IT HAD BEEN necessary to re-read I promessi sposi to establish the continuity of an Italian gallery of types, a kinship between the saints and tricksters of the Inferno and the Decameron right through to those of D’Annunzio, Pasolini and even Fellini. Not that any one figure or quality could be considered superlatively Italian, or even as holding the kernel of Italian national character, for one can no more be Italian or English on one’s own, than one could be human, or indeed inhuman, on one’s own, or a son without a mother. But that there was a constellation of types who made each other what they were, who became more and more obviously type figures when seen in relation to each other, and above all in action, in reaction, with and to each other. A sort of Italian dynamic, if you like. A complementary community of minds. A particular way of twining stories together, imagining available spheres of action, and thus of defining each other, of becoming oneself. To establish the existence, I had thought, I had long thought, of such a dynamic, to savour its extension and evolution, its openness to nuance and resistance to change, would be to discover new continents of predictability. To go deeper, in short. That was my goal. Far deeper than my journalism had ever gone. Andreotti was predictable, I thought, in so far as he moved in the world of Italian politics, defined by and defining those around him. Including the corpse on the pavement that decisive spring morning in Palermo. Brought up in Lytham or Lisbon, Andreotti would have behaved entirely differently. I myself would have behaved entirely differently, I felt – no, I was sure – in London or Los Angeles, or with an English wife in Rome. Or a Tibetan wife. In Rome. Thus, in re-reading Manzoni, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to show what perfectly recognisable and even contemporary figures Don Abbondio and Lucia and the Avvocato Azzeccagarbugli and Don Rodrigo are, to name but four, but how they are so in relation to each other. And indeed to many others before and after them, real and imaginary. Destiny is a thing we do together, I thought.
Such, in any event, was the idea I was seeking support for on reading, re-reading, among a score of other books – it seemed no more than my duty given the task I had set myself – I promessi sposi, when I came across the story of the Nun of Monza – I hadn’t thought of it for years – and above all I came across that chapter opening where Manzoni says: There are moments when the minds of the young are so inclined that any request for a gesture of seeming goodness or sacrifice is met with immediate compliance: like a freshly opened flower the young mind settles softly on its fragile stem, ready to grant its fragrance to the first breeze that blows. Such moments, Manzoni goes on – though I quote, I translate, imprecisely and from memory – such moments, that others ought to wonder at in mute respect, are precisely those the selfish and crafty know to wait for, and seize upon, thus to bind a will that is as yet without defence.
Why was I overcome by a sense of terror on reading those lines from I promessi sposi? On re-reading the story of Gertrude of Monza’s monstrously manipulative father? I had not tricked my daughter into becoming a nun against her will, thus condemning her to a life of duplicity. I had not manipulated her, or even encouraged her when it came to marrying Giorgio. I had no personal interest in the matter. I had not denied her a dowry. On the contrary, I paid through the nose to set them up. Against my wife’s wishes. And even had I wanted to, I could never have manipulated my son Marco in any way at all, since Marco fell entirely within his mother’s sphere of influence. That was obvious. And jurisdiction. Marco is still entirely attached to his mother’s sphere of influence, I would say to myself as I travelled from one Italian city to another, reporting on this or that scam or tragedy, consolidating what many were beginning to speak of as a very significant career. She controls his whole life. He is hardly my son at all, I would think sometimes, in this hotel or that. It was a time when people were beginning to speak of me as the foremost authority on contemporary Italy. When is he going to grow away from those apron strings? I wondered. I had called home from some party convention only to have Paola tell me that my wife and son were out together. It annoyed me that Marco went so regularly to mass. With his mother. She has seduced him entirely, I thought. I can hardly be proud of his basketball and brilliant maths results, I felt, despite an intense desire to feel otherwise, since he is hardly my boy at all. I don’t even know the rules of basketball. No doubt she speaks ill of me to him, I thought. My maths was always hopeless. A son in every way different from his father, my wife insisted, at her many and amusing dinner parties. Had I spoken ill of her in his presence he would have stuffed his fingers in his ears. He was loyal. It annoyed me to see Marco make the sign of the cross. To see him fall so tamely within his mother’s sphere of influence. He has none of my vision of the world, I thought. I haven’t influenced my son at all. Let alone manipulated him. Yet when I reached the page where Manzoni describes how at the last the Nun of Monza is walled up in a cell for years of living death, I knew it was Marco I was thinking of Marco too is walled up in a cell, I told myself. I can’t remember where I was when I read those pages, when I said those terrible words to myself, but I suspect at home, for the book is too large to carry around comfortably. I promessi sposi is a large book. Marco has been walled up for years, I thought, sitting at home in the house he half-destroyed that night I phoned and phoned from Palermo. His mother’s ancestral stairway sledgehammered to fragments. In a single night. Those pages of Manzoni’s, I remember now, that terrible and terribly Italian story, induced a sense of horror such as I had rarely felt before. It was the image of the beautiful Gertrude hopelessly trapped, walled away irretrievably from all company, that frightened me. It is a frightening image: a beautiful, sensual woman twisted and destroyed in her inmost self, as a result of circumstances at least initially beyond her control. Her youthful dutifulness exploited by a manipulative father, a complicitous mother. Why had Marco turned against his mother? In the story of the Nun of Monza, I thought, there was all the age-old clash of established custom and wayward individual. The way the two call to each other to form a single destiny. National character warps the character, I thought. Though they cannot exist separately. There are no individuals without society. Gertrude bows but rebels. She does her duty, then rebels. Was there a moment when the apron strings became a noose? For Marco. Gertrude takes the veil, against her will, but behind it rebels. She can’t breathe behind the veil. Should I have untied those strings? Could I? But behind a veil you can rebel. She loves, fornicates, kills. She has all the rancour and cunning of somebody rebelling from behind a veil. She would still like to be dutiful, as when her young mind sacrificed itself to her father’s will, bowed like a fresh young plant on its fragile stem, but she is suffocating. All her father wanted was to save himself the dowry, the cost of marriage. The veil is smothering her. She is smothered by her father’s greed. Whereas I was happy to pay for my daughter’s apartment. Destroyed by his disinterest for her most intimate needs. She breaks her vows, loves a man, kills a blackmailer. She is betrayed. She is punished. She is walled up in a cell. He was such a gentle boy, my wife wept at the trial that followed. We had fallen into our routine of moving heaven and earth. I barely had to ask and he obeyed, she sobbed. There were very few people in court. You cannot imagine a more amenable child, she insisted. She was wearing her green jacket, a lipstick almost scarlet, a thick powder over bruises that would not heal. He was always extremely gentle with me, she pleaded. The police had photos of the hole smashed in our bedroom wall, of the broken slabs on the stairway. I didn’t want them repaired. Invited not to press charges, Paola refused. For your sake, Papà, she insisted. For Marco’s sake. He has always been extremely well behaved, I said quietly at the stand, feigning embarrassment at my wife’s emotion the better to confirm her evidence. We’re an unbeatable double-act. No, and I repeat, I said quietly, I know of no incident of any kind such as those recounted by my daughter. We must at all costs avoid a prison institution, Vanoli had warned. The trauma of the prison institution can be decisive, he told us. Marco is walled up, I thought, on reading those pages by the great Manzoni, the appalling story of Gertrude of Monza. Not so much in Villa Serena as in his mind. A story absolutely without relief or catharsis, I thought. This image of a woman walled up, of a woman who accepts to be walled up, she accepts, because still locked into the group vision of her crime and its punishment. She chooses her punishment. Marco was allowed to leave Villa Serena for brief spells under certain conditions. But rarely did so. He was walled up in his mind. As surely as the murderess nun. Smashing his mother’s ancestral home hadn’t helped at all, I thought. What consolation can there be in such a story, I asked myself, turning the pages of Manzoni’s great book? Gertrude was walled up, I thought, from the moment her monstrous father tricked her into taking the veil, manipulated her young woman’s readiness to please, the better to bury her forever, merely to save himself the dowry. Marco was buried forever, I thought. There is a momentum in such things. But it was ludicrous to imagine I was responsible, the way Gertrude’s father clearly had been. Why do I draw such analogies? He imagines I run some international spy ring, I told Vanoli. That I’m all powerful. Apparently that’s why I travel so much. One moment I am moving vast alien armies to destroy him, the next I am his only hope of protection. He claims his mother has killed his pet dog. He never had a dog. Suffocated his pet puppy. I don’t remember any puppies. He claims she pulled the animal under her dress and suffocated the thing. Every time a different story. All my travelling has to do with the way I control world climate, I laughed nervously. I bring his mother children to eat. Or Paola is his guardian angel. His saviour sister. Though it was she who accused him. He has seen her giving blow-jobs at Stazione Termini.
