Happy Ending by Francesca Duranti

Author:Francesca Duranti [Duranti, Francesca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6489-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-04T15:43:00+00:00

13

THE DUMBWAITER I HAVE HAD INSTALLED between the kitchen and my bedroom announces the arrival of my breakfast with a gentle, silvery chime. Like a reliable alarm clock, it wakes me up at seven every morning, including Saturday and Sunday.

I go pick up the tray, and then slip back into bed and place it on my knees. It is hard to believe that I, the son of the Rugani widow, should now be sitting in this bed, surrounded by this furniture, eating a breakfast that has reached me in such a melodious fashion. A more likely prediction, for any astrologer who might have been summoned to my cradle to map out my future, would have involved the same scene with little Aldo, now in his middle years, wearing a black-and-yellow-striped jacket and preparing the same breakfast at the other end of the same dumbwaiter.

Instead, here I am. This world—which I recognize in the splotch of light on the corner of the rug, in the sinuous outline of the rosewood bureau, in the particular way it resonates—is the same one I spied on through the dislocated slat the night I was hiding from the Germans. That timeless scene vanished from reality without leaving a trace; its characters—a family of rich refugees—went back to their city, whether Milan or Genoa. Some of them must have died, others must have aged beyond recognition. The villa, with its gallery, is still there—I drive by it whenever I go eat game at Moreno’s—but it too has become unrecognizable: bought and sold three or four times since the war, it is now divided into various apartments, each with its clothesline, rabbit cage, and the inevitable garage with a corrugated plastic roof.

It is as if the image of that night had flashed in front of my eyes like an ectoplasm, barely long enough to show me the way to my El Dorado and cling to my mind as a constant term of comparison. Cold, cold, lukewarm, warm, hot. Burning! I got it, I am right in the middle of it. I still can’t believe it.

At times I wonder, not without some dismay: will I ever get used to it? When is doubt going to give way to the belief that I am not dreaming, that I really belong to this world, and that this world belongs to me—since I not only can see and hear its inhabitants as if I were spying on them through a crack in a shutter, but am also seen and heard by them as a guest at their own table. What happens to someone who no longer has anything to strive for? What stagnant pool will reflect the vision that is now offered to my eyes—two perfectly manicured hands buttering a toast, Meissen china on the tray, the silk bedspread, the Charles X chair, the sun-streaked rug, the furniture, the curtains, the white cashmere cardigan dangling sideways like a chimp, one sleeve nonchalantly looped around the coat hanger, the other dragging on

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.