“Okay,” I said, excited by the idea of getting out of this place. We slid off our stools and walked to the elevators. He leaned on my shoulder with one hand, keeping the other free to shake hands with people. In the elevator, since he didn’t know anybody in it, he leaned back against the wall. When we came to an abrupt halt on the ground floor, the slight jolt made him open his eyes again.
The big atrium was deserted and the ushers were chatting among themselves as they checked people’s passes. I was afraid they’d take my pass away and ask me where I was going, but nothing like that happened and we pushed open the glass doors and found ourselves outside in the heat of the sun.
The studios were a couple of kilometers away and we took my old Alfa Romeo. Corrado looked at the traffic with his eyes reduced to two slits and his elbow out the window. The wind blew in, whirling alcohol fumes around the car. You could get drunk just by sitting next to him. “It’s not as bad as it seems on the first day,” he said suddenly. “You’ll get by, you’ll see.” It was surprising that he’d guessed what I was thinking. I said if the worst came to the worst I’d buy myself a pipe. “Right,” he said. “Apparently that works, except that when it falls in your glass it’s hard to fish out.”
But there were few guys as fucked-up as he was. At the studio gates the ushers greeted him like one of them. Inside, it was no different. Everyone he met greeted him as if they were the best of friends and offered him a drink, but as soon as he turned his back they smiled because even if he was the greatest director television had ever had, the only one who could go into the CEO’s office without knocking, they all knew that his time was up and there was nothing special about greeting him.
By about one o’clock, he was completely gone. The corridors were full of bizarrely dressed people because they were in the middle of shooting two historical series. We saw a bit player dressed as one of Napoleon’s soldiers leaning against a bathroom door.
“Good man,” Corrado said to him, opening the door, “did you do it for your Emperor?”
The man looked at him without understanding, but gave a stupid smile anyway. “Hello, chief,” he said.
“You know the story of Napoleon’s soldier?” Corrado said sleepily as he used the stall next to mine, making a mysterious amount of noise as he did.
“Yes,” I said.
It was the story of a lancer at Austerlitz who advanced ahead of everyone else, amid the smoke and the cannon fire, until he lost his legs and arms, but still continued to advance fearlessly, crawling across the field with the flag between his teeth. That evening, in the hospital, Napoleon gave him a medal, and asked him if he had done it for his Emperor.
“No,” said the soldier.
“For your flag?”
“No.”
“For your country?”
“No.”
“So why did you do it?”
“For a bet,” the soldier replied.
“A nice story,” Corrado said, “very instructive.”
Then he fell silent, and after a moment I heard a dull thud and a groan. I rushed out of my stall and into his. He was leaning against the wall, holding a swollen, bleeding hand to his chest. He had punched the tiled wall and was looking at me with eyes full of tears and astonishment. I was going to help him when I realized he was about to throw up. Just in time, I managed to get him to bend over the bowl.
“Oh, Christ!” he was moaning. “Oh, Christ!”
Then I realized he wasn’t the one moaning, I was. When he turned, he almost fell on top of me. It was an embrace, but mainly it was the need to cling to something that wasn’t the toilet bowl.
“Sit down,” I said, “I’ll go call someone.”
But he was shaking his big head. “Who are you going to call? There’s no one to call.” He was weeping. “We don’t have anyone anymore! We don’t have anyone anymore!”
All at once, a huge, frightening sob echoed around the tiled walls of the bathroom. I looked at him, startled. Christ, how could someone allow himself to get in such a state? Instinctively, I started to retreat until I found myself in the doorway. “I’m getting the hell out of here,” I said. In the corridor I spotted Napoleon’s soldier. He looked worried. “Call someone,” I said, and hurried to the exit. On the sidewalk, I stopped for a moment to warm myself in the sun. Then I got in the old Alfa Romeo and drove to Piazza Navona.