Vanoli was in a hurry that afternoon. I was speaking quickly, reading as instructed from notes I had taken on our first or second trip to Villa Serena. After the trial. Our long drives north. Marco was really beyond Vanoli’s care now, after the trial, the move to Villa Serena, but I still went to see the man. He smiled. These were precisely the kind of things a schizophrenic did say, he said. And hardly remarkable. That was what schizophrenia was, he said. But I knew that. I must just go on calmly repeating the truth, he said, the true story. That we were his parents who loved him and wanted him to get well and come home.
Just keep repeating the truth, Vanoli said, calmly and above all consistently. Just keep reminding him how the world really is. And check that he takes his medicine. At least we’ve managed to avoid the prison institution, Italy’s foremost psychiatrist said. Villa Serena is a civilised place. Something of a miracle actually, given the evidence your daughter gave. And he is taking his medicine again. Obviously there were things I hadn’t been informed of, Vanoli said. Your wife put on a remarkable performance though. He was clearly impressed. There are few people my wife cannot impress. Or seduce for that matter. She had had her hair freshly permed for the occasion. Her glorious hair. Many of my patients have made dramatic improvements at Villa Serena, he said. Dottor Busi is an excellent psychiatrist. But on returning home from Vanoli’s office on the Lungotevere and re-reading the story of the Nun of Monza, I was overwhelmed. That was not the truth at all, I thought. I didn’t want you home at all, I tell my son now, sitting here beside his body. That was a lie. I wanted your mother to myself. At last. I wanted you out of the way. Our lives are separate now, Karen had said. I have decided to stop travelling, I told my wife. At last. It had taken two years for those words to sink in. I am giving up journalism, I told my wife. I’m needed in the family, I said. I want to be with you. How flat and dead Karen’s voice was when she spoke those words. I never had the stairs repaired. I shall write a book, I decided: national character and the essential predictability of human behaviour. But on re-reading the story of the Nun of Monza, walled up for ever in her cell, I was appalled.
Why had I started thinking of this, remembering this – I promessi sposi, the Nun of Monza – those few precious minutes in the camera ardente before being so cruelly interrupted? Was it the candles? The religious iconography? The thought of a body about to be walled up? Was it my tricky question for Andreotti? What will he answer? Or just a general and absolutely absurd feeling of guilt? An absurd and masochistic bandhu. Linking myself and Gertrude’s monstrously manipulative father. A connection that didn’t connect. Paranoia, no less. Marco is less remarkable in death than in life: that was my first thought on being shown into the camera ardente, those few minutes before being so cruelly interrupted. I was surprised and I suppose relieved to find my wife not there. Very surprised. I took a seat. To my immense relief he was dressed. The corpse was dressed. My wife wasn’t there. Dark trousers, blue sweater. Villa Serena must have sent his clothes, I thought. How kind. The nurses had dressed his body, hidden his wounds. How generous. Sitting down I was surprised and moved by this generosity. They had dressed the boy after the post-mortem. There were candles at the head and feet. It was the camera ardente, not the mortuary. There were two or three heavy pieces of dark wooden furniture and a Sacred Heart on the near wall. A public space that apes the private, I thought, or the imagined private of a distant past. That saves you taking your late beloved home to lie under halogen light by the television. A more meaningful past of coffin-like chests and sideboards with Sacred Hearts. But in an under-funded public hospital. I sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair with red upholstery. Our parents’ past. I sat down. Or their parents’. It was definitely Marco. Definitely his face. He was laid in a sort of shallow coffin whose darkly polished wood matched the other furniture glimmering in the candlelight. There was a crucifix, a Sacred Heart. These objects conjure an illusion of meaning, I remarked. Less remarkable in death than life, I thought. Less wild. More like the dutiful Marco who knelt beside his mother every Sunday at mass. How that irritated me! Not her religion, which I respect, even envy, but his docile mimicry. The diligent Marco who walked forward to take the host at his grandmother’s funeral, while Paola sat behind in the pews with me. Aren’t you going up to take the host? I asked my daughter. It was her grandmother’s funeral after all. She held my hand and sat in the pew while the others went forward. I remember her face being especially foreign that day, especially set about the lips in the dim light. Was it this religious iconography, in the camera ardente, that reminded me of the Nun of Monza? Of Gertrude’s monstrously manipulative father, her terrible destiny of being walled up, as Marco quite definitely had been walled away in his mind and now is beyond all walls.
