The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana Read online

  "Write something about your life," Paola said. "What did you do when you were twenty?" I wrote: "I was twenty. I won’t let anyone say that’s the best time of a person’s life." The doctor asked me what first came to mind when I woke up. I wrote: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect."

  "Maybe that’s enough, Doctor," Paola said. "Don’t let him go on too long with these associative chains, or he might go crazy on me."

  "Right, because I seem sane to you now?"

  All at once Gratarolo barked: "Now sign your name, without thinking, as if it were a check."

  Without thinking. I traced "GBBodoni," with a flourish at the end and a round dot on the i.

  "You see? Your head doesn’t know who you are, but your hand does. That was to be expected. Let’s try something else. You mentioned Napoleon. What did he look like?"

  "I can’t conjure up an image of him. Just words."

  Gratarolo asked Paola if I knew how to draw. Apparently I’m no artist, but I manage to doodle things. He asked me to draw Napoleon. I did something of the sort.

  "Not bad," Gratarolo remarked. "You drew your mental scheme of Napoleon-the tricorne, the hand in the vest. Now I’ll show you a series of images. First series, works of art."

  I performed well: the Mona Lisa, Manet’s Olympia, this one is a Picasso, that one is a good imitation.

  "See how well you recognize them? Now let’s try some contemporary figures."

  Another series of photographs, and here too, with the exception of one or two faces that meant nothing to me, my answers were on target: Greta Garbo, Einstein, Toto, Kennedy, Moravia, and who they were. Gratarolo asked me what they had in common. They were famous? Not enough, there’s something else. I balked.

  "They’re all dead now," Gratarolo said.

  "What, even Kennedy and Moravia?"

  "Moravia died at the end of last year. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963."

  "Oh, those poor guys. I’m sorry."

  "That you wouldn’t remember about Moravia is almost normal, he just died recently, and your semantic memory didn’t have much time to absorb the event. Kennedy, on the other hand, baffles me-that’s old news, the stuff of encyclopedias."

  "He was deeply affected by the Kennedy affair," Paola said. "Maybe Kennedy got lumped with his personal memories."

  Gratarolo pulled out some other photographs. One showed two men: the first was certainly me, except well groomed and well dressed, and with that irresistible smile Paola had mentioned. The other man had a friendly face, too, but I did not know him.

  "That’s Gianni Laivelli, your best friend," Paola said. "He was your desk mate from first grade through high school."

  "Who are these?" asked Gratarolo, bringing out another image. It was an old photograph. The woman had a thirties-style hairdo, a white, moderately low-cut dress, and a teeny-tiny little button nose. The man had perfectly parted hair, maybe a little brilliantine, a pronounced nose, and a broad, open smile. I did not recognize them. (Artists? No, it was not glamorous or stagy enough. Maybe newlyweds.) But I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach and-I do not know what to call it-a gentle swoon.

  Paola noticed it: "Yambo, that’s your parents on their wedding day."

  "Are they still alive?" I asked.

  "No, they died a while ago. In a car accident."

  "You got worked up looking at that photo," Gratarolo said. "Certain images spark something inside you. That’s a start."

  "But what kind of start is it, if I can’t even find papà and mamma in that damn hellhole," I shouted. "You tell me that these two were my parents, so now I know, but it’s a memory that you’ve given me. I’ll remember the photo from now on, but not them."

  "Who knows how many times over the past thirty years you were reminded of them because you kept seeing this photo? You can’t think of memory as a warehouse where you deposit past events and retrieve them later just as they were when you put them there," Gratarolo said. "I don’t want to get too technical, but when you remember something, you’re constructing a new profile of neuronal excitation. Let’s suppose that in a certain place you had some unpleasant experience. When afterward you remember that place, you reactivate that initial pattern of neuronal excitation with a profile of excitation that’s similar to but not the same as that which was originally stimulated. Remembering will therefore produce a feeling of unease. In short, to remember is to reconstruct, in part on the basis of what we have learned or said since. That’s normal, that’s how we remember. I tell you this to encourage you to reactivate some of these profiles of excitation, instead of simply digging obsessively in an effort to find something that’s already there, as shiny and new as you imagine it was when you first set it aside. The image of your parents in this photo is the one we’ve shown you and the one we see ourselves. You have to start from this image to rebuild something else, and only that will be yours. Remembering is a labor, not a luxury."

