Мадина Федосова – Signora Lucia’s Laundry (страница 3)
«I don’t know,» she said finally. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. «I thought I did. But now… I don’t know. I don’t understand who he is. I don’t understand who I am. I don’t know what to do with this sheet.»
Lucia nodded. She stood up.
Went to the counter, took the sheets. Unfolded them, looked at the stain one last time, as if memorizing it. Then she opened the lid of the big washing machine – the one against the far wall, the oldest, but the most reliable. Loaded the laundry. Poured detergent from a large unlabeled cardboard box. Added stain remover, which she used only for difficult cases, a little more than usual. Closed the heavy lid. Turned it on.
The machine hummed low, bassy, then water began to rush, flowing through the hoses, filling the drum. After a minute, a dull thumping sound came from inside – the laundry had begun its journey.
Lucia returned to the chair.
«Now it’s an hour and a half,» she said. «Will you sit, or will you leave?»
Valentina looked at the machine as if it were a living being. As if it were a doctor who would now begin to heal.
«I’ll sit.»
They sat in silence. In the laundry, you could only hear the hum of the machines, the hiss of steam from the old iron Lucia had forgotten to turn off, distant voices from the street. Somewhere children were already playing ball – dull thuds against a wall. Somewhere market women were arguing – their voices rising and falling like seagulls over the sea. Life went on as usual. The sheets with red lipstick swirled in soapy water, washing, surrendering their dirt to the detergent.
After half an hour, Valentina spoke herself.
Her voice was steadier, but a different note had appeared in it – bitter, adult, the note that comes after the loss of illusions.
«My mother left my father when I was five. I don’t remember that time well, but I remember one thing vividly: she found another woman’s earring in his pocket. An ordinary earring, cheap, costume jewelry. She just packed her things, took me, and left. In one night. Without conversation, without explanations, without trying to understand.»
She took a sip of coffee, now cold, but didn’t notice.
«I grew up without him. He came on Sundays, took me to the park, bought ice cream, but it wasn’t the same. He was a stranger who became slightly less strange once a week. I always thought: how could she? Over some stupid earring that could have gotten into his pocket in a thousand ways? Maybe someone put it there at work, maybe he found it himself, maybe something else? Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe she should have talked, figured it out, not broken up the family?»
She fell silent. In the laundry, you could hear the machine humming, water dripping somewhere from a poorly closed tap.
«And now I look at this sheet and I understand. It wasn’t about the earring. It was about the fact that after that earring, you can’t sleep on the same sheet anymore. You understand? You look at it and you only see that. Every night. Every morning. It eats into you more than into the fabric. You don’t see the person next to you anymore. You only see the stain.»
Lucia was silent. Valentina continued talking, and the words poured out of her in a stream that could no longer be stopped.
«I want to kill him. I want to find that woman and tear her hair out. I want to kill myself for being such a fool, so naive, so blind. I want this morning never to have happened. I want to have slept until noon and for him to have come back and for everything to be like before. I want these sheets to burn, not to exist, I want never to have bought them. I want…»
«Enough,» said Lucia.
Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the stream of words like a knife through a ripe tomato.
Valentina fell silent. Stared at Lucia with wide eyes.
«You can want many things,» Lucia said. «The water will still flow. The machine will still wash. The sun will rise and set. And you’ll sit here wanting. And then what?»
Valentina looked at her. Waited for an answer. Lucia was in no hurry.
«Wanting isn’t doing. Wanting is hiding from what’s already happened. You’re sitting here, wishing it hadn’t. But it already has. And it’s not going anywhere.»
Valentina was silent.
«What should I do?» she asked finally. Her voice was quiet, almost childlike.
Lucia stood up, went to the machine. Looked at the timer. Twenty minutes left.
«You’ll pick up the sheets,» she said. «They’ll be clean. No stain.»
«So what?» Valentina also stood, came closer. «I’ll go home, make the bed, go to sleep, and then what? I’ll know. I’ll always know. Every night, closing my eyes, I’ll see that red lipstick on the white fabric. Even if it’s not there.»