You must be paranoid, I thought. I had barely taken my seat in the camera ardente before I was overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. You must be eager to think ill of yourself. Perhaps it was the English school, I once suggested to Vanoli. Really the only way I had influenced my son at all was the English school. Perhaps that was the mistake. And I explained to the psychiatrist that whereas I was always being mistaken for what I was not, German in Italy, American in England, and while my wife was never mistaken for anything other than what she was, Italian, or rather Roman, whatever language she was speaking, however fluently, Marco – I explained to Vanoli – Marco had the uncanny knack of being taken entirely for English in England, entirely for Italian in Italy. His English was a perfect impersonation of my own, I said, only without that element, whatever it is, that makes people imagine me American in England. His Italian was his mother’s. His mother’s exactly, I said. Geoff Courteney had remarked on Marco’s excellent English, his excellent manners, over dinner only the evening before last, it occurred to me now, taking my seat in the camera ardente, wondering why my wife, who had sat the night beside him in the cold of the mortuary, was missing this opportunity to be here now, now that he was properly laid out, that is, with the candles and the darkly polished furniture in the funeral chamber. In an appropriately religious aura. We should really be together now, I thought. As a family. One says appropriately. My wife should be here beside me. Paola should be here. Our family is radically split, I thought. It was radically split the day Marco went to take the host and Paola did not. At their grandmother’s funeral. He’d been so sorry, Geoff Courteney said, to hear from Gregory about our son’s illness. My wife’s ears strained. It was a considerable sacrifice on her part to come to England, to hear Gregory’s name without understanding what was being said. He is dead, I thought. His skin is cold. Your mother could not raise you from the dead. A stupid thought. I hadn’t even asked for the results of the autopsy. She felt alien to English, she told me. I told Vanoli. English is hostile to my spirit, she laughed. This in the days she might still have quoted Guinizelli. To me I mean. Or Foscolo. I sepolcri. Her ears strained at the sound of those names. Marco’s name, Gregory’s name. My wife has such a thrilling laugh. Nobody better placed than yourself, Geoff Courteney conceded, just the evening before last – though he hadn’t offered a contract – to write a comparative study of national characters. Is this a clue? To what went wrong. This language thing. But now of all moments, you must not be distracted, I told myself calmly but firmly. I had only just sat down in the camera ardente. Now, of all moments, you must concentrate, I told myself. You must look at the body. It was only minutes after all, though I could hardly have known that, before I was to be so farcically interrupted. You must not think about the Nun of Monza and Vanoli and languages. Your various ideas. So convenient for not looking at things. You must look, I told myself. Look at your son. Look now.
I looked. When Marco spoke English, I thought, he was English, he thought of himself as English and was acknowledged to be so. Summers spent in England. With the Courteneys. Likewise when he spoke Italian. I looked at his pale lips. Is that a clue? Two entirely disconnected thought patterns, I told Vanoli. Was this what we should never have imposed? My wife finds them hostile, I told him. She has always refused to learn English, I said. Things you know in Italian, I tried to explain to the psychiatrist, that you’ll never know in English. Things you become in English that you’ll never become in Italian. Two different ways of telling yourself about yourself, I said. Was language the beginning of the schismatic process? Half the world is bilingual, Vanoli smiled, with no adverse effects. He dismissed the idea. He is a psychiatrist, not a shrink.
But is it even useful, I suddenly asked myself in the camera ardente, quite exhausted, but equally surprised, at least thus far, by my calm, by my lucidity, the coherent working of my mind, to search for clues, to think of this thing in terms of guilt and causality? Was there any point at all in trying to understand what had happened? I felt completely exhausted, and decidedly ill, in pain even, but much calmer than I had expected to be in the presence of my son’s body. I was surprised that my wife was not here. Where was she? He was so much less remarkable in death than in life. I felt uncannily calm. And lucid. He had been ill, I reflected. Courteney used the right word there. This illness. I felt grateful to Geoff Courteney. There can be no guilt attached to a son catching the flu, I thought. Most recent thinking puts it down to virus mutation, Vanoli said. Unless you’ve locked the poor child out in the cold of course. Why do thoughts like that keep recurring? Walled him up in the cold. And I wondered if my wife were about to burst in. Demanding to know where I had been. People left in the cold do catch the flu virus. Hysterical over what would now be the last vision of her son. Of my son. She couldn’t move heaven and earth this time. She cannot raise him from the dead. Your wife will burst in at any minute, I told myself. I must concentrate now.
Then at last I laid my hand on his forehead. I forced my hand to rest there on Marco’s cold forehead, as one lays a hand on a sleeping child to check his temperature. He was ill, that’s all. A virus. Here you are beside your son’s body, I thought. You have done it. Beside Marco. It is Marco. Marco’s face, Marco’s jaw. It is Marco. You are not a coward, I told myself. There is no smell but the smell of candles and polished wood. You have come to see him. Poor Marco. Despite the possible presence of your wife. You are touching him even. Despite your fear of a smell of decay. Though I never feared such a thing as a journalist. I have smelt the decay of rotting bodies as a journalist, quite unimpressed. And I leaned forward until my lips were brushing his ear. Where was she? The skin seemed ochre in the candlelight. The fever’s passed, ciccio, I whispered, my hand on his forehead. She called him ciccio when she took him in her bed. Ciccio, ciccietto. Principino. Our terms of endearment were all hers, I thought. It’s passed now, kid, I whispered. Fever’s gone. Then, just as the emotion I had been inviting rose with astonishing promptness to fill my throat, to flood my eyes, an emotion bound, it suddenly seemed, to sweep me quite away beyond any place I had ever been swept before, beyond any return to the person I was, at this very moment another voice spoke out quite clearly, even coolly, and with great authority: To recover this in all historicity, this voice suddenly announced into the thick of my tears, is beyond you. It was a rather formal voice. It formed the words on my lips. Though historicity is not a word I remember my lips forming before. Nor was I quite sure, in that moment of bewilderment, what the words might mean. Such a task is beyond you, the voice repeated. There was an odd metallic ring to it. All the same, for one hour now, you shall tell yourself the story of your son. Immediately the flood subsided.
You were not shocked, I reflect now, so soon after that cruel interruption, back once again in the camera ardente, to hear that voice intervene as it did. They have given me fifteen minutes. On the contrary you were relieved. The flood of emotion was immediately calmed. You called the emotion into being and immediately, automatically almost, the voice calmed it, prevented you from being overwhelmed. You will tell yourself the story of your son, I told myself. I was amazed how swiftly I had recovered my composure. You will recover his life. The voice spoke once and was gone. With your hand on his forehead. Much as Vanoli told you to keep repeating the truth to him, the true story. Keep telling him the simple truth, preferably while establishing some basic physical contact. A hand on a hand, or round a shoulder. You must keep re-establishing reality as it is, normality as it is. A normal story, Vanoli said, of a normal mother and father and son, and nothing to do with controlling the climate and suffocating puppies. Don’t even bother contradicting such inanities. The problem was virus mutation. Something that could probably be predicted if only we knew the mechanisms. Or there might even be a vaccination one day. Why then had he spoken to me of Italian mothers and their sons, I demanded, of particularly Italian forms of schizophrenia? And again I was surprised to think how much this corpse was my son. Not the shell, I had expected. Not the mask of horror. Far more your son, I thought, than the last time you spoke to him alive. Less remarkable. I was relieved. In a way less frightening. You will spend this precious time telling yourself the story of your son. He can’t hallucinate now, I thought. My hand seemed glued to the clammy skin of his forehead, which had itself been so feverish with voices on that occasion, that last occasion we met. There is no smell here in the camera ardente. Except of candles. They began when I went to college, he claimed. The candlelight flickered. But he frequently changed the story. He had had problems with room-mates. With girls. Who will ever know the truth behind those stories now? Who doesn’t have problems with girls? He was convinced girls made fun of him. The fever’s passed now, I whispered, only minutes before being interrupted. You were a darling child, I whispered. Always in your mother’s way and the apple of her eye. She loved you and scolded you and kept you in her bed, I whispered. It sounded trite, but I was obeying the voice as best I could. I had sensed its authority. A last ditch authority. What more can one remember of those days? You were a good kid, I said. I can remember very little of his early childhood. A photograph here and there. Elba. Rimini. Suffolk. An infant body smiling from a big bucket. Summer snaps. At the Courteneys’ Suffolk house. Was that where we first met Gregory? You were a good boy, I whispered. You were obedient. What story can a tiny child have? If not his parents’ story? I wondered what my wife had felt the need to say to him yesterday. When she insisted on seeing him alone. Where was she now? You were very obedient. Mamma loved you. I wasn’t jealous. I was so pleased for your mother. So pleased she had been able to have a child of her own. It meant so much to her. Travel as much as you like, she told me. She gave up the work she was doing. That came as a surprise. Her beloved PR. The big hotels. The society. Don’t bother about presents, your mother said, I know what he wants. She had enjoyed the social aspects of her work. I know what my ciccino wants. Paola was jealous. That was natural. Did they smooth his face? I wondered. Was it horribly distorted when they found him? I must ask for the results of the autopsy.
