When the Night (22 page)

If only one of my own kin had said it, just once. Everything’s fine; you’re lucky to be alive. What do they care if I miss my work? What do they know about what eats at me?

When you’re on the mountain, if you scream or don’t say anything at all, no one asks you for an explanation. You put one boot in front of the other, your blood warms up, you sweat, and there’s nothing between you and the sky. If it’s stormy, even better; the rain lashes your face and you struggle to advance with your head down. I’m not afraid of dying, but she dragged me out of that hole. I can’t complain; I’m alive, I have a family, a hotel, my brothers.

I lie down on the bed, finally alone.

Stefan takes his car, loads up his Slavic wife, and drives to the gondola station. Then they go up to the lodge in the snowcat. They spend an enjoyable evening with her, drinking, talking. Perhaps they even talk about me.

“He was lucky; if you hadn’t called the police …”

You don’t think about it for years. If she hadn’t come, my life would have been all set. Parking cars, arguing with my kids, paying the mortgage, going to bed early. You can’t say it, but it’s the truth. That’s why I don’t talk. What’s the use of getting upset? Be calm, Manfred, you didn’t go, you didn’t fall for it. That other time you were younger, and you weren’t ready to settle down.

She made a fool of me, dancing with Stefan, striking up a friendship with Bianca. She kissed me on the bed when I couldn’t move. I grabbed her hand to keep her there but then I told her to leave forever with her child. He must be grown
up now; a long time has passed. It’s better not to think. I’ll go tomorrow.

STEFAN HAS GRAY hair; I wonder if Manfred has gone gray as well. Albert is thinner; perhaps he is too. Stefan’s wife tells me about Belgrade. She orders her husband to pour her a drink, without looking at him. Stefan smiles; he’s happy to see us talking. When he arrived, he embraced me and presented me to his wife.

“Marina, a tremendous dancer!”

I laughed. “Not as good you!”

She didn’t laugh. She stared at us suspiciously. So, to smooth things over, I asked her about her country. She warmed up, told me about the war and about her arrival in Italy. If it weren’t for the war, Stefan would never have met her, and perhaps he’d have a different wife.

Husbands and wives are interchangeable. No one says it, but that’s what I believe. You meet a man, you like him, his voice, his body, how he eats, how he touches you, your kids, the house. You lie in bed and you don’t know which leg belongs to whom; but you don’t remember why you chose that particular man.

I’m tired of her war stories, but she keeps talking.

“I left Belgrade with my mother.”

Stefan smiles: “And then she met me.”

She turns toward him with a brazen look: “That’s right! I met him.”

Albert laughs. “You married the handsomest of the three of us, and the biggest rascal.”

Bianca taps her brother-in-law on the back. “It’s not true. He’s a wonderful husband.”

Stefan smiles, a smile that is aged by his gray hair. “I pay her to defend me from my wife.”

Everyone laughs, except his Serbian wife.

“I’m the foreigner here, and the last to know all of you, and I’m telling you that the best of the three is Manfred.”

I was about to get up, but I change my mind. The two brothers and Bianca tease her.

“You wouldn’t have lasted an hour with Manfred.”

But Stefan’s wife isn’t bowed. “I’m not joking. It’s true. He’s quiet, he has a nasty streak, but at your father’s funeral he was the only one who spoke at the church.”

I can’t help myself, I have to ask; who cares if they find me overly interested: “What did he say?”

Albert wants to drop the subject, but Bianca intervenes: “I couldn’t believe it myself. He hadn’t told anyone he was going to do it. When the priest asked if anyone had something to say, he stood up and went to the altar. He said that Gustav was a shining example of how one keeps faith in a commitment; that he had raised the three of them without coddling them; that they were lucky to have had him for a father.”

The two brothers are visibly uncomfortable. The memory is too intimate. After a short pause, Stefan’s wife adds, “At the end, he said, ‘You can judge a man by the strength he shows with the people he loves.’ I’ll never forget it.”

Albert snickers. “Our Manfred is a tough one.”

Stefan looks over at him. “He was the same as a kid. If I cried, he didn’t care. I could scream my head off and he wouldn’t
even look at me. As soon as I stopped, he gave me a piece of chocolate.”

They talk about Manfred, his difficult personality, his wife’s patience after the accident. I don’t listen; I imagine him at his father’s funeral, or giving his little brother a piece of chocolate after he stops crying.

I stand up. “I’m sorry, I need to go to bed. I’m tired. It must be from the traveling, the altitude.”

I thank everyone and embrace Stefan and his wife. Bianca walks upstairs with me and hands me the key and a bottle of water.

“Sleep well.”

I TOSS AND turn in bed; I might as well have stayed downstairs to help Luna. I have to admit, the idea that she’s here, nearby, makes me anxious.

After fifteen years, she was dead, like my leg. I never brought her back to life, out of fear that the mere idea of her would make the blood rush through my veins as it does now. The blood pulses in my head, in my hands, in my chest. It’s best if she leaves immediately. Part of me thinks that, but another part wants to see her. I tease my son, but I’m no better than he is.

Fifteen years ago, she was a different person; maybe she has left her husband, has been with other men, it wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe she doesn’t even remember that you live here. Be realistic: 365 days by fifteen years since you last saw each other. First multiply by ten, then by five.

Five thousand four hundred seventy-five days. Well done, Manfred, you still know your multiplication tables. But you’re still awake.

