To the Wedding

18

Zdena is on the fifth-floor landing of the wide staircase which has neither carpet nor wallpaper but a polished wooden handrail. She has already put her suitcase by the head of the stairs. Through the half-open door of her flat, her glance lingers on the mirror and her desk and the lace curtains of the grand windows and the armchairs in which her friends sprawl and talk, and on her coffee tables chaotic with papers. Wearing a smart gabardine trench coat, she turns the key in the lock very slowly so as to make the least possible noise, like a mother leaving a room on tiptoe when she has put her child to sleep.

Gino wants us to get married. I have told him a hundred times — No. Last week I said: All right. I remembered Gino’s grass. It hangs above my bed.

Afterwards we’ll go on a trip together, he said.

Where?

I haven’t decided, and if I had, I wouldn’t tell you. It’ll be a secret. A surprise, he said.

I know where I want to be married.

Tell me.

Where the river Po goes into the sea!

Sì, he said.

We’ll hold hands! I said, that’s it, that’s all.

I have an aunt who lives in a place called Gorino. You can’t be farther into the sea. We’ll get married from her house.

In June, I said.

June the seventh.

Gino knows what day of the week every date in the year is. It comes from working the markets.

Friday, June the seventh, in Gorino, he said.