The Sense of an Elephant (12 page)

Luca paused for a moment on the threshold before entering. Left the door open a crack.

Pietro followed him.

The internal courtyard had a diamond-shaped flower bed with a palm tree at its centre that appeared ready to snap in two. There were two bicycles against one wall and in a corner a small fountain surrounded by a low wall of azulejo tiles. The concierge sat down on the fountain wall. A single drop spilled over from the fountain's upper basin into the larger, already full one below. A second drop spilled. The doctor passed through a glass-paned door and climbed red-carpeted stairs. On the first floor, two windows lit up.

Twenty minutes later the doctor came down, walked past the concierge and leaned his back against the inside surface of the street door. The leather bag swung from his index finger. Pietro hadn't moved from the azulejo fountain, now went to Luca and lifted the bag from his hands. On the first floor, the two windows had gone dark. The concierge accompanied the doctor into the street, back through the Piazza del Duomo, the polychrome Madonnina statue atop the cathedral defying the blackened sky. They returned up the Corso one behind the other, not stopping until the hospital. When they arrived, the accident and emergency department sign was lit.

‘I want to say goodbye to Lorenzo. Starting tomorrow he'll be cared for at home.' The doctor took back his bag and lifted up his face, all sharp angles. Stepped towards Pietro but did not face or look at him. ‘The woman on the balcony is the wife. He was my teacher in secondary school. He has intestinal cancer. He's tired.' Luca straightened his raincoat. ‘His wife asked me who you were.'

Pietro buttoned his jacket. ‘Who am I?'

‘You're the priest who'll be confessing him tomorrow.'

‘I'm not a priest any more.'

‘You will be tomorrow.' The doctor stared blankly at the emergency department sign. ‘Because tomorrow I'll be helping him to die.' He looked now at the concierge and truly saw him for the first time. Pietro was a tiny man whom the evening was
nevertheless incapable of covering. Luca sought him with fearful eyes, then closed them. Together they walked through the hospital's front gate. They arrived at the entrance to the ward.

‘Are you coming in?' the doctor asked, heading off without waiting for an answer. Pietro didn't move. He looked for something to support him, struggled to catch his breath, leaned against one of the fir trees. Then he raised his head. The windows glowed. He sought out a window on the first floor, confident he would see him, and he did. Lorenzo was there. Pietro drew a breath and waved with his hand hanging from his nose. The child pressed himself up against the window, hesitated. Then he returned the gesture, creating his own trunk.

Pietro headed back out to the street without entering the ward. He paused when he reached the pavement. An ambulance went past, its flashing lights staining him turquoise. When the lights were turned off, on the emergency department ramp, he started home. The concierge walked without haste, before his breathlessness forced him to stop altogether.
He needs me.
The effort choked him, choked him still after he arrived at the lodge and sat down in his kitchen. He felt for the drawer below the table and opened it without lowering his head. Felt some more, found a sack containing a scrap of bread. It was dry. He set it down on the table. Cut a slice thin enough to see through. Held it in the palm of his hand as he poured half a glass of wine from the bottle he had brought from the sea. With the bread and the wine he went into the
bathroom. Standing before the mirror he saw what his tears looked like. Two rivulets trailed into his shirt collar. He lifted up the bread, broke it in two, lifted the glass and drank. The pasty mix swelled his cheeks.
He needs me
. He swallowed it down.

The witch opened the window and climbed out. Clung to the gutter. ‘Be careful,' said the young priest. She began to descend. ‘Witches fly, didn't you know?' He remained stock-still, hands stretched wide, ready to catch her.

She came down slowly. Her skirt lifted as she leapt and he saw two tapered legs, four sticking plasters on one knee.

‘My mother doesn't want me to go out.' She took his arm, which was cold. Rubbed it warm and he could only grimace. Rubbed it more quickly and he laughed.

‘Come on … Your name is Pietro, right?' She led him into the street, flitting noiselessly, a dragonfly dragging a horse. They flew to the Corso d'Augusto and the Tiberius Bridge, crossed it and continued down the gravel path to the park. There was a lamppost and a bench, four dark trees losing their leaves. He did not sit down but the witch did, and the leaves ceased to fall. ‘Haven't you ever seen a pair of legs from Milan?' She raised her hands to the light of the lamppost. On the gravel appeared the blurry shadow of ten fingers. They closed into a fist and became a parrot. Then a dog, barking.

