Don't Move (21 page)

But now . . . Now, we try to smooth our rumpled clothing and run a hand over our plastered hair. Though our insides are still in turmoil and our bodies still shaken, we walk back to the busy avenue, which is agleam with reflected lights on the pavement, passing cars, legs flashing swiftly by under umbrellas. It’s us again, two poor wretches, two squalid lovers in the middle of the street. On the ground, there’s a red balloon, like a forgotten heart. Italia looks at it.

“Why did you cut your hair?”

Instead of answering, she smiles in the darkness; her uneven teeth appear under the thin blades of her lips. This is the way we rejoin the crowd: her little hand in the crook of my folded arm, her fingers digging into my raincoat. We make slow progress. I can feel from the way she hangs on to my arm that she’s having difficulty walking. People brush past without noticing us. Now, finally, the rain’s abated to a gentle dripping, like the last drops from a wrung-out towel.

“What is it? Show me.”

It’s us again, sitting in a bar again, at its most hidden table. The wall behind Italia’s back is covered with thin strips of dark wood. The table’s small and wet from our wet elbows. Underneath it, our knees are touching, and pieces of old paper napkins are stuck to the soles of our shoes. I made the mistake of putting that plastic bag on the table, without thinking, and now Italia’s trying to pull the package away from me. I hang on to it, saying, “It’s nothing.”

“Show me.”

And the little gown with the taffeta flounces slips out, damp and mussed. She says, “It’s a girl?”

I form a funnel with my hands, stare into it, and nod. It gives me the creeps to see that white fabric there on the table between the two of us. Less than an hour ago, your mother and I were looking at that baby dress and laughing. We took it off its hanger and tossed it in our shopping cart. We were happy. And now the thing seems horrible to me. The rainwater ruined it while we were making love. It looks like something worn by a small child that drowned in a lake. Italia’s head is bent, and she’s moving her hands, moving them too much, smoothing out the material, touching the flounces. “What a shame,” she says. “Let’s hope it hasn’t shrunk.”

She turns it over, looking for the label inside. “No, it’s okay. Fortunately, it can be washed by hand. . . .”

What’s she doing? What’s she saying?

“You just have to iron it a little and it’ll be perfect again.”

Now she folds it. She takes the sleeves and folds them inward carefully, as if she can’t keep her hands off that fabric. Her eyes don’t want to look at me; she gazes past me, at the people moving around in the other part of the bar.

“The morning I had the abortion, I went to your apartment building. You came out of the entrance, but I didn’t approach you because your wife was there. The two of you walked to your car. When you opened the door for her, you hit her accidentally, not very hard. She put her hand on her stomach, down low, and that’s when I understood. Because all my life has been like that, full of little signs that come looking for me.”

“You’ll never forgive me, will you?”

“God won’t forgive us.”

That’s just what she said, Angela. And now I feel her words returning to me from that bar, from that rain, from that time long ago.
God won’t forgive us.

“God doesn’t exist!” I hissed at her, squeezing her icy hands.

She looked at me, and maybe she laughed at me. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s hope not.”

We didn’t talk about seeing each other again; we didn’t talk about anything. I told her good-bye in the middle of the street. She said that she was moving away, that she had to turn over the house to its new owners.

“So where are you going?”

“I’m going back south for a while. Then we’ll see. Maybe I’ll go to Australia.”

“You speak English?”

“I’ll learn it.”

36

Your mother had you the following evening. Her contractions began in the early afternoon. I was in the hospital, but I left at once. I found her in the living room, still in her dressing gown, sitting in front of the blank television screen. She gestured toward the empty place beside her. “Come here,” she said.

I sat down next to her. She put her hands on her sides and set her face against the pain. I looked at my watch; after a few minutes, a new contraction began.

I went into the bedroom, where the bag with your things in it—yours and your mother’s—had been waiting for several days. “Shall I zip it up?” I asked, raising my voice so she could hear me.

But she was already in the room. “Yes,” she said softly. She took off her dressing gown and threw it on the bed. I picked up her dress from a chair and helped her slip it on. I said, “Keep calm.”

She wandered around the apartment aimlessly for a little while longer. She went to the bookshelf, took down a book, put it back, took another one. She said, “My sweater . . .”

“I’ll get it for you. Which one?”

“The sky blue one. Whichever one you want.”

I handed her the sweater, which she left on the table.

She went into the bathroom. When she came out, she’d brushed her hair and put on lipstick, but she was trembling. The pains were closing in on her, coming more and more frequently. She stopped in the foyer, picked up the telephone, and dialed her parents’ number. “Mama, we’re leaving now. You don’t have to come right away—there’s time.”

In fact, there isn’t very much time at all. Her water breaks in the car. The sudden warm stream frightens her, makes her uncomfortable. She really doesn’t want to arrive at the clinic in a wet dress. Luckily, she’s brought an overcoat, and she’s holding it on her shoulders as we walk into a large entryway faced with dark marble. I’m behind her, carrying her bag. We go upstairs at once. When we get out of the elevator, Bianca, her gynecologist, is waiting for us. She and Elsa are on familiar terms. She says, “Hi, Elsa. How are you doing?”

