The Perfect Circle Page 9

  One afternoon, he even asks Marianne to come to the garage with him. He wants to show her two long white boxes intended for storing fish. They’re from his cousin and he’d like to use them for transporting his hunting gear.

  He pauses, then says: “It’s too bad, they’re perfect — light and roomy, and they fit in the Jeep ...”

  “But?”

  “Whenever I see them I think about coffins and it sends a chill up my spine.”

  Surprised by this confession, Marianne takes a box and stands it in front of Marco, who is a good head taller.

  “Look, it’s too small for you.”

  “But with my legs cut off?”

  “Yes, but anyway, if you’re cut into pieces you’d fit into a garbage bag, too.”

  Marco doesn’t reply, but in the garage the following week, Marianne notices that the boxes have gone. Death frightens him only insofar as it will come from outside, to break the equilibrium of his normal, enjoyable life. Because of this, paradoxically, Marco likes to say that he’s immortal. Immortal because within the limits of his enjoyable life, there’s no set time for going to bed; because he can go without coffee one day and drink twelve cups the next; because he only shaves once a year, on no fixed date; because his car is falling apart; because he’s poor and works so seldom. Marco says he’s immortal: that’s because he knows he is mortal, which suits him fine. On one side there is life and on the other, death. During life, we live. Death is simply the completion of that verb.

  I’ve put a table in a huge room where the sun stays lazily all morning. I sit at it, I look outside, I look at a tree that’s carving a place for itself in the icy sky, I watch the cold cracking the roof of the front neighbour’s house.

  Your arms had a strange way of embracing me, then letting me go right away, as if to avoid holding me, as if to avoid making promises: as if to refuse for themselves the help that everyone needs, help that you actually don’t want to take from or give to anyone.

  We only really topple over within ourselves.Why not call the essential presences, recognize them when they touch down like white butterflies on the edge of our eyelids, thank them for coming, welcome them home before nightfall, and become for them — and for others too — the light in the countryside at night that I’m crazy about, the light that’s on at night, keeping watch on the balcony of the chalet, so that nearby insects in the thousands will come and keep watch too — one could become that, that quiet sifted space of almost nothing, and sleep then, deeply confident, at the side of one’s waking and vigilant self.

  I wish I could have loved you starting from life. I’d have had to lose you on the horizon, let you blend with things that are loved simply for their power of being. I’d have had to love you no more and no less than a tired footstep sinking into the beach, with that way the sand has of filling in the arch of the foot without losing anything of its own shape. From you I was trying to extract a first love, then expand it to everything and distribute it like the crumbs of stale bread that we throw to the birds. I should have loved you in reverse, loved you because you arrive in addition to what already is, because you are the bluer shade of the water and the brighter patch of sky, coolness added to the shadow of the leaves: like the abundance of the already-loved. I should have loved you as if I were finding a new way of greeting things. Loving should happen in the impossible patience of the being, untangling from you the brittle threads of expectation and disappointment, so you would never be deprived of yourself, and so I would not be so bereft once your image has disappeared.

  I spread a cloth on the table, it’s the colour of a salmon and there are flowers woven into it. Last night I dreamed that I was swimming in a lake full of water weeds. I wanted to cross the lake but none of the shores was the right one, I was tired, hungry, I woke up thirsty. On an island along the way I saw a church whose steps dropped abruptly into the water, it was old, dirty, its walls were full of holes, it had a flat, pink front, it was beautiful, I would have liked to go inside.

  In my vast window I hung plants so that when I’m writing I won’t see the terrifying breadth of the sky.That way the sky is not so high, but it is as deep as ever, infinitely deep. I write out of a profound fatigue. I’m stupid, I’m tense, I am sitting at the table set for happiness, the sun blazes onto my pencil, my index finger, my thumb, I don’t write anything. I am a pink wall, dirty, flat, old, I’m an old wall full of holes.

