Limbo (56 page)

She didn't even leave a note. Then again, what more was there to say? In truth, she'd already left me that morning in November, in the gynecological ward of the local hospital. She didn't ask my opinion then, either. Those last weeks were just the death throes. She'd killed me a second time. But I don't hold it against her, I've forgiven her. In her place I would have left much sooner. I would not have been able to face or endure what she had for me. I would not have been able to devote myself to unhappiness because of something I could neither accept nor understand. What I can't forgive is the fact that she didn't kill the man I was before, the one who deserved to be punished. She killed the young, new, enthusiastic me, the better man, who deserved another chance. Denise denied me that chance. And, sitting on that park bench, I died a second time.

I'd enjoyed our Adriatic life. I'd thought it could work. We furnished the apartment together, and this time I went with Denise to buy couches and beds, because it's not true that a bed is a bed and a couch is a couch. Objects take on the identity of whoever chooses them, whoever uses and consumes them; even knickknacks have memories. In the summer we went to the beach club across the way. There were six rows of umbrellas, spaced three feet apart. And they were all occupied. Mindless music blared from loudspeakers until sunset. Denise missed the sea at Santorini, our elegant house on the crater, the solitude of the volcanic bays under the cliffs, the sea urchins and schools of fish in the clear, cool waters. But I enjoyed doing battle with the shade from our neighbor's umbrella, flip-flopping along the wooden footpath, even plunging into the shallow, hot, slimy water. I already knew I would never see Imerovigli again, and I'd managed to accept that. That house belonged to someone who no longer existed, and I didn't miss it. I sold it to an international chain that owned a five-star hotel just below us. They'll turn it into luxury suites. They paid me extremely well, and I had the money transferred to Marco's account. I can't buy him the future I would have liked to build for him, but I delude myself that at least I tried.

It was a simple life, normal even. We'd ride our bikes along the flat waterfront, shop at the supermarket, sleep a lot. I was on call four times a week. I treated lowly flus, panic attacks, and the congestion and diarrhea of German tourists. One night in September Denise and I conceived our second child. When school started, we took Marco to a crumbling old building that had probably once been a convent. The nuns were tiny and chatty. His classmates had rough, country accents that made us smile, but I liked it all because it made me feel like I was making peace with a more ancient, more humane Italy, an Italy I had never known.

In other words, I adapted. I became a pathetic country doctor, with no ambition or desire beyond raising my children to be better than myself. I worked to support my family, to treat them to pizza on Saturday night and the water park on Sunday. We'd brought the solitude of our previous life with us. But Denise and I also brought fear. We never left Marco alone, not even for a second. An irrational fear paralyzed us if he was out of our sight even for a moment. We tried not to pass our anxiety along to him, but I'm afraid we didn't succeed. Children absorb us like air, breathe in our joy but also our sadness, our melancholy and sorrow. You don't have to say anything; they understand just the same. Marco became a cautious, quiet boy. He would even ask permission to go to the bathroom. We watched our backs whenever we went out. We'd spy on the street from our windows and immediately report any suspicious car. In a restaurant we only ever sat near the emergency exit, and I always had my back to the wall and my eyes on the door. We didn't have a landline, only cell phones, whose numbers only we and my man knew. We didn't trust anyone and made a point of rarely socializing. We were pleasant but vague with shopkeepers and neighbors. We never accepted invitations. Not that we got very many. People were suspicious of us. They thought we were criminals. One of Marco's classmates told him so, and he cried, wouldn't speak for three days, then confessed everything to me and swore that he didn't believe I was bad. So I decided to tell him the truth, even though it was too serious for a child. Every now and then Denise complained that she felt she had nothing left. But I felt like I had everything. That is, the essentials. You know what I mean.

I didn't realize that Denise was sick. She was weak, anemic, listless—I thought it was probably the pregnancy. I didn't live with her when she was pregnant with Marco, but she told me that she was sick a lot the first months. She was weak from anemia, and it was a painful struggle just to get a cracker down. Then her mother died. It was the beginning of November. It rained cats and dogs, and the humid, gloomy climate made us nervous. When my man gave us the news, Denise's mother had been dead for a week, forgotten like a dog in the clinic back home. She'd already been cremated. They couldn't tell Denise because she would have wanted to go see her, to at least be with her during those final hours, but she couldn't; the danger was still too great.

