The Sense of an Elephant Read online

  Her mobile rang and without answering the woman went to the intercom, pushed the button while she finished the petit four, looked down. Into the courtyard came a man in his fifties with his coat collar turned up. The man climbed to the second floor and hurried directly into the woman’s flat. She followed him and before closing the door said, ‘My name’s Silvia.’

  ‘Pietro.’

  ‘Very pleased to meet you.’ She locked the door and drew the curtain of her one window facing the communal balcony. The curtain was made of voile and through it he discerned her helping the man remove his coat and tie. Pietro stopped watching and stood up.

  Anita smiled from the stairs. ‘You were nice to Silvia.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  She showed him a bottle opener. ‘I’d loaned it to my upstairs neighbour. I enjoyed your gallantry.’ Anita lowered her voice: ‘That’s her third client today. Poor girl. Just think that I’ve seen her become like that in a year. Before she just studied and that was it.’

  Pietro finished rewrapping the tray and gave it to her.

  Anita kissed him on the cheek. ‘What is it?’

  The concierge waited until she opened her door, then as soon as they entered, embraced her. Dug his nose into her hair. Anita smelled of goodness.

  ‘Something happened with your son, didn’t it?’

  The concierge pulled out the photograph of the woman with the newborn. He put it on the table.

  Anita brought it up to the light. ‘It’s her. She’s really beautiful.’ She went over to Pietro and enunciated each word: ‘Give the letter to your son. Tell him the truth.’

  Anita took his hand. Led him into the bedroom, took off his jumper and trousers, unbuttoned his shirt. Went into the bathroom and when she returned he was as she had left him. Together they lay down on the bed, resting their heads on a single pillow. She pressed her breasts against him and he felt the tired flesh. They looked at each other. Pietro allowed himself to be kissed. Anita’s lips tasted of goodness, too. Slowly he undressed her. Pushed her against the pillow. Anita said, ‘Leave it to me,’ but he held her still and himself above her. His hands roamed and fumbled. He sat up and they returned to his sides. She took his member in her hand, closed her fingers around it and gently shook the soft, yielding form. Pietro leaned forward to caress her neck. Began to squeeze it. ‘Gently,’ she said. Pietro squeezed and released, lowered himself onto her and took her broad face between his palms. Kissed her on the eyes.

  Anita kissed him on the eyes as well. ‘You deserve your son.’

  Pietro pulled back. ‘He deserves his daughter.’

  30

  Pietro left Anita’s house at dawn. Before leaving, while she slept, he placed two marzipan petits fours on a small plate and prepared the stovetop percolator. As soon as it began to sputter he turned off the flame, went down into the courtyard and walked out with the Bianchi. He had always sought the dawn. In Rimini he would wake at night’s end and walk down the Corso d’Augusto from the centre to the Tiberius Bridge, down into the fishermen’s village with its pastel houses and low roofs. Emerge from the other end of the village and see the first slice of the harbour. Rimini at dawn is on tiptoe. He would tiptoe as well, waiting for the sun there, heels high, while the light lengthened the shadows of the only mother he had, his city.

  From Anita’s house the way was all downhill. The Bianchi flew through the large square with the clocks on skyscrapers and skirted the remains of the old city walls of Milan, arriving at the condominium as Alice pulled up the roller shutter of the cafe. She greeted him first, her eyes sleepy and the deliveries from the bakery piled up at the entrance. Pietro carried them in for her.

  Alice turned on the lights above the counter. ‘I saw you with the doctor the other evening.’ She lifted an apron over her neck and fiddled with the cash register.

  He looked at her, a woman full of grace who merely grazed the world as she moved. She unwrapped the pastries and arranged them in the display case as if without touching them. ‘There’s some Mastroianni in the doctor as well … The three of you resemble each other.’ She blew the powdered sugar from her hands. ‘How about a croissant and some hot chocolate? What do you say, Marcello? It’s on the house. These are my last days on the job.’

