The Edge of the Horizon

13

“They say I’m mad because I live alone with all these cats, but what do I care? You haven’t come about the gate have you? The front gate. I had to have it repainted because a city van scraped it right across trying to turn round. It happened a while ago, you should know better than me, shouldn’t you? Anyway, of course I remember Carlito. But I’m not sure if he’s the boy in your photograph. You see, the boy in the photo looks too blond to be him, but then you never can tell. The Carlito I had here was a cheerful boy. He loved all the little creatures you find in the earth: beetles, ants, fireflies, green-and-yellow caterpillars, the ones with the sticking-out eyes and the furry bits….”

The cat curled up in her lap shakes itself and with a jump bounds away. She gets up too. She still has some photographs, she never throws anything away, she likes to keep things. From a drawer she takes out some little boxes, ribbons, rosary beads, a mother-of-pearl album. She invites him to look through the album with her. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. There are yellowing photographs of surly men leaning on fake cardboard parapets with the name of the photographer stamped under their feet; and then an infantryman with an unhappy expression, this with a dedication written at an angle; then a view of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, an old woman sitting on a wicker armchair, a view of Florence with carriages in the streets, a church, a family portrait taken from too far away, a girl with white cheeks and hands pressed together, memento of a first communion. There are some empty pages, a dog with melancholy eyes, a house with wisteria and shutters under which a feminine hand has written, scent of a summer. On the last page a group of children have been arranged in pyramid shape in a little courtyard. The ones in front are crouching, then there’s a row standing, and finally another higher row — perhaps the photographer had them climb on a bench. He counts them. There are twenty-four. On their right, standing and with her hands held together, is Signorina Elvira as she was then, although she really hasn’t changed that much. The children have been arranged too far from the lens for their faces to be recognized with any confidence. The only one who might in some way resemble the face he is looking for is a little blond boy in the front row. His body has the same posture, chin propped up on one hand with the elbow resting on his knee. But definite identification is impossible.

And does Signorina Elvira remember the boy’s father? No, not the father. All she knows is that he was dead, the mother too, all the boy had was an uncle. But is he sure he was called Carlito? She seems to remember Carlino. Anyhow, it’s not important. He was a cheerful boy. He loved the little creatures you find in the earth: beetles, ants, fireflies, green-and-yellow caterpillars…

And so here he is again wandering about in search of nothing. The walls of these narrow streets seem to promise a reward he never manages to arrive at, as if they formed the board of a game of snakes and ladders, full of dead ends and trapdoors, on which he goes up and down, round and round, hoping that sooner or later the dice will take him to a square that will give the whole thing meaning. And meanwhile over there is the sea. He looks at it. Across its surface pass the shapes of ships, a few seagulls, clouds.