You look so calm, Marco, I suddenly said out loud. Unexpectedly I looked up at the candles. The windows are curtained. Where was I? It is uncanny to turn and find somebody still in exactly the same position. Paola was ill. She was weak. That was when Paola was ill and you were healthy, kid. Ironia della sorte. Your mother was disappointed with Paola even before you were born, I told my dead son, my hand on his forehead. They would give me the death certificate at reception, the doctor said. Presumably that would indicate the cause of death. Thank God he is dressed. How generous of them. I looked at his big hands laid by his side. Bigger than mine. Basketball hands. There is no need to look at the rest of his body, I said out loud. When you say goodbye to a person, you don’t need to see their bodies. Where had he stabbed himself? Not even lovers. You don’t want to see their bodies again. Your lives are separate now. Why must you keep challenging yourself like this? I wondered. It’s the face you say goodbye to. The closed eyes. My hand was as if stuck to his forehead, in the clammy candlelight. If candles are more solemn than electric light, it’s because they can flicker and die, I thought. What exactly had they done at the autopsy? Candles consume themselves, as we do. Cut him open? The light in the eye is the fire that consumes the mind, as the flame the candle. I had read that somewhere. I said out loud: Marco’s eyes are closed forever. That light is extinguished forever. But I must not get distracted now. If I allow myself to be distracted, I thought, the emotion will rise up and carry me off. Thinking of those dead eyes. Or the voice will cut in again. The authoritative voice. Fleetingly, I was furious with myself for seeing the pun in last ditch. Perhaps you’ve passed it on to me, I whispered. I moved my mouth very close to his face. My dead son’s face. Perhaps I’ve got your fever, kid. I was smiling. I heard a voice, I said. I would never look into his eyes again. You must get through these next few days any way you can, I told myself. Any way you can. Some voices help, if you let them, Marco told me. I can’t remember on what occasion. They decide for you, he explained. But what was it that my son found so difficult to decide? Move in with Paola if you’re unhappy, I told him. You’re not far from Paola’s. It’s a difficult time when one leaves home, when one starts at university. What was upsetting him? Less than an hour on the train from Milan. Move in with your sister. You can still attend classes from Novara. She won’t mind. Giorgio won’t mind. All this, just moments before being interrupted. Trying to commune with my dead son. Finding it easier than I had feared. If not altogether convincing. But when had it ever been convincing? When is it ever convincing communing with anyone? Certainly easier than the last time I saw him. Or even oneself? When he kissed his mother on the mouth. Then rubbed mud in her hair. What did that gesture mean to you? I suddenly asked the corpse. I’m leaving your mother too now, I said. He rubbed butter in my hair, Paola testified. And pinned me against the wall. I do love Marco, she said, but he has made our lives hell for eighteen months. He lived with us for eighteen months in Novara, she explained. Myself and my husband. I feel he should be in some kind of institution. He said I was a replicant, Paola testified. At the trial. That I wasn’t real. He is convinced people have been substituted by aliens. His mother and father in particular. He is convinced that if it had been the real me, I would have saved him. As it was, he would have to kill me. The aliens have to be eliminated. He tried to rape me, Paola testified. Her voice never trembled. He used force, she testified. He said he was a replicant himself, otherwise he wouldn’t do such things.
Your mother was disappointed with Paola, I whispered to Marco, my lips close to his ear. She didn’t get any change from Paola, she said. Non mi da corda, she said. I can’t remember what age we’re talking about. It all seems simultaneous to me. And immeasurably distant. You were breast-fed for three years. I slept in the lower of the two bunk beds. Later we moved into the big house, your grandmother’s house. Your mother was determined you wouldn’t be damaged as Paola was. I lowered my voice. She breast-fed you for three years. My lips were almost brushing his cheek. That was it, Marco. That was the beginning. Yes. Or one of the beginnings. That was why she left her job. Your mother was determined you would be saved from Paola’s fate. She would give you all the love Paola hadn’t had from her real mother. She found it hard to love Paola. Paola didn’t know how to be loved, she said. That crucial stage in life had been denied her. The first two years. The orphanages in the Ukraine. But she would have breast-fed you forever if that would have helped. Paola’s dour, your mother said. She’s damaged. We had arguments about it. It can be hard to love even your own flesh and blood sometimes. The mother was a Kazakh whore. But Paola always babysat for you when your mother was off at her various functions. When I was off travelling. Your mother is religious. We know that. And of course there were her parties. Her set. She likes to see people. She missed her work. I had to travel. She likes to get involved in projects. It is odd, though, it suddenly occurs to me now, once again back here beside my son’s body, still trying to gather my thoughts after that farcical interruption, still wondering how on earth I am to behave in response to what has happened – it is odd how my wife has always managed to occupy both extremes of every polarity. She is religious and flirts. She is strong and independent and desperately needs to be with people. With me even. She plays mute, but she wants to be involved. It is because he suffers disillusionment so early, Leopardi wrote, that the naturally passionate Italian becomes so irretrievably cynical. They have given me fifteen minutes. Because disillusioned early. Certainly our life was less romantic than she hoped. Whose is not? But I have lost my concentration. There is nothing wrong with social functions, I was telling Marco a few moments before being so frighteningly interrupted. I liked your mother for her busy social life, however irritating it could be sometimes, I loved her for the way she brought life into the house, even though you must have seen the irritation on my face from time to time, you smelt my fear I suppose. There is no smell here but the smell of candles.
