False Days

Certain days are stitched together with the remnants of those that couldn’t stretch all the way from dawn to night, and end up shortened, contracted, darned, and mended. Doesn’t it sometimes happen that night falls suddenly, when twilight hasn’t yet aged the day’s colors, and the birds haven’t yet finished singing, and an allegory of clouds has only just begun to reveal the spectacle of the hours? Anyone who notices will find the moment insufferable, as when a fever rises, and overcome it by yawning, or furrowing their brow, or buttoning their coat; most people—who knows why, they’re generally wearing gray—lengthen their step, which is one way to cross out the mistake of time, to cover it up, almost like winding the clock, I’d say; others turn around and stand still, bewildered, like someone who, feeling as if they’ve lost something, can’t even find its name; children usually start to cry for no reason. But the only ones to complain are the swallows, who, through their persistent shrieks, trace needles of light.

Now and then it happens that some important minute is taken from the very heart of the day. It often occurs, in fact, that certain well-staged storms engaging the efforts of the whole sky, with the mountains claiming to want no part of it, draped in dark curtains, with crooked olive trees assuming the guise of old men, and the cypresses peaking in sheer agitation—it often occurs that they amount to nothing; and it’s as if a reader had skipped over a tuft of pages. In reality, these are thefts of time, minutes and quarter-hours that are stolen—or, judging by the behavior of the birds in such cases, murdered.

Now, all of these scraps (and some are precious, of the bluest blue) can make up a false day, a phantom day, recognizable by its polemical, vengeful intonation, and find their place in a season as hesitant and off-key as the spring.

On such days, men usually decide that the world doesn’t exist, that life is a dream; and from them Hamlet is born. Women, instead, realize some of their memories are false, that they’ve made room for shadows of things that never existed; and they remain suspended, as though their eyes were at an odd height, wary of an imaginary yet effortless freedom, the same as that we win by breathing; and they convince themselves that being a woman means finding yourself entranced, slightly above adolescence.

*

To call such a day “yesterday” is to compromise yourself, giving the impression of having taken seriously its game of sheer appearances, and of honoring it with a place on the calendar.

Number seven: the Fiesole tram, on a road fit for a reconnaissance mission toward springtime.

The light was so artificial that the women’s dresses looked like choir robes laid in the sun, though their make-up seemed full of hidden harmonies, genuine. For an instant, the air was so tender that you’d take slow, cautious breaths, intimidated by so much naked transparence; but then the sky grew dense—scowled, even—and it felt like being in a fairy tale, when fear sets in. Apparitions in a muddy garden, a score of flowers so white they looked redeemed, made you ache.

The windowpanes of the shops and tram collected devilish glimmers of light, and took on importance, their being and non-being exalted in this feast of the unreal and the ambiguous, of which two women on a terrace were the spectacular emblem, enlarged versions of the puppet a child might make out of bread whites, tinfoil, and flax: utterly false, big as they were.

It began to rain, and it seemed impossible that we should get wet; after the first drops, in fact, hail began to fall, all glow and gossip. It was just foolishness, and in the wake of this sham storm trailed a blue taffeta, a slight scallop of clouds straddling the hillside, conjuring the form of women’s lingerie hung to dry.

Having to bear such an altered sky, the earth suffered. Soft and slippery, an aching green hemmed the riverbanks, while the plants seemed uneasy about carrying the flowers (a few roses, a spray or two of wisteria), which appeared more miraculous and unbelievable than usual; and the streams of water running though the fields seemed stretched, strained, lustrous. The city seen from up there resembled a clay pot, cracked by the roads.

*

On such days, then, false memories and shadows of things that never existed show their faces again, enlivened by a mischievous smile that smacks of revenge and “I told you so.”

As the tram climbed the hill, and the sky seemed a fingertip away from the car window, there swept up inside me the image of a kite I never owned—though the ribbons on its tail are tied with real memories—and have often spoken of, a gift bestowed to the insouciant days of my childhood, with a tranquility that causes me no shame.

A friend had declared himself an expert in kites. He had built some as a boy, for all his friends. With the power of his words, my kite arose from the limbo of my consciousness, on the edge of a crystal-clear memory, in every way similar to yesterday’s sun after the pretend storm, held taut between a too-pink house and an artfully tousled tree that gestured theatrically; it found a few colors, its own cautious way of harmonizing with the wind; it even had a slanted script, adorned with the same design as that I might like to see on the sail of a fishing boat.

“Mine were shaped like that; not like the squat ones you see these days,” and he drew a picture of it on the back of a paper bag.

“Well, mine was shaped like this, and had a nice long tail.”

“Just like that? But how could it fly?”

“It flew,” I answered, piqued.

And on March days in particular, that toy of mine comes to mind and demands that I remember friends and places (there was the railroad along the fields where I’d run to launch it. One day, it was struck by the steam of a train engine; it could have been whisked away. I held the string with both hands, tumbling to the ground) and that I be accurate. Oddly encountered, this memory regards me with a resolve that’s not at all kite-like, allowing me no hesitations or doubts; and I feel the way I did as a girl, when I’d be questioned in such assertive tones that I was forced to say yes no matter what.

It also became clear that I was in the thrall of another image without object—a downhill street. At the top, it’s pinned by two buildings I know well, the kind that seem made to look out at the rain and lose meaning on sunny days, so that in order to make sense, they must be translated into the language of another season. At the other end, the road stagnates and ebbs into a little square where you’d expect to find water: a sort of wide puddle. Here, coral-footed pigeons walk about without ever meeting or seeing each other—and not a single person.

Yet this street, slithering beneath buildings in tune with the bad weather, among the walls of the city that has aged gracefully in my memory, like the first book I ever read, the mere thought of which, even now, makes certain chapters unfold in my mind, with the rhyming beat of a rote recitation—it has never existed. Once ascertained, my sense of wonder dilutes into a smile, a reflection; and I find myself on the verge of having an answer, one that I’ll keep all to myself.

But I don’t smile at all when a certain date, which neither corresponds to any event nor connects to any real occurrence of my life, surfaces in my memory, demanding a gesture, an action I must carry out with discretion; and I don’t know what it could be. A number that sounds pleasant, beside the name of a month whose mere mention brings darkness, becomes a verse I could read if I turned around: written behind me, in my line of sight, slightly to the left. This occasion, thus, fallen from a calendar of memories, is always at my back. It has the stride of someone shrewd. Catching up with me, it commands a look of sympathy, while my heart tightens with a sudden start, and I dare not rummage inside it.

*

Memories like this can’t be treated with familiarity, kept close like old pals, held like a sleeping child, much less entertained when we please. All of them, in various ways, show up unexpectedly. Facing them, we act as if we’ve taken a hit below the belt, a forbidden blow.

It’s in those moments that, bewildered and thrust into subjection, we learn to hide our confusion, stupidly twiddling our thumbs, and put together a sample book of hollow smiles, made of nothing but sketches, shells of smiles.

Gianna Manzini, “False Giornate,” from Boscovivo. Milan: Treves, 1932.

Image by Thomas Colligan.