Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
BIANCAMURA, 17 APRIL 1985
VANNI
I’ve carried her in my heart for all these years , I think as I watch her run inside. But I can never have her. As soon as she’s out of sight, I let my smile fade.
Half man. Cripple. In a fit of self-hatred, I whisper them to my own image in the mirror.
Folded in two, useless, in a chair.
Nobody ever used those cruel words to describe me, but me.
When Lucrezia returned, it was as if the boy I was before the accident had come back with her. I wanted to be myself again. But it wasn’t enough. I can delude myself that a clean shave and a little self-respect can change things, but they can’t.
Every time Lucrezia had to look down and I had to look up, every time she had to push me on the cobbles, the way we had to sit at the edge of a path instead of climbing the grassy slopes of the Boboli Gardens – having to call the waiters to lift me up the five steps to the restaurant, with the other punters pretending not look… all this meant defeat, humiliation. It stings enough when I am alone; but with Lucrezia there, it was unbearable.
I remember Cristina’s tears as if it happened yesterday – I’ve replayed that day over and over in my mind. Cristina, crying in her hands as she repeated how sorry she was, how ashamed, but she couldn’t lie to herself any longer. She couldn’t live with me this way.
My brother and I are never short of girls interested in us, or should I say, in the Orafi family; but I refused to see anyone else. I will not go through the humiliation again. I can’t give children to my future wife. I can’t give her a walk on the beach; we can’t stand side by side and kiss. I don’t command respect from the men we work with; I can’t face a relationship. I can only let life pass me by, maybe with the balm of little moments such as the ones I had today with Lucrezia.
Lorenzo won’t allow himself a relationship – women come and go from his life in the space of one night; my father is alone too, as is our estranged mother. We’ve become a house of bachelors, two of us devoted to the business, one of us – me – in limbo.
I knock at my father’s door and make my way in. His room is, as usual, bright and airy, not so much a sickroom but a sanctuary. He’s forced to stay in bed most of the time, but whenever he can, he likes to sit in the armchair by the window and look out onto the hills.
‘You’re back. How did it go?’ he says with the smile he’s never lost, even if life hasn’t been easy on him.
His smile contrasts with the sorry pair we make, two men destroyed in a few minutes, by a falling car.
‘I don’t know. It was good to see her, but it was awful at the same time. Fosco did his best to crush her spirit.’
‘He left quite a few other people crushed in his wake. But he’s gone now.’
‘He’s gone to hell, yes.’
Dad grimaces. Words of hate never sit right with him, even when they have reason to be uttered. ‘The Casalta sisters seem in agreement about selling the house to us,’ he says. ‘The question is, what will happen next?’
‘What do you mean?’ I pretend not to understand, because I want my father to put into words whatever Lorenzo is planning.
‘You do know what I mean, figlio mio .’
‘Remind me,’ I say quietly.
He smiles, his eyes bright and clever and acutely aware of everything that goes on in this house, in the business, in his sons. Whoever dismisses my father as a powerless invalid – oh, how I hate that word! – couldn’t be more wrong. However, Lorenzo has youth and strength on his side, and a cunning that my father refuses to employ.
‘What do you want to happen next, after we buy Casalta? What do you think we should do with the Falconeri house?’
‘You’re doing it again!’ Lorenzo’s voice is followed by the scent of his aftershave. He’s come in, and is now looking at our father with reproach. ‘Vanni can’t be burdened with business worries, tasks, whatever! Do you want him to end up like you?’
Here is the real Lorenzo. Smooth and collected with the outside world, vulnerable and highly strung with his family. You’d wonder who’s the vulnerable one here, me in my wheelchair, or Lorenzo, standing tall and strong but eternally afraid.
‘Your brother is perfectly capable of making decisions for himself, Lorenzo.’
‘Er… excuse me? I’m here, in this room, with you. Can you maybe address me directly?’ I say without resentment.
‘Sorry, Vanni. But you know you shouldn’t exert yourself.’
‘His legs don’t work, but the rest of him does! He can make decisions about business, and so can I,’ Dad asserts.
‘He needs to concentrate on resting, and physio, and looking after his health!’
‘Still here, Lorenzo!’ I cry. The back and forth between my father and my brother doesn’t make me feel any more powerless than I usually feel. There’s no tug of war for power between my brother and me, because I’m not really interested in the family business.
I’m not interested in anything.
My father knows it, and tries to push me to find something to do, something to believe in, anything to feel alive again. ‘You both have so much rage inside you. This is our life, now. Every day and every night you relive the accident! It was years ago, and yet you never moved on. I’m old and sick and I have more life in me than the two of you!’
‘Dad—’ Lorenzo begins.
‘Don’t you dare say I shouldn’t get angry because it’s bad for me!’
‘But it is bad for you.’ Lorenzo frowns in the exact same way he did when he was little.
‘Well. I’ll leave you guys to argue it all out, va bene ?’ I say, half annoyed, half touched by their clumsy reciprocal affection.
‘Vanni, wait. We haven’t finished discussing Casalta. I think we should buy it, as arranged, and give it back to the Falconeri daughters for a token.’
Lorenzo’s lips are a thin line, his fists curled by his sides. ‘You must be joking .’
My father looks at me, and I choose my words carefully. ‘I don’t know what they want, Lucrezia and her sisters. I don’t know that Lucrezia wants to keep Casalta at all.’
‘What they want is irrelevant.’ Lorenzo sounds calm, but I can feel his voice vibrating with indignation. ‘We waited years for this. Fosco Falconeri is dead, and he died bankrupt. Their estate and all it contains will be ours soon; their business will be ours. Why on earth are you even considering giving it back to them?’
‘Decency,’ my father says. ‘Fosco damaged them too.’
‘I don’t know if you’re forgiving, or just a fool.’
Lorenzo has gone too far. The sound of his hard, hard words ripples in the air, in our hearts and minds. He called our father a fool. And to my shock, my strong, resolute father looks aghast, his eyes shiny and his hands open on the blanket.
Fosco Falconeri has broken us once, with the car accident that took my legs. And now, I realise bitterly, he’s breaking us again, by turning us into him.
Alone in my room, with a bottle of Chianti for company, I run the scene in my mind over and over and over again: a helpless man, emasculated, almost falling on his face in front of everyone. In front of Lucrezia. The bitterness and self-pity I truly feel are free to flood me, now that I don’t have to put on a brave face, smile, to pretend I’ve accepted the new me – the cripple . The word tastes foul in my mouth: Lorenzo and my father would be appalled to hear me use it. But in my mind, I’m free not to be positive, not to be brave, or even fair.
I know that I won’t see Lucrezia again. I couldn’t bear more humiliation.
I fall asleep when the bottle is empty and the night is at its darkest, with Lucrezia’s face dancing behind my closed eyes, and a heart full of grief.