  My cycle is twenty-eight days, almost to the hour. My body makes its way in the dimness just as well as in the light, I am blind. I try not to smoke, I try to eat properly. It’s not much, to tell the truth, under the pneumatic drill

  When you reread pages that you’ve written you’re surprised at having lost the trace of your hesitations, of strikeouts, of all the time spent cleaning your nails, drinking coffee, staring at the white wall. Despairing of literature, despairing of solitude — and expecting everything from them as well.Wishing the phone would ring, even a wrong number. I have a slight headache. I think my head is short of storage space. If there were one more drawer I would lay you down in it, with your dogs, your mother, and the figs, I’d lay down there for good your country’s eternal sun, then I’d close the drawer, close it and lock it.

  Sometimes people cry on airplanes, no one talks to them, the flight attendants walk straight ahead with their trays of fruit salad and ham, others who see them cry wonder what they’ve left behind in the other country, the country that’s already tiny down below, that’s no more than a sock lying on the ocean floor, their immense sorrow no more than a stain riddled with clouds. Between Rome and Montreal, in the plane where I sat crying, a man died. Over the P.A. system they asked if there was a doctor on board, like in a bad movie. They asked in French, in English, in Italian, and yes, there was a doctor on board, who even spoke the three languages. Because I’d made my reservation at the last minute, my seat was near the place where they store flight equipment and also, as I learned that day, corpses. They quickly closed the curtain but I saw the dead man’s bare feet, young feet, and I was surprised that I wasn’t there instead of him.“The idea, to die on a plane,” one flight attendant whispered into another’s ear. It was death that had had the idea, death’s own ideas which are neither good nor bad, but just the last ones.

  When I took the plane in the opposite direction, to your country, I’d thought that since I would be living somewhere else, I would finally feel as if I were everywhere at once, and as a result that I was where I was supposed to be. I had taken your village for the entire universe.As if one could travel the whole universe on foot in less than half an hour, slowly, try every gelato in every bar and, in less than two weeks, find the best one, on the avenue of via degli Alberi. No. I’m condemned to be merely the small amount of space in which to move my body, and above it the exasperating hope that the sky provides, by dint of being the same for us all.

  And you. You are a perfect microcosm. About you, I made no mistake.You are a kind of universe, as are people who die on airplanes, those who make the best gelato in the village, and those who look ravaged like a willow.That’s what I know at this moment, as the winter advances: the country where one is supposed to live doesn’t appear on maps.The country where one is supposed to live is humanity.

  And I see clearly how at certain blessed moments, the question of location loses all significance, because reality starts to speak our imaginary language. Before coming back to you, I exhibited my paintings to pay for the second plane ticket. For the show I wrote something about the search for places fit to live in. I listed openings that seem insignificant but are important in their way. One of them stood out for no reason, it was a weird metaphor, it had no resonance, it was foreign to my patience and I resisted it in vain. It was: “A blue marble found in a hole in the sand.”

  One afternoon, your cousin’s wife decided to bring me along when she went fishing. She took a detour to the farm of a friend to whom she’d brought tins to fill with oil.The farm, a tall house on a vast estate, was d
ozing against an overexposed sky. An old man was snoring in a wicker chair, his eyes half-closed; a woman full of exclamations came towards us, smiling, asking for news, offering us coffee, and behind her voice unfurled the infinite ribbon of the hens’ race before the little rooster’s ciao bella, lengthened the pace of the wind in the olive trees. Everything was at once humble, calm, and bore no trace of waiting.

  While the women jabbered, I played with the toes of my shoes in the sandy earth. I touched a round, shiny object and bent down to free it from the ground. It was so simple and insignificant: I’d just found a blue marble in a hole in the sand.The metaphor had got ahead of reality, it was a defective chronology thanks to which another metaphor became accessible, the marble suddenly saying in its inverted language:Yes, don’t worry, you’re exactly where we’ve been waiting for you; don’t worry about anything, just notice how objects are speaking a familiar language.

  The grandfather was smiling at me. I held the marble out to him, he gestured for me to keep it. I don’t know where it is now, I put it in my pocket, it must have fallen out. Maybe it’s waiting in some other hole in some other sand, waiting for someone to find it, for someone, finding it, to recognize it, and in recognizing it, feel at last that he is part of a legible world.

