Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty‑one

Eighteen

The sea was rough and I was four years old and wearing a red swimsuit. The beach was scorched by the early afternoon sun; the pebbles gleamed and stood out against the intense blue of the sky. Around my waist I had a plastic rubber ring with a pattern of red apples. I held it up with both hands, stamping my feet because I wanted to swim at all costs, even though the waves seemed determined to swallow everything up.

“I want to swim! ” I shrieked, tears pricking my eyes.

My father, lying on his mat, pretended not to hear me.

“I want to swim! ” I repeated until he was forced to look up at me impatiently.

“Well, you can’t, ” he said. “The sea’s too rough. ”

“That’s what I like about it, ” I replied. “I like playing with the waves. ”

Lying on your stomach and sunning your back, you muttered, “Go on, let her do it, go on, as long as you’re there nothing will happen. ”

Inside I was smiling with satisfaction, but my face was still furious.

I ran toward the water’s edge, still holding up my rubber ring. Dad caught up with me, I put one foot into the water and it was terribly cold, but I didn’t care.

“It’s cold, ” he said, “let’s get out. ”

I said nothing but just kept walking until the water came halfway up my belly.

I headed toward the open sea, my toes no longer touching the bottom, and now the waves were dragging me and my rubber ring. Behind me, my father was growing impatient with my saying, “Dad, let’s go. ”

I swam and played with the waves that buoyed me, high and majestic. Perhaps I was smiling. They were like big arms that lifted me up and then dropped me back down again, and for a moment I felt a mixture of fear and delight. Fear of drowning, and delight at being lifted toward the sky, just for a moment, just for a second. I felt myself being rocked.

I turned around and saw him, so impatient now that his face was almost contorted with pain.

I felt so much sorrow at that moment. I saw his wet trunks and I thought it was bad that he was feeling cold. I saw the pained expression on his face and felt so much tenderness; I chastised myself for being selfish, for thinking about my games.

“Dad, let’s go back to the shore. ”

He practically ran out of the water, while I floundered impetuously, battling against the waves that seemed more and more intent on carrying me out to sea.

With my eyes narrowed slightly, I tried to get closer to him but I couldn’t. I still said nothing, because I didn’t want to see that expression on his face – I had to do it on my own.

By the time I reached the shore, he was already lying on his mat reading the paper.

Nineteen

Last night I had a beautiful, disturbing dream. I was in it, with Thomas and a little girl. A beautiful little girl with red hair, a round face, and a pair of red, fleshy lips. I was almost frightened at the sight of her; her beauty was disconcerting. She was our daughter.

But in the dream I was at once myself and Thomas and the girl. I could see with everyone’s eyes. I felt part of everyone.

We were dressed in nineteenth‑ century clothes. Not the sumptuous nineteenth century of the courts but the nineteenth century of the ordinary villagers.

The little girl takes us to the sea. She makes us immerse ourselves in the waves, but we don’t swim.

We stay suspended underwater for a long time. Around us there are octopus, jellyfish, lobsters…the little girl is lying suspended above the void, her arms along her hips and her long, long red hair still growing and flowing beneath the water. Her hair is beautiful and silky, and it grows and grows. Then, at some point, her hair turns white and bristly and starts to shrink back until it finally disappears. Now her head is bald. She’s a newborn baby, but she is still surprisingly beautiful.

I kiss her, I press her to my breast, and she shuts her eyes and lays her face on my neck.

An icy sensation woke me up. I touched my neck and it was extremely cold. That lasted only a few seconds, because I shut my eyes again and went on with my dream. The little girl has died in my arms and I have floated to the surface, passing through a cave. Thomas stays down there, looking at her and kissing her. But I have left only in a physical sense, because I’m still seeing through Thomas’s eyes. He picks up the little girl, rises to the surface, and when he reaches the cave, he lifts her into the air and cries, “She’s alive! She’s alive! ”

You, dressed all in black, run and shout with joy. I go on looking at her beautiful face, and realize that she isn’t alive at all. She’s dead. But I pretend she’s alive. We all pretend she’s breathing.

One day I will inhabit my dreams and have a great orgy of love with all the people I love, all the people I have loved.

Twenty

“Do you want to? ” the man asked me.

He was tall, quite sturdy, with two burning black eyes and curly black hair that thinned over his forehead.

He was holding out a half‑ open wooden box with one hand; in the other he held a hundred‑ Euro note and a slim box cutter.

I stared at him and imagined that he was the chief of an African village, simultaneously offering me the treasure of his land and handing me the sacrificial dagger with which I was to cut my finger and mingle my blood with his.

“It’s really good, excellent stuff, ” he went on.

I imagined the men of the village digging the dark, dry earth to remove the precious, crystalline material.

He gestured to me to accept his gift.

I stared into his eyes and saw he wasn’t really there. He saw me, but he wasn’t looking at me.

He wasn’t fully in control of his faculties, and he didn’t understand that he was looking at a little girl who was barely of legal age and who looked at least four years younger than she really was.

