Jonathan Bazzi - Fever

FEVER

Jonathan Bazzi (they/them) was born in Milan in 1985. They grew up in Rozzano, on the extreme southern outskirts of the city. They studied philosophy and graduated with a thesis on symbolic theology in the work of Edith Stein. Jonathan has collaborated with various newspapers and magazines, including Gay.it , Vice , The Vision , and Il Fatto.it . Fever is their first novel.

Alice Whitmore (she/her) is a writer and literary translator living on Eastern Maar country. Her translation of Mariana Dimpuloss Imminence was awarded the 2021 NSW Premiers Translation Prize.

Scribe Publications
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
3754 Pleasant Ave, Suite 100, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409, USA

First published in Italian as Febbre
Published by Scribe 2022

Copyright Fandango Libri s.r.l. 2019
Translation copyright Alice Whitmore 2022

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted.

978 1 950354 96 2 (US edition)
978 1 922310 90 3 (Australian edition)
978 1 913348 83 0 (UK edition)
978 1 922586 39 1 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

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For the invisible children

In every love relationship, even the most passionate and impulsive, some blows must be held back; I mean, some words must not be spoken, some thoughts must not be expressed, some questions must not be asked.

Elsa Morante, House of Liars

I am writing with my burnt hand about the nature of fire.

Ingeborg Bachmann

Three years ago the fever came over me and never left

Three years ago the fever came over me and never left.

11 January, 2016.

Almost thirty-one years old.

I get home from university; its lunchtime, but Im not hungry.

Whats wrong?

I dont feel so good, I think I might be coming down with a fever.

I lie down on the couch, but I cant focus on my book.

The fever sets in.

It doesnt go away.

One week, two weeks.

A month.

Thirty-eight, thirty-eight point five, then it goes down slightly.

Thirty-seven point four, thirty-seven point three. The fever doesnt break.

The mercury must be stuck.

I cool it down.

It climbs back up.

Each time I remove the thermometer from my armpit, I hope to see that the fever has subsided. But it never has. The mercury sits at a little over thirty-seven degrees, right on the edge, at the turning point the boundary between what I was and what Ive become.

I get home from university and take my temperature. I take it again, and again, I take it incessantly.

My mother calls me. She starts calling every three hours.

So, is that fever still hanging around?

Yes, mamma, its still here.

So strange take your temperature again later.

And again. Never stop taking it.

Soon shes asking me for an update every two hours.

Paracetamol doesnt help; my temperature falls briefly, then rises again.

Three days, five, ten.

I go to work even though I dont feel like it; for the past four years (or is it five?) Ive been teaching yoga at different gyms across Milan. I enjoyed it at first, but not anymore. Ive been forced to teach too many classes, at all times of day, all over the city. Health clubs, dance schools, gyms. The quality of the venues varies, but more often than not theyre dumps. Still, teaching has kept me afloat through university. I accept every job, every substitution, even when I really dont want to.

If I dont go to work, I wont get paid. I have to go, fever or no fever.

Im a freelancer, so I dont have a contract. No sick leave, no holiday pay. Tomorrow I have an early class, I have to leave the house at seven. I thought I would have been feeling a bit better by now. Its too late to call in sick. The guy in charge of scheduling classes is new, hes been laying off a bunch of people. Sucking up to management: calling instructors, threatening them, reducing their hours. In Milan there are now more yoga instructors than there are students the teacher-training business has really taken off so, if he wanted to, he could replace any one of us at a moments notice.

I sweat so much at night. When I wake up the bed is drenched. A black stain on the blue sheets, in the shape of my sleeping body. A black me-shaped stain.

Even the pillow is soaked with sweat. I wet one side; I turn it over and wet the other side.

I get up and change. I go through three T-shirts a night. This is how it will be from now on: at night, my body dissolves into a pool of water. My body surrenders to this mad fever, which rises and falls according to its own rhythms.

I wake up, take a shower, accidentally fall back to sleep on the couch.

I sweat some more, I wake up, I leave the house just after seven, running late, bathed in sweat.

Milan in January; it must be two degrees. The icy air creeps inside my coat, freezes the sweat on my skin. I want to turn around and go back inside. I brace against the cold, pull up my hood, protecting my head. I walk slowly, enveloped in my layers of fabric and sweat. One foot after the other.

I speed up, then slow back down.

I have to figure out whats wrong with me.

Street, crossing, then Metro. I need to sit down.

My body stalls. I cant do this.

I deepen my breaths, breathing right into the bottom of my rib cage I have to do this.

I make it to the gym, change, join the class. Everyone is waiting for me; Im at least fifteen minutes late. The class only goes for fifty minutes. No doubt someone has already complained.

I apologise, I admit it, I tell them the truth: Im not feeling well.

We thought you werent going to show up.

I smile. What the fuck do you want from me?

The older women who come to my classes are used to seeing me move easily from one pose to the next. Flexible, strong, like an athlete. Whats wrong with him? Whats happened to him? I apologise at first, but then I stop. Whats the point?

Four days into the fever, my mother starts losing her mind. She heard about a girl she tells me over the phone who started out like me, with a mild but persistent fever. One week later she was dead.

Acute meningitis.

Go to the doctor, what are you waiting for? For it to be too late?

She calls me nonstop. When shes not calling, shes texting me. If I dont respond immediately she sends another, then another, dozens and dozens of text messages; she transmits her fear to me through the phones electromagnetic field, until her fear is my fear.

Go and see a doctor.

I dont even have a doctor. I had one, until the end of last year. One of those temporary doctors they assign to you if youre a student, or if youre residing somewhere different from where you usually live. After a year the arrangement expires, and I never got around to renewing mine.

My mother is right I have to do something.

I try getting in touch with a new doctor, one recommended by my friend Gianfranco. Hes young, I think hes gay. Hes on Facebook and Instagram. Hes into art history he posts more photos of paintings than anything else. He studies Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture. He posts vegan recipes. I write to him on Messenger.