pushes his way through the water to his blind. He stands to manoeuvre the boat because of the local oars, which are longer than the rower is tall, each arm executing a movement opposite to the other. Once he’s arrived, he arranges the birds — real and fake — on the lake, experimenting with a different layout of his fleet each time, methodically empirical. He works the way an artist would work on an ephemeral installation that only he will have the time to gaze at: he and the wild birds. Occasionally, he observes ducks that he thinks are his until they fly off, before he’s had time to shoot, caught in his own trap and perfectly content.

  If he decides to go into the woods, he gets up around five, pulls on wool socks, heavy boots, a flannel shirt, a tight T-shirt, and pants with all kinds of pockets. Rifle and ammunition are already in the Jeep. He takes a paper bag from the fridge, which his mother has filled with bread, cheese, and apples.

  He loads the dogs into his vehicle, starts it up, drives for a long time. He likes the ritual of surrounding himself with the same objects, leaving at an excessively early hour, travelling far, being alone: he loves hunting. He thinks about his father who, having only five bullets at his disposal, walked all the way to Grado to hunt. He thinks about his passion for hunting, the passion they share. It’s as if he were going to meet him and when he shoots with the same legendary precision, he feels his father’s approval from on high. He enjoys these hours when he talks only to the dogs, these hours when his dogs answer him, these hours similar to those he spent as a child, sleeping in the dog’s kennel. What he likes most of all is the possibility of being a dog.

  He’s fired up if his squad stops, tails wagging, at the entrance to a woods, detecting the animal’s presence. He thinks. Depending on humidity, the direction of the wind, the presence of a stream, depending on the kind of vegetation, on whether or not he’s seen feathers stuck on thorns or tracks on the ground, depending on his own hunting memories, and his father’s, and those of other hunters, which are stacked up inside him like the volumes of a living encyclopaedia, he works out his strategy and decides if he’ll go into the woods. For him, hunting is a game of chess, he enjoys losing as much as winning, and he lives with the illusion that his prey is as intelligent as a Russian champion.The animals he kills are animals he has first talked to. He finds them, loses them, recognizes them, waits for them. One pheasant keeps him on tenterhooks for an entire season. Marco curses it, but is secretly proud to have found an adversary able to shake him off.

  The bird falls and the dogs retrieve it. He holds it in his open hand, looks at it, strokes its beak and feathers, locates the holes left by the shot, then drops it into his bag with the indifference he often displays for things from the past. He kills as many animals as he can eat. He opens his freezer and counts the remains; when he concludes that basta adesso, he turns in his rifle for a camera.

  The dealings of his dogs among themselves fascinate him. He feeds them better than princes, trains them, sticks under their muzzles pheasant feathers and the meat that his mother is preparing to cook. He always takes along a young dog and an older one. He marvels at the sight of the older one setting an example for the younger and the younger learning, disobeying, trying out a new manoeuvre, understanding that he was wrong, and trying to get Marco’s approval all the same. “Peggy was a perfect mother. One day, for instance, when two birds had fallen, now listen carefully, due uccelli in una volta sola, she tore into the water to get the one that had fallen the farthest, checking from the corner of her eye that Fulli could get the other one so he’d have a little success of his own. Argo is still young, take a good look, watch him watching Fulli and hoping he’ll surpass him in the hierarchy. He tries to bite him now and then, but Fulli only sneers. Each of them gets his turn, è cosi vero? One day Fulli will be old and Argo will be the strongest. If I can find a female for Fulli she’ll have puppies, I’d like another girl, so it’s Argo who would show her everything. But before that, he has to learn, and he’s so impatient, madonna mia! that dog is so impatient, he’s the most impatient of them all, and a little bit clumsy on top of it, isn’t he, che ci posso fare io, what can I do? Niente! Aspetto, I wait.”

  He hunts until it’s time to go to work. His clothes are wet, he’s cold when he stops and too hot when he walks, his bag is heavy, his rifle is heavy, the fields slope and the woods are full of thorns. He also enjoys feeling tired, the holes in his clothes from the branches, the sweat that soaks the prickly wool, he enjoys the way the dogs run in an ellipse, the colour of the rain, the Jeep’s drive wheels, the dry shoes he puts on before getting back on the road, the imperceptible changes in the spots he’s been going to since childhood. He enjoys the absence of humans; now and then he’ll pick up a pebble.

  After supper, around nine o’clock in the evening, he sits by the fireplace where his mud-encrusted boots are drying. He throws on a log, listens to the fire and falls fast asleep almost at once, until his own snoring wakes him up; then he drags himself to his bed, sometimes gets undressed, sometimes sleeps with all his clothes on.

