They went to the place—I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where, perhaps near Portofino. Belbo’s description was all emotion, tensions, dejections, moods; it contained no landscapes. Lorenza did her errand while Belbo waited in a café. Then she said they could go and eat fish in a place on a bluff high above the sea.
After this, the story becomes fragmentary. There are snatches of dialogue without quotation marks, as if transcribed at white heat lest a series of epiphanies fade. They drove as far as they could, then continued on foot, taking those toilsome Ligurian paths along the coast, surrounded by flowers, to the restaurant. When they were seated, they saw, on the table next to theirs, a card reserving it for Conte Agliè.
What a coincidence, Belbo must have said. A nasty coincidence, Lorenza replied; she didn’t want Agliè to know she was there, and with Belbo. Why not, what was wrong with that? What gave Agliè the right to be jealous? Right? No, it was a matter of taste; Agliè had invited her out today and she’d told him she was busy. Belbo didn’t want her to look like a liar, did he? She wouldn’t look like a liar; she was in fact busy, she had a date with Belbo. Was that something to be ashamed of? Not ashamed of, but she had her own rules of tact, if Belbo didn’t mind.
They left the restaurant, started back up the path, but Lorenza suddenly stopped; she saw some people arriving. Belbo didn’t know them. Friends of Agliè, she said, and she didn’t want them to see her. A humiliating situation: she leaned against the railing of a little bridge over a ravine full of olive trees, a newspaper in front of her face, as if she were consumed by a sudden interest in current events. Belbo stood ten paces away, smoking, as if he were just passing by.
A friend of Agliè walked past. Lorenza said that if they continued along the path, they were bound to run into Agliè himself. To hell with this, Belbo said. So what? Lorenza said he was insensitive. The solution: Get to the car without taking the path, cut across the slopes. A breathless flight over a series of sun-baked terraces, and Belbo lost the heel of a shoe. Lorenza said, You see how much more beautiful it is this way? Of course you’re out of breath; you shouldn’t smoke so much.
They reached the car, and Belbo said they might as well go back to Milan. No, Lorenza said, Agliè might be late, we might meet him on the highway, and he knows your car. It’s such a lovely day, let’s cut through the interior. It must be charming, and we’ll get to the Autostrada del Sole and have supper along the Po somewhere, near Pavia.
Why there, and what do you mean, cut through the interior? There’s only one solution; look at the map. We’d have to climb into the mountains after Uscio, then cross the Apennines, stop at Bobbio, and from there go on to Piacenza. You’re crazy! Worse than Hannibal and the elephants. You have no sense of adventure, she said, and anyway, think of all the charming little restaurants we’ll find in those hills. Before Uscio there’s Manuelina’s, which has at least twelve stars in the Michelin and all the fish you could want.
Manuelina’s was full, with a line of customers eyeing the tables where coffee was being served. Never mind, Lorenza said, a few kilometers higher we’ll find a hundred places better than this. They found a restaurant at two-thirty, in a wretched village that, according to Belbo, even the army maps were ashamed to record, and they ate overcooked pasta with a sauce made of canned meat.
Belbo asked Lorenza what was behind all this, because it was no accident that she had made him take her to the very place where Agliè would be: she wanted to provoke someone, either Agliè or him, but he couldn’t figure out which of the two it was. She asked him if he was paranoid.
After Uscio they tried a mountain pass and, as they were going through a village that looked like Sunday afternoon in Sicily during the reign of the Bourbons, a big black dog came to a stop in the middle of the road, as if it had never seen an automobile before. Belbo hit it. The impact did not seem great, but as soon as they got out, they saw that the poor animal’s belly was red with blood, and some strange pink things (intestines?) were sticking out, and the dog was whimpering and drooling.
Some villeins gathered, and soon it was like a town meeting. Belbo asked who the dog’s owner was, he would pay. The dog had no owner. The dog represented perhaps ten percent of the population of that Godforsaken place, but they knew it only by sight. Some said they should fetch the carabiniere sergeant, who would fire a shot, and that would be that.
As they were looking for the sergeant, a lady arrived, declaring herself an animal lover. I have six cats, she said. This is a dog, not a cat, Belbo said, and he’s dying, and I’m in a hurry. Cat or dog, you should have a heart, the lady said. No sergeant. Somebody must be brought from the SPCA, or from the hospital in the next town. Maybe the animal can be saved.
The sun was beating down on Belbo, on Lorenza, on the car, on the dog, and on the bystanders; it seemed to have no intention of setting.
Belbo felt as if he were in his pajamas but unable to wake up; the lady was implacable, the sergeant couldn’t be found, the dog went on bleeding and panting and making weak noises. He’s whimpering, Belbo said, and then, with Eliotlike detachment: He’s ending with a whimper. Of course he’s whimpering, the lady said; he’s suffering, poor darling, and why couldn’t you look where you were going?
The village underwent a demographic boom; Belbo, Lorenza, and the dog had become the entertainment of that gloomy Sunday. A little girl with an ice-cream cone came over and asked if they were the people from the TV who were organizing the Miss Ligurian Apennine contest. Belbo told her to beat it or he’d do to her what he did to the dog. The girl started crying.
The local doctor arrived, said the girl was his daughter, and Belbo didn’t realize to whom he was talking. In a rapid exchange of apologies and introductions, it transpired that the physician had published a Diary of a Village Doctor with the famous Manutius Press in Milan. Belbo incautiously said that he was magna pars of that press. The doctor insisted that he and Lorenza stay for supper. Lorenza fumed, nudged Belbo: Now we’ll end up in the papers, the diabolical lovers. Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?
The sun still beat down as the church bell rang compline. We’re in Ultima Thule, Belbo muttered through clenched teeth: sun six months of the year, from midnight to midnight, and I’m out of cigarettes. The dog confined itself to suffering, and nobody paid it any further attention. Lorenza said she was having an asthma attack.
Belbo was sure by now that the cosmos was a practical joke of the Demiurge. Finally it occurred to him that they could take the car and look for help in the nearest town. The animal-loving lady agreed: they should go, they should hurry, she trusted a gentleman from a publishing house that published poetry, she herself was a great admirer of Khalil Gibran.
Belbo drove off and, when they reached the nearest town, cynically drove through it, as Lorenza cursed all the animals with which the Lord had befouled the earth from the first through the fifth day. Belbo agreed, and went so far as to curse the work of the sixth day, too, and perhaps also the rest on the seventh, because this was the most ill-starred Sunday he had ever lived through.
They began to cross the Apennines. On the map it looked easy, but it took them hours. They didn’t stop at Bobbio, and toward evening they arrived at Piacenza. Belbo was tired, but at least he could have supper with Lorenza. He took a double room in the only available hotel, near the station. When they went upstairs, Lorenza said she wouldn’t sleep in such a place.
Belbo said they’d look for something else, if she would just give him time to go down to the bar and have a martini. He found nothing but cognac, domestic. When he went back up to the room, Lorenza wasn’t there. At the front desk he found a message: “Darling, I’ve discovered a marvelous train for Milan. I’m leaving. See you next week.”
Belbo rushed to the station: the track was empty. Just like a Western.
He had to spend the night in Piacenza. He looked for a paperback thriller, but the station newsstand was closed. All he could find in the hotel was a Touring Club magazine.
It had an article on Apennine passes like the one he had just crossed. In his memory—faded, as if the day’s events had happened long ago—they were arid, sun-baked, dusty, scattered with mineral flotsam. But on the glossy pages of the magazine they were dream country, to return to even on foot, to be savored step by step. The Samoas of Seven
