She is having such difficulty with the catch on her bag that the pain contorts her face and she turns away from him in embarrassment, continuing her struggle in silence, her back turned to him. When at last she frees the stubborn interlocking metal pieces, she turns to him and he sees that tears are running down her face as she hands him the several dollars for the two fish. 'Are you all right?' he asks.
'Puoi alzare la voce?' she asks. 'Sono unpo sordo.'
Asking him to speak a little louder as she is a little deaf. :
He repeats the question, and she answers, in Italian, 'Yes, fine, I'm fine.'
He learns one day, early in October, that she is originally from Russia and at once a stronger bond is forged, these two immigrants in a city of immigrants, he an Italian seller of fish, thirty-four years old and adrift in a foreign land, she a Russian expatriate in her eighties, a former actress, perhaps, or dancer perhaps, or perhaps even a princess, who knows, seeking fresh seafood for 'mio piccolo tesoro Irina.'
My little treasure Irina.
She. reminds him somehow of his gentle and cultivated Aunt Lucia who married a greengrocer from Napoli when Lorenzo was only twelve, breaking his heart when she moved to that beautiful but barbaric city so very far to the south.
Their daily exchanges are no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, each, but during this time they each learn much about the other, and he finds that he looks
forward to her early morning visits to the market, pretty silk scarf on her head now that winter is' approaching, woolen gloves on her twisted hands; a worn blue woolen coat, he senses she was once a woman of elegance and taste who has now fallen on hard times here in this harsh city.
One day he tells her why he left Milano.
'I am a gambler,' he says. 'I owed money.'
'Ah,' she says, and nods wisely.
'A lot of money. They threatened to kill me. In Italy, this is not an idle threat. I left.'
'Do you still gamble?' she asks.
'Ehh,' he says, and shrugs, and smiles saying with the slight lifting of his shoulders and faint grin, Yes, signora, every now and then, che fare? 'And you?' he asks. 'Do you have any habits?'
'I listen to old records,' she says.
A week or so later, he learns that she once played piano on the concert stage, often performing at
La Scala in Milan, which is where she learned Italian... 'But no! La Scala? Veramente?' 'Yes, yes!' Excitedly.
'Not only in Milan,' she says, 'but also in New
York and London and Paris...'
'Brava,' he says.
' Budapest' Vienna Anvers, Prague, Liege,
Brussels, everywhere. Everywhere.' Her voice falling. 'Bravissima,' he says. 'Yes,' she says softly.
They are silent for a moment. He is wrapping the fish he recommended to her. 'And now?' he says. 'Do you still play?'
'Now,' she says, 'I listen to the past.'
Just before Thanksgiving, she comes to the market one morning and tells Lorenzo she had been to see her ear doctor yesterday and he made some tests... 'Audiometric tests,' she says. 'Non so il parole Italiano .. .' she doesn't know the Italian word for the tests, they reproduce various sounds in each ear. The results weren't good, she tells him, and now she is fearful there may be something else wrong. She has lately begun to hear ringing in her ears, she is afraid... Lorenzo tells her that tests aren't always accurate, and doctors often make mistakes, they think they're God, they think they can play with a person's emotions, but she keeps shaking her head and saying she knows the tests were correct, her hearing is getting worse and worse every day of the week. What if there comes a time when she can no longer listen to her own recordings? Then even the past will be gone. And then she might just as well be dead.
It is not until he delivers the fish to her, on the morning she got sick..,
Q: What do you mean, sick?
A: Nothing serious. A cold. Although, for an old woman... Q: When was this?
A: The beginning of the month. Q: This month? January? A: Yes... Q: How'd you know she was sick?
A: She telephoned me.
Lorenzo, non mi sen to tanto bene oggi. Me lo puoi port are i pesci?
Q: Phoned you at the market?
A: Yes. And asked me if I could please pick out two nice fresh fish for Irina, same as always, and deliver them to the apartment. I told her I would. She was a friend. I got there... At eight-thirty that January morning, there is no one in the hallway when Lorenzo knocks on the door to apartment 3A. But just as Svetlana calls, 'Yes, who is it?' the door to apartment 3C opens, and an' exotic-looking woman with long black hair and brown eyes, and a mouth like Sophia Loren's,
high cheekbones and wonderful... Q: What about her?
A: She was coming out of the apartment. Q: 3C, did you say? A: Down the hall.
Q: So what about her?
A: Nothing. I'm giving you all the details.
He tells Svetlana through the closed door that it's him, Lorenzo, and he's here with the fish for Irina. She calls to him to come in, the door is open. The girl from 3C has already gone down the stairs. Lorenzo goes into the apartment. It is a small apartment and frightfully cold on this day when winter has scarcely begun in earnest. Svetlana is sitting up in a double bed in the tiny bedroom, wearing a faded pink silk robe, covered with a blanket and a quilt that looks almost Italian. There is a dresser that is almost certainly
Italian, or so he believes, like one you might find on Sicilia or Sardegna, with ornate drawer pulls and paintings on the sides and top.
'C'ho un mal raffredore,' she says, telling him she has a bad cold, and then gently warning him not to come near her, 'Non ti avvicinare.'
Irina the cat is lying at the foot of the bed. She is a fat grey and black and white animal. She blinks up at Lorenzo as he comes into the room, and then catches the scent of the fresh fish wrapped in white paper, and is suddenly all uptight ears and flashing green eyes and twitching nose. Like a jungle beast, Lorenzo thinks.
Svetlana asks if he would mind feeding Irina one of the fish. He needn't do anything but put it in Irina's bowl under the sink; Irina eats everything but the spine and the hard part of the jaw. Lorenzo goes out to the kitchen, unwraps the fish while the cat rubs against his leg. There is something about cats that makes him enormously uncomfortable. He never knows what a cat is thinking. He never knows whether a cat is going to lick his hand or spring for his throat. He puts the raw fish in the cat's bowl and backs away at once.
When he comes back into the bedroom, Svetlana asks him to sit for a moment, please, there is something she would like to discuss with him. He takes a chair near the dresser. Across the room, he can see into an open closet where old but stylish clothes, tattered and frayed, are hanging on silk-covered hangers the color of Svetlana's robe. She coughs, takes a Kleenex from a box beside the bed, blows her nose, and then says, 'Lorenzo, voglio che to mi ammazi.'
'Lorenzo, I want you to kill me.'
He does not at first know how to react to this. Is this some sort of Russian joke? If so, Slavs have a very peculiar sense of humor. But is he supposed to laugh? No, she seems quite serious. She wants him to kill her She would do it herself, she says, but she doesn't have the nerve. Besides, how does a person kill herself if she doesn't own a gun? Does she jump off the roof?. Or turn on the gas? Or slit her wrists with `:-3,' a razor or a knife? Or hang herself from the closet pole? No, all these seem too horrible even to contemplate. A gun swift and sure, but where would she get a gun? Does Lorenzo know where to get a gun? And if he can get one, would he be so kind as to shoot her? She is not smiling. This is no joke.
In the kitchen, he can hear the cat demolishing fish Lorenzo put in her bowl. The sounds are obscene. Cats are too much like wild animals. One step backward and they would be in the jungle again, hunting.
Svetlana goes on to explain that she has been to see a neurologist who diagnosed a benign tumor on the nerve in her left auditory canal. Unless this is removed surgically, she will go completely deaf in that ear. But the chances of... 'Well, then of course you must...'
