Gramsci's Fall by Nora Bossong

Author:Nora Bossong
Language: deu
Format: epub
Publisher: Seagull Books
Published: 2020-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

The first time they meet he doesn’t see her. He sees Giulia. He sees a shadow that has broken out of his memory and become real. It is a smoky, foggy morning, people are pressed together in the tram, they have just passed Via Nomentana, they will soon pass through Piazza Buenos Aires, a charming little circle with villas and sandstone lions looking imperiously down on the wobbly, over-filled ride. Then along the edge of the massive Villa Borghese to the zoo, where, when the wind’s just right, you can hear the elephants. The doors have just closed, it is sticky and people’s arms are damp with sweat. He turns his head and sees a woman who, when she briefly turns her head towards him, looks familiar. He stops short, thinks of Giulia. Thinks of his son. 3,600 grams, dark hair, blue eyes, a nicely proportioned little head, Giulia had written him in August. ‘It looks like he has been ripened in the sun.’

People push between him and the woman, arms brush him, damp impressions stay behind on his skin, he sees the round face with the sharp lines of the eyebrows, the delicate body, and asks himself whether his wish has become so urgent that it is actually standing in front of him, whether she has come all the way from Ivanovo without telling him.

No, that’d be impossible. A wish would have at least said hello.

And then he knows. Tania. He has just seen Giulia’s sister, who he has been seeking for weeks, after the Schuchts asked him. When the family went back to Russia, Tania stayed behind in Rome. ‘In order to finish her studies,’ Giulia had said. ‘That’s only half the story,’ Gramsci had answered. ‘Natural sciences,’ was all Giulia said in response. ‘She was very talented.’

He wants to get out, he wants to follow her but the tram has separated the two of them. When he gets off at the next stop, he cowers like a beaten mutt and hurries along the rails in the opposite direction. The people on the pavement avoid him. He hardly notices any more, he has grown used to it, those looks, but today he can feel all the displeasure he has long felt directed towards him, towards that misshaped body.

He disappears further into his coat. All of a sudden he isfreezing even though it is more than twenty degrees. The air seems leaden and over there, on the other side of the street, a door slams so loudly it’s as if it wanted to reach all the way to Moscow. He’s afraid, suddenly he is afraid of the hydrants next to him, afraid of the upcoming intersection, afraid of the thoughts beating him back into his isolation, into that cocoon through which nothing but letters and numbers pass. That stumbling of the nerves and thoughts which one calls love, but where does it lead? There in Rome it has no place nor goal, and

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