The Sense of an Elephant Read online

  Snow White appeared in the doorway, stepped into the room. ‘You can’t be on the mattress, Mr Pietro.’

  The concierge replaced the sidewall. Snow White nodded and returned whence she had come.

  ‘Sofia is pretty.’ He moved to the end of the bed, to the spot where Andrea’s eyes were looking.

  Pietro looked at him as well. ‘Do you want to die, my son?’

  The eyes were opened wide, and raised. Once.

  35

  That night in the studio flat Sara asked, ‘Why doesn’t Mama come here?’

  Luca murmured, ‘Take deep breaths, honey. That way you’ll fall asleep sooner. Don’t be afraid, it’s just the dark, a bit of colour, a great inky gloom. Don’t be afraid, it’s just the sun, who’s yawning because he wants to sleep.’ They sang together and then she whispered, ‘Will you take me to the sea?’

  ‘You’ve got to go to nursery school. We’ll go to the sea this summer, right now it’s cold.’ He rocked her in his arms and she said, ‘I want to come with you to the cold sea.’

  The deep breaths began but no one fell asleep in the studio flat, nor in the house of the pomegranate trees. The old man from the petrol station lowered one of the bed’s sidewalls and lay down next to his son. You and I, we’re like Rossi and Altobelli against Germany, world champions, like Rossi and Altobelli, we take everyone by surprise. The father closed his eyes and coughed. The son raised his pupils once. His voice echoed in the concierge’s lodge. From the recorder came the crackling voice: ‘My name is Andrea Testi. I am thirty-four years old and I know how to dribble. You have to have strong ankles to dribble well, and I have strong ankles.’ Pietro listened to it again and again as he stared at the letter on rice paper held down by the elephant and by the pomegranate. Dozed off, then the voice of Andrea was silent and Pietro slept until the following morning.

  He was woken by Riccardo’s knock on the door.

  The concierge opened. Riccardo stood there with a stuffed animal in one hand and a black raincoat fastened up to his neck. Gave a slight smile. ‘Pardon me, you were sleeping.’

  Pietro nodded.

  ‘It’s Lorenzo’s funeral. If you want, I’ll give you a ride. The church is a little out of the way.’

  The concierge motioned for him to sit down on a wicker chair and went into the bathroom. Rinsed his face. It was lean and had lost its greyness. What remained of Mastroianni were the bags under his eyes and the forehead crease. He dressed in a hurry, placed the elephant in his jacket in a way that the trunk emerged over the edge of the pocket. Before going out he stuck Fernando and Sara’s drawing above his bed. The two parrots were crippled and the Bianchi a tricycle with punctured tyres. He pressed it hard against the wall then drew out the leather bracelet from the night table and returned to the lodge. Riccardo was reading a completed crossword puzzle. Now he rose from the wicker chair and went out. Pietro hung the ‘Back soon’ sign on the window glass and joined him outside.

  They climbed into the SUV parked outside the street door. A miniature tennis racket hung from the rear-view mirror. In the receptacle between the seats were some wadded-up receipts, covered in ash. Riccardo placed the animal in his lap and started the car. When they set off the toy fell over and he straightened it up. ‘I didn’t think Luca had said anything to you.’ His face was hard. ‘When he loses a child he closes out the world.’

  ‘The same thing can happen when someone loses a wife.’

  The SUV slowed. Riccardo stared straight ahead. Clutched the animal’s trunk, opening and closing his fingers, then took the wheel with both hands, accelerated and cleared his throat. Turned his head toward the passenger side. ‘We fell in love, Pietro.’

  The concierge looked out the side window. The city was stuck in ice. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You understand?’

  He nodded. ‘People leave each other because at some point someone decides to try someone else.’ His fingers grazed the elephant. ‘It’s minimal love.’

  Riccardo looked at the road and then again at the concierge. ‘And what would maximum love be?’

  ‘To stand by the love of a single person.’

  ‘Sometimes you can’t.’

  ‘Because sometimes you don’t want to.’

  ‘You speak as a priest.’

  ‘I speak as an old man.’

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘So with God it was minimal?’

  ‘It wasn’t love.’

  ‘So why did you become a priest?’

