Limbo (44 page)

“Worm, you have to hit me,” Alessia yells, and Mattia crawls out of his hiding place, firing a handful of pinecones at her. Alessia zigzags across the grass, rejoicing at having escaped. She's laughing, shouting, having fun. But her cell phone has fallen out of her pocket. Mattia prudently sheds his worm identity, snatches it, and then lies down on the grass again. He shows Manuela the photo. Alessia caught him smiling, looking good-natured, disheveled, and alert. But also evasive, catlike. “Erase it for me,” he says. “Why?” “Let's keep the memory of today just for us, as if we were alone here, just you and me.” Manuela erases the photo. “Now it's the men in the caves' turn,” Alessia shouts. “Manu, come get me!!! If you don't send me to Limbo, I win.” “I'm coming,” Manuela yells. “I'm coming.”

But she goes on hiding behind the hedge, holding her breath. Immobile, patient, the spider is still lying in wait. She hears Alessia running, panting, climbing over trunks, charging through bushes. When Alessia runs past without seeing her, Manuela gets up, and in so doing, destroys the spiderweb. The spider sinks into the leaves. “Don't catch me, Aunt Manu! Don't catch me! I win, I win!” She spots him there on the grass. Mattia doesn't move. His big body supine, his eyes to the sky, his arms crossed, hair rumpled, smiling, undoubtedly more serene than she has ever seen him. They don't make the most convincing Adam and Eve. She does feel she has been expelled from the Garden of Eden, but this park isn't it. It's the uniform, the company, the fraternity. And she doesn't know how to reconcile Mattia with all that. She drops to the grass next to him. The tall trees sway in the wind, dark green against a lapis lazuli sky. At times winter on the Tyrrhenian can be limpid and crystalline, supernatural almost. “I made it to the end and I found the little girl,” Alessia's voice startles them. “I won. But you two are stuck in Limbo.” Mattia takes her hand, he doesn't want to get up, neither does she. “I think something's happened to me,” Mattia says. “Did you get bit by a spider?” Manuela misunderstands. “I've found myself in you,” he says, his fingers wrapping around her wrist. He can't explain it. But it's as if Manuela were his reflection in a pool of water.

*   *   *

Vanessa and Cinzia join them at the Posta Vecchia restaurant. Mattia has reserved a table. They're seated in front of the large window, framed by flowing red drapes. The sea in the window looks like a painting. There are only American and Japanese tourists, and the five of them, dressed as they are, seem like intruders. But the waiters pretend not to notice and treat them, like all the others, with professional kindness. “I don't want to steal Manuela away from you,” Mattia says to her mother, extending his hand, “but I thought you might feel better if you met me.” “You're too kind, you shouldn't have gone to all this trouble,” Cinzia says, intimidated by the sumptuous dining room and the insistent presence of waiters in white livery. “What are you doing? This will ruin you,” Vanessa whispers in his ear, “it's not worth it, we don't know the difference between a trattoria and a Michelin two-star.” “Neither do I,” Mattia replies, “but I've been eating at the Bellavista for almost three weeks, and I felt like something different.”

It's not true, of course. You can see that from how he decodes the menu, which is incomprehensible, might as well be written in a foreign language as far as the Paris family is concerned (what are Jerusalem artichokes, sea truffles?), from how he chooses the bottle of wine from hundreds of labels in a leather-bound book that looks like a reliquary, from how he smells and tastes it, clicking his tongue, and by the tone he uses when he speaks to the waiter. He orders for everyone: fried zucchini flowers with caviar, raw weever with annurca apple purée, cannoli stuffed with lobster and artichoke tartare, roasted shellfish on a bed of toasted fennel, licorice, and ginger. Self-assured, easy, he shows that he doesn't take the place or the occasion too seriously. Cinzia doesn't know what to say, so she doesn't say anything, to avoid making a bad impression. Even though he's a tad too old, Mr. Rubino is distinguished, polite, and clearly rich: in short, he has class. She can't understand what he could possibly have in common with a soldier like Manuela, but she begins to hope that this unlikely relationship of theirs is the prelude to Manuela's farewell to arms—for which she is ready to forgive his difference in age and bless him forever.