Paola babysat. I tried again to tell my dead son the story of our family, of himself. Paola babysat. We had moved into the family house on via Livorno. The house of ghosts, your mother called it. Joking. The family house. The generations. Who died there. Her own mother was dead at last. Perhaps I wasn’t so jealous of you, Marco, because you had drawn your mother away from her mother. For centuries they died there. The endless weekends with her mother. Though her father was shot down over Malta of course. Your mother’s father. There is no grave. No trace. He was called Marco too. Shot down by the British. There was no corpse, no tombstone. It was his father killed himself. Your great-grandfather killed himself. Paola babysat in the family house. She loved you. She was very jealous. But how can I know what the relationship between you and Paola was? Things get out of hand. I was away. Once I heard you calling her Xenia. But that wasn’t her Ukrainian name I don’t think. You know, I can’t remember Paola’s Ukrainian name. I was frequently away. I felt your mother was right to rename her at once. To make her ours, to make her Italian. How can I know what went on between yourself and Paola? Her friends made fun of you. But all older girls make fun of little boys with their sticky-out ears. I could hardly be expected to see danger there. I can hardly deny I was attracted to some of Paola’s friends. When they came with her to babysit you and I had to drive them home. That was a funny period. Did I let it show? How can a father know what best to say to his children in puberty? Especially when attracted to his daughter’s friends. You seemed so sensible at school. So accommodating. Much more so than Paola. We couldn’t have sent Paola to an English school. She was so far behind, so slow. It seemed the right thing to make her a hundred per cent Italian to give her a feeling of belonging somewhere. How can I know what went on between you both when you stayed in Novara? I was so busy. That year. Why did you think staying with Paola would help you escape the voices? It was the last year of the old regime. Of my journalism. I was working impossible hours. These illnesses always begin at the moment when one strikes out for independence. Late teens, early twenties. Staying with Paola didn’t help. The literature is clear on that. But then many ordinary illnesses take place at particular times of life. Paola had offended you, your mother said. Kicked you out of her Novara flat. It seemed to me more likely that it was Giorgio had asked you to leave. I couldn’t afford to get them a bigger apartment. Your mother wasn’t to know. But I certainly didn’t shirk a dowry. The trial was a revelation to me, Marco. I never dreamed Paola would say the things she said. I didn’t know. Your mother was keeping you to herself. Perhaps the problem had been going on for years before I noticed, before you gave up basketball, before you suddenly insisted on speaking English. I hadn’t noticed anything till then. Till those dramatic changes. In the end, we only went out drinking, what? three times, or four, before you blew apart. Before you destroyed the house. Before your mother and I were forced together again to find some help for you. The important thing was to avoid a closed institution, a prison. Vanoli was very clear on that point.
I stared at my son’s face. At the gaunt profile of the nose. It’s not that I betrayed you, Marco, I’ve explained this. Just that I suddenly realised you were ill. That the position you’d taken with me was sickness. I didn’t see that at first. I was angry with your mother. I thought you had genuinely seen my side. Finally come round to my side. Was there something I should have said those times we went out together? Could I have said something? No doubt I said things I shouldn’t have. Against your mother. I’ve always been content to be left in the dark, Marco. You must have sensed that. But the literature also makes clear that it is an entirely chemical alteration. A virus mutation operating on the enzymes. You’ve been ill, kid. My relationship with your mother always made me feel it would be unwise to look into the heart of things. I am perfectly capable of reading a little French if I have to, but I never looked at her famous diary. Nor read the famous correspondence with Gregory. Nor ever found out exactly how it ended between them. It did end. Very shortly after the trial, after we moved heaven and earth to avoid the prison hospital. I presume it ended. We can get through without looking into the heart of things, I thought. The shock just made her lose interest, I suppose. We understood we had to be strong for you. Strong together for you. To see how something works, you have to break it more often than not, that’s what I used to think. And I didn’t want to break it. We made love when you and Paola were at school. Your mother and I. Though at the same time I often spoke of the need to go deeper. That night with Gregory in the Hotel Garibaldi. I am afraid of being a coward. I love your mother, I told my dead son. I nursed the illusion that I was the kind of person who liked to go deep, but I was too afraid to look into the heart of things. Then I said out loud: and now it is over.
Withdrawing my hand from my son’s head, only seconds away from being interrupted, I whispered: I can’t remember you at all, Marco. And I asked: Why did you change sides? Were the apron strings suddenly too tight? Was it you who wrote help me? In the steam on the bathroom window? Did you leave Villa Serena when you weren’t supposed to? Did you kill yourself because they forced you back? Because Paola phoned to have you taken back? But then why didn’t they tell me? Why hasn’t she told me? Do you know why Paola and Giorgio have split up? I suddenly demanded of my dead son.
I had withdrawn my hand from his forehead. I was looking straight at my dead son’s face. The skin is lustreless and the eyes sunken. I would not dare to peel back an eyelid and look into an eye. They have combed his hair. It is ridiculous I suddenly thought, that your mother used to speak of us as being so different. Of birth by parthenogenesis. Your profile is exactly my profile, Marco. Overnight your eyes have sunk to my depths, I told him. At last I was speaking freely, honestly to my son. Your nose has come out like mine, I told him. I almost laughed. This could be me dead, I thought. It should be me dead. Though better dead than a life walled away in a cell. Actually I would say he looks rather like you, Vanoli remarked when I told him that story, when I came out with the word parthenogenesis. Though I never had your physique. Why do you think your wife chooses to be so provocative? Vanoli asked. And I said if schizophrenia was a purely biological question then I couldn’t see what the relationship between myself and my wife could possibly have to do with it. Why did he bother to ask me these questions? Which were entirely unconnected with my son’s illness. Perhaps it’s because you’re so interested in talking about them yourself, Vanoli laughed. And now you look even more like me, I told Marco. And my body functions seem to have stopped too. Just like yours. Since more or less the moment you died, I told him. My bowels haven’t moved since you died, kid. My bladder refuses to empty. I remembered the dog and the theatre director. Who would find me? Would both Sardinian wife and Polish mistress be there at the funeral? I’m in an agony of cramps, Marco. I must get some heparin. How many times have I fantasised Karen at my funeral. It’s only the mind racing round and round these things that stops me screaming, I told him. Suddenly, sitting on the straight-backed chair in the candlelight of the camera ardente, I felt extremely confused. I half got up, sat down again. The room flickered. The bandhu survive death, that book said. There was clattering outside the door. I can’t remember the title. The connections the mind makes survive its physical decease. I was looking directly at my son, his head on a purple cushion in a shallow coffin, I was feeling extremely confused and absolutely certain that nothing survives death. I suppose I was weeping. When the door banged open, the candles guttered wildly. We were interrupted.
Giorgio! A few moments later I was at a payphone in the corridor. There are payphones by the stairwell. Paola had given me the number of his mobile. She didn’t tell me anything, he said. From his cautiousness it seemed he must be with a client. But they’ve come to take him away, I insisted. To Rome. They want to take him now, this minute. Giorgio said he couldn’t help. He didn’t know what she had in mind. The family tomb presumably. Down in Rome. My suitcase would be at the airport in Turin by now, he said. I’ll have to go to Rome immediately, I was saying. The digits on the credit display were counting down extremely rapidly. I had forgotten the family tomb. Did I still have the original ticket, he asked, with the baggage sticker? They would need to see the baggage sticker. Where is she? I demanded. I couldn’t wait for him to finish speaking. There was a pause. My credit was evaporating. Are you well? he asked. Paola said you were ill this morning. She was worried for you. I was frantic. Is she coming back to the hospital, or isn’t she? He didn’t know. Have you seen a doctor? he was asking. Then my cash ran out and the line was gone. How is it, I demanded, hanging up the receiver, that these two recently separated people can mention each other’s names so casually, so reasonably, as if there were no rancour at all between them? As if their marriage had been little more than an amicable agreement. And how was it that Italcom could charge so much for calls to mobile phones? Five thousand lire had gone in a flash. From public places like hospitals. An article proposing subsidies for calls from hospitals? As I hurried back along the corridor a hoarse voice, a radio behind a door, was singing a song of lost love. Italy, I thought. This is Italy. This is where I have spent my life.