We fought. She was upset, devastated, she hated me. She told me her mother didn't deserve to die like that. That I had made her life a desert—worse, a hell. That I had turned her into a pariah, an untouchable, a damned soul. That she wanted her freedom back, wanted to leave the house without looking over her shoulder, to call a girlfriend, go on a trip, take Marco to the playground without having to worry if someone spoke with a southern accent. To find a job, do something, to stop vegetating as if she'd been condemned to death. She wasn't a criminal, she hadn't done anything wrong, she had never in her life broken the law apart from the one time she had forgotten to declare some income on her tax return, she didn't deserve this, and neither did her son. A child can't live like this, transplanted again and again from one place to the next; plants and trees have a hard time if they can't put down deep roots. And so do people. Growing up like this, he would be incapable of normal relationships, of making friends, even someday, of love. It wasn't fair. She didn't want any part in ruining her son. She loved Marco and if she had to choose between him and me, she chose him. I had to understand, I would have done the same thing.

Alarmed, I asked her if she wanted to leave me. She couldn't take Marco away from me. He was all I had left. Denise shrugged her shoulders, took a sleeping pill, and slept for sixteen hours. We never talked about it again, and I attributed those fierce words to a breakdown—understandable—over her mother's death. Denise's mother, a kind, generous, good woman, who loved us both like her own children and who had shown me more affection than my own mother had, was my second victim.

She didn't tell me anything about the hospital. She took care of it all in a day, while I was on call. She went, did it, and left a few hours later. She didn't even spend the rest of the day in bed. I didn't realize what had happened at first. Denise had been taking folic acid, she'd been told it was important for the health of the fetus. She kept a small bottle of it, with a green label, near the stove in the kitchen. One day, it must have been the end of November, I noticed it wasn't there anymore. I asked her why. Casually, as if she were relating something unimportant, she told me she didn't need it anymore, the baby was gone. It was like I'd been hit on the head. My vision went blurry, I had to sit down. I felt like strangling her. I started to cry, a sudden fit of tears, furious and uncontrollable. But by that point there was nothing I could do. It had already happened. My second child was my third victim.

Denise stayed with me for five more weeks, but in truth she was already gone. During those last few weeks, I said goodbye to Marco. An infinite sadness weighed on me, but I tried to hide it until the end. Marco pretended not to understand, and I am grateful to him for that. He was cheerful, he liked that simple city, where he had settled in right away. He was playing soccer again, another youth league, and was proud he'd been picked to play defense. Protecting the goal, preventing the other team from scoring: it suited him. I'd bought a whole arsenal of deadly Chinese fireworks, and on New Year's Eve I set them off. We played with sparklers on our little balcony, shrieking with excitement, dueling with the incandescent tips, crossing imaginary swords made of sparks, writing in the air with fire. Then, when even the last firecracker was out, Denise told me I should put him to bed myself. Marco fell asleep with his hand in mine. I don't know what he will think of me in the future, or if he will forgive me. Maybe the price he paid will seem too high and he will blame me for having let all this happen. Maybe he will think it wasn't worth it, and he will be right. But life is also—perhaps especially—about doing things that aren't worth it. I haven't seen him since.

 

 

BELLAVISTA HOTEL, JANUARY 11

In May I received an envelope at the hospital—with three bullets in it. The other doctor on duty gave it to me, a kid from Puglia who'd graduated three months earlier. “I think there's something metallic inside,” he said, “the magnet on my badge stuck to the envelope.” I opened it and held them in my hand. I don't know anything about guns. You would have recognized them immediately. They were heavy, large caliber, maybe for an automatic rifle, an AK-47, I think that's what it's called. I've always hated guns. Even hunting makes me sick. When I was young I would go into the fields or the woods with my environmentalist friends and make noise with pots and pans and drums, to chase away the deer and migratory birds. I did it with conviction, but also for fun. Now I feel tied to those migratory birds, just as if they were my family. Which is why I was bewitched by that white egret at Torre Flavia. It was the only time I tried to really talk to you about myself. But you didn't understand. And that's as it should be: you needed to find your comrades again in order to find yourself. And if you hadn't found yourself again, you wouldn't have been able to accept me.