The Parises are not very talkative, so Mattia ventures an odd soliloquy on city street names. He says he liked Ladispoli instantly. Oh, not for its monuments or even for the sea. But for the names. He's had to pass through Rome pretty often lately, for work. And he's struck every time by the harshness of the place-names. Il Muro Torto—the Twisted Wall; Via dei Due Macelli—the Street of Two Slaughterhouses; Via delle Fratte—the Street of Thickets; Via dei Cessati Spiriti—the Street of Dead Spirits; Via della Femmina Morta—the Street of the Dead Woman; Via del Fosso di Tor Pagnotta—the Street of the Pagnotta Tower Ditch; Tor Sanguigna—Bloody Tower; Borgata Finocchio—the Fag Neighborhood … In the city where he was born, the streets are named after, for example, Italy's founding fathers, Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini, or scientists, philosophers, battles. Then he realized that the secret of Rome is disenchantment. The lack of rhetoric. Romans, oppressed by the nearness of power, have a crude fondness for truth. They don't embellish reality, the flaws of which they know well; instead they serve it up and take it as it comes. Apparently the people of Lazio are the same. A city where the streets are called Via dell'Infernaccio—Real Hell Street; Via dell'Anatra—Duck Street; Via delle Folaghe—Coot Street; Via della Caduta delle Cavalle—the Street Where Mares Fall; has a simple, straightforward soul, and he feels at home in Ladispoli.

“Are you thinking of moving here?” Vanessa tosses out as she empties her wineglass with a studied indifference. Manuela's eyes sink into her lobster cannoli, she'd like to bury herself in them. Yet that question—which she never would have dared to pose—makes her heart race. She begins to fear she has forgotten every safeguard, every strategy, that she's gone too far with him. So far that she wouldn't know how to turn back. “I could live here,” Mattia replies. “I'm sure I could live here happily.”

An hour and a half later, when even the peach soufflé with star anise and violets is nothing more than a pink shadow on their plates, Alessia starts getting restless and Cinzia, relieved, takes her to see the swimming pool. “I made a terrible impression on her,” Mattia observes. “Mamma really doted on Giovanni,” Vanessa says. “Manuela was supposed to marry him, I don't know if she told you, Mamma wanted to see her married off, my mother and I don't have any luck with men, we fall for the ones who can't be trusted, but Manuela had this good kid, studious, serious, Mamma hoped she'd have a solid marriage, it's better for soldiers not to divorce, they're traditionalists, they still worry about those things, Mamma was really counting on it, and she still hasn't accepted the fact that they broke up.” Manuela blushes with embarrassment, but Mattia doesn't ask her about Giovanni. He's very sure of himself. Or maybe he just doesn't care. He smiles at her, relaxed, satisfied, calm, and all of a sudden Manuela suspects that he's playing a part. That his excessive intimacy with Alessia, the idyll in the Garden of Eden, the official lunch with the family, that nonsense about street names, the conversation, the declaration of love for Ladispoli—that it's all an act. Theater. Once the show is over and the curtain drops, the stage will be empty. Mattia has no intention of living in Ladispoli. He took the risk of meeting her mother because he knows he won't have to see her again. She had offered him her confused heart and he accepted it, but he could just as easily throw it away tomorrow without even realizing it. A rage that she can neither repress nor control rises up inside her.

Mattia is telling Vanessa, in his usual smug, slightly forced voice, that mothers usually like him. They find him reassuring, think he's the ideal boyfriend. He's sorry he's disappointed so many of them. Evidently their mother is more shrewd. She's right to suspect him, he can't be trusted, just like the men Vanessa and Cinzia like. As he speaks, he gazes too attentively at Vanessa, and his blue eyes, the pupils encircled by contact lenses, gleam maliciously. For a second, Manuela has the impression she has unmasked him, and she hates him for it. She clenches her fists and crumbles her
grissini
onto the tablecloth. She needs air. She stands up so suddenly that the diligent waiter doesn't have time to move her chair aside. It falls over loudly. “I'm going out to the terrace to smoke,” she informs him curtly. She intentionally bangs her crutches on the marble.