“Fairly well . . .”

I’ve seen Bianca only a couple of times before. She’s middle-aged, tall, and elegant; she wears her graying hair cut short; she likes sailing. Manlio took it badly when Elsa told him she wanted to continue with a woman doctor. She broke the news to him during one of our dinners, all the while smiling a sweet, pitiless smile. Perhaps she’d intuited the idiotic complicity between him and me. Bianca holds out a hand in my direction. “Hello.”

Maternity’s on the fourth floor. The floor covering— grass-green tiles—gives the department a cheerful ambience, like a nursery school. Cockades made of voile and pink or blue ribbons decorate the closed doors as we walk down the corridor. Elsa’s room has an electric bed of gilded metal and a large window, from which you can see the branches of the trees in the garden. Elsa leans on the bed, breathing hard. As I leave the room, Kentu—a black obstetrician from Africa with strong, jovial features—comes in, followed by Bianca, who has to examine Elsa. When I go back in, the machine for measuring the intensity of Elsa’s contractions is next to her bed, and she’s staring into the blue screen of the monitor with gelatinous eyes. Her lips are dry; I help her drink some water. They’ve shaved her, given her an enema, subjected her to a great deal of intimate handling, and she’s been as docile as a newborn. She walks up and down the room with her hands on her sides. Every now and then, she stops, puts a hand on the wall, and stays like that for a while, with her head bowed, her legs spread wide, and her great belly hanging down. She moans softly. I help her breathe, stroking her back. Bianca looks in from time to time and asks, “How’s it going?” Elsa tries unsuccessfully to smile. She’s read in some manual that a woman’s character is revealed in childbirth. She wants to seem brave, but maybe not so much as she did before.

“You’re paler than your wife,” Bianca says as she shuts the door. Firm and brusque in manner, not without a certain subtle irony, she apparently doesn’t think much of men; now I see why Elsa appreciates her. I’m a physician, and I should be helping her more than I am, but my knowledge of obstetrics is quite rudimentary. On the other hand, the event that’s almost upon us has little to do with science; it belongs to the realm of nature. That’s what’s causing her body to shake; that’s why she’s quivering this way. May it all be over quickly, I think, because now, Angela, I’m starting to be afraid that something’s going wrong. Your mother’s suffering. I support her forehead on my shoulder, and I’m afraid all the while. I’m an impostor. I have a lover, and I can’t forget her, because she and I have lost a child, a child who would have come through travail like this into the light. But I let it go without lifting a finger to help it, and it remained in the black screen of a disconnected monitor.

Elsa’s lying down again. On the monitor, the red peaks of the contractions are getting higher. She spreads her legs as Bianca examines her. Bianca thrusts one hand deep inside her; Elsa lifts her head and cries out. Her cervix is at ten centimeters, completely dilated.

“We’re almost there,” Bianca says, stripping off her latex glove and tossing it into the stainless-steel container. By this time, Elsa’s holding on with all her might to the obstetrician’s black arms, which look as strong as tree trunks. Bianca says, “Come see.”

I draw near and look. Your mother’s sex has grown; it’s wide and distended, swollen by your head. And there in the middle is a black splotch. It’s your hair, Angela. My first sight of you is your hair.

We set out for the delivery room. Elsa gropes for my hand and squeezes it hard. The nurse pushing the gurney sets a rapid pace; I have trouble maintaining my grip on Elsa’s hand. Before we go into the delivery room, she whispers, exhausted, “Are you sure you want to watch this?”

And in fact, I’m not all that sure. I’m a surgeon, but I’m afraid of falling in a faint. I’m still stunned from the sight of that clump of black hair, spattered with my wife’s blood, surrounded by her shaved crotch. I’d gladly wait outside—this business, at once poetic and bloody, frightens me—but I know I can’t refuse. My being there is important to Elsa. I feel a mighty force all around me, and I register this mysterious vibration deep inside, like an ultrasound image of my adult self captured in the crystal where life begins.

And so I’m in there, in the delivery room, and the delivery has begun. Bianca moves her hands around between Elsa’s thighs. Bianca’s face is tensed and serious; her arms are suddenly brash and coarse, like a country midwife’s. We have to be quick, and Elsa has to push, which she does, guided by Bianca and Kentu, whose hands are on Elsa’s writhing stomach, pressing down purposefully.

“Take a deep breath. Now, push hard. As if you’re going to the bathroom.”

With the effort, Elsa arches her neck; her head is rigid, her face cyanotic. She stares at her belly, which is still filled with you. She grinds her teeth, closes her eyes, and tries to push, but she has no strength left. “I can’t do it—it hurts too much. . . .”

“Breathe! Take a deep breath!”

Now Bianca’s voice is loud and authoritative. “Come on! Like that!”

I stroke your mother’s sweaty hair, which sticks to the palms of my hands. Bianca takes a step backward, away from the bed. Kentu takes her place between Elsa’s thighs and peers into her sex. I move closer. Now I want to see. For a moment, Angela, Kentu’s hands are inside that bloody opening, one finger on one side, one on the other. There’s a sharp sound, like a popping cork, and your head is out. And then, all at once, the rest of your body. You look like a rabbit—a skinned rabbit. Your torso is long, your features squished together. You’re covered with dark blood and white slime. The umbilical cord is wrapped around your throat.

