Cautiously he pointed the beam of light toward the wall, like a detective searching for clues in the dark, he avoided the patient, especially her body, slowly scrolling down over the bed. He began to catalog. One: the plastic bag full of that milky stuff, with a narrow tube leading to the stomach: food. Two: next to it some sort of intravenous drip that disappeared under the sheets. Three: the oxygen boiling soundlessly in the water, now emerging from the inhaler she’d removed. Four: a little white bottle hanging upside down from a rack, with a thin tube that made a U-turn, the drops falling one after another before descending in a fixed rhythm down to the arm: morphine. With that same rhythm, all day and all night, doctors administered an artificial peace to a body that otherwise would shake from a storm of pain. He would’ve liked to avert his gaze but couldn’t, as if he were being drawn in, hypnotized by that monotonous rhythm of drops. He pushed the little button and turned off the light. And then he heard them, the drops. At first they were muffled sound, a subterranean thrum, as though coming from the floor or walls: drip, drop, drippity, drippity, drip, drop, drippity-drop. They reached into his skull, tapped against his brain, but with no echo, a snap that pops and disappears to make way at once for the next snap, seemingly similar to the previous snap, but actually with a different tone, the same way rain begins falling on a lakeshore but if you really listen you can hear there’s a variation of sound from drop to drop, because the cloud doesn’t make the drops identical, some are bigger, some smaller, you just have to listen: drip, drop, drippity-drop, according to their own musical scale, they sounded like that, and after arriving and getting muffled inside his head, began growing in intensity to the point where he heard them burst in his head as though his skull couldn’t contain them anymore, and they burst from his ears into the surrounding space, like bells gone crazy whose sonic waves grew to a spasm. And then, by sorcery, as though his body were a magnet able to attract sonic waves, he felt they were swarming toward him, but no longer in the brain, in the vertebrae, at a precise point, as though his vertebrae were the well of water where the rod discharges the lightning bolt. And it was also right at that point, he felt, that they extinguished themselves, tearing through the pall that the night imposed on the earth, lacerating its presence. The chinks in the shutters began going pale. It was dawn.
And if we were to play the if game? The memory came with a voice at the little table next to his, as though his uncle were there, hidden behind the hedge bordering the terrace of the coffee bar. It was his uncle’s voice this time, actually his uncle was the one who’d invented that game. Why? Because the if game is good for the imagination, especially on certain rainy days. For instance we are at the beach, or in the mountains, it doesn’t matter, since the kid is sick and the sea and the mountains are both good for him, it all depends, otherwise a bad worm will gnaw at his knee, and for instance it’s September, and in September sometimes it rains, never mind, if it’s raining and he’s at home, a kid can find a lot to do, but during this forced vacation, especially in a poorly furnished rental cottage or even worse in a pensione, if it rains, boredom sets in, and with it melancholy. But fortunately there’s the if game, and so the imagination gets to work, and the best player is the one who throws out the craziest ideas, totally crazy, mamma mia that laughter, listen to this: and what if the pope were to have landed in Pisa?
He asked for a double espresso in a large cup. The hospital grounds were coming to life: two young doctors in white uniforms were chatting, a little truck marked Hospital Supplies set off, a man in light-blue coveralls came down a side street carrying a whisk and a plastic bag, now and then he’d stop and sweep up some leaves, some butts. On his little table he spread out the paper napkin folded next to his cup and smoothed it carefully so he could write on it. On a corner of the napkin, a brand: Caffè Honduras. He circled it with his fountain pen. The paper, porous, absorbed a little ink but held up: he could try. The first sentence was obligatory: what if I were to go to Honduras? He continued numbering the sentences. Two: and what if I were to dance the Viennese waltz? Three: and what if I were to go to the moon and eat Cain’s fritters? Four: and what if Cain hadn’t made any fritters? Five: and what if I had left on the ship? Six: and what if the ship had already left? Seven: and what if at a whistle it would turn back? Eight: and what if Betta were to get married? Nine: and what if the Maltese cat were to play the piano and sing in French?
Read as a poem it had its own personality, maybe that woman who’d asked him to write something for a poetry anthology for children would like it, but that wouldn’t be honest, it wasn’t for children, it was a poème zutique. But children like zutiques, what matters is saying silly things, so even if it’s done out of melancholy, children won’t realize. I’ll phone him, he said to himself. There was no need for a cell phone, besides, he’d never had one: right by the coffee bar was a phone booth, and some change left on the table, tempting him. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy to explain himself, the conversation had to be set up right, like a teacher wants with an essay, because if you set up the theme correctly, you’re safe, even if you express yourself poorly. Perhaps before approaching the topic you’d need a code, something that once suggested complicity, a sort of watchword, like sentinels in the trenches would use when they changed guard. He thought: hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. Sure that he’d get it. And then he’d say: I know very well you can’t wake up someone at this hour after not calling him for three years, but the fact is I went into hiding for a bit. Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. He went on: I set my mind on writing a big novel, let’s put it that way, that novel everyone’s waiting for, sooner or later, the publisher, the critics, because sure, they say, the short stories are splendid, and also those two books of meanderings, even that fake diary is a text of the first order, no doubt, but a novel, when are you going to write us a real novel? Everyone’s fixed on the novel, so I was fixed on it too, and if you’re going to write the novel everyone wants from you, which will be your masterpiece, you realize you need the right atmosphere, and the right place, and you need to search for the right place God knows where, because where you are is never the right place, and so I went into hiding to look for the right place to write my masterpiece, am I making myself clear? Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. Ingrid is in Göteborg, she went to see our daughter, I don’t know if you know but she got married in Göteborg, she went back to her maternal roots, besides, she’s better off there than here around someone dying, but I’ll explain that later, no, I’ll explain right now, I’m in my usual haunts, at the city hospital, no, no, I’m really fine, sure I’d like to see you, I’m coming to the point, because my call is nothing but an SOS from a radio operator who turned off his radio, but it’s not that there was a storm around me, if anything a dead calm, without even any shadow lines to cross, they had been crossed a long time ago, there was a sandbar instead on which the boat ran aground. Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. My aunt is dying, said en passant. Mine, not yours, we each have a mother, and our father didn’t have sisters, so it’s my aunt, though that’s not really why I’m calling, it’s that actually I wanted to read you a passage from the novel I’ve been working on these past three years of silence so you’ll have some idea of the effort I’ve put into it, I’m sure you’ll understand why I didn’t show up earlier, you ready? It goes like this: and what if I went to Honduras? And what if I danced the Viennese waltz? And what if I went to the moon and ate Cain’s fritters? And what if Cain hadn’t made his fritters? And what if I left with the ship? And what if the ship had already left? And what if at a whistle it would turn back? And what if Betta got married? And what if the Maltese cat played the piano while singing in French? It cost me more than the Serchio River cost the people of Lucca, you like it?