Vanessa watches her leave, and when the glass door closes again, she bends over him, so close that her hair tickles his nose. She tells him that when Manuela went off to war—because that's what it was—it became her job to defend her. “How?” Mattia asks. He tries to catch the waiter's attention by raising his arm, because he's afraid of Vanessa's confidences. He doesn't want to talk about Manuela with her. He doesn't want to talk about Manuela with anyone. It's all too new and fragile to sustain other people's opinions. “I thought about my sister at least five times a day,” Vanessa explains, “I'd mentally review her gestures, her smile, the memories we share, the things she had said to me, her gait, her reserve, her determination, her idealism, her innocence. It was my way of enveloping her with my aura, because at the time I was convinced I had developed significant spiritual powers. Positive powers, I mean, like I could emanate goodness. In short, I watched over her in order to save and protect whatever of Manuela needed to be saved and protected. I kept her alive and true to herself. I knew that terrible things could happen over there, things that could change her, but I was trying to hold on to her real personality so I could give it back to her whole when she came home. But Manuela, the Manuela I tried to protect, still hasn't come back.”

Mattia doesn't know what to say. He's not sure he has quite understood what Vanessa means, but he doesn't believe in these things anyway. No one can protect someone else, you can't even protect yourself. No one preserved the best things in him. When the waiter comes to ask if they would like bitters, limoncello, grappa, herbal tea, Mattia tells him just to bring the check. Vanessa presses her hand in his. “Manuela still isn't well,” she says, “I don't know if you really understand how sick she is.” “Yes, I do,” Mattia says. “Listen to me,” Vanessa says, almost threateningly. “If you hurt her, I swear I'll come find you, wherever you are, and I'll make you regret it.”

Mattia looks distractedly at the bill, without even checking the math. Vanessa is surprised when, despite the not insignificant sum, he pays in cash instead of with a credit card. The bills are new, smooth, intact. Mattia slips the money into the leather folder. “The last thing in the world I want,” he says almost sadly, “is to hurt Manuela.”

*   *   *

The Posta Vecchia restrooms smell of lavender. Enormous mirrors over the sinks. Stacks of pure white towels, the size of handkerchiefs. The four white doors are all ajar. No one's there. Manuela fights the annoying but irresistible urge to cry. She doesn't know what exactly she blames Mattia for. For having deceived her, or for simply having involved her. Because it's as if she's been under anesthesia all these months. Her indifference was her protection. And now it's like she's walking through hostile terrain without a bulletproof vest, exposed to every shot. It's too much. She locks herself in the last stall, out of old habit, looking for a little privacy. In the barracks she learned how to control her bladder and pee without making a sound. You have to aim the jet at the porcelain, avoiding the pool of water. Years ago, she had been proud of her ability. It made her invisible, and therefore invulnerable. The liquid slides silently into the toilet. She can still do it. It seems she has forgotten everything about military life. All that's left is this pathetic habit.

She reaches for the toilet paper, but there's none left. She swears, angry at not having noticed earlier. She hops toward her purse dangling on a hook, opens it, rummages around, but doesn't have any tissues. She's about to open the door and grab a strip from the next stall, when she senses a presence. A woman approaches in high heels, closes the door, the rustle of a skirt. Ever since Manuela came home, she'd been washing herself constantly. Hands, face, body. She feels dirty all the time. She can't imagine simply pulling up her jeans and leaving, as if it were nothing. The immodest dripping in the next toilet. “Fuck it,” she whispers and cleans herself Afghani style, with her left hand, the impure hand. She stares blankly at her fingers.

The woman flushes, the water gurgles down the drain, and it takes a second before she hears the strange sound coming from the next stall. A lament, a moan almost. She hesitates, then hurriedly washes her hands, dries them on a cloth towel, throws it in the wicker basket, and, her heels ticking, goes out into the atrium. Behind the closed door, someone is crying.

Manuela has fallen between the toilet and the plywood wall, her good knee against her chest, the other leg stretched out on the floor, her hand pressed against the door. Her heart is racing. Her fingers leave bloody prints on the white wall. She keeps her eyes stubbornly closed. She can no longer stand the sight of blood. At the hospital she would faint whenever she had to have her blood drawn. And she threw up when the nurse passed her pushing a trolley of samples to be analyzed. She almost threw up at the discount butcher counter, distraught by all those plastic-wrapped cuts of meat and the acrid smell rising from the packets. She even worried she'd get sick when Alessia scratched herself in the woods. But now it's even worse. It's her own blood dripping from her fingers. She hasn't gotten her period since that night in the Gulistan gorge, more than eight months ago.