The First True Lie: A Novel by Marina Mander Read Free Book Online Page B

you, to care for you?
    I care for her for free, but it must not be enough.
    It may be that she doesn’t want to confess her darkest thoughts to me directly. Sometimes she writes them down using tiny, tiny letters, then forgets the pieces of paper on the kitchen table; or else she talks about them to somebody in a low voice. She talks slowly and she moves slowly.
    She did it the other night too.
    At times Mama moves in slow motion.
    When she slows down more than usual she decides not to go to work for a few days.
    “One of these days they’ll end up firing me.”
    I think one of these days came.
    So she took a day or two to sleep.
    When normal people don’t work they go on vacation.
    Last year even Mama took a week for a real vacation, and we went to Venice.
    “Do you know that if you go to Venice with a man before you’re married, then you won’t ever marry him? It happened to me once.”
    Or more than once.
    More than a city, Venice seems like one of those books with three-dimensional objects that pop out of the pages, suddenly spreading out before your eyes. You turn the corner and you feel as if you’re turning a page, as if you’re falling into another fantastic story. Venice is all hand-drawn. The houses are ancient and every detail seems specially designed by an architect in a wizard’s hat. There are no cars and you can walk everywhere. Gondolas slip by on the water, each one steered by a single sailor with a striped shirt like mine.
    Mama and I took a ride around like the couples do.
    “Don’t you think this city’s magical? Isn’t it incredible that places like this still exist in the world?”
    We went to visit the churches and the museums with their paintings that are hundreds of years old, where you have to whisper so you don’t disturb the other people; we also discovered a special place under an arch where everyone sticks their gum. We stopped and played under the portico of a palazzo on the canal: If you walk around the base of one of the columns without falling, you get to make a wish. Almost nobody makes it, but it’s fun to try.
    “Don’t say it, don’t tell me the wish. If you say it, then it won’t come true.”
    We bought a glass ashtray and sat at a little café table with the glittering sea in front of us and to one side a church with a golden ball on top. We wrote postcards: to Giulia, to Grandma, to Davide and Chubby Broccolo, plus I sent Antonella the one with a gondola. I wrote “Greetings from Venice”—I wanted to write “I love you” but was too embarrassed.
    We had some really good gelato. It was like a bar of chocolate dipped in whipped cream. The waiter recommended it to us and Mama said: “Sure, let’s try it. We’re on vacation, and it’s always a good idea to try the local specialty.”
    It must be wonderful to live in a place like Venice. I wonder how it would have been if my stork had been rerouted and I’d been born in Venice.
    “In winter, though, Venice is depressing.”
    So no, then, I think it’s better how it is, for us to be where we are.
    Mama says that in winter Venice is like a cold: The world outside is even more muffled and far away, and your head pounds for no reason while your nose runs, like those stray cats with heart-shaped noses that nobody has the heart to clean.
    But the thing I remember most about Venice is that it’s either extremely noisy or extremely quiet. You’re either walking in the middle of millions of people who are stepping on your feet and getting stuck in the really narrow streets or on the bridges, everyone’s shouting in different languages and the gondoliers are singing and the boats’ motors are roaring, and there’s always someone hammering somewhere or a radio going or people calling out to each other from one place to another; or else you take a random turn and maybe you find an open space with nobody there, and the only thing you can hear is the water in the canals and the echo of your own footsteps and the