“I’m the king and Momo is the prince,” he says, to throw me off guard.
“Momo pimf,” mumbles Momo around the pacifier in his mouth (I hadn’t taken it away because I didn’t want him to go wild).
But the third novelty about this morning keeps torturing me, and the trip can’t distract me from it. The poplar plantations flow past, their rows as regular as battalions on parade, and they’re followed by the mall, the multiplex, the disco, more poplars and cornfields, the gas station, houses, subdivisions, apartment blocks, a restaurant, garages and building supply warehouses, fences, the industrial chicken farm, the bathroom fixtures and faucets outlet, poplars and fields, scattered houses … But my agitation doesn’t dissipate, and it’s no use trying to reassure myself by thinking that I’m sure to find the ultrasuperglue I need: I can’t calm down. Filippo talks about the huge ocean he crossed last summer, aboard a huge ship that cut the sea in half and killed all the fish, and I give up and admit that the shower-faucet wall plate is an alibi, a pretext — it has nothing to do with anything — that I’m agitated about other things. (The erection I get at this point could be purely physiologicaclass="underline" I always get one at this time of the morning, especially in the car — it must be the vibrations.)
After half an hour in line, I manage to find a parking spot on the roof of the home center; then I take possession of a cart and put the kids in it and go down inside. Yes, there is such a thing as ultrasuperglue, and it glues every kind of material, including human skin, in no time flat, forever. I get balsa wood and some wide elastic bands and some small steel balls and also a garden spade, two short hoes, a fruit picker, two terra-cotta planters of dubious quality that aren’t even particularly cheap — stuff I don’t need, but I do have to fill up the cart and make the best of the time I’m spending here (because it’s Saturday morning and the place is full of people, and I failed to think of that ahead of time). I also have to buy two straw gardener’s hats that Filippo and Momo have gotten hold of. And the checkout line and the payment process (handing over my debit card, typing in my PIN, taking the receipt) magically calm me.
I remember the first time Fabio came back from the detox center: during the week, his mechanic’s work at the garage gave him a rhythm and a schedule, but on Saturday morning he would begin to get agitated and move restlessly from one room to another, from kitchen to bed, up and down the hallway, rubbing his hands together, so I would suggest that we go to the supermarket. Our mother would sit at the dining table and write the shopping list on the back of a receipt that curled like old parchment, and then she’d give it to me with the money, which I would pass immediately to Fabio because I didn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him — they had told us it was important to treat him normally and not keep any secrets, to involve him in things. And he really did seem peaceful in the supermarket aisles (even though they weren’t huge and packed with merchandise like nowadays) as he pushed the cart and checked the list against the items I took from the shelves and agreed to debate about the brands we chose, and the prices, as if we were a pair of old retired bachelor brothers.
The boys and I sat down at the café, although I couldn’t recall if I’d promised them we would; it’s practically an obligatory stop on our outings, and I know perfectly well it’s not healthy for kids to snack all day long, but I absolutely needed a coffee because my earlier anxiety had left me with a sugar low, and the drop in tension made me a little unsteady on my feet. So I got a coffee and two fruit juices and three pastries, and while I helped Momo drink his juice, I began to hear the people around us talking about war and I raised my eyes to the TV hung in the center of the room and realized that I hadn’t seen the news for three days and it was maybe a week since I’d bought the paper. I showed Filippo the pictures of the airplanes taking off loaded with bombs, but he shrugged his shoulders — he already knew about it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t understand what I was asking him; he looked at me and laboriously chewed his pastry. Sometimes I think he’s afraid people are making fun of him. How could an adult possibly not know that a war had broken out?
We went up to the roof of the home center to get the car and stood at the railing for a few minutes to gaze across the open country. There are not a lot of spots around here where one can see such a vast expanse of the region, and every time I come, when the air is still and clear, like today, I linger to contemplate the landscape as if it were the first time I’d ever seen it. There are yellow lines and blue splotches, straight black lines that halve the gray-brown fields, puffs of green, and white reflections from garages and industrial parks and warehouses. Everything is flattened out as if on an immense map without labels. Everything is more beautiful; you can’t see the ugliness that is the industrial sheds, the devastation of the fields hammered by hail, the filth along the sides of the road, the dreadful taste of the Indo-Saracen style subdivisions, the garbage of the mini-mall. From here the flatland looks like a garden (seen from the right height, gardens look like worlds).
I showed the children the distant towns, roads, and hills. I get great satisfaction from recognizing places and being able to point them out to someone. But I’m not so good at it since my father died. I mix up the towns, I mix up the names, and I think simply, “the city,” “where Witold is,” “where my mother is,” and sometimes I fear it’s the fault of the wine. Last night I dreamed I’d found a cave in the woods with three doors guarded by three dogs, like in the Hans Christian Andersen tale about the magic tinderbox. Gustavo, my old dog, was guarding the first one, Durga was guarding the second, and a strange dog was guarding the third. I know that the three doors opened onto places very distant from one another in space and time, where certain scenes from my life were played out repeatedly, but the thing that most amazed me when I awoke was the idea that a place without a name, deep in the woods, linked other places together.
When we got home, Carlo wasn’t in his usual armchair; he had turned on the TV and was watching the news about last night’s attack and, now that I also knew more about it because I had listened to the radio in the car, we had the beginning of a conversation, a germinal exchange of impressions. Meanwhile, long lines of refugees marched through the mud, their children and old people abandoned on the side of the road, exhausted, or covered with clear plastic sheets on top of carts towed by tractors. Without taking his eyes off the screen, Carlo told me that someone had rung the bell.
“When?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“And who was it?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t open up in time.”
“Were they in a car?”
“I didn’t see.”
In other words, he didn’t even get up from his chair. Maybe Malik came to ask for help taking his wife to the hospital; in any case, I could still take the kids to see the animals before lunch, so I decide to call him immediately.