The Days of Abandonment

43

For days after that evening I had to contend with a sharpening of Gianni and Ilaria’s complaints. They reproached me for leaving them with strangers, they reproached me for spending time with strangers. Their accusing voices were hard, without affection, without tenderness.

“You didn’t put my toothbrush in my bag,” Ilaria said.

“I got a cold because they had the radiators turned off,” Gianni protested to me.

“They forced me to eat tuna fish and I threw up,” the girl whined.

Until the weekend arrived, I was the cause of every misadventure. While Gianni stared at me ironically — did that look belong to me? was that why I hated it? was it Mario’s? had he perhaps even copied it from Carla? — practicing grim silences, Ilaria burst into long, piercing cries for no reason, she threw herself on the floor, she bit me, she kicked, taking advantage of small frustrations, a pencil she couldn’t find, a comic book with a slightly torn page, her hair was wavy and she wanted it straight, it was my fault because I had wavy hair, her father had nice hair.

I let them go on, I had experienced worse. Besides, it seemed to me suddenly that ironies, silences, and tantrums were their way, perhaps silently agreed on, for holding off distress and coming up with explanations that might diminish it. I was only afraid that the neighbors would call the police.

One morning we were about to go out, they were late for school, I for work. Ilaria was irritable, unhappy with everything, she was mad at her shoes, the shoes she had been wearing for at least a month and that now suddenly hurt her. In tears she threw herself on the floor of the landing and began kicking the door, which I had just closed. She cried and screamed, she said her feet hurt, she couldn’t go to school in that state. I asked her where they hurt, without interest but patiently; Gianni kept repeating, laughing: cut off your feet, make them smaller, so the shoes will fit; I whispered that’s enough, come on, quiet, let’s go, we’re late.

At a certain point there was the click of a lock on the floor below and the voice of Carrano, smudged with sleep, said:

“Can I do anything?”

I flared with shame as if I had been caught doing something disgusting. I put a hand over Ilaria’s mouth and held it there forcefully. With the other I energetically made her get up. She was immediately quiet, amazed by my no longer compliant behavior. Gianni stared at me questioningly, I searched for my voice in my throat, a tone that might sound normal.

“No,” I said, “thanks, excuse us.”

“If there’s something…”

“Everything’s fine, don’t worry, thanks again, for everything.”

Gianni tried to cry:

“Hey, Aldo,” but I hugged his nose, his mouth hard against my coat.

The door closed discreetly, with regret I noticed that Carrano now intimidated me. Although I knew well all that could come to me from him, I no longer believed what I knew. In my eyes the man on the floor below had become the custodian of a mysterious power that he kept hidden, out of modesty, out of courtesy, out of good manners.