In the end, I go to Rome. If, in New York, there was a mix of hot and cold, here it’s just cold. But the city’s just as dirty, and I don’t feel safe here, either; with each step I take, I’m afraid of tripping, and ending up in some hospital with a broken bone. I got rid of Emma a few minutes ago. To her misfortune, she looks like her mother, not her father. This woman didn’t get anything from Pietro, only the upbringing he gave her. While we were talking, I thought: In some sense, we’re both his pupils; if we examined ourselves carefully, who knows how many fragments of knowledge, how many expressions we’d discover in common.
In any case, one difference is quite clear: Emma is almost always out of line. What torments her now is what I’ll be saying tomorrow. I tried, for a long time, to avoid confessing that I didn’t know, but then, when she asked if she could have a copy of my speech, with the excuse of wanting to publish in it the paper she worked for, I told her that not only was there no text, but not even an outline. I’d be improvising on the spot.
This deeply upset her, and I believe she struggled to refrain from making one of the scenes she must be used to making. Disappointed, she came close to confessing the truth to me. She said: my father’s gotten quite worked up, and knowing what you’re going to say would calm him down. Her father, her father, that’s all she talks about. Is it possible that everyone loved that man to death, even the children, who always cultivate some hate, or rather, repugnance, toward their parents? I told her: after all these years, your father should trust me. It was just what she wanted to hear. She cheered up, it almost looked like she was moved, and she exclaimed: I’ll call him on the cell phone, can you tell him that? I said no, we’ll speak tomorrow.
I went to bed and thought back to those things we’d said in confidence so many years ago. I’ll tell him, at the end of the day: the experiment is a success, life’s over, we’re safe. And I’ll add, to make fun of him, it’s not the pedagogy of love that improves us, but the pedagogy of fear.
I turned this last sentence around in my head. We feared that our terrible deeds would haunt us and lord over us forever. And yet, today, I barely remember what I told him I’d done, and I’m surprised that I recall little of what he’d confided in me. Surely, they were dreadful things, but not dreadful enough to be unforgettable, and I went on to see and hear others that were much worse. Maybe it might even be a nice thing, tomorrow, after the ceremony, to see each other somewhere, and talk about how rotten we used to feel back then.
The idea appealed to me for a while, but then I thought back to some of Pietro’s extremely exceptional moments, brief flashes of memory that I’ve pushed back over the years. They weren’t images of our quarrels, even though on some occasions they veered closed to getting violent. They were moments that seemed lovely, he with his face concentrated, his mouth half open, his eyes fixed on something invisible while he ruffled his hair with his fingers. Until I noticed that something truly repellent was coursing through his entire being, like an unbearable spasm of the nervous system. I would immediately retract my gaze, horrified. But not him, he continued to stay on the alert, as if he were seeing himself. At times I asked him, Pietro, what’s wrong? He’d explain it to me willingly, also self-mockingly. It’s the malady of my origins, he’d say. I’m the first of six siblings, the family was poor, my father was an electrician and my mother was a housewife; it’s the malady of not being capable enough, from elementary school until I received my university degree I never felt worthy; it’s the malady of the degradation of roles, I know I’m a teacher without substance, and I’m among those who are lowering, in epic proportions, the quality of intellectual work; it’s the malady of a well-proportioned body and harmonious features: beauty gives you a faulty advantage, it’s the most unjust form of getting ahead.
Each time, he’d invent some sociological or ethical reason for his malady. But at other times he seemed trapped; he wasn’t able to back out of those terrible moments, or even to hear me. He sat there, observing himself, enabling one malady after another to spring forth, and even though I called out to him, I couldn’t distract him.
I loved him deeply, and I’d wanted to save him, but there was no redeeming him. In that moment, I was terrified by the cruelty of his forehead, by the upper lip that curled ferociously, as if he had a twitch, by the way his face contorted, and I’d have to go. No, I really don’t know what I’ll say tomorrow. Pietro was, and is, a very dangerous man.