Three Light-Years: A Novel (5 page)

Viberti nodded.

“And what do you want from her, do you want to talk about medicine with her? You talked about medicine with Giulia, too.”

“I like her because there’s something about her that isn’t quite right … She dresses funny, her T-shirts are always tight and her pants baggy…”

“They all dress like that.”

“Yes, but she’ll put on a perfect white blouse, and then she’ll wear a shapeless sweater, full of holes, over it.”

Antonio burst out laughing and Viberti told him to go to hell.

They were a group of friends, old schoolmates, most married with children, Antonio separated with children, Viberti divorced with no children—though according to the others, Viberti’s divorce was an annulment in disguise, it didn’t count as a divorce and it didn’t count as a marriage. It hadn’t been like Antonio’s blood-sweat-and-tears separation, it hadn’t been a marriage with passion, bickering, long faces, joy, satisfaction, and frustration like the marriages of the other three. Every so often they played tennis together, and in the teasing that took place week after week, on the courts or in the locker room, in the endlessly repeated gibes and wisecracks that only they understood and were allowed to toss at one another, in the oral repertoire of their friendship, Viberti’s soubriquet was “Claudio, who didn’t consummate.”

Unconsciously, not ever having spoken to one another about it, let alone to him, the group preferred that he remain a bachelor. He was their mascot. When he went on vacation with them it was only for brief periods of time—any longer and it didn’t work. Whether or not their children came along, it didn’t work, they all knew it. His friends’ idea of his private life was nebulous. Yes, he’d had a couple of affairs after the divorce; one woman refused to sleep at his house because she said there was a “ghost” there. But they didn’t know much more.

Since his own divorce, Antonio took it for granted that he and Viberti would be a steady couple. Every Tuesday or Wednesday evening that winter, Antonio invited Viberti over to watch the game. Wednesday, Antonio had his two sons. The house was a mess; a housekeeper came three mornings a week—to “ward off the threat of disease”—but Antonio refused to run the dishwasher and washing machine, or do any cooking or cleaning. Every now and then it was Viberti who summarily tidied up the kitchen, during a break in the game. Maybe when he talked about Cecilia, Antonio was simply worried that his friend might remarry. Maybe he was jealous.

When he said, “Besides, not everyone thinks Cecilia is so great,” it occurred to Viberti that he might be jealous.

“Who thinks she isn’t?”

“Her colleagues say that—”

“Who?”

“They say she’s overly meticulous, sometimes she argues with the nurses.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“She’s obsessed with rules.”

“But that’s good.”

“And she gets angry because some of the other doctors’ handwriting is illegible.”

They both laughed. “She gets angry because doctors have bad handwriting?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, that makes her even more likable,” Viberti said.

Antonio looked at him, smiling. “We’re getting old.”

“I don’t feel old.”

“This is your first senile infatuation.”

“I’m forty, leave me alone.”

“Forty-three. Don’t get upset. I have some good news for you.”

“What?”

“She’s separated from her husband again, this time for good, they say.”

It was the end of February; he’d known her for almost a year.

This time he didn’t pretend he already knew it—he hadn’t known and he was too stunned to lie. He didn’t recall having noticed anything different in Cecilia’s behavior recently. She didn’t seem more worried or more relieved than usual. He was annoyed that he didn’t know, disappointed to find out from Antonio, but then again, why on earth would Cecilia have told him?

*   *   *

The next day, when he meets her at their café, at their table, he’s concocted a perfect substitute speech: plausible, urgent, and innocuous. “I have to have my mother looked at, I don’t quite trust the geriatrician I made her visit, do you know anyone else?” But seeing her there in front of him, reading anxiety and discomfort in her eyes rather than expectation and curiosity, he realizes that the woman is worried because she knows exactly why he’s asked to meet her. She’s also had time to analyze and brood after the scene in the ER, and ruling out the less likely hypotheses, has arrived at the truth. It makes no sense to back off now, he doesn’t want to look like a coward; better to appear ridiculous. Better to make her uncomfortable than be vilified. He looks at her hair, her mouth; then he lowers his eyes. Today Cecilia is wearing a purple T-shirt with a pair of blue linen trousers, and the edge of the shirt’s neckline is a little ripped.