  Pietro smiled at her and backed away. He left the cafe and directly he arrived in the street ran a hand over his face, over his nose and over his mouth. Brought the Bianchi into the condominium and started up the stairs. Touched his ears and his forehead, his hair. Reached the first floor and the second, climbed further and his fingers continued to seek out the resemblance with his son. He climbed the stairs to the top, found the iron door slightly ajar, opened it wide and arrived on the terrace. Slipped between the sheets and waited for the sun as he had waited for it for years. When it rose he clicked his heels and returned onto his toes, clicked them again, the start of a routine that had no need of any music. He finished abruptly and the moment he came to a stop, someone applauded. Pietro turned around, saw no one. Ducked under a sheet. The lawyer sat on the parapet wall. ‘Celeste told me about the rhythm in those shoes.’

  The young priest saw the witch again at mass. She sat in the third row with her mother, head bowed and hands interlaced on her belly. He looked at her from the altar, then raised up the blood and body of Christ, consumed them. Began to place the wafers in the mouths of the faithful. The organ played hallelujah, hallelujah. The witch was the last in line. He continued to place the wafers in mouths, in the mouths of the faithful, in the mother’s mouth, then he found the witch standing before him. Picked up the wafer and offered it to her. In exchange he received a strip of paper. The young priest looked at it when he returned behind the altar. Hallelujah, hallelujah. He read: Tonight at 11, the fountain with the four horses.

  The lawyer rose from the parapet. He was in his dressing gown and smoking. ‘Don’t be so surprised, my friend.’ His face was severe, unadorned, old. ‘I have the spirit of a confessor. Celeste, on the other hand, was a sharer of confidences.’

  Pietro remained motionless, then swiftly hid himself behind a flannel sheet. The scent of fabric softener was everywhere. His voice wouldn’t come, came and was barely audible. ‘What confidences?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I forget.’ Poppi came forward in his silk slippers. ‘The passion for dance – this I remember.’

  ‘I don’t know how to dance.’ Pietro found himself face to face with the lawyer.

  ‘Neither do I.’ The slippers rose up on their heels. ‘Except when I’m scared. Or I miss my Daniele.’ He passed through the sheets until he reached a kind of chimney at the centre of the terrace. It supported two satellite dishes. He pointed to the concrete base. ‘We would come here to smoke. He didn’t want us to in the house.’ There was something written in chalk on the concrete: Giovanni Poppi & Daniele Izzo. ‘Memory makes the feet move, isn’t that right?’

  The concierge looked at him.

  ‘Tell me why God carried away the love of my life, Pietro.’ His lips trembled. He tossed the cigarette. ‘Tell me what’s left behind. Ask your god, c’mon.’

  ‘It’s not my god.’

  ‘What’s left, Pietro?’

  The concierge went to the parapet. Down in the street, he could see, Alice had turned on the neon signs. A few of the tables were already filled. ‘Memory is what’s left.’

  ‘The great lie, that’s what memory is.’ Poppi screened his eyes against the light. ‘Let the Lord try to get by on memory, then he’ll know what punishment is.’ And without warning he approached Pietro, took and raised his hands, began to lead him in a weary waltz. Pulled him over to the sheets. ‘Do you know what the Jews say, my friend? Mazel tov. Good luck.’ They continued the unsteady dance. ‘Mazel tov to us survivors.’ They stopped and the scent of Poppi enveloped the concierge. Poppi’s mouth brushed Pietro’s ear, his hands still in Pietro’s hands: ‘Go and find Celeste, I’ll tell you where she is. Less than a metre of earth won’t keep you apart.’

  3
1

  Lorenzo died that morning. The lodge phone rang around ten. Pietro did not hear it. He was working in the courtyard with the radio on, cleaning up the mess from the birthday party. When they called the second time the concierge had returned to his flat to change. He put a towel around his shoulders and went into the lodge to answer. ‘Hello,’ he said. The towel slipped to the floor and he remained bare-chested with the receiver at his ear.

  Paola passed by in that moment, spotted him and opened one of the newspapers she had just bought, pretended to read it as she approached the lodge.

  The concierge was facing away from her. ‘What’s the address?’ he asked into the phone, writing the reply on a supermarket flyer. ‘I’ll come right away.’ He hung up.

  Paola entered the lodge. ‘Oh, pardon me, oh … I wanted to check if any post had come for me, I didn’t see you.’

  ‘The phone rang while I was changing.’ Pietro picked up the towel and opened her letterbox, gave her three letters.

