To the Wedding

19

The way Jean Ferrero is driving makes me remember Nikos. Nikos from Gyzi. We used to swim together — this was before I went blind. Nikos particularly liked diving into the sea from the rocks at Varkiza. When he walked solemnly to the edge and stood there, his two feet together, taking a deep breath, it was as if he had left his body. He was absent from it. He had given his body to a diver and he, Nikos, was elsewhere. After he had dived, when he clambered out of the water in order to dive again, it was the diver who was wet, not him. Nikos was still somewhere in the air watching the sea, the diver, the rocks and the sun. And it’s the same with the signalman as he rides between Viadana and Bergantino. He has left the saddle, he is in the air, and he is watching his bike, the road and the pilot. The road is a small one on the north bank of the Po.

We climb the mountain above the school, we place our feet very carefully so no stones roll and we make no noise except our breathing, then the sentinel won’t hear us coming, and when we’ve climbed to the ridge if they’re there today, we’ll see the marmots. The teacher says they woke up last week. They wake up when the snow melts. Without it they feel cold, they feel hungry too, they haven’t eaten anything for five months, they’ve used up all their fat and their bones ache. So, they rub their eyes and their blood comes pounding back. The marmot sentinel is standing up. He is going to whistle. He has seen us. Who goes there? he asks. Friend, I say.

When the sentinel asks now: Who goes there? I answer: The Plague.

Signalman and bike as they flow and turn beside the great river have become a single creature, the gap between command and action no more than that of a synapse, and this single creature, elbows and wrists relaxed, black thorax joining red torso, toes down and soles of the feet facing the road behind, is still watched over by Jean Ferrero who, in the sky, carries the pain he will never lose, even if at this moment, looking down at his own driving, he feels free.

Papa’s bike is very large. Large as a goose, wide and low on the ground. I love his bike and I sit behind him. When my neck is tired, I rest my head against his back. It’s our bike which makes the earth tilt as we go past the sawmill in Maurienne, fast, fast.

Near the ferry at San Benedetto Jean Ferrero stops, locks the bike and walks towards the river. It is a kilometre wide. By the bank runs a dyke. When such dykes were built during the last century, they were patrolled whenever there was a risk of flooding. A patrol consisted of two men, provided with a shovel, a sack, a hunting horn and, in the night, a lantern.

Jean climbs the dyke. On the other side, more or less level with the river, runs a track like a towpath with a grass verge and small trees. He runs down, and there he is cut off from all sound except that of the water.

When the Po flooded in 1872, four thousand men, and one hundred women, who sewed pieces of canvas together, worked for seven weeks to close the breach.

Jean Ferrero comes to a row of tip-up cinema seats fixed into the earth a few metres from the water. They are stained with bird-shit and their metal fittings are rusty, but the seats still tilt up and down. He sits in one, leans back and gazes at the Po. A blackbird sings in a tree a little downstream.

It was worse than the soldiers in the train, Papa. It was after we’d been to Athens. I heard from Filippo, a friend whom I met at the hospital and who was sick, dead-sick like I am, that in Milano they’re dispensing a new drug to replace AZT, and I wanted to find out more about it. Gino was going to come with me and, at the last moment, he couldn’t because he had to go and buy at an auction of Indian sandals, the importer had gone bust and Gino thought he could get a bargain. So I went alone. I saw a doctor at the end of the afternoon after I’d waited all day. He told me to leave my papers with my latest blood count, the number of lymphocytes CD4, etc.

I was going to sleep in Milano at a girl friend of Marella’s, so before taking the metro out to the suburbs, suburbs are the same everywhere, I said to myself: Why not make a trip to the centre? I’d never been there. You took me, Papa, on the bike to Genoa when I was a kid, and this year to Athens, but never to Milano. The Duomo was flood-lit and it made me think it had just landed, landed there in the empty piazza.

I guess it looked the same when it was first built — maybe more so with the masonry and the spires and statues all new, but in those days nobody would have been able to describe it like this, for they didn’t know about outer space and had never heard of things as big as cathedrals flying and landing! All they could do was to whistle at the new cathedral, or bow their head, or sell things to the crowds who flocked to stare up at the new wonder of the world. Or they could pray.

I went in and I lit a candle for all of us who have it. When I came out it was dark so I strolled through the arcades. The boutiques were closed and there were few people about. I was wondering whether to have an ice cream in a bar which was still open, when a dog bounded up and pawed me. Not a dangerous dog, simply heavy and difficult to push away. I patted him, I lifted his hound’s paws up and I shoved.

He won’t hurt you! a man said. The man had a dog’s lead and wore one of those fake yachting caps that Gino calls Boaters’ Bananas.

Simpler to keep him on your leash, no?

He spotted my accent. You’re a visitor to our city? Let me offer you a glass of the best champagne.

I drink with friends only. And I pushed him off like I pushed off the dog.

Exactly! he said, only with friends! We’ll go to Daniele’s over there, he keeps the Widow on ice for me.

I’m going nowhere with you.

A coup de champagne, what’s the harm? He grasped my arm.

