Emmaus (10 page)

Have you seen Andre? he asked.

I thought he meant had I seen how marvelous she was, up on the stage—or even in general, what a marvel she was, in life. So I answered, Yes.

Where? he asked. I said Everywhere. It sounded rather excessive, to tell the truth. So I added, From a distance.

Andre's father nodded yes, as if to say that he agreed, and had understood. He gave a look around. Maybe he was thinking what a strange type I was. You're a smart kid, he said. And drove off.

Four intersections farther on, where a signal flashed uselessly in the sun, the red sports car was hit by an out-of-control van. The impact was terrible, and Andre's father lost his life.

Then I knew that that child was there, because I recognized the squaring of a circle—the meeting of two geometries. The spell that ruled that family, welding every birth to a death, had been crossed with the protocol of our feelings, which linked every sin to a punishment. The result, by all the evidence, was a prison of steel—I distinctly heard the mechanical sound of the lock.

I didn't talk to Luca about it—he had begun to skip school, he didn't answer the phone. I had to go get him to make him leave the house, sometimes, and it wasn't always enough. Everything was difficult in those hours, the pain of keeping things going. One morning I got the idea of taking him to school, so I went to his house, at seven thirty in the morning. At the entrance I met his father—he already had his hat on, briefcase in hand, he was about to go to the office. He was serious and terse, it was clear that that visit of mine, at an abnormal hour, caused him enormous suffering, but he accepted it, like the arrival of a doctor.
Luca was in his room—he was dressed but was lying on the bed, which was made. I closed the door, maybe I intended to raise my voice. I put his books in his bag—a military knapsack, such as we all have, from the secondhand stores. Don't be an idiot, I said, and get up.

Afterward, as we walked to school, he tried to explain, and to me it even seemed that I found a way of making him see some sense, of dissolving his fear. Yet, at a certain point, he was able to say, with the precision of simple words, retrieved from the depths of his shame, what really was consuming him:
I can't do this to my father
. He was convinced that that man would be wounded to death by it, and he wasn't ready for that horror. Really, that was not something I knew how to respond to. It disarms us, in fact, the inclination to think that our life is, above all, a conclusive fragment of the life of our parents, merely entrusted to our care. As if they had charged us, in a moment of weariness, to hold for a moment that epilogue precious to them—it was expected that we would restore it, sooner or later, intact. They would then put it back in place, creating the roundness of a completed life: theirs. But to our weary fathers, who had trusted us, we return sharp-edged fragments, objects that slipped from our fingers. In the muffled slide of such a failure, we find neither the time to reflect nor the light of a rebellion. Only the immobility of the sin. So our lives will return to us, when already it's too late.

In the end, since Luca wouldn't go, I left him alone to fill the void of those morning hours. I preferred to follow the
dictate of things, in an orderly fashion. School, homework, obligations. It was something that helped me. I hadn't much else. Ordinarily, in such situations, I have recourse to confession and, secondarily, penance. Yet I felt no urge toward one or the other, in the conviction that I was no longer entitled to the privilege of the sacraments, perhaps not even to the consolation of a pious expiation. So I had no medicine—apart from respect for habits, only the instinct to pray endured. It gave me relief to do it on my knees, for a very long time, in random churches, at the hour when there is just the occasional shuffling of old ladies, every so often the banging of a door. I was with God, without asking anything.

When the day of Andre's father's funeral arrived, Luca and I decided to go.

Bobby was there, too, the Saint wasn't. But we were on one side of the crowded church, Bobby on the other, and he now dressed differently—he had begun to pay attention. It's not something we do. We had seen big groups of people, but seldom so serious, so restrained. Dark glasses and brief nods. Standing, during the Mass, without knowing the words. We know that type of recitation, it has no true connection with any religious feeling, it has to do with elegance, with the need for ritual. But there is no resurrection in those hearts, nothing. At the sign of peace I shook Luca's hand, with a look. We alone knew how much we needed it—peace.

