Authors: Simona Sparaco
I
N THE CAR
, on the way to the restaurant, all I could do was think again about Isabelle and the incredible feelings she arouses in me. But it was no good, because You started racing again, faster than ever.
Once again I arrived late, I practically didn’t touch any of the food or follow a word of what Righini and the director were saying. All the way through lunch, they kept glancing at me uneasily. My nervous state, my inability to handle the situation, was all too obvious.
Before going back to the office, the director, who’s managed, without my help, to arrange a meeting to sign the contract next week, is forthright in his criticism of my undignified behaviour. “We can talk about it more calmly once we’re back in the office.” I try to make him understand that I don’t have time for his lectures, that over the past few months I’ve lost the ability to do things calmly, and that I have a councillor waiting for me in a bar in little more than an hour. “You can keep him waiting,” he retorts, “it’s what you do to everyone else. Maybe I haven’t made myself clear: I’m losing patience with you.”
The thought of being reprimanded again makes me want to drop everything, to run to the sea and walk on the beach with
Isabelle waiting for the sunset. With her beside me, I could once again see it the way normal people do, watch the sun slowly melting into the waves, the way it does in my sweetest memories. I never thought that one day I’d feel nostalgic for a sunset, just as I never thought I’d get to the point of hating my work and everything it represents, but, despite everything, the ambition that has led me all these years still burns inside me and tells me I mustn’t give up, I must do whatever the director asks, once again, as I’ve always done, until I follow him into his office.
First, it’s just an awkward exchange of opinions. Mine don’t stand up, any more than anything else that’s left of my life. The director, on the other hand, is shrewd, he doesn’t hesitate to put the knife in, and he’s impatient, the way everyone is now towards me. At the umpteenth question to which he doesn’t obtain a prompt response, he throws me a look full of contempt and starts shouting, “This isn’t a game here! Don’t you realize you owe everything to my support? I trusted you, I treated you like a son! And now I find myself dealing with a completely different man. You don’t seem to give a damn about anything any more. Congratulations, you’re throwing your future away!”
This time I react as if it isn’t the director talking tome, but You, Father Time: “You have no idea of the sacrifices I’m making so as not to throw my future away!”
The director’s eyes widen. “Sacrifices? Do you actually have the nerve to call them sacrifices? You don’t even realize what you’re saying any more. And that’s no surprise, given that you can’t even seem to think clearly! Just look at your office, it’s become a pigsty. And as I always say, someone who can’t keep his things tidy can’t keep his thoughts tidy.”
I can’t bear this onslaught any more, it’ll end up consuming me. So I decide to turn things round the other way. “It’s never
happened to you, has it?” I reply. “You’ve never been in a
situation
you didn’t understand. You’re far-sighted, you always see everything with extreme clarity. Even when it’s something that reduces a man to having no more time left, like a terminal illness, and yet that same man decides to waste what little time he does have, continuing to work in the same company, the company that’s been his whole life.”
He turns pale. He’s speechless. All at once, he can’t think of any more reprimands to fling at me. He takes a few steps back, I think he’s suffering from the pathological phobia he has towards any kind of illness. From the way he looks at me, I can guess what illness has just flashed through his mind: Svevo Romano is a womanizer, and he’s irresponsible, he probably doesn’t take any kind of precautions. Svevo Romano must have AIDS. I can almost see it, that whole tangle of thoughts, that obsession that insinuates itself into the bigoted mechanisms of his mind. He must be wondering if the virus is already everywhere, if I’ve spread it around the room with my hands. It might be anywhere, lying in wait, ready to get in through the myriad of tiny wounds on his skin. It’s on the chair, on his clothes, on the pen he has in his hand, which he immediately puts down on the desk. Everything is contaminated. And his greatest anxiety is: “What’s to become of all this? The investments, the worldwide properties? Who’ll take care of my empire?” Two ex-wives and a daughter who only calls him to ask for money. I can’t see anything else in his mind. How could I ever have wanted to take his place? The master of my life obsessed with the fear of death. The pterodactyl, who moves shrewdly in the circles that matter, surrounded by a herd of eohippuses without prospects, suddenly trapped by his own hang-ups, a mental disorder fed by fear and ignorance.
He keeps his distance. “Svevo,” he says, “what’s happened to you?”
