In Other Words (23 page)

When my Italian writing is published, the scaffolding disappears. Apart from certain words, certain choices that betray the fact that Italian isn't my language, one can't see what props me up, protects me. What hides the vulnerable part remains invisible. But that absence is only an illusion. I am always aware of my scaffolding, without which I, too, would collapse.

Unlike the Portico di Ottavia, my Italian writing, just begun, is not yet worn down. I doubt that it will last for centuries. But the scaffolding serves the same purpose: to hold up a work that might fall. I don't find it ugly. Maybe one day there will be no need for it. If I could get rid of it and write on my own, I would feel more independent. But I would miss my scaffolding, a group of dear friends who guided and girded me, to whom I connect one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

H
e wakes beside his wife, disoriented, agitated by a dream.

In the dream, too, he was beside his wife. Also disoriented, agitated. They were driving on a country road flanked by trees and bushes. There was an uncertain light. It might have been dawn or sunset. The sky was pale but had a trace of pink.

The landscape evoked an old oil painting: a rural scene, unpeopled, shadowy. The tops of the trees seemed a mass of clouds that obscured the sky, and the trunks cast thin shadows that accompanied them along one side of the road.

His wife was at the wheel. And as she drove he was filled with anxiety, because although the car was running the entire body was missing. Apart from the steering wheel, the pedals, the gearbox, there was nothing between them and the road.

His wife drove as if she were unaware of this, or as if there were no danger, while the absence of the car's body and the proximity of the road frightened him.

He cried to his wife to stop. But, as usual in dreams, he
had no voice. They went on like that, without speaking, without any problems, always alongside the thin shadows of the trees. There were no obstacles along the road. They didn't have an accident, although he expected it. Maybe that was the most disturbing detail of the dream.

Now it's the middle of the night and his wife is sleeping, but he has just returned from a couple of months abroad, and for him it's already morning. He has an impulse to get up and start the day. He belongs now to the daily rhythm of another country, where the sky is already blue, where he no longer is.

He can't sleep, and yet the effect of the dream stuns him. He's afraid that there are other absences, other things missing. He wants to make sure that there is still a floor under the bed, that the room still has four walls.

His wife is there, on his left, just as in the dream. He sees her bare arms, her features illuminated by the full moon.

The table, at dinner, which ended a few hours ago, was full, too. His wife had organized a big dinner to celebrate his return. He had no appetite, the festive clamor around the table annoyed him. At that hour, after traveling a long way, he wanted only to go to bed.

Instead he remained sitting at the table, telling the guests, their close friends, about his experiences abroad: the country where he had been, the apartment he had rented, the appearance of the city. He talked about the people and their character. He explained the work he had done. At one point, to satisfy the curiosity of one of the guests, he had said a couple of things in the foreign language he had learned, feeling, at that moment, a stranger in his own house.

He goes into the kitchen. There's no need to turn on the light, the glow of the moon is enough. He sees the spectacular wake of the dinner: all the dirty plates and glasses, greasy pots and pans, a giant ceramic tray on which his wife had served a wonderful dish. They had left it all like that and gone to bed, he because he was tired, she because she had drunk a little too much.

He begins to wash the pots, to scrape away the leftovers now encrusted on the plates, to rinse the silverware. He loads the dishwasher and turns it on. He puts things in order, removing every trace of the celebration.

In the cleaned-up kitchen he makes coffee, looks for some bread. He would like to have a slice of bread: abroad, in the kitchen of his apartment, there was no toaster, so he had a different breakfast. He finds a loaf of bread, puts a slice in the toaster. But it doesn't go in, there is some obstacle in the slit. Then he sees that there is already a slice of bread inside—dry, hard, cold.

To whom does that forgotten slice, still untouched, belong? His wife wouldn't have left it there. She stopped eating that type of bread, she says she has an intolerance. A suspicion dawns, emerging out of nowhere, that instills a fear even more chilling than in the dream. He wonders if his wife has a lover, if the forgotten slice belongs to him.