* * *
The square was flooded with sunlight. It was break time, and I sat down at Domiziano’s and ordered some cheese sandwiches, hoping to see Graziano. Every now and again, I’d look up at the church clock. The sandwiches were edible, but the thought of going back to that building took away my appetite. I smoked one cigarette after another and watched the hands of the clock move. By half past two, things had turned serious; at a quarter to three, after a final attempt to stand up, I closed my eyes and counted to a hundred. When I opened them again it was too late to get back in time and I knew that instead of that glass building I would go to the offices of the Corriere dello Sport. The thought of the pleasant forty-year-old wondering where I’d ended up amused me. Then I ordered another beer and started eating the sandwiches, thinking about how to save face.
“Christ, what a getup!” Rosario said when I walked into the newspaper office. “You look like someone.”
“Yes,” I said, “Lord Jim.” Then I asked him if the offer of a permanent job was still open. He thought it was, but we’d have to wait until the head of department arrived. He was pleased. He liked the idea that we’d be working together, because with all these girls around he felt like a rooster in a henhouse, and also because we’d be able to split the night shift. Even the head of department, when he arrived, was pleased that I’d made up my mind. He was a blue-eyed pit bull who kept his hands on the armrests of his chair as if constantly having to restrain himself from jumping on you. He put me straight to work, and I hammered away like a fury at the typewriter, transcribing one article after another, until the end of the shift, when the girls suggested opening a bottle of bubbly. “We’ve trapped you,” they said, but they were pleased too.
The worst part came when I found myself on the street with an empty evening in front of me. I couldn’t go home because Renzo would be looking for me and I still had to think of a valid excuse, so I made the rounds of the bars on Piazza del Popolo, looking for Graziano, but he seemed to have melted away. Then I thought of Claudia. I hadn’t heard from her since she’d left that note on my door. I’d have liked to see her, but I hesitated. Not that I thought I’d annoy her by showing up—too much time had passed since we’d had our affair—it was more that her life had gone in a direction where there was no room for me anymore. That kind of thing happened. In the end I bought a bunch of flowers and went to wait for her outside her building.
It was on a little square in the back streets of Trastevere and she arrived at dinnertime, carrying a plastic bag filled with provisions. She was wearing pants and a blue sweater. Her clogs, which she always wore in summer, made her swing her hips even more than usual, and her erect back emphasized the roundness of her breasts. I let her walk past me without seeing me, then followed her up the steps and grabbed hold of her bag. “Gazzara!” she said loudly. “Flowers!” She threw her arms around my neck and we stood there like that, hugging while the doorman looked on. She pulled away and looked me in the face, closely. Whatever she saw, she said nothing. She took the bag and the flowers and continued up the stairs. From the haste with which she did this, I realized she was really pleased to see me.
In the apartment—I walked in by myself while she went to pick up Biondella from the neighbor—I was struck by the usual smell of smoke, cooking, and eau de cologne I knew so well. I went to the window. The promise of a long, mild summer evening hung over the little square, where the waiters stood between the tables of the trattorias, waiting for the first customers to arrive.
“What a suit! Where did you steal it?” Claudia said, coming in. One more remark about my suit and I would take a
pair of shears to it. Claudia handed the little girl over to me and I took her and went and sat down on the couch. She had grown in those months, with that slow, inexorable premeditation unique to children. She was unsure whether she recognized me, but in the end she sat there and we started playing while Claudia made dinner. After a while, with her usual wisdom, she came and took the kid from me and put her in her playpen. She treated her with tender ease, and as she bent down, seeing those two blond heads close together made me think what rotten luck the guy had had who’d gotten her pregnant before marrying her and then gone and died in a motorcycle accident.
“How are things at school?”
“Tough,” she said. “Like walking through a minefield.”
“Still fighting with the other teachers?”