“Nothing,” I reply, going to the door.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“Not today, I have no time to lose.” And it’s true, Father Time: while You’re racing like this, I have no intention of wasting what little time I have left being dependent on him. “I won’t be in tomorrow,” I inform him, coolly. “I’ll see you next week, for the signing of the contract. For anything else, ask Elena.”
He’s staring at me with revulsion, but I surprise him by retracing my steps, giving him a vigorous handshake and bidding him a formal farewell.
Once out of his office, my time, with its leaps and gaps, again overwhelms me: it’s after four, and I’m a quarter of an hour late for my appointment with the councillor.
I get to the restaurant nearly half an hour later.
I ask a waiter, who’s busy clearing a table, for information.
“He ordered two coffees and left a while ago. He looked a bit impatient.”
What an incredible relief, discovering that for the first time it’s a matter of complete indifference to me.
M
Y APARTMENT ISN’T
FAR
from the Campo de’ Fiori, but I don’t know how many hours of common time it would take me to get there on foot. I give the driver a day off and about nine in the morning call a taxi.
I’m in a hurry, but I’m consoled by the thought of seeing her and the magical possibility that everything might slow down again. The closer I get, the tighter the childish knot in my stomach. I glance at my watch: another half-hour has flown by, as imperceptibly as ever. At the end of the Via del Pellegrino, the noisy market appears before me: first of all, the stalls selling fabrics and kitchen utensils. At this hour of the morning it’s at its most crowded. It’s a hot June day, and the old square, tolerating the stallholders’ din, seems to be bursting with life. The smells of the market mingle together: the blasts of hot air from the rotisserie, the odour of newly cooked pizza, the sharp aroma of dripping olives and the sickly scent of the crates of fruit. They wash away my anxiety, and everything gradually returns to its natural rhythm.
“Fresh fruit! Look how soft these grapes are!” The stallholders lavish praise on their produce, holding forth to their little audience. Amid all the people pushing, shouting, asking for things, muttering, I’m searching for her. It only takes a moment before
my gaze comes to rest on a point that seems random, but isn’t really random at all, and our eyes meet. The confusion, the shouts, everything comes to an abrupt halt. There’s nothing else left except her and her flowered skirt. “I was looking for you,” I say, as I walk towards her.
“Me too.”
Isabelle has just bought some huge lemons, and now she’s searching for a grater. Giulia is chattering to herself, alternating vowels and consonants in a language only she can understand. She’s happy, she gives me a comical grin, opening her mouth wide and screwing up her little blue eyes with enthusiasm. She doesn’t look much like her mother, but she does have the same smile.
As we search for lemon graters, Isabelle asks me if I want to hold Giulia. I don’t have time to refuse, I’m already face to face with that little pink bundle.
It’s the first time I’ve ever been so close to a child and I’m surprised to discover that the contact is far from unpleasant, although fraught with anxiety: I’m afraid she’ll fall, that she’ll slip out of my arms or notice my discomfort. But she stays quite still against my chest, and continues to smile at me. There’s no real reason, but she just keeps smiling.
“Oh, here it is, just what I was looking for.” Isabelle has finally found her lemon grater. She turns and asks me, “Do you like it?”
It’s an ordinary yellow lemon grater, with a transparent plastic cover. But the way she touches it, opens it and examines it makes it seem precious.
“Do you ever come here?”
“Not often, and you?”
“I live just up there.” She points to a balcony at the top of a building on the right. “Those geraniums you see are mine.”
“Do you live alone?”
“A woman comes a couple of times a week to do the cleaning, the rest of the time there’s just me and Giulia.”
She’s ready to take her daughter in her arms again, and as soon as she takes her off me I realize that I’d like her back. We’d found our own balance.
As we buy bread and slices of pizza, Isabelle tells me which are her favourite shops, the habits she can’t live without. About a hundred metres from the square, there’s a shop that rents out good films, which is great for her because she’s quite a film buff, and it’s embarrassing to realize that I’m almost completely ignorant on the subject. When it comes to literature, too, it turns out Isabelle has always been a voracious reader, although she prefers the more intimist kind of novel, and I’d like to be able to enliven the conversation with some interesting quotations but, apart from a few historical or philosophical anecdotes, not much comes to mind. I’ve spent most of my life with numbers.
