Limbo (52 page)

Mr. Rubino said he had to go away. He thanked him for having taken such good care of him and then he gave him a big tip. Unfortunately he didn't have time to say goodbye to his friends who lived across the way, Miss Vanessa Paris and her daughter, Alessia, and he was very sorry. He begged him to say goodbye to the little girl and to tell her that the Cat had to go on one of his voyages for the Marquis of Carabas, but that he would help her find her teeth soon. She had to touch her gums with her finger every evening, and every time she felt the bump grow a bit, she should think of the Cat, because the Cat was thinking of her. “That's exactly what he said,” Gianni swears on his father's head. It was an odd conversation, but Mr. Rubino was really shaken up. Then he begged Gianni to keep something that belonged to Sergeant Paris. And not to tell anyone—not a soul—that he had given it to him. And to give it to her as soon as he saw her. He had to give it directly to her, not to anyone else, ever. The “something” is an iPhone box. Manuela shakes it, but there's no phone inside.

“He didn't tell you anything else, for me?” Manuela asks. Her mouth is dry, her heart topsy-turvy. She feels she's in a bizarre, evil dream. The cats brush against her legs, their yellow eyes glisten in the dark living room. “No, I'm sorry,” Gianni says. “Mr. Rubino was really upset. That's for sure. I think he didn't want to go, but that it wasn't up to him. Then he got in a dark car, and the two who had stayed in the lobby showed us their cards and questioned us, first the concierge, then me, then Adel. They asked us all the same questions, we talked about it afterward. They wanted to know who Mr. Rubino had seen in Ladispoli, who knew he was at the Bellavista, who had called him. Oh, and if we had noticed anything unusual. Suspicious characters, people not from around here. I'm just a waiter, I explained, other than our regular clients, everyone is from somewhere else, this is a beach town. They wanted to see the reservations, and wrote down the names. They criticized us because we don't ask for a phone number when someone reserves a table, but I explained that this is a simple place, and besides, we're never full in the off season, if someone who reserved doesn't show up, no harm done. The concierge recalled that last Monday two men came asking if we had a room. He couldn't take reservations—the company had informed him that the hotel was reserved—and so he told them no. The men took a good look around. According to the concierge, they weren't tourists and they weren't interested in a room, but there are lots of strange people around, and he assumed they were our competition, come to spy on the new décor.”

Vanessa and Manuela decline his offer of coffee or an aperitif. Unfortunately they're in a hurry to get back, they say. Gianni apologizes if he chattered on too long, he's a gossip, everybody always tells him, even Mr. Rubino. The Paris sisters thank him and wish him a pleasant vacation. “This is my vacation,” he sighs, gesturing to his father, the dogs, and the cats. He is a sad, kind man, and it occurs to Manuela that he was Mattia's only interlocutor for all those days, and then they stole Mattia away from him. Mattia talked with Gianni Tribolato every morning and every evening—about inconsequential yet necessary things. About spaghetti, clams, mascarpone cake, cats, nothing at all. Mattia said something to the Bellavista waiter, something just for him, but for her not a word.

As soon as Vanessa starts up the car and pulls into the bumpy track that cuts through the artichoke fields and connects with the main road, Manuela opens the box. Inside is a packet of letters, all in envelopes from the Bellavista Hotel. And on each one is written—by hand—
MANUELA PARIS
, nothing more. No stamp, no address.

22

REWIND

BELLAVISTA HOTEL, JANUARY 6

I died on March 16, three years ago, in the parking lot of a restaurant overlooking the sea. The strangest thing is that I didn't realize it. It was midnight, give or take a minute. I'd had a few glasses of wine, but I was completely sober. I was sleepy, really tired, in a bad mood because the evening had gone all wrong. I don't know if you've ever gone to a conference: I go to at least two a year—one in Italy and one abroad. The organizers usually choose a pleasant spot—a city with plenty of cultural attractions, an island, or a castle—to tempt people to attend. Everyone prepares a paper to read, and they listen distractedly to those of their colleagues—it's really about networking. You're there to be seen, catch up, make connections. You meet people, go out to dinner, sometimes you end up in bed together. The whole thing lasts three days, then everyone says goodbye, maybe you see them again at the airport, and then you forget about everyone for a year.

