The devil in the attic

Had I not burned the roast I would never have opened the window. Not with that chilly air.
Had I not opened the window, the neighbor’s cat would not have come in. I wonder what play of forces has led him up to me.

I opened the window. He entered. He comes and goes as he wants from that apparently infinite terrace railing. A cat, stocky and muscular, an arrogant air. Black, with a white diamond on his nose. I never did know his name. Not even who his owner is, now that I think about it. A tiny bell, sunk deep into the fur of his neck, commenting on his every move with a muffled tinkling that must be a torment for his sensitive ears.
From the window he jumped on the table in my studio. Arching his back he moved in a tight circle as he rubbed his chin against the knuckles of my hand. He sniffed the sheets just out of the printer. I made him jump off with a slap when he took a bite at my invoices, already folded in three, ready to be enveloped and shipped to my clients.
However, I did not talk to him. Hard not to talk to a cat.

Had he not started to bite my documents, I would not have hit him. I didn’t hit him. Just a slap.
Had I not given the slap he would not have moved away from my study.

Instead, he went straight to the living room and began to stare at the sofa. He tried to squeeze under, but that couch is really too low. Then he stretched his legs trying to grab some invisible object; impatient and rapid movements until something was pulled off. A mousetrap. Not one of those wooden ones, with a spring, that you see in cartoons. Something more simple and effective, a square of cardboard coated with glue. One that you can fold to form a tiny rectangular tunnel, deadly sticky, with a cube of parmesan cheese in the center. Forgotten down there for months. Since you, as a joke, had placed that, because when I stayed at work late I had moaned about small noises, and because the neighbors had seen a gray ball tumbling down the stairs, while returning from the cinema, half-drunk. Who knows what they really saw.

Had he not entered in the living room he would not have found the dead mouse.
Been dead a long time, I suppose. Mummified, almost, with gray hair, spiky and glued to the walls of the simple paper trap. I stopped a moment, with the feeling that the little corpse could be a sign of something wrong, a warning by some unknown presence that watches me. Animals, alive or dead, mean that to me. I imagine them always directed towards me by some angel, some devil.
I held back the cat who wanted to play with a vengeance and I picked up the creepy little mouse stuck to the cardboard. I immediately isolated it in a giant black plastic bag and brought it out to the dumpster.

Had there not been a dead mouse under it, I would have never moved the heavy sofa to thoroughly disinfect it.
I moved it. It took me quite an effort, all by myself. At the sight of the vacuum cleaner the cat jumped into my office and away, out the still open window. I found dust, but less than I thought. A mother of pearl cufflink that you had been looking for for weeks, he will be happy, I thought. A dime. A receipt.

Had I not moved the couch I would not have found the receipt. A normal, dusty, faded restaurant ticket.
A restaurant that I know well. Plato’s Cave. A bizarre and pretentious logo, a ring filled with shadows, silhouettes of people drinking. A downtown wine bar in the old city, partially carved from the rock. You brought me there three times: Valentine’s Day, my birthday, our anniversary. I never liked it. It’s your idea of a romantic place. You have no imagination, you are subject to the rough form of superstition that says that if you go to a place and have a nice evening, then every time you’ll go back you’ll have the same experience. On second thought, it is not normal that you never realized that I do not like that place.

Were it not for that horrible picture printed in brick-like color, I would not have even looked at the receipt. (If I were not a graphic designer, I would not be disturbed by poor artwork). I have never checked your movements, checked out your phone, spied on your email. We need to be together because you want to, not because I check on you, I had always thought.
If that hadn’t been your idea of a romantic place, I would never have had any doubts about the receipt.
However, I did have a doubt. I read it. Dinner for two. I also checked the date. October third. Neither Valentine’s Day, nor my birthday, nor our anniversary.

Had you not entered in that very moment, I would have thrown it away anyway and I would not have thought of it anymore. Seriously.

You entered. You shut the door behind you and in a flash you were in front of me, really close. I still had the ticket between my thumb and forefinger. I was about to throw it away. You started staring at that dusty little sheet. You forced me to ask you.
“Who were you with, in Plato’s Cave? ”

Had I not asked, I would have saved you from looking the worst I had ever seen you in your life.

