I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (26 page)

Whereupon I don't know what to say, since it's obvious that he has a point. It's pure good luck that someone knocks at the door just then.

“Now who the fuck is that,” I grumble in relief. And I start to get up from the Skruvsta.

“Don't bother,” he says, “I'll go.”

“What do you mean you'll go, wai—”

But I'm not fast enough to stop him before he's out of the room and down the hall. I'd like to yell after him that he's not my secretary, but instead I sit there, half curved over the Jonas, astonished at how intrusive he is.

Reality hits pause until I hear him open the door and say
Buon giorno
. When whoever it is returns the greeting and asks if I'm there, and from the voice I recognize the demented tenant who recently confided in me about his disquieting problems with his Polish live-in girlfriend, I'm reminded of a television commercial that ends with the phrase: “Help me,” with Christian De Sica flopping over helplessly onto the steering wheel of the car.

In fact, I sit back down.

Tricarico comes back, letting the tenant go ahead of him, the tenant whose name I absolutely can't remember just now, actually.

“Ciao, Vincenzo,” says the guy, walking in so briskly that then and there I have to wonder if by some chance I might have given him an appointment.

“Oh, ciao,” I reply in some confusion.

Before I can even inquire as to the reason for this visit, he takes a seat on one of the Hampus chairs without asking.

“Oh please, come in, make yourself comfortable,” I feel like saying to him.

I look him up and down: he's wearing a worn-out polo shirt, once dark blue, that looks as if it hasn't been changed in the past two days at least, and a pair of horrible pleated jeans for fifty-year-olds, so drab that they trend worrisomely toward beige. I've never seen him looking so bedraggled. And since I believe that the state of a person's clothing more or less reflects their psychological state, I'm starting to get apprehensive about the potential development of this unscheduled entertainment.

He leans forward and starts scrutinizing me, as if he were trying to predict my next move. Whereupon I look at the surface of my desk, sensing the sudden lack of a chessboard.

Behind him, in the door, Tricarico eyes me closely, awaiting further instructions. I transmit no signals, but I find his presence pretty comforting just now.

We all remain silent and motionless for two long minutes until the tenant whose name I continue not to remember finally says:

“Sorry if I didn't come by the day before yesterday, for our appointment. I still needed to think it over.”

What the fuck are you talking about?
I think.

Tricarico puts his hands in his pocket and stands there listening.

“I'm losing control of my nerves, Vincenzo. I'm thinking things that I shouldn't think. I don't where this is all leading.”

“Where what's leading?” I ask.

He closes his eyes and then opens them again. The thought that just went through his mind must have made him wince.

“She wants me to move out. To move out of my own home, you understand?”

Tricarico pulls one hand out of his pocket and traces a couple of circles in midair. I slap him down with a ferocious glare. He desists.

“I'm sorry to have to get you involved in this,” he resumes, “but you're the only person I trust.”

There we go. Let's say that up to now, it was all within the bounds of the acceptable. But I don't like that last phrase, whatever it meant, even a little bit.

“Listen, can you tell me what you're talking about?” I try saying. But it's like trying to start a conversation with an answering machine.

Giustino Talento. His name suddenly appears in my memory like a lightning bolt.

“I can't blame you if you don't find it in your heart to forgive me, I just want you to know that, Vincenzo,” he goes on, talking to himself, “But I have to share this thing somehow. You understand me, don't you?”

“No.”

He looks at me, glassy-eyed, and clamps his mouth shut. At that point I realize that the objective of his off-kilter mind is to use me as nothing more than a recipient to whom he can serve his demented subpoena. For this kind of wingnut, what matters is not that you interact with his lunatic plans; it's enough that you listen to those plans, that you become a party to them. Knowledge becomes consent. Obviously, a deranged form of extortion. In the sense that he starts out from an absurd pretext, but still one that is articulated in accordance with a comprehensible logic. And in fact, you can even sort of understand it. That's what's so disturbing about wingnuts, what makes them so truly invasive and unpleasant: the suspicion that, if you stop and listen to them, they might actually wind up convincing you. As if their way of thinking could somehow infect yours. It's because when they bend reality to their wishes, they bend you with it. Which is how they destabilize.

