I got off the streetcar and started wandering around the market. It was overflowing with merchandise, especially fruit and fir trees heaped up in the corners, spreading an absurd forest smell. I bought a bunch of grapes and started eating them. They were so cold they set my teeth on edge. As I ate, I looked at my home. It was the same as ever, but it still didn’t arouse any emotion in me. It was the street that ruined everything. It had been a clean street once, but now it made me sick to my stomach. I finished the grapes, including the stalk, and made to cross over to the building but stopped.
My father was coming out the front door. I was about to call to him, then I thought I’d follow him and slip my hand under his arm, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and see the look of surprise on his face, but I didn’t move. In appearance, he hadn’t changed, his body was big inside his coat, his stride still soft and imposing, but I knew that if I looked in his eyes, I would see how much he’d aged. I stood there, not moving, while he walked to his car. He opened the car door, then looked back toward the building. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw my mother at the window. He gestured to her with his hand, a wave that was also an admonition to go back inside so she wouldn’t catch cold, but she didn’t move, just smiled and gestured in return, telling him to go. It was a ritual I’d never seen them perform. Maybe it had started when they’d been left on their own. My father got in the car and sat for a while, waiting for the engine to warm up, with that incredible respect he had for inanimate things. All the while, my mother stayed at the window, but it was closed now, so I couldn’t see her well, couldn’t see how she was. When at last the car set off, wheezing toward the intersection, my mother disappeared from the window.
I still didn’t move. I’d never seen them looking so calm. Of course, they weren’t thinking about me, so why should I bother them? It was two days before Christmas and everything must have been organized already for lunch with their daughters, their daughters’ husbands, and their daughters’ children. All good people, but what did I have in common with them? I could already hear my mother’s questions, see my father’s silent looks, hear my sisters’ comments from the height of the compact little mound of respectability on which they’d built their nests. I’d left so long ago, why should I disturb them at Christmas, of all times?
Anyway, I had to do something, at least move. It was too cold to just stand there. So I went in search of a delicatessen and wandered around until I found one that was okay. Inside, it was more lush and more resplendent than a cathedral. I ordered a hot dog with extra sauerkraut and a little mustard and ate it as I headed back to the train station on foot. The hot dog was excellent, well worth a trip to Milan, truth be told.
It was strange, but I didn’t even feel sad. Not too sad, at least. A little bit fucked-up, that’s for sure. After a while, I caught the streetcar. With luck, I might find a good book at the station kiosk and a train that wasn’t too crowded. And I was lucky. The book was good, and the train practically empty. The sadness only hit me when the train pulled out and I realized that if it had headed in another direction, any direction, it would have been all the same to me.
* * *
At the end of January I received a letter from Glauco and Serena. It was the first one in two years and as soon as I saw it I also knew it would be the last. They were coming back. They told me the day and the number of their flight and I thought I should go to meet them. I spent two days tidying the apartment. I had to get help from the doorman, because there were lots of diggers in the valley now and they were raising a god-awful amount of dust. For months I’d been neglecting the place and there was a lot to do before the three rooms began to look decent.
I realized they’d changed as soon as I saw them getting off the plane. I had difficulty in distinguishing them from the other passengers, then I recognized Glauco’s boxer’s stride and, next to him, the slim figure of Serena under a poncho. They waved their arms as they came toward me. Glauco was the first to reach me. He’d put on weight and was much jollier than when he’d left. He must have gotten his heavyweight title back. He shook my hand warmly. Serena, though, kissed me on the lips. “Don’t look at me,” she said, “it’s been a terrible flight.” Actually, she looked just fine, and when she saw the old Alfa Romeo she laughed. “You still have that old thing?” she said. “How softhearted you are!”
We put the suitcases in the backseat and the three of us squeezed into the front. Glauco was the most contented. He’d had two shows in the best galleries in Mexico City. As for Serena, there wasn’t a critic who hadn’t been crazy about her set designs for Andrea Chenier and Traviata. Did I know what they’d been called? The “two brilliant Italians,” that’s what they’d been called. And I had no idea of the money they’d made. Numbers that would blow me away, with all those military men and those politicians. True, Glauco had been spat on by a student, but they’d learned to care less about protesters. It wasn’t even clear what those people were trying to say. All they were good at was getting themselves shot down on the streets.
“Anyway,” Serena said, “we made a whole lot of money and we can’t wait to go back. How are things here?”
“Much the same,” I said.
“How can you bear to live here?” Glauco said. “We’re going back as soon as we can. Right, darling?”
They hardly noticed how tidy I’d made the apartment, and it didn’t stay tidy for long after their suitcases started an avalanche. Serena extracted a Mexican nightgown from her suitcase, took a shower, and sat down on the couch to drink a bottle of tequila bought at the duty-free store.
“There’s nothing like tequila,” she said, “it’s fuego! So, are you going to tell us about you or not?”
“Much the same,” I said. “No, I don’t drink.”
“Of course, you can stay here as long as you like. You look a bit exhausted.”
“He can stay forever if he wants,” Glauco said, coming in from the bathroom in shorts. “It’s not like you’ll want to go on living here.” But he didn’t say anything about the concrete skeleton that had taken the place of the trees in the valley.
