Born Twice (Vintage International) by Giuseppe Pontiggia Page A

your children, do less.”
    The embarrassed parents listen in silence. At times, the blackmail of language prevents us from showing the repugnance it triggers in us.
    The doctor looks to me for assistance. “Professor Frigerio, what do you think about this? You’re a teacher too; surely you’ve tutored your son—”
    “No, actually I rarely tutor him,” I reply, “because it has the same effect on me.”
    “Do you slap your son too?” the doctor asks sarcastically.
    “No, but there are worse offenses. A degrading look hurts. Intolerance is just as bad.”
    The math teacher sticks out her chest; she’s pleased to have found someone whom she sees as an ally. “And it happens with our own children, the ones we love most. It doesn’t happen with other students, the ones who pay to be tutored.”
    “That’s the whole point,” I say gravely.
    “What is?”
    “To begin with, the lesson you’re giving your son is atypical. You’re not getting paid for it.”
    The math teacher looks at me in amazement.
    “That’s the first frustrating thing about it,” I say, “and it can’t be ignored.”
    “What a cynic you are!” the math teacher exclaims.
    “I’m not the problem,” I say. “The problem is the lesson. A free lesson has to be gratifying in other ways. But because the student in this case just doesn’t understand, the lesson fosters new frustrations.”
    I am pleased with the level of calm I am maintaining.
    “Then, added to these frustrations,” I go on to say, “is an even greater delusion: that the student is our child.”
    “The love-hate relationship I was talking about before,” the teacher suggests.
    “No,” I reply, looking down. “I wouldn’t call it that. I would call it hate. You, in that precise moment, hate your son. That’s all. It’s pure hate.”
    “What on earth are you saying?”
    She has turned imploringly toward the doctor, but the doctor does not volunteer a word.
    “You don’t have to explain,” I say. “You’re hurting him. You’ll love him later. In that particular moment, though, you hate him.”
    She looks back toward the doctor.
    “What do you think? Is it true that I feel this way?”
    “Why ask me?” she says. “They’re your feelings.”

Sea Rescue
     
    I’m sitting with the doctor in her glass-walled office. The appointments are over for the day, the lights have been turned off in the therapy room, the physiotherapists are getting dressed to go home, and she’s smoking a briar pipe that’s as long and narrow as her face. I’m telling her what happened last August in Fano.
    A friend of mine from Ancona comes to visit. Our two families decide to go to the beach. It’s like a scene out of a nineteenth-century novel. A strong wind is blowing along the coast. Ominous dark waves crash against the stone jetties that enclose the small bay. There’s no one in the water; the red flag flaps wildly over the deserted beach. Driven by an infantile desire for extreme challenges and an inclination toward displays of bravado, feeling like a true swimmer compared to my delicate friend Carlo, and pursued by Franca’s familiar cutting remarks, I head out with him toward the mouth of the bay, where the waves break in a deafening crash. Suddenly we’re being pulled out to sea. I can discern the rolling hills of the coastline; they emerge and then disappear under an avalanche of water that pulls me down in turbulent cascades. I keep afloat by using my arms and desperately treading water. Let yourself be carried to shore by the current, I remember thinking; it’s crazy to swim against it. I recall the losing struggle of trying to fight the undertow, my mouth filling with water, thinking that I’ll try again farther down the coast. The shore flashes into sight in a whitish stormy light; the coastline is getting farther away.
    Suddenly I hear a feeble cry: Carlo is being consumed by a frothy vortex; he’s panicking; he’s losing his head; he’s calling me in a