Four short stories

Read the English translation by Antonio Gambacorta and Andrea Romanzi, ed. William Davies, of the short stories ‘Je fait des tour’, ‘Leonor’, ‘Radici’, and ‘Sere’, originally written in Italian by writer Anna Stella Poli.

Poli explores identity, sexuality, and change in a lyrically broken style.

You don’t know English? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We have more:

• Quatre relats curts – Catalan translation by Teresa Bauzà Bosch
• Vier Kurzgeschichten – German translation by Florian Busch
• Patru povestiri – Romanian translation by Bianca Graszl
• Cuatro cuentos – Spanish translation by Irene Galera Puga

To read the original in Italian head to to our shop and get Issue Zero of LONGITŪDINĒS for free (or support us with a small donation).

Je fait des tour

When I step on the bus she looks at me, the bus half empty, I sit next to her. She’s like a little animal, but I cannot tell which one right away.
She has small, sunken eyes, odd grooves through her face. Young. Short hair, indistinct. A little mouse, a weasel, a dark ermine. She spies on me furtively. She smells of unwashed clothes. She talks to me.
She asks if I have an internet connection. It’s nine, I’m headed home. I have an internet connection. She speaks French, sheepishly. I know French, but I tell her quickly, behind the convex shield of my accent from elsewhere, that I don’t understand.
She doesn’t believe me, but she’s right not to believe me. I search for a reason for my diffidence. Maybe it’s her smell, or those eyes, small and quick.
She asks, softly, to send a message. I look at her. On Paris, a Siberian wind. Her ankles are bare, white sneakers, floral trousers. No way she’s not cold. I wear tights under my jeans, wool socks, high-top boots. Two jumpers.
I open the bag, grab the phone, tap on the message icon, I tell her feel free to write. Then I set my eyes on her, because my phone in her hands makes me uncomfortable.
Such a low instinct, I tell myself. It’s not even worth much. She writes. Stops at the controls in Italian. I tell her it’s that I’m Italian. She says sais pas que j’ai fait and I, without looking, tell her c’est bon. I take the phone and put it back in the bag.
She’s cold. She looks at me. I check, but there’s no reply. She requests a stop but doesn’t get off. Then, eventually, she gets off. She didn’t thank me, she doesn’t say goodbye.
I get down three stops later, go get groceries, I buy a slice of quiche, when I get home, I turn on the radio and open a bottle of white.
I am cooking when I remember her. I didn’t read it not to seem nosey. I’m not even that curious, but I look anyway.
I find the message, it’s not been sent. It reads: Cest diyhia stp laisse moi venir car depuis tt alheur je fait des tour de bus et ji froid jai pas envie de dormir dehors desole si je tai manquer de respect a ts pote jai frois et je fait des tours depuis.
I try to send it again, but the contact is blocked, or it needs an area code or a zero should go, or something that I cannot do, no matter how many times I try.

(It’s Diyhia. Please, let me come over. I’ve been going around on the bus for a while and I’m cold. I don’t want to sleep outside. I’m sorry if I disrespected you or your friends. I’m cold, I’ve been going around for a while).

Leonor

Leonor was the beginning, majestic, and the end, swift, of doubts. She said balotta, with an l as soft as camellias. She was young, ate raw shrimps, bit her thumb if you asked her about the future. Her hair was cut short like some children’s at summer camp and when they humiliated her at the round table she did not cry but, for three minutes, stuttered.
She was studying in the Netherlands, she told me that once she had stopped a train to chase after a guy with his hair combed to one side and bring him two pain au chocolate, thinking they’d eat them together. He took them, gave her a kiss on the cheek and then went to sit down, letting the doors close amid the distress of the commuters, who were rooting for her.
She spoke waving her arms in the air and making funny voices, while we shared beers at the pier.
But all this is relatively unimportant because that day we had dashed off to the beach at lunch break, the sea lay just behind the castle, and could be reached through a cobbled path downhill. Leonor did not wear a swimsuit underneath, I had already removed my t-shirt – I always felt ungraceful next to her, who was tall and muscular and straight and cheerful. I was about to offer to hold a towel for her when all of a sudden Leonor was naked, she had wide cinnamon-coloured nipples and an untamed cunt, imposing, climbing like ivy, dark as worry. It lasted a second, a second later she had an orange bikini that she tied skilfully, but I stayed silent the whole time, when we decided to jump from the rocks, when we dove in, and when, floating, she told me about her upcoming trains, an imminent departure, and who knows when we might meet again.

