Don't Move (23 page)

“Do you need any of your bags?”

She didn’t reply. My words brushed past her neck, which was bowed inertly in the darkness. I said, “Come on, let’s go.”

I bent over her, putting one arm around her waist, and helped her out of the car. I could feel her bones vibrate as I lifted her, and a deep sigh, an attempt at self-encouragement, shook her chest. The sky above us was bathed in the light of a full moon with a charitable face. Holding tightly to each other, we walked toward the sign, stopping to look at the moon. It looked so close that it seemed to be part of us, no longer part of the sky; so low and heavy that it lost something of its mystery and became humanized.

We entered the trattoria through a glass door covered with sheer curtains. On the right was a long, deserted bar; on the left, a big sad dining room. Several men were sitting at tables here and there. Few of them were eating. Most of them were drinking wine and looking up at a television set that was broadcasting a soccer match. We sat at a distant table. Someone’s eyes moved toward us, uninterested eyes that quickly returned to the TV screen.

A woman came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She had a crude face, surrounded by a cloud of disheveled gray hair. I asked her, “Is it possible to get something to eat?”

“The waiter’s gone for the night.”

“Some cold cuts, or maybe a little cheese?”

“Would you also like some vegetable soup?”

“Yes, thanks,” I said, quite surprised by the woman’s affability.

“I’ll heat it up for you.”

“And a room? Could we get a room?”

The woman stared at Italia longer than necessary. “For how many nights?”

When the soup came, Italia ate nothing but a few spoonfuls. I looked at her short dark hair, which I wasn’t yet used to, at her face, which was thinner than ever, made up of hollows and little shadows, and at her blue high-necked dress: She looked like a nun without a veil. I poured her a brimming glass of wine and insisted that we drink a toast. Her response was to push her glass next to mine without lifting it. We toasted on the tablecloth—too low, like the moon in the sky. We could see it through the window, which was set in a metal frame. The moon hung there, displaying its kindly overstuffed face, the air around its sphere diaphanous in the darkness. It seemed curious about us. I was a little tipsy, having gulped down three full glasses of wine, one after the other. Although we were in a roadside inn redolent of stale food and cheap drink, I was happy because I was with her, hundreds of kilometers away from the city where I’d lived like a rat. Happy because our life together was beginning, and every stage of it was going to be splendid; it would have to be. And now I was afraid that Italia was sad, so I gathered myself and tried to cheer her up, fearing that it might not take long for me to become sad, too. I felt that looking for our reflection in that moon might suddenly make us miserable. I didn’t want to think about that, Angela, so I drank instead. I was drinking because I was full of confidence, because life had presented me with a way to redeem myself; I was drinking because we’d have another child, Italia and I. I would deny her nothing, never again, and I’d treasure her for the rest of my days. I gazed at her, and my stupid eyes glistened with confident hope. So she isn’t hungry, so what, I thought; she’s just tired. She needs to fall asleep and dream, while I caress her in spite of that fat-faced moon. And if she gets hungry during the night, I’ll walk down the stairs to the darkened kitchen and steal something for her to eat, a little bread, a few slices of sausage. And I’ll watch her eat, hovering over her like a Cupid in the night.

She vomited into her plate. The convulsion caught her by surprise, reddening her face while a dark vein in her forehead swelled and pulsed. She picked up her napkin and brought it to her mouth.

“Excuse me.”

I reached across the table and squeezed her hand, which was too hot and sticky with perspiration. “I should apologize to you,” I said. “I’m the one who talked you into eating.”

Her face had grown extremely pale, and her eyes were filled with a strange surrender. She coughed, then looked around, as if afraid someone might notice she was unwell. The place was quiet except for the drone from the television set as the announcer followed the movements of the ball. In the back of the dining room, behind Italia, the kitchen door opened, thrust aside by the woman’s body. She approached our table, carrying a tray of cold cuts. The food was well arranged on the tray, with little clusters of vegetables preserved in oil, grilled eggplant slices, and dried tomatoes gleaming among the sliced sausages.

“My friend doesn’t feel well. Could you show us to our room?”

