The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana Read online

  Apparently that was where I spent all my childhood summers, Christmas and Easter vacations, and many other religious holidays, as well as two full years, from 1943 to 1945, after the bombings had begun in the city. That is where all my grandfather’s things must be, along with all my schoolbooks and toys.

  "I don’t know where they are; it was as if you didn’t want to see them anymore. Your relationship with that house has always been bizarre. Your grandfather died of a heart attack after your parents were lost in that car accident, around the time you were finishing high school…"

  "What did my parents do?"

  "Your father worked for an import business, eventually becoming the manager. Your mother stayed home, as respectable ladies did. Your father eventually managed to buy himself a car-a Lancia no less-and what happened happened. You were never very explicit on that score. You were about to go off to university and you and your sister Ada lost your whole family in a single blow."

  "I have a sister?"

  "Younger than you. She was taken in by your mother’s brother and sister-in-law, who had become your legal guardians. But Ada got married young, at eighteen, to a guy who whisked her off to live in Australia. You don’t see each other often. She makes it to Italy about as often as the pope dies. Your aunt and uncle sold the family house in the city, and almost all the Solara land. Thanks to the proceeds, you were able to continue your studies, but you quickly gained your independence from them by winning a university scholarship, and you went to live in Turin. From that point on you seemed to forget Solara. I insisted, after Carla and Nicoletta were born, that we go there for summers. That air is good for the kids. I sweated blood to get the wing that we stay in livable. And you went against your will. The girls love it, it’s their childhood, even now they spend all the time they can there, with the little ones. You’d go back for their sake, stay two or three days, but you never set foot in the places you called the sanctums: your old bedroom, your parents’ and grandparents’ rooms, the attics… On the other hand, there’s still enough space left that three families can live there and never see each other. You’d take a few walks in the hills and then there would always be something urgent that required you to return to Milan. It’s understandable, your parents’ deaths basically split your life into two parts, before and after. Perhaps the Solara house represented for you a world that had vanished forever, and you made a clean break. I always tried to respect your discomfort, though sometimes jealousy made me think it was just an excuse-that you were going back to Milan alone for other reasons. Mais glissons."

  "The irresistible smile. So what made you marry the laughing man?"

  "You laughed well, and you made me laugh. When I was a girl I always talked about a schoolmate of mine-it was Luigino this and Luigino that. Every day I came home from school talking about something Luigino had done. My mother suspected I was sweet on him, and one day she asked me why I liked Luigino so much. And I said, Because he makes me laugh."

  Experiences can be recovered in a hurry. I tested the flavors of different foods-the hospital fare had all tasted the same. Mustard on boiled meat is quite appetizing. But meat is stringy and gets between your teeth. I discovered (rediscovered?) toothpicks. If only I could work one into my frontal lobe, get the dross out… Paola had me taste two wines, and I said the second was incomparably better. It ought to be, she said; the first is cooking wine, good for a stew at best, the second is Brunello. Well, I said, no matter what shape my head is in, at least my palate is working.

  I spent the afternoon testing things, feeling the pressure of my hand on a cognac glass, watching how the coffee rises in the coffee-maker, tasting two varieties of honey and three kinds of marmalade (I like apricot best), rubbing the living room curtains, squeezing a lemon, plunging my hands into a sack of semolina. Then Paola took me for a short walk in the park; I felt the barks of the trees, I heard the murmur of mulberry leaves in the hand. We passed a flower seller in Largo Cairoli, and Paola had him put together, against his better judgment, a bouquet that looked like a harlequin. Back at home I tried to distinguish the scents of different flowers and herbs. And he saw that everything was very good, I said, cheered. Paola asked me if I felt like God. I replied that I was quoting just for the sake of quoting, but I was certainly an Adam discovering his Garden of Eden. And an Adam who learns quickly, it seems: I saw, on a shelf, some bottles and boxes of cleansers, and I knew at once not to touch the tree of good and evil.

  After dinner I sat down in the living room. Instinctively I went over to the rocking chair and sank into it. "You always did that," Paola said. "It’s where you had your evening scotch. I think Gratarolo would permit you that." She brought me a bottle, Laphroaig, and poured me a good amount, no ice. I rolled the liquid around in my mouth before swallowing. "Exquisite. It tastes a little like kerosene, though." Paola was excited: "You know, after the war, in the early fifties-it was only then that people started drinking whiskey. Maybe the Fascist higher-ups drank it before that, who knows, but normal people didn’t. And we started drinking it when we were about twenty. Not often, because it was expensive, but it was a rite of passage. And our folks all looked at us and said, how can you drink that stuff, it tastes like kerosene."

  "Well, tastes aren’t conjuring up any Combray for me."

  "It depends on the taste. Keep on living and you’ll find the right one."

  On the little side table there was a pack of Gitanes, papier maïs. I lit one, inhaled greedily, and coughed. I took a few more puffs and put it out.