He says, almost in one breath: “I don’t know how I could have let things get this far, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s my fault. I thought about the fact that we’ve been seeing each other for a year and I felt so anxious. I should have told you sooner, or decided not to eat with you anymore. I don’t know, is it normal for us to have lunch together every day?”

Cecilia shakes her head: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Viberti sighs, starts over again: “I don’t know how it happened, but I think one of the main reasons is the respect that I have for you as a doctor. I know you don’t feel the same attraction, I would have noticed, but in the last few months you’ve become a kind of torture, so I thought that if I told you maybe I’d be able to stand it, I don’t know, maybe it’s a stupid idea, I’d like to get over it.” He immediately regrets using the word “torture,” but he didn’t prepare the little speech he’s giving now. “Well, torture is an exaggeration, sorry, I meant fixation, obsession, in a positive sense…” He’s complicating his life, making things worse. He takes a sip of water.

He can’t help glancing at her, if only briefly. Cecilia’s lips are parted, her chin is quivering a little, she’s wide-eyed. Viberti looks away, to the half-empty room of the café. He’s not sure he saw her right, maybe she doesn’t have that look of absolute astonishment. He glances at her again. She does.

He lied when he said he knew she didn’t feel the same attraction—he doesn’t know that and indeed continues to hope that the opposite is true. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable, please don’t think I want to saddle you with any kind of responsibility. Put it this way: you’re both the illness and the doctor, tell me there’s no hope, it’s better you tell me right away.”

Cecilia doesn’t smile and Viberti thinks they’ll never leave that café. It’s a very hot day, not a breath of air, a false spring that’s already summer, and a sense of anticipation has hung over things since early afternoon; nothing will ever be resolved with all that light.

“Please, don’t make that face,” he smiles. “You make me feel like I’m crazy.”

“No, I don’t think you’re crazy,” she says at last. “It’s just that…” She breaks off, opens her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“You don’t know what to say to me, I expected it, you’re like me, if I were in your situation I would be afraid of hurting someone and making him suffer, too, but I, well … it’s what I’m asking you, it’s better to hear it directly from you.”

Cecilia shakes her head. “It’s my fault. I should have told you more about what was going on with me. I’ve been through some tough months, that much you know. I separated from my husband, I think this time for good. And it was very painful. Now I’m completely drained. Even if there were attraction, I wouldn’t have the strength to act on it.”

“But there isn’t.”

“Well, I never thought about it … I guess I knew you liked me, but these lunches were too important for me, and I didn’t want to give them up.”

Important, why? No one has ever insisted on eating with him, not even his mother.

“I’m very confused right now, but you’re right, I don’t want to lead you on … I really never thought of you … that way … in those terms … But I think about you a lot.”

“Of course, I realized that … I wasn’t hoping.”

And the fact that he wasn’t hoping seems to make Cecilia feel much better and that at least is something Viberti actually does realize. He suddenly feels empty; he has nothing more to say and would like to get up and leave.

They’re silent for a time that, to both, seems to stretch on and on.

“I disappointed you.”

“No, you didn’t disappoint me. I’m disappointed, but it’s not your fault.”

“You won’t talk to me anymore.”

“I’ll talk to you.”

“Will we still be friends?”

“Of course, what do you think?”

“You’re a special person.”

She’s recovered, her eyes are shining, her cheeks have their color back.

“You’re very important to me, you know?”

“Don’t feel like you have to say these things.”

“No, I’m serious. You’re an important friend…”

Viberti shakes his head, but Cecilia is undeterred and continues her speech. It seems more and more like a eulogy.

“… you have no idea how many times a day I feel like I want to talk to you, want to tell you about something; I never talked so much with anyone in my life.”

The pain he didn’t experience when she said no, he’s experiencing now. He has to stop her before she adds something else, something irrevocable, as if “friend” weren’t enough.