I shook my head.

He smiled at me and tipped his powder onto a silver tray, splashed here and there with a few drops of champagne. He wiped away the droplets with his shirt cuff and muttered something.

All of a sudden he sniffed. He raised his head and threw it back and closed his eyes, twitching his nose like a rabbit.

For a moment I thought I saw his body turning transparent; I saw his skin melting and his internal organs becoming visible. They were darker than his eyes, and here and there the mucous membrane was torn by an ulcer. The crystal powder spread all the way through his body, branching like a river into different streams, and it looked almost like a divine spring, a purifying fountain.

Then a large belly appeared, followed by the rest of the body of a beautiful woman, who walked over to African‑ chief‑ guy and stroked his hair, asking him if it was good.

He took a deep breath, widening his nostrils, and replied, “Divine. ”

The woman pulled a face, as though to say, “A shame I’ve got a brat in my belly, otherwise…”

Then she looked at me and asked me, “You’ve never tried it, have you? ”

I shook my head and answered, “No, I don’t like it. ”

She nodded, walked toward a big chest of drawers, opened one of them, and took out a joint, already rolled.

She looked at it as I might look at a particularly fine penis and then she sighed.

She lit it and lay back on the bed, smoking with gusto.

A few weeks later I saw her acting in a film; her hair was longer and she didn’t have the belly yet. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks.

Twenty‑ one

It happened all at once. I was sitting on the toilet and felt first an itch in my ovaries and then a dull splash in the toilet bowl. When I was little I was convinced that frogs could come out of the toilet and climb up my back. I lifted myself up from the bowl, holding my legs wide, and blood dripped to the floor.

There were no frogs in it. There was a tadpole. A human tadpole. It was red, floating in a golden swimming pool, looking at me with its one black eye, which was almost bigger than its own head. With a little tail, its body was elongated like a lizard’s.

“Suttu ’n palazzu c’è ’n cani pazzu, te pazzu cani stu pezzu ri pani, ” this disgusting creature whispered, a nonsensical tongue twister in the Sicilian dialect of my childhood, something about a mad dog and a piece of bread.

I felt my heart tremble and my thoughts blurred. The tadpole swam there, moving back and forth as though enjoying its aquatic game. I could hear the shrill laughter of a child in the distance while the tadpole went on swimming and swimming, repeating its curious phrase.

Then, afraid that it was a monster, I flushed the toilet. A mighty whirlpool dragged it down to the sewer.

Because of the noise of the water I didn’t hear Thomas arrive. He had closed the door and was putting his bag on the ground.

“I’m home! ”

Grabbed him. That’s what I should have done. Grabbed him and strangled him.

“Where are you hiding? ”

Strangled him with rage, with keen love, with the love that made me love him for an infinitesimally short length of time, and for the death that he dragged from my belly.

“Pequeñ a… where are you? ”

I came out of the bathroom, looking at the floor, and smiled at him.

“What were you doing? ” he asked.

“I was in the bathroom, ” I replied.

Lick away the blood and hold him naked and clean under the pillow.

“Hey, listen, I’ve brought you a surprise…! ” he said enthusiastically.

Touch his soft limbs and plunge a finger into his chest. Rip out his heart and lift it to the sky.

I know it took two of us, but I put up no resistance…

Attach him to my nipple for a few minutes, long enough to weep.

Then I felt a hairy head stroking my calves and for a moment I thought my son had returned in the form of a velvety ghost.

I looked straight ahead and asked Thomas, “What is it? ”

He stared at me and then he said, “It’s a dog…”

I lowered my head, eyes full of tears.

And then I burst out crying.

The darkness had already entered the room, and the red curtain floated slightly in the breeze, while the noise from our neighbors’ TV filled the still silence.

“What shall we do? ” he asked me, stroking my feet.

“He’s already done what had to be done. Everything’s just as it was, ” I replied crisply.

He got to his feet, lit a cigarette, and went to look out the window. I heard him breathing.

The cowering dog took refuge in a corner and followed all my tired movements with the corner of its eye. “Everything’s just as it was, ” I repeated.

The smoke from his cigarette rose in circles and dissolved in the air.

“Why did you throw it away? ” he asked me in a tone of voice that I had never heard him use before.

“It came out all by itself, I…”

“No, no, ” he broke in, “why did you flush the toilet? ”

I stopped and thought for a moment, because I didn’t really know either.

The dog went on staring at me, and that phrase echoed around in my head: “Suttu ’n palazzu c’è ’n cani pazzu, te pazzu cani stu pezzu ri pani. ”

“Perhaps out of fear, ” I replied.

“Fear of what? ” he asked me.

I shrugged, but he couldn’t see me.

“You should have shown it to me, ” he said.

“What difference would that have made…, ” I replied, tears beginning to sting my eyes again.

Then he turned around and said, “I’m sorry. ”

Everything’s as it was.

Is everything as it was?