The woman gave us a perplexed look; maybe she didn’t trust us anymore.

“Please excuse us,” I said, placing a note for 100,000 lire on the table, along with my identification. “I’ll come back downstairs and give you the lady’s papers.”

The woman picked up the banknote, walked slowly over to the bar, opened a metal box, and took out a key, which she placed in my hand.

The room was large and tidy-looking, but it smelled like a place that’s been closed up for a while. There was a bed of veneered wood and a matching wardrobe, its feet still wrapped in the plastic it had come in. Two towels, a long blue one and a short brown one, were hanging next to a sink. The curtains were green, and so was the bedspread, which I turned down to the foot of the bed. Italia sat down, bending over herself, clutching her stomach with both hands.

“Are you having your period?”

“No,” she said, and she let herself fall backward onto the bed.

I took off her shoes and helped her to stretch out her legs. I shoved her pillow under her head. The pillow was half-empty—you could press it practically flat—so I took the one that would have been mine and gave her that, too, to lift her up a little more. There really was a strange smell in the room, an unhealthy chemical odor. Maybe it emanated from that nasty furniture, fresh from the factory. I pushed the curtains aside, pulled up the shade, and opened the window to let in the fragrance of the mild night, so mild that it seemed to be summer already.

Italia was shivering on the bed. I closed the window and looked for a blanket. I found one in the wardrobe, a rough brown blanket like the ones they give out in army barracks. I folded it in half and spread it over her. Then I slipped a hand under it and felt for her wrist. Her pulse was weak, but I didn’t have my physician’s bag with me, so I was totally unprepared. I hated myself for such negligence.

“Please, let’s go to sleep,” she said.

I stretched out next to her without even taking off my shoes. Now we’ll go to sleep, I thought. We’ll fall asleep as we are, fully dressed, in this ugly room, and tomorrow she’ll feel better. We’ll get an early start in the cool of the morning. We’ll stop for breakfast in a bar; I’ll buy newspapers and some razor blades. As I lay there, the wine I’d drunk in such a hurry turned stale in my stomach. I missed Italia’s voice; I missed her body. I had a stiffening erection, and I was longing to make love to her, but she was already asleep. I turned off the light. She was breathing heavily, noisily, like an exhausted child or a dreaming dog. The wine really hadn’t been very good. It had made me tired for only a little while, and now I was wide-awake again. My mouth felt thick and tasted sour. I curled up next to Italia, gently, trying not to wake her. She was mine; she’d be mine forever.

The moonlight fell upon one side of her face. In profile, she appeared to be frowning, perplexed, as if she’d carried some uncertainty with her across the threshold of sleep. I didn’t ask myself what that uncertainty might be. No, I smiled in the darkness, feeling the skin under my cheekbone crinkle against the sheet and thinking about how much I enjoyed watching her while she slept. I was happy—we rarely notice when we’re happy, Angela—and I wondered why we’re always unprepared for happiness, why it takes us by surprise, unawares, as if we can know such a benign sentiment only by brooding over it when it’s past or by longing for it to arrive. Yet at that moment, I was happy, and I said so to myself: I’m happy! The small part of Italia visible to me in the weak light of that simple room, as dreary as a furniture factory, was enough to make me happy.

Her forehead was glistening with perspiration, which I tried to dry with part of the sheet. She was still burning hot, maybe hotter than before, and a trickle of saliva ran from her mouth to the side of her neck she was sleeping on. Soon I realized that each of her exhalations was accompanied by a moan. I listened closely. The moaning began to break up, and eventually it stopped altogether. But then it came back, as piercing as the twittering of a frightened bird. I shook her. “Italia . . .”

She didn’t move.

“Italia!”

She must have been in a deep torpor. Her lips were a little parted, and she seemed to be chewing, although her mouth was empty. Her eyes remained closed. Maybe she was searching for a word, a word she never managed to find.

I got out of bed, bent over her, and began to slap her, gently at first, then harder and harder, trying to wake her up. Her head rolled back and forth, offering no resistance to my blows. “Wake up!” I cried. “Wake up!”