I asked you. You did not answer. You swallowed, blushing like a child, inside that jacket so tight, that every time you put it on you look like a soldier under inspection, every time you remove it you expand of two sizes.
I remember feeling bad. Not for me, not for the betrayal. Not for that. Because of the humiliation of being married to the only man on earth who can not find a shred of an excuse to hide an affair. Even the most squalid and naive husband would have said, meeting with the boss, receipt is not mine, there was no other place open, I ate for two, it must be a mistake, I must have got the wrong one, I was abducted by aliens and when I woke up I had it in my pocket.
You, nothing. I married an inept, I thought withdrawing again into my studio. I thought I am not worth an excuse. How lucky that we do not have children, I thought again, and only then, for a moment, my heart sank.

Had you said something, anything, I would not have locked myself in my studio.
I thought. I thought about the succession of events of that afternoon. How did it start?

Let’s see. I burn the roast, start cleaning, open the window. The cat comes in, finds the mouse. I decide to clean under the couch and I find the receipt. Contrary to my habits, I check it out. I see dinner for two. You come in just then. You get confused, do not answer my question.

Did everything start with the roast? Is that possible?
No. The roast must be the result of some other cause. Something else must have happened before. I remember that I was already agitated and pervaded by an unpleasant feeling. Since morning, now that I think about it. I remember the dead mouse came as a confirmation, not as a surprise.
When I woke up, I saw from the window of the study fast black clouds riding on furious wind that shook the windows. It makes me nervous, the wind. Even my thoughts take a whirl in unwanted directions, with violent force. As a child I lingered, happy, on the terrace watching the storms, welcoming every flash with ecstatic happiness as if those bright lights burning the inside of my closed eyelids were there to clean something inside me. But when some winds blew wildly I would run to grandmother’s bed for refuge, my head under the pillow, singing something to drown the noise, until I would fall asleep.
If I had not had some presentiments, I would have not burned the roast.
Let’s see if I can remember. I put the roast in the oven and I forgot to start the timer. Strange, I always do it. Something must have happened at that moment.

Yes, now I remember, the song.
At some point the radio news that I was not listening to gave way to a sorrowful and plaintive melody in an unknown language, perhaps turkish. The same that I had heard at that restaurant in Istanbul. Same melody, same voice. Same woman, I’m sure: the exhausted singer with black hair which escaped the clip to dangle over her face, which after her piece had immediately taken refuge in the table next to ours, cigarette in mouth, head in her hands.
I made a sign of applause, she replied with a smile so tired that I immediately looked away, thinking that she could not hold it for long. You were eating peanuts, tapping time with your fingernail against the glass, laughing and not noticing anything.
Here you are again. I was ready to leave. Strange that I had never noticed up to now.

I remember walking down the steep crumbling alleys  back to the hotel, I saw a sign that marked The Museum of Innocence.
I was shocked and confused. I had just read the book of the same title by Orhan Pamuk. The Museum of Innocence. I did not think there was a museum in the physical, tangible world, away from those pages.

We had both been drinking. I had to insist that we take the uphill alley, stopping in front of the house about which I knew everything, having visualized every detail, without ever having believed that it really existed.
“What ‘s inside the museum?” You asked me, your voice slurring from the drink. I was hoping that the shadows hid the tears in my eyes.
“Many small objects. Ugly and insignificant. Thimbles. Doilies. Glasses. Cigarette butts. Burnt matches.”
You looked at me waiting for an explanation.
“Why were they ever put together? They were put together by someone who wanted to ease the pain of an irreparable mistake.”

The next day we quarreled because I wanted to go back to the Museum of Innocence, see the inside, while you wanted to visit the Topkapi Palace. We went to the Topkapi. We already had tickets. We saw priceless exquisite artifacts. We had lunch on a terrace overlooking the sea. You were happy. Relaxed, leaning against the chair, your arms outstretched on the low wall behind you, the tips of your hair glowing red in the sun. You’re a handsome man. You were born to travel, to enjoy variety in food, people, weather, colors, and scented air. Women too, I now realize. However I wasn’t born to travel. Travelling has always disappointed me, I have never found a place where I could escape the cramped and bleak company of my thoughts. You swirled your glass as if you understood wine and said:
“You really would have given up on this to see a place that looks like your grandmother’s attic?”