  I let myself rock gently until I began to feel sleepy. The tolling of a grandfather clock woke me, and I almost spilled my scotch. The clock was behind me, but before I could identify it, the tolling stopped, and I said, "It’s nine o’clock." Then, to Paola, "You know what just happened? I was dozing, and the clock woke me. I didn’t hear the first few chimes distinctly, that is to say, I didn’t count them. But as soon as I decided to count I realized that there had already been three, so I was able to count four, five, and so on. I understood that I could say four and then wait for the fifth, because one, two, and three had passed, and I somehow knew that. If the fourth chime had been the first I was conscious of, I would have thought it was six o’clock. I think our lives are like that-you can only anticipate the future if you can call the past to mind. I can’t count the chimes of my life because I don’t know how many came before. On the other hand, I dozed off because the chair had been rocking for a while. And I dozed off in a certain moment because that moment had been preceded by other moments, and because I was relaxing while awaiting the subsequent moment. But if the first moments hadn’t put me in the right frame of mind, if I had begun rocking in any old moment, I wouldn’t have expected what had to come. I would have remained awake. You need memory even to fall asleep. Or no?"

  "The snowball effect. The avalanche slides toward the valley, gaining speed as it goes, because little by little it gets larger, carrying with it the weight of all it has been before. Otherwise there is no avalanche-just a little snowball that never rolls down."

  "Yesterday evening… in the hospital, I was bored, and I started humming a tune to myself. It was automatic, like brushing my teeth… I tried to figure out how I knew it. I started to sing it again, but once I began thinking about it, the song no longer came of its own accord, and I stopped on a single note. I held it a long time, at least five seconds, as if it were an alarm or a dirge. I no longer knew how to go forward, and I didn’t know how to go forward because I had lost what came before. That’s it, that’s how I am. I’m holding a long note, like a stuck record, and since I can’t remember the opening notes, I can’t finish the song. I wonder what it is I’m supposed to finish, and why. While I was singing without thinking I was actually myself for the duration of my memory, which in that case was what you might call throat memory, with the befores and afters linked together, and I was the complete song, and every time I began it my vocal cords were already preparing to vibrate the sounds to come. I think a pi
anist works that way, too: even as he plays one note he’s readying his fingers to strike the keys that come next. Without the first notes, we won’t make it to the last ones, we’ll come untuned, and we’ll succeed in getting from start to finish only if we somehow contain the entire song within us. I don’t know the whole song anymore. I’m like… a burning log. The log burns, but it has no awareness of having once been part of a whole trunk nor any way to find out that it has been, or to know when it caught fire. So it burns up and that’s all. I’m living in pure loss."

  "Let’s not go overboard with the philosophy," Paola whispered.

  "No, let’s. Where do I keep my copy of Augustine’s Confessions?"

  "In the bookcase with the encyclopedias, the Bible, the Koran, Lao Tzu, and the philosophy books."

  I went to pick out the Confessions and looked in the index for the passages on memory. I must have read them because they were all underlined: I come then to the fields and the vast chambers of memory… When I enter there, I summon whatever images I wish. Some appear at once, but others must be sought at length, dragged forth as it were from hidden nooks… Memory gathers all this in its vast cavern, in its hidden and ineffable recesses… In the enormous palace of my memory, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me… I find myself there also… Great is the power of memory, O my God, and awe-inspiring its infinite, profound complexity. And that is the mind, and that is myself… Behold the fields and caves, the measureless caverns of memory, immeasurably full of immeasurable things… I pass among them all, I fly from here to there, and nowhere is there any end…"You see, Paola," I said, "you’ve told me about my grandfather and the country house, everyone’s trying to give me all this information, but when I receive it in this way, in order really to populate these caverns I’d have to put into them every one of the sixty years I’ve lived till now. No, this is not the way to do it. I have to go into the cavern alone. Like Tom Sawyer."

  I do not know what Paola said to that, because I was still making the chair rock and I dozed again.

  Briefly, I think, because I heard the doorbell, and it was Gianni Laivelli. We had been desk mates, the two Dioscuri. He embraced me like a brother, emotional, already knowing how to treat me. Don’t worry, he said, I know more about your life than you do. I’ll tell you every last detail. No thanks, I told him, Paola already explained our history to me. Together from elementary school through high school. Then I went off to college in Turin while he studied economics and business in Milan. But apparently we never lost touch. I sell antiquarian books, he helps people pay their taxes-or not pay them-and by all rights we should have each gone our separate ways, but instead we’re like family: his two grandchildren play with mine, and we always celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together.

  No thanks, I had said, but Gianni could not keep his mouth shut. And since he remembered, he seemed unable to grasp that I did not. Remember, he would say, the day we brought a mouse to class to scare the math teacher, and the time we took a trip to Asti to see the Alfieri play and when we got back we learned that the plane carrying the Turin team had gone down, and the time that…"

  "No, I don’t remember, Gianni, but you’re such a good storyteller that it’s as if I did. Which one of us was smarter?"

  "Naturally, in Italian and philosophy you were, and in math I was. You see how we turned out."

  "By the way, Paola, what did I major in?"

  "In letters, with a thesis on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Unreadable, at least to me. Then you went off to Germany to specialize in the history of ancient books. You said that because of the name you’d been stuck with you couldn’t have done anything else. And then there was your grandfather’s example, a life among papers. When you came back, you set up your rare book studio, at first in a little room, using the little capital you had left. After that, things went well for you."