  ‘Because I’d never known anything else.’

  The elephant smashed its trunk against the horn. Riccardo wedged it between his legs and the SUV went through a yellow light. ‘I didn’t know anything else, either, after I lost my parents.’ He drove along a section of one of the inner ring roads, unable to find a parking spot, made turn after fruitless turn, finally pulled into a spot for residents. Through the window they could see the beginning of the pedestrian zone, a group of people proceeding slowly into a red-brick church. Riccardo leaned over to Pietro’s side and opened the glove box. Out popped a city street map, a Michelin restaurant guide and a GPS device. He searched haphazardly, saying, ‘Where did I put it.’ There was also a prescription pad and a plastic case with the car’s papers. He opened the latter and a Polaroid fell and landed face down just under the seat. Pietro retrieved it and Riccardo took it out of his hands. ‘I want to have a family again, Pietro.’ He put the photograph away and continued to rummage, more calmly now. Extracted from the back of the glove box a doctor’s badge and placed it next to the parking disc.

  ‘All Luca needs is his daughter.’ He handed him the bracelet.

  Riccardo gave him a bewildered look, took the bracelet and held it in the palm of his hand. ‘That’s not how things are.’ He attached it to his wrist.

  ‘All Luca needs is his daughter.’ The concierge began to get out. Riccardo took hold of his sleeve. ‘Would God absolve me?’

  ‘God doesn’t understand such things.’

  ‘Would you absolve me?’

  ‘I’m only a man.’

  Pietro walked ahead of him toward the church. People were entering in dribs and drabs. Two beggars shook their cups and asked for charity in the corner reserved for flowers. Riccardo left the toy between two wreaths of white roses. The concierge began to follow a group of women crowding the entrance, then stopped. Luca appeared among them, zipped up tight in a heavy jacket and wearing running shoes.

  Riccardo, too, noticed him. ‘Luca,’ he called, ‘Luca.’

  The doctor moved away, darting into the church courtyard, five bare trees and a carpet of earth. Riccardo called him again, made to follow. This time it was the concierge who held him back.

  ‘I have to talk to him, Pietro.’

  The concierge refused to let him go. They walked together into the church, then Riccardo squirmed free to join Lorenzo’s mother beside the casket. She had her hand inside the white box and was saying something to a lanky priest wearing a gown that was too short.

  Pietro placed himself just inside the right aisle, beside a minor Christ who looked at him sidelong. He had not entered a church since he left his own. He rubbed his hands together. The chill in his bones had returned. Below the ankles of the minor Christ trembled the flames of the votive candles. The prayers melted over the rusty iron.

  Everyone sat down except for Lorenzo’s mother. She remained in place, one hand fussing with a pearl earring, the other stroking the casket.

  ‘Let us pray,’ announced the priest.

  Pietro lowered his eyes to the marble floor, counted granules in the stone while the priest raised his hands to the heavens, Let us pray. Lorenzo’s mother prayed, as did Riccardo in the second row and the rest of the people with heads bowed in the pews. The doctor prayed, seated in the church courtyard, running shoes nestled in the earth. Luca pressed his hands to his eyes and kept them there, and Lorenzo’s mother did the same. They both said: ‘Why me.’

  36

  Th
e departure for Rimini was set for eight. Pietro arrived at the studio flat ten minutes early. The flat’s shutters were closed. He waited outside the street door, a backpack in hand, wearing a coat that would keep out the cold. The day before, after Lorenzo’s funeral, he had passed by Anita’s shop to let her know: ‘I’m returning to the sea for a few hours. With my son.’ She smiled and asked, ‘When you’re there, will you do me a small favour?’ He accepted and Anita gave him an empty jam jar.

  Pietro checked the backpack to make sure he had brought the jar. When he looked up he noticed them. The doctor and the little girl were sitting at the window in the cafe across the street. Sara was wiping her father’s mouth. He was doing the same to hers. Each held half a doughnut in hands covered in powdered sugar. The concierge crossed the street and knocked on the glass. A second later, a silver MPV with Deluxe Vans on its side parked in front of the flat. He looked at his watch: eight o’clock on the dot.

