It’s only 6 p.m. and she’d give anything to be able to escape right now, or even just lock herself in the bathroom. What heaven it would be to sit on the toilet and smoke a cigarette; it’s forbidden, but she’s been doing it anyway. Today, between one shopper and another, she hasn’t even had time to take a deep breath. What’s worse, she thinks the stink of the supermarket, the gorgonzola and the hair spray and all that, must have permeated her bronchial tubes, her flesh, and her skin. Every time she looks at the clock next to the pregnant ogre’s booth, she finds only a minute has passed, or at the best, two. Time stands still in this quagmire she’s fallen into.
When she’s finished she heads for the wee one’s house, although she’s a wreck and wouldn’t mind going straight home. But they said they’d meet. The one-bedroom/zoo is in turmoil; Aphra seems very pleased to see her but every few seconds her phone rings anew and she’s going on about banners, frontiers to cross, the van they’ll be traveling in and possible police roadblocks. The cockatoo and the other animals seem worried. Is she about to get into some kind of trouble again? When she was in prison before, the household had descended into chaos. As if replying to their concerns, she explains she’s taking off for a little town in eastern Europe where they plan to mow down a field of genetically modified corn and dump it in the town square. And then they’ll liberate 2,000 pigs from a giant pen where they’re given only genetically modified feed. She’s leaving early tomorrow morning.
While she boils water to make tea, she speaks of Vittorio. Smiling as always, her big eyes slightly droopy, she tells Daphne that he’s had some awesome freakin’ luck (I merely report what she said); as things turned out he’s now doing exactly what he wanted to and making a shitload of money. She’s really happy for him, she says, her cheeks trembling. Really happy, she says again, rubbing her eyes. She begins to cry. Her face crumples up like a baby, and her sobs are accompanied by high-pitched throaty yelps. The phone rings again but she doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t even hear it. Daphne wraps a long arm around her shoulder, she too quite teary. She’s crying, you understand, also and maybe primarily on her own behalf, as humans always do.
Truth is, Aphra’s happy that Vittorio is ten thousand miles away, she tells Daphne when she’s calmed down a bit and is stroking the other’s back. Although she’s in the dumps right now. The cockatoo is back on her shoulder; he seems to want to be sure to hear what she’s saying. It was the last thing she’d expected,* she goes on, patting her long Bambi eyelashes dry. Then she cries some more, but smiling to show her impish teeth. The telephone rings again and this time she answers. Cocò, the prying white cockatoo, takes off and lands on the refrigerator, his high-strung head-wagging a signal the tragedy is over.
* If I may, her reaction is just one more example of the utter inconsistency of human beings. They want something, and when they get it, they complain.
What we could do is rent some land, the two of us, she pipes up. A house to live in and a nice piece of land to cultivate, she adds, patting the fox cub with the injured leg that’s climbed onto her lap. (Cocò is observing them suspiciously from atop the fridge.) Daphne freezes, her teacup at half-mast. She has always detested rural silence, broken only by the chickens clucking and the hum of the neighbor’s tractor, rows of crops as far as the eye can see. What a great idea, says her mouth, however. And now that she’s said it, she really does think she’d like to live out in the country with her friend, indeed it seems to be the only way to rid herself of the supermarket. She feels tremendously relieved, thinking of it.
Aphra’s eyes caress her, bright with yearning. You’re so intelligent, she tells Daphne, it’s obvious you’ll invent a ton of new ways to irrigate the crops and to preserve them. When are you going to take me to meet your stepfather? she continues without waiting for any comment from the other. I really want to see that place of his and talk to him, she says, pressing her palms together. At this point her eyes are open wide, transfixed. Daphne promises to take her there, but she thinks privately that she never will; her friend would be terribly disappointed by that loser ex-friend of her mother and the pigsty he lives in, that junkyard. Anyway, he’d be struck dumb as he always is; it would just be embarrassing. She can’t figure out where the little one got that bee in her bonnet.
Nor does the prospect of hoeing fields of carrots seem that appealing, she thinks as she heads toward the subway stop in the freezing rain. She and her friend are just hardwired to be incompatible, it seems: that little bombshell of energy and good humor has her own battles to fight, her vegan friends, her neo-rustic dreams. She’s into animism, and the animals she looks after and their souls—to her mind they have souls, something like powerful computers. She dreams of a world where everyone grows carrots and they hold public meetings to decide everything. Daphne, instead, beyond her blind, nymphomaniac cat, has nothing. No family, no orgasms, not even, ultimately, any principles to defend. She’s not even sure whether she’s for or against genetically modified organisms, she’s not sure of anything. She just knows she’s unhappy, and that the only thing she’s really good at is being unhappy.
It breaks my heart (figure of speech) to see her in this state. Of course I had the bus come right away and made sure she found a seat even though it was crowded. Take it easy, your bike will soon turn up, I wish I could say to her. And little by little all the rest will be resolved too, my sweetheart (my sweetheart!) But no, I’m mute as a fish. I am God, I tell myself. God.