They had negotiated the coffin on a trolley alongside the hospital’s shallower version which I now realised must be some institutional stand-in for families who hadn’t yet had time to purchase their own. Pushing the door I heard the word Juventus. My wife has found the time to purchase a coffin, I thought. And energy. How resilient she is! The undertakers were talking football. You felt sorry for her – you were letting her down terribly – and she calmly went out and purchased a coffin. Again they repeated that they hadn’t realised there would be mourners. Football is less inappropriate than second-rate love-songs, I thought. They were under strict orders to drive to Rome. Even if they left this minute, the older of the four pointed out, they wouldn’t make it much before nine. They would have to find a hotel. On whose authority? I demanded. I was the father. Only I had the right to decide what was to be done with my son. The man was in his fifties, tall, with a ski-slope suntan, a clipboard. These people are used to death, I thought. The others were just well-dressed boys. Perhaps death is less remarkable than we suppose, I thought. Perhaps it’s quite easy to get used to death. I had seen a good few corpses myself after all. I was perfectly used to death. I had seen the dead piled in heaps in Basilicata that time. One boy leaned forward over the empty coffin and shifted it very slightly back and forth on its trolley. I have seen any number of murder victims. Though one sees one’s son’s corpse only once.
It looked an expensive coffin at a glance. A wheel squeaked. Almost a luxurious coffin. If one can say such a thing. This is absolutely typical of my wife, I suddenly thought, quite furious, then immediately conceded what, until only a moment before I had forgotten: how quickly they bury people in Italy. A day, two days. Today was Tuesday. The football matches were on Sunday. If Marco had been interested in football I would certainly have gone to see him. Certainly I would have watched Juventus with him. I like football. My wife knew that. She knew I liked football. The theatre director was to be buried on Wednesday afternoon, in Bari, despite all the prestigious guests who must be invited, the expected clash between his various women. Then I remembered that this was the exact same time I was supposed to be seeing Andreotti, though of course I knew I wouldn’t see Andreotti. It would be monstrous for me to go and see Andreotti in these circumstances. My son had died at almost exactly the same time as the theatre director, thirty-six hours ago. He might well be buried at the same time, exactly. When I was supposed to be seeing Andreotti. On whose authority? I repeated, taking a second glance at what was clearly a very expensive coffin. The undertaker pulled out a mobile and called his office. From the camera ardente. Everybody has mobiles now. Even undertakers. They call from funeral chambers, beside corpses. Or from ski-slopes, no doubt. Nobody was looking at Marco. My wife has interrupted my mourning, I thought and at the same time I was ludicrously aware of an Italian comedy film I once saw where a heart surgeon drops his mobile in his wife’s coffin while kissing the corpse goodbye and hears it ringing as they are burying her in the family tomb beside his three other dead wives. This is absolutely typical, of my wife, I thought, my only wife, and I thought how many times Marco had simply sat or stood or even lain, on the sofa, while others quarrelled over him. Could he have a moped, or couldn’t he? Was he to go to Milan to university, or stay in Rome? One of the very few battles I won. I influenced his life very little. We played power games over Marco. In a way we never did over Paola. It has never been clear who has the power in our home, my wife’s family home: I should never have agreed to live there. Until that weekend he took it into his head to come back from Milan, from Novara, and destroy the whole house. Sledgehammer the masonry, as if it was that walling him in. The house of ghosts. And she would never sell up now precisely because Marco had left his mark on it. Had added his ghost to theirs. Marco is part of my wife’s family history, I thought. She will never sell up her family house. Not of mine. He locked her in the bathroom and took a sledgehammer to the place. The unburied airman and so many others. Her grandfather also killed himself. His ghost will haunt the stairway with a sledgehammer. Still, it suddenly occurred to me, I had walked out on her. What could she do but order a coffin? And why shouldn’t it be luxurious? My wife is in the utmost distress, I thought. The least one can do is to buy an expensive coffin.
Two of the young men went out and immediately a smell of cigarette smoke drifted under the door. Their voices chuckled. Distractedly, while the undertaker spoke on his mobile and the smoke drifted in under the door, I recalled that there was a chapter in Gregory’s book entitled ‘The Paranoid Peninsula’, full of ideas stolen from myself. I had leafed through it on the train from Novara. One must do something to kill the time. Even when going to wake one’s son. To wake one who can never be woken. I haven’t even had five minutes with him, I protested to the man still speaking into his mobile. She said she was the only mourner, he told me, not even bothering to cover the phone. There was no suggestion we might have to wait. Sì, c’è un problema, he told the phone. And only an address to take it to, he turned to me. Via Livorno, I thought, then realised when he nodded I must have spoken out loud. No mention of the funeral or burial place, he said. Was I announcing other thoughts out loud? He snapped the mobile shut. I imagine the local authorities will take over after we’ve delivered. That’s the normal thing. Give me fifteen minutes, I said. Please. Then all at once a fit of pain returned my intestines to centre stage. Unbelievably fierce. There was a stabbing. I felt nauseous and might have tottered. It was deep in the innards. As if the gut had twisted. I’m turning white, I told myself. How can one avoid distraction when one has intestines? When one has a body? At the same time, suddenly and inexplicably, I was back on the straight-backed seat the other side of the coffin. I called to the undertaker who had reached the door now: But will they bury him if it’s suicide? As he ushered the last of his assistants out, I noticed he had a limp. Somehow this seemed extraordinarily felicitous in an undertaker. For a moment my vision blurred, then came back. I mean in the family tomb, I said. In consecrated ground. An undertaker limps because he has one foot in the grave, I thought. Quite stupidly. He doesn’t ski at all. Don’t they have rules, I asked, about suicides? One of my reasons for living in Italy, I used to joke at my wife’s dinner parties, and hence Gregory must have heard it at least once, if not many times, was that it was a place whose group paranoia was so evident, so laughable that I felt it was healthy for my own. Nobody would notice an Englishman’s poor paranoia in Italy, I said. A country of mafia and omertà was necessarily a country of deep paranoia, I once wrote more seriously in an article. My wife believes in the evil eye. Certainly Marco became paranoid, believing I could manipulate vast armies, control the weather. And Gregory had stolen the whole idea word for word. I read it in the train. He had stolen it. They would never bury my son on consecrated ground, I thought. My wife would be destroyed. And I said, Mi scusi? Because I realised I hadn’t been following what the undertaker was saying. I believe it depends on the individual priest, the man said, perhaps repeated. He was trying to be kind in the face of what was no doubt an irritating hiccup, a day that promised to be endless. Turin–Rome is a long drive. They rarely raise objections these days, he said. Not in his experience. On the other hand, I thought, an undertaker should be used to dealing with the distressed. I’m distressed, I thought. He has a limp. I have been distressed for years. My wife must be distressed beyond all consolation. Fifteen minutes, he said. Presumably I nodded.