  "These mournful and enduring memories," I recited, "this trail of death we leave alive…"

  "Memory can also be beautiful," Gratarolo said. "Someone said that it acts like a convergent lens in a camera obscura: it focuses everything, and the image that results from it is much more beautiful than the original."

  "I want a cigarette."

  "That’s a sign that your organism is recovering at a normal pace. But it’s better if you don’t smoke. And when you go back home, alcohol in moderation: not more than a glass per meal. You have blood-pressure problems. Otherwise I won’t allow you to leave tomorrow."

  "You’re letting him leave?" Paola said, a little scared.

  "Let’s take stock, Signora. From a physical standpoint your husband can get by pretty well on his own. It’s not as though he’ll fall down the stairs if you leave him alone. If we keep him here, we’ll exhaust him with endless tests, all of them artificial experiences, and we already know what they’ll tell us. I think it would do him good to return to his environment. Sometimes the most helpful thing is the taste of familiar food, a smell-who knows? On these matters, literature has taught us more than neurology."

  It is not that I wanted to play the pedant, but if all I had left was that damned semantic memory, I might as well use it: "Proust’s madeleine," I said. "The taste of the linden-blossom tea and that little cake give him a jolt. He feels a violent joy. And an image of Sundays at Combray with his Aunt Léonie comes back to him … It seems there must be an involuntary memory of the limbs, our legs and arms are full of torpid memories… And who was that other voice? Nothing compels memories to manifest themselves as much as smells and flame."

  "So you know what I mean. Even scientists sometimes believe writers more than their machines. And as for you, Signora, it’s practically your field-you’re not a neurologist, but you are a psychologist. I’ll give you a few books to read, a few famous accounts of clinical cases, and you’ll understand the nature of your husband’s problems immediately. I think that being around you and your daughters and going back to work will help him more than staying here. Just be sure to visit me once a week so we can track your progress. Go home, Signor Bodoni. Look around, touch things, smell them, read newspapers, watch TV, go hunting for images."

  "I’ll try, but I don’t remember images, or smells, or flavors. I only remember words."

  "That could change. Keep a diary of your reactions. We’ll work on that."

  I began to keep a diary.

  I packed my bags the next day. I went down with Paola. It was clear that they must have air-conditioning in hospitals: suddenly I understood, for the first time, what the heat of the sun was. The warmth of a still raw spring sun. And the light: I had to squint. You can’t look at the sun: Soleil, soleil, faute éclatante…

  When we got to the car (never seen it before) Paola told me to give it a try. "Get in, put it in neutral first, then start it. While it’s still in neutral, press the accelerator." I immediately knew where to put my hands and feet, as if I
’d never done anything else. Paola sat next to me and told me to put it in first, then to remove my foot from the clutch while ever so slightly pressing the accelerator, just enough to move a meter or two forward, then to brake and turn the engine off. That way, if I did something wrong, the worst I could do was run into a bush. It went well. I was quite proud. I defiantly backed up a little too. Then I got out, left the driving to Paola, and off we went.

  "How does the world look?" she asked me.

  "I don’t know. They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I’m a cat that hit its nose. I see things, I understand what sort of things they are, of course-those are stores over there, here’s a bicycle going by, there are some trees, but… but they don’t quite fit somehow, as if I were trying to put on someone else’s jacket."

  "A cat putting on someone else’s jacket with its nose. Your metaphors must still be loose. We’ll have to tell Gratarolo, but I’m sure it will pass."

  The car continued on. I looked around, discovering the colors and shapes of an unknown city.