She doesn’t seem to be bothered by these major differences. She takes me by the hand and gives me a light, infectious smile that seems to be saying: We have plenty of time, we may even discover paths we never thought of exploring before, don’t be in a hurry. And with my hand in hers, walking on these black paving stones that smell of life, the sheer everydayness of this little slice of the metropolis has never seemed so invigorating: the restaurant owner coming to the door for a drag on his cigarette, the florist chatting at the side of the street with the waitress from the bar opposite, the market vendors joking among themselves… Everybody seems so relaxed, even a little indolent to me, but of course they know how to take their time. Isabelle greets them,
stops to chat, listens to their confidences and keeps receiving gifts: a rose, some basil, a handful of pine nuts for making pesto. The truth is, she knows how to deal with people. She doesn’t make distinctions, she treats everybody the same.
We reach the front door of the building where she lives. Inside, there’s a little lift, but she keeps walking right past it towards the stairs.
“What floor are you?”
“The fourth.”
“What about the lift?”
“I don’t trust the lift,” she says, and I smile. To think that, of all people, I met a woman like her!
I take Giulia in my arms, and we divide the shopping bags. The stairs are not very inviting: the closer we get to her floor, the steeper they get. After the second flight we hear a dog barking, then a woman yelling “Pablo, stop it!” There’s an odour of fried onions and detergent, while the walls smell of the fresh paint someone has crudely applied to it to disguise a small crack.
Isabelle’s apartment is much more welcoming than the rest of the building. The dark clay floor and the wooden beams on the ceiling are typical of apartments in the centre, the furnishings are bohemian, the kitchen filled with colourful accessories, and there are piles of books in Italian and French, DVDs and photographs. There’s something comforting about all this untidiness, about Giulia’s toys scattered everywhere, about the old French books on the shelves, the collections of poetry, the 1960s refrigerator that she’s decided to use as a dresser and the antique wrought-iron crib she’s transformed into a window box. Timeworn objects given a second life, like shells gathered on the beach and strung onto a necklace or glued to a jewel box. Isabelle also has a passion for buses, Fifties- and Sixties-style buses with rounded corners. She
has collected so many objects showing buses, she’s lost count. There’s a really nice tin clock shaped like a stylized bus just next to the TV set. “Talking of spending your life sitting down,” she says as she conscientiously picks up Giulia’s toys and puts them in a basket. “The only way to feel you’re not missing anything when you travel is to look out of the window. It’s like seeing a good film or reading an interesting book. Sometimes it’s worth stopping, though, don’t you think?”
The way she looks at me, after expressing such a flexible yet resonant idea, is so extraordinarily relevant to what I’m living through, it takes my breath away. In my life I’ve had to deal with politicians, bankers, people in authority, I used to know how to rattle off clever remarks, obtain favours, box people into corners if necessary, but nobody ever left me speechless. Nobody until today.
Beyond the door of the bedroom, I see a few photographs on the walls and recognize her. She’s very young, and wearing a ballerina’s tutu. Now I understand where she gets that long straight neck, that elegant bearing. “I used to dance when I was a little girl,” she says, when she notices me looking at them. “But it was never very serious.”
“So you stopped?”
“I love life too much to let it be taken over by a single passion,” she says as she goes into the kitchen to sort out the lunch at the stove: the water for the pasta, the cherry tomatoes for the sauce. Everything about the way she talks and behaves suggests a deep culture, but she’s also an old-fashioned, highly organized mother and housewife. She moves with great dexterity in this cluttered space. Here too, there are plenty of photographs, most of them of Giulia: having a bath, at the sea, with a funny hat and a joke pair of glasses. Isabelle stops in front of one of them and with the air of someone who never gets tired of looking at it says, “This
is my favourite. There’s so much of me in her, in that smile of hers.” I also look at it closely, and for a fraction of a second have a feeling I’ve already lived through this moment. Now we’re again looking straight at each other and I want to kiss her. I feel a kind of enthusiasm growing inside me that I’ve never known, or that I may have forgotten in the disenchantment of all the easy lays I’ve collected over the years. It’s just a kiss, a tender little kiss, where you hold back desire for the sake of something bigger, and yet it’s like one’s first ever kiss, a completely different way of looking at the world.
I like the taste of her, so different from what I’m accustomed to, and I especially like the fact that when we catch our breaths and look at each other again there isn’t the slightest trace of embarrassment between us. It’s all so natural, so spontaneous.