For almost fifteen minutes then I have been sitting here in the camera ardente staring at my son. In death he does look remarkably like me. The sunken eyes, the nose rising from the face. Less remarkable than in life. This is the last time I shall see him. My thoughts have collected somewhat. I shall never see this face again. His eyes I saw for the last time some months ago. They were wild then. I dare not touch his eyelids. I shall have to leave it to a later date, I reflect, a little more calmly now, to form any more coherent memory of him. But I do remember our last encounter at Villa Serena. There was a scuffle when he did the business of rubbing dirt in her hair. Wishing well, the shadows lengthen, he said. His eyes were wild. He must have said it five or six times, chuckling to himself. Wishing well, the shadows lengthen. All the literature remarks on the schizophrenic’s pleasure in cryptic remarks. You made fun of us, I mutter in the candlelight. His face is quite still and smooth. Perhaps because we made worse fun of you. The shadows are indeed long in the camera ardente. It would be impossible to say how much I wish him well, and how far he is beyond any wishing well or ill. Wishing well does not seem to improve anybody’s lot, I reflect. Though no doubt a good thing in itself. Was there sense then to his expression: Wishing well, the shadows lengthen? His mother wished everything in the world for him. And he said: Giving today, giving tomorrow, goodnight to the players. That was an Italian saying, from some play or other, but odd and strange in English. I tried to explain to Vanoli that this habit of giving literal translations of Italian idioms was his way of demonstrating the incompatibility of the different sides of himself. Idioms his mother used, spoken in his father’s language. You want the wife drunk and the barrel full, he shouted. An Italian idiom was madness in English, I explained. You don’t give me rope, he laughed. You never give me rope. Non mi dai corda, I translated. Why was it you would only speak English in your mother’s presence? I mutter to the corpse. I had to translate everything you said for her. It is uncanny to sit beside a person who simply will not move. Even a sleeping child moves. There is a sort of hum behind the eyes. Even when you said: Sodomise, damn your eyes, lobotomise, it’s only wise, I had to translate. Your mother insisted. I’ll kill you when I get out, you said. I’ll give you rope and no mistake. And I remember how he said it almost casually, breathing heavily, overweight, and immediately my native paranoia has me wondering, can one die on purpose to haunt and hurt someone? And wall them in? He was obese again. Can one die to come back? To make them pay for their crimes? I had read somewhere that suicides become vampires. Am I already being haunted? I’ll make you a wooden overcoat, next time I’m out, you said. Another idiom. I translated. Your mother wept in the car. She said she would come to England after all. And now it’s you has the wooden overcoat, Marco. And a luxurious one at that. With a purple lining.
Sitting in the camera ardente these fifteen minutes, whispering in candlelight beside the face of my dead son – a face, now it is still, so much more like my own than I ever imagined – I am making a huge effort to collect my thoughts, to be straightforward and above all to be coherent, something to which I have always attached the greatest importance. Your mother is arranging for you to be buried in the family tomb, I tell him. I am sure of it. Beside your grandmother. Though I would have preferred a cremation myself. I am trying to concentrate on his face. There is a certain cut the lips have which is all his mother’s. In my journalism I always put the highest premium on coherence. Yet the forehead is mine. The nose is mine. There are two spare places, I tell him, staring at a face that might be my own. Bar the lips. But you know that. Or from another angle my wife’s. Bar the nose. When you toss ashes in the wind, I reflect, there is no sense of confinement, no sense of being walled away. Don’t you think? The fifteen minutes are almost up. I find myself waiting as if for a response. The story of my son escapes me. That’s the truth. I know Andreotti’s life better than my son’s, I reflect. That’s a terrible thought. The closer you come to something the less you understand it. He will compare himself to one of the minor political figures in Manzoni’s story, no doubt. A predictable false modesty. Or one of the church administrators. A wry smile on his lips. Your story escapes me, I tell my son. I could not write it up. But the story of myself and your mother is overwhelming. Is all the other stories together somehow. Is all I know. She has arranged for you to be buried in the family tomb, I tell him. Beside your grandmother, your aunt, your great-grandmother. I am breathing slowly, speaking softly. That was predictable enough. And I have given way again, Marco. You have seen that before. I have let her have her way. Again it was predictable. Presumably I could have told these men they had no right to take you away without my consent. To bury you in my wife’s family tomb. Without my consent. I would have preferred cremation. But I didn’t. No doubt she is planning to keep the place beside him, the last place, for herself, I reflect. To deny me, even in death, the place beside her. She has arranged to have you taken to Rome, I repeat, but I made only a token objection. I don’t want that place beside her. As last night, you will be aware, I made only a token objection when she wanted to see you alone, when she told me I mustn’t come into the mortuary. I could perfectly well have insisted on coming into the mortuary. Perhaps my wife wanted me to insist. Perhaps it was my duty to do so. But I didn’t. I keep pausing as if for a reply. But Marco has become entirely predictable now. Eternally silent. The extraordinary thing about the story of the Nun of Monza, I reflect, is that it offers absolutely no room for comic relief or catharsis of any kind. Just an appalling socio-psychological dynamic that leads a young woman to be walled up forever in a cell, food passed through a hole in a wall, excrement on the floor, waiting to die, but really dead already. Death pushes back the horizon of predictability to the infinite, I reflect. There is no longer any danger of getting things wrong. My son will never move again. There can be no doubt about a reflection like that. There is no hum behind his eyes. Such certainty is hardly a relief. Really, Marco, I never made anything more than token objections to the idea of your sleeping in our bed, her bed. I could have objected, I tell my son, but I didn’t. It began there perhaps. I was furious when I came to our bed to find you already in my place. I was tired, worried, and there you were in my place. I was deeply frustrated. But I made only token objections. Cremation would be my preference, the ashes in the breeze, but I can see no reason for imposing it. That’s the truth. I see no reason for imposing myself. I ironise over my wife’s religion, but have nothing better to offer in its place. Nothing that would have helped you. I criticised politicians, but made no policies of my own. I chuckled at the evil eye, the ex voto, the Italian paranoia, but had only a vague unfocused anxiety to offer in its place, a vague unease that leaked out in worried articles about democracy and the environment. At least your mother has faith, I tell my dead son. You mustn’t blame her. Fuck somebody else, you said. I did, but it was never an alternative to your mother. To her energy. Just part of the general eclecticism, a general detachment I have. I never thought of imposing my mistress. I never considered bringing her into the house and sitting her on the sofa and saying, okay let’s talk about this. However much I might have loved her. Your mother has all the energy, Marco. That’s the truth. That’s why she is so obscene, so scandalous, so attractive. I’m attracted to her and repelled. The mistress was just a mistress, Marco. Who would I be without your mother? I suddenly find myself demanding of my dead son. I am nobody. I find this camera ardente ridiculous. Its Sacred Heart. Its crucifix. It is ridiculous, when you think about it, to imagine that corpses have to be surrounded by dark wood and candlelight. But I can imagine no alternative. Nor any reason for imposing my view. I find Italy with all its old traditions, its superficial idealism, its gauche bad taste, its puffed up national