Roots

She had counted them. She had moved twelve times. Most of the times it had been nice, the last one, somewhat turbulent. Like with purple pinball machines, she was back to square one.
She could still hear the din din of the bonus points, with the little lights going crazy on the round bumpers.
She was not yet thirty. She was in a square, he called her to ask where the square was or maybe where she was, she was in the square. For six seconds, she was unsure about the names of the surrounding streets, then she found a detail that nailed down the spot, and he said oh, right, I’m coming.
There were people, all around, some were their friends. They chatted standing by her.
He seemed more relaxed, younger, maybe even more tanned. It must be my head, she told herself while hunching down in her jumper pulling the sleeves to cover her hands, since it was a damp night, with one of those suspended, still mists.
She felt a strange tingling. He was talking about a festival by the river where he had interviewed a journalist and she asked herself who knows where I was, two years ago, and she didn’t even tell him that she wanted to hear about it, she figured it was obvious.
She tried to move a foot and she found it very heavy. Then he asked about her job and she said that she had been offered a position in Toronto. Toronto, he repeated, and she thought it must be my impression, but it seems you say it as though it were a sad thing, something far away and ugly, to think about.
A friend invited them to drink something at the bar close by, she wanted to stay up late until the conference on International Geopolitics. She said yes straight away that she wanted to drink something with him and that she was cold.
It must have been no more than fifteen steps, diagonally. She tried once, then a second time.
She looked at him with a certain panic in her eyes and said, softly, embarrassed, I cannot move.
What did you say?
I cannot lift my feet, they are stuck.
He was a pragmatic man, he bent down to observe her feet. Lift, he said. I try, she said. I’m already trying, she said. Her boot barely moved. Roots, he said.
What the fuck are you saying, she said.
You put down roots he said, looking at the shadow between the sole and the porphyry.
He stood up and they looked at each other puzzled.
Your fault, she said quickly. Toronto is nice, but I don’t want to go anymore. And here there is nothing comparable. There’s only you that make me want to. Like in those girly magazines.
Want to?, he asked.
Stay. Put down roots, but not like this. Slowly, very slowly, with the cautions, the patiences. Ever since I think of you I can’t talk to you anymore. I look at this stultification and I think it’s about not wanting to fail. You give me this fucking desire of not wanting to fail, of not thinking that in the worst-case scenario one can start from scratch, with new trajectories, new frictions, new little lights.
Their geopolitics friend stopped talking, she was staring at something she was fidgeting with. He said actually I think I might go back home.
Are you going home?, she asked.
Yes, sorry, I am knackered.
They kissed on the cheek, he went to the car.
She stayed for a beer. Her feet worked.

Sere

«I should wear my tiger pants,
I should have an affair».

My father did not speak to me for seven months, I did not speak to Martina for six days.
I told myself that everything could have been avoided if I had paid more attention to timing. I lied. If the handbrake breaks in your hand, you can’t avoid the crash. But it wasn’t a great comparison.
My father did not speak to me for seven months because I told him I loved Martina. He threw my stuff out of the window, like in those threats mothers make to messy children or in big Russian dramas.
I picked it up, chucked it into an aqua-green bag, went to Martina’s.
While I walked I tried to visualise her in the street, like me, we had agreed on the day. But I couldn’t really picture her, I had always thought that her mother, with all the freckles and meditation classes would understand, or that she had always known.
I took a train and then a bus, without telling her, thinking of her eyelashes when she widened her eyes, the way she blushed in patches when one surprised her.
I got there as the sun was setting. In fact, there was nothing in the street, not even Martina.
I rang. Her mother smiled, slightly puzzled. She called Martina.
She didn’t blush when I saw her. She seemed unable to say anything.
It took me an unreasonably long time to understand, she had already dragged me into her room by the arm.
You didn’t say anything, I said, without even a hint of a question mark.
She looked down. My father kicked me out and you didn’t say anything. I can’t do it, she whined. Sere, I can’t do it. I said goodbye to her mother, went out into the street, slept at the hostel near the station where one April afternoon we had gone to make love.
We had lived together in São Paulo, kissed on the street in Porto. I blamed Parma, but maybe it wasn’t even her fault.

Not knowing what to do I called Costanza, Costanza told me come here, I’ll set up the couch.
On the tgv to Paris I cried as silently as possible, curled up.