“Oh yes,” she said as I started looking at the bookshelves to see if there was anything new. I found Dylan Thomas’s letters to Vernon Watkins. “To hear him, you’d think Thomas owes him everything,” Claudia said. “It’s true, though—it’s always a bad idea to die before everyone else. Take that work of mine off the table, dinner’s ready,” she said. I removed her pupils’ exercise books from the table. We’d spent some good evenings, once upon a time, doing the marking together.
“What wine do you have?” I said.
“The best discount bulk wine I could find.”
“Forget it,” I said, slipping out the door. I went back out on the street and managed to get a bottle of already chilled Soave at a trattoria.
“This was Hemingway’s favorite wine when he was in Venice, did you know that?” Claudia said as we sat down to dinner. For some reason, this made me feel emotional. “What’s the matter?” she said. “What a face you’re making.” Then she put a hand on my arm. “No,” she said, “don’t tell me.”
The little girl was asleep and we ate in silence, listening to the noises coming in through the window. When the phone rang, Claudia gave a start and raised her head. She let it ring several times, looking at me. Then she went to answer it.
“Hi,” was the first thing she said after she lifted the receiver. She had her back to me, and for a while all I heard was yes and no. “Yes,” she said abruptly, “but not this evening, I’m sorry.” The person at the other end insisted and she gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I really can’t. Tomorrow, yes. I’m sorry.”
It was difficult for me to hold on and not signal to her that I was going. It was also dishonest, but I was in no position to allow myself to be honest. When she came back and sat down, her face was red. “The thing is,” she said, “he loves me…” I searched desperately for something witty to say but couldn’t think of anything, so I kept quiet. “Are you staying?” she said, putting her hand on my arm again.
“If I may.”
She nodded, lost in thought for a moment, then crossed her elbows and, in a single movement, pulled her tight-fitting T-shirt up over her soft, full, naked breasts. My heart started beating again in my chest. It had seemed motionless for months. Still silent, Claudia stood up from the table and took off her pants and her red panties simultaneously, with that dancing pace that I loved in her more than any other thing, and as she passed Biondella she gave the girl a brief caress. She pressed a lever and the couch folded out into an already made-up bed.
I felt her arms around my neck and her fingers in my hair, I put my forehead between her breasts, and we stayed like that, motionless, until her fingers began, lightly, curiously, to explore my body, recognizing me. Then, with an angry little cry, she started moving her hips. It was a slow movement of enticement, as ancient as the undertow on a beach, and I felt a forgotten languor spreading from my numbed belly. “Oh, Leo!” she said softly. “My dear, dear, dear Leo!” She stopped for a moment, just long enough for me to grab hold of her, then started swaying again, caressing me and saying over and over, “Come, Leo, come, come, come, my dear…” until, as if at a sudden blow, she quivered, arched, and planted her nails in my back.
I collapsed into sleep but awoke a few times during the night. One of those times, Claudia was smoking in silence, stroking my hair, while sounds came through the open window, voices in the trattorias on the square, the clatter of dishes, the melancholy sound of an out-of-tune trumpet. I lay there, motionless, and listened until I fell asleep again.
I slept until late morning, when I woke up to an empty apartment. I found coffee already made, along with a note. Stay as long as you like. I thought about it, as I lay in a bathtub filled with warm water, I thought about whether to stay or not, until I realized that the only thing I could do now was leave and never come back. And so, like so many other times, for the last time I got out of her bath, dried myself, finished the coffee, and left, firmly closing the door behind me.
7
Sitting on the terrace of his apartment, against the background of a red sunset crisscrossed by hundreds of swallows, Renzo was very understanding. He said he should have known from the start that it wasn’t the right job for me. It was embarrassing: one minute more and he’d be apologizing to me.
“Anyway,” he said, “it was a nice dream. Let’s forget about it.”
Viola’s little laugh came out a tad forced. “I fear you’re really incorrigible, Leo!” she said, before once again devoting her attention to the bare foot with which she was pushing the swing seat she was lying on, drinking grapefruit juice.