‘It bites priests,' she said.

‘Who taught you how to do that?'

‘My father.' The witch stroked his fingers, spread them from palm to fingertips. They were uncommonly long, and made of iron. ‘You can tell that you pray with these and nothing more.' She stroked the backs of his hands, drew them into light. And
while he stared at her lips, on the ground appeared a species of crestless parrot. The witch tugged on his middle and ring fingers and the crest emerged.

‘Move its beak,' she said.

He wiggled his thumb.

As the parrot's beak opened the young priest sought the witch's mouth.

That night, after he heard his son return from the hospital, Pietro started up the stairs and climbed slowly until he came to the iron door on the fifth floor. Opened it with some difficulty and went through. Walls of damp white sheets hung from the wires. He passed between two and felt the coolness on his face, arrived at the parapet. The narrow street was deserted, the sky a lightless pall. He continued to look up.
Will I go to his teacher's tomorrow?
he asked of the only father he had ever had in his life, the father who had remained cowardly silent throughout that same lifetime. The concierge slipped off his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves. Walked to the centre of the terrace, between the sheets once again, and stretched out his arms.

The next morning Pietro left the building with the Bianchi and pedalled slowly to Anita's shop. It was still closed. He waited in the saddle, leaning a shoulder against the wall and keeping his feet on the pedals.

‘Pietro.' All of a sudden she stood before him.

He smiled and took the keys from her hands, helped her with the roller shutter.

‘I was about to come to you, you scoundrel. You keep your mobile off, and …'

‘I wanted to ask you something.' He kissed her on the head and ushered her in.

Anita had on a dress with a bow on the back. ‘What happened?' She settled in behind the counter and turned on the shop's display lights. ‘Tell me.'

Pietro laid a hand on the deck of cards, which was surrounded by balls of yarn. ‘Shuffle.'

‘You've never believed in it.'

‘Please, shuffle.'

She laughed, restrained herself, laughed again. Watched him as she shuffled: he was a child, his eyes consumed with sleep and impatience. ‘You've never believed in anything.' Anita held out the deck to him.

The concierge cut it in half.

She looked at the bottom card. ‘You're challenging him.'

‘Who?'

‘God.'

She showed him the card, a woman forcing open the jaws of a lion. Uncovered for him too the middle card, a man on a throne. ‘You're doing it for him.'

‘The emperor.'

‘Your son.' She spread the deck out on the counter, as far as the yarn. Exhaled noisily. ‘Whatever it is you wanted to ask me …' Nibbled at a fingernail. ‘The answer is no. Don't do it.'

‘No?'

‘The Lord doesn't forgive twice.'

Pietro did not listen to Anita's cards. For the rest of the morning he monitored the preparations for Sara's birthday. In the courtyard the magician Nicolini was directing the construction of a small stage. The lawyer stopped by the lodge around eleven with a brochure in hand and a haggard look. ‘It's a disaster, my friend. It seems that Fernando won't ever set foot in the cafe again.'

‘He'll get over it.'

‘I hope so. Meanwhile …' He showed him the brochure, which showed two jockeys on horses. ‘I've consoled myself with a gift for little Sara – riding lessons. The younger the better, in such cases.' He tittered. ‘What did you come up with?'

Pietro bit his lip.

‘If you forgot, you can always go in with me.' Poppi left the brochure with him and continued into the courtyard to inspect the operation. He stayed more than an hour, going back up to his flat only after the magician had gone.

Pietro set to sweeping the courtyard until he caught sight of the doctor coming down the stairs. Then he made sure he was in the entrance hall to greet him. Held open the street door and said, ‘I'm coming with you.' Then, as on the previous evening, Pietro trailed Luca all the way to his former teacher's house. They stopped below the imposing balcony. The little old woman was there, wrapped up in a coat, her face greyer than the two stone eagles. She went back inside and Luca said, ‘Why did you agree to come?'

‘Why did you ask me to?'

