A Fortune
The money expert will receive me. A red carpet with a raised diamond-shaped pattern leads me to him. His study is beautifully furnished, and I feel like a lady. Of course, and he says so, too. Take a seat, madam. I’m just plain Irina for everyone else.
So, what shall we do with this money? Do we want to invest it?
“It’s no fortune” says the money expert, studying the machine that thinks in calculations. It counts. It subtracts. It divides.
“It’s no fortune.” He repeats.
Hard to say. Do you know what fortune is?
The money expert produces papers. And a thousand detailed explanations. On the computer screen appear all the truths of numbers. It’s all so certain and measurable.
Really, I wish you’d tell me. Who knows .... fortune.
Now it widens to the point of touching the clear line of freedom.
Perhaps I’ll be able to buy myself time.
Certainly, you have to run a risk, I understand that. Give up immediate satisfactions and look after this money, make it grow, like children, wait patiently.
Certainly madam, but as I’ve said, it’s no fortune.
You’ve already said that, I know.
Even the thought machine agrees, and draws colourful graphs, incomprehensible and reassuring.
This artificial intelligence can transport large quantities of money to the opposite side of the globe, invest it, watch and wait. Live the thrill of a yeast cell, infinitesimal, seeing from the inside wealth growing overnight, like bread dough. Predict what will happen tomorrow, and perhaps delay a war. This machine knows everything and controls everything. But what would it have to say about my loss?
My son got sick because he was cold.
An overcoat would have been enough to save him. Between a thousand and no possible fortunes. But we had nothing, and for nothing we left.
The man pushes away from the screen, sliding on the ball-bearing wheels of the leather chair, gives up talking like an expert and takes on a paternal voice. So, what do we do with these coppers? A small word, like one you would use with children.
In his pocket he has knowledge that is not like me. In his mind he has small lives, like worker ants. Left-over food, rags of freedom put aside in the knot of a scarf or in the tiny compartment of a wallet.
What does he know about me? And about my billionaire’s thoughts.
I’d like to be able to explain it to him, but I hear my voice swaying like an acrobat on a wire. I repeat undecided half-sentences held together by stammering. I’d like to set out my thoughts in an orderly fashion, accompany them with important words.
And the man says:
“So, madam, you must decide”.....
It’s so difficult. How many coats can be bought? How many crowns fit for a queen? how many woollen stockings? ? I multiply and divide. But what does it add up to?
People always ask me.
So you’ve come here in search of fortune... Irina?
Where was I?
Tonight I dreamed my mother. She is seated on a bench in the middle of a cloud. She is wearing a light-coloured coat that covers her knees and drapes down over the sides a bit, onto the bench. The light is bright like water sliding on crystal and doesn’t seem to come from a single source, but from every corner of heaven. So that there are no shadows, because everything is illuminated and nothing is hidden from anything.
“You know, maybe they’ll be able to send me back down.” She says to me. She is referring to the staff in heaven. To the officials, so influential.
“They’re looking over the papers....” She says.
“Would you like to come back?...... Aren’t you happy here?” I ask her.
“Yes” she answers “But if I come back I can see you again. You were in Italy, as you well know, when my heart burst and I fell down on the ground."
Babuschka Missha and Olia join us.
We go for a walk without talking. Then Babuschka rats on me. She tells my mother not to believe me, that I didn’t send all the money home when I was in Italy, I kept a lot for myself, and that she saw me going to the shops to buy wine, balsamic vinegar and an aquamarine. It’s true.
I go up to my mother, put my arm on her shoulder and ask her what she needs. I swear I’ll send it to her.
She begins an endless list.
Pasta, oil, a necklace, a silk cushion and some notebooks, a raisin bun, some black lace and some white, and a flying carpet.
And she smiles, nodding her head yes, “yes yes that’s exactly what I want“, with a knowing look. I hug her, and while I’m holding her tight I feel a small bang, like an explosion inside her at the height of the heart. Her body goes heavy. An imperceptible wave crosses her and her head gives a shake just before it falls asleep to one side.