In the silence that followed, I had the feeling this whole business had cost Renzo more than he was letting on.
“Is the gentleman staying for dinner?” the servant asked, appearing among us with his usual murderous silence. He made no secret of his sympathy for me and at table always insisted on serving me twice.
“No,” I said, “I have an appointment.”
It wasn’t true, but when you smell gunpowder in the air, a dignified retreat is the best solution. Neither Renzo nor Viola insisted, so I stood up and took my jacket. Renzo simply asked me when I might be available for a game and Viola walked me to the door. “Phone Arianna,” she said before I left.
“Has something happened?”
“No, nothing,” she said, “but you know how she dramatizes.”
So I went to Signor Sandro’s bar to summon up the courage to call her. I spent the whole day trying, but always stopped before dialing the last digit. Despite a stiff pick-me-up, I just couldn’t do it, not even from Sandro’s, so I had a burger and went to the movies. Then I went back home and started reading again and it was two in the morning when, despite the hum of the radio, I heard her steps on the stairs. I went to the door and opened it before she could ring the bell and bring the house down. She must have poured a whole bottle of perfume over herself. I saw immediately that she was hysterical.
“I’m hysterical,” she said as she came in, then looked at me. “I thought the TV people must have given you the night shift. I was waiting for you outside here until five.”
Why didn’t she drop it, she knew perfectly well what had happened. “Drop it,” I said, “you know perfectly well what happened.”
“Me?” she said. “I don’t know anything.” Passing the mirror in the entryway, she reacted with annoyance, because although she couldn’t under any circumstances get by without looking at herself in the mirror, right now she was so hysterical she couldn’t even bear her own image. She kept going as far as the armchair and sat down on the book I’d left open. “Well,” she said, looking around her but as usual without drawing any comfort from it, “how does it feel to have gotten your head together?”
People going around remembering things I’d said was something I was starting to find hard to take. Arianna continued looking at me, while I felt almost physically the presence of the book under her thighs. As if she’d read my thoughts, she shifted just enough to pull it out and throw it on the floor. I felt anger overwhelm me.
“Pick up the book,” I said.
“No,” she said, “I’m not picking it up.”
“Pick up the book,” I said
again.
She looked at me defiantly. Then she bent down and picked up the book, but as soon as she had it in her hands, she couldn’t resist, she tore it in half and threw it back on the floor. When she looked at me again something in her was broken. “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I’ll buy you another copy, all right? I’ll buy you another copy!” I turned my back on her and stared at the wall, trying to control myself. “I was so worried,” she said. “I thought something had happened to you.” Her nails were digging into the palms of her hands.
“Nothing happened,” I said. “I just couldn’t take it, that’s all.” I gathered the scattered pages of the book from the floor.
“Couldn’t you have made an effort?” she said.
“For who?” I said. “For what? You yourself said that I’m me.”
“It’s not true!” she said, tears in her eyes. “You’re not a screwup.”
“Who said I was?”
“Nobody,” she said hastily. “Nobody said it.”
“I found work as a journalist,” I said. It took guts to define my job at the Corriere dello Sport like that, but I felt I had to boost myself in some way.
She looked at me uncertainly. “Really?” she said. “You mean that sports paper hired you?” I said yes and she passed a hand across her forehead. “Oh, all right, then,” she said, calming down. She sat down again in the armchair. “Can I stay here?” she said. “I don’t know where else to go.”
So she’d quarreled with Eva. “Have you quarreled with Eva?” I said. It was like taking the lid off a pressure cooker.
She really couldn’t stand it anymore! She was tired of Eva behaving like a queen bee! Did I know that now she’d started flirting with that man, that humorist with the big nose, just because a comedy of his had achieved a modicum of success? How could anyone be such a stupid snob? Livio was literally devastated, and did I know what she did? She embraced that other man right in front of him! And then she went around passing judgment on everyone else, her of all people! What was I doing now?
Last Summer in the City Page 11