  She placed them in her purse. There was an acrid smell. She breathed it in, removed her hat, breathed again. ‘You were an angel to show my Fernando how to make the shadows.’

  ‘I have to go, Paola.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him like that since his father was alive.’ She laid a hand on his naked shoulder.

  ‘I have to go.’ He left her there, went back into his flat and finished changing in a hurry. The Bianchi wouldn’t do. When he came out again the lodge was empty and the acrid odour mixed with that of paint.

  He went into the street and waited at the light. Two engaged taxis passed. He hailed the third one. Got in and read out the address he had written down.

  The house where Lorenzo lived appeared lifeless. Pietro got out of the taxi and approached the art-nouveau villa. The front gate clicked open before he could buzz. The doctor emerged immediately and walked up to him. ‘It’s since yesterday that he’s been getting worse.’ He grasped his shoulder. ‘Since yesterday.’

  Pietro looked at Luca. He was a wreck. A drooping reed. The concierge followed him up the path to the villa. Its shutters were closed and the lawn perfectly groomed.

  They went inside. A housemaid was waiting for them beside a vase of fresh calla lilies. She took Pietro’s coat and led them down a broad, dimly lit hallway, interrupted three-quarters along by a couch with paw-shaped brass feet and an end table covered with magazines. The freshly painted walls smelled old. Two doctors emerged from a room, called Luca aside. ‘Wait for me here, Pietro.’

  The concierge waited in front of an electric fireplace. The false flame glowed behind glass. Above the mantelpiece hung an oil painting of Lorenzo posing with his mother and a Dalmatian as tall as he was.

  Luca returned. ‘Let’s go.’ And he proceeded to the end of the hall.

  She was there. Leaning against the door frame, more beautiful than the portrait with the Dalmatian. She had her hair tied back and a shawl that brushed the floor, a teddy bear in her hands. She herself was a doll with vacant eyes and a rigid neck, staring at the floor. Stared now at Pietro and said nothing, turning just slightly.

  Luca touched her shoulder. ‘Giulia, this is Pietro.’

  The doll opened her mouth slightly. She wore no lipstick. ‘He wasn’t baptized.’ Torment faintly spoiled her face. Grace remained in her frightened gestures. She stroked the teddy bear. ‘My son wasn’t baptized.’

  Luca opened the door to the room. In the middle was a four-poster bed draped with light blue chiffon. On the walls a poster with lions, another with monkeys. In the corner a clown made of fabric. On the far side a table with folded clothes and a picture book: The Animals of the Savannah. From the windows, their shades half drawn, could be seen a field of nothing but weeds. The light was failing.

  Lorenzo was a tiny ball of a thing, curled up on his side under a dark blue blanket. When he left his head was bent nearly to his chest, leaving the blanket halfway up a face whose paleness had become pink. Luca pushed aside the chiffon and sat down on the bed. Pietro remained standing and watched his son caressing the son of another. The doctor pinched the child’s leg through the covers and gently shook him, My dear little boy, lowered the sheet to free his face. His hand grazed Lorenzo from forehead to chin, then he turned him on his back with his arms along his sides. He made space for Pietro.

  The priest came forward. He perched on the mattress and stroked Lorenzo’s cheek as he had at the lake, and as on that day he closed a hand over one of the child’s hands. The cut on the thumb was almost healed. Pietro rubbed it and turned toward the mother.

  She continued to stand in the doorway, hands around the teddy bear, hands raw in the fingers, raw at the knuckles from scratching. Her face of porcelain. The woman threatened to fade from visibility, transparent in the same way as her son. ‘I’m here,’ she murmured and at the same time backed further away.

  The priest pressed the pillow down and settled Lorenzo’s head at its centre. Only then did he see it: the elephant that he had given him peeked out between the mattress and the headboard, its feet in the air and its trunk buried in the folds of the sheet. He placed it beside him. ‘It’s here,’ he said, and made it so that one foot touched the child, because that was the sense of the elephant and of all fathers, their devotion to all sons. He held Lorenzo from above, in the hollow of his arms, squeezed and was afraid of hurting him.