  The lawyer stepped down from behind the wheel, waving a fur hat topped with a peacock feather. He turned around, walked toward Pietro and bowed before him. Paola lowered the van window to greet him. ‘Don’t get out, Fernando,’ she said, shaking her newly permed head. But Fernando was already out, wearing his beret and with a camera around his neck. He captured the scene of the lawyer bowing to the concierge, behind them the arriving Luca and his daughter.

  Poppi, a corner of his mouth rising, approached the doctor. ‘We’re coming to the sea too.’ He shook the doctor’s hand. The weighty fur hat swayed, straining his giraffe’s neck.

  Luca set down Sara’s schoolbag and his medical bag. Dangled car keys from an index finger. ‘It’s for work, Mr Poppi.’

  ‘We’re a family, Doctor.’

  ‘It’s for work, I already told you on the phone.’

  ‘You also told me what time you were leaving. And this I call a subconscious request for support. Don’t worry, while you work we’ll be breathing iodine.’ He took a deep breath and turned to the little girl. ‘You’ll see how much fun we have, Princess.’

  ‘Sara has to go to nursery school.’

  ‘Don’t be cruel.’

  ‘Don’t be cruel,’ Fernando repeated, hugging the girl.

  Luca and Pietro looked to each other. Then the doctor went back inside the building, returning with an additional duffel and without the schoolbag. ‘OK, then.’

  Sara ran to her father and danced around him, unable to contain herself for joy.

  The lawyer waited in front of the van, holding the heads of two matches in his fist. ‘And the winner is …’ He held them out to Pietro.

  The concierge came up with the shorter match. ‘And so?’

  ‘And so drive carefully, because I have a weak stomach.’ He sat down in the front passenger seat.

  Luca had Sara get in next to Paola. ‘I’ll be here behind you, honey.’ And he sat down next to Fernando.

  ‘Are we going to Mama’s now?’ murmured Sara.

  Paola caressed her face. ‘Did you know that the sea has dolphins that leap into the sky?’

  The lawyer twisted around in his seat in front of them, pulled the peacock feather from the fur hat and handed it to the child. ‘It’s like your magic wand. Touch your nose three times and you’ll see dolphins.’

  Sara held the feather without doing anything further as Pietro started the van.

  ‘Wait.’ Paola opened her coat and drew out a small rosary made of coral. Stretched forward and tried to hang it from the rear-view mirror. ‘The streets are dangerous.’

  ‘You see, Pietro? She has more faith in God than in you.’ Poppi pulled the rosary from her hands. ‘She doesn’t know that the Lord doesn’t have a licence. Let’s let the driver decide: do we keep the snake on the mirror or do we snuff it out?’

  The concierge fastened his seat belt, released the hand brake and said, ‘Let’s keep it.’

  The young priest and the witch approached the dance floor. The people said, ‘That’s the priest. That’s the witch.’ They ran to a dark corner of the beach, beneath ivy climbing between two huts. ‘It’s not music that moves your priest’s feet.’ She brought her ankles together and raised one leg to the side, held on to the ivy and spun in place. ‘It’s not what moves my witch’s body, either.’

  He slipped a rosary from his wrist and struck his heels together, softly, harder, struck them in a tapping rhythm that challenged the heavens. ‘It’s fear of the Lord that moves them.’

  The ivy shook above them and dropped what had hidden among the leaves, snail shells crusted with salt.

  ‘It’s fear.’

  They came together. The young priest placed a hand on her belly. The witch said, ‘I saw my son when he came into the world, he was small as these snails.’

  His feet abruptly stopped, appeased by their kiss.

  After half an hour on the motorway, the lawyer turned toward the passengers. Fernando was taking everyone’s picture. Poppi produced a CD, slipped an index finger through the disc’s hole and spun. Inserted it into the player and adjusted the volume, and the song began: The sea in winter is just a black-and-white movie seen on TV. Fernando took a picture of Luca dozing against the window with a hat pulled down over eyes that pretended to sleep. And looking inland, clouds throw themselves down from the sky. Took a picture of Paola as she told Sara a story about mermaids, of Sara as she touched her nose with her wishing feather and said, ‘I want to be a mermaid who swims with the dolphins.’ Took a picture of himself, of love for Alice still on his chubby face. The sea, the sea, here no one ever comes to drag me away. The sea, the sea, here no one ever comes to keep us company. The lawyer and Pietro went out of focus. The coral rosary on the mirror separated them while the song went on, But then one evening, a strange concert on the beach, a single umbrella that stays open. Confused I plunge into moments lived once before.