pride and Catholic paranoia ridiculous – Italy is quite ridiculous, I am telling my dead son, the way people here believe in the evil eye and are always convinced there are conspiracies against them – but I would not swap it for anything I have to offer. For an Englishman’s empty and pragmatic eclecticism. Why did I never have any vision to oppose to my wife’s? To help you grow up. England is a nation without plans, I had insisted to Geoff Courteney the other evening. He was ludicrously enthusiastic about Blair. A nation that says, maybe we’ll join this, if it’s convenient. Maybe we won’t, if it’s not. A nation without vision, I insisted. Even the wrong vision is better than no vision, I told Courteney at his dinner party. We were arguing over Europe. Give me the delirium of a destiny, I told him. He was praising the wait-and-see approach. Any destiny, I insisted. While at the same time reflecting that all my life had been wait and see. Wait in briefing rooms. See the scene of the crime. The corpse on the street. Wait and see if our marriage improves. Your mother had plans, I tell Marco, quite abruptly, almost angrily, as if still pursuing the argument with Courteney, Geoff Courteney who has the power to publish my book. Your mother had endless plans. Hair-brained plans. I loved her for them and they went wrong. They went terribly wrong. I loved to think how dynamic she was, Marco, but I seemed unable to assist with her plans. I watched them going wrong, but seemed unable to assist. Courteney is irretrievably smug, with his talk of hedged bets and cautious good sense. I was perfectly aware when it all began to go wrong with Paola. That is journalism after all. You wait and see and get the opportunity to watch things going wrong, Inferno in the making. I remember very precisely the moment when your mother realised Paola would not be beautiful. That is the bird on the Vedic tree who watches the other bird eat. Myself and your mother. I had no vision to substitute for hers. Even when the plans went wrong. It was the day Paola got her glasses, and your mother realised, in an instant, that she was not going to be a beautiful woman. She was immensely disappointed. She let it show. Your mother occupied both sides of every polarity, Marco. She took you to church and flirted with you. She prayed with Gregory, and committed adultery with him. She was generous to Paola and cruel to Paola. For some reason I am standing up, leaning over the coffin. My face is only inches from his. From my son’s. But when it came to the poles of reflection-action, Marco, when it came to who actually did things, and who just thought about doing them, who just tagged along, who just offered a voice that was at best an echo, there we stayed at opposite extremes. What was it my son couldn’t decide about, I wonder, when everything went wrong, in Milan? Could I have helped? What was it drove him to thrust a screwdriver in his veins? Without kissing him, without waiting for the knock on the door, without deciding to go, I am gone.
Dottor Vanoli? I have bought another phone-card. You have all my sympathy, he says. I am so sorry. Busi informed me this morning. I was hoping you would be in touch. It is . . . They have put suicide on the death certificate, I announce. I am standing in the busy foyer of the policlinico. Suicide. My wife doesn’t know. I’m afraid they won’t let him be buried in the family tomb. She will be distressed. There will be a scene. She will be wild.
I have bought a stack of phone-cards so as not to be cut off again. I have spoken to Giorgio again, and heard nothing but the blandest of disclaimers. I have spoken to Paola who says she does not see how she can come to a funeral in Rome. She is afraid my wife will make a scene. She ought to come to the funeral, she says, but she can’t. She refuses to use the word mamma. Your wife, she said. There was something cool about Paola’s voice when she refused to come, I tell myself now, listening to Vanoli’s commiserations, when she refused to use the word mamma. Paola is determined to establish a distance from you, I tell myself, listening to Vanoli repeat what the undertaker said about its being extremely rare for priests to raise objections. Perhaps there is something dour about Paola. But surely your wife has been informed, Italy’s foremost psychiatrist asks. I have left her, I tell him. There is no point in our being together now Marco is dead. It is over between us, I announce. Now I am listening to him worrying if I am well. How can I broach with Paola the question of my going to live with her? Or was her coolness to do with what was written on the bathroom window? With something she is hiding? These feelings of desolation are commonplace in bereavement Vanoli says. Am I looking after myself? Am I eating? He is telling me my feelings are commonplace. That I must not be hasty. Why don’t you come and see me if the funeral is going to be in Rome? Perhaps I can prescribe something, he suggests. Then all at once I am shouting: It’s not a question of prescribing anything. It was never a question of prescribing things. I substitute one phone-card for another, I am determined not to be cut off this time. Mr Burton, you are understandably upset, he is saying. It is ludicrous to imagine you can help me by prescribing something, I am shouting in the foyer. It was utter folly, I shout out loud in the hospital foyer, to imagine you could help my son with Thorazine. With a mere medicine. For somebody out of his mind. It was our fault, I shout at Vanoli. It was my fault. My fault for letting things slide. For paying no attention. For having no vision. No, let me say what I think for once. Mr Burton . . . It was our fault and you knew it. We drove him mad. We made it impossible for him to live. And you knew it. We walled him up. As surely as with bricks and mortar. You knew it. I came to you – there are still four thousand lire on this card – to avoid clearing up the situation between my wife and myself, to avoid a doctor who would suggest his illness was anything but clinical. You knew that. You knew why we came to see you separately, why we didn’t come together. You even asked the appropriate questions. We are totally responsible for what happened to Marco. That’s the truth Dottor Vanoli. You knew it and did nothing. You were never frank. You were seduced by my wife’s pleasant façade. You asked questions and never followed them up. All you did was prescribe things. You can’t prescribe things for people like us. You should be ashamed of yourself, I tell Italy’s foremost psychiatrist. Then suddenly I feel completely and utterly exhausted. It is my third wild phone-call in succession. Two thousand six hundred. Two thousand four hundred. All at once I realise he is smiling. Six hundred kilometres away Vanoli is smiling his knowing smile. But I don’t have the energy to start again. Mr Burton, he says. There is a pause. I am sorry, Doctor, I’m sorry, I lost control. Mr Burton, if I may say so . . . Forgive me, Doctor. Please, Mr Burton, if I may say so, the habit of assuming ourselves responsible for everything that goes wrong is a particularly modern and western aberration. His voice is as calm and even as ever. But leaving aside the question of your son’s pathology, might I suggest two things, both as a doctor and, after all these years I hope, as a friend. I wait. I am sure he is smiling. This isn’t affecting him at all. There is still a thousand lire. First, I suspect that you are indeed in urgent need of medication. You do not sound yourself, Mr Burton. Second – he pauses. Second I do feel that the person your anger is really directed at, Mr Burton, is your wife. I am watching the money blink away. Mr Burton? Long distance calls cost less than calls to mobiles, I reflect. Something I have never understood. Vanoli is smiling, exactly as he always used to, in his office, in my dream: What I am trying to say is that it is perhaps your wife, not myself, you wish to be shouting at. And if I could just warn you, in that regard, I do feel that at this delicate moment . . .
Without waiting for the cash to run out, I replace the receiver. How can the man talk about prescriptions, I wonder, and then offer such a frighteningly accurate analysis of my state of mind? I let my feet carry me to the main doors, the steps. I am entirely predictable it seems. To a man like Vanoli. As predictable as a corpse. To an important psychiatrist. My face turns up to a bright blue afternoon. And to myself as well for that matter. I will shout at anybody but my wife.