March is a special month for the AbanoRitz, chosen not by chance by Terry and Ida Poletto to be dedicated to a dream, a project, a reality: the realization of the Super 8, that we invite you to discover, week by week. Eight authors stayed in our hotel, but more precisely in our rooms at the fifth floor: our Creative Rooms. Eight rooms, eight writers, eight telling.
This week we read Mari Accardi, class 77, born in Palermo and living in France. The revue Granta Italia nominated her through the most promising voices of the Country. She made her first appearance with the romance Weirdest place I ever fell in love (Terre di mezzo, 2013) and her last book dates back to 2018: But you are having fun (Terre di mezzo). And to amuse her we thought to the room 514 “Swan” which she introduce us with
“What to keep in a box”
The greetings had begun a week earlier and, when it was time to leave, my boyfriend had not turned up yet. I was waiting for him in the reading room, forever being a not entirely hidden refuge between the entrance and the foyer. I was turning my back away from the foyer. After goodbyes I always felt like a shadow, somebody who did not belong to that place anymore. For the first time in twenty years, I was felt like a guest. Still there, underneath the mantlepiece of the fireplace was my name, carved by a key; Otavia, at a time when spelling was a joke like any other. Rubbing it with my finger relaxed me. I must have fallen asleep and when I opened my eyes again, a Husky was sniffing my suitcases. The dog looked like a soft toy I used to sleep with when I was a small girl, before my bed ate it (or at least that is what I was led to believe). At times, customers would bring their dogs with them, or rarely cats, occasionally parrots or hamsters, once even a tortoise. The welcoming was the same for everybody and everything. I tried to stroke the dog but it stepped backwards. It had a red collar, from which was hanging a broken chain, but no identification tag. “Come here, doggy”, but the dog continued stepping backwards until it had left the room. My boyfriend was still unreachable. It had gone dark outside and, because of the rain, you could not distinguish outlines. I took the box which I had kept in the safe – inside were mostly photos, letters, postcards and naïve secrets – and I walked back into the foyer on the tips of my toes. At that time, the restaurant was closing and a musician was playing Bossa Nova on the piano for a German couple who were dancing at a slower pace. Everything was in slow motion towards the end of the season. I kept looking around but the Husky was nowhere to be seen. “You’re not leaving us, are you?” Glauco said, popping out from behind a tray of empty glasses. When I was at elementary school, he would help me with my times tables and poems, me on a stool, him behind the bar. Nevertheless, he continued addressing me in formal Italian speech by using the third person singular. Our goodbye had been reduced to a mere handshake. “I fear I may have been left on my own.” Glauco had witnessed all of my previous loves, both the reciprocated and the unreciprocated ones, starting from the boy from Lugano, when I was twelve years old, with whom I used to play together with in silence. One day, he gave me a note (which is now in the box) saying: “Hello. My name is Andrea. You’re pretty” and, later on that day, still in silence, he removed a eyelash that had fallen on my cheek with his fingertip and blew it away. We never saw each other again. My current boyfriend’s name is Andrea too. He is not a guest, but a sous-chef. In the lift he removed another eyelash of mine and I felt the euphoria of coincidence (the lash remained stuck to his fingertip and I put that in the box too). Would I have loved him if his name had not been Andrea? What if he had not removed my eyelash and done something different? “There’s a Husky wandering scared around the hotel. Have you seen it? It must have escaped from who knows where.” “I didn’t notice.” Glauco smiled at me. I held out my hand to him for a second goodbye (or perhaps a third one) and he hesitated before shaking it. Then he held my hand between his; the discreet equivalent of a hug. All my loves had started in the hotel, as it was my home, my world. When my parents divorced, my sisters went with my mother, the twins with my father and I, the youngest, was sent here, to my grandparents’. “Temporarily!” Until I was in middle school, I would avoid giving out my address. I was ashamed to say that I ate in a restaurant, that I had never made my bed and I used to be called «the princess». I went up to the first floor. On the right was the swimming pool area, from where the last guests were walking out. “Have you seen a Husky?” I asked. They shrugged their shoulders. My grandparents had been spending half of their days in the water, whereas I had learnt to swim late – like everything else – when I was in high school. Back then my classmates would make up excuses to be invited to the hotel. We used to study on the deck-chairs, in our bathrobes, while drinking fruit juice, which turned into tonic water and later, during the last year of school, into beer, which we would hide in the garden. At last my diversity had turned out to be an advantage. When I visited my parents, their houses were just like cages and I could not breathe. At least Andrea and I could live in a flat with a garden. I think it would be too small – any space for a couple would be small – but it would be a good compromise. That is what you do in a couple, don’t you? You look for compromises. I turned left towards the rooms. Sometimes the cleaning women would let me in. I would look for forgotten objects, terms of a comparison with my grandparents’ room, messages. When I finished high school, I should have moved into university halls of residence, but at that point, grandpa died and I did not want to leave grandma on her own. While I was walking past the closed doors, I heard whispers; meantime, from downstairs, the notes of Águas de Março were flowing up. It had stopped raining and, from the window in the hall, the lights of a handful of cars were beginning to come back into focus.
I walked up to the second floor with my eyes closed. It was a game that I used to play when I was a small girl; I used to wander around the hotel blindfolded trying not to stumble or crash into things. I would take the lift, press a random button and, wherever I ended up, I would try to get my bearings. There is an infinite number of games that you can play alone. A girl, about my age, was banging on the door of a room. She was saying: “The joke has gone too far, now let me in.” She was wearing a black sheath dress and a pair of slippers. You could hear someone laughing from inside. She started laughing too, while still banging on the door, but it remained closed. Then I heard the tinkling of a chain coming from upstairs, so I rushed up to the third floor and then up to the fourth, where the lights were dim and suddenly they went out. A waiter from the restaurant was striding towards me. I could clearly make out his white gloves. “I’ll inform reception straight away” he said to me, as if I still lived there. All the waiters removed their gloves to greet me, a gesture which touched me. That would be the way I would express kindness. At the end of the hall was a fish tank, the most romantic corner of the hotel. When I was interested in a boy, I would find a way to bring him there, as if it was a sort of first date. I could tell whether that was the right boy or not for me by the movements of the fish, a sign which I had invented while playing my solitary games. Andrea and I had kissed there for the first time. Again, in front of the fish tank, two years later, he told me that he had found a job in another city and he would like me to go with him. Then grandma died and her room would go back to the hotel, unless I took it. Andrea was waiting for me, my brothers had married, settled down and started families, and “temporarily” had come to an end. One of the fish was motionless in the middle of the tank. If it was dead, Andrea would not come. When I was a teenager, I used to say to myself that if somebody wearing yellow – or orange, or purple –stepped out of the lift, this or that would happen. If a flash of lightning appeared on a sunny day, if the paintings in the halls changed place, if the radio played that specific song… This was how I used to invent my destiny. The fish was motionless and there was no Husky around. Perhaps I had imagined when I had dozed off. Then I heard it again, the tinkling of a chain, so I walked up to the fifth floor, the top one. I walked with my eyes closed, hoping I would stumble this time, and there was the Husky, curled up in front of my room, whose keys I did not have anymore. Now it let me stroke it. And while my mobile phone was ringing insistently, I sat down beside the dog.
