Read Online Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini, John Cullen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Margaret Mazzantini, John Cullen
Ads: Link
whizzing by. I wondered how many times I had passed overhead on my way to the beach, completely unaware of the life down below. Beyond the piers of the viaduct, there were other dwellings: rusty sheds, trailers. The lugubrious carcass of a burned automobile showed through a patch of grass. Maybe it had fallen from the viaduct and nobody had ever bothered to haul it away. Nearby, there was an area of bare clay, dried and cracked by the sun. A snake with gleaming black skin slithered over it before disappearing back into the grass. She wasn’t home. As I walked away, the shadow of her house spread over that depressing landscape and buried me.
I went the long way back to my car and put the key in the ignition, but I didn’t turn it. Instead, I manipulated the radio dial in search of some music, and then I laid my head against the back of the seat. I was in the shade; outside, there was that great buzzing heat and, as usual, little else. Every now and then, an isolated scream rolled down from some unidentifiable hole in the wall. I turned off the radio. I stretched my legs out past the pedals, half-closed my eyes, and saw her through the slit between my eyelids, like a wide-screen movie. She was walking among the cement columns on the basement floor of the big unfinished apartment building. I’d been right to wait for her there. She’d gone that way, as she had before, because it offered some shelter from the sun. She seemed to walk faster when she stepped into the light, and then slowed down and almost disappeared when she reached the long black shadows of the columns. I’d been afraid I wouldn’t recognize her, but I recognized her as soon as I saw her. Far off, tiny, half hidden in the darkness. With her scarecrow head and her thin bandy legs. I spotted that disoriented way of walking she had—maybe there was something wrong with one of her hips. She was headed for me without knowing it, walking a little sideways, like a suspicious stray dog. She was carrying a large shopping bag in each hand—her arms were stretched and taut. These weights, however, failed to stabilize her as she advanced; in fact, they pulled her off balance. Now she’s going to fall, I thought; now she’s going to fall. And I grabbed the door handle, ready to get out and go to her. But she didn’t fall, and then another shadow hid her. I let go of the handle and stayed where I was. Her broad forehead came back into the light, and with it the sensation that it wasn’t her I was spying on; it was myself.
While she continued to come my way, moving through that checkerboard of darkness and light, I went over in my mind—frame by frame, like a film—the obscene moments I’d spent with her. I slid down in my seat, inert and sweating in sexual apnea. Because all of a sudden I remembered: her lifeless body, extinguished like her cold fireplace; her bowed white neck; that sad, enigmatic gaze. No, I hadn’t done it all by myself. She’d wanted it as much as I had. More than I had. And the wall, and the chair that fell over behind us, and her wrists, pinned to that glossy poster above her head—they all passed before my eyes. The memory was in the pit of my stomach. Even the smell of the two of us together came back to me: the smell of delirious passion, overpowering the smell of ashes. Ours had been a desperate embrace, and the desperation was all hers, riding on those skeletal legs that now were walking toward me. I was not used to making love like that, but she was. She dragged me down with her. And here she was, walking with her shopping bags. What was in them?
What did you buy?
What do you eat? Drop those bags, leave them in the dust, and
come with me, little dog.
With the light behind her, she was thin, very thin. She looked like one of those little invertebrates with anemic exoskeletons that come out of the ground in the spring. In the same way, she seemed to be surfacing after a struggle. She was going home undismayed on an ordinary day in
I went the long way back to my car and put the key in the ignition, but I didn’t turn it. Instead, I manipulated the radio dial in search of some music, and then I laid my head against the back of the seat. I was in the shade; outside, there was that great buzzing heat and, as usual, little else. Every now and then, an isolated scream rolled down from some unidentifiable hole in the wall. I turned off the radio. I stretched my legs out past the pedals, half-closed my eyes, and saw her through the slit between my eyelids, like a wide-screen movie. She was walking among the cement columns on the basement floor of the big unfinished apartment building. I’d been right to wait for her there. She’d gone that way, as she had before, because it offered some shelter from the sun. She seemed to walk faster when she stepped into the light, and then slowed down and almost disappeared when she reached the long black shadows of the columns. I’d been afraid I wouldn’t recognize her, but I recognized her as soon as I saw her. Far off, tiny, half hidden in the darkness. With her scarecrow head and her thin bandy legs. I spotted that disoriented way of walking she had—maybe there was something wrong with one of her hips. She was headed for me without knowing it, walking a little sideways, like a suspicious stray dog. She was carrying a large shopping bag in each hand—her arms were stretched and taut. These weights, however, failed to stabilize her as she advanced; in fact, they pulled her off balance. Now she’s going to fall, I thought; now she’s going to fall. And I grabbed the door handle, ready to get out and go to her. But she didn’t fall, and then another shadow hid her. I let go of the handle and stayed where I was. Her broad forehead came back into the light, and with it the sensation that it wasn’t her I was spying on; it was myself.
While she continued to come my way, moving through that checkerboard of darkness and light, I went over in my mind—frame by frame, like a film—the obscene moments I’d spent with her. I slid down in my seat, inert and sweating in sexual apnea. Because all of a sudden I remembered: her lifeless body, extinguished like her cold fireplace; her bowed white neck; that sad, enigmatic gaze. No, I hadn’t done it all by myself. She’d wanted it as much as I had. More than I had. And the wall, and the chair that fell over behind us, and her wrists, pinned to that glossy poster above her head—they all passed before my eyes. The memory was in the pit of my stomach. Even the smell of the two of us together came back to me: the smell of delirious passion, overpowering the smell of ashes. Ours had been a desperate embrace, and the desperation was all hers, riding on those skeletal legs that now were walking toward me. I was not used to making love like that, but she was. She dragged me down with her. And here she was, walking with her shopping bags. What was in them?
What did you buy?
What do you eat? Drop those bags, leave them in the dust, and
come with me, little dog.
With the light behind her, she was thin, very thin. She looked like one of those little invertebrates with anemic exoskeletons that come out of the ground in the spring. In the same way, she seemed to be surfacing after a struggle. She was going home undismayed on an ordinary day in
Similar Books