I think you’d better let go. He had his jaw and mouth thrust forward and his fur collar hid his neck. Let go!

Give me one good reason.

Because I’m asking you to.

You’ll be asking me something else in a moment, Beautiful, and by the end of the evening, you’ll be asking me many things.

Get off! I said.

Give me a good reason.

Get off, I have SIDA.

The force with which he threw me to the ground startled me so much — my head hit the mosaics. I think, Papa, I lost consciousness. When I came to, the man was standing above me. Somewhere behind him were a middle-aged couple. They must have been walking home through the arcade. I remember the window of a pen shop.

Help me, I shouted, please help!

You know what she is, the man with the dog yelled, she’s a slut with SIDA and she wants to spread it, contaminate, infect, that’s what she wants to do.

The couple started saying other words. The woman slipped her heavy handbag from her shoulder and raised it to strike me. Her husband restrained her. It’s not for us, he said.

The worst wasn’t their words. The worst was how they hated. They hated everything about me. Like somebody says they love everything about you, they hated everything. There was nothing left over.

Suddenly the hound pricked up his ears, and bounded away down the arcade towards the piazza and cathedral. The animal moved so fast his feet slipped on the marble — his claws making a scratching noise. Boater’s Banana was obliged to run after him. The wife with the handbag gave a little cry of surprise and jumped back. I scrambled to my feet to pursue the bastard who had knocked me down, shouting Senza palle! Spunkless! Spunkless! Even his cap falling off didn’t stop him running away with his dog.

I limped back to my place in the arcade near the pen shop and I sat down on the mosaic pavement, as though it was where I sat every evening of my life. It didn’t matter what I did, so long as I did something definite.

I could see the fucking cap where it had fallen on the floor. I sat there under the curved glass-leaded roof and I cried — cried until my tears rolled stones down your mountainside.

You like our cinema? a young man’s voice enquires.

It’s you who fixed the seats here? asks Jean.

Our group did it, yes.

You cover them in the winter?

We like to sit here and think about the future. I’m eighteen, Lunatic’s seventeen and Tenebrium is fifteen. He’s the most gifted, Tenebrium. He could get Sysman Status anywhere … May I ask if you’re Polish?

No, I’m French.

We saw the French plates on your bike up on the road, but your accent made me think you might be Polish. We want to go to Gdańsk.

Yes.

There’s a genius working there in Gdańsk.

What does he do?

I wouldn’t leave your bike up on the road. There’s a thieving gang — not like us — working around Mantua. Bring the bike down here. Here with us you’re safe.

Does this track join the road?

Up by the ferry, yes. It’ll take no more than five minutes.

I should be on my way, says Jean Ferrero.

You see the hut there by the water — we call it the Hospice. It’s well stocked. Have a Coke with us before you go. Hey! Lunatic, come here, here’s the man with the red Honda CBR!

A beauty! says the boy, examining the bike.

This is Lunatic, says the one who came over to the seats, and I’m John the Baptist. And he’s Tenebrium.

You like our handles?

Handles?

The names we chose as IDs. What would you choose for yours?

Trackshine, says Jean.

That’s from where?

A signalling system term. Trackshine!

How much does a new bike like this cost?

A lot, says Jean.

You’ve done eighty-five thousand kilometres, says Tenebrium, bent over the dials.

Tenebrium wants to buy a motorbike when he’s eighteen, says John the Baptist, but he’ll have to travel for the money.

You’ve all got jobs? asks Jean Ferrero.

Not one of us. We live with our parents in Parma, when we’re not out here at the Hospice. We come here for a quiet break. Back in Parma we travel.

Travel?

All over the world, says Lunatic.

That’s why we know there’s a genius in Gdansk, says John the Baptist.

I’d say that guy in Gdansk is as great as Captain Crunch, says Tenebrium.

Captain Crunch?

Shall we tell him who Captain Crunch is? Better test him first.

Leave him alone, let him drink his Coke in peace.

Everything’s beautiful, says John the Baptist, everything which exists, except evil, is beautiful.

You see how well he chose his handle! says Lunatic. John the Baptist is his ID, and he talks like the Bible.

Do you know how much water passes here in one second? Tenebrium asks. You’ll never guess — fifteen hundred cubic metres per second! I’m telling you.

A celestial vision, continues John the Baptist peering across the opaque water to the small trees on the opposite bank, where everything is beautiful except evil. Up there in the sky there’s no need for aesthetics. Here on earth people seek the beautiful because it vaguely reminds them of the good. This is the only reason for aesthetics. They’re the reminder of something that has gone.

Look at that guy rowing his barchino! says Lunatic.

From here you can’t feel the current. If you go down to the water’s edge you get the message. It’s irresistible.

Hey, man! says Tenebrium, will you give us a ride on your bike?

Until it gets dark, Jean Ferrero drives up and down the towpath — first with Tenebrium behind him, then with Lunatic, and lastly with John the Baptist. He drives slowly, and he watches the stretch of the river which becomes more and more familiar, as if, on each trip, he was crossing it like a ferryman.