Emmaus (7 page)

Bobby turned red, he really hadn't expected that. He said he was playing with Andre.

You're playing? And what are you playing?

The bass, he said.

He was trying to laugh it off. He's like that.

Don't give us that bullshit, what are you playing with her?

Nothing, it's for a show she's doing.

You play with us, Bobby.

And so?

And so if you start playing with someone else you should tell us.

I would have told you.

When?

At that point it was clear that he was upset.

What the fuck do you want from me? I didn't marry you.

He took a step forward.

Why, instead, don't you tell me what
you
were doing there, and what's it all about, your going to her house?

He was right to ask. I explained. I said the Saint and I had gone to talk to Andre's mother. We wanted to tell her about her daughter, that she should do something, Andre was destroying herself and her friends.

You went to Andre's mother to say those things?

I added that the Saint had explained to her about us, about the Church, and what we thought. He had advised her to take Andre to confession, to talk to a priest.

Andre? To confession?

Yes.

You're nuts—out of your minds.

It was the right thing to do, I said.

The right thing? Do you hear yourself? What can you understand about Andre? That's her mother, she'll know perfectly well what to do.

Not necessarily.

She's a grown-up woman, you're a kid.

It doesn't mean anything.

A kid. Who do you think you are, to go and teach her a lesson?

It's the Lord who speaks, with our voice, said the Saint.

Bobby turned to look at him. But he didn't notice that blind man's gaze. He was too angry. You're not a priest yet, Saint, you're a kid, when you're a priest then you can go back and we'll let you do your preaching.

The Saint jumped on him: he's fiendishly agile, at such moments. They ended up on the ground. They were really giving it to each other. It had happened so quickly that I just stood there watching. They did everything in an illogical silence, concentrated, fists in each other's face. Gripping around the neck. Then the Saint banged his head hard, on the ground, and went limp in Bobby's arms. Both
of them were bloody.

So we ended up in the emergency room. They asked us what happened.

We had a fight, Bobby said. A question of girls.

The doctor nodded, he didn't care. He took both of them through a glass door, the Saint on a gurney, Bobby on his feet.

I sat waiting in the corridor, by myself, under a poster for those buses where you go to give blood. I went with my father, as a boy. They were parked in the square. My father took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeve. Evidently he was a hero. At the end they gave him a glass of wine and he let me have a taste. I'm eighteen years old and already happiness has the savor of memory.

Bobby came out with two band-aids on his face, nothing complicated, one hand bandaged. He sat down next to me. It was late. There was no need to say we loved each other, but I gave him a pat, so there could be no mistake.

What are you playing with Andre? I asked.

She dances, I play. She asked me, it's for a performance, of that stuff she does.

What's it like?

I don't know. It has nothing to do with what we do. It has no meaning.

What do you mean?

I mean it has no meaning, what we do signifies nothing, there's no story, or idea, nothing. She dances, I play, it's just that.

He sat thinking. I tried to imagine.

So it's not a good action, he said, it's an action and that's all. It has nothing to do with doing something good.

He said that it had to do with doing something
beautiful
.

He struggled to explain, and I to understand, because we are Catholics, and are not used to distinguishing between aesthetic value and moral value. It's like with sex. They taught us that one makes love in order to communicate, and to share joy. One plays music for the same reason. Pleasure has nothing to do with it, pleasure is a resonance, a reverberation. Beauty is just an accident, necessary only in minimal doses.

Bobby said that
he was ashamed
of playing like that, when he did it at Andre's house, it seemed to him that he was naked, and that had made him think.

You know when we talk about
our
music? he said.

Yes.

That we should decide to play
our
music?

Yes.

Given that there's no purpose, only me playing and her dancing, there's no real reason to do it, except that we want to, that we like doing it. We are the reason. In the end the world isn't better, we haven't convinced anyone, we haven't made anyone understand anything—in the end we're us, as in the beginning, but true. And behind, a wake—something that remains, that's
true
.

He was angry with this thing of the true.

Maybe that's what it is, playing
my
music, he said.

I could no longer follow him.

Put like that, it sounds like colossal nonsense, you know? I said.

It is, he said. But it doesn't matter to Andre, in fact it's like anything that can become emotional irritates her. She wanted the bass precisely because it's the minimum of life. And she dances the same way. Whenever it might become emotional, she stops. She stops a step before.

I looked at him.

Every so often, he said, I do something that seems to me beautiful, strong, and then she turns toward me, without stopping dancing, as if she'd heard a wrong note. She doesn't care if it's beautiful in that way. That's not what she's looking for.

I smiled. Did you sleep with her? I asked.

Bobby started laughing. You shit, he said.

Come on, you slept with her.

You really don't understand a damn thing, do you?

Yes, you slept with her.

He got up. He took a few steps in the corridor. We were alone. He kept walking back and forth until he thought the matter was finished. Luca? he asked.

I called him. He might come, he had problems at home.

He should get away from there.

He's eighteen, you can't leave home at eighteen.

Who said?

Come on…

They're simmering there. Is he coming to the hospital, to the larvae?

Larvae is what we call the sick people in the hospital.

Yes. You're the one who doesn't come anymore.

He sat down. Next week I will.

You said that last week, too.

He nodded his head yes. I don't know, I don't feel like it anymore.

No one feels like it, it's that they're expecting us. Can we leave them shipwrecked in their own pee?