  The other doctors called Luca and he went to them. The mother retreated further, becoming a mere porcelain shadow in the doorway. She stared at the bedroom window and squeezed the teddy bear. Met the priest’s gaze, looked away when the child’s mouth abruptly fell open. The priest clamped it shut and said, ‘Take him with you, O Lord, because you are the Father he wants and he is the son you want.’ He made the sign of the cross and placed a hand over the boy’s eyes.

  *

  Lorenzo’s mother held on to the door jamb. Then she slowly came forward, her dress encumbering her walk. Dropped her shawl and pushed aside the chiffon of the canopy, stretched out a hand and touched the little one’s neck. It was still warm. She touched an arm and his ribs beneath his pyjamas, so hard. Then she recognized her son.

  ‘My child.’

  Her voice was weary, her grace lost. She slipped off her shoes and sat down. Gently shook the child and lay down beside him. She put the teddy bear in his arms and rested her cheek against his smooth head. ‘God takes from the ungrateful.’

  Pietro backed away.

  The mother collapsed onto her son.

  32

  A bluish strip in the west was all that remained of the day. The concierge left the villa ahead of Luca and when he was in the street he searched his coat. He drew out the elephant. He had taken it even as the mother gazed at her son and called him her child. Pietro held it in both hands, noticed that the trunk and feet had been gnawed on, felt the traces of Lorenzo’s teeth. When he got in the car he saw that Luca was already inside, leaning his head against the window. The doctor started the car and slowly drove down the street, went round the block, turned again and returned them to their starting place. The light over the villa’s entrance had gone on, so too several lights behind its windows. Luca stared at them. ‘All you need to survive is one decent memory. His mother probably has one.’

  Pietro protected the elephant’s trunk in his fingers, closed them over it. They set off again. They took the street that ran along the park and led to the airport. The rows of houses rhythmically notched the sky. Luca bumped his head back against the headrest, a puppet without strings, bent forward and straightened up again, collapsed. ‘Every time one of my children died I would go to my mother.’ He could not cry, rubbed his eyes and sounded the horn at the cars stuck under the flyover. Changed lanes, accelerated. ‘I’d go to her.’ Stretched his neck and half-closed his eyes. ‘Now I go to whom I have left.’

  Pietro recognized the street. ‘Viola.’

  Now Luca nodded and, halfway down the street, slowed. Slowed further as he ran his wooden hands down the steering wheel from t
op to bottom. Dropped them in his lap and took his foot off the accelerator. A gurgling rose from his mouth. He lowered the window and steered over to the shoulder of the road. He breathed with difficulty, gasped and coughed. The crying came upon him, a sobbing without tears. He tried to say something, mumbled. Mumbled again: ‘I’ve always known about them. About her and Riccardo. I didn’t want to lose them.’

  The car came to a complete stop.

  Pietro was looking through the windscreen. The evening had consumed the bluish streak. He looked at Luca, who had dropped his chin to his chest. They resembled each other in the dimple in the right cheek, the forehead crease.

  Luca’s face was calm. The murmur of the car’s engine drowned out his deep breaths. He wiped his eyes and extended an arm toward the concierge.

  Pietro felt the cold wood, warmed it between his hands.

  The young priest arrived at the fountain on his bike. The witch was waiting for him, seated Indian-style. The four horses, sculpted with their rears joined in the centre, snorted water from their nostrils. He braked to a stop and dismounted before her. ‘What do you have to say to me?’

  The music of a seaside dance hall reached them. The witch stood and ran through a few steps. ‘There’s not much to say in a goodbye.’

  ‘This is goodbye?’

  ‘You belong to the Lord. And I’ve already committed the greatest sin.’ She touched her stomach. ‘I’m made of remorse.’

  ‘And I of regrets.’ He pulled away and made to climb back on the bike.

  She grabbed a handlebar. The water in the horses’ nostrils stopped.

  ‘Stop here, please,’ said Luca.

  Pietro parked in front of a terraced house with a yellow facade. He had taken the doctor’s place behind the wheel after he had said he couldn’t manage. He glanced now through the window at the house. ‘Who lives there?’

  Luca fixed his hair and shirt. Before getting out he looked down at his trembling hands. Got out and rang the doorbell. The door opened and he disappeared inside. Re-emerged shortly after with Sara clinging to his neck, giving him a series of kisses on his head and holding him tight.