Mauro De Cortes is the best person I know, but he stays as far away from us as the horizon at sea. Every time we invite him over he replies, ‘Thank you, but I have something on.’ He’d scale a mountain if we were in trouble, but he’d never come over for dinner, or to the movies, or to the beach.
I feel really sorry for Zia, even though she’s a buttery doll of a woman with curls and she’s bursting with health and never comes home at the end of the day without someone having courted her. I feel sorry for her because in her life there are never more than three straight hours with a man, never a night, or a day trip, much less a holiday. She knows certain things exist because she’s seen them in films, or heard about them in songs, or people have told her about them.
Papà was right: when it comes to Zia, God just isn’t willing.
Or else Nonna’s right: Zia’s the one who isn’t willing. Because she’s always been too exuberant, rebellious; at school they’d suspend her and call Nonna and Nonno to tell them their daughter always seemed like she was on the edge of a swimming pool and that she came to class only to entertain the other children with her antics. And maybe Nonna’s right because the fact is Zia tires of everything straight away, especially her lovers.
She tells me, though, that it’s not that she tires of her lovers, it’s that she’s afraid they’ll tire of her, so she tries to give of her best. It’s true that after two or three hours her lovers send her away, but it’s also true that she wouldn’t be able to endure any more simply out of tiredness. Except for that time with Mauro De Cortes when she fell asleep and felt like she was being rocked by the waves.
And yet Zia’s not boring. When she comes over to our house we never want to let her leave, and not just now that our parents are no longer around, but even before. It’s fun when she makes animal sounds, or imitates the sound of the coffee pot boiling or the washing machine on all the different cycles, or the Normandy landing on the flooded floor. Or simply when she laughs at films she thinks are funny and you wonder, ‘Why does she find it so funny?’ and you realise that you’re laughing just because she’s laughing.
When Mamma used to say that Zia was funny, Papà would reply that being funny doesn’t mean making infantile jokes – and always the same ones too – or laughing at other people’s. He preferred Mamma who, with great humility and intellectual honesty, didn’t even try.
Zia clearly has a new suitor. He’s a judge and she thinks he’s Austrian, despite his Sardinian surname, because of something rigid and wintry in his physiognomy and manner, such that she’s not even sure that he is courting her. She met him because she needed something on criminal law for her history studies and people pointed to him as the main expert on the topic.
The judge invited her to come and have a coffee one of these days, ten minutes at that bar under the Torre dell’Elefante, with the beautiful view, and as he invited her he observed her with great interest. It seemed to Zia to be a particular kind of interest, but you can’t be sure.
And I wonder what man – even if he is rigid, a judge and possibly Austrian – could resist Zia’s long, long legs, her short, flimsy skirts, her narrow, narrow waist, her big, bulging, buttery tits that are always prominent in her disordered movements, and through badly buttoned blouses and tops that are too thin. Plus when she talks – and she doesn’t do it on purpose because it also happens when she’s with us and with Nonna – Zia leans over, bounces around, and her clothes move. I reckon no man can resist a curvy, buttery doll, with her unkempt curls in her eyes and her firm, soft, white tits and highly sensitive nipples, which as kids we’d always ask to squeeze, or at least touch, fabulous delicacies of marzipan, ice cream and cream. It’s obvious she’s made an impression on the judge.
The ten-minute coffee one of these days, Zia told me, was not ten minutes but many more. Also the judge didn’t arrive at the meeting in an elegant blue car, as she’d expected, but on his scooter, and he told her to get on, handing her the helmet he’d brought specially for her. Zia had often seen couples going around on scooters together, but she’d never got on one and she said it felt like she was on the other side of the world and it was really strange, because it’s true that it was still her, but it was more like a memory of who she was. Also, on a scooter, there’s no need to talk to fill the silences, because all you have to do is keep quiet so as not to distract the person driving, and enjoy the view, with one cheek resting on his shoulder. I’d often offered her a ride on my scooter, and she’d never wanted to get on, but it’s pointless to try and explain it because that’s a completely different story.
Then, outside the café under the Torre dell’Elefante, Zia started explaining to him what she was looking for, holding forth about certain historical events to impress him, but the judge stopped her and told her that his one hobby was reading history books when he has time and he was familiar with that issue. In other words: save your breath because there’s no point.
So she relaxed, listened to what she needed to hear, laughed and made him laugh because he makes sophisticated jokes but luckily he’s easily amused and he doesn’t need such sophistication to be able to laugh.
Between one area of study and the next, a few secrets slipped out, like that the judge has only recently stopped smoking joints and has had countless love affairs that all went to shit and he could never work out why, since he always gave of his best.
So then Zia took a leap and revealed that she, too, had had a hundred relationships that had all gone to shit and she could never work out why either, since she always gave of her best.
Suddenly, she got up from her chair and stood next to him and proposed what Papà would call one of those impossible, infantile ceremonies: that next time they fell in love, they would give of their worst and demand the same of the other person.
She sat back down and started writing the pact on a paper napkin: Love only to those who can endure and if we can endure! They racked their brains trying to think what historical pact this might resemble, but nothing came to mind.
When the judge got her to climb back on the scooter and promised to look into the topic she was studying, it was already dark.
I imagine the snow on the Austrian mountains, a snow that hides the beauty of what will be revealed when it thaws, a beauty I know already exists. I imagine all the animals Zia can imitate; they are asleep up there in the mountains at the moment, but they will make their cries heard when they reawaken. I imagine an enchanted castle where immobility and death reign, but where the coffee pots will begin once more to boil and the washing machines to go through their different cycles. I imagine Zia dancing the first waltz of her life and she will neither tire, nor be tired of.