Three Light-Years: A Novel (20 page)

She had to go pay the children’s dentist near the playground, then go back home right away. “Please, please.”

Viberti agreed.

He completed his rounds in fifty minutes and ran down the stairs. Why was he running? Because he hated being late. “Am I running because I want to see her or only because I hate being late?” He remembered a taxi stand in front of a side entrance to the hospital: if he went out through the main entry, passing the locker room to get his coat first, it would take him more than half an hour.

He went out into the harsh light and biting cold huddled in his white coat; he counted on jumping straight into a taxi, but the stand was empty. It was so cold that the street seemed wider, the houses cowering back, snuggled against one another. Viberti pulled out his cell phone to call a taxi, gave the address to the dispatcher, then dashed into a café to wait. He called Cecilia to let her know he’d be late—he stopped just inside the glass door plastered with stickers for food coupons, brands of ice cream, and images of the Madonna of Medjugorje, turning his back to the room—but Cecilia’s phone was turned off or out of range. He looked up, he’d thought he’d gone unnoticed, but there were only two customers in the café and the barista was staring at him.

He wasn’t familiar with the places on that side of the hospital, he’d never been in that café. He approached the counter and chose a package of candy. The barista looked suspicious or irritated, as if he knew that Viberti hadn’t really come in to buy candy, as if he considered him a parasite who’d come into his café to keep warm while waiting for a taxi. Viberti had never been able to ask to use the toilet without at least ordering a cup of coffee. He walked to the door to leave, at which point the barista asked him if he was a doctor by any chance. His son had a varicocele and the doctors (he made a vague gesture to indicate
other
doctors, present company excluded) weren’t able to help him. Did he know a good specialist? Out of the corner of his eye Viberti saw the taxi stop in front of the café. He told the man the name of a colleague, then mentioned another. The barista didn’t seem satisfied. So Viberti took the café’s card from the counter and said, “I might come up with another one, I’ll call you later, I promise.”

In the taxi he pictured Cecilia waiting for him in the cold, sitting on a swing; he tried to imagine what could have happened—it was the first time she’d asked to see him with such urgency. Nothing could have happened, it was crazy, it made no sense to respond so promptly to calls like that without probing further, without demanding answers. He closed his eyes. Since the time he was a child he’d found sunlight refracted through the windows of a car extremely grating, and in a few minutes he felt nauseous. It was the thought of that light that made him feel sick, he didn’t get carsick. He remembered once when he had to wait for his mother in the car, he’d locked himself in and was so bothered by the light that he wrapped his head in a scarf. Marta got angry when she came back, she told him he could have
hung
himself (hard to hang yourself in a truck, impossible in a car).

After a while, the taxi driver asked him if by chance he was a doctor. Viberti diagnosed an irritable bowel syndrome, paid, and got out. The playground was between the avenue and the river, behind a local police station where he’d paid a few fines in the past. There was the standard equipment found in all modern playgrounds, things he would have gone crazy for as a child. Even now he was intrigued by features like the spongy flooring, a great way to protect children from falls.
Then, too, what fascinates me are the small improvements, because they make me believe that everything can be improved, always, little by little, and that we mustn’t lose hope. Take the blender, somehow, for some reason, one day it occurred to someone not to have it rotate in one direction only. Press it once: clockwise. Press it again: counterclockwise. That way it juices better.
No trace of Cecilia, she must have left already. He took out the phone to call her and apologize for being late and saw that he had received a text ten minutes ago; he hadn’t heard it:
I’m on my way
. If he’d arrived on time he would have been waiting half an hour for her in the icy cold.