“So that’s why she wasn’t coming out,” Bianca says. She seizes the cord and frees your head. Then she cuts the cord, and a black hand gives you a little blow on the back. Your face is so smirched that I still can’t see what you look like. You’re blue. You feel the blow, but you don’t react; you just hang there inert, like a sausage. There’s a neonatologist on the other side of the wall of glazed glass that divides the delivery room. Bianca, with you in her arms, rushes over to him. I can see only the shadows of bodies and heads. I hear the sound of the aspirator at work; your throat is clogged with mucus, and they’re getting rid of it. You haven’t cried yet. You’re not alive yet. Elsa, sweaty and purple-faced, looks at me. Our incredulous eyes do our speaking for us. We’re thinking the same thing:
It isn’t possible. It isn’t possible!
Elsa’s hands are cold now, and so is her face. It doesn’t last long, Angela, but that brief time is an interstice in hell. I see Italia, and I’m inside her; I see us making love, again and again and again. Punishing myself is all I can do; I stand on the gallows and place my feet on the trapdoor, which is ready to spring. I look at your mother, and I think that perhaps she, too, is making some vow, offering up some sacrifice to save your life. I take hold of my demon, the weight on my back, the invader of my balls, and I say to him,
Let the child live, and I’ll give up Italia!

At last, we hear the cry. Shrill, intense, perfect. We’re holding hands, your mother and I; our wet palms are stuck together. A tear slides across Elsa’s temple and disappears under her hair. Joy takes its time, placid and slow. The aspirator’s turned off, and things return to their proper places. Pacts with the devil are already worthless, and in comes Kentu, carrying you in his arms: a pink monkey, swathed in white. I take you from him and consider you. You’re very ugly. You’re very beautiful. You’ve already got strong, well-marked lips, standing out in the middle of your crumpled face. Your eyes are swollen and half-closed, because all this sudden brightness is bothering you. The delivery room light is still on, harsh and violent, and I raise an elbow to shield you from it. It’s the first gesture I’ve ever made to protect you. I bend toward your mother, who looks at you with an expression on her face I’ll never forget: gratified, astonished, and ever so slightly sad. I understand the feeling mirrored in her face, the sudden realization of the task that life is handing her. Up until an instant ago, she was just a perspiring woman with her head thrown back, but now she’s a mother; maternity has imprinted itself upon her countenance. Isolated in that flood of cold light, her hair disheveled, her body exhausted by her labor, she has the power and the ungainliness of a prototype.

While your mother stayed on the delivery table for the after-birth, I carried you down the stairs to the room the two of you would share. Although you were as light as a loaf of bread, you seemed to weigh a lot, and I felt somehow unfit for this exceptional transportation duty. A cockade with a pink ribbon was already hanging on the door of your room. At last, we were alone. Gently, I put you down on the bed, leaned over you, and stared down at you from the height of my adult eyes. I was your father, and you knew nothing of me, nothing of the life I carried around on my back. I was your father, a man with big trembling hands, a man with a unique smell lodged in the pores of his skin, a man traversed by forty years’ worth of days. You didn’t move; you remained just as you were when I put you down, like a turtle flipped onto its back. You looked at me with those watery deep gray eyes. Maybe you were wondering what happened to the dark, narrow place you’d been kept in for so long. You didn’t cry. You lay there quietly, like a good baby, with your face poking out of clothes too big for you; you put me in mind of a dressed-up mouse. I thought you looked like me. You were minuscule, indecipherable, but you had something I recognized. You took almost all my features, Angela. You passed up your mother’s beauty and assumed my not particularly attractive appearance, except that on you, mysteriously enough, it looks good. Yours is not a modern, aggressive beauty. Your face is old-fashioned, broad, placid, infinitely sweet; there are no shadows in it, no twilight. I’ve always thought you looked special, right from the start. I lay down in a heap beside you, drawing up my legs like a fetus. You were only a few minutes old, and as I looked at you, I felt vague, out of focus, exactly the way you saw me. I wondered if you’d brought me, even me, a little grace from the gleaming world you’d left behind. By now it was dawn—your first dawn.

I left you alone on the big bed and walked over to the window. Down below, past the terrace, a garden was starting to come to life. The air was grainy with fog, the sun absent. I thought about the overcast, sticky day that was beginning among the buildings and the shanties that surrounded Italia’s house. What was she doing in that trickling dawn? Reeling in a rag from the clothesline outside her kitchen window, maybe, and pausing with one hand under her chin to contemplate this same gloomy sky, half-obscured by the viaduct. I thought about my mother—she would have liked having a grand-daughter. For the summer holidays, she’d have taken you with her to stay in one of those big hotels she favored, room and half board for grandma and grandchild. For lunch, you’d get a sandwich, to be consumed on your sandy bedsheets. Dinners in the dining room would feature bottles of mineral water with rubber stoppers and the previous night’s napkins. But I certainly couldn’t knock on the door of her tomb. You were born; you weighed exactly six pounds; your eyes were long and sad, like mine.