  The next day he wakes up around five. The rifle, the ammunition, and the dogs are ready, and the damp night encircles them like friendly arms they happily step into — and it’s the same every day.

  Some people are incapable of talking in a low voice.You, though, can project your voice and put on a show, and you also know how to reduce it to an essential thread, to a minimal sound in the dimness of bedrooms.

  You taught me, I think, how to hear and see. By observing the back of your neck I understood how to draw windows, streets, chairs, tables. My hearing, my eyesight, have no object now. I’m trying to find a world for them. I’m waiting until, in the absence of your neck, the windows and streets, the chairs, tables reappear, with the remarkable smile they wear when someone gets ready to see them. I think of you alive, up since five a.m., laughing at your own mistakes, with the dust that rolls around in the tramontana. I want to exist the way you exist, with the pride that has made me suffer so much, but from which I know that you’ll die on your feet.The space is still between us, it keeps us at arm’s length, and what you’ve put inside me I must carry and care for, like a difficult child.

  You didn’t cry when I flew away.

  You asked me not to cry. I stole your image, I had less than a minute. To fly was the only thing I could do on that day and by flying resemble the most beautiful animal.

  III

  THE ALL-ROUND MOTHER

  Marianne goes for weeks without meeting Marco’s mother. She can’t imagine her as anything but a gaping hole that swallows him up at certain precise times: mealtimes, to which she’s not yet welcome.The mother is well aware that her son doesn’t sleep at home now, but she asks no questions for fear of finding out what she already knows through the aunt: another foreigner. Marco grants her the favour of his presence by day and takes it away for the night. In this way he divides himself between mother and lover until, tired of all these comings and goings, he finally makes up his mind.

  When Marianne steps inside Marco’s house for the first time, the mother goes to the doorstep and vigorously shakes her hand. Before Marianne has time to open her mouth, she has already turned her back, her hands are already in the sink washing the vegetables.

  There is sand in her voice and a certain harshness which shows that she’s not just a mother, she’s a field marshal, with weapons that smell good at mealtimes and a regiment of pots and pans under her command. Her excellent cooking is renowned throughout the village. Restaurants have tried to hire her, she’s always said no, her
art is reserved for her men. She pours oil onto the lettuce, holding the huge bottle in one hand, thumb over the opening to control the flow. She cuts bread like a cowboy, pushing the knife towards herself. She works with superfluous movements that look scientific. She realized long ago that she holds onto her men by the stomach, which compensates entirely for the fact that they keep her in the kitchen.

  Her age is impossible to guess. Short, bouncy, white hair, she says things that make her laugh and she says rude things, things like the ones that little girls tell one another. She also does things that wound, as when after supper one evening, seeing that Marianne is clearing the table, shaking the tablecloth out the window, folding it carefully and putting it away in a drawer, she takes it out, snaps it open, folds it again, and puts it away. In the same drawer.

  When she prepares the birds Marco has shot, she starts by cutting off the head and feet, then she plucks them.

  She takes out the entrails and stuffs the birds with a mixture of olives and bread, then she sews up the stomachs as conscientiously as she darns socks or crochets lace. Preparing the birds takes all afternoon, it’s the final stage of Marco’s work, of his work of art that began on the lake or on the scale where he weighs the lead shot. She puts into cooking all her respect for her son and through it, all his respect for the animals, and through that, their shared respect for life.

  Her culinary knowledge is at once luminous and obscure. Degree zero of the recipe: minestra — water, vegetables, beans, rice; tomato salad — tomatoes, oil, salt; yet elaborate dishes end up on the table. On the first days, she lapses into the gargantuan, both at noon and at night. Pasta, two meat dishes, fried vegetables, salad, cheese, tart, fruit: it’s to welcome Marianne nicely, perhaps, or to act in such a way that she has nothing to find fault with because everything is known. It may be to please Marco by making him aware that she’s delighted there’s finally a woman in his life, or maybe to obey him — she can’t refuse him anything. Maybe it’s to seduce Marianne into staying as long as possible rather than taking Marco to some other continent, or maybe it’s to paralyze her, take away her ability to feed herself, tie her to her plate and give her a round belly that would make her unable to talk, to get up, to go away. Marianne will never really know.What is known for certain is that with her short, firm hands the mother loads her plate without asking any questions, without trying to find out who she is, what she wants, how long she intends to stay in the empty house. A week later, with many exclamations, Marco begs his mother to curb her enthusiasm. “I’ll get fat, I’ll explode, Marianne will explode, we’ll all explode.”