He blew his nose. The whole thing didn’t make sense anymore. He’d been telling himself that for weeks now. After returning from vacation there had been a “relapse,” and another relapse in December. He’d started calling them relapses to make her smile, so they could laugh about it together, because their relationship was a recurring illness, because they were doctors unable to cure it, but now it was no longer funny. The idea of relapses wasn’t funny, the idea of a serial killer wasn’t funny (a bizarre serial killer who always struck the same victim). And so, freezing to death, he sat down on a big spring rider with a red, blue, and yellow flower-shaped seat and asked himself again: Did I race over here because I wanted to see her, and I couldn’t stand not seeing her, and I’m in love with her, or because I didn’t want to say no, and I was afraid I would regret it, and I’m afraid of being alone forever, and for some time a ridiculous idea has been stuck in my head, that it’s too late, that this is my last chance?

He was angry, with Cecilia, with himself. After the last relapse, when, for the fourth time, the scene of repentance had repeated itself, when for the fourth time she’d told him, I’m sorry but I can’t do this, he’d remarked: “So it’s all over.” Cecilia had gotten offended, she hadn’t appreciated his sarcasm, and had retorted, “Though maybe it never began.” At which point he had gotten offended. They hadn’t spoken to each other for two weeks, until Christmas, then they’d made up. He looked at the pairs of swings, motionless in the cold. He imagined sitting on the swing with Cecilia and talking, swinging up and down. By synchronizing their movements they could easily converse. But even without synchronizing them, even if they got out of synch, they would still meet at least once each swing.

He decided to wait another ten minutes. After ten minutes he decided to wait another five. A homeless man shuffled along slowly, pushing a shopping cart with all his worldly goods. His home. The man stopped to stare at him. And Viberti saw himself through the homeless man’s eyes: a man in a white coat sitting on a big spring rider, in a playground painted strictly in primary colors. Should he go? Stay? Return the look? And what a look! Impossible to stare at someone with such intensity, a gaze that was blurry and at the same time sharp.

After an interminable time the homeless man came up to him. He must be full of pathologies! A whole cross-section of samples. For a moment he thought the man actually wanted to ask him if he was a doctor. Instead he asked for a cigarette. Viberti smiled. “Asking a doctor for a cigarette? Ridiculous.” The homeless man wasn’t smiling. Viberti pulled out the candy and started to offer him one. The man took the whole package and went away without thanking him.

*   *   *

Like the homeless man, I, too, observe my father sitting on the flower-shaped spring rider, shivering in the icy February chill. It’s an image that should be read in its entirety, like a sign. The cold is a damp cold that goes straight through you. In the playground along the river, the internist Viberti is rigid, frozen in place, he seems chained to the flower, a prisoner. But we mustn’t forget that he’s sitting on a spring, like James Bond’s passenger in the Aston Martin, and at any moment he might be ejected.

He might fall down with me on the playground’s spongy floor. I’m very familiar with that rubbery material, I can almost feel it under my feet as I fall from above, bouncing with my friends. My father bounces with me in my mind, in reality he’s sitting on a bench nearby, reading a newspaper. Whole afternoons, when the weather was nice.

*   *   *

When she arrives, Cecilia’s face looks very tired. Viberti is freezing and would like to forgive her for everything, but he can’t, because there’s nothing to forgive, and the blame, if there is any blame, is distributed equally between them. There is no blame, why should there be blame?

Cecilia wants to walk along the river, Viberti implores her to go to a café he spotted on the street. They sit at a small table in the back. Cecilia talks about the children, Mattia has a cough, maybe he’s caught the flu, she sent him to school but she’s already sorry. And when he’s sick, it’s even more difficult to get him to eat.

“But you didn’t call me here to talk about that,” Viberti says curtly.

“No, but don’t be mean to me,” she replies, her voice cracking.

“I’m sorry, but try to understand, I have to get back to the hospital, I thought something serious had happened.”

She tells him she hasn’t been sleeping well at night, she’s so tired she collapses at ten, right after turning off the light in the children’s rooms, then she wakes up at two or three and starts tossing and turning in bed. She doesn’t want to start in again with the sleepless nights she had the year before. Every now and then she gets up to check on the children, to see if they’re breathing. “Can you imagine? Something you do with newborns.”

