The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana Read online

  "That doesn’t seem much like my case. Legs on his head? And his penis in place of his nose?"

  "Hang on. Never mind about the legs on the head, that happened only occasionally. The worst thing was his memory. Reduced to shreds, as if it had been pulverized-much worse than yours. Like you, he couldn’t remember where he was born or the name of his mother-but he could no longer even read or write. Luria begins observing him. Zasetsky has an iron will and relearns how to read and write, and he writes and writes. For twenty-five years he records not only everything he disinters from the devastated caverns of his memory but also everything that happens to him day by day. It was as if his hand, with its automatisms, was able to put in order what his head couldn’t. Which is like saying that what he wrote was more intelligent than he was. And thus, on paper, he gradually rediscovered himself. You’re not him, but what struck me is that he reconstructed for himself a memory made of paper. And it took him twenty-five years. You already have plenty of paper here, but evidently it isn’t the right paper. Your cavern is in the country house. I’ve given it a lot of thought in recent days, you know. All the papers of your childhood and your adolescence-you locked them away too abruptly. Maybe something there will hit home for you. So now, please do me the great favor of going to Solara. Alone, because for one thing I can’t get away from work, and for another this is something, as I see it, that you have do by yourself. Just you and your distant past. Stay as long as you need to and see what happens. You’ll lose a week at most, maybe two, and you’ll get some good air, which won’t hurt a bit. I’ve already phoned Amalia."

  "And who’s Amalia-Zasetsky’s wife?"

  "Yes, his grandmother. I didn’t tell you quite everything about Solara. In your grandfather’s time there were tenant farmers, Tommaso, who went by Masulu, and Maria, because in those days the house had quite a bit of land around it, mostly vineyards, and a fair amount of livestock. Maria watched you grow up and loved you with all her heart. As did Amalia, her daughter, who’s about ten years older than you and who played the role of your big sister, nanny, everything. You were her idol. When your aunt and uncle sold the lands, including the farm on the hill, there was still a small vineyard left, and the fruit orchard, vegetable garden, pigsty, rabbit hutch, and henhouse. It no longer made sense to speak of tenant terming, so you just left it all to Masulu to use as he liked, with the proviso that his family would take care of the house. Eventually Masulu and Maria passed on, too, and because Amalia never married-she was never a great beauty-she’s still there, selling her eggs and chickens in town, the pork butcher comes by when the time is right to kill the pig for her, some cousins help her apply the Bordeaux mixture to the vines and harvest her small crop of grapes; in short, she’s content, except she feels a little lonely, so she’s happy when the girls visit with the little ones. We pay her for any eggs, chickens, or salami we consume, for fruit and vegetables there’s no charge-she says they belong to us. She’s a gem, and you’ll see what a cook she is. When she heard you might come, she was beside herself-Signorino Yambo this, Signorino Yambo that, how wonderful, you’ll see, his illness will disappear when I fix him that salad he likes…"

  "Signorino Yambo. How extravagant. By the way, why does everyone call me Yambo?"

  "For Amalia, you’ll always be Signorino, even when you’re eighty. And as for Yambo, it was Maria who explained it to me. You chose it yourself when you were little. You used to say, My name is Yambo, the boy with the quiff. And you’ve been Yambo ever since."

  "The quiff?"

  "You must have had a cute little quiff. And you didn’t like Giambattista, I can’t say I blame you. But enough personal history. You’re leaving. You can’t really go by train, since you’d have to change four times, but Nicoletta will take you-she needs to pick up some things she left there at Christmas, then she’ll turn right around and leave you with Amalia, who’ll pamper you, who’ll be around when you need her and disappear when you want to be alone. Five years ago we put a phone in, so we can be in touch at any time. Give it a try, please."

  I asked for a few days to think about it. I was the one who had first brought up the idea of a trip, to escape those afternoons in my studio. But did I really want to escape those afternoons in my studio?

  I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way. And besides, what did I want to get out of? Who was it who said Open sesame, I want to get out? I wanted to go in, like Ali Baba. Into the caverns of memory.

