The Days of Abandonment

29

I dragged her behind me to the storage closet. I rooted around everywhere in search of a strong rope, I was sure I had one. Instead I found only a ball of string for tying packages. I went to the entrance hall, I tied one end of the string to the short iron bar that I had left on the floor, in front of the armored door. Followed by Ilaria, I returned to the living room, went out onto the balcony.

I collided with a gust of warm wind that had just bowed the trees, leaving behind an irritating rustle of leaves. I almost lost my breath, the short nightgown stuck to my body, Ilaria was grabbing the hem with her free hand, as if she were afraid of flying away. In the air was a thick smell of wild mint, of dust, of bark burned by the sun.

I leaned over the balcony, I tried to look onto the balcony below, which belonged to Carrano.

“Don’t fall,” Ilaria said to me in alarm, holding on to my nightgown.

The window was closed, the only sound was the song of some birds, the distant rumble of a bus. No human voices. On all five floors, below, to the right, to the left, I couldn’t make out a sign of life. I strained to hear the music from a radio, a song, the chatter of a television show. Nothing, nothing nearby, at least, nothing that was indistinguishable from the periodic roar of leaves stirred by that incongruous burning wind. I shouted over and over, in a weak voice, a voice that, in any case, had never had great power:

“Carrano! Aldo! Is anyone there? Help! Help me.”

Nothing happened, the wind cut the words off my lips as if I were trying to speak while bringing a cup of boiling liquid to my mouth.

Ilaria, now visibly tense, asked:

“Why do we need help?”

I didn’t answer, I didn’t know what to say, I mumbled:

“Don’t worry, we’ll help ourselves.”

I stuck the bar through the railing, I let out the string, dropping the bar until it touched Carrano’s railing. I leaned over to try to see how far it was from the window and immediately Ilaria let go of my nightgown and held tight instead to a bare leg, I felt her breathing against my skin, saying:

“I’ll hold you, mamma.”

I stretched my right arm down as far as possible, I gripped the string tight between thumb and forefinger, then I gave a swinging motion to the bar with rapid, decisive pulses. The bar — I saw — began to move like a pendulum along Carrano’s balcony. In order for the motion to be successful, I leaned my chest out farther and farther, I stared at the bar as if I wanted to hypnotize myself, I watched that dark pointed segment, now flying above the pavement, now coming back to graze my neighbor’s railing. I soon lost the fear of falling, it seemed to me in fact that my balcony was no farther from the street than the length of the string. I wanted to hit Carrano’s windows. I wanted the bar to break them and penetrate his house, the living room where he had received me the night before. I felt like laughing. Surely he was lazing in bed, in a half sleep, a man on the threshold of physical decay, a man of dubious erections, a casual lover unfit for reascending the slope of humiliation. Imagining how he spent the days, I felt an impulse of contempt for him. In the hottest hours of the day he would take a long siesta in the half-light, sweating, his breath heavy, waiting to go and play in some faded orchestra, with no more hope. I recalled his rough tongue, the salty taste of his mouth, and I came to only when I felt the point of Ilaria’s paper cutter against the skin of my right thigh. Good girl: attentive, sensible. That was the tactile signal I needed. I let the string run through my fingers, the bar disappeared at great speed under the floor of my balcony. I heard the sound of broken glass, the string broke, I saw the bar tumble along the tiles of the balcony below, bump the railing, and fall into the void. It fell for a long time, followed by sparkling fragments of glass, hitting from floor to floor the railings of other balconies, all the same, a black bar, smaller and smaller. It landed on the pavement, ricocheting several times with a distant ringing.

I drew back, frightened, the abyss of the fifth floor had regained its depth. I felt Ilaria tight on my leg. I waited for the hoarse voice of the musician, anger at the damage I had caused. There was no reaction. Instead the birds returned, the wave of burning wind that hit me and the child, my daughter, a true invention of my flesh that forced me to reality.

“You did well,” I said.

“If I hadn’t held you, you would have fallen.”

“You don’t hear anything?”

“No.”

“Then let’s call: Carrano, Carrano, help!”

We shouted together, for a long time, but still Carrano gave no sign of life. There answered instead a long feeble bark, it might be from a distant dog, abandoned in the summer on the side of the road, or Otto himself.