Chiara Valerio

Seven fourteen twenty-eight

There’s a certainty you are grasping now

And it’s not the Angel

It’s not a miracle

It’s not the hand of the Lord

It’s you

‘Heart of Darkness’, BAUSTELLE

 

 

I have nothing in hand. If I was an illusionist they would be five surprising

words, more, they would be a curtain, all eyes would be on me, bright and

ready to goggle at the appearance of a rabbit or a bunch of flowers, or a

dove, maybe. I’d rather the flowers. Red yellow and white, large and

callous, no roses, no green. Roses wilt and the green goes brown. There

are never any roses in illusionists’ bunches, not even in the fairground

magicians’. Because they wilt. People in love give roses because love

wilts. They know, they lie and eternally give roses. I’d never want to

receive a flower like that. One that’s a warning. And then whisper what a

wonderful smell what a wonderful smell and smile, get a little excited

forgetting that roses wither and love and new shoes and other things and

that there are plastic and fabric flowers that are no answer anyway.

Especially if you are allergic to dust. I say I have nothing in hand and I

look at my dry palms because in this nothing that I’m clutching I can’t

even keep a secret. Every time I’ve covered my mouth with my hand I

haven’t been able to keep quiet. Every time I played Guess where the

sweet is as a child, right or left, left or right, here or here, I always lost the

sugar. Losing is bitter. I have nothing in hand and I can’t keep a secret.

Last month, on a Wednesday, I met a man and we ended up in bed after a

beer and a rambling chat. I paid the first, he the second which was the

same anyway. A light double-malt in a glass that looked like and perhaps

was a small goldfish bowl. Goldfish often seem drunk, they swim round

until they’re dizzy and sometimes they jump out and end up on the floor.

Then someone comes rushing along and doesn’t notice. The fish on the

floor. And they slip and fall and die. Sometimes someone hits their head.

They don’t notice the absence of the red in the opaque transparency of

water and fish food. On the floor of the house trodden a thousand times.

And the neighbours whisper They must have been drunk. Instead it was

the fish, but it can’t tell anyone, mum’s the word, swallow your tongue.

Bowls know something about objectionable drunkenness and secrets

should only be told to the dead, who have nothing in hand though. Maybe

a coin. Or under the tongue? We ended up in bed together, and it had

never happened to me, a beer and a man between the sheets, all in the

same evening. On a Wednesday at my house and at ten to eleven all done

because my mother called to say Goodnight darling, and I You too mum

and he Does your mother always call you at this time and my mother

Who’s that there with you? And I No one mum it’s the television. He

smiled buttoning himself up slowly, as you would imagine a reformed

stripper to do, fired by kindness and pity as if for a thirty-year-old woman

it was humiliating to confess to her mother that she kept the television on

with a convincingly fifties film playing. How many men ask Does your

mother always call you at this time. What time? All time is for mothers.