  Sibilla was kind enough to solve my problem. One afternoon she emitted an irresistible hiccup, blushed slightly (in your blood, which spreads its flames across your face, the cosmos makes its laughter), tormented a stack of forms she had in front of her, and said: "Yambo, you should be the first to know… I’m getting married."

  "What do you mean, married?" I replied, as if to say, "How could you?"

  "I’m getting married. You know, when a man and woman exchange rings and everyone throws rice on them?"

  "No, I mean… you’re leaving me?"

  "Why would I? He works for an architecture firm, but he doesn’t make a whole lot yet-both of us will have to work. And besides, how could I ever leave you?"

  The other planted the knife in his heart and turned it there twice.

  The end of The Trial, and indeed, the end of the trial. "And is this something… that’s been going on a long time?"

  "Not long. We met a few weeks ago-you know how these things go. He’s a great guy, you’ll meet him."

  How these things go. Perhaps there were other great guys before him, or perhaps she took advantage of my accident to wash her hands of an untenable situation. Maybe she threw herself on the first guy who came along, a shot in the dark. In which case I have hurt her twice. But who hurt her, you imbecile? Things are going as things go: she is young, meets someone her own age, falls in love for the first time… For the first time, okay? And someone will pluck your flower, mouth of the wellspring, and not having sought you will be his grace and good fortune…

  "I’ll have to get you a nice present."

  "There’s plenty of time. We decided last night, but I want to wait until you’ve recovered, so I can take a week of vacation without feeling guilty."

  Without feeling guilty. How thoughtful.

  What was the last quote I had seen about fog? When we arrived at the Rome station, the evening of Good Friday, and she rode off in a coach into the fog, it seemed to me that I had lost her forever, irrevocably.

  The story of our affair had ended on its own. Whatever had happened before, all erased. The blackboard shiny black. From now on, like a daughter only.

  At that point I could leave. Indeed, I had to. I told Paola that I would be going to Solara. She was happy.

  "You’ll like it there, you’ll see."

  "O flounder, flounder, in the sea, / it really isn’t up to me, / it’s just that tiresome wife I’ve got, / for she desires what I do not."

  "You wicked man. To the countryside, to the countryside!"

  That evening in bed, as Paola was giving me some last-minute advice before my trip, I caressed her breasts. She moaned softly, and I felt something that resembled desire, but mixed with gentleness, and perhaps recognition. We made love.

  As with the toothbrushing, my body had apparently retained a memory of how it was done. It was a calm thing, a slow rhythm. She had her orgasm first (she always did, she later said), and I had mine soon after. After all, it was my first time. It really is as good as they say. I was not surprised by that fact; it was as if my brain already knew it, but my body was just then discovering it was true.

  "That’s not bad," I said, collapsing onto my back. "Now I know why people are so fond of it."

  "Christ," Paola remarked, "on top of everything else, I’ve had to deflower my sixty-year-old husband."

  "Better late than never."

  But I couldn’t help wondering, as I fell asleep with Paola’s hand in mine, whether it would have been the same thing with Sibilla. Imbecile, I
murmured to myself as I slowly lost consciousness, that is something you can never know.

  I left. Nicoletta was driving, and I was looking at her, in profile. Judging by the photos of me at the time of my marriage, her nose was mine, and the shape of her mouth, too. She really was my daughter, I had not been saddled with the fruit of some indiscretion.

  (Her blouse being slightly open, he suddenly espied a gold locket upon her breast, with a Y delicately engraved upon it. Great God, said he, who gave you that? I’ve always worn it, my lord, it was around my neck when I was found as an infant upon the steps of the Poor Clares convent at Saint-Auban, said she. The locket that belonged to your mother, the duchess, I exclaimed! Do you by chance have four moles in the shape of a cross upon your left shoulder? Yes, my lord, but how could you have known? Well then, then you are my daughter and I am your father! Father, oh Father! No, do not, my chaste innocent, lose your senses now. We’ll run off the road!)

  We were not talking, but I had already realized that Nicoletta was laconic by nature, and in that moment she was no doubt embarrassed, afraid to draw my attention to things I had forgotten, not wanting to upset me. I asked her only what direction we were heading: "Solara is right on the border between Langhe and Monferrato; it’s a beautiful place, you’ll see, Papà." I liked hearing myself called Papà.

