My Mother-in-Law Drinks (7 page)

Certain nights, as a famous Italian singer puts it, I feel as if I've reached conclusions that might be, so to speak, of public interest, and I go to sleep with a sense of satisfaction.

Then, a couple of days later, when my opinions resume their customary vacillation, I turn on my computer, I open the file Brood.doc, I reread it, and I don't find a single convincing phrase. It all seems patched together, phony. It has the look of a falsified account (if I knew how to read a balance sheet). With the various sentence-pipes all screwed together to form a plumbing system, instead of being left free to wander as they will, each with its own shape, likes the branches of a tree. I don't know if that's clear

If there's one thing that I've come to understand by deleting in one moment of lucid irritation long files I'd spent hours and hours on, it's that you can tell immediately whether the person who is writing something is disinterested or is pursuing some purpose of their own. Because in the first case, you'll be able to understand the writing, however difficult it might be. In the second case, however, you'll need to reread it, and even after you reread it you're left with a certain degree of confusion, so you go on reading awhile longer, thinking that it will become clearer to you as continue (the way it is with board games, when at the beginning they explain the rules to you but you don't feel like concentrating so you cut the explanation short and say, “Okay, let's just start playing”), and in the end, when you still don't understand it (or rather, you don't trust that you've understood correctly), you experience genuine annoyance at the effort you've had to undertake, as if you'd tried to do a favor for someone who didn't deserve it.

When you write that way, that is, in pursuit of a goal, stuffing your sentences with synonyms, adverbs, and ideas that are alluded to but never fully expressed, it means that you're trying to fool someone (whether it's yourself or someone else doesn't really matter).

I personally believe that I'm pretty clear on the difference between disinterested writing and utilitarian writing because in my, shall we say, profession, I'm required to make use of the latter, which is inevitably at odds with the former (and it's no coincidence that I do the former kind of writing at night).

Lawyerly writing is in fact a kind of writing that is designed to turn a profit. There's nothing wrong with that, let's be clear. Among other reasons because all sciences consist of languages. And law is a science. That a scientific language should possess a certain degree of incomprehensibility, and that this incomprehensibility should be experienced in a negative manner by those who haven't mastered a certain type of subject, is the most natural thing imaginable.

But if a report from an expert witness, or even an ordinary medical prescription, is perceived by the reader as a text that is merely difficult to understand without the help of a translation on a facing page (and in fact the doctor provides one by reading the prescription aloud as he writes it), any legal document, the minute we lay eyes on it, immediately conveys a sense of falsehood. In the sense that a legal document is by its own admission inauthentic. And not because it doesn't tell the truth. It's inauthentic because it is ontologically prompted by a vested interest, because it is out to achieve a purpose or a profit and it makes no bones about it. It's this very shamelessness that makes it seem untrustworthy at first glance.

Put any legal document (a subpoena, an appeal, a complaint, a verdict, or even a simple contract) in front of someone who's unfamiliar with the courts and he'll tell you that: a) he doesn't understand it; b) he doesn't trust what little he thinks he does understand.

And then if that person is actually the recipient of the document in question, what he'll do next, and I mean beyond the shadow of a doubt, is to pick up the phone and call a friend who's a lawyer and have him read it, in order to find out what it actually says.

All this just goes to show you that legal writing is not trustworthy. And that the mistrust that the average citizen feels toward it comes essentially from the fact that he perceives it as a utilitarian form of writing.

In much the same way (otherwise I'll be told that I'm being unfair to my fellow members of the bar), though to a lesser degree, the average citizen is mistrustful of journalistic writing (the kind of writing in the newspapers that he doesn't buy), as well as of advertising copy (even though—and this is a paradox—he's not all that embarrassed to purchase a product for which he's seen a commercial that strikes him as overtly dishonest).

 

Let's take a look at a nice concrete example of utilitarian writing and disinterested writing. An example that has to do with me, since I am its author; but I'll examine myself the way an entomologist would examine an insect, I promise.

Example of utilitarian writing (source: Brood.doc by Vincenzo Malinconico, hidden in folder “Photographs, Happy Village in Marina di Camerota, July 2004”):

 

Perhaps we ought to begin to consider whether this relationship, rather than improving our lives, isn't simply complicating them. In that case perhaps we should ask ourselves what has broken between us, and why. Then, together, we can find the least painful solution for us both.

 

As you can plainly see, the style of writing that governs these phrases slithers along a path of disingenuous hypocrisy of a pretty coarse variety. It's a kind of reptilian writing, which spots its prey from a distance and then draws closer in ever-tightening circles, awaiting the perfect opportunity to lunge and sink its fangs into it.

The author pretends to start from a potential doubt (before even touching down on the verb “to consider”—which already in and of itself suggests no real volition—he covers his ass with a “perhaps,” and then further armor-plates himself with a “begin to,” as if even that act of considering is an effort he's not completely sure he's willing to undertake), though it's perfectly obvious that he knows exactly what's going on; then, seeing as the responsibility for an eventual separation (which is after all the reptile's real objective) is not a burden he's willing to bear entirely on his own, he cunningly attempts to farm out half of it to the other party in the doomed relationship, venturing so far as to invite her to underwrite a metaphorical protocol of understanding, an emotional briefing intended to explore a problem that in reality he knows exactly how to resolve (which is to say, by dumping the girl while making her believe that this separation is something they actually entered into by common accord).

In other words, despicable stuff.

 

Now let's try writing the exact same thing (or to be more precise let's treat the same topic of Love Looking Around for the Check) in a more gratuitous mode.