Viberti sighs, takes her hand, squeezes it tightly. He expects she’ll try to break free immediately, because she doesn’t usually welcome signs of affection in public, instead she pulls him to her and gives him a kiss on the cheek. This is why she called him so far away from the hospital, so they could behave normally, for once at least, without being afraid that someone might see them.

“I’m getting to it, okay? I’m getting to it.”

And Viberti thinks she intends to tell him that they mustn’t see each other any longer, that she’s as tired as he is of that friendship which is not only friendship, that there’s no place in her life for such a waste of emotion.

Instead Cecilia says: “When I have to think about something wonderful and good I think of you, at night I think of you and I calm down and fall asleep.”

“Well, better me than a benzodiazepine.”

Cecilia ignores him and continues: “So I said to myself that maybe I’m in love with you. I don’t know. I’m asking you: Do you think I’m in love with you?”

Viberti lowers his eyes. How should he react to that question? By throwing his arms around her, weeping, shouting for joy? But the very fact that he asks himself this question means he doesn’t want to react in any way, it means he doesn’t believe what Cecilia has said, doesn’t believe that she’s really in love with him. He believes she’s very confused, and confused people confuse him, he doesn’t know how to act.

“You don’t seem thrilled,” she says.

He can’t speak, he can’t find anything sensible to say.

“Please, say something.”

He shakes his head.

After a seemingly interminable time he says: “Of course you’re in love with me. I’m in love with you, too.”

Cecilia nods.

“But being together isn’t easy, is it?”

“No, it’s not easy.”

“Not after what you went through.”

“Not after what I went through. What I’m still going through.” She squeezes his hand again. “You see. You understand me. You understand me right away.”

Viberti thinks: Why don’t we try? Why don’t we try being together?

It’s not what she wants. Is it what
he
wants?

He’s seized by a sudden fit of anger. He doesn’t know why Cecilia lets herself go like that: old, scruffy loafers, a missing button at the neck of her blouse, that shabby backpack.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry you’re feeling miserable. I’d like to help you, but I don’t know how.”

“But you do help me, you help me a lot.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “If you weren’t here, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“If I weren’t here.”

“Yes,” Cecilia says.

“But I am here.”

They remain silent, holding hands, studying the brown ring of coffee left in the bottom of the cups. Cecilia concentrates on trying not to cry. Viberti is startled to have said “I’m sorry you’re feeling miserable.” He’d never realized how miserable she felt, “to feel miserable” means feeling
very
miserable, otherwise he would have said “I’m sorry you’re not happy.” And even more startled because she didn’t deny feeling miserable (therefore
very
miserable). She’s aware of it and doesn’t deny it, and she doesn’t talk about it, because it’s too painful to talk about.

He glances around to see if anyone is watching them. A love story that has taken place entirely in cafés. One table among many. A tiny table on which to uncomfortably rest your elbows. The looks of strangers who embroider a wedding canopy around you, the paper place mat acting as the bridal veil, a small bottle of mineral water for the toast.

*   *   *

Then Cecilia perked up and asked him to tell her the story. Viberti didn’t know what she was talking about.

“The story your mother told you, which had a Cecilia in it, you said it was a scandalous story … I thought about it last night and couldn’t forgive myself for never having asked you about it.”

“The scandalous story … I’m not sure I remember it anymore. Why are you interested?”

“I don’t know, because it has to do with you. I’m interested in everything that has to do with you. And it has to do with me, too, you told me about it the first time.”

“The first time?”

“When you gave me that solemn speech.”

“The solemn speech … Oh yes, the solemn speech, I remember.”

He couldn’t tell her he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to tell her that he couldn’t take it anymore. To cheer her up, to cheer himself up, he tried to reconstruct the story he had heard from Marta nine months ago, but he quickly realized that he wasn’t capable of telling it with his mother’s same rambling pace, her words rich with euphemisms and allusions. He went too fast, often forgetting an important detail, forced to go back and fill in the gap. Right off the bat he forgot a critically important detail. He began telling it halfheartedly and continued halfheartedly. He told the story to finish things in a hurry so he could get back to the hospital.