  At first, after we had left the highway, I saw signs that referred to well-known cities: Turin, Asti, Alessandria, Casale. Later we made our way onto secondary roads, where the signs began to refer to towns I had never heard of. After a few kilometers of plains, beyond a dip in the road, I glimpsed the pale blue outline of some hills in the distance. But the outline disappeared suddenly, because a wall of trees rose up in front of us and we drove into it, proceeding along a leafy corridor that brought to mind tropical forests. Que me font maintenant tes ombrages et tes lacs?

  But once we had passed through the corridor, which felt like a continuation of the plains, we found ourselves in a hollow dominated by hills on each side and behind us. Evidently we had entered Monferrato after an imperceptible and continuous ascent, high ground had surrounded us without my noticing, and already I was entering into another world, into a festival of budding vineyards. In the distance, peaks of various heights, some barely rising above the low hills, some steeper, many dominated by structures-churches, large farmhouses, castles of a sort-that made their stands with disproportionate obtrusiveness and rather than gently completing their peaks, gave them a shove toward the sky.

  At a certain point, after an hour or so of traveling through those hills, where a different landscape unfurled at every turn as if we were being suddenly transported from one region to another, I saw a sign that said Mongardello. I said: "Mongardello. Then Corseglio, Montevasco, Castelletto Vecchio, Lovezzolo, and we’re there, right?"

  "How do you know that?"

  "Everyone knows that," I said. But apparently that was not true; do any encyclopedias mention Lovezzolo? Was I beginning to penetrate the cavern?

  Part Two. PAPER MEMORY

  5. Clarabelle’s Treasure

  ____________________

  As I drew near the places of my childhood, I tried and failed to grasp why as an adult I had never willingly gone to Solara. It was not so much Solara itself-little more than a big village that one skirts before leaving it in its hollow amid the vineyards on the low hills-but what lay beyond and above it. At a certain point, after various hairpin curves, Nicoletta turned onto a narrow side road, and we drove for at least two kilometers along an embankment that was barely wide enough for two cars to pass and that sloped away on both sides, revealing two distinct landscapes. On the right, typical Monferrato country, gently rolling hills festooned with rows of vines, proliferating languidly, green against a clear early-summer sky, at that hour when (I knew) the midday demon rages. On the left, the first foothills of the Langhe region, with its harsher, less modulated contours, like a series of ranges one after the other, each given perspective by a different hue, until the farthest ones vanish in a pale blue haze.

  I was discovering that landscape for the first time, yet I felt it was mine and had the impression that, had I launched into a mad run down toward the valleys, I would have known where I was going and how to get there. In a way it was like leaving the hospital and being able to drive that car I had never seen. I felt at home. I was gripped by a vague joy, an absent-minded happiness.

  The embankment continued its ascent along the flank of a hill that suddenly loomed above it, and there, at the end of a drive lined with horse chestnuts, was the house. We came to a stop in front of a kind of courtyard splashed with beds of flowers, and behind the building you could glimpse a slightly higher hill, over which stretched what must have been Amalia’s little vineyard. From the front it was difficult to discern the shape of that huge house with its tall second-story windows: you could see the vast central wing, which featured a lovely oak door set in a rounded archway beneath a balcony that overlooked the drive, and two smaller wings on either side with humbler entryways, but it was hard to tell how far the house extended in back, toward the hill. The courtyard looked out, behind me, onto the two landscapes I had just admired, and with a 180-degree panorama, for the driveway ascended gradually and the road that had led us here disappeared below us, without blocking the view.

  It was a brief impression, because almost at once we heard shrieks of jubilation, and there emerged a woman who, from the descriptions I had been given, could have been no one but Amalia: short of leg, rather robust, ot uncertain age (as Nicoletta had said earlier, between twenty and ninety), with a dried-chestnut face that was lit by an irrepressible joy. In short, the welcoming ceremony, hugs and kisses, demure gaffes quickly followed by little cries cut off by a hand clapped over a mouth (does Signorino Yambo remember this and that, surely you recognize, and so on, with Nicoletta, behind me, no doubt giving her looks).