Here's an example of the kind of prose that might come out of such an effort (or perhaps I should say the text that I wrote after the red-cheeked shame I felt after rereading what I'd previously composed in the utilitarian fashion):

 

Accept the fucking miserable reality, Vince'. You're both stuck. Wasting time wondering how and when it happened is futile at best. The truth is that you just look each other in the face and talk about other things. The only question at this point is which of you is going to bring it up first.

 

As you can see, the shift in style was so radical and so sudden that the author was made to renounce outright the hypocrisy of the first person singular, going so far as to address himself in the second person. A necessary splitting of the personality in order to suppress the reptilian (a useful lesson to take away at this point might be “If you want to write, then suppress the reptile inside you”), regain control of present events, and finally break the code of
omertà
that governed his utilitarian writing.

From this point forward, it's all downhill: the author seizes the topic by the horns, and without much beating around the bush writes: “You're both stuck”: then, in a single line, he dismisses the old chestnut about tracing the problem back to its source, and limits himself to accepting the fact that what's broken cannot be fixed (because first of all there are some things that are just beyond repair; and second, even if it could be fixed, these days it's not worth spending money on repairs anyway). At this point his renewed faith in the truth allows him to serve up a metaphor, cynical but as eloquent as a scene in a movie: “looking each other in the face and talking about other things,” which is also a concise description of the awkwardness that arises between two people who have fallen out of love with each other.

Now, even though I realize that it's an inherently unfair question, compare the examples provided above once again and tell me which of the two writing styles you prefer.

If you ask me, all really good books are written in the gratuitous mode.

Take
The Catcher in the Rye
. It's one of the most disinterested books I've ever read.

Which is why it still sells so many copies.

I think.

How did I even work my way around to this topic? Ah, yes, that whole business about the envy I feel for people like my mother-in-law, who enjoy a simplified conception of life, as opposed to us brooders, who poison our lives by brooding and then use writing as a way of recalibrating things.

 

You want to know why I write? What's the real, most essential, truly indisputable reason, trimmed free of any and all idle chitchat? I'll tell you why: I write so that I have time to come up with the proper comeback.

My problem is that I'm slow on the draw. That's why I hate my thoughts. If only they'd give me a brief summary of the things that happen, instead of getting all twisted up over everything, then I'd have a chance of coming up with something snappy (and, more important, on topic) more or less when needed.

The thing I ought to have said always comes to me when I'm almost home. Specifically, as I'm turning my key in the door to my building. That's when it appears before my eyes, as if I could actually see it, a well-formed phrase, spare, musical, impeccably logical: designed to discourage any attempt at rebuttal. And that's when I could practically kick myself in the teeth. Because the last thing I can do now is pick up my phone, call the person who won the battle of wits, and say to them, “Hey, so, anyway, about that talk we were having, I'd like to add that . . .”

You can't do it. Overtime rules forbid it.

In real life I can't delete, start over, rethink what I said, correct it.

So I write.

To take my revenge on words.

To tell the story of how things would have gone if I'd used the right ones.

I
t's about time,” I was about to say to the deli counterman—a fatty with a soul patch you'd expect to see on a carabiniere and the same face he must have had when he was ten (I don't know if you know the kind of guy I'm talking about, one of those types you're sure look exactly like themselves as children even if you've never seen them before)—when he came over to me, shop apron all wrinkled and white cap in his hands, as if he were on a visit to pay his condolences.

“What on earth is going on here?” he asked me, more brokenhearted than worried.

He saw for himself before I could get the words out.

Matrix glared at him as the deli counterman's jaw dropped at the sight of that surreal scene.

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo stared at him without saying a word, his arm dangling inert at his side, the gun in his hand. He'd prudently positioned himself midway between us and Matrix, facing sideways, so that he could keep an eye on his prisoner and at the same time stage-manage the appearance of the new witness.

Instinctively, the deli counterman with the face he'd had as a boy stepped toward him, though not with any intent of taking his weapon or trying to dissuade him in any way: he just made the move, trustingly, as if he could do something to help him.

“Dotto',” he said.

Scandalized, as if he refused to change his mind about the handcuffed man.

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo snapped his arm straight out into the air in front of him and aimed the pistol on a line with the counterman's broad moon-face.

“Stop right there, Matteo. Don't get any closer.”

Calmly, without a hint of menace in his voice.

Matteo the deli counterman stopped short, turned as white as the cap he was clutching in his hand (just one hand, now), and took a step back. The old woman raised both arms in a pugilistic stance of self-defense. I was on the verge of telling her: “Oh, would you stop always thinking it's all about you? He's aiming at him, not you.”

“Please,” Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo added, almost apologetically. “Stay back.”

And that's when it became clear that he was a bit of a sentimentalist, because if he hadn't felt called upon to tell Matteo the deli counterman how sorry he was to have to treat him that way, he wouldn't have fallen into the moment of distraction (a classic: and they always seem to fall for the classics) that any self-respecting criminal would instantly recognize and turn to his advantage.

With stunning promptness, in fact, Matrix leapt to his feet and charged head-down like a battering ram, taking along behind him both arms trapped by the handcuffs that screeched along the metal rail of the dairy case, producing a subversive, premonitory sound.

Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo was just fast enough to turn and block the impact with his left arm, otherwise Matrix's head butt would have caught him square between his spine and his ribs. He nevertheless hit him hard enough to knock him off his feet, causing him to lose both his balance and his gun in the same instant (the deli counterman Matteo looked down to see the pistol slide to within a yard or so of the tips of his shoes). The old woman was using me as a human shield, and every so often it seemed to me she jumped into the air back there behind me.