Don’t tell it together and one at a time
that there are no irreplaceable men
because my mother
delicate and intransigent
all of her, in unfinished present time
leans down from heaven
to sew on a button for me
Jan Twardowski
Half-way through the lesson the mobile started vibrating in his jeans pocket. Francesco forced himself to finish his lecture – he didn’t want the students to lose the thread of the explanation. The phone kept on vibrating. A few of the more attentive students noticed a slight frown of worry on the professor’s face. Francesco apologized and checked the phone. It was his sister. He called her back. As he feared, his mother was in hospital because her condition had worsened. He left the classroom and went straight to the head of the department, meaning to set out at once. He quickly explained the situation – the head hadn’t been informed about his mother’s illness -- and was told not to worry, they would find someone to take his place for the whole time that was necessary. A colleague offered to drive him to the airport, and insisted on paying for the plane ticket before leaving him. Moved by his generosity, Francesco gave him a hug. There was no time to discuss the matter. A flight of twelve hours separated him from Italy, then another two hours from his native town. Could he make it, would he arrive on time?
During the flight he thought about his mother, who had been battling the illness for a year. She’d never lost her courage; she hadn’t asked Francesco to return to Italy to be near her. She would call him only if the situation became critical. He thought about his father, who’d done what he could to stay close to his mother during that year. He felt deeply grateful to his parents, who had always respected his choices, even when they hadn’t understood them. With time they’d accepted his vocation and his departure. And now they admired him. When his friends came to see them, they talked about him with shining eyes. The son whose mission had taken him so far away had become their pride and joy.
Francesco alternated his thoughts with a prayer: Lord, I’ve journeyed to the far end of the earth for you, I ask you to be able to say good-bye to my mother before she departs. I don’t ask you to make her well, I know that isn’t possible, I only want to say good-bye. He tried to sleep, in vain. He tried to read, but his mind wandered so much that before he got to the end of the sentence he’d already forgotten what it said. The plane landed at Rome airport on time. Francesco ran to the domestic flight terminal to find the first flight available for his home town. The young woman at the ticket agency looked at him worriedly and asked how he intended to pay for the ticket. Francesco had left without taking anything with him, not even a suitcase, dressed as usual in jeans, a cotton tee-shirt, flip-flops, with a colourful cotton bag slung over his shoulder. I’m paying in cash, he said, almost hiding a smile.
After buying the ticket he turned his mobile back on and called home. His mother had been dead for five hours. The words reached him from a world that had suddenly become remote and separate. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He remained paralyzed in the middle of the terminal, watching people passing with their luggage, their carts, their tickets in hand, the queues at the counters, a little boy with a backpack, his mother calling him, the monitors showing arriving and departing flights. Everything seemed unreal. It was a non-place: a suspension in the real space and time of life. A passage “from - to”. And he was late. Forever by now. He watched, his head emptying as if someone had pulled a plug and his thoughts were pouring out one after another. His glance fell on a sign indicating the bathrooms. Like a robot, he followed the arrow. Once inside, he stopped in front of the mirror. His eyes, swollen and red, were about to explode. His legs were trembling. He bent over and fell on his knees, his forehead leaning on the edge of the washbasin. Why? he asked in a choked voice. Tears streamed down his cheeks and neck into his tee-shirt.
Marco had never left his wife’s bedside. He stroked her hair and pressed her hand. Grazia was in a state of semi-consciousness and had stopped speaking some hours ago. Marco got up and went to the window. He stood there, looking out, not at the sky but at the street: the cars going by and the cars stopping, the taxis. His son would be arriving from one minute to the next, he would get out of an unfamiliar car that belonged to one of his many friends, and he would run up the hospital stairs. Grazia was waiting for Francesco, he was sure of that, she wouldn’t go without saying good-bye to him. All of a sudden Grazia started to mumble something. Marco ran over to her bed, he put his ear up to her mouth, but he couldn’t make out her words. Grazia, I’m here, he said, don’t worry, I’m here beside you. She opened and shut her eyes, modulating her voice in indistinct sounds accompanied by small lateral movements of her head. She’s in her last throes, thought Marco, she’s delirious. They’d told him that the last minutes or hours before dying could be terrible: the body rebels and protests, it doesn’t want to give up, nature is recalcitrant, the spirit looks for the peace it cannot find. Staying next to someone who is fighting the final battle without being able to help is the most traumatic experience possible, second perhaps only to one’s own death – which no one will ever describe. Marco was religious, he knew that the final hour comes for everyone and that it doesn’t all end here. He believed he would meet Grazia again in the afterlife and that they would be together again, forever. But he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to bear the pain of the separation, the crude disintegration of the body, for which there is no remedy. Every once in a while he thought he could hear bi-syllables that made sense mingled in his wife’s murmur. Maybe she wasn’t raving, maybe she really was trying to say something. Grazia, what can I do, tell me, Grazia, slowly, don’t strain yourself, one word at a time, take your time breathing, rest, as soon as you have a bit more strength you can tell me what you are trying to say, I’m here, don’t worry. He held her hand and stroked her hair, trying not to break down into desperate sobbing. He had to be strong until the end, that was the only way he could help her to fight or better, perhaps, to give in peacefully. For ten minutes Grazia alternated suffocated groans with mumbles. Then, between spasms, her face covered with sweat, with one final effort she said, “Marco, ciao”.