From a distance we looked carefully at Andre, obviously, but under the jacket nothing was legible, the decisive thinness and nothing else. We didn't know enough to understand if we could deduce anything from it.

Outside the church, we embraced Bobby, and then we had no doubt that we should go and say something to Andre, that it would be only polite. Without admitting it, we expected something, the clarity of a signal that she would know how to give. There were people in line, in the sacristy, we waited until Andre stood a little apart from her mother and brother, we watched her smiling, she was the only one not wearing dark glasses, and very beautiful. We approached slowly, waiting our turn, without taking our eyes off her—now that she was there, I suddenly remembered how I had missed her body every moment since that night. I looked for the same thought in Luca's eyes, but he seemed preoccupied and that was all. Andre greeted an elderly couple, then it was our turn. First Luca—then I held out my hand, she shook it, Thank you for coming, smiling, a kiss on the cheek, nothing else. Maybe a moment more, delaying, but I don't know. She was already thanking someone else.

Andre.

It's not ours, I said to Luca, the church behind us, as we walked home. It's not possible that it's ours.

She would have let us know, I thought. I also thought that in that kiss on the cheek everything had disappeared, like the water that closes over, heedless of the rock lying on the streambed. So I was exhilarated, I had been given back
my life. I said it to Luca, anyway. He was listening. But he walked with his head bent. I became suspicious, and asked if Andre had said something to him. He didn't answer, he only tilted his head slightly to one side. I couldn't understand what had happened, so I took him by the arm, roughly: What the hell is the matter? His eyes filled with tears, like that other time, leaving my house. He stopped, trembling.

Let's go back, he said.

To Andre?

Yes.

To do? He was really crying now. It took him a moment to become calm enough to speak.

I can't go on, let me go back there, we have to ask her, that's all, we can't go on like this, it's stupid, I can't go on.

He might even be right—but not there, with all those people, at a funeral. I was embarrassed. I told him.

What do I care about their funeral, he said.

He seemed sure.

I said that I, no, I wouldn't go. If you really want to go, go by yourself.

He nodded his head yes.

But you're doing something stupid, I said.

I left. After a while I turned to look, he was still standing there, passing the back of his hand over his eyes.

When I got home I let some time go by, then I began calling him at his house—they always said he wasn't back yet. I didn't like it, this thing, and I ended up having some ugly thoughts. I thought of going to look for him:
the certainty that I shouldn't have left him alone there, in the middle of the street, increased. Then I imagined that I would find him with Andre, somewhere, and the embarrassment of the gestures, the words to say. It was all complicated. There was no way to distract myself. The only thing I could do was keep calling his house, always apologizing profusely. The sixth time he answered.

Christ, Luca, don't play any more tricks like that.

What's wrong?

Nothing. Did you go?

He was silent for a moment. Then he said no.

No?

I can't explain now, really.

OK, I said. Better that way. It will come out all right. I really believed it. I felt like talking some nonsense, so I began talking about Bobby's shoes at the funeral. You couldn't believe that he had
actually
bought them.

And the shirt? said Luca. They don't even know how to
iron
shirts like that, at my house, he said.

But that night at dinner he got up suddenly, to carry the plates to the sink, and instead of going back to sit at that counter, with the wall in front of him, he went out on the balcony. He leaned against the railing, where he had seen his father a thousand times—but backward, his eyes toward the kitchen. Maybe he looked at everything one more time. Then he fell backward, into the void.

The ambiguous story of the death of Lazarus is told in the Gospel of John, and only there. While Jesus is far away, preaching, he finds out that a friend of his, in Bethany, has fallen gravely ill. Two days pass, and at dawn on the third day Jesus tells his disciples to prepare to return to Judaea. They ask why and he says, Our friend Lazarus has gone to sleep, let us go and wake him. So he starts off, and, arriving at the gates of Bethany, he sees Martha, a sister of Lazarus, running toward him. When she reaches him, she says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not be dead. Entering the city, Jesus meets the other sister of Lazarus, Mary. And she says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not be dead.