  A whirlwind, no room to think or ask questions, barely enough time to unload my suitcases and carry them to the left wing, the one where Paola had settled with the girls and where I too could stay, unless I preferred to stay in the central wing, the wing of my grandparents and my childhood, which had remained closed upstairs, like a sanctum ("Well, you know, I go in pretty regular to give things a good dusting, and every now and again I air it out some, but just every now and again, so as you don’t get nasty smells, and without bothering the rooms, which for me is like being in church"). But on the ground floor those big empty rooms remained open, because that was where they set out the apples, the tomatoes, and many other good things, to ripen and to keep cool. And indeed, just a few steps into those entrance halls you could smell the pungent scent of spices and fruits and vegetables, and the first figs were already laid out on a long table, the very first, and I could not help tasting one and venturing to say that that tree always had been bountiful, but Amalia shouted, "What do you mean that tree: those trees, there’s five as you well know, each prettier than the last!" Forgive me, Amalia, I was distracted. And no wonder, with all the important things you’ve got in that head of yours, Signorino Yambo. Thank you, Amalia, if only I really did have lots of things in my head-the trouble is they all flew away, whoosh, one morning in late April, and one fig or five, it’s all the same to me.

  "Are there already grapes on the vines?" I asked, if only to show I still had my wits about me.

  "Well, the grapes are still just itty-bitty clusters like babies in a mamma’s belly, though this year what with all the heat everything’s ripening sooner than usual-sure hope we get some rain. They’ll be ripe in time for you to see, I reckon you ought to stay till September. I know you’ve been a mite under the weather, and Signora Paola tells me I’ve got to give you a boost, something good and nourishing. For tonight I’m fixing what you liked when you was a boy, salad with a dressing of oil and tomato, with little pieces of celery and chopped green onion and all the herbs God could want, and I got them rolls you used to like for sopping up the dressing. Then one of fat cockerels-none
of that store-bought chicken fatted on garbage-or if you’d favor rabbit with rosemary… Rabbit? Rabbit; I’ll go right over and give the prettiest one a whack on the neck, poor little critter, but that’s life. Lord, can it be true Nicoletta is leaving so quick? What a shame. That’s all right, we’ll stick around just the two of us and you can do whatever you like and I won’t get in your hair. You’ll see me in the morning, when I bring you your coffee, and at mealtimes, and the rest of the time you just come and go as you please." "So, Papà," said Nicoletta as she was loading the stuff she had come to retrieve, "Solara may seem a long way from here, but behind the house there’s a path that goes straight down into the town, cutting out all the switchbacks of the road. It’s a fairly steep descent, but there’s a kind of stairway, and before you know it you’re down on the plain. Fifteen minutes to get down and twenty to get back up, but you always said it was good for the cholesterol. In town you’ll find newspapers and cigarettes, but if you tell Amalia she’ll go at eight in the morning. She goes in any case for all her errands and for mass. But be sure to write down for her the name of the paper you want, every day, otherwise she’ll forget and bring you the same issue of Gente or some other celebrity rag seven days in a row. You really don’t need anything else? I’d like to stay with you, but Mamma says it’ll do you good to be alone among your old things."

  Nicoletta left. Amalia showed me to the room that was mine and Paola’s (lavender scent). I arranged my things, changed into some comfortable old rags that I rounded up, including some down-at-heel shoes that must have been twenty years old, real landowner’s shoes, and then sat at the window for half an hour looking out at the hills on the Langhe side.

  On the kitchen table was a newspaper from around Christmastime (we were last there for the holidays), and I began reading it, after pouring myself a glass of moscato, a bottle of which was waiting in a bucket of ice-cold well water. In late November the United Nations had authorized the use of force to free Kuwait from the Iraqis, the first shipments of American equipment had recently left for Saudi Arabia, and there was talk of one last attempt by the U.S. to negotiate in Geneva with Saddam’s ministers and convince him to withdraw. The newspaper was helping me reconstruct certain events, and I read it as if it were the latest news.