“I’m going back to the hotel,” I said. “I’ve already notified them. They’re giving me my old room. But tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”
They didn’t, and, after a last drink, they started unpacking their suitcases and putting their clothes away in the closet in the bedroom. Each thing they took out had a story and they insisted on telling me every single one.
“This is for you,” Serena said, giving me a small bronze totem. “It’s the god of fertility.” It was squat and surly, with two red stones for eyes.
“You old lecher,” Glauco said, sitting down on the bed. “God knows how many girls you’ve had in my bed. What is it with you and women? I’ve never understood why they had such a weakness for you. And what about your friends?”
“Graziano died,” I said.
“Oh, Christ, what are you saying?” he said. “I’m sorry. He was one of us.”
Of course. I was about to tell Glauco what I thought of him when Serena came in holding the red robe. “Have you kept this rag?” she said. “Why didn’t you throw it away?” She kissed me on the lips. I really couldn’t stand the two of them and I was sorry I’d told them the hotel room wouldn’t be ready until the next day, but there was the matter of my books and clothes to sort out and one way or another I needed an extra day. Just so as not to spend any more time with them, I went to the newspaper office even though it was my day off.
When I got back in the evening, they were watching TV. They’d had it repaired that same afternoon. I sat with them long enough to have a smoke, then went to my room. For the first time I closed the door. It took me ages to get to sleep, because ever since I’d stopped drinking I’d suffered from insomnia. I heard them moving around the apartment, between the bathroom and the hallway, and for a few minutes I also heard their voices, with Serena laughing and Glauco calling her an idiot. Then they closed their b
edroom door. After a while I heard the bedsprings creaking. I switched on the lamp and started reading. When Serena went to the bathroom, she must have noticed the light filtering from under my door because I heard her laugh.
The next morning Glauco left early to look for a studio to rent and Serena brought me my coffee in bed. She was wearing the red robe, open at the chest.
“Make room,” she said, sitting down on the bed while I was drinking coffee. “Why did you keep it?” she said, touching the hem of the robe.
“I thought you’d still need it.”
“This rag?” she said, laughing. Then she stroked the blanket. “You don’t look rested,” she said.
“I haven’t slept much,” I said.
“Neither have I,” she said.
“It must have been the flight,” I said, thinking about the time, two years earlier, when I’d kissed her surrounded by suitcases.
“You could say that,” she said, laughing. Then I told her I had to finish getting my books together, making it clear I thought she should get the hell out. She was shocked for a moment, then shrugged and laughed again. “Strange,” she said. “You were always the strangest of Glauco’s friends.”
When I was alone, I peered into my cup. There was still a little coffee left and I finished it. Then I stretched out again on the bed and lay there listening to the noise of the diggers.
10
Of all the hotels I’d lived in, the one behind Campo de’ Fiori was my favorite. I liked going back there in the evening, walking through the side streets and across the empty, silent squares. It was the old stone heart of the city that visionary architects had built five centuries earlier on the orders of stern pontiffs, where a disproportionate number of churches, hemmed in by houses, lifted their travertine summits to indicate the possible cruelty of heaven. By day, the area was an ants’ nest, but toward evening you became aware that you were below the level of the river and on the walls of the houses stone plaques with dates on them bore witness to the levels reached by long-ago floods. Sheltered by higher embankments, the area had dried out, as it were. Large cracks furrowed the walls of the palaces, the plaster was coming away, and when you walked the streets and peered in through the windows you could see the decorated ceilings falling to pieces. The artisans in their workshops always looked as if they were repairing something.
I was seeing a lot of a girl named Sandra. She was twenty-two, and we’d meet on Piazza Navona, have dinner, and catch a movie. She loved the art houses, but they were always showing movies I’d already seen and when eventually I told her to choose between me and the art houses she chose the art houses. Apart from that, I went to the newspaper office every day, though I wasn’t working with Rosario anymore. An article I’d written, substituting for a sick journalist, had opened the doors of the newsroom to me. I couldn’t think of any reason not to accept, but Rosario took it badly because I was doing what he’d always dreamed of doing and earning more than him. I was sad that he’d grown cold toward me because he’d helped me a lot in the hard times, and I tried to go see him as often as possible in the copy department but that just irritated him even more and in the end I stopped bothering.
In the spring, our tennis writer published an interview with Livio Stresa. He was playing tournaments again and the journalist wondered if at the age of forty and after such a long period of inactivity he was still capable of good things. The tournament was being held in Rome and I followed it in the articles we published. To everyone’s surprise, Stresa played some great matches and was lucky enough to get to the finals, where he’d be playing against a twenty-year-old Pole who’d just defeated the top seed. I thought about it for a while, then decided to go see the match.