At the funeral I couldn’t stop looking at Francesco. His erect bearing, his gentle, frank look when he tried to get the attention of his sisters, relatives and friends, the way he’d embraced us before we went into church, as though he was the one who had to console us. Francesco on one side, his father on the other, the two sisters in the middle, in the front row. The sisters’ faces were wet. Francesco and his father didn’t shed a tear. I met Marco’s eyes a couple of times and they were serene. During the homily the priest was moved: remembering Grazia’s friendliness and the help she had given to the parish, his voice broke and he was silent for a few seconds. The whole church seemed suspended in an air bubble; no one moved, it was a though everyone had stopped breathing. This is prayer, I remember thinking at that moment. Then the priest started up again; he thanked Francesco for choosing such beautiful and unusual passages: the Song of Songs, a wedding passage. He spoke of the joy of resurrection, holding back his tears. The church was full. We were sitting on one side, and we could take in everything, from the last rows to the first. Enormous round windows, more like portholes than rose windows, covered the side walls. The friend seated on my right nodded towards a huge inflatable rubber globe leaning against a column next to the sacristy entrance. We exchanged an amazed look, but didn’t make any comment. The mass lasted forty-five minutes. We asked Francesco if he wanted to go to the cemetery on his own or if he preferred us to go with him. His mother had asked to be cremated. You come, too, he said. We accompanied Grazia to the cemetery. Workers went in and out of the building with trolleys, banging doors and talking loudly. A clerk quickly took care of the formalities on the stairs. A siren, followed by the cold voice of a loudspeaker, announced that the cemetery was closing. We shivered. After a quarter of an hour, we were already outside. The automatic gates closed behind us. I felt a sense of relief. There were about fifteen of us left. We stayed near Francesco. A friend gave him a bag with some shirts and two pairs jeans of his size. That’s what friend are, said Francesco smiling, they think of everything. He thanked us and hugged us again. Then he wanted to tell us how he’d had the news of his mother’s death, of his hurried departure, of how he’d broken down and cried in the airport bathroom. It was a terrible blow, he said, I missed getting there in time only by five hours. She was proud of you, your mother, of what you do, one of us said. We all looked at each other. It was time to go. Marco didn’t let us leave without telling us first about Grazia’s last ten minutes, the effort she’d made to pronounce his name and say ‘ciao’ to him. For the first time, he lost his composure. Marriages like this succeed thanks to mutual respect, said Marco, we always respected one another despite differences in our beliefs and sensibilities. Marriages like this last, we were happy. I was surprised to hear him talk about respect; in these cases people talk about love. I was moved by the last word on Grazia’s lips, ‘ciao’.
I asked Marco’s permission to tell the story of his mother’s death as fiction. He agreed, also because his name is Marco and not Francesco. Francesco is his father’s name.
After taking his degree in physics at the University of Aquila, the author was awarded a Ph.d in physics at the University of Warsaw. In 2001 he was winner of a special prize awarded by the jury of the ‘Premio internazionale di Poesia Orient-Express’, in the "Guglielmo Maio" section for young poet, and the following year he was short-listed for the same prize. He attended the fiction workshop of the "Sagarana" School of Creative Writing in Lucca. He received an MA in writing at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Siena. He is working on chaos and solar wind at the Centre for Spatial Research of the Polish Academy for Sciences in Warsaw. He edits the biweekly column "Scrittura Creativa FormatoA4" for "Città Nuova" and contributes to their columns on culture and religious witness. He translated contemporary Polish authors for the Edizioni San Paolo and the publishing house Città Nuova. He collaborates with the Polish National Geographic. He teaches creative writing in the Department of Mediterranean Studies of the University of Warsaw, in the Italian Institute for Culture in Warsaw and in the Italian Department of the University of Cracow.