Read Online Listen to My Voice by Susanna Tamaro - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Susanna Tamaro
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have failed, just as my mother could have lost me involuntarily, perhaps by tripping on the stairs with me inside her.
I ascended and descended the stony paths. As I passed, the grass snakes basking in the sun shook off their lethargy and whished away into the bushes. Wall lizards darted here and there. When a snake comes into the world, I said to myself, or a harvest mouse or a crow, none of them can distinguish itself from the rest of its kind except by its longevity, its ability to stay alive. An animal (for all its extraordinary complexity) can only carry out, more or less effectively, the project inscribed in the genetic patrimony of its species, but what about man? Can’t a human being change the path he’s on, again and again? And isn’t it this bottomless chasm of potential that dismays us, that suggests the impotence of our vision? Who would my brother have been? And as for me, why have I come into the world? Who am I supposed to become?
Those long walks gave me the strength to continue my researches. One morning, I woke to the clicking sound of raindrops against the windowpane. The dark bora, the
bora scura
, had come up in the night, the temperature had dropped, and the wind was blowing pretty hard, covering the garden in an autumnal light. The innumerable white petals scattered under the plum and cherry trees were the only reminders that spring had begun.
After a bit of breakfast, I slowly climbed back up into the attic. An old curtain in a floral pattern covered a pile of boxes, large and small. Some of them must have once contained liqueurs and chocolates; others were anonymous cardboard boxes sealed with packing tape. With the aid of a penknife, I opened one of them, which turned out to be full of Christmas decorations. I unwound several metres of silver ribbon before I got to the crèche. The stable wasn’t old or particularly well made: two cork walls and a ladder leading up to a kind of hayloft under the roof. Inside, the ox and the ass lay with their legs sticking up in the air, while St Joseph and the Madonna rested on their sides. A small bag contained the manger, the sheep, and the lambs. I found my favourite little statue: an old plaster ewe with one broken limb and a red ribbon around her neck. She was the one I used to hide every Christmas Eve; she was the little lost sheep I made you look for, bleating through all the rooms of the house.
There was no trace of Baby Jesus. He must have been in another box, or maybe he wound up in somebody’s pocket during Advent. I also discovered the few glass baubles that had managed to survive decades of Christmases and a treetop ornament with a hole in it.
The boxes underneath held Grandfather’s various beetle collections: little glass cases with velvet lining, to which the insects were affixed with long, slender pins, the whole labelled with each insect’s Latin name, written out in a clear, unhesitating hand.
While I was cautiously trying to move the cases to one side, I tripped over a plastic bag, sealed with electrical tape and bearing the insignia of the State Police; inside there seemed to be a cloth shoulder bag. For a few moments, my heart accelerated its pace. What could it be if not the purse my mother had with her at the time of the accident?
I tore through the plastic wrapping with my fingernails. The bag had no zippers, just a single button, undone. Inside I found a wallet with a few thousand lire, a membership card for an alternative film club, a few dinars, a train pass for the Trieste–Padua stretch, and, protected inside a transparent envelope, a faded Polaroid snapshot of me as a baby at the seashore, in the arms of a man. The stranger – his hair long and dishevelled, a shell necklace around his neck – smiles at the camera, but I’m clearly irritated. I’ve got a little bucket in my hand, and either I’ve just finished crying or I’m about to start. From what I can see in the background, we must be at Sistiana Bay.
In
I ascended and descended the stony paths. As I passed, the grass snakes basking in the sun shook off their lethargy and whished away into the bushes. Wall lizards darted here and there. When a snake comes into the world, I said to myself, or a harvest mouse or a crow, none of them can distinguish itself from the rest of its kind except by its longevity, its ability to stay alive. An animal (for all its extraordinary complexity) can only carry out, more or less effectively, the project inscribed in the genetic patrimony of its species, but what about man? Can’t a human being change the path he’s on, again and again? And isn’t it this bottomless chasm of potential that dismays us, that suggests the impotence of our vision? Who would my brother have been? And as for me, why have I come into the world? Who am I supposed to become?
Those long walks gave me the strength to continue my researches. One morning, I woke to the clicking sound of raindrops against the windowpane. The dark bora, the
bora scura
, had come up in the night, the temperature had dropped, and the wind was blowing pretty hard, covering the garden in an autumnal light. The innumerable white petals scattered under the plum and cherry trees were the only reminders that spring had begun.
After a bit of breakfast, I slowly climbed back up into the attic. An old curtain in a floral pattern covered a pile of boxes, large and small. Some of them must have once contained liqueurs and chocolates; others were anonymous cardboard boxes sealed with packing tape. With the aid of a penknife, I opened one of them, which turned out to be full of Christmas decorations. I unwound several metres of silver ribbon before I got to the crèche. The stable wasn’t old or particularly well made: two cork walls and a ladder leading up to a kind of hayloft under the roof. Inside, the ox and the ass lay with their legs sticking up in the air, while St Joseph and the Madonna rested on their sides. A small bag contained the manger, the sheep, and the lambs. I found my favourite little statue: an old plaster ewe with one broken limb and a red ribbon around her neck. She was the one I used to hide every Christmas Eve; she was the little lost sheep I made you look for, bleating through all the rooms of the house.
There was no trace of Baby Jesus. He must have been in another box, or maybe he wound up in somebody’s pocket during Advent. I also discovered the few glass baubles that had managed to survive decades of Christmases and a treetop ornament with a hole in it.
The boxes underneath held Grandfather’s various beetle collections: little glass cases with velvet lining, to which the insects were affixed with long, slender pins, the whole labelled with each insect’s Latin name, written out in a clear, unhesitating hand.
While I was cautiously trying to move the cases to one side, I tripped over a plastic bag, sealed with electrical tape and bearing the insignia of the State Police; inside there seemed to be a cloth shoulder bag. For a few moments, my heart accelerated its pace. What could it be if not the purse my mother had with her at the time of the accident?
I tore through the plastic wrapping with my fingernails. The bag had no zippers, just a single button, undone. Inside I found a wallet with a few thousand lire, a membership card for an alternative film club, a few dinars, a train pass for the Trieste–Padua stretch, and, protected inside a transparent envelope, a faded Polaroid snapshot of me as a baby at the seashore, in the arms of a man. The stranger – his hair long and dishevelled, a shell necklace around his neck – smiles at the camera, but I’m clearly irritated. I’ve got a little bucket in my hand, and either I’ve just finished crying or I’m about to start. From what I can see in the background, we must be at Sistiana Bay.
In
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