Alessandro Baricco
The Young Bride
To Samuele, Sebastiano, and Barbara. Thank you.
The Young Bride
There are thirty-six stone steps to climb, and the old man climbs slowly, cautiously, almost as if he were collecting them, one by one, to drive them up to the second floor: he the shepherd, they meek animals. Modesto is his name. He has served in this house for fifty-nine years, and is therefore its priest.
Reaching the top step he stops before the wide hall that stretches without surprises before his gaze: to the right are the closed rooms of the Masters, five; to the left seven windows, dimmed by shutters of lacquered wood.
It’s just dawn.
The old man stops because he has a tally to update. He records the mornings that he has inaugurated in this house, always in the same way. So he adds a number that vanishes into the thousands. The count is dizzying, but he isn’t disturbed by it: officiating forever at the same morning rite seems to him consistent with his job, respectful of his inclinations, and typical of his fate.
After running the palms of his hands over the ironed fabric of his pants — along the sides, at the thigh — he moves his head forward slightly and sets his feet in motion again. He ignores the doors of the Masters, but, reaching the first window, on the left, he stops to open the shutters. He does this with fluid and precise gestures. He repeats them at every window, seven times. Only then does he turn, to assess the shafts of dawn light entering through the glass: he knows its every possible nuance and from its character can tell what sort of day it will be; he can deduce from it, sometimes, faded promises. Since they will rely on him — all of them — the judgment he forms is important.
Hazy sun, light breeze, he decides. So it will be.
Then he goes back along the corridor, this time devoting himself to the side he ignored before. He opens the doors of the Masters, one after another, and announces the start of the day with a phrase that he repeats aloud five times, altering neither timbre nor inflection.
Good morning. Hazy sun, light breeze.
Then he disappears.
He no longer exists, until he reappears, unchanged, in the breakfasts room.
The tradition of that solemn awakening, which later becomes joyful and drawn out, derives from long-ago events whose details we prefer not to speak of for now. It concerns the entire household. Never before dawn: this is imperative. The Masters wait for the light and for Modesto’s dance at the seven windows. Only then do they consider the condemnation to bed, the blindness of sleep, and the risk of dreams to be over. They are dead: the old man’s voice returns them to life.
Then they swarm out of the rooms, without putting on clothes, not even pausing for the relief of some water on the eyes, on the hands. With the odors of sleep in hair and teeth, we meet in the halls, on the stairs, in the doorways of the rooms, embracing like exiles returning from some distant land, incredulous at having survived the spell that night seems to us. Dispersed by the obligation to sleep, we re-establish ourselves as a family, and on the ground floor we flow into the big breakfasts room like an underground river coming into the light, carrying a premonition of the sea. Most of the time we are laughing.
The table for breakfasts — a term that no one ever thought of using in the singular, for only a plural can conjure the richness, the abundance, and the unreasonable duration — is indeed a well-laid sea. A pagan sense of thanksgiving is evident — the escape from the catastrophe of sleep. Modesto, with two servants, watches over everything, gliding imperceptibly. On a normal day, neither Lent nor a holiday, the ordinary offerings include white and dark toast, curls of butter on a silver plate, honey, chestnut spread, and a jam made with nine fruits, eight varieties of pastry culminating in an inimitable croissant, four different flavors of cake, a bowl of whipped cream, fruit in season always cut with mathematical precision, a display of rare exotic fruits, newly laid eggs cooked three different ways, fresh cheeses plus an English Stilton, thin slices of prosciutto from the farm, cubes of mortadella, beef broth, fruit braised in red wine, cornmeal cookies, anise digestive tablets, marzipan cherries, hazelnut ice cream, a pitcher of hot chocolate, Swiss pralines, licorice, peanuts, milk, coffee.
Tea is detested, chamomile only for the sick.
It’s understandable, then, how a meal considered by most people a quick start to the day is in this house a complex and interminable process. The usual practice keeps them at the table for hours, crossing over into the zone of lunch (which in fact in this house no one ever gets around to), as in an Italian imitation of the more stylish “brunch.” Only every so often, a few at a time, they get up, to then reappear at the table partly dressed, or washed — bladders emptied. But these details are scarcely noticed. Because, it should be said, the visitors of the day — relatives, acquaintances, postulants, suppliers, possible authorities, men and women of the church — are arriving at the big table: each with his subject to discuss. It’s the habit of the Family to receive them there, during the torrential flow of breakfast, with a sort of ostentatious informality that no one, not even they, would be able to distinguish from the height of arrogance, that is, to receive visitors while wearing pajamas. But the freshness of the butter and the mythical perfection of the tarts induce cordiality. The champagne is always on ice, and poured generously, which is itself sufficient motivation for many.
Thus it is not unusual to see dozens of people at the same time around the breakfasts table, although the family itself is just five, or rather four, now that the Son is on the Island.
The Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the Uncle.
The Son temporarily abroad, on the Island.
Finally, around three in the afternoon, they withdraw to their rooms and, half an hour later, emerge splendidly elegant and fresh, as all acknowledge. We devote the middle hours of the afternoon to business — the factory, the farms, the house. At dusk, solitary work — we meditate, invent, pray — or courtesy visits. Dinner is late and frugal, taken without ceremony, eaten in bits and pieces: it dwells under the wing of night, so we tend to hurry it, like a pointless prelude. Then, without saying good night, we go to the uncertainty of sleep, each of us exorcising it in our own way.
For a hundred and thirteen years, it should be said, all of us have died at night, in our family.
That explains everything.
The particular subject, that morning, was the usefulness of sea bathing, about which the Monsignor, shoveling whipped cream into his mouth, harbored some reservations. He sensed an obvious moral unknown, without daring, however, to define it precisely.
The Father, a good-natured and, if necessary, fierce man, was helping him bring the matter into focus.
“Kindly remind me, Monsignor, where, exactly, it’s mentioned in the Gospel.”
As a counterweight to the response, which was evasive, the front doorbell rang, rousing little attention, since it was obviously yet another visit.
Modesto took care of it. He opened the door and found before him the young Bride.
She wasn’t expected that day, or maybe she was, but they had forgotten about it.
I’m the young Bride, I said.
You, Modesto noted. Then he looked around, astonished, because it didn’t make sense that I had arrived alone, and yet there was no one, as far as the eye could see.
They left me at the end of the street, I said. I wanted to count my steps in peace. And I placed the suitcase on the ground.
I was eighteen years old, which was what had been agreed on.
I really would have no hesitation about being naked on the beach — the Mother was saying, meanwhile — since I’ve always had a certain preference for the mountains (many of her syllogisms were in fact inscrutable). I could cite at least ten people, she continued, whom I’ve seen naked, and I’m not talking about children or old people who were dying, for whom I have a special, deep sympathy, even though…