“Listen to me,” I tell him, “I don't know what you have in mind and I don't want to know. And just to be perfectly clear, I didn't understand a single word of whatever you just said.”

He lowers his head, but his lips are twisted with the victorious smirk of a properly served subpoena.

Without even realizing it, I give Tricarico a glance, and he intervenes like a radio-controlled bouncer.

“Oh,” he says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “it's time for you to go.”

Giustino turns around, looks up, focuses on him.

Goodbye victorious smirk of a properly served subpoena.

“Did you hear me?” Tricarico explores the concept in greater depth. As if to say that, otherwise, what comes next is physical ejection from this office and probably from the apartment building itself.

Giustino looks at me, but I don't say anything. He gets up.

He turns on his heel and leaves, freeing up some space.

One time, at the zoo, I saw a gorilla curve his shoulders in that exact same way, turning his back on a crowd of rude little boys clustering around the front of his cage, jeering. Identical.

As for me, I feel like a complete piece of shit, if you really want to know.

 

S
ome sort of avoidance mechanism must have made me completely forget about my appointment with Nives, because when my ex-wife calls me at 2:15 to ask: “Vin­cenzo, are you having problems?” I instinctively start to ask: “Problems of what kind?” but I manage to hold it in, remembering that we had agreed to meet for lunch at Il Sergente. I tell her that in fact I did have a problem so I'm running late but I'll be there soon—ten minutes at the most, I improvise, even though from where I am when she calls me—that is, in an Expert electronics store browsing color television sets—it'll take at least twenty minutes, if not longer.

That's me all over. A true master of the improvisational jazz of complications. Give me a situation that's already compromised, and watch me launch into my virtuoso solo. The funny thing is that I work hard at complicating my life, in an almost invariably unsuccessful attempt to simplify it. The thing is, when I don't know what to do, I fudge. Not in a fraudulent way. I'm just always trying to cut corners, catch up. Because alongside the survival instinct, there's also the instinct to cut corners, which is why, for instance when you're late for an appointment and you want them to wait for you, you declare ten when the actual time required is twenty minutes. Thus, you force the person waiting for you to give you a discount on the time you're already running late, as if you had restarted the clock on that appointment from the moment when you stretched the truth. Because otherwise the other person could reasonably tell you: “Go fuck yourself,” or maybe even say nothing and just leave, while you're still on your way.

Of course, it would be great if that's how things went. But that's not how they go at all. There's always a basic, concrete reason why people wait for you. And that basic, concrete reason, whatever people may say, is far more compelling than the lovely internal flights of rhetoric you indulge in about how intolerable it is for people to show up late. It's not really all that simple to say: “I'm leaving now,” and then actually stand up and leave. If there's a woman you want to see, let's say, just to pick a random example, and even if she makes you wait and that's something that normally gets you upset, there's nothing more likely than that you'll wait for her anyway, well past your normal limits of what's tolerable. And even though at first glance it might seem like a typical case of male submission to female with the expectation of a fairly radical short-term reversal of positions, what is really happening in that situation, what you're really doing, is you're plea-bargaining with life. Because life (and it becomes especially clear to you when you're waiting for something or someone who is running late) is made up primarily of plea bargains. It's made up of transactions in which—and this is the revelation that blows you away—you discover that you're capable of a degree of downward-trending comprehension that you normally can't understand when you see it in other people. And there are things that become clear to you, for instance the fact that leaving now would be tantamount to telling the nasty thing you're waiting for that, as far as you're concerned, she can go get fucked (by some other guy? Just the thought of that possibility is enough to catapult you into bottomless despair).

And anyway, to come back to the topic at hand, this time it's Nives who has to stoop to a little plea-bargaining.

“That's all right, it doesn't matter,” she says to me, but she says it as if something were happening that mattered, “but get here quickly if you can, okay?”

I remain speechless for a couple of seconds with my cell phone in my hand, and then I roughly triple my walking speed.

 

When I get to Il Sergente, I can scarcely believe my eyes. Sitting at the table with Nives is the architect. I see him through the plate glass window, before entering the restaurant. What the fuck does this mean, I wonder. Then, without thinking twice, I walk in.