Being a mother is like having all time. Then he left and I didn’t even see

him to the door in case he thought of a reply. Or maybe it’s women who

think that men are interested in replies, that they are more sexual beings

than socialites. The reprises of safe sex with no outcome. If it’s safe there

is no outcome. If they wrote no outcome in the advertising or on the

packet no one would ever buy contraceptives of any sort again. No

outcome is so fatal. No outcome is fatal. I put things in order, tidied up,

listed the objects caressing them one by one with my eyes and turned the

light off to rest. And I slept. The past month I’ve been sleeping like never

before. I have nothing in hand I can’t keep a secret and usually I can’t

sleep. We saw each other again at the bar I offered him a beer he left

saying Have a good evening in front of the TV. I don’t know men well but

I’m amazed they behave like little damsels in a fit of pique. Or maybe it’s

him and why I invited him home, maybe I love piqued damsels, of any

sex. I love piqued damsels, covered in lace even when the lace is a tidy

moustache and inlaid sideburns and the springs of tanga briefs and two

earrings and freshly cut hair. That smells of fields and scythe. I switched

off the light. Mothers even have sleep time. They watch over children’s

sleep, check they sleep peacefully and dream of honey and enchanted

forests and don’t get their head wet if it rains and don’t fall into ravines

and don’t scratch their sores, which is worse. A good mother wouldn’t

buy a goldfish for a living room with a marble floor. A good mother would

never go and live with an infant in a house with a marble floor. A hard floor

for a velvety head and a malleable creature. I never thought I’d have

children. Not that I’m against it, but I didn’t think it would happen like this,

suddenly and without thinking, one Wednesday evening with a stranger

disobedient to any contact after a light double-malt beer. I must be

pregnant because my periods are even more regular than Kant’s walks

and the story about the bridges of Konigsberg may be a legend but this

isn’t. I’ve had my period every twenty-eight days since the age of

fourteen. Which if you think that fourteen is half twenty-eight you can’t

help feeling you are bearing a degree of precision that would make any

German railway timetable or the British postal service pale by

comparison. Any Holter monitor. And I’m seven days late which is half

fourteen and a quarter of twenty-eight. I’ve stopped drinking beer and I’ve

remembered I can crochet. I’ve bought an expensive cotton thread and

devised a very complicated pair of bootees. I’ve been to the

haberdasher’s and I know it would have been much easier to make a little

blanket or a doily. But I wanted the bootees. A pair of bootees for my

child. If I can’t be a mother at least I can crochet. Red bootees. I don’t

care if the way is mad or subversive and chaotic. Nor even if it’s an

obsession, it just needs to be mapped out. The red bootees trace the way

of my baby, which announces itself with a seven day delay and painful

breasts and kidneys and bloating like when you’ve drunk too much and

trips to the bathroom. Pregnancy goes hand in hand with objectionable

drunkenness and the inability to expell air. I’d like to go up to the piqued

damsel with the clean shave and tell him we are expecting a baby, that his

strawberry or watermelon red or rose pink contraceptives have presented

us with a delay that is not that of a train or any old connection or of a

waiter at table. A delay of pink flesh. But I don’t know him and I don’t

know what to say to him. Having a baby with someone of a different sex

is a fact that can happen. If I was a cook these fifteen words would be my

great hors d’oeuvre, instead I imagine sitting on the sofa in front of my

father and mother who know all about children. But they didn’t come

along. They got married young and all the rest, with the half-chicken at

the late-Seventies wedding and the two-tier mimosa cake and four

bridesmaids and envelopes with money in them and a borrowed cot, she

with a hat and bucket bag he with flared trousers just on his ankles and a

man’s bag and thirteen-inch glasses with gradually tinted lenses. I could

ask mum what happened to my cot, where the lending round stopped. At

what degree of kinship. And in a Shakespearean voice and bard’s posture

declaim, Speak mother, wherein is held my cot? Doth it perhaps hold

infants within its bars of contention? Make an act of containment, mother,

yours and the cot’s and tell me where it is, confess now or it will be late

and I shall already have bought it! My mother would laugh or I might smile

and simply, one Sunday at table, because Sunday lunches are the

crucible of all anxieties and expectations and unpleasant surprises

masked as news. Mum dad I’m expecting a baby, isn’t that great? Great

with no other words, great for sure and a new cot because I remember my

sleep-inducing, oil-painted one. Toxic-painted cream and chocolate.

Instead still here in silence and a week late which is half of fourteen and a

quarter of twenty-eight. It took me a night to make the bootees. They

came out full of knots, I justify myself Mayan knots, to keep count of the

baby’s first steps with its little hands in mine, one step at a time and him

trying to stand up, he presses his feet down because he can see farther

standing up. As far as the goldfish bowl that, thinking he’s too small to

slip and to avoid the living room I have banished to the piece of furniture

in the entrance hall. But my son knows that red means distraction, after

all he’s got red bootees, and he stretches his hands out to the knob and

the knob is enough to rock the bowl and surrender the fish. Cause

drunkenness with the large waves in the cubic decimetres of cloudy

transparency. It’s always the food that makes it murky. Only on the

surface at first, then gravity takes it everywhere and on down to the

bottom. But it’s necessary. The first steps, the fish on the floor struggling

for breath my son who bends down to grasp it and shapes his tiny lips

into a little oh of wonder and then a large Oh of hunger and awareness.

My son bends down to eat the goldfish. My son is drowning with the fish

wiggling his naked gums while I calmly keep watch on the cut-out

switches on the bathroom and living room sockets because there are no

sockets in the entrance. There are no sockets I scream as my son lies icecold

on the marble. Seven days late here too, if I did it today, instead of

waiting till he’s born and chokes to death, if I’d done it last night instead

of making the bootees that won’t stop him from dying anyway, I’d be a

good mother. He’s not even born yet and I’m already inadequate. If it was

a girl she’d already be making accusations. Mothers have all the time in

the world for crucifying themselves. If I was a fervent Catholic I could say

that this is it, and this is how it has to be, because for one who had to see

her own son crucified, millions have to crucify themselves in solidarity. To

balance that one out in time and the blood shed or spat. That blood.

