Troubling Love

7

I was strong, lean, quick, and decisive; not only that, I liked being confident of being so. But I don’t know what happened in that situation. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was the shock of finding open that door that I had diligently closed. Maybe I was dazed by the house with the lights on, by my mother’s suitcase and purse in full view in the doorway. Or maybe it was something else. It was the repulsion I felt at perceiving that the image of that old man beyond the arabesqued glass of the elevator had seemed for a moment to have a dark beauty. So, instead of following him, I stood motionless, trying to fix in my mind the details, even after the elevator disappeared into the stairwell.

When I came to myself, I felt drained, depressed by the sensation of being humiliated in front of the part of myself that watched over every possible yielding of the other. I went to the window in time to see the man going off along the alley in the light of the streetlamps, his body erect, at a slow but not labored pace, the bag in his right hand with the arm held stiffly down, the black plastic grazing the pavement. I went back to the door and was about to rush down the stairs. But I realized that the neighbor, Signora De Riso, had appeared in a vertical strip of light cautiously opening between the door and the frame.

She was wearing a long pink cotton nightgown, and she was looking at me with hostility, her face split by the chain that was meant to keep anyone with evil intentions from entering. Certainly she had been there for some time, spying through the peephole and listening.

“What’s going on?” she asked argumentatively. “You’ve been up and down all night.” I was about to answer in an equally argumentative tone, but I remembered that she had mentioned a man my mother was seeing and was in time to realize that I had better control myself, if I wanted to know more. I was now obliged to hope that that hint of gossip which had annoyed me in the afternoon would become detailed talk, conversation, compensation for that lonely old woman who didn’t know how to get through her nights.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to make my breathing normal. “I can’t sleep.”

She muttered something about how the dead have trouble leaving.

“The first night, they never let you sleep,” she said.

“Did you hear any noise? Did I disturb you?” I asked with false politeness.

“I sleep little and not very well, after a certain time. On top of that there was the lock: you kept opening and closing the door.”

“It’s true,” I said. “I’m a little nervous. I dreamed that that man you were telling me about was here on the landing.”

The old woman understood that I had changed my tune and was disposed to listen to her gossip, but she wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t reject her again.

“What man?” she asked.

“The one you told me about. . the one who came here, to visit my mother. I fell asleep thinking about him. . ”

“He was a respectable man, who put Amalia in a good mood. He brought her sfogliatelle and flowers. When he came, I heard them talking and laughing continuously. She, especially, laughed — her laugh was so loud you could hear it from the landing.”

“What were they saying?”

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t stay and listen. I mind my own business.”

I made a gesture of impatience.

“But Amalia never talked about him?”

“Yes,” Signora De Riso admitted. “Once I saw them come out of the house together. She told me that he was someone she had known for fifty years, who was almost like a relative. And if that’s so, you know him, too. He was tall, thin, with white hair. Your mother treated him almost as if he were her brother. As an intimate.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. She never told me. Amalia did as she liked. One day she told me about all her affairs, even if I didn’t want to hear it, and the next day she didn’t even say hello. I know about the sfogliatelle because they didn’t eat them all and she gave the rest to me. She also gave me the flowers, because the scent gave her a headache: she always had a headache, in recent months. But invite me in and introduce me, never.”

“Maybe she was afraid of embarrassing you.”

“No, she wanted to mind her own business. I understood and stayed away. But I want to tell you that your mother was not to be trusted.”

“In what sense?”

“She didn’t behave properly. This man I met only the one time. He was a handsome old man, well dressed, and when I met them he made me a slight bow. She, however, turned the other way and said an ugly word to me.”

“Maybe you misunderstood.”

“I understood very well. She had developed a mania for saying the worst words, out loud, even when she was alone. And then she would start laughing. I heard her from here, in my kitchen.”

“My mother never said bad words.”

“She did, she did. . At a certain age, one should have some restraint.”

“It’s true,” I said. And there returned to my mind the suitcase and purse in the doorway of the apartment. They seemed to me objects that, because of the journey they must have taken, had lost the dignity of things belonging to Amalia. I wanted to try to restore it to them. But the old woman, encouraged by my submissive tones, undid the chain from the door, and stepped into the doorway.

“In any case,” she said, “at this hour I’m not going to go back to sleep.”

I was afraid that she wanted to come into the house and withdrew quickly toward my mother’s apartment.

“I, on the other hand, am going to try to sleep a little,” I said.

Signora De Riso darkened and immediately stopped following me. She put the chain back on the door with contempt.

“Amalia, too, always wanted to come to my house and never asked me into hers,” she muttered. Then she closed the door in my face.