The Days of Abandonment

32

I saw her back off in fear with the paper cutter in her right hand.

“Are you crazy?” I said, turning on her fiercely.

“You aren’t listening to me,” Ilaria cried. “I’m calling you and you can’t hear me, you’re doing terrible things, your eyes are all twisted, I’m going to tell daddy.”

I looked at the cut above my knee, the strip of blood. I tore the paper cutter away from her. I threw it toward the open door of the storage closet.

“That’s enough of that game,” I said to her. “You don’t know how to play. Now stay here and be good, don’t move. We’re locked in, we’re prisoners, and your father will never come to save us. Look what you’ve done to me.”

“You deserve worse,” she retorted, her eyes bright with tears.

I tried to calm myself, I took a deep breath.

“Now don’t start crying, don’t you dare start crying…”

I didn’t know what to say, what else to do, at that point. It seemed to me that I had tried everything, there was nothing left to do but restore clear outlines to the situation and accept it.

Displaying a false capacity to give orders, I said:

“We have two patients, Gianni and Otto. Now you, without crying, go and see how your brother is, I will go and see how Otto is.”

“I have to stay with you and prick you, you told me to.”

“I was wrong, Gianni is alone, he needs someone to feel his forehead, and put the refreshing coins on it, I can’t do everything.”

I pushed her toward the living room, she rebelled:

“Who’s going to prick you if you get distracted?”

I looked at the long cut on my leg, from which a thick stripe of blood continued to well up.

“Call me every so often, and don’t forget. That will be enough to keep me from being distracted.”

She thought for a moment, then said:

“But hurry up, I get bored with Gianni, he doesn’t know how to play.”

That last phrase pained me. With that explicit reminder of the game I realized that Ilaria didn’t want to play anymore, that she was beginning to be seriously worried about me. If I had the responsibility for two sick creatures, she was starting to perceive that the sick who burdened her were three. Poor, poor little thing. She felt alone, she was secretly waiting for a father who wasn’t showing up, she could no longer hold the confusion of that day within the limits of a game. I was now aware of her anguish, I added it to mine. How changeable it all is, nothing has fixed points. With every step I took toward Gianni’s room, toward Otto’s, I was afraid of feeling ill, of presenting to her I don’t know what spectacle of collapse. I had to maintain judgment and the clarity of memory, they always go together, a binomial of health.

I pushed the little girl into the room, I glanced at the boy who was still sleeping and I went out, locking the door with a clear gesture, entirely natural. Although Ilaria protested, called me, beat her hands against the door, I ignored her and went to the room where Otto was lying. I didn’t know what was happening to the dog. Ilaria loved him deeply, I didn’t want her to be present at horrifying scenes. Protect her, yes, the truth of this preoccupation did me good. That the cold plan of guarding my children should slowly be transformed into an inescapable need, the principal preoccupation, seemed to me a positive sign.

In the dog’s room, under Mario’s desk, there was now the evil odor of death. I went in cautiously, Otto was still, he hadn’t moved an inch. I crouched beside him, then sat on the floor.

First of all I saw the ants, they had arrived, they were exploring the muddy territory that lapped the dog’s back. Otto, however, didn’t care. It was as if he had turned gray, an island drained of color breathing its last. His muzzle, with the greenish saliva from the jaws, seemed to have corroded the material of the tiles and to be sinking into them. His eyes were closed.

“Forgive me,” I said.

I ran the palm of my hand over the fur on his neck, he gave a jolt, his jaws unlocked, he emitted a threatening growl. I wanted to be forgiven for what I had perhaps done to him, for what I had been unable to do. I pulled him toward me, I rested his head on my legs. He gave off a sick heat that entered my blood. He barely moved his ears, his tail. I thought it was a sign of well-being, even his breath seemed less labored. The big spots of shining drool that were spreading like an enamel around the black edge of his mouth appeared to freeze, as if he had no longer any need to produce those humors of suffering.

How unbearable the body of a living being who fights with death, and now seems to win, now to lose. I don’t know how long we remained like that. At times the dog’s breathing accelerated as when he was healthy and was eager for a game, for a run in the open air, for understanding and petting, at times it became imperceptible. Even his body alternated moments of trembling and spasms with moments of absolute immobility. I felt the remains of his power slowly slip away, images of the past dripping out: the flight among the bright corpuscles of pressurized water from the sprinklers in the park, the inquisitive scratching among the bushes, the way he followed me through the house when he expected me to feed him. That proximity of real death, that bleeding wound of his suffering, of guilt, unexpectedly made me ashamed of my grief of the previous months, of that day with its overtones of unreality. I felt the room return to order, the house weld together its spaces, the solidity of the floor, the hot day that extended over everything, a transparent glue.

How could I have let myself go like that, let my senses disintegrate, the sense of being alive. I caressed Otto between the ears and he opened his colorless eyes and stared at me. I saw in him the look of the friendly dog who, instead of accusing me, asked forgiveness for his condition. Then an intense pain in his body obscured his pupils, he gnashed his teeth and barked at me without ferocity. Soon afterward he died in my lap, and I burst out crying in an uncontrollable lament, utterly unlike any other crying of those days, those months.

When my eyes dried and the last sobs died in my breast, I realized that Mario had become again the good man he had perhaps always been, I no longer loved him.