In the meantime, Giulia is sitting in her high chair waiting for her baby food. Isabelle goes back to the stove to liquidize some vegetables and the kitchen fills with inviting smells. I sit down next to Giulia. She’s exploring the upholstery on the back of her seat with her tiny fingers, while also trying to loosen her belt, but before she can get upset her mother intervenes promptly with a biscuit. Giulia takes it, drags it across the feeding tray so that it crumbles a bit, then lifts it. I don’t think she has any intention of eating it, she seems to be wondering what would happen if she dropped it on the floor. After a while, she stops wondering and just drops it. That’s the nice thing about children, there are many things in my life I wish I had the courage to deal with the way she’s dealt with that biscuit.
Her food is ready, and I ask Isabelle if I can be the one to give it to Giulia. She laughs her head off at my attempts to deal with Giulia’s constant moving. I try to persuade the child to eat by imitating a plane, and get a spoonful in the face for my pains.
The spaghetti with fresh pesto and small tomatoes is delicious, and the most surprising thing is that I have all the time I need to savour it. Isabelle doesn’t hurry me, just keeps looking at me with that enchanting smile.
When we finish eating, I help her to clear the table. I don’t think I’ve ever cleared a table in my life, and she’s amused by my clumsy attempts to hide the fact. As far as I can remember I’ve never even washed a plate, but Isabelle doesn’t have a dishwasher, the one she had is broken and she’s never replaced it. “There are a whole lot of things I always forget to do,” she says, adding, “I’ve never been much good with machines.” She pours a little detergent in the sink and I offer to help her. She laughs again. “Don’t be silly, I can do it myself.” But I insist, and find myself sharing the sink and a little sponge with her, earning some more laughter from her.
We put Giulia to bed and sit down on the sofa. I find an open book under the cushion. She starts to tidy it a little, but I stop her with a kiss. I kiss her on the mouth, on the neck, again on the mouth, I’m like a young boy trying to hold in his excitement. I don’t have the courage to go further, not because I don’t feel the desire, but out of respect, the kind I’ve never had for any other woman before. Not only is Giulia sleeping in the other room, but given how incredibly slowly time is passing when I’m with Isabelle, there’s no urgency. I’m not so crazy as to risk ruining everything.
I look at her: any physical defects I might have noticed the first time I saw her have vanished. The lines around her eyes, the fact that she doesn’t have the fresh skin or perfectly firm body of a twenty-year-old, with a round arse and no trace of cellulite, the kind of arse I’ve always looked for in a woman: none of that matters. Then I don’t see her any more, I feel her and that’s enough, it all boils down to a matter of skin. And the gentle way
she disarms me, the confidence visible in every gesture, the way she confronts life as if it would never end. She surrenders to the passing of time, trying to savour what remains, and simultaneously digging within to know herself better every day. I wonder if it’s possible to look someone in the eyes and see all this in such a short time. Isabelle, with her inexplicable ability to slow my life right down, shows me that yes, it is possible.
We interrupt our adolescent kisses to catch our breaths, and lie on the sofa talking, looking up at the ceiling beams, the veins in the wood with their whimsical shapes. Isabelle strokes my hair and tells me about a book she’s reading for the third time. She says there are certain masterpieces that should be read several times, life is a constant evolution. Reopening a book that has been important to you can mean setting out on a new journey, perhaps a different one, being able to catch references and meanings that may have escaped you on a first reading. She has a visceral vision of things, the ability to focus only on the present without worrying too much about what has been and what will be. And she makes me feel like that book. If she had leafed through me a few months ago, she might not have been able to read me. I myself have never stopped to read myself, and the paradox of this sudden race against time is that since everything has speeded up, in reality I’ve stopped running. And even though physically, in these past few months, I’ve tried to keep up with my own life, my real race began a long time ago. And now that she’s stroking my hair, with gentle, circular, soporific movements, it’s like stopping for the first time, in every sense. The profound tiredness I’ve been dragging around with me for too long is gradually overtaken by the deepest sleep I can ever remember.
I sleep all the hours it seems to me I’ve never slept. A sleep
expanding
through time, weightless, dreamless, a pure, regenerative
sleep. I sleep so well that when I wake up, I forget my name for a moment. Then I see her smiling at me. “I like to watch you sleep,” she says.
I realize it’s already dark.