  "Are you aware that you sell books that cost more than a Porsche?" Gianni said. "They’re gorgeous, and to pick them up and realize they’re five hundred years old, and the pages still as snappy beneath your fingers as if they’d just come off the press…"

  "Take it easy," Paola said, "we can start talking about his work in the next few days. Let’s give him a chance to get used to his home first. How about a scotch, kerosene-flavored?"

  "Kerosene?"

  "It’s just something between me and Yambo, Gianni. We’re starting to have secrets again."

  When I escorted Gianni to the door, he took me by the arm and whispered to me in a complicit tone, "And so you haven’t yet seen the beautiful Sibilla…"

  Sibilla who?

  Yesterday Carla and Nicoletta came with their whole families, even their husbands, who are friendly. I spent the afternoon with the children. They are sweet, I am beginning to get attached to them. But it is embarrassing; at a certain point I realized that I was smothering them with kisses, pulling them to me, and I could smell them-soap, milk, and talcum powder. And I asked myself what I was doing with those strange children. Am I some kind of pedophile? I kept them at a distance and we played some games. They asked me to be a bear-who knows what a grandfather bear does. So I got on all fours, going awrr roarr roarr, and they all jumped on my back. Take it easy, I’m not young anymore, my back aches. Luca zapped me with a water pistol, and I thought it wise to die, belly up. I risked throwing my back out, but it was a success. I was still weak, and as I got back up my head was spinning. "You shouldn’t do that," Nicoletta said, "you know you have orthostatic pressure." Then she corrected herself: "I’m sorry, you didn’t know. Well, now you know again." A new chapter for my future autobiography. Written by someone else.

  My life as an encyclopedia continues. I speak as if I were up against a wall and could never turn around. My memories have the depth of a few weeks. Other people’s stretch back centuries. A few evenings ago I tasted a small nut. I said: The distinctive scent of bitter almond. In the park I saw two policemen on horseback: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

  I knocked my hand against a sharp corner, and as I was sucking the little scratch and trying to see what my blood tasted like, I said: Often have I encountered the evil of living.

  There was a downpour and when it ended I exulted: For lo, the rain is over and gone.

  I usually go to bed early and remark: Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure.

  I do fine with traffic lights, but the other day I stepped into the street at a moment that seemed safe, and Paola managed to grab my arm just in time, because a car was coming. "I had it timed," I said. "I would have made it."

  "No, you wouldn’t have made it. That car was going fast."

  "Come on, I’m not an idiot. I know perfectly well that cars run over pedestrians, and chickens too, and to avoid them they hit the brakes and black smoke comes out and they have to get out to start the car again with the crank. Two men in dustcoats with big black goggles, and me with mile-long ears that look like wings." Where did that image come from?

  Paola looked at me. "What’s the fastest you think a car can go?"

  "Oh," I said, "up to eighty kilometers per hour…" Apparently they go quite a bit faster now. My ideas on the subject seemed to come from the period when I got my license.

  I was astonished that, as we made our way across Largo Cairoli, every few steps we passed a Negro who wanted to sell me a lighter. Paola brought me for a bike ride in the park (I have no trouble riding a bike), and I was astonished again to see a group of Negroes playing drums around a pond. "Where are we," I said, "New York? Since when have there been so many Negroes in Milan?"

  "For some time now," Paola replied. "But we don’t say Negroes anymore, we say blacks."

  "What difference does it make? They sell lighters, they come here to play their drums because they probably don’t have a lira to go to a café, or maybe they’re not wanted there. It looks to me as if these blacks are as badly off as the Negroes."

  "Still, that’s what one says now. You did, too."

  Paola observed that when I t
ry to speak English I make mistakes, but I do not when I speak German or French. "That doesn’t surprise me," she said. "You must have absorbed French as a child, and it’s still in your tongue the way bicycles are still in your legs. You learned German from textbooks in college, and you remember everything from books. But English, on the other hand, you learned during your travels, later. It belongs to your personal experiences of the past thirty years, and only bits of it have stuck to your tongue."

  I still feel a little weak. I can focus on something for half an hour, an hour at the most; then I go lie down for a while. Paola takes me to the pharmacist every day to have my blood pressure checked. And I have to pay attention to my diet, avoid salt.

  I have begun watching television; it is the thing that tires me least. I see unfamiliar gentlemen who are called president and prime minister. I see the king of Spain (was it not Franco?) and ex-terrorists (terrorists?) who have repented. I do not always understand what they are talking about, but I learn a great deal. I remember Aldo Moro, the parallel convergences, but who killed him? Or was he in the plane that crashed into the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Ustica? I see some singers with rings through their earlobes. And they are male. I like the TV series about family tragedies in Texas, the old films of John Wayne. Action movies upset me, because with one blast of their tommy guns they blow up rooms, they make cars flip over and explode, a guy in an undershirt throws a punch and another guy smashes through a plate-glass window and plummets into the sea-all of it, the room, the car, the window, in a few seconds. Too fast, my head spins. And why so much noise?