But this time I’m with her and I don’t let her fall down.
I hold her up and I make myself stronger than I’ve ever been.
I lay her down gently, and the sky turns into breadcrumbs, like the beach at Danzig. And the clouds are moors and rocks smoothed by the wind.
I’ll bring you what you ask for because it’s thanks to your courage that I left, to your wild spirit that kept me from being afraid.
That explosion you hear isn’t your weak heart, but some fireworks, long and short like a life.
Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you now.
The Other
The car takes me home.
A light on the dashboard reminds me of the petrol. The road signs bring me back to the present. Soon it will be night and I’ll stop my body to rest it while long brain waves, the ones that come while you’re half asleep in the first hours of the night, will keep me company.
And arranging objects to make life work while you search in the distance, behind and in front of you, to rediscover its sense, will be like changing the tire of a car while it’s moving.
When I think about going back, I imagine finding myself again.
Seeing another myself from far away.
I see a young woman going up the muddy slope in front of the house, wearing rubber boots. A short wide skirt covered with an apron.
She isn’t carrying anything. No handbag, no package, no daughter. She seems so light to me.
She has strong legs and muscles that bulge with every step she takes.
Long strides almost as though she wanted to measure the terrain with them.
“Don’t look down at the ground when you’re walking, there’s nothing there.
You won’t find anything even if you search well".
That land that I left no longer gave fruit, nor air nor breath.
She doesn’t see me or look the other way. How can she recognize me?
She stayed, she didn’t walk with me until her feet bled.
She knows what has been, not what will come after her.
So she doesn’t know about me. Of the other me.
At the gate of the house she adjusts her hair, she looks at the reflection of her pretty, unlined face in the brass plate with her name etched on it:
Anna Prochazka.
Before going in, she casts her eye around her at the immense emptiness, where profiles of birch trees suggest a horizon so far away that it’s impossible to try to reach it.
I make myself real at the gate of the house. I, too, adjust my hair. I, too, look at myself in the brass plate with my name etched on it: Anna Prochazka.
From inside the kitchen Anna sees me and runs out. She rubs the palms of her hands energetically on the dirty apron and quickly comes up the short path separating her from me.
Welcome, she says.
Good to see you, I reply, and we look at one another politely. We still look alike, with the fine, fair hair that is never tidy and you couldn’t say who is one and who is the other. So? You’re here! .....Are you tired? Tell me. How lovely you’re looking! What a nice surprise ...
But I’ll be the one to tell her of what there is in the world. She has nothing to say.
Because, thank heaven, she stayed on when I decided to leave.
Caring
This man is old. And heavy. His body moves shapelessly. No gesture goes well. He bumps into things and stumbles. Formless. He can’t find a place.
A sad weariness pulls him downwards. He drags his shoulders with the acquiescence of one who knows that soon he will have to go.
I sit him in an armchair. And he stays there with his broad face, mouth open, inert. It seems that his feelings are the same as he is, and his bloodless lips.
In the torpor of permanent digestion, he half closes his eyes and regurgitates. He settles down, makes himself comfortable and drowses. Now I have the impression that he is breathing my air.
I’d like to talk to him, I talk only to myself. Except for the women I meet in the park on Sunday mornings, I talk only to myself.
But it’s better to let him be. It’s the first night he’s breathing regularly. The first night he’s resting calmly since I’ve had his papers in my hands.
They’re here in the bedside table drawer. He hasn’t looked at them again, as though they didn’t belong to him. The report is detailed and heartless.
A clerk at the computer will have printed it, along with others, in a hurry, late in the afternoon when it was already time to leave. In a frigid laboratory where a life changes at the moment when a ghost sees something wrong in the blood slide under the microscope.
Nothing would change if in its place there were a phial of poison, or a revolver with a silencer. It would be the same death, we all have to go, what difference does it make how. The light outside grows brighter and filters in between the slats of the shutters. There’s no need to keep the electricity on.
Then it will all be like before. Even this blanket that still seems beautiful to me, you’ll put it on the bed again tomorrow, and after.