THE STRAP OF my nightgown slides down my shoulder. I bought it before coming here, along with a new set of black underwear and bra, all for an aging mountain man who has gone back to his wife.

Standing in front of the mirror, I touch my lips. It’s typical of women, dreaming of something they can’t have. He doesn’t care about you, he has a life to live.

I stretch out on the bed. I came all the way here to see him; tomorrow I’ll go down into town, I don’t care what I find.

W
IND, SNOW. THE customers are stuck in the hotel like mice, and finally I’m free. I walk and the leg doesn’t bother me. I can’t feel my chin or my cheeks. I reach the gondola station and come back. It’s nothing, for someone who used to hike all the mountain passes around here in one day and knew every peak like the back of his hand. Now this is enough for me, especially today. There’s not a soul around, no voices, just the dull sound of snow falling from the trees, the wind in my ears, icy needles on my sleeve.

“You want to go up to the lodge on a day like this, with your leg?”

“I’m just going to the gondola station and back. What do I care about the weather?”

She doesn’t try to stop me. Luna knows me too well for that; and it’s not like her to insist. This is how it has been between us since the accident.

IT’S NIGHTTIME. WE’RE home after two months in the hospital. Clara and Simon are sleeping. She has put her things back in the closets, and the house smells clean again. I get up twice a day to do my exercises; but I still haven’t been able to walk around the whole house. I take my time. I don’t want to see the pots and pans in the kitchen, the dishwasher on, their shoes in the entryway, her pantyhose and bras in the bathroom. She has decided to stay, but she hasn’t told me yet. She’s sitting on an armchair next to the bed while I pretend to sleep. She’s been wanting to talk for days. I open my eyes. If it must happen, it’s best for me to decide when. I ask her, “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

She looks at me. She’s tired, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She came to the hospital every day and took care of me like a mother—not my mother. She whispers, as if there were a dead man in the room.

“Manfred, the kids are happy to be back.”

Women always talk about the kids first. I ask her, in the strongest voice I can muster, “What about you?”

She cries. I’ve pressed the button that releases the tears. It should affect me but I feel nothing, I’m not sure why.

In the first years of our marriage, we were on the same side. Then, after Clara was born, we were on opposite sides. And now?

“Do you think it will be better living with half a man than it was when I was whole, Luna?”

She shakes her head.

“So why do you want to come back?”

“You’ll be able to walk again, Manfred.”

She didn’t answer me. That day or any other day since. I didn’t press the issue, nor did she. Anything to avoid touching upon the real question: why did she come back?

She sits on the bed and puts her arms around me. I feel her next to me; a window bangs in the kitchen. The one who saved me from death has gone away.

FROM THAT MOMENT on, nothing touches me: my children’s voices, those of my brothers, the sound of the wind, the snow. It’s all a mere accompaniment. I must go back much further to remember a time when I felt something: the presence of the mountain, the pain inflicted by my mother, the hatred and pity I felt for my father and my brothers. It is as if that were all I ever had.

All because of this woman. She came and turned everything upside down. In another half hour I’ll reach the gondola station and go up to the lodge. I’ll see her, she’ll introduce me to her husband, and we can put it all behind us.

THE GONDOLA SWAYS in the white light, amid a cloud of little white dots. It has already stopped twice. I’m alone with the young man who closed the doors. I asked him, “Is no one else coming?”

“Not many people come up in this weather.”

I’m frightened when it stops and begins to bob up and down in the air. I grip the icy handrail and close my eyes. Why on
earth did I decide to ride down the mountain in this storm? I want to go to him. I didn’t sleep; his proximity and the comments about him from last night swirl around in my head, along with images from these last fifteen years and from my time here with Marco, the only time about which I remember every detail. They put wood paneling on the walls and covered up the little boy with the glasses and the wide-open mouth. Marco’s wound, too, is concealed by his hair.

ONE DAY WHEN he was thirteen, after taking a shower, he came into the kitchen with a frightened look. His hair was combed back, his robe tied tightly, his white chest still slender and hairless. These were the last days of his boyhood. He said, worriedly, “I have a scar on my head, Mamma, look.”

I didn’t turn around. “Hadn’t you ever noticed?”

“No. What is it from?”

“That time when we went to the mountains. You fell off a table, I told you about it.”

“But it’s a big scar. Did I have stitches?”

I turn toward him and smile, reassuringly. “One of the many hospitals we visited when you were little. You were impossible.”

He touches the spot on his head: “A hidden scar. I like it.”

I hug him and kiss him on the head. “Like a soldier.”

He pulls away. “Come on, Mamma.”

THE GONDOLA BRUSHES a pylon. I look up at the young man.

“Is it dangerous?”

He smiles. “No, don’t worry. As soon as the wind calms down we’ll start moving again.”

Calm: the wind, my fury, and his. I was ready to leave everything behind, but he said, “You can’t. Stay where you are.”

I stayed, and so did he. His wife, his children, the hotel. Like dogs chained to a post. You try to jump, but you can’t; you’re chained, don’t you remember? Is there anything else in life but this?

The gondola begins to move; we descend slowly in a cloud of white dots, rapping against the windows. I’ll go to the house and ask for him; if his wife is there it doesn’t matter, I’ll just say, “I’m here on holiday, and I wanted to say hello.”

All I need is a tiny sign, to understand whether it was all a dream, like the prayer I used to say before going to bed when I was a little girl: “Tomorrow at school, please, please, let him notice me.”