I didn’t have any kind of medicine with me; I didn’t have anything. And I didn’t know anything, either. I was no diagnostician. I was used to following a clearly outlined plan, used to operating on specified portions of the body, patches of flesh surrounded by cloths. And where were we? In a little inn off a secondary highway, in a part of the country I didn’t know, far from any city, far from any hospital.

Then she moved and even mumbled a greeting. But she was so groggy and numb that she must have felt my slaps like the soft beating of tiny wings, as if a butterfly were importuning her. I pulled her to a sitting position in the bed, trying to arrange her so that she could lean back against the wall. She abandoned herself to my efforts but slipped a little to one side, her head lolling weakly on her shoulder. I switched on the lights, ran over to the washbasin, and turned on the faucet all the way. With a cough, the water came rushing out and splashed me. I wet a towel and pressed it onto her face, soaking her hair and her chest in the process. She came to, opened her eyes, and kept them open.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You’re not well,” I stammered.

But she acted as though she didn’t realize that anything was wrong. She seemed not to have noticed the sudden crisis that overwhelmed her in her sleep. With a few violent movements, I stripped her to the waist. “I have to examine you,” I said, almost screaming.

I palpated her abdomen. It was as hard as a tabletop. She didn’t move. “I’m cold,” she murmured.

I looked out the window, hoping the moon would set in a hurry and stop shining its light on us. We have to get out of here, I thought. Right away. And then, just at that moment, I saw that she was urinating; a stain was spreading over the sheets. She looked at me without realizing what she was doing, as if the body doing it didn’t belong to her. I poked her rigid stomach again. “Can you feel that?” I shouted. “Can you feel my hand?”

She didn’t lie. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t feel anything.”

Angela, that was when I understood that something very serious was happening. Italia’s back slid farther down the wall, and she lay twisted on the bed, her gray face between the pillows. “Let’s go,” I said.

“Let me sleep. . . .”

I lifted her entirely off the bed. Her body weighed nothing. Color from her dress had run onto the white sheets, leaving a pale blue blotch. I carried her across the hall and began to kick at the door with the ground-glass windowpane and the little sign that read PRIVATE. The woman opened the door; behind her stood a young man with dazzled eyes.

“A hospital!” I shouted. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

I was barely finished speaking when Italia—as if to show them the reason for my distress, for my madness—slumped unconscious in my arms. I cried out, and my eyes filled with furious tears, with a refusal so intense that the woman and the boy I took to be her son flattened themselves against the wall while they tried to give me directions to the hospital. I ran to the car and set Italia in the passenger’s seat. Wearing a nightshirt and slippers, the woman followed me outside, for no particular reason. She didn’t know what else to do, so she assisted at my fury. I looked at her in the rearview mirror, standing in the dirt parking lot in front of the inn, enveloped in the cloud of dust I raised as I drove away.

The directions I’d received were scanty and imprecise, and I was in such a state that I didn’t even remember them. But if we must go, life will bear us along, Angela. The road, glimmering in the light of dawn, was the needle of a compass that drew me onward. I trod harder on the accelerator and spoke to Italia. “Stay calm,” I said. “We’re almost there. Everything’s going to be all right. Stay calm.”

Italia was calm. Motionless, burning hot, maybe already in a coma.

Meanwhile, the sea was in the air, in the flat, fractured roads, in the vegetation. The sea of the south, with ghastly buildings lining the beach not far from the road. Finally, in the center of a little traffic circle, under a jumble of rusty highway signs, the bright white sign with the red
H
in the middle. A few hundred feet more, and there we were. A building of modest proportions: not many stories high, rectangular in outline, and surrounded on all sides by cement paving. One of those seashore hospitals that stay practically shut down all winter long. Just a few cars in the parking lot, and one idle ambulance. The only illumination in the deserted emergency room came from the security lights. I was carrying Italia in my arms; one of her wine-colored shoes was missing. I looked through the porthole window in a door and pushed it open, only to discover other doors and more silence. I called out, “Is anyone here?”

A nurse stepped into the corridor, a young woman with black hair pinned up behind her head.