I can't tell you the name of the city, I'm determined never to mention it. My silence is my insurance. I ask that you burn this letter when you get to the end, if you even get there. I am violating an agreement, I know you didn't ask me to, but I owe it to you. You left almost without saying goodbye, went away without warning me, you're angry with me and I think I understand why. You talk a lot about honesty. I'm not—and couldn't be—required to be honest with you, but I will be. It was a beautiful city, windy, on the sea, in southern Italy. I'd never been there before, and I'll never go back there again. All things considered, I even have some happy memories of the place. The sun was shining, and you could see the cliffs of the port from the conference hall.

I was scheduled to speak on the last day. My paper was on experimental cataract microsurgery. I showed a film clip of an operation where I used a new method, made possible by the invention of an intraocular acrylic lens. Then I highlighted the advantages of making a microincision—just 2.2 millimeters—in the crystalline lens, which could drastically reduce the duration of the operation as well as the risk of endophthalmitis and post-op complications. The whole thing lasted twenty minutes: that's how much time each participant was given, and I never run overtime; I respect the other speakers because I expect them to respect me.

During the coffee break the members of the American delegation complimented me; they thought my working hypothesis was very intriguing, we exchanged e-mail addresses and planned on sharing the results of our latest experiments. They asked me if I might be interested in working at their institute for a while. I indicated that I was open to the idea. Three years ago cataract microsurgery occupied more or less sixty percent of my day. The rest I dedicated to my family, sex, and mountaineering. A pretty simple life, all in all.

At the end of the afternoon session I met a colleague I'll call Livia—in any case, her name doesn't matter. She's two or three years younger than me, she lives near Turin and is a good, ambitious ophthalmologist. I won't hide from you that we had a casual relationship. We'd see each other almost every year, at the ophthalmology convention, and more than once I ended up in her room. I should tell you right up front that I have always liked having sex in hotel rooms. I hope you're not offended. Maybe I'm an exhibitionist, but the idea that someone might hear me turns me on instead of making me anxious. I love leaving my own viscous fluids behind on the sheets, towels, the carpet. Maybe it's the animal in me, marking my territory. The fact is that fucking in an anonymous place where you have no memories is relaxing; it helps empty the mind of all of life's junk. Sex with my colleague was pretty detached, devoid of any sentimental implications. I didn't even have her phone number, nor she mine. When I said goodbye to her, I never knew whether I'd see her again, and it didn't much matter. Over the course of a dozen or so years, we spent a few happy hours together, and that was really it. I respected her, but I can't say I particularly liked her. She was a fun distraction for me. And I for her. We were equals. I wish I had never met her, but I know it's not her fault, and I can't blame her.

Livia wasn't alone, though. She was talking with two colleagues I didn't know in the lobby of the conference hall. From her deferential behavior I gathered that they were important. I distrust powerful people. The Greeks say that it's risky to be friends with them, it's like riding a donkey. She introduced me. We shook hands, with that courteous indifference of strangers. The older one, tall, elegant, with a white mustache, was the director of a private clinic in the city; the other, a plump, sweaty doctor with a crackling voice and a red, veiny nose, was probably about my age. Unlike us, they weren't wearing plasticized name tags on their lapels. Livia and I locked eyes, silently questioning each other; we were both thinking the same thing. She whispered that she had to have dinner with them, but she'd really like it if I went with her. It was clear that she really wanted to get to know the older one, but was counting on being able to get away early, and wanted to spend the night with me.

I had a seat on the 8:00 plane the next morning. I was complicating my life, because we'd get back to the hotel around eleven at the earliest, and if I spent the night with her I wouldn't get much sleep. I was thirty-eight, not twenty, alas, and certain activities were starting to take their toll. But Livia insisted, and I was happy to end my trip in her bed—she hadn't come to the conference the previous two years because she had a small child and had stayed home to care for him. So I told our two colleagues—whose names I had already forgotten but could no longer ask—that I was grateful for the invitation, and that I'd be happy to join them. We agreed to meet at the waterfront restaurant a few miles out of town. Livia and I caught a cab, and held hands when it entered the underpass. “You look great,” she told me. “But you should cut your hair, it's too long, it's messy, it makes you look less authoritative, more like a student.” Her comment annoyed me. And if I had told her I preferred not to go, if I had eaten at the hotel buffet with the other conferencegoers and gone to bed early, I would still be alive now.

