I prepared the CV and attached it to the email to Luisa. Then, as it turned out, I had a great deal of work, and that work gave me such a headache that I stopped dealing not only with the matter of the list, but I also didn’t pay attention to my daughters, nor to the man with whom I’ve been in a complicated relationship for the past few years.
He’s the same person I mentioned as my source regarding the list of twenty-eight. The last time we saw each other, he said, with a sarcasm I didn’t appreciate: your illustrious father has been put on the list, but illustriousness goes to waste, there are no longer twenty-eight teachers but fifty. I wasn’t surprised: I knew the nominees would have grown in number, that the list would be increasingly packed with people without any merits, and that in the end, in order to avoid conflict among small but powerful people, they would have summoned a sizable number of lowly employees, without any spark to them, in some big room in the Quirinale, and that they would give a little commemorative medal to all of them. But I got angry instead. I wanted that initiative to retain a certain dignity, I wanted my father to be truly celebrated, with great pomp. So, for starters, I got upset, mocking Silvio, that’s how I’ll call my friend. The desire to spend time with him vanished in an instant, even though we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and I’d really wanted things to go well. “Your illustrious father,” “illustriousness goes to waste,” how dare he? I already struggled, on the whole, to relax and enjoy myself; but then, if something raises my hackles, I can’t stand even a caress.
—Trying to be funny? I asked him.
—Not at all.
—Then don’t you dare talk that way about my father anymore.
—What did I say?
—Forget about it.
I got dressed, and even though he tried to hold me back with sweet gestures and rough ones—he grabbed hold of my wrist and hissed: if you go out that door, you’ll never see me again—I left.
When I was outside, I started crying. I couldn’t calm down. I didn’t cry for him, who was, on the whole, a patient man, the most patient I’ve come across, but because I was exhausted, which, on top of feeling dazed, on top of having a stomachache and a backache, was drilling a hole in my chest. I don’t cut corners with myself, not at work nor with anything else; I’m incapable of keeping one foot in and one foot out, setting limits to my involvement. I probably ended up with a body not able to take on the tasks I put myself up to, and one of these days I’ll collapse on the street, they’ll push me to the edges of a dumpster overflowing with other trash that the seagulls rummage through with their beaks. But this is a country whose constant refrain is: it’s not my fault. Nothing is said and done as it should be, and I end up feeling like I’m playing the part of the whip of cords that Jesus grasped when he chased the merchants out of the temple. I fight hard, I do, and I don’t let up. Nevertheless, on days like this, when I can’t go on, what strikes me and scares me is that I’d like to grab a sharp knife, not to make a clean sweep of the temple, or any other institution that thinks it can have its way, but to cut myself, with precision, all over my body.
During this intensely stressful phase of work, I sent my daughters to my parents’ house, and for a few days all I did was deal with various troubles. Silvio called often, but I didn’t pick up, not because I bore a grudge, simply because I was worn out. Instead I replied to my mother, I said: okay, I’ll pop over to your place, but I’ll leave the girls there another few days. The fact that my daughters are often at their grandparents’ calms me down; if I were their age again, and could go back to live in that house, I’d feel better. I left when I was eighteen, I got married at twenty-two, but I did that because of my yearning for life. I’m not like those that hate their original families, and their own childhoods and teenaged years. I adore my mother, and I hope I’ve made it clear how much I love my father. It’s this life of ongoing struggle that’s getting increasingly harder to bear.
This is what I told my mother. I tossed off, when she seemed worried that I looked pale and worn-down: I’m happy here, it’s out there that I feel bad. Then I went to the girls to say goodbye (the older one is fourteen, the second twelve, the next eight, and the youngest five: I’m harebrained, why on earth did I have four children?). My mother stayed in the kitchen. Naturally, they were with my father. I walked down the hallway, and I heard his voice, lovely, unveiled. I stopped; the study door was open. He was sitting on an old armchair, and I saw him in profile. He had the little one on his knee, and his other three grandchildren were sitting on colored pillows spread out on the floor. It was a scene I’d witnessed a hundred times. He was telling them something, or maybe not telling, maybe explaining is the right world. He did the same thing with me, with Sergio, with Ernesto, and whether it was a mechanical device, or a work of art, or the unfolding of a battle, it makes no difference. He was explaining something, and it was as if, in the space between himself and the girls, he were unfurling an old map with inscriptions and colored figures and detailed landscapes. My daughters looked at him, silently, and I liked, above all, the way that Nadina, the oldest, was gazing at him. The marked but nevertheless beautiful face of her grandfather blinded her. I said to myself: I was like that, and I’d still like to be like that, what a pity to have deprived myself of all that, too soon. I leaned my shoulder against the hallway wall and predicted the chorus of protests that would greet me were I to burst into the veranda, like an inevitably chill wind. I imagined the older two with an irritated grimace, the third who would have most likely turned quickly around, hissing: go away, mamma, and the little one woefully torn between her grandfather and me. I returned to the kitchen on the tips of my toes. My mother said:
—He never leaves them be.
—They don’t want to be left alone.
—Maybe.
—Furthermore, if he enchants them, you don’t need to work as hard.
—It takes a lot of energy to enchant them, and your father gets tired.
—I don’t think so, you think he’s tired?
—A little, but that’s how he is: if he didn’t enchant them, he’d wear himself out even more.
Just then, my cell phone rang, it was Silvio again. I stepped out onto the balcony.
—What is it?
—You still angry?
—No.
—Then why don’t you pick up?
—I’m afraid.
—Of what?
—Of everything. I’m afraid everything is falling apart.
—The two of us?
—I said everything, not the two of us.
—I have some nice news for you.
—Let’s hear it.
—There’s some guy on the commission who’s crazy about your father.
—One with pull?
—Seems so, I checked out Wikipedia, and he’s done a ton of things.
—What’s his name?
—Franco Gilara. Know him?
I said no but I wasn’t sure. When I got off the call, I went back to the kitchen with that name in my head. I asked my mother:
—Does the name Franco Gilara ring a bell?
She looked at me with slight unease.
—You really don’t remember Franco Gilara?
—No.
—Emma, it’s Franchino.