NO REFUND NO RETURN

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Tuesday was the day of the week there was more of a hurry to open up, more of a longing to see people about and sweep away the silence and enduring boredom of the nights before. Because on Mondays we were closed, and to the two previous nights of silence was added still another whole day, more boring and restless than the nights themselves. Because, obviously, throughout the night everyone slept, while when the sun was up and shining, at least there was always someone walking by, talking, shouting. And the door and windows would be opened wide, as usual. But Mondays were a day of rest and you had to grin and bear it. And then someone would always, and this was the worst, draw near and stare in through the window. Lingering there, in disbelief. He would huddle close upon himself, as if he’d hoped to grow small enough to slip right through the window and find himself within. And so we hoped as well. We lived through such moments of infinite waiting. He’d cup his hands about his eyes, against the glass, like binoculars, and this act was like a cry for help. What anxiety! What palpitations of the heart! And the shape would draw back a bit from the window and let his hands fall to his sides and go away, resigned or bankrupt of belief. We were left, inheriting the new true solitude of the room. A desolation that laid its hand on every object; upon each glass in every row segregated according to form, on all the bottles, the little tables and on the chairs, on the countertop, and even on the espresso machine. I myself stayed in my little corner where I had been put, glimpsing what comings-and-goings of people I could, and watched the cars drift by, with an indefinable sense of impotence that, as I would later understand, was the key to my existence.

***

It was at ten in the morning on the second Tuesday in June that my life changed. We had opened the café at seven, as per usual. The day started off slow, as did every Tuesday. Those previous days off would weigh upon business more than you could imagine.
The exacting clean-up of Sunday nights gave a new sense of order to things, to which one had to adjust oneself, as is natural, and as is the case with all new orders. Things would frequently get shifted about according to a plan it was difficult to foresee or even comprehend afterwards. When the café opened up again everything seemed to be clearly situated, fresh and acceptable. As the scandal of novelty wore off, things appeared normal again. But throughout the whole of Monday we endured in the shadows of ineluctable uncertainty. Enormous boxes were dumped in the midst of us, containing who knows what and going who knows where. Things that didn’t seem necessarily related to the life of the place, given the rush with which it all came and went, those Tuesday mornings before seven.
The last person we saw Sunday evenings was the cleaning-boy. A youth who, contrary to his depressed and taciturn appearance, would talk quite a bit after a couple of hours of work, and would even sing, after drinking here and there from the various bottles. When he’d finish his job and go off in the night, we knew that for more than twenty-four hours we wouldn’t see a single living soul.
Around ten in the morning on the second Tuesday in June I was purchased by two young people, a couple, recently married, who happened to be passing through Bologna. I can’t say if this made me happy or sad. It was my fate to be sold, this much I knew. I had been in the café too long. And not through any will of my own, but as a result of the laziness of the hired help. No one took responsibility for properly adjusting the cans of soda. No one, that is to say, moved the colder cans to the front of the refrigerator, to make room for hot newcomers in the rear. I saw a friend of mine, quite close to me, get taken away, and it could have very well been me, on one of those rare occasions when a customer would ask for a really cold can of Aranciata. But that Tuesday I came to understand that it was just about all over anyway, for I had inexplicably been moved up, to the front line.
The newlyweds paid and put me in one of their traveling-bags. Ah, liberty! Ah, fate! Nevermore to look upon the light blue walls of the café, the shades ever pulled high at the windows, -- and beyond, the sidewalk, with its colonnaded porch along the street. Never again to be set out upon the countertop because I had become too cold, nor then again to be refrigerated because I had become too warm. Not another Monday would I spend in the languid shadows of the closed café, nor tremble with anxiety to feel the first grinding rhythms of another Tuesday shifting into gear.
From the darkness of the traveling-bag I said my goodbyes to the bottles of Campari and Cabernet, and to my fellow cans of soda, who watched me go off, and who wondered uneasily, thinking about their own destinies.

***

We walked the block to the train station. At 11:20 the train departed, destined to take us to Florence. Around noon the couple decided that it was time to eat lunch. I felt a hand reach in for me, then retreat from my extreme coldness. I thought: it’s all over! But in fact it wasn’t. The couple shared a sandwich and washed it down with some mineral water from a plastic bottle, a bottle that had been in the same bag with me. And the Aranciata?, the husband asked. We can drink it later, was the response.
I still had time. But what was the use? I didn’t know then (nor do I know now) if it was better for a can of soda to be empty or full. What my value indubitably consisted in was the liquid that I contained. For that, people dug down in their pockets. For that reason these two newlyweds bore me about in their bag. And yet I was more than simply juice. My vicissitudes continued once it was gone. Instead, left to my own devices, I understood the violence and tragedy of life, of which I had been innocent.
I was not consumed. And it’s useless to ask oneself what possible fates might have befallen me if the couple had left me on the train. Any can could ask itself that very question at any time.
When we got to Florence we looked for a hotel. And I remained there for two days, even in the same bag, for, as I realized later, I had been forgotten.

