The whole performance wasn’t as sad as it might have seemed, at least not until the last act. But I didn’t even go into the bedroom, so I didn’t leave in a bad mood. The woman made a slightly disappointed face, I don’t know why; maybe she thought that without sex I wouldn’t come back. She must have thought that I’d completely misunderstood, because she repeated it twice, she even asked me if I didn’t want something quick. I paid her and said goodbye to the kids. They looked mortified too, as if I really was a father and had just announced that I was leaving forever.
He said that the marriage is the biggest mystery; it’s hard to understand why a man of forty-five who has always lived with his mother suddenly decides to get married, unless he wants to start a family; the family is the thing that triggers it — certainly not the woman — because the aim is to have children and raise them with Christian values, to bring up an eager platoon of Christian soldiers.
I begged him to stop exaggerating and get to the point, but it was as if I hadn’t spoken.
And, on the other hand, there’s the mystery of a girl who falls in love with someone like Renal — what could a woman see in a man like that? If people were obligated to write something when they got married, if people had to explain why they were marrying, listing their noble and idealistic reasons along with their self-interested ones, or sketching their loved one’s portrait, for example, describing the other person in black and white, describing their bride’s or groom’s irresistible aspects …
Now he was really annoying me.
I told him that it was impossible, that it made no sense. Elisabetta was the sister of Alfredo, and the wife of Rossi.
“Has she ever told you she was Renal’s sister?”
“No. Why should she? I never asked her.”
“Exactly. Why didn’t you ever ask her?”
“Because it’s obvious that she’s the sister — she’s a Renal.”
“Yes, of course, the widow of Alberto Renal would naturally introduce herself as Elisabetta Renal. But explain to me why you never asked her. What would be wrong with it? You could have asked her in a thousand different ways — why would it be a problem? You didn’t want to seem too curious?”
“Maybe.”
“But then you come and ask me, and you don’t believe what I tell you.”
“No, that’s not true. I believe you, but I don’t know if I believe that professor of yours.”
To find out more about the Renals, Carlo went to talk with an old teacher of his, Professor Pozzi. He’s a widower of seventy-seven who lives alone in an enormous house, full of furniture and lace doilies and a gigantic TV with a gigantic armchair facing it. Carlo remembered vaguely that Pozzi knew a lot of lay Catholic volunteers and other charity activists, because his wife pushed or dragged him into it. And Pozzi naturally remembered Renal. He remembered that Renal had married a very young girl and that he was deeply attached to an old high school friend.
I didn’t like my brother’s smug way of telling me what he had discovered, as if he were showing me up for some incapacity of mine. His tone, too, was irritating. To dampen it, I asked him whether Pozzi was that old Communist who, according to Cecilia, pretended to help Carlo secure university positions while actually throwing obstacles in his way.
He didn’t answer. He sighed and waved his hand to chase off an invisible fly.
He tells me that I have to concentrate on the story, that I have to imagine it as a melodrama, a passionate, violent struggle: it has all the right ingredients — love, jealousy, betrayal. And then he stares at me.
I don’t react.
Alfredo Renal needed to take on a secretary to help manage his inheritance. But, as with all his other initiatives, he also wanted to help a friend in need. And Rossi repaid his generosity: he seemed to be born for the job — he was perfect in the role of the grand philanthropist. He came up with the idea for the foundation, according to Pozzi. Renal would have been happy just visiting the sick, organizing charity auctions, and occasionally accompanying the handicapped to Lourdes.
What annoys me most is that I have to admit he’s right.
So Elisabetta married Alfredo Renal. So she wasn’t the normal sister who had to deal with an exceptional brother. She had chosen Renal. And then she chose Rossi.
“So she’s not necessarily married to Rossi.”
“Pozzi says she’s not. At least, not formally.”
“Okay, but why is it a melodrama?”
“I was just saying that for effect. Picture it: your best friend, a man you trust completely, steals your wife … and not only that, he expects to go on living with you, as if nothing had happened. And if, after just a few months of marriage, your wife couldn’t stand you, couldn’t stand the sight of you—”
“But you’re just making all this up!”
“No, I’m trying to understand. I’m hypothesizing.”
“Don’t try to tell me that the two of them killed Alfredo Renal.”
“I don’t think so. He died of cancer. He must have had a miserable time in his final years. Or maybe he didn’t care. But just try to imagine one more thing: the three of them in the villa, the life they lived together. Can you imagine it?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Make an effort. Alfredo marries Elisabetta. But there’s nothing between them. What could there be? Alfredo Renal isn’t a man, he’s a saint. Elisabetta is young, Alberto makes her laugh, he takes her places, he doesn’t shut himself up in his room writing treatises for the good of mankind; he doesn’t dedicate all his time to prisoners or sick people.”
“But why would they all live together?”
“Alfredo needed both of them. Ultimately he chose to withdraw to the country and give up the active life, but he kept them both close by. He became a philosopher, and meanwhile the two lovers stayed lovers. Until they’d had enough, and they stopped loving each other. Now, think about that moment: Renal sees that Elisabetta no longer loves Alberto. It’s as if she’s betraying him all over again.”
“You’re making all this up,” I repeat, irritated.
“No, I’m building realistic hypotheses on the basis of known facts.”
“If I knew this was what you’d do, I wouldn’t have asked you anything. My fault.”
“No, no, I enjoyed myself. You’re the one without any imagination.”
“It’s true. I haven’t.” I don’t mind not having any. “And what about Rossi: did she push him off a cliff?”
“You can joke if you want. But you’re not far off the mark, anyway. It was an accident — the car drove off a bluff and flipped over; she got away with a few scratches, but Rossi was paralyzed from the waist down, his vertebrae were crushed.”
“If he’s the same person you’re talking about,” I say, “Rossi must have changed a lot. He’s more like your portrait of Alfredo Renal.”
“He probably began to imitate Renal, from being around him so long.”
“It’s strange, though. Sometimes they seem to ignore each other. At other times it seems like they’re still in love.”
He looks at me with half a smile, as if it’s clear that I don’t understand anything, that there’s no hope I’ll ever understand anything, as if the secrets of the human soul were suited only for finer minds than mine. So, out of spite, I ask him whether we should trust this professor, whether he might be losing his memory.
“He’s got the memory of an elephant, that shithead.”
When the war ended, my grandfather came to the village to open his “artisanal woodworking shop.” He brought my grandmother, and my father, who was twenty-two. They came from the lake up north, almost at the Swiss border, where until 1940 they’d lived peacefully in a farmhouse with animals and a vineyard, and where my grandfather had a small carpentry shop with four workers. They owned some land, which they sold along with the house in order to move close to the city, which offered more job opportunities and fewer people looking to settle old scores. My father’s situation was the most serious and urgent reason for their move: after Italy’s 1943 armistice with the Allies, he had lain low to avoid further military duty; ten months of freezing guard duty in a regiment of Alpine troops had been enough. Everyone in his neighborhood knew him, and both the partisans and the Fascists swore they would get even with him for not joining their respective sides; after the Liberation in 1945, the partisans came looking for him, explaining to my grandfather that the boy’s failure to join them meant he must have been spying for Mussolini’s Republic. So my grandfather went down to the valley, where he found success. Each year his business got bigger, and when he turned the reins over to my father, ten years later, he had twenty workers and a well-established, thriving little company. I never saw the old house near the lake; I don’t know when my grandparents got married; I know just a few details and some worn-out old anecdotes about them, and the same is true for my mother’s family.