  The Deluxe van approached the bridge over the Po River. Pietro accelerated and Paola said, ‘Be careful.’ He accelerated again and the rosary struck the windscreen. Passed two cars and they changed into the right lane. The guard rails had been broken through and patched up with temporary barriers. ‘Oh my goodness.’ She brought a hand to her mouth. ‘Please slow down.’

  Pietro stared at the hole in the guard rail as they sped past.

  ‘Do you know the alphabet game?’ the lawyer asked.

  They climbed the bridge and no one answered. The river was in flood. A broken-down boat was crossing from one bank to the other.

  ‘The sea!’ Fernando pointed the camera at the window.

  The little girl touched the feather to her nose three times.

  ‘It’s the river, dear. There aren’t any dolphins in there.’ Paola patted her head. ‘What were you saying about the alphabet, Mr Poppi?’

  ‘The winner is the one who recreates the alphabet from “a” to “z” with the first letters of the road signs. First “a”, then “b”, then “c” and so on. Just the first letters. Sara, the doctor and I will take the right side of the road, Pietro, Paola and Fernando, the left side. Make sense? Let’s begin.’

  ‘Viola,’ exclaimed Fernando.

  ‘What’s “v” got to do with it?’ Paola turned toward her son, followed by the other passengers. The boy was staring at the display of the mobile phone ringing in the doctor’s hand.

  They crossed to the far bank.

  Without indicating, Pietro moved toward the shoulder and Luca said into the phone, ‘I’m on my way to Rimini. Sara is with me …’

  Poppi motioned for Pietro to accelerate. Luca spluttered, ‘We’re only staying a few hours, then we’ll be back.’

  The Deluxe van continued on the shoulder until they came to a service area and Autogrill, where they parked.

  ‘Second breakfasts for everyone.’ The lawyer opened the sliding door.

  Fernando jumped out first. ‘Cappuccino.’

  The last in the van were Luca and his daughter. He passed her the phone and she spoke into it, tapping a finger against the glass, then handed the
phone to her father and got out.

  Paola led her away. ‘What did your mama say to you?’

  The lawyer went up to Pietro. ‘The love affairs of gays end more quickly even than yours, goodness knows, but you know what the real difference is? There aren’t any children stuck in the middle. The uterus is the source of unhappiness, my friend.’

  ‘The source of you as well, Mr Poppi.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He adjusted his fur hat and followed the others into the restaurant.

  The concierge waited in the middle of the car park and checked his coat pockets. Felt the elephant. And the old man’s recorder.

  Luca caught up with him. ‘She wants to talk to me as soon as I get back.’

  37

  They left the motorway and the last letter of the alphabet game was ‘m’. The lawyer read at the top of his voice, Marvel at the Grand Hotel, on a billboard right before the toll booth for North Rimini. ‘We’re “m”, you’re “g”, we win.’ Poppi spread his arms. ‘And now, let’s marvel at this Grand Hotel, selected by my credit card.’

  ‘I want to return this evening,’ said Luca.

  ‘It will do us good,’ the lawyer said to the group. Then again, more softly, to the doctor, ‘It will do us good.’

  Fernando raised his hand. Sara imitated him and Paola, blushing, also raised a finger.

  ‘Four against two. And anyway, I’ve already made the reservation. Three suites, room service at breakfast, and sea views included. It’s my treat. I’m only taking receipts to the grave.’

  The concierge pulled the van over. ‘Where are we going, Doctor?’

  ‘Everyone to the Grand Hotel,’ replied the lawyer.

  ‘Where, Doctor?’

  ‘Where they want to go, Pietro. I don’t want any revolts.’

  The van rejoiced. The concierge sat frozen with the engine running, the coral rosary swinging from the mirror.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Poppi.