The restaurant is a large open space with a wood-burning oven in plain view, crowded with tables jammed one up against the other. The place is packed. The diners are all talking at once at an intolerable volume, which only confuses me even more. The waiters, red-faced and frenzied, hurry to and fro, their arms loaded with dishes. None of the staff seems to notice me. Perched on a high stool behind the cash register, a matron with dyed blonde hair and outsized seventies smoke-grey sunglasses is talking on the phone at the same time that she rings up a customer (a lack of respect that I find galling, just as much as if she were doing it to me, I have to say). Hanging on the wall behind her, a Last Supper featuring Totò, Peppino, Sophia Loren, Massimo Troisi, and Pino Daniele enjoys pride of place, a classic of local pop art that always prompts an indescribable surge of sadness in me. I stand there looking toward the table of the newlyweds until Nives catches sight of me, stands up, and waves me over, while the miserable cuckold blatantly avoids meeting my gaze.

“You, sir, are an idiot,” I mouth mentally; next I glare at my ex-wife, just long enough to let her know that I'm going to make her pay for this one; then I turn on my heel and walk out.

Compared to the deafening din in the restaurant, ordinary street noise seems like silence. Even the air is nice out here. I look at a one way/no entry sign as if I found it rather interesting. A couple about to enter the restaurant asks me if there's much of a wait. I tell them I have no idea and stroll off down the sidewalk at a snail's pace, counting down from ten. Before I even reach six, Nives runs out of the restaurant and calls my name. I turn and give her another murderous glare. For a second I see in her eyes that she's afraid I might smack her.

“Why the fuck did you ask me to come, eh? How dare you pull this kind of move on me?”

Guys, let me tell you, there's nothing as satisfying as acting offended when you are unmistakably in the right.

“Ah, how dare I? You gallop into my office, burst into the middle of a session of therapy, put on your little cabaret act, and now you decide that you can preach to me?”

“So that's what you wanted? To get even? Nice job, you did it, congratulations. Now you can go back to your table.
Buon appetito
.”

I turn to go. She grabs me by the arm.

“Wait. He's leaving right away,” she says. She spoke in a low voice, I notice.

“I don't give a goddamn if he's leaving right away,” I snap back at her, flying into a rage. “I wouldn't have come in the first place if I'd known you were bringing him with you.”

“I didn't bring him,” she goes on explaining with perfect calm. “He showed up while I was waiting for you. I didn't tell him I was having lunch with you.”

“So, what, is he following you?”

“He told me that he was walking by and he saw me from the street.”

“And you believe him?”

“What does that matter, since I lied to him in the first place? Anyway, he and I have just finished having a fight. I told him to leave. He said he was leaving.”

“Then how come he's still inside?”

“He waited for you to get here. He wanted you to see him. I think he's trying to show you that he's not giving you a free hand, he's not going to get out of your way.”

I think that over for a second.

“Why, what a lovely analysis, Nives. And what do you expect me to do, fight a duel with that pathetic loser?”

“He's afraid of you, Vincenzo.”

“Oh, he is? I can't tell you how sorry I am, really. Wait a minute, what do you mean he's afraid of me?”

“He says there's a distance between him and me, that I'm growing further away from him. That it's ending between us, and that I don't even realize it.”

And that's how you tell me? I feel like saying to her. Let's go inside and I'll order a bottle of champagne, right?

Instead, I riposte with a textbook comeback:

“Listen, Nives, those are problems between the two of you. You don't have any right to involve me in your architect's mood swings.”

“I'm not the one that's involving you, he's the one who's taking his time. I told him to leave, but I can't expect to snap my fingers and have him obey my every command. What do you want me to do, throw him out of the restaurant? After all, he does have a point. He just found out that I lied to him.”

“Ooh, for God's sake, Nives, what do you want from me? You want me to say that he's right, now?”

“Quite the opposite. I wanted to stay and have lunch with you, and I still do. It's up to you. If you come in, he'll leave: practically speaking, the two of us can send him away together. But if you leave, then he'll probably stay.”

“But you could leave.”

