Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado (Translated by Jamie Richards)

Author:Viola Di Grado (Translated by Jamie Richards)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC051000, FIC107000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2023-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

15

Vertebrae

When I woke up the sky was deep blue and Xu had disappeared. She had remade the bed perfectly. Even the pillow had no indentation, as if it hadn’t supported the weight of her head for hours. I pressed my nose into the fabric to inhale the last traces of her mysterious, spicy scent. I took off my clothes. I tried not to look at myself in the mirror. In the shower I masturbated, frenetically, to extinguish my anxiety the way you would a fire.

I went to work. The short walk to the school seemed endless. I was tired, my legs felt heavy, the medicinal blue sky bothered my eyes. And there was construction everywhere: men toiling, breathing hard, busy repairing, demolishing. Up on ladders and cranes, metal scaffolds, in the sun, pale sweat-beaded faces focused on some imperceptible detail. I stepped around a sinkhole. Everyone walked briskly with calm and purposeful expressions, entering and exiting the metro like ants in and out of an anthill. Didn’t they realize what was happening? Didn’t they notice all that fervor and destruction? Didn’t it frighten them that soil and cement crumble so easily? And that, with the same ease and speed, could be put back together as if they’d never collapsed? My head was spinning. I went toward Jing’an Park. The square to the right, the one on the cover of my Shanghai travel guide, was gone: in its place was a huge pit full of workers and rubble. I peeked through the gate to look at the crater and rocks and the dusty commotion of the cranes. The only time I’d cracked that guide was on the plane, at some point in the night, my Italian night which outside the window was already Chinese and strewn with puffy clouds. Of the square, it said: The perfect spot to stop for a break.

During class I kept checking my phone, hoping Xu would write me, but I forced myself not to write her. I had to leave her her space. That’s what you do in relationships. You respect the other person’s silence by offering the gift of additional silence, making sure that the sum total of silence isn’t so great as to cancel everything out. Silence has to be doled out carefully. Like hydrogen peroxide on a cut. It seems harmless, it disinfects, makes a snowy white foam on a splotch of blood. But it drains the color out of anything that soaks in it for too long.

As I explained to my students the difference between la mia casa and casa mia, Xu’s nightmare popped into my head and I couldn’t get it out. Mechanically I reviewed grammar all the while picturing on the orange wall the image of Xu, shaking like she’d been in a shipwreck, covered in sweat after emerging from a violent ocean of feeling. I hated that she didn’t want to tell me anything. I hated that she shared with me only the shell of her inner life, keeping the volatile core to herself.

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