It was a gorgeous spring day and in the stands there were movie actors, directors, writers, journalists, the most beautiful girls in the city, and those women whose pictures you usually saw in the glossy magazines. There was a great sense of anticipation and everyone was rushing to grab the best seats. I looked for the group in the center stands, where the most expensive seats were, but didn’t see them. Instead, I spotted them on the lower stands at the far end of the court, where you could watch the match without moving your head and root for your favorite just a few meters from the backs of the players. They were all there, wearing strange little white hats—the Diaconos, Eva, the young Russian, the model, the humorist, and the writer with the white mustache, who had published a book in the winter that hadn’t won a major prize. Only Arianna was missing. When Stresa came out onto the court the whole group got to its feet and yelled, but he was very nervous and barely looked at them.
It was a long, brutal match. Stresa was a good player, cool and intelligent, while the Pole, who was blond and much appreciated by the ladies, played with real passion. It was immediately clear that the winner would be whoever was best able to withstand the pressure.
For almost three hours the group swung between excitement and despondency. Whenever Stresa played on that side of the court, they cheered so much that several times the line umpire had to ask for silence. It was definitely a nail-biter, and when at the beginning of the fifth set Stresa started to shoot his backhand into the net I also cheered him on. I don’t know why I did. Maybe because I was cured, maybe because he was suffering in that subtle, cruel way made up of silence and solitude in which tennis can make people suffer, maybe because I’d seen him handing a glass to Eva in the lobby of a theater, and because now, down there, in the middle of all these people yelling, he no longer looked like a disorientated bird but like a fighting cock with bloodied spurs. Or maybe because both of us once had Arianna in our arms and lost her.
The last set was played in a nervous hush as the two players exchanged deadly volleys. On a drop shot of Stresa’s, the Pole made a last leap and caught the ball under the net, lifting it just enough to put it back in play. I saw Stresa standing motionless at the other end of the court, his eyes closed. A cry went up. I recognized Eva’s voice. Then, from the stands, applause erupted as if at last everyone had been set free. The Pole’s nerves gave out all at once and he burst into copious tears. Stresa managed to smile and put an arm around his opponent’s neck to congratulate him. I was pleased I’d cheered him on. I’d always liked good losers.
I headed for the exit, through the crowd. I was almost at the gates when I heard someone call my name. It was Eva. She must have lost the rest of the group, because she was alone.
“What are you doing?” she said hesitantly. “Aren’t you going to say hello?” Then we were pushed back toward the stands and she had to grab hold of my arm. “God, what horrible people!” she said, frightened. Her face was red from the sun and her dark glasses reflected the crowd around us.
“I didn’t see you,” I said. “I feel sorry for Livio, he played a great game.”
But it wasn’t Stresa she wanted to talk about. The crowds scared her and she kept looking around nervously. “Have you heard from Arianna?” she asked, without letting go of my arm. “Did you know that man doesn’t want me to see her? Did you know she hates me? I really hoped I’d see her today!”
I too looked around. I saw some of the group. The crowd had scattered them and they were searching for one another, calling out one another’s names.
Eva wouldn’t let go of my arm. “Are you sure you haven’t heard from her? I beg you! Tell me if you know something,” she said with a moan, as the multitude struggled on the surface of her glasses.
“No,” I said, “I don’t know anything. If I knew something I’d tell you.” It was true, I would have told her.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I know you would tell me. You understand things.” She had a moment’s hesitation, then held out her hand. “Don’t you want to shake hands?” she said. I shook her hand and she said, “Forgive me. I really would like you to forgive me.”
Then, I don’t know why, I asked her for forgiveness too.
Someone called out her name. She turned to me one last time before walking away. T
hen the crowd overflowed her glasses and she was lost in the middle.
* * *
I knew I would see Arianna again. I sensed it. It was one afternoon, a week later. She was walking idly along Via Frattina, window-shopping. I’d just left the newspaper and was headed back to the hotel on foot. She saw me.
“I can’t believe it!” she said excitedly.
“Yes, you can,” I said. “I survived.”
“I’ll never forgive you,” she said. “What have you been up to?” she went on, grabbing me by the wrists. “Let me see. You don’t even have any scars.” Then she looked at me closely. “I’m pleased to see you, do you know that?”
There was a different tone to her voice, but I recognized it. I would have recognized it among a thousand voices, after a thousand years, in whatever world I found myself. We were silent for a moment, looking each other up and down. She was beautiful, of course, but her style had changed, and she had changed too. She was wearing a calf-length dress and a silk blouse with a black bow at the chest. Her hair was gathered at the back of her neck and her big eyes devoured my face. She was calm, without conceit, and somehow recalled the women you see in old sepia photographs.
“How about a pick-me-up?” she said.
“I’ve quit drinking.”
“Again? That makes it a vice,” she said, walking into the bar opposite. She ordered a sherry and thanked the bartender with one of her smiles. He was elderly and reminded her of Signor Sandro.
“Sandro’s not around anymore,” I said. “He’s retired.” She asked where he’d gone and I said the first thing that came into my head—an old hotel in Stresa.
“Let’s not name names, please,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“The same thing,” I said. “How about you and architecture?”
“I love the Romanesque,” she said innocently. “Why?” Then we started to laugh, and we left the bar to continue window-shopping. “You remember how I liked to think I could buy the clothes?” she said. I remembered. “I’m bored with it now, but he wants me to dress up, always dress up!” she said impatiently.
Last Summer in the City Page 16