He thought for a while. Why not, he said.

Fuck off.

We laughed.

Then the Saint's parents arrived. They didn't ask too many questions, just how was Bobby, and when the Saint would get out. They had stopped trying to understand a while ago, they confined themselves to waiting for the consequences and putting things back in order, every time. So they had come to tidy up, and seemed intent on doing so politely, without causing disturbance. The father had brought something to read.

At one point Bobby said he was sorry, he hadn't meant to hurt him.

Of course, the Saint's mother said, with a smile. The father looked up from his book and said in a gentle tone something our parents often say. Not at all.

The Saint, however, wasn't really better, in the end. They wanted to keep him there, for observation—the head, you never know. They brought us in to him; his parents seemed worried by his underwear more than anything else.
A change of underwear. That in the details the world is saved is something we believe blindly.

The Saint nodded at Bobby, and he went over. They said something to each other. Then one of those gestures.

I stayed with Bobby to sign the papers for the hospital, for the prescriptions—the Saint's parents had already left. When we went out, Luca was there.

Why didn't you come in?

I hate hospitals.

We went toward the tram, shut up like clams in our coats, breathing in fog. It was late, and in the darkness there was only solitude. We didn't speak until we got to the stop. Because a tram stop at night, in our cold fogs, is perfect. Only the necessary words, no gestures. A glance when needed. We speak like old men. Luca wanted to know and we explained, in that way. I told him about the afternoon at Andre's mother's. In those few words it sounded even more absurd.

You're crazy, he said.

They went to preach to her, Bobby said.

And she? asked Luca.

I told the story of the monk. More or less as we had heard it. Up to the point where Andre was his daughter.

First Luca laughed, then he thought for a moment.

It's not true, he said, finally.

She was bullshitting you, he said.

I thought back to how the woman had said it, in search of some nuance that might explain. But it was like beating your
head against a wall, nothing came of it. So there remained that hypothesis of a priest in hostile terrain—a low blow. It was better before, us here, them there, to each its own harvest. It was the type of field where we knew how to play. But now it was a different geometry, it was their wild geometry.

Are you coming to the show? Bobby asked. He meant the thing with him and Andre.

Luca had him explain, then said he'd rather kill himself.

And you? Bobby asked, turning to me.

Yes, I'm coming, keep three tickets for me.

Three?

I have two friends who are interested.

The usual two shits?

Them.

OK, three, then.

Thanks.

The tram's coming, said Luca.

But since they had had that fight, they went together to the mountains, Bobby and the Saint. That's what we do. When something breaks between us, we seek exertion and solitude. That is the spiritual luxury we live in—to save ourselves we choose what in a normal life would be punishment and penalty.

We prefer to seek this exertion and solitude in nature. We favor the mountains, for obvious reasons. There the link
between effort and ascent is literal, and the straining of every form toward the height obsessive. As we walk amid the peaks, the silence becomes religious, and the surrounding purity is a promise kept—water, air, earth cleared of insects. Ultimately, if you believe in God, the mountains remain the easiest place to do so. The cold compels us to hide our bodies and fatigue disfigures them: thus our daily effort to censure the body is exalted, and after hours of walking we are reduced to steps and thoughts—the bare minimum needed, they taught us, to be ourselves.

They went to the mountains and didn't want anyone to go with them. A pup tent, a few supplies, not even a book or music. To do without is a thing that helps—there's nothing like poverty to bring you close to the truth. They left because they intended to untangle a knot between them. Two days and they would be back.

I knew where they planned to go. There was an exasperatingly long, stony ascent before the approach to the real summit. Walking on stony ground is a penance—I saw the Saint's hand in it; it was his kind of thing. He wanted a penance. But also the light, probably—the light on stony ground is the true light of the earth. And he also wanted the strange sensation that we know up there, as of some soft thing that's left, unmoving, saved from a spell, the last thing, floating.

With some envy, I watched them leave. We know enough to observe the nuances. Bobby had a strange way of performing the small acts of departure—he always showed up with the wrong shoes, like one who doesn't entirely want
to go. I asked if he was sure he wanted to go and he shrugged his shoulders. It didn't seem to matter much to him.

The first night they camped on the edge of the stony ground. They put up the tent when it was dark, and the Saint's backpack, lying on a rock, rolled off. It was slightly open, and the few things for the journey slipped out. But, in the light of the gas lantern, there was also a metallic gleam that Bobby didn't immediately recognize. The Saint went to put the things back in the pack, then returned to the tent.

What are you doing with a gun, Bobby asked, but smiling.

Nothing, said the Saint.

It was partly that, but probably even more the words during the night. In the morning they started to climb among the rocks, without speaking, two strangers. The Saint has an implacable way of walking, climbing steadily, silently. Bobby stayed behind—the wrong shoes didn't help. A wind rose from the east and then rain. The cold was bitter. The Saint walked at an even pace, taking short, regular breaks—he never turned. From behind, at a certain point, Bobby shouted something. The Saint turned. Bobby yelled that he was fed up, he was going back. The Saint shook his head and nodded at him, to tell him to cut it out and keep walking, but Bobby didn't want to hear about it, he was yelling, in the voice of one near tears. Then the Saint descended a few meters, slowly, looking carefully where he put his feet. The rain was falling obliquely, and cold. He got within a few large rocks of Bobby, and asked him in a loud voice what the hell was happening.