So Long

88 nd who would get postcards? Thinking about it, he wondered if he should make a list, because once you reach your destination, you always forget. He found a sheet of paper in the desk, sat down, and started coming up with names and addresses. He lit a cigarette. He’d write down a name, think it over, take a drag of his cigarette, and write down another. After he finished, he copied the names into his datebook and tore up the paper. He set the datebook on top of his shirts, in his open suitcase. He looked around, studying the room, like he was trying to remember what he might’ve forgotten—it was going to be fiction So Long Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Elizabeth Harris A SO LONG | 89 a long trip. Then he remembered the postcards he’d bought in an art gallery and left on the bookshelf. He started sorting through them, to see if they might work for this upcoming trip. Not really, he told himself, they don’t really work, what’s a postcard of the Marches got to do with South America? But then he also thought how nice the stamps would look; in Peru, for instance, he’d buy stamps with parrots, there had to be stamps with parrots in Peru, plus stamps with faces of pre-Columbian gods, smiling, inscrutable masks, masks of gold or glazed enamel—he’d seen an exhibit once at Palazzo Reale—there had to be stamps of those places, too. Actually, he liked the idea, because typical tourist postcards were so ugly, the colors always too bright, fake colors, and all the cards alike, whether they came from Mexico or Germany. So this was far more original: a postcard with “from Ascoli” written on it when it came from Oaxaca or Yucatán or Chapultepec (was that it?)— these names of places where he’d go. Where he should have gone with Isabel, if she were still here. But she wasn’t, she was gone before they could. For fifteen years, they thought about that trip, but it wasn’t a trip you could take just like that, especially for two people in their profession. It took time, availability, money—all things that weren’t there before. Now they were, but Isabel wasn’t. He went to the desk, found a picture of Isabel and set it in his suitcase, beside the datebook and the postcards. It was a picture of them, arms linked, standing in San Marco Piazza in Venice, surrounded by pigeons, with vaguely stupid smiles on their faces, like people smile for the camera. Were we happy? he thought. And he recalled how Isabel took his hand on the boat taxi and whispered: “Well, if we can’t get to South America right now, at least we’re in Venice.” Odd when pictures lie flat: he and Isabel, surrounded by pigeons, with San Marco below, and them staring up at the ceiling. It bothered him, their eyes in that picture, staring up at the ceiling , so he turned the picture over and said: “I’m taking you along, Isabel, you’re going on this trip, too, we’ll travel all over the place, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and we’ll have a great time and write 90 Tullio Pericoli, Postcard From Florence, 1983. SO LONG | 91 postcards, and I’ll sign them for us both. I’ll sign your name, too, it’ll be just like you’re with me—no—you will be with me, because as you well know, I always take you along.” He quickly added up the things left to do; the last things, he thought, feeling like someone who wouldn’t be coming back. And all at once, he understood that he wouldn’t be coming back, that he’d never set foot inside this apartment again, this apartment where he’d spent almost his entire life longing to be in exotic places with mysterious names like Yucatán and Oaxaca. He shut off the gas valve, the water valve, switched off the circuit breaker, closed the shutters. Standing by the windows, he realized how hot it was. Of...