Only I knew why. For the others Luca's death was a mystery—the dubious result of unclear causes. Naturally the long shadow of the illness in that family was known without anyone having to say it: the father. But people were little disposed to admit even that, considering it something nonessential. Youth, rather, seemed the root of the evil—a youth that could no longer be understood.

They sought me out, to understand. They wouldn't really have listened to me—they wanted only to know if there was something hidden, unsaid. Secrets. They were not far from the truth, but they had to do without my help—for days I saw no one. An unfamiliar hardness, and even indifference—that was how I reacted. My parents were worried, the other
adults disturbed, the priests. I didn't go to the funeral, there was no resurrection in my heart.

Bobby showed up. The Saint wrote a letter. I didn't open the letter. I wouldn't see Bobby.

I tried to extinguish an image, Luca with his hair stuck to his forehead, in Andre's bed, but that did not leave me, nor would it ever leave me, so that is what I remember of him, forever. We existed in the same love, at that moment—we had been only that, for years. Her beauty, his tears, my strength, his steps, my praying—we were in the same love. His music, my books, my delays, his afternoons alone—we were in the same love. The air in our faces, the cold in our hands, his forgetfulness, my certainty, Andre's body—we were in the same love. So we died together—and until I die we'll live together.

The adults were disturbed above all by our staying apart and not seeking each other out—Bobby, the Saint, and I. They would have liked us to be close, cushioning the blow—they watched us in wonder. In this they read an enduring wound, one deeper than they wanted to imagine. But it was like birds after a gunshot, scattering apart, waiting for the moment to become a flock again—or even only dark stains lined up on the wire. We just brushed against each other a couple of times. We knew the time that had to pass—the silence.

But one day the girl who had been my girlfriend came, and I went out with her. We hadn't seen each other for a while, it was all strange. She was driving a car now, a small
old car that her parents had given her when she turned eighteen. She was proud of it, and wanted me to see it. She was dressed nicely, but not like someone who wanted to start up again, or anything like that. Her hair tied back, low-heeled shoes, normal. I went—it was lovely to watch her drive, the gestures still precise, as if she were taking dictation, but meanwhile something like a woman had slipped inside the girl I knew. Maybe it was that. But also the knowledge that she had nothing to do with it, so that telling her would be like drawing on a blank page. So I did. She was the first person in the world to whom I told the whole story—Andre, Luca, and me. She drove, I talked. It wasn't always easy to find the words, she waited and I talked, in the end. She kept her eyes on the windshield and, when necessary, on the rearview mirror, never on me—her hands on the wheel, her back not really relaxed against the seat back. At a certain point the streetlights went on in the city.

She looked at me only at the end, when she stopped at my house, parking head on, a little away from the sidewalk—something my father can't bear. You're crazy, she said. But it didn't have to do with what I had done, it had to do with what I should do. Go to Andre, she said, now, right away, stop being afraid. How can you live without knowing the truth?

In reality we know very well how to live without knowing the truth, always, but I have to admit that on that point she was right, and I said so, and so I was forced to tell her
something I had kept to myself—it was hard to tell it. I said that in fact I had tried to see Andre, the truth is that at a certain point I, too, had thought I should, and I had tried. A few days after Luca's death, but more out of resentment than to know—out of revenge. I had gone one evening when I couldn't take it anymore, driven by an unfamiliar spitefulness, and had gone to the bar where it was likely I might find her, among her people. I should have planned the thing much more carefully, but at that moment it seemed I would die if I didn't see her, if I didn't tell her—so, wherever she was I would go there, and that's all. I would
fight
her, it occurred to me. Except that when I got to the street, across from the bar, everyone was outside, holding a glass: I saw her friends from a distance, elegant in their slightly bored lightness of heart. In the midst of them—apart and yet clearly in the midst of them—was the Saint. Leaning against a wall, he, too, holding a glass. Silent, alone, but they passed by and exchanged remarks with him, and smiles. Like animals of the same herd. At one point a girl stopped to talk to him, and meanwhile with her hand she smoothed his hair back—he let her do it.