Life depends on it, the old woman by the parapet continues, none of us can stop. You pick up something here, you take something there, you wake up with an idea, you suddenly remember it’s a long time since you tried that, and you go home and put what you go home with into the refrigerator. Every day you keep going. Have you noticed the man down there with the dog?
Yes.
You’ve noticed the man with a dog? He’s my husband. My second husband. He worked for Fiat. Marrying me didn’t do him any good. I fouled it up for him.
Jean Ferrero turns his back, unzips his leather jacket and places it on the parapet. The summer heat has begun. It will fluctuate, go cooler, get much hotter, erupt in storms preceded by violent winds, be somnolent for days under a milky haze, but the heat on the southern side of the Alps will now remain for three months. And this reduces anxiety for the future. There may be despair, particularly the despair of boredom, or the sudden mortal rage of fatigue. But the threat of the future as something different recedes. Every day leads to the next which is more or less the same.
You’re better off without your jacket. The woman touches its leather lying on the parapet. Fine quality!
Jean Ferrero’s shirt is sweat-stained.
I try to keep it full of what he likes, the refrigerator, or of what he used to like, she says. Every day I take something out for him. Sometimes I try to surprise him, it’s a way of getting a smile out of him. Every day I put something back in. It’s like packing for a journey. It’s an art to pack it, for it’s a very small refrigerator, it came from a caravan. The caravan was scrapped. How to keep it full for him, that’s my job.
Three young men in jeans are admiring the bike by the curb.
Bellissima!
Three hundred kilometres an hour!
The clocks exaggerate but she’s lovely.
How much do you think she weighs?
She’s heavy.
Heavy and fast.
Look at her twin headlights.
Abbagliante!
My husband opens the door of the frigo, says the woman, but it’s only to find something to give to the dog. He’s lost his appetite, my husband. For the dog I go to the restaurants. But I’ve never — it’s a question of pride — never offered my man anything they gave me at the backdoor of a restaurant. Only what I’ve prepared with my own hands is good enough for him. It’s a lifelong task. One day he won’t be able to eat any more, not even the tortellini he once liked so such, and they’ll bury him in the cemetery over there, and the refrigerator will be thrown on to a dump.
The barber in Asklipiou Street had the finger of his left hand on top of my skull to keep the head still, and he was shaving with his razor the back of my neck. I lost the old woman’s voice and another came to me.
Five hundred years ago, this voice says, three wise men were arguing, before Nushiran the Just, about the heaviest wave in this deep sea of sorrow which is life. Now I recognise the voice. It belongs to Jari from Alexandria who loves to interrupt. One wise man said it was illness and pain, Jari continues. Another said it was old age and poverty. The third wise man insisted it was approaching death with lack of work. In the end the three of them agreed that the last was probably the worst. Approaching death and lack of work.
He almost never catches anything, says the old woman by the parapet to Jean — almost never. I’ve seen it happen only twice. Do you know what his weakness is? I will tell you. Quaquare di limone! He loves Quaquare.
Jean Ferrero stares into the opaque water of the river which never stops flowing.
The old woman with her angel hand opens her purse and announces: I haven’t enough. I have six thousand which is half what a packet costs! He eats them with his black coffee, after his siesta. Might a box of Quaquare di limone be something we could offer him together, Signore, the two of us?
The signalman searches in the pocket of his leather jacket for some money.
I have learnt to write my name: Ninon. I’m sitting at the kitchen table and I’m writing. The letter N goes like a dog’s tongue, the letter I sprouts like a seed, the letter N goes like I said, O is a bow and N is N. Now I can write my name: NINON.
Jean Ferrero is seated at a café table under the ochre arcades in the Via Po. In front of him is a cappuccino and a glass of ice-cold water. Nothing else in the city sparkles like these glasses of water. He leans back in his chair; he has crossed the mountains. Probably his grandfather once came to Torino to argue a case with a notary. Today the arcades are the colour of old files whose labels have been changed many times. Hearing a laugh, he raises his head. It takes him some time to find the one laughing. It’s a woman’s laugh. Not in the arcade, not at the bar, not by the newspaper kiosk. The laughter sounds as if it comes from a field in the country. Then he spots her. She is standing at a second-storey window on the other side of the street, shaking a tablecloth or a bedcover. A tram passes but he still hears her laughter, and she is still laughing when the tram has gone, a woman no longer young, with heavy arms and short hair. It is impossible to know what she’s laughing at. When she stops laughing, she’ll have to sit down to catch her breath.
Gino’s in love with me. I’m bending down. When I straighten up, my knees will crease and the crease will smile. My middle is a riddle. It starts at the ribs and ends like my dress just above the crease. How beautiful I’m becoming for him.
13
I smell muted ammonia, damp hair, and lacquer. I hear the whirr of a big hairdryer and the singsong exchange of women speaking in Slovak. Among them, Zdena.
I want a few glints, Zdena says, not everywhere, just where it falls here.
She’s talking to a young woman who is wearing a black T-shirt and white trousers. The girl’s black hair, brushed to the top of her head, is flecked with white as an ermine is flecked with black.
A shade like this? the girl asks with the voice and accent of somebody from the country.
Exactly, no more, says Zdena, closing her eyes, while the young woman pulls plastic gloves over her large hands.
I’m called Linda, says the young woman. It’s the first time you’ve been here, I think?
Yes, the first time.
Since 1991 several new hairdressing salons have started up in Bratislava with a new style which at first shocked everyone except the young. The earlier hairdressers, run by the state, were like untidy kitchens and specialised in permanent waves. The new ones pretend to the chic of car display rooms.
You’re going to a party tonight? asks Linda.
I’m going to a wedding.
Very carefully with her gloved fingers, because it’s the first lock she has combed the white paste on to, Linda arranges the silver foil for it.
A wedding. Lucky you. Tomorrow?
With great concentration she treats the second lock. It is the white paste which smells of ammonia.
Tomorrow?
The day after tomorrow in Italy.
There’s a country I want to go to!
With her separated white locks laid out on silver foil and her eyes shut, Zdena begins to resemble some emblem of the moon.
We don’t need a visa any more, do we? says Linda.