  V

  SWEAT

  Da Nerone, Ristorante: six kinds of grappa, lager, dark ale, stout, exotic pizzas, wallet-emptying secondi, desserts accompanied by Prosecco; a former mill accessible by an ivy-covered staircase; the night lit by candles, placemats decorated attractively with animals, thick, bluish glasses, reflections perched on the mirrors and the brass trays, casks of beer, chrome and porcelain.

  The owner, Grazia, has buckteeth, a skeletal face, coal-black hair pulled into a very long braid. She throws herself at Marianne whenever she sees her, like a sparrow hawk on a sleeping prey. Marianne has been warned about her, but Grazia uses a seductive tone to entice her: “Come and join us.” “Here, for you, we’re always open.” “I’m expecting you, don’t forget me.” In short, she has a knack for stating the words of welcome that Marianne expects — in vain — from the village in general and from Marco in particular.The work Grazia offers seems in any case the only possible kind in a region plagued by unemployment, where hope lasts only as long as a tourist season.

  And so, one day, Marianne goes there, as much from courage as from resignation. Grazia gives her a half-smile, takes her into the kitchen, explains that she’ll work first at the bar, then at the tables. “The tables?” exclaims Mario, her husband, who’s just made his entrance, “but she hardly knows a word of Italian, it would be a disaster!” “Don’t worry,” replies Grazia, who always has the last word, “she speaks enough to be understood and little enough to be charming.” Marianne’s throat tightens, she smiles idiotically, waits.

  In July and August, the temperature is usually around thirty-five. Mario and Grazia have asked Marianne to wear black pants and she comes to work three times a week in new jeans that stick to her legs and are covered with beer, lemonade, and pizza sauce. Her shift starts at five o’clock. Mario puts on some music, the staff prepare the dining rooms.The wooden tables and the benches have to be lined up on the uneven flagstones of the terrace. Every night, Grazia scolds Mario, pointing out how wobbly they all are. “You have to do something, we can’t let people eat there.” Every night, without a word, Mario deals with the problem using cardboard coasters — three under one leg, two under the other — and the operation carries on with quality controls that always end with deep sighs. Employees set the tables with hundreds of knives, forks, spoons. Ashtrays, candlesticks, glasses.Then sit down for their own meal. Just as they’re swallowing the first bite, Grazia leaps out of her seat and signals, shouting, that it’s time to get down to work.

  Foreigners eat early. They turn up around seven, ask Marianne to translate the menu, consider everything sehr schön, and tuck in, smiling.The Italians all arrive at the same time, around nine o’clock, driving up the blood pressure of the waitresses, the bartender, the cook, the pizzaiolo, and Grazia. Mario, between two flying trays, serves himself the first beer, dark, his favourite. As he brings it slowly to his mouth, the others are running every which way, bringing bread, salt, oil, wine, taking an order, frothing a beer that’s stood around too long, washing a glass, foaming milk for a cappuccino, and answering the bell that from the second floor announces the birth of a pizza. A customer becomes impatient because his dish hasn’t arrived, another wants to know all about winter in Quebec, and it’s impossible to fathom the order of a couple sitting right under the speakers.

  There’s enough work for ten, there are only six, counting the dishwasher.

  Sometimes fuses blow and darkness falls over the restaurant like a blessing. In the kitchen, the only thing that can be seen is the gas flames, and they all think, “Thank God.” “Thank God,” someone murmurs. But Grazia, spouting blasphemy, attacks the generator and, in under two minutes, has got the power back on, snatched the crostini from the oven, mechanically garnished three plates with cherry tomatoes and black olives, and placed them on Marianne’s right hand — her left already holds a giant pizza. Mario, wanting to pour himself a second beer in the dark, has selected the wrong cask, and regretfully offers the glass of lager to the closest customer — on the house.

  Every time she goes into the kitchen, it seems to Marianne that she sees exactly the same scene: the cook’s bent back and her aching legs, the encouragement lavished by the dishwasher, Grazia’s brusque gestures, where you can see in fits and starts, as in a futurist painting, the passage of tomatoes and olives onto elegant plates, sprinkled with slander yet digested serenely by the clientele.

