Letter from Casablanca by Antonio Tabucchi Read Free Book Online Page B

motionless, listening. I got up when I heard the creaking of the armchair in the living room. It was the only noise. Mama was truly quiet. I waited a few seconds behind the blinds. I realized that I was trembling, but certainly not from cold. I had to grit my teeth so they would not chatter. Then the back-kitchen door slowly opened and Mama went out. At first I didn’t think it was really she. How strange! It was the Mama in that photograph on the chest of drawers, where she was arm in arm with Papa. Behind them was the Basilica of San Marco and below was written “Venice, April 14, 1942.” She wore the same white dress with the big black polka dots, the shoes with the funny straps fastened around her ankles, and a white veil that covered her face. On the collar of her jacket she wore a blue silk camellia, and slipped over her arm she carried a crocodile purse. In one hand, delicately, as if she were carrying a precious object, she held a man’s cap that I recognized. She walked slowly as far as the entrance to the avenue, between the large pots of lemons, with a graceful gait that I had never seen. To watch her like this from behind, she seemed much younger, and only then did I realize that Nena walked exactly like her, with a slight swing and the same position of the shoulders. She disappeared around the corner of the house and I heard her footsteps on the gravel. My heart beat harder than ever. I was all sticky with sweat. I thought that I ought to get my bathrobe, but at that moment the clock struck two, and I couldn’t take my hands off the windowsill. I moved two slats of the blindslightly in order to see better. It seemed an interminable time. “How long she’s staying!’’ I thought. “Maybe she won’t come back.”
    And at that moment Mama emerged from around the corner. She came forward with her head held high, staring in front of her with that distracted, faraway look that made her resemble Aunt Yvonne, and on her lips there lingered a smile. She had slipped her purse over her shoulder, which gave her an even younger look. At a certain point she stopped, opened her purse, took out a little round box of powder with the mirror inside the cover. She released the hook and the box opened by itself. She took the powder puff, rubbed it on the powder, and, looking at herself in the mirror, she slowly powdered her cheeks. And then I felt an enormous desire to call her, to tell her, “I’m here, Mama.” But I couldn’t say a word. I was aware only of a very strong taste of bilberries that filled my mouth, my nostrils, that invaded the room, the air, the whole world.

HEAVENLY BLISS
To Isabella G., who talked to me in Rome about “Heavenly Bliss”
    U ntil the day I met Madame Huppert, I had never heard of Ikebana. I was very much on the defensive that afternoon. I had prepared myself psychologically to tell a lot of little lies if it seemed to me “promotional.” At that time I considered little lies as a necessary ingredient in order to appear interesting, to escape from mediocrity, and I trained myself to tell them without constraint. All things considered, I found myself quite convincing when I lied, perhaps more so than when I told the truth. But faced with a direct question, without pretext, without even the glimmer of who or what Ikebana was, all my admirable inclinations toward falsehood crumbled inexorably, and I was forced to admit my ignorance.
    For the interview, Madame received me on the terrace. She was lying on a very austere, cushionless, reed deck chair, of the yoga-meditation type and was dressed in a delicious pale blue kimono. Up until the last moment I had been undecided whether to wear my blue pleated skirt with my red pullover, the “adolescent-of-good-family-who-belongs-to-the-tennis-club” type, or my nut-brown tweed suit with the beige shin. Then I had decided on the suit, not without certain misgivings over the resolution because the season was not reallyideal for a heavy tweed