  2. The Murmur of Mulberry Leaves

  ____________________

  "Where are we going now, Paola?"

  "Home. Our home."

  "And then?"

  "Then we’ll go inside, and you’ll get comfortable."

  "And then?"

  "Then you’ll take a nice long shower, you’ll shave, put on some decent clothes. And then we’ll eat. And then-what would you like to do?"

  "That’s just what I don’t know. I remember everything that’s happened since my reawakening, I know all about Julius Caesar, but I can’t imagine what comes next. Until this morning I wasn’t worried about any next-only about the before that I wasn’t able to remember. But now that we’re going… somewhere, I see fog ahead of me, too, not just behind me. No, it isn’t fog ahead-it’s as if my legs were slack and I couldn’t walk. It’s like jumping."

  "Jumping?"

  "Yes, to jump you have to make a leap forward, but to do that you have to get a running start, so you have to back up first. If you don’t back up, you won’t go forward. So I have the feeling that in order to say what I’ll do next, I need to know a lot about what I did before. You get ready to do a thing by changing something that was there before. Now, if you tell me I need to shave, I can see why: I rub my hand over my chin, it feels bristly, I should get rid of this hair. It’s the same if you tell me I should eat, I recall that the last time I ate was last night, broth, prosciutto, and stewed pear. But it’s one thing to say I’ll shave or I’ll eat, and something else to say what I’ll do next, in the long run, I mean. I can’t grasp what the long run means, because I’m missing the long run that was there before. Does that make sense?"

  "You’re saying you no longer live in time. We are the time we live in. You used to love Augustine’s passages about time. He was the most intelligent man who ever lived, you always said. We psychologists can learn a lot from him still. We live in the three moments of expectation, attention, and memory, and none of them can exist without the others. You can’t stretch toward the future because you’ve lost your past. And knowing what Julius Caesar did doesn’t help you figure out what you yourself should do."

  Paola saw my jaw tightening and changed the subject. "Do you recognize Milan?"

  "Never seen it before." But when the road widened I said: "Castello Sforzesco. And then the Duomo. And the Last Supper, and the Brera Art Gallery."

  "And Venice?"

  "In Venice there’s the Grand Canal, the Rialto bridge, San Marco, the gondolas. I know what’s in the guide books. It may be that I’ve never been to Venice and have lived in Milan for thirty years, but for me Milan’s the same as Venice. Or Vienna: the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the third man. Harry Lime up on that Ferris wheel at the Prater saying the Swiss invented cuckoo clocks. He lied: Cuckoo clocks are Bavarian."

  We got home and went inside. A lovely apartment, with balconies overlooking the park. I really saw an expanse of trees. Nature is as beautiful as they say. Antique furniture-apparently I am well-off. I do not know how to get around, where the living room is, or the kitchen. Paola introduces me to Anita, the Peruvian woman who helps around the house. The poor thing does not know whether to celebrate my return or greet me like a visitor. She runs back and forth, shows me the door to the bathroom, keeps saying, "Pobrecito el Señor Yam bo , ay Jesusmaría, here are the clean towels, Signor Yambo."

  After the commotion of my departure from the hospital, my first encounter with the sun, and the trip home, I felt sweaty. I decided to sniff my armpits: the odor of my sweat did not bother me-I do not think it was very strong-but it made me feel like a living animal. Three days before returning to Paris, Napoleon sent a message to Josephine telling her not to wash. Did I ever wash before making love? I do not dare ask Paola, and who knows, maybe I did with her and did not with other women-or vice versa. I had myself a good shower, soaped my face and shaved slowly, found some aftershave with a light, fresh scent, and combed my hair. I look more civil already. Paola showed me my wardrobe: apparently I like corduroy pants, slightly coarse jackets, wool ties in pale colors (pea green, emerald, chartreuse? I know the names, but not how to apply them yet), checkered shirts. It seems I also have a dark suit for weddings and funerals. "Just as handsome as before," Paola said, when I had put on something casual.