“And what difference would that make for you, if you're leaving anyway?”

“Eh. No difference.”

“Exactly.”

Well, Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.

 

You really ought to see the sequence of expressions that are projected onto the face of that idiot when we get to the table. The gamut, from astonishment to knowingness, from incredulity to pure scandal. It's like a film trailer. The problem, I think then and there, is that often people don't have very clear emotions, let alone clear ideas.

Nives sits down. I don't, since it's a table for two and the idiot seems incapable of making up his mind to clear out and free up a place. But he's already starting to get on my nerves, so unless he decides to get moving, chairs and other things are going to start flying in here.

“All right then, can you leave us now, please?” she says to him.

“Is that what you want?”

What a ridiculous question. I have to say, when someone asks that stupid a question, do they really think they're going to change the other person's mind?

“I need to talk to Vincenzo. Alone. Do I have to tell you again?”

“I wouldn't have had any objections, if you'd told me about it in advance,” he protests.

“We've already talked it over, and I told you that I was sorry. I could have rescheduled my meeting with Vincenzo and seen him some other time, whenever I liked. But I don't want to lie to you again. Right now I want to stay here with him, and I want you to know it.”

The asshole registers the impact, picks up his napkin, crushes it into a ball, lets it drop next to his plate, and stands up. Such a cornball piece of histrionics that you won't even find it in a made-for-television movie these days.

“All right,” he says, “the two of you win.”

Wow, what a retort.

I tense my muscles in preparation for a last-minute assault even though, judging from the debate that I've just witnessed, the likelihood is decidedly theoretical. In fact, the architect meticulously ignores me (which only makes me sketchier, as if I had “Cut along dotted line” written on me), takes the long way around the table in order to avoid passing in front of me, walks out the door, and vanishes. Nives follows him with her gaze, vaguely sorrowful.

I sit down.

For a little while we say nothing.

The sound of voices all around is overwhelming.

“I'm not that hungry,” I say.

“You're telling me,” she says.

“You want to get out of here?” I say.

“And go where?” she says.

“Search me,” I say.

“Your place?” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Just kidding,” she says.

“Ah,” I say.

“But why?” I think.

Just then a sweaty waiter materializes next to us, with his Bic already poised over his order pad.

“All right then, what can I get you two,” he says, as if he couldn't wait to come take care of us. And he wipes the sweat off his brow with the back of his right hand.

We quickly read the menu, then the young waiter takes our orders with all the focus of a journalist (Nives orders a fruit salad, I order a steak salad, and a carafe of house wine for the table), apologizes for the haste and confusion, and hurries off.

I pick up a breadstick.

“What were you trying to tell me the other day?” Nives asks after looking at me for a while, in that way of hers that I know all too well.

“The other day?”

“When you walked into the session. Why did you attack me that way? What did I do?”

I snap the breadstick in half, and with it, I break something else. There really aren't that many times in your life when your ideas are crystal clear. And I'm not talking about carefully deliberated decisions, with a judicious balancing of pros and cons, those ridiculous processes whereby you look for a sage middle ground that makes the rest of your life miserable. What I'm talking about is the kind of logic-free awareness that makes you say, from one minute to the next, with no conceivable reason: “I'm not doing that.” Full stop. Why not? Because. What do you mean “Because”? Just because. Sometimes you get these moments of intense awareness at the altar. I just had one, even if we're not at the altar. Suddenly I have no desire whatsoever to talk with Nives about Alfredo, about how upset I am, about me, about the blame I put on her and on myself for the way in which I left her the leadership in the education and rearing of our children, for all the bullshit with which she furnished their lives, and so on and so forth. I don't want to tell her a damned thing, what do you think about that? Let her come up with her own explanation of my attack, as she calls it. It'll be my 9/11, let's say, oh, what an intelligent metaphor I just engendered.

“I don't want to tell you,” I tell her.

“What?” she says in astonishment.

I look at her. I'm proud of myself.

“You're joking.”

“Not at all.”

She ventures a tremulous smile.

“Are you going to exercise your right not to answer that question?”

“Yes. You could put it like that.”

She torments little balls of bread crumb. But I remain unmoved.