“I’m not sure I like these compliments, you’re saying I’m a good listener, a kind of confessor…”

“That’s not all I meant, and you know it.”

“Okay, I exaggerated.”

“I meant you’re one of the few human beings I’ve met in this hospital.”

Viberti finally relaxes. Yes, he likes that.
The real challenge for a physician is to continue treating patients as human beings year after year and not just as cases because, you see, after a while it’s natural for everyone to say things like “tonight a bad case of pneumonia came in” or “the angina in bed 5” or “number 20 is a refractory decompensation,” they’re formulas of self-defense to depersonalize the illness, but one must defend oneself from this self-defense.
He likes being a human being.

“The others belong to a different species. They’re seals and walruses. Hens, barnyard chickens.”

Viberti smiles. “I sometimes feel like a dog.”

“Why?”

“Eager to obey, too faithful, in need of a master.”

“Every now and then it’s okay. Every now and then it’s all right to be an animal, but not all the time.”

“You’re a cat.”

“God, no. One of those obnoxious ones? Then we can’t get along.”

Now they’re bantering, complicit; he can’t let it die. “I’ll never forget your expression.”

“When?”

“Before. Your expression when you didn’t know what I was talking about, and then when you realized.”

“What was my expression like?”

“Your mouth was open.”

“Impossible, I never have my mouth open.”

“I swear, you were wide-eyed and gaping.”

“Come on!”

“You weren’t expecting it.”

“No, I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Not from such an important
friend
.”

“Actually, I was wrong. You’re the only one. I have no other friends. Really.” She pauses. “But no, I wasn’t expecting it. When did you decide to tell me?”

“I didn’t decide. Yesterday morning I thought, now I’ll tell her that I have to talk to her. And I told you.”

“You wrote it to me.”

“I wrote it to you.”

“Why?”

“I hadn’t yet made up my mind whether to really tell you everything.”

“But why did you write it?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“And what were you thinking of telling me?”

“Instead of what I told you? I thought maybe I’d tell you something else. Something about my mother, maybe.”

“When did you decide to tell me the truth?”

“When you came in and sat down. I thought it was silly for things to keep going like this.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“From the beginning. More or less. Ever since I met you. But I didn’t know it. Then I had to admit it.”

“Had to?”

“I would rather have kept telling myself that I admired you.”

She smiles. “You admire me?”

“As a doctor.”

“How do you know what kind of doctor I am?”

“I know.”

“But it wasn’t admiration.”

“Not just admiration.”

“But do you admire me or not?”

“Very much.”

“So then it’s been going on for about a year now.”

“For a year.”

“And all of a sudden you decide to tell me.”

“I don’t know why. Last night my mother told me a crazy story. My mother is eighty-two. She probably has the beginnings of senile dementia.”

“What are her symptoms?”

“She doesn’t remember what she just said. She leaves stuff on the stove.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s hard to worry about her. Because she’s actually in very good health. Then, too, dementia is difficult to diagnose. She took the Mini mental test and scored twenty-nine out of thirty. She came out boasting, saying that even her university professors, the bastards, always gave her twenty-nine. The progression is so slow you tend to think it’s inevitable.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It is, but maybe we shouldn’t admit it.”

“And the crazy story?”

“The crazy story was by some writer or other, it was the first time she’d mentioned it to me, who knows, it may be that she actually read it, she was a big reader, although I got the impression that she was confusing it, mixing up two different stories. But the funny thing is that the main character’s name was Cecilia.”

“Did you talk to her about me?”

He smiles. “I don’t talk about women with my mother.”

When they get up to leave it’s as though they’d met to celebrate a birthday; they’re sorry that the party is over, but all in all everyone’s in a good mood. Viberti pays for the two mineral waters and puts the receipt in his wallet along with the extra passport photo from when he renewed his ID card. He says goodbye to Cecilia with a handshake, smiling. The passersby seem to be smiling also, as do the faces on the billboards, and the grilles of the cars.