The restaurant was very fancy, the fish very fresh. But I was in a hurry to leave with Livia, so I didn't eat much. Experience had taught me that there is nothing worse for sex than a heavy meal. Every once in a while, to encourage me to sit through the boredom, Livia would rub the toe of her shoe along my calf, and that contact held me in a state of permanent excitement. I wasn't very talkative because all my energy was concentrated there. I know you won't understand, it's different for women, I guess. But at ten o'clock—they still hadn't brought us our main course—Livia got a phone call. “Oh my God, no,” she exclaimed, getting up. Confused, upset, she said she had to go back to the hotel right away to get her bag, she was going to try and catch the last flight to Turin, her husband had been in an accident, he had been rushed to the hospital, it was an emergency. I offered to go with her, but she didn't want me to. She felt guilty, which I can understand. She barely even said goodbye. I never saw her again, and I'm not sorry. But she should have sought me out, she owed it to me. Of all human weaknesses, cowardice is the most repugnant, and I can't forgive her.

So I found myself having dinner with two strangers. They were understanding about the emergency and very pleasant, but the mood was far from relaxed. I sensed a powerful tension between the two of them, which my presence served in some way to soothe: I was involved in a game whose rules I did not know. I wanted to get up and leave, but didn't know how. Unfortunately my parents were old-fashioned, bourgeois, and I was raised with impeccable manners. We talked about medicine, so as not to sit there in silence. But they weren't oculists or microsurgery experts and at that time I was very specialized. The younger one was a gynecologist—I instinctively think less of men who stick gloves, mirrors, and that phallus-shaped ultrasound machine in women's vaginas. I didn't understand what they had to do with the conference. The gynecologist was passionate about sailing, he had a boat in the marina, too bad I was leaving tomorrow, or we could have sailed out to the islands, the weather was supposed to be perfect. The older one boasted about his clinic, an oasis of excellence in a region with poor health care; he told me he had offered Livia a job in the ophthalmology department, he knew she wanted to move back home. “Oh, I always thought she was from Turin,” I said. They seemed like two completely normal guys, a bit arrogant, but people in my profession often are. The older one got up from the table first, without waiting for coffee, and I stayed with the younger one.

He was really anxious, but in no hurry to go. I don't know how, but I ended up having to sit through a depressing harangue about the statistically proven increase in tumors in the area, potentially due to the radioactive waste dumped into the sea, just a few miles off the coast. He wanted to know what effect radioactivity could have on the visual system. I explained that the retina is not particularly radiosensitive, but the crystalline lens, if exposed to radiation, can lose its transparency and develop a cataract. I know I didn't seem terribly eager to express my opinion on radioactive waste. I never tell my colleagues what I'm thinking, it's not worth it, even hospitals have become political minefields, you have to know how to navigate them. When I was young, I was quite an environmentalist and took part in antinuclear demonstrations, but frankly I'd only be interested in the problem now if criminals were dumping radioactive waste in my sea. But I vacationed in Greece, I'd remodeled a house on the island of Santorini, in Imerovigli, a village as white as snow on the edge of the caldera—for me it was the closest thing to an earthly Paradise. When I looked at my watch, it was 11:50. It was late, I really had to go. I wanted to pay for dinner, but the gynecologist explained that we were the older man's guests. We couldn't be rude. I asked the waiter to call me a taxi, and again the gynecologist said it was out of the question. I was a guest, he would drive me back to the hotel in his car.

It was drizzling. The parking lot was dark except for two streetlights that cast a yellow glow on the gravel. When we'd arrived, there was a kid showing people where to park, but he wasn't there when we left, and the chair next to the gate was empty. The restaurant was still crowded, and the guests milling around the parking lot cast dark shadows. Their voices blended with the murmur of the sea. I remember one couple with a BMW because of the woman: she'd had a terrible nose job but was still very beautiful. We didn't have an umbrella so we jogged to his car, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, which costs a hundred and twenty thousand euros. I noted the make because I would have liked to buy one myself, but I'd hesitated—in part because of the cost and in part because it polluted a lot. My last thought—I am ashamed to say—was that if a hick gynecologist from the provinces can afford one, then so can I. Not to brag, but I was an established professional. In my private practice alone—not counting my hospital salary—I made ten thousand euros a month. There were times when I would go home with pockets full of money. I'd pull bills out of my jacket and pants pockets, sometimes I'd forget them in my clothes and the dry cleaners would give them back to me perfectly washed and pressed, as if they'd just been minted. At that moment I decided that as soon as I got home I would buy myself a Porsche Cayenne, to hell with environmental scruples and particulate emission impact; it was a terrific car. I gazed at it admiringly, grateful for my good fortune, my talents, my life. I had it all.