Journal of Italian Translation

Adria Bernardi/Raffaello Baldini
it’s ajar, isn’t there anyone here? I saw
the light under a doorbell, I rang,” Come in,
come in, should I lay them out for you?
she was shuffling a deck of cards, “I can’t,”
“Just five thousand lire,” “It’s not the money, I’m in a hurry,”
“Where do you have to go?” “Up higher, where’s a staircase?”
“Follow your nose, open that door,” “Goodbye,
and you, you too, don’t stay here waiting, come away,
it’s already a morass,” “Ah. You don’t have to tell me,
this is a house, and I, this is, and when it rains,
I have to put bowls all over the place,”
and people are always getting things half-assed backwards,
what good are basins and bowls? can’t you hear it down below,
right down here, don’t you hear how it sounds like an animal
gasping? no response, fine then, what’s the point of talking, in any
case,
this is the final landing,
and this huge door is shut, but there’s talking behind it,
a waiter came out, he slipped past me,
they’d finished eating, it was quite a group,
they were squabbling, a cloud of smoke, they didn’t even see me,
I made my way to a hallway,
and this door? there’s a key inside, let’s see,
I could have guessed it, stairs,
and up there, a trapdoor, I grabbed it,
I braced myself against the wall, I hefted myself up,
and this? it’s like walking inside a cloud,
it’s filled with tufts of wool, it’s Pia’s house,
Pia the mattress-maker, and that curl over there
is a railing, at least my vision’s still sharp, above
it’s all horsehair, quiet now, who’s moaning?
“Are you hurt?” there’s two of them, “What do you want?” “Is it
Nando?”
“No, please excuse me, I was just passing through,”
“Get the hell out of here,” she had covered her face
with her hands, and now where?
stay calm, beyond that net is a door,
with a bolt that’s all rusted, this is a bitch,
come on, up and down, up and down, that’s right, to get it to budge,
all it needs, come on, up and down, and pull,
that’s it, it gave, hurry, come on, unbelievable!
I tripped, I came close to falling, it’s pitch dark,
and I’m not finding the switch, here it is, right here,
but this stone feels like tufa, and hanging from it, up high there,
is a rabbit stuffed with straw,
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