Like Family by Paolo Giordano Read Free Book Online Page B

and him alone, who followed him along his rambling fantasies wherever they were headed and spoiled him like a little prince. When he notices her unexpected remoteness, he becomes nervous and petulant. I can tell by the way his voice changes: he does that whenever he wants to be the center of attention. But Mrs. A. doesn’t have the strength or the desire to understand what’s going through the child’s head. I find myself between two raging flames burning with expectations and resentment: on the one hand a sick elderly woman, on the other a schoolboy, each eager to have all eyes on him for fear of disappearing.
    I send Emanuele out to play in the courtyard, eventhough it’s cold. He protests but in the end obeys. From the doorway he gives me one of his most withering looks.
    _____
    There was a room in Mrs. A.’s house where the radiators had been turned off for years, a room that looked not like either a living room or a study but rather a reliquary. Since in winter the temperature here was at least ten degrees lower than in the rest of the apartment, when you went in, you had the feeling you were entering a catacomb. The windows were shuttered with colored-glass panes depicting women’s faces in profile—I don’t recall the name of the stained-glass artist, but Mrs. A. always mentioned him very reverently—so the light that filtered through was also hushed, sepulchral. Everything in that room spoke of Renato.
    A recessed wall had been fitted with shelves, and a different collection was displayed on each shelf. The mix of periods and styles suggested that the collector was an individual suffering from a peculiar incoherence or someone who was very open-minded: there were a dozen pre-Columbian statues, some bizarrely shapedpaperweights that I had never seen anywhere else, painted ceramic sculptures of dubious taste, plus assorted silver and brass containers. In the center of the room, a low table with a false bottom displayed twenty or so pocketwatches, arranged equidistantly from one another on a green felt lining, the hands of each stopped at twelve noon. The aspiration of a secondhand dealer like Renato to become an art expert—a goal he came close to but never actually achieved—was evident from the heterogeneous nature of the collection. Whether Mrs. A. was aware of it is impossible to say, but she would not have dishonored her husband’s dubious talent for anything in the world. Of all the experiences in her life, assisting him in his business dealings was certainly the most unexpected and exciting; just the thought of it still filled her with pride.
    The most valuable objects were stacked behind a lacquered screen with Oriental motifs: about fifty canvases, all authenticated. I know for a fact that there were works by Aligi Sassu and Romano Gazzera, at least a couple from the school of Felice Casorati and some from the futurist period, though not by its most celebrated exponents. Mrs. A. also spoke to me aboutan oil by Giuseppe Migneco,
Gli sposi
(
The Married Couple
), which Renato had never wanted to sell, despite the insistence of a doctor who increased his offer each year. That painting, she said, made her think of her and Renato, and of me and Nora.
    Actually I’ve never seen even one of the paintings. Mrs. A. let me see only the paper packaging, all identical, and the one time I dared peek between the edges of a wrapper, she stepped forward to stop me. I didn’t try it again.
    â€œWhat are you planning to do with them?” I ask her on the day of the visit with Emanuele. It’s an indelicate question that I have not considered properly, yet I feel it’s my duty to warn her about the dissolution of her cherished collection that she has watched over for so long in an apartment that no one would ever suspect housed such treasure. Whoever comes later will not have the slightest regard for it, certainly not what she would expect, because there is no