Spitting blood means getting angry, irritated or tired out, forcing yourself

to make things better. Mothers spit blood. And now I too at night with the

table lamp on thinking about the fact I’m seven days late and I don’t even

know Flanders’ sideburns’ name. I’d like Alfredo, or Alberto or Alessandro

or Andrea, a name with an A. I don’t know why, but I’d like it, and seeing

I’ll never go and ask him and he’ll never come and tell me I can imagine

what I want and start practising with names. I know my son will have me

shedding blood tomorrow but today I haven’t got my period. I haven’t had

my period for seven days. I look on web sites, do tests, buy women’s

magazines, in Italy it’s impossible to get it wrong because neutral doesn’t

exist and I’ve stopped raw meat. Alive or dead. I’ve nothing in hand I can’t

keep a secret and I don’t eat raw meat. This is what I told my mother who

called to wish me goodnight and I answered I’m pregnant and she Have

you done the test? My mother didn’t ask me whose it is and why I’m at

home if I haven’t got a temperature. Nor whether I’d eaten. She asked me

Have you done the test? I’ll have to remember always to ask my son

questions he finds awkward. You’re always inappropriate with a good

mother. No mum, I haven’t done the test, So how do you know, Mum I’m

seven days’ late, Well if that were the case I would have been pregnant at

least thirty times in my life, Goodnight mum, do the test. It’s the dead of

night and I have to find a chemist that’s open, and hope it’s not just a

shop for first aid medicines and methadone, that on a forgotten shelf

there’s a pregancy test. It’s like something in a movie, except that from

the fifties film I’ve moved into a Sundance or TriBeCa-type scene, or,

already archives, the bride in a yellow tracksuit who before the fateful line,

the reacting strip of life, is a merciless killer and then just fear, awful fear

with the oriental hit-woman pointing a muzzle between her eyes. I hate it

when my mother asks me if I’ve done my homework. Same thing. She

asks me before I run into the garden to steal the neighbour’s duck or the

local kids’ volleyball net, I hate my mother asking me if I’ve done the test

before celebrating and asking who the father is and how I did it and if not

how at least when. It’s the dead of night, I have nothing in hand I can’t

keep a secret and I haven’t done the pregnancy test, maybe if I’d waited

another three weeks, if I and my period had waited four weeks to present

ourselves in person and absence to my mother she wouldn’t have been

able to oppose us Have you done the test, instead now she’s right. It’s the

dead of night and my mother’s right.

I take the car and special care, because a woman in my condition cannot

but expect an attendant at her side. But I haven’t got one. I have nothing

in hand I can’t keep a secret and I haven’t got an attendant at my side.

The green cross on the chemist’s sign goes on and off on and off and it

hypnotises me. I want to lick it like a mint ice lolly on a summer day or a

pistachio cone-shaped ice cream streaked with chocolate, always. I go in.

I ring to be let in and find myself in front of bullet-proof glass and beyond

the glass a young man who looks a lot like inlaid sideburns says I’m

Giacomo how can I help you. Tell me I’m pregnant Giacomo, look at me

and tell me I’m expecting a baby. But I keep quiet and I worry, my teeth

chatter, I’ve got bags under my eyes and a pale face which if you don’t

live in a film with Indians says nothing about your identity but a lot about

your lifestyle, it says excessive, maybe Giacomo thinks I take drugs, that I

want to break my head on the bullet-proof glass and ruin his sleep forever.

Made me unjust against myself how? On the bullet-proof glass, very

unjust. I am the one. I’m Giacomo how can I help you, I’d like a pregnancy

test. Giacomo smiles as if he was the father, I breathe heavily because I’m

seven days’ late which is the improbable half of fourteen years and the

equally improbable fourth part of twenty-eight days. Giacomo says That’s

eleven euro. And he’s happy because the test is life, it’s like vitamins. A

hope-loaded over-the-counter product. It occurs to me that eleven isn’t

an even number. How much a child costs. Stingy and tyrannical mother.

And it isn’t born. A child costs more than a kilo of mincemeat and it only

weighs a clot. More than fresh fruit even unripe as it is. I say nothing to

Giacomo, I never say anything to anyone so it’s irrelevant that I can’t

keep secrets and clutch the car keys in the fingers of my right hand and

in the left a pregnancy test. A light and reliably coloured parallelepiped.

I want to do the test in the car but I can’t, I ought to wait to get back to

the bathroom at home. Which is a long way away. I’m curious, I’ve got

pregnancy anxiety which will stop me carrying on my life, even if I’d like

something to stop it, because I’ve nothing in hand. My mobile rings, my

mother will be wanting to know, wise at last, who I made this child with,

but I don’t answer because I’ve got to find a toilet. I’ve nothing in hand

except the steering wheel, I can’t keep a secret apart from the evidence

that I took a man to bed and that I don’t know this area. But there’s

electricity and the neon lights are better than road signs. I jam on the

brakes, my son will dig his heels in until he has his very own car. With the

only drawback that this sign too goes off and on off and on but the sense

is intermittent and I feel stupid understanding in bursts. I go into the

bar whose name I couldn’t read. I ring to get in, behind the counter is a

woman with a cone-shaped glass. Not a martini glass, narrower, inside is

a milky liquid which may be coconut maybe cow’s milk, maybe something

else, I ask for a toilet, she winks at me looks at my hands and points to

the door at the back. With her chin. How stupid of me the toilet is at the

back. I open the box, read the instructions carry them out and wait. The

toilet is spick and span and tiled, I smile at myself in the lit mirror. I look

as if I’m under water. This is the light. I look at myself in the mirror and I

swim. All that’s missing is a bowl with a goldfish. If I was at home I could

just go in to the entrance to find one. And empty it. If I was at home the

fish would be gasping for air on the floor but I’d keep still. I’ve nothing

in hand I can’t keep a secret I’m not expecting a baby and there’s no

goldfish here. Late is late is late is late.