Water Memory
When I was nineteen, Grandpa managed to overcome my reluctance and dragged me to his homeopath, a beautiful middle-aged woman living in the Chianti region. As he drove his old off-roader down the highway, under the cloudy sky of the early morning, I leaned my head against the window watching the hills billow in the wind, like rough waves foaming with vines and olive trees. Sometimes I’d look at Grandpa and see his moss-green sweater contrasting with the white metal interior of the door; his pursed lips whistling a tune I couldn’t hear; one hand on the black, worn knob of the shifter, the other resting on the shiny wheel that trembled as if frightened by the road. He’d only told me I had to trust him.
Past the Gaiole sign Grandpa took the off-ramp, merging onto a country road that ran between the slopes of two wooded knolls, and I hadn’t had time to get acquainted with the new scenery when he steered onto a dirt, steep path, which leveled out just before we reached the gate of the property. Grandpa stepped out of the car, walked to ring the doorbell, said something I didn’t hear, then came back with the hint of a smile. We had exchanged only a handful of words during the entire one-hour drive. He eased his foot off the clutch and let the car crawl onto the gleaming white gravel of the parking area. Lavinia was waiting for us on the cobblestones before the doorway.
The car doors hadn’t even slammed shut that he was already next to her, drawing a broad grin across her face. A sudden gust of wind made me squint as they kissed each other’s cheeks. I tried to introduce myself, but she already knew who I was and what I looked like—he must’ve talked at length about me, his grandson who wanted to be a mathematician. She invited us to cross the threshold of a small waiting room, probably meant to discourage odd clients steeped in pseudoscience from snooping too much in the rest of the house. Two gray couches gave their backs to the wall, with a knee-high mahogany table fit in between, and looked at a closed frosted glass door. Grandpa settled onto the nearest couch and casually picked up one of the fashion magazines on the table.
Lavinia let me into the nest, as she called it. It was a tiny room hosting two wooden chairs next to a modern desk, in front of a wide window overlooking the garden. Outside, a row of Lombardy poplars marked the end of the long lawn, confined by high laurels on the left and right sides, and dotted here and there with round flower beds glowing with all the colors of the rainbow. The elongated crowns of the poplars gracefully swayed; the wind had calmed a little and the sun now poked through the thinning clouds, shimmering on the spire of a bell tower that cut the horizon line, above the huddled houses of a village in the far distance. Lavinia gestured for me to sit in front of her, an arm’s length from the coral red veil on her lips. The only details I recall about our conversation are the water lily leaves gushing in her dark eyes; her brown hair cascading like two willow branches around the neckline of her white coat; the crisp, invigorating scent of citrus fruits she spread as she swapped from time to time her crossed legs; and her thin ankles peeking out from under the mint palazzo pants, over a pair of aqua green décolleté heels that echoed in my eyes the homeopathic mysteries of water memory. We chatted for an hour about emotions and feelings, what I was studying at university, my inclination to daydream… I dreamed of fucking her on the desk, before the voyeuristic stare of the poplars.
Leaving the nest, I held the door open for Grandpa to come in and pay. A jingle of giggles reached my ears as I closed it again, convincing me to head back to the car. I propped myself up on the protruding bumpers, scrolling the feeds on the phone, and suddenly it came to my mind how the last time we’d taken an off-road trip had been with Grandma. It had been on my seventeenth birthday, and the five of us—plus the slobbery tongue of Luna—had adventured to picnic in the wavy grassland around Peccioli. We’d loaded a small foldable table into the back of the car, along with five lawn chairs, and set out to find a nice spot in the middle of a grassfield. We’d had a simple lunch with Grandma’s raw ham and artichoke pate sandwiches, and then relaxed in the silence broken only by rare airplanes, playing cards or letting the breeze caress our faces, while Luna ran in circles because she’d never seen all that green in her life.
When Grandpa reappeared on the walkway, Lavinia was standing to his right. She seemed glad to see me again. Smiling, she said she was wondering if we’d like to stay for lunch. I replied that I really had to study.
Back in the car, I couldn’t help but brood over the money. As we entered the highway, I asked:
“How much?”
“How much what?” he said, wrinkling his brow, but focused on the road.
“How much have you shelled out?” I asked again.
“What do you care? How did she seem?”—he gave a look at the rearview window.
“Pleasant. But you know I just can’t stand some things. And I don’t understand why you’ve started believing in that pseudoscientific babbling.”
“I don’t believe it at all. I still have in here—pointing at his temple—the stuff you told me, how not a single grain of duck liver or whatever it is ends up in those granules… You think I’m one of those lone-old-men that fall into the traps of the first tarot-reader passing by?” he replied, then clicked four or five times the button on the dashboard. When the mileage finally appeared next to the speedometer, he threw a glance out of his window.
“Then why do you go there so often? Just to talk?”
“Yes, kind of, talking, thinking out loud… A friend from the sailing club shared her number, she’d helped him with his… You know… I suddenly had a lot of time to spend alone in some way. A few months ago I told myself: you know what, at least I’m doing something new” he said, checking the left mirror; the rearview mirror; then again the left mirror; and another rapid glance out of his window.
“I see. Well, yes, I’d say she’s something new.”
“Yes, I told you, you wouldn’t trust me, but she’s a quite unique kind of witch”—I left that last sentence unanswered. He hadn’t looked at me once, as if I weren’t in the car and we were having a phone call. His right hand couldn’t decide whether to stay on the shifter or on the wheel; when it lay on the wheel, both hands kept shifting and shuffling their grip until the left fell on his thigh, flied towards his sweater, shook it off one or two times, then moved back to the wheel as the right hand jumped to the shifter.
Pretending to adjust the car heater, I searched his face for a clue about what could be spinning in his mind, but I noticed instead the perfect juxtaposition of his short, curly ash hair and his deep, silvery eyes, as if he were meant to look like that from the very first moment he’d sprung from the womb, as if he’d been born to be an old man. His profile stood out against the hills flanking the highway, bright green pearls of jade lit by the dazzling sunlight.
Just as I was taking the headphones out of their case, I heard him saying:
“Oh fuck, I can’t hold it. We want to get married.”
Stefano Arcadi is an Italian computer engineer. Passionate about mathematics and literature, he occasionally takes the time to write short stories of his own. In his adolescence, he read too many postmodern novels, and now he lives trying to keep the digressions of his own psyche in check.