***

And again we departed. Trudging onward, this time to Rome, where we thereby arrived at lunchtime and, as for me, no one said a thing about it. However, once we got to the hotel room, she, the wife, looking for a handkerchief in the traveling-bag, stumbled upon my presence and said to her husband: “Hey! Look at this, it’s the can of Aranciata we bought in Bologna.” It seemed, from the surprised tone with which her voice remarked my presence, that I had unbeknownst to them hidden myself in their bag. But the very meaning the words expressed obviated that possibility: they remembered in fact having purchased me in Bologna, a word that suddenly filled me with nostalgia.
The woman said: “We can drink it this afternoon.” “But it’s so warm!” he retorted. And I was transferred from the traveling- to the young woman’s shoulder-bag which was, anyway, big enough for me.
So there I am, making the rounds of the Roman sights. The couple had lunch in a trattoria in Trastevere. I could see the sunlight each time she reached in her bag for a cigarette. We spent the afternoon going hither and thither, without my ever knowing where. We’d take walks, we’d sit down, we’d take more walks. At a certain point the man said: “Let’s go over to the Spanish Steps.” And I sensed that my end was drawing near.

The Spanish Steps. Four o’clock in the afternoon.
“Hey, why don’t we get into that Aranciata now?”
“I don’t feel like it, it’s gotta be too hot.”
“Come on, a little sip. Enough so that we don’t find ourselves dragging it around forever.”
“No, I don’t want any, really. If you like, you drink it. Drink what you want, and just leave the rest.”

***

And so I was popped open. I was partially emptied of my contents and then just left there on a step, amid a throng of people about as feeling as a log.

***

I have no idea how much time had passed, when a kick, given by chance or by caprice, sent me rolling along. People grazed me passing by from each and every direction. And then there were shoes that just barely missed kicking me, at the very last moment changing directions. Then one indeed hit the mark directly, and so commenced my descent to the piazza at the bottom of the Steps.
If at first my position was upright –so the young couple had left me, out of kindness or simply not to waste me—now I found myself on my side at the bottom of my fall. A young man who was reading a book started to roll me under his foot. That is, he put me to work as a wheel. After a while, he tired of it, not only of his routine with me, but of reading and remaining seated. He got up, and left me a few inches from where he had found me.
How I finally got down to the street I can’t say. At a certain moment I grew confused and started to roll out of control. I was kicked more than once and I believe by more than one person. I lost almost all my remaining liquid. I got dented. I landed in front of a group of boys, one of whom came forward and stood beside me in a menacing way. “Paolo, catch!” he said. And I was rolled a few yards ahead. There I was caught and sent flying back in the direction from which I’d come, then forward and to the left and to the right and forward again and again back.
To have oneself turned into a wheel is stupefying, but to be sent flying here and then there like a ball was thrilling, but it filled me with fear as well. It was now a question of having to deal with being free in this way. And I don’t mean free to do as I pleased, but rather free from the protection which, as a wheel, the foot had given me. No longer mine was the warm coziness of the shoulder-bag, no longer mine that sense of belonging. Now it was a question of not even knowing what direction I would be taking. Now everything depended totally on the whim of these would be soccer-stars. Something which, while in one way thrilling, was definitely terrifying.

***

When the boys grew tired of the game, I was again abandoned and left to my own devices. Again I tasted that strange, anguished sense of freedom. I was useless. My condition had deteriorated. I would never again be purchased in a bar by a couple of newlyweds, never again realize such a condition of socio-economic relationship, nor bear a tantamount responsibility. I could no longer even play the wheel, being dented as I was. The past was over and done with, and I could not tell what future awaited me. It began to grow dark. A sense of solitude, similar to that which I would feel at night in the café, manifested itself. But now, in addition to being alone, I was in the open. A dog came by that took a sniff at everything, then took a sniff at me.

***

I should not have anything else to say at this point had not a rag-man then picked me up, come along shouldering his sacks and a mess of clothing. He examined me carefully, turning me over and over again in his hands. He shook me, and then drank the last sip of soda I still somehow contained. Then he put me into one of his sacks, amid the rags and other cans.


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By Bruno Gullì
Translated from the Italian by Ronald F Sauer
(San Francisco, 1988)