I learned that the guilty verdict was upheld on appeal, but frankly, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. They told me I would have to leave again and that I had been accepted into the special witness protection program. This time, per article 13.5, I would receive a new identity. A new address, a new birthplace, a new tax ID, a new benefits card. A new name. I instinctively said I wanted to be named Marco. I kidded myself that I could always have my son with me that way. They told me it wasn't a good idea. Too easy. Like passwords. Everyone uses their birthdate, their nickname, their wedding date—anyone can hack them in a second. A new identity can't be tied to the past. It has to be pure, like a blank page. And anyway, I'm not the one who decides. I will be notified when the order has been approved.

So in the meantime, I am Mattia. Because of Pirandello's novel
The Late Mattia Pascal
. I don't know if you've read it—my Italian teacher in high school made me, required summer reading for juniors. I can't say if I liked it or not, but it certainly made an impression on me. I never had the urge to reread it, and maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. Anyway, it's the story of a man who dies, or rather is presumed dead, and he thinks he can make a new life for himself in another city, under another name. But it's an illusion, because his past haunts him and one day comes back to claim him. And even though he meets a girl and falls in love, he can't have a future with her or with anyone, since he is the living dead, condemned to live as dead every day, until the end. It's a sad story, but it's also the only one I knew truly suited me.

My last name I took from the phone book. I have to say it felt weird. Like baptizing a new creature: in a certain sense I was becoming the son of the man who died in that restaurant parking lot near the sea. I am my own son, I brought myself into the world. There were lots of names in the phone book I liked: Ferro, Pace, Dell'Amore—iron, peace, love. In the end I chose a precious gem. My mother had a whole box of jewelry: pendants, chokers, earrings. She knew the qualities of each gem, and decided what to wear according to her mood. Precious gems influence our feelings, she would say. She was neurotic, as testy as a wasp, but she was amazing, she really did know how to connect with minerals—better than with people, unfortunately. She still is amazing, in fact. She's fine, and I'm in contact with her occasionally, through my man. I tried to remember her sayings. Diamonds reveal the truth. But I did not consider myself a revealer of truth. Topaz facilitates spiritual growth. But I'm afraid I'm not very spiritual. Agate encourages you to be attentive to your surroundings, and it would have been a good fit for my situation, but Mattia Agata sounded like a fake name. Sapphire helps you break out of old patterns, but Mattia Zaffiro wasn't very believable either. Tourmaline helps you face new challenges without losing your sense of self, but there wasn't a single Tourmalina in the phone book. Rubies convey strength, courage, steadfastness, enthusiasm, and a joy for life. And there were Rubinos in almost every city. So that was it, my new name had to be Rubino. I baptized myself Mattia Rubino. I don't know if I can really explain its true meaning, but it wasn't merely a bureaucratic act. I really am Mattia Rubino.

 

 

BELLAVISTA HOTEL, JANUARY 12

I don't have much to say about the past few months. I've roamed from one place to the next, from hotels to half-empty apartments, never able to stay for long. I'm like a seed tossed about by the wind. Do you remember that saying, spray-painted black, on that marble bridge, in front of the hospital in Rome? He who sows seeds in the wind will make the sky blossom. I liked it, but you said it was stupid. You were right. He who sows seeds in the wind harvests nothing. But I can't bury myself in the ground and flower. I can't put down roots and I don't give fruit. Nothing is born of me. I'm not complaining, and I don't want to give you the wrong impression: I still know how to appreciate life, at a basic, almost primeval level. Mattia Rubino has found comfort, he has had a few casual affairs, but mostly with prostitutes. Women who ask no questions and have no expectations. For your peace of mind, let me assure you that I always used a condom. I shunned like the plague any woman who might interest me, because I can't allow myself to get attached to anyone. I agreed not to speak to anyone about what happened, not to reveal my previous identity, not to use it under any circumstances, and never to return to the places I'd left unless I was authorized to do so. In practice, I agreed to not have a past anymore. If I break even one of these rules, the legal motions to change my identity could be revoked, and then I really would be no one. Again, I ask you to burn this letter.