‘Look,’ he says, drawing an empty vial out of his pants pocket.
The pharmacist sets about translating the English label into Italian.
Ingrid has glimpsed a post office across the street. ‘Rena, would you mind buying us some stamps while we’re busy in here?’
Yes, I would mind, thinks Rena. I don’t feel like either buying stamps or translating labels. I want Aziz, I want Aziz, I want Aziz.
She exits the pharmacy, slamming the door behind her.
If I can’t remember the word for stamps, I refuse to ask for them. What’s the point in buying stamps for postcards that haven’t been written yet?
Of their own volition, her feet cross the street. Of its own volition, her brain rummages around in its darkest depths. And Rena finds herself standing at the counter like a normal human being, smiling and murmuring, ‘Francobolli, per favore!’
The medical parenthesis lasts and lasts, drawn out by her father’s indecision. Rena waits for Simon and Ingrid outside, determined not to explode with impatience. Kicking her heels at the corner of the Via Garibaldi, she absent-mindedly reads the plaque recounting the Italian patriot’s heroic deeds in Siena…then forgets them at once.
When the couple emerges some thirty-five minutes later, the afternoon turns into a nightmare. In the steep hilly streets near Porta d’Ovile, motor-scooters with no mufflers zoom past them one after another. How can a bunch of pimply teenagers be allowed to inflict such violence on their ears and souls? Forgotten, the bonds woven by Lady Concord! Night is falling and Simon is furious with her for having read the Garibaldi plaque without him…A thick cloud layer has swallowed up the sun…The air is heavy with a thousand human exhalations: poisonous gases, failed aspirations and petty quarrels… Rena’s Canon bangs relentlessly against her solar plexus. Why aren’t you working? it needles her. Why have you stopped looking? Don’t you want me to help you see things anymore? They get lost, wandering at length and at random through smelly Siena. And when at last they find their car: a parking ticket.
A plague upon the planet!
As they head towards their B & B on the outskirts of the city, the silence in the car becomes so charged that Rena turns on the radio for the first time and stumbles upon a world news bulletin in Italian. The riots in France are now breaking news. The announcer runs through the statistics at top speed, citing the number of macchine bruciate, carabinieri feriti and ragazzi arrestati in one city after another. Rena doesn’t get it all, but her heartbeat speeds up uncontrollably. Wiped out, Simon and Ingrid sit in the back seat saying nothing.
A bucolic residential suburb. This time they have no trouble finding the place, but (alas!) no Gaia awaits them there. The owner is a young, blonde, and appallingly efficient mother of three. Sure, that’ll be fine, thank you…Shower’s in the hallway…Perfect.
They go back out an hour later. Admire the purity of the full moon (almost full, almost pure — above the Ponte Vecchio — was a century ago). Bundle back into the car to search for a restaurant.
Here? No…There? No…Over there, maybe? U-turn…Hey, there’s one!..Quick, quick, turn left!
The young man on the pedestrian crossing jumps, hastens his step.
‘Don’t do that,’ Simon mutters to Rena. ‘I hate people who do that!’
The phrase hits a nerve. (Flashback to 1975: ‘You hate me!’ ‘No, I don’t. It’s not you I hate, it’s your lies. I hate to see you stealing things, skipping school, lying to me and your mother. Rena, I really think you should see a professional. I have a friend who could at least refer us to someone…’ Simon and I have been at loggerheads for three full decades…)
‘Sorry, Dad,’ she retorts. ‘But I’m driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar city’—guided, moreover, she manages to refrain from saying, by a lousy Virgil…
Simon apologises in turn. He’s getting old, he tells her, and cars often force him to speed up when he’s crossing the street.
Father and daughter are both contrite, and mad as hell.
At last Rena parks and the couple gets out of the car. A few seconds later, Ingrid taps on her window: ‘You can’t park here, Rena, it’s a bus stop. If you get two parking tickets on the same day, they’re liable to press charges.’
Simon points to a spot across the street. Impossible (illegal) to make a U-turn. Rena tries to nose her way around the small square, but far too many cars are parked there and she gets stuck. Instantly, a dozen men rush over and surround the Megane, shouting advice at her in Italian. Flustered, she turns the steering wheel the wrong way as she backs up, grazing the fender of an Audi and eliciting even louder shouts from the men. They sense that she’s a foreigner and start haranguing her in English. This is the last straw: she rolls her window down and makes a most unladylike gesture in their direction.
Having extricated the car from that mess at last, she drives half a mile before finding a place to turn around. Her right leg is shaking so badly that the pressure on the accelerator is spasmodic and the car moves forward in fits and starts. Her chest slams up against the steering wheel, and an electronic beep berates her for not having attached her seatbelt. By the time she finally glides into the parking spot her father has been saving for her, she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
‘You could have stayed right where you were,’ he tells her, smiling, as she locks the car. ‘Turns out the buses stop at eight.’
Nothing has happened, nothing. Yet she wants to scream, beat this old man over the head, clasp him to her, tell him off, shake him so hard that his teeth fall out, collapse on the ground at his feet.
Fazzoletto
They embark on a lengthy examination of the menu, including the conversion of euros into Canadian dollars and an etymological discussion, possibly the three hundredth of Rena’s life, of the misleading word pepperoni, a type of sausage in North America and a vegetable in Italy. Somehow they manage to place their order.
Suddenly Simon turns to her and says, ‘That’s a lovely scarf!’
Rena freezes. Blanches. Lowers her eyes and murmurs, ‘Thank you — I like it, too…’ The conversation picks up where it left off.
He gave it to you, murmurs Subra. That beautiful velvet scarf in shimmering red and mauve and blue…
Yes, a good ten years ago. He chose it especially for me, wrapped it and mailed it overseas — accompanied, like all his gifts over the years, by a carefully chosen birthday card. Then he waited for my response. In vain. Hurt, he brought it up a few months later: ‘Didn’t you like the scarf?’ ‘What do you mean?’ I protested. ‘I loved it! Didn’t you get my thank you note?’ ‘No…’ His expression made it clear he didn’t believe I’d sent one. Since then, every time I wear this scarf, it brings back not my father’s generosity but his mistrust. I decided to wear it tonight for our last meal in Siena, and now… he’s forgotten it ever existed!
Their pizzas arrive and the conversation grows animated. Perspiring, Rena takes off the scarf.
Back in their B & B — panic. No scarf — must have left it behind in the restaurant. No, I don’t believe it!
Rushes to the car, drives like a madwoman, bursts into the restaurant—’Did you by any chance see…?’
Finds it, heads back towards the car, and bursts into tears.
Not tears of relief. No, not exactly.
Sacco di Siena
She waves the remote control in the car’s direction…hmm. Instead of clicking, the car blinks at her.
She seizes up in silly fear.
Stop it, Subra tells her. Too many emotions. Obviously, in your haste, your forgot to lock the car doors two minutes ago.