Everything will begin again as it was before. Even if the children will miss their grandfather and I’ll lose my job.
This room smells of being shut up and of sweat and outside there’s the sound of daybreak. I feel uncomfortable and would like to be somewhere else. This old man could be mine ... that is the paradox of life, taking you far from home to repeat the same gestures you do at home. Who is near mine now that I am thousands of kilometres from his body. No doubt another woman...
Now he will ask for coffee and then his bath. Hot.
He lets himself be picked up like a baby. One hand under his legs to pull them over to the side of the bed. I know he could do it, but he prefers it this way.
In the bathroom the steam brings up a smell of cleanliness and I look at his feet on the rug. I think of how much the feet of old people look alike.
Now he goes in, leaning on me, and when he slides into the tub the water and suds splash over the edge. Heat is good for the heart.
I soap his back and chest, which has grown as empty as his talk, while I pretend to listen to him.
I rub his arms and legs with a rough towel. It’s good for him, it helps the blood to circulate. Who knows if it can make him last longer.
Do you feel better now? I promise that when the time comes, I’ll wash the curtains and fill the room with flowers...
Let’s stay here for a bit. Sitting next to one another, on the living room sofa to make time pass. Next to one another, like hatred and love. The talcum powder forms a perfumed cloud that blurs the borders.
Dear Father
Dear father staying with you was like walking in a shadow. Up the path where the poplar copse ended, far from the road. Across the paths dried by the heat. Do you remember? We bathed our feet in the lake and held hands, walking fearlessly along the edge.
Now I’m the one who is closer to the road. No one is in front of me to look out and say.. “careful- not now – it’s not safe“ -
Now I’m far away and the ground is missing under my feet!
And yet I walk on this missing ground, and search, and speak, in my hesitant Italian, to explain that I am capable, that I can work, that I have strong shoulders, that I am me.
I count to three and find the word I need. Me.
We kept on writing to one another, you and I, even when the lords of our souls made it difficult and the police opened our mail. They read normal everyday things and stole the secrets.
Don’t worry Olga- you told me- count to three and find the word you need.
So I read every third word to compose the letter and I felt sorry for the others, useless accomplices, dying on the paper.
You told me about the winter, about tea at Leda’s with china cups, and about my sisters.
Nothing that shouldn’t be said, nothing, but my flight to the west made all of you into enemies of the country, to be watched ...and to be searched to the very depths of the heart.
One day, three by three, you gave me the gift of your absolute faith.
A letter like a prayer.
Olga –you said- our future will be radiant. You didn’t want to believe, you couldn’t wait, but here there will be freedom and life will be full of promise. In this land, perhaps only in this land, the future will be born, and our resistance is a pledge of happiness.
And still unable to believe it, you asked me: Why did you leave? Was it worth it?(in Polish and in Italian)
And so my choice was paid for fully, even your complicity came to an end. I disappointed you -- didn’t I?
Dear father, staying with you was like walking in a shadow. Protected.
Now I am the one closer to the road. No one looks out for me. I’m the one who decides to make a mistake. Was it worth it?
Now I walk in the sun. I put down my rheumatic foot. First the toes, with the bones pushing against the sides of my sandals.
I feel to see if the earth is solid and then take another step.
I walk.
Today I walk in the sun. I buy a light dress. I imagine what I’ll do tomorrow and the following day. And I answer the smile of a woman passing by.
Elena Bellei lives in Modena, where she works as a journalist. She has written for local and national papers and translated works on psychoanalysis for the publishers Riuniti and Laterza. She is the author of Lettere a Meriém [Letters to Meriém] (published by Clio), which has been made into a play against racism for schools. She is the author of Awa che ha dentro due mondi [Awa who has two worlds inside him], a theatre piece about migrant identity. The text Nostàlghia has been staged by the cultural association Integra of Modena, accompanied by the projection of images and piano music. She is involved in projects promoting equal opportunity and intercultural communication. Her novel Mater is being published by Editrice Incontri.