  She led me down a long hallway lined with shelves full of books. I looked at the spines and recognized most of them. That is to say I recognized the titles-The Betrothed, Orlando Furioso, The Catcher in the Rye. For the first time, I had the impression of being in a place where I felt at ease. I pulled a volume from the shelf, but even before looking at the cover I held the back of it in my right hand and with my left thumb flipped quickly through the pages in reverse. I liked the noise, did it several times, then asked Paola whether I should see a soccer player kicking a ball. She laughed; apparently there were little books that made the rounds when we were children, a kind of poor man’s movie, where the soccer player changed position on each page, so that if you flipped the pages rapidly you saw him move. I made sure that this was something everyone knew: I thought as much, it was not a memory, just a notion.

  The book was Père Goriot, Balzac. Without opening it I said: "Goriot sacrificed himself for his daughters. One was named Delphine, I think. Along come Vautrin alias Collin and the ambitious Rastignac- just the two of us now, Paris. Did I read much?"

  "You’re a tireless reader. With an iron memory. You know stacks of poems by heart."

  "Did I write?"

  "Nothing of your own. I’m a sterile genius, you used to say; in this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while."

  "I have so many books. Sorry, we do."

  "Five thousand here. And there’s always some imbecile who comes over and says, my how many books you have, have you read them all?"

  "And what do I say?"

  "Usually you say: Not one, why else would I be keeping them here? Do you by chance keep the tins of meat after you’ve emptied them? As for the five thousand I’ve already read, I gave them away to prisons and hospitals. And the imbecile reels."

  "I see a lot of foreign books. I think I know several languages." Verses came to me unbidden: "Le brouillard indolent de l’automne est épars… Unreal city, / under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many… Spätherbstnebel, kalte Träume, / überfloren Berg und Tal, / Sturm entblättert schon die Bäume, / und sie schaun gespenstig kahl… Mas el doctor no sabía," I concluded, "que hoy es siempre todavía …"

  "That’s curious, out of four poems, three are about fog."

  "You know, I feel surrounded by fog. It’s just that I can’t see it. I know how others have seen it: At a turn, an ephemeral sun br
ightens: a duster of mimosas in the pure white fog."

  "You were fascinated by fog. You used to say you were born in it. For years now, whenever you came across a description of fog in a book you made a note in the margin. Then one by one you had the pages photocopied at your studio. I think you’ll find your fog dossier there. And in any case, all you have to do is wait: the fog will be back. Though it’s no longer what it used to be-there’s too much light in Milan, too many shop windows lit up even at night; the fog slips away along the walls."

  "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes, the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes, licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, curled once about the house and fell asleep."

  "Even I knew that one. You used to complain that the fogs of your youth weren’t around any more."

  "My youth. Is there someplace here where I keep the books I had when I was a kid?"

  "Not here. They must be in Solara, at the country house."

  And so I learned the story of the Solara house, and of my family. I was born there, accidentally, during the Christmas holidays of 1931. Like Baby Jesus. Maternal grandparents dead before I was born, paternal grandmother passed away when I was five. My father’s father remained, and we were all he had left. My grandfather was a strange character. In the city where I grew up, he had a shop, almost a warehouse, of old books. Not valuable, antiquarian books, like mine, just used books, and lots of nineteenth-century stuff. In addition, he liked to travel and went abroad often. In that era, abroad meant Lugano, or at the very most Paris or Munich. And in such places he collected things from street vendors: not only books but also movie posters, figurines, postcards, old magazines. Back then we did not have all the memorabilia collectors we have today, Paola said, but he had a few regular customers, or maybe he collected for his own pleasure. He never made much, but he enjoyed himself. Then in the twenties he inherited the Solara house from a great-uncle. An immense house, if you could see it, Yambo, the attics alone look like the Postojna caves. There was a lot of land around it, which was farmed by tenants, and your grandfather derived enough from that to live on, without having to work too hard at selling books.