Lucia turned to her. Stood so close that Valentina could smell the detergent mixed with coffee and something else elusive, old, homely, safe.
«Do you think I only wash away stains?»
Valentina froze.
«Do you think, in forty years, people have only come to me with dirty laundry?»
Lucia stepped back, gestured around the laundry.
«Look around. Everyone who walked through that door brought not just clothes. They brought themselves. Their pain. Their shame. Their dirt that can’t be seen with the eyes. I washed sheets after the dead. I washed murderers’ shirts. I washed the dresses of women beaten by their husbands. I washed the children’s clothes of children who are no more.»
She paused.
«A stain on a sheet isn’t infidelity. A stain on a sheet is just pigment. Infidelity is what’s in your head. What you imagined or embellished yourself. You didn’t come here to wash a sheet. You came here to wash yourself.»
Valentina stood, gripping the edge of the counter as she had when she first came in. But now her fingers weren’t trembling.
«I’ll wash the sheet. It will be clean. White. Like snow on the mountains you can see from Rome on a clear day. You’ll take it back. And then you have two choices.»
She paused. The machine hummed louder, going into the spin cycle.
«First: you’ll see that lipstick on it every night for the rest of your life. You’ll sleep with a ghost you created yourself. You’ll hate him, yourself, that woman you don’t even know. And the sheet will be clean, but you won’t be.»
Valentina swallowed.
«Second: you stop looking at the sheet and you look at him.»
«At him?» Valentina almost screamed, but her voice cracked into a wheeze. «Are you suggesting I forgive him? After this?»
«I’m not suggesting anything,» Lucia’s voice remained calm, steady, like water in an old fountain. «I’m saying: you don’t know what happened. You only know the stain.»
Valentina opened her mouth to object, and froze.
«How do you know it was infidelity?» Lucia asked.
Valentina stared at her, uncomprehending.
«It’s… it’s lipstick. On our bed. On the sheet where we sleep. What else could it be?»
«Many things,» said Lucia. «Maybe he had a work party and some drunk fool just kissed him on the cheek and he didn’t even notice. Maybe it was his sister, his mother, a friend who came by in the morning while you were asleep. Maybe it wasn’t even a woman. Men wear lipstick too these days, you know?»
Valentina blinked.
«You don’t know whose lipstick it is,» Lucia continued. «You don’t know how it got there. You don’t know if he was drinking, was drunk, was even conscious. You don’t know – maybe she undressed him while he was passed out. You don’t know – maybe he fought back and just didn’t have the strength. You don’t know anything except a red stain on white fabric.»
Valentina slowly, as if in a dream, sank onto the chair. Her legs gave way.
«I… I didn’t think.»
«You wanted to burn the sheets. You wanted to kill him. You wanted to kill yourself. And you didn’t even ask.»
Silence hung in the laundry, heavy, humid, like air before a thunderstorm. Only the machine hummed, spinning out water, and somewhere in the street, children still played.
The machine beeped. Once. Briefly. The cycle was finished.
Lucia opened the door. Steam rushed out, smelling of detergent and hot water. She took out the sheets. Wet, heavy, they hung down to the floor, water dripping from them onto the stone tiles, pooling.
Lucia unfolded that particular sheet. The one that had had the red stain that morning. Unfolded it completely, held it up to the light coming from the window.
Clean.
No trace. White as the day it was bought. White as the first snow, which almost never falls in Rome. White as Valentina’s coat in the hospital where she saved other people’s children.
Lucia put the sheets into the spin dryer – a separate machine, old, her husband’s, which could spin laundry almost dry in ten minutes. Turned it on. The spinner whined, spun, flinging water through the holes in the drum.
Ten minutes later, Lucia took out the sheets. Almost dry, only slightly damp to the touch.
«Come,» she said, and pushed open the door to the courtyard.
Valentina followed her out.