Here you are. Bravo. You said it. Sometimes you have the ability to hit the target, blindfolded, not knowing that you have a bow in your hand. True knowledge is not knowing that you know.
My grandmother’s flat. Every Sunday, when I was little, we went to lunch with her, in a small apartment on the ground floor so full of plants that we moved with difficulty. I played the wild woman and I exchanged bloody ambushes with Ugo, the white cat, as aged as my grandmother, but still as full of desire to play as she. Even today, I am amazed when I see a cat or an old person who does not want to play.
What came today looked like Ugo, now that I think about it. Color aside.

Each time, before lunch, my grandmother would open an inlaid box and hand me a key. Go get a bottle of good wine in the attic, you know which one I mean, right? She always said, with a smile for me but extended to everyone, the smile of someone who knew a lot and wanted to say much more than the words she said.
In fact, every time I was terrified and amazed that just the most difficult task was given to me, me the most recent and inexperienced bud of the human species. I would lower my head without saying anything, take the key and go up to the attic. An attic with no light, where the wind which blew through the narrow spaces between the tiles sounded like breathing. A dusty winding labyrinth, so cramped with things that you could not come back without being all gray from head to toe with dust.

Each time, going through it, it was necessary for me to say something. Always different. Often senseless.
For example, I could say: Urgaz – alisimagnatefékk – zuàrmag.
Or: The Ephelides count four to three in case Zundlapf is left-handed.

Because there, hidden somewhere, there was a devil.
No, not Satan. I’m talking about a subordinate demon, grumpy and resentful, that sat there hidden from eternity with the sole task of listening to what I would say.
Of all the billions and billions of possible combinations of sounds of the universe there was one, only one – that would damn me, instantly.
I never dared to cross the floor in silence. The devil is clever. What if the sound that would damn me was just silence? And so, meanwhile, I was always saying something.
The first few times I would speak solely to overcome my fear of the devil. Then I realized that I had fallen into a trap, and had invoked a terrifying law. That was one of the flaws of the universe, in other respects so admirably constructed. A flaw in Creation, a small one, involving just me. If I had uttered that particular sequence of sounds determined at the beginning of time, I would have been damned and dragged to hell in an instant, in the blinking of an eye.
It could be anything, the sound m. However it is not the sound m. I’ve tried.
I did not know if the demonic rule of the phrase applied only to me, or if anyone who came into that attic was in danger. There was no way of knowing. But I knew that whining and asking one of my parents to get the wine would have been pathetic, cowardly and would not take into account the inflexible laws that govern the universe. So I went, trembling. There was no choice.

Today I felt I was back in that basement, not safe in my modern and not at all dusty apartment, in my adult body, with those eyes that, when seen in the mirror, seem as if they know everything.
Had I not burned the roast. Had I not heard the song. Had I not hit the cat. If one of these forks in the road had not occurred, we would still be together. Everything had had to happen in that way; the only way that would generate this result. Impressive. What can we blame for such ghastliness? This poisonous combination of events suggests an author.

In Istanbul, on several walls I found an inscription, made with stencil and spray paint. I noticed it because there were so many, all the same, and because it was not in turkish, but in Latin. I photographed it. Several times. In one of these photos you’re there looking like a laughing baby full of wonder.
Quorsum haec tam putida tendunt?
In the hotel, I searched on Google. It is Horace. It says: What can we blame for such ghastliness?
The next morning we left, vacation over. On the same day, in Istanbul the riots began. In the same square where we ate roasted chestnuts, drinking tea in those narrow glasses.

Things. The bad things. Things are not as they seem. How they really are, though, we can not know. We are left with appearances.
Appearances are not deceptive, they just release images. We are the ones who want to deceive ourselves: we get stuck, deliberating over their ambiguity, choosing to see only a few, we forget to reach a conclusion, we get lazy or scared when it comes to deciphering them.
What can we blame for such ghastliness?

I curl up under the covers and think. What is the name of that demon? Maybe that mysterious sound is his name? And what if the results of his actions didn’t happen immediately? What if he was waiting for the night, for when I close my eyes and fall asleep, to emerge silently from his hidden dimension and take possession of my soul?
I’m thirty. What if he had decided to wait for twenty years? I may have uttered the tragic formula twenty years ago and just tonight, having announced his plans through insignificant but disquieting signs, that old devil will leap out from under the bed and imprison me, leaving me to dessicate for all eternity in a narrow tunnel smeared with yellowish glue?