  Around a quarter to midnight, the restaurant is the only place in town that’s still open — aside from the fruit store run by a depressive and tremulous old man who’d prefer not to see anyone though he can’t bring himself to retire. It’s suddenly peaceful — peaceful enough that the employees have time to identify faces and to keep in mind the geography of the tables. With one hand, Mario smoothes his hair, frizzy from the heat, and smiles miserably whenever he meets Marianne. He sighs, his lips quiver, his eyes are wet, he sips his beer, and declares: “One day, soon, I’ll leave all this and get myself a guitar.” Marianne picks up a tray, clears a table, comes back with an order for the bartender. “Yes, I’m going to leave,” Mario repeats, tragically. “When?” she asks. “Soon,” he answers, “soon.” His wife emerges from the kitchen, slamming the door with her iron hand, looks at them for a moment, then shoves three plates into Marianne’s hand and sends her with them to a table that wasn’t assigned to her. She pushes Mario behind the cash register, tells him to calculate the bills, and when Marianne comes back, shoves them at her. “Soon, really?” Looking down, he finishes his beer in one gulp. “Dai!” says Grazia impatiently.

  Every night Marianne has a moment to watch the moon resting on the roof across the way. On her empty tray, a summer insect sometimes touches down, or a white moth or, towards the end of the season, a dead leaf falling off the ivy. The restaurant overlooks the sleeping village, black against the black of the sky, you can hardly make out the shadow of a chapel tower and that of the combined angles of all the roofs together. I am here, thinks Marianne, here in the gorgeous night of this generous country. This night resembles mine, it’s the same temperature as my skin and its warm passage goes along with all the rest, with those who are asleep and those who are awake and those who will soon go fishing. In this blonde countryside, from which all day she is excluded, she is surprised to discover the tremendous fidelity of the night, its discreet bandage on the scales of evil, the sublime refuge it offers from the scorching heat, the opening of its arms — black, blue, white. Night deposits on the tray its dust of darkness and moonlight, weightless and utterly soothing. A howl from Grazia pulls her from her meditation: a customer has spilled his beer and Mario is hurtling down the cellar stairs.

  And then, at midnight, everything is ruined again. The restaur
ant is transformed into a bar and a new clientele, young and in many cases already drunk, shows up all at once, like a busload of Japanese at the Vatican. Everything’s sailing on beer and the rumbling of voices, full glasses drop onto the floor tiles, couples make out in the shelter of candlelight. Every night, the customers at one table, never the same ones, realize that Marianne doesn’t understand their dialect and they make risqué jokes while she waits for their orders, ill at ease, pencil suspended, and circles under her eyes.The staff’s fatigue progresses beyond hunger, and now they’re only energized by exasperated murmurs that drive them mechanically from table to table and from the bar to the pizzeria.

  Finally, around a quarter past two, the pizzeria shuts down. At that exact moment, and as if acting with remarkable clairvoyance, a client orders a focaccia with rosemary, provoking the same discussion every night. Marianne to Mario: “Can we still serve a pizza?”

  “No, the pizzeria’s closed.”

  Then, seized with one last scruple, Mario to Grazia: “The pizzeria’s closed, right?”

  “No, no, one more, it’s barely a quarter past two.”

  “But the pizzaiolo turned off the oven.”

  “Then he can turn it back on for God’s sake, it’s a sale, after all.”

  “But ...”

  “Dai!”

  Mario to Marianne: an apologetic look. Marianne to the pizzaiolo: sick at heart. The pizzaiolo: a sigh and grin from cheek to flour-covered cheek. He turns on the oven.

  Shortly before three, the last customers leave or are discreetly thrown out by Mario when Grazia’s back is turned. He starts early on nights when Paolo (father dead, brought up by his mother, a concierge on the outskirts of Rome, abandoned by his fiancée two days before their marriage, and famous throughout the region for surviving a suicidal leap from a moving train) comes in for a beer, then another. He may not have fallen under the train, but on those nights he collapses under the table, risks being swept up with the dust and the butts by employees anxious for bed. Mario, feeling no pain himself, bends over him and shakes him by the shoulders. Before Paolo’s head hits the table, Mario tells him he’ll soon be getting a guitar and going away, then grabs his feet, drags him to the stairs, and splashes his face with the water for the plants and with genuine compassion.