‘For my mother.' The doctor entered the building.

Pietro remained in the street, tried to clasp his hands together to stop them shaking, then crossed into the courtyard. More drops overflowed in the azulejo fountain. Beside it Luca, a stork swaying on the steps, waited for him. They went up together, stopping in front of a door with a brass nameplate reading
Morelli-Lai
. The door opened.

‘Hello.'

The two-eagles woman welcomed them, bowing a chin covered with sparse down. She was a twig dried up by the years. The woman looked at Pietro, looked at the doctor. ‘This way.' She indicated a room halfway down the hall. On the walls hung several lithographs and two Indian ink drawings of Milan in the last century. A stick of incense burned on a large wooden chest.

‘This way.'

From the end of the hall came a series of coughs, ending in a rattling wheeze.

‘My husband can change his mind, right?' she asked.

Luca kept his gaze on the stone eagle outside the French doors of the large sitting room. ‘He can change his mind whenever he likes.' He laid his leather bag on a table and his coat over a chair.

‘My husband is not a believer.' She turned toward Pietro. ‘But I am.'

‘I'll need the professor's signature.' Luca handed her a sheet of paper. ‘I'll also need a glass.'

She read the document, left and returned with a glass, left the room once more with the paper. Luca pulled from his bag two glass vials, a tourniquet and a small bottle. Pietro stood next to a mantelpiece supporting a large bowl full of chocolates. Above it hung a shelf with a line of records from the 1970s (De André, Venditti, Dalla), beside it a small table with a book of poetry and a worn copy of the Gospels. The bookmark was a bus ticket.

Luca put on plastic gloves and poured two drops from the bottle into the glass. Looked at Pietro. ‘It happened with my mother as well.' He drew out a syringe and a stethoscope.

The little old woman had meanwhile returned with the signed document and was now leaning against the door jamb. As soon as Luca nodded she led him to her husband. ‘The doctor is here, Luigi,' she murmured as she entered.

Pietro saw his son enter the room at the end of the hall.

‘
Moriturus te salutat
,' said a weary voice.

‘Mr Morelli,' said Luca.

‘The doctor said that you can change your mind whenever you want,' his wife insisted.

‘The doctor was an excellent student with his head in the clouds. I remember him well.'

The woman went into the hall and from there into the bathroom.

‘I promised her that we'd meet again, even if she's not very romantic these days.' The weary voice paused. ‘“But even as we press together tightly / and keep the crowding menace from our eyes / it maybe hides in you or hides in me / because our spirits live by treachery”. My wife agrees with the poet Rilke. She thinks that I'm betraying her. This time with death.' He coughed and spat into a basin beside the bed. ‘I'm exhausted, doctor.'

‘I have a friend of mine outside. Your wife told me that she would appreciate having a word with him.'

‘My wife maintains that if I don't repent, we won't meet again. Death on demand separates the ignorant souls from the ungrateful ones, she says. I've always been ungrateful, so what difference would it make?'

Pietro was halfway to the room when the teacher said, ‘Now tell me what I have to do, Luca.'

‘Drink from the glass and set it back down on the night-stand. Nobody must touch it. Then I'll come.'

The little old woman came out of the bathroom, hugged the wall as she approached the room containing her husband, entered.

‘Come here,' said the teacher.

Luca stood aside.

‘Come here, my love.'

In the house of the two eagles could be heard her cry. She
squeaked like a tiny animal,
Don't do it
, her wail strangling her into an almost silent whimper. Abruptly the woman left the room and retreated as far as Pietro. He placed an arm around her and together they walked back to the sitting room. ‘Tell me that we'll see each other again, Father.'

Pietro did not look at her.

‘Tell me that we'll see each other again.'

The doctor joined them and bent over her. ‘If you want, you can go and talk to him, ma'am. He has just drunk.'

‘What did he drink?'

‘Sedatives.'

The little old woman went and Luca took the two vials from the table. He shook them gently and filled the syringe, returned to the teacher's room while Pietro fished out a chocolate with a red foil wrapper from the bowl. Slipped it into his pocket and walked into the hall. Listened to the weary voice rise in pitch, the woman's break, ‘I love you.'