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“carcinoma” and “non-small-cell” and “stage four,” and that is enough for my friend to mutter grimly and say, “It will be quick. They are remarkably swift tumors.”
    In the flurry of phone calls that follow—we now call her every evening for updates—the words that recur most frequently are “I can’t understand it.” I’d like to tell her that there is precious little to understand, that it’s just the way it is. Her tumor can beclassified as a statistic, maybe in the overlooked tail end of a Gaussian curve, though still within the natural order of things, but I keep this realism to myself, expressing it only to Nora, who, like Mrs. A., dazedly wonders why. As far as Nora is concerned, my rationality is only an embellished form of cynicism, one of the things that irritates her the most about me, a residue of my youthful callousness that she has not yet been able to correct. We don’t talk about it anymore.
    The plausible reason that everyone was looking for arrived soon enough, however, in the form of a newspaper clipping that Giulietta, a neighbor of Mrs. A., brings her one afternoon. A scientific study of dubious credibility has drawn attention to an anomalous percentage of tumors in Val di Susa. Possible causes include the telephone repeater whose noxious effect the residents of the valley have been clamoring about for years and the nuclear power plants along the Rhône.
    â€œCould be,” I comment on the phone, “yes, it could be,” yet I can’t help but note that expressions such as “anomalous” and “nuclear power plants” are perceived by Mrs. A. as reassuring or appalling depending on her need. There’s no reason to make an issue of it. Thetelephone repeater and the transborder power plants—if that’s what it takes, so be it, let’s blame them. It’s easier to point the finger at enriched uranium in France or electromagnetic radiation than accuse an equally invisible fate, a void, the merciless scourge of God.
    _____
    Soon there isn’t even time to wonder about the reasons. Mrs. A. is overwhelmed by a host of new routines, which starkly remind her of Renato’s years of dialysis, only now the body in the spotlight is hers, and she herself is caring for it. With the first cycle of chemotherapy coming up—the oncologist has planned for three of them, with twenty-day intervals, after reluctantly ruling out the idea of an operation—Mrs. A. would like to acquire a wig. She has no way of knowing when her hair will begin to fall out, clump after clump, and she wants to be prepared. By some perversity of fate, her hair is the only feature she really cares about: she walks lopsidedly, she hasn’t bought a new dress for at least twenty years (so that we can never go wrong by giving her a cardigan on every birthday), she doesn’t spend as much as a penny on cosmetics, andthe pieces of jewelry she wears are the same ones her husband knew, but she pays special attention to her hair. Sometimes, to pamper her, Nora would make an appointment with her own hairdresser for Mrs. A. She pointed out to me several times how few women there are whose hair is naturally white like that of Mrs. A., a chalk white streaked with silvery strands. “I hope mine will be like that when I get old,” she says, and I suspect that behind that wish there’s a deeper longing to identify.
    â€œFirst I want to get it cut,” Mrs. A. announces over the phone, “short, like I wore it when I was a girl. At least I’ll get used to seeing myself bald.”
    Nora takes the idea for what it is, an impulse. “Don’t be silly. It suits you the way it is.”
    The hope left unspoken by Mrs. A. is that cutting her hair will strengthen the roots enough so that it won’t fall out anymore. Her way of thinking is cluttered with popular beliefs that always amused or enraged me,