He moved close enough to brush against her face. She wasn’t sleeping: she suddenly opened her eyes and put a finger to his lips. The aunt’s voice was a whisper, so feeble it seemed like the rustling wind. Pull up your chair and move closer to my mouth, she said, but don’t think I’m dying, I’m talking like this so the restaurateur won’t wake up, if we interrupt her dream she’ll get upset, she’s dreaming of lobster. He laughed softly. Don’t laugh, she said, I need to talk, I’d like to talk to you, and I don’t know if there’ll be another occasion. He nodded and whispered in her ear: what would you like to tell me? About your childhood, she said, when you were so small you can’t remember. It was the last thing he expected. And she sensed it, his aunt didn’t miss a thing. Don’t be surprised, she said, it’s not all that strange, you think you’re so smart but it probably never occurred to you that memories of the time when someone is very young are kept by the grown-ups near him, you can’t recall such far-off memories, you need the grown-ups from back then, if I don’t tell you about it myself maybe something of it will remain but only in a confusing, thick fog, like when you’ve dreamed something but can’t really remember what, so you don’t even try to remember since it doesn’t make sense to try remembering a dream you don’t remember, this is how the past is made, especially if it’s really past, I couldn’t possibly remember when your uncle Ferruccio and I were children, yet I remember it like it was yesterday though more than eighty years have passed, because in her last days my grandmother thought to tell me what I was like before I knew who I was, when I wasn’t aware yet of being myself, have you ever thought about this? He shook his head no, he never had, and said: so what years do you want to tell me about? When you were five and everyone at home had come to believe you were a bit retarded, as the kindergarten teacher said, but that just didn’t make sense to me, how could you be retarded if you already knew how to write your name? I’d already taught you the alphabet and you’d learned it in the blink of an eye. I write the letters on the blackboard, the teacher said, I ask him to repeat them, like everybody else, and he stays silent, there are two possibilities, either he’s a difficult boy and is refusing, or he just doesn’t understand. I suddenly grasped the problem one July day, we were at Forte, a woman with a white apron and a basket on her arm was walking along the beach, yelling: doughnuts! We were under the beach umbrella, you wanted a doughnut, and your father was about to call her over, but I said to you: Ferruccio, go and get one by yourself, then I’ll give you the money, do you remember? He said nothing, drifting back. Go on and try, she said, see if you can catch hold of the memory, you were sitting on a black-and-white rubber ring your father had made for you from the inner tube of a moped to which he’d stuck a waterproof, papier-mâché duck head he’d found in a warehouse for carnival floats, it must have been one of the first Viareggio carnivals after the disaster, you were hugging it all morning long but didn’t have the courage to take it into the water, now can you see yourself? He could see himself. Or it seemed like he did, he saw a skinny little boy hugging an inner tube with a duck head attached to it and the little boy saying to his dad: I want a doughnut. I see him, Aunt, he confirmed, I think I’m back there. And then I told you to go and get the doughnut, she murmured, you left the duck and ran toward that white apron on the beach, hurrying hurrying, afraid that apron would go by, an imposing man was standing at the water’s edge showing off how elegant he was in his white robe and he took you by the hand, not understanding, and called to us in a haughty voice, and I said to your father: the kid can’t see distances, he mistook that man for the doughnut woman, he is really nearsighted, no way he’s retarded, take him to an eye doctor.
The aunt’s phrasing came back to him. She’d never say a game was nice, it was really nice, and she hadn’t bought him a colorful book but a really colorful one, and we had to go for a walk because that day the sky was really blue. Meanwhile she’d moved on to another memory, murmuring in that silent room, all those devices over the bed: the tanks, the plastic tubes, and the needles inserted in her arms, then she went quiet and suddenly the silence grew heavy, the sounds of the city seemed almost from another planet, the vast grounds surrounding the hospital isolated it from everything. And in that silence he listened to her murmuring in his ear, leaning forward, curiously his back pain had ceased, and behind that feeble voice he found he was navigating in a self he’d lost, back and forth like a kite twisting on a string, and from up there, from that kite upon which he was seated, he began to discern: a tricycle, the voice of an evening radio broadcast, a Madonna everybody claimed was crying, a little girl from a “displaced” family, with bows in her braids, who as she hopped on a chalk pattern on the ground exclaimed: square one, bread and salami! and other things like that, the aunt by then was talking in the dark since even the dim overhead light had been shut off, only the pale blue lamp over the bed remained and a glowing slice of neon coming from under the door. She closed her eyes and fell silent, she seemed exhausted. He straightened up in the chair and felt a sharp pinprick of pain between his vertebrae. She’s fallen asleep, he thought, now she’s really fallen asleep. Instead she brushed his hand and beckoned for him to come closer again. Ferruccio, he heard her breath saying, do you remember how beautiful Italy used to be?
How can the night be present? Composed only of itself, it’s absolute, every space belongs to it, its mere presence is imposing, the same presence a ghost might have that you know is there in front of you but is everywhere, even behind you, and if you seek refuge in a patch of light you become its prisoner because all around you, like the sea surrounding your little lighthouse, is the impenetrable presence of the night.
Instinctively he dug in his pocket for his car keys. They were attached to a small black device as big as a matchbox with two buttons: one set off a dot of red light that opened and closed the car, from the other, a mini-eye with a convex lens, emerged a bright fluorescent beam. He pointed the white beam at the floor. It cut through the dark like a laser. He scribbled with the light until he found his shoes, how strange, he’d never realized that they were still those shoes. Italian shoes? the woman at the next table had asked, studying them with interest. It’d started like that, with the shoes. But of course they’re Italian shoes, madame, he mumbled to himself, handmade, finest leather, just look at the uppers, shoes are judged mainly by their uppers, here, madame, put your finger inside, don’t worry, no, it doesn’t tickle, do you like? But why do people hold on to a pair of shoes for twenty years, even Italian shoes, they wind up ruined, old shoes must be thrown out. The fact is they’re comfortable, madame, he continued mumbling, I wear them because they’re comfortable, don’t kid yourself that these worn-out shoes are the madeleine of your lovely lashes, the point is lately my feet get a bit swollen, particularly at night, bad circulation, this damn discopathy has brought on arterial stenosis in my leg, the capillaries have been affected and so, madame, my feet swell.