The Purple Room

by Mauro Casiraghi

  “Sergio? What’s wrong?”

  I open my mouth to breathe, but no air enters my lungs. I’m suffocating. I try to shout. Not even a moan passes through my lips. Only bubbles. I can feel Ettore’s hand on my shoulder. He grabs me, shakes me. Then I can’t see anything anymore. Where am I? Have I fallen into the pit? There’s water in it. The water’s freezing. I’m so heavy. My lead weights are pulling me down. I’m going to the bottom. It’s dark and cold and I’m sinking deeper and deeper.

  “Sergio!”

  Ettore grabs my arm and pulls. He wants to take me back to the surface. He wants to save me. I push him away and he falls to the ground. The light goes out.

  “Where are you going? Stop!” Ettore shouts.

  I run, head down. I scrape my hands and shoulders on the stone walls, but I keep on running through the dark. I race along the tunnel, crouched low to the ground, like an animal fleeing in the throes of terror.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been walking in the dark. I keep expecting to come up against the end of the passageway at any moment, or to not be able to breathe for lack of oxygen, but I’m calm.

  I remember a dive I went on with Roberto a long time ago. We went one night to explore the seabed off the coast of Mount Argentario, a place called The Coral Shoal. At one point I saw a big brown grouper slip into a gap between the rocks. I followed it to take a photo. I found myself all alone inside a cavern. The grouper had disappeared somewhere I couldn’t see. I stayed floating there, gazing at the rock ceiling above me. It was like being inside the belly of some huge animal. I turned off my lamp and stayed there in the total darkness. I’d never before been in a place so isolated, so hidden from the world. I thought back to when I was a child and would hide under my parents’ bed, sure they’d never find me. I’d stay there for hours, fantasizing, imagining that soon they’d give up the search. They would resign themselves to living without me. My parents, my classmates, my friends––they’d all give me up for dead and, little by little, they would forget about me. After the funeral, they would all go back to their day-to-day activities. Not me. I’d opted out. I would be free to exist without the others knowing. It made me feel light and powerful. It was the elation of the Invisible Man.

  The happiness of those escapes under my parents’ bed, of that excursion into the underwater cave––it’s the same feeling I have now, lost in the Etruscan tomb. I’m not afraid. On the contrary, I feel calm, at peace with myself.

  I sit down on the tunnel floor and think of Gloria. I wonder if the last memory I’ll have of her will be of her teeth sinking into my lip, and the image of her seen through the dust, walking away without looking back.

  I shiver. A breath of air brushes against the hairs on my arm. I stand up and resume walking, following the direction of the draft. After about twenty steps, I see a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. I keep on, and suddenly I come out into the open, in the middle of the woods. I don’t know where I am, although I do realize that the entrance Ettore showed me isn’t the only way into the cave. I squint in the bright light, experiencing the same feeling I used to get when I came up to the surface after a dive. A sense of disorientation, as if the reality of the world above were too stark and intense, so much so that I would feel a pang of nostalgia for the darkness below that I had only just abandoned.

  It only lasts a moment. Then I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with clean air, and set off down the slope through the woods.

  23

  The path led me back to the main entrance to the cave. I saw Ettore there. I stayed hidden among the trees, watching him. He’d lost his beautiful hat. He kept on looking down the tunnel, calling my name. He seemed to want to go back into the cave and look for me, but in the end he changed his mind. He hurried back to his jeep. I waited to hear the sound of the engine fade, then I came out from behind the trees. I went over to Lucky, still tied to the bush. As soon as it saw me, the dog started straining against its leash so hard I thought it would strangle itself. I freed it and let it jump into my arms. I didn’t let it lick my face, though.

  We go back on foot, the dog and I. The sun beats down savagely on my head. After the darkness in the cave, it’s almost impossible to keep my eyes open. I take off my shirt and tie it around my head like a turban.

  When we come in sight of Gloria’s house, Lucky bounds ahead in search of water. I check to make sure Ettore’s jeep isn’t there, then I follow. I find the dog with its front paws up on the sink out back. It’s trying to lick a few drops from around the lip of the basin. I fill a bowl and set it down for the dog. Then I put my mouth up to the tap and drink until my belly’s swollen. I thrust my head under the cold water and stay there for a long time.

  The house is silent. Gloria and her mother must be upstairs, sleeping. It’s the only way to wait out such a hot afternoon. I would like to lie down and rest, too. I’m exhausted. But I can’t. I made a promise to Gloria. I have to get out of here. Take Lucky, get in the car and leave. I said I would, and I intend to keep my word. It’s just that it’s so peaceful here, with Gloria sleeping upstairs.

  I go into the kitchen. I look up at the beamed ceiling. I can almost hear her steady breathing, the rustle of her foot moving over the sheet. While I’m thinking that I should leave, my feet start climbing the stairs. Step by step, I arrive on the second floor. It’s then that I stop repeating to myself that I shouldn’t be here. I’m sure that I’m not doing anything wrong. I only want to see Gloria one last time. A farewell is worth all the time in the world.

  Gloria’s mother is sleeping on the sofa in the sitting room. The electric fan is on. It rotates, stirring the warm air just a few inches from where she lies. Her staring eye is closed. On no account must it open. I have to be careful of the wooden floorboards. They creak so easily. First of all, I take off my shoes. Then I test the boards one by one with my hands before putting my weight on them. It takes a full minute to inspect each plank, then another minute to slip silently over it. It takes a long time to cover the distance that separates me from the second staircase, the one leading to the loft. There are nine steps. I grasp the railing with one hand and place my foot on the first stair. Despite my best efforts to place my foot lightly, the wood settles under my weight with a sharp crack. In this hush, it sounds like a plate smashing.

  I look towards the sofa. Mrs. Decesaris gives a start. Her eyelids tremble like butterfly wings, her eye opens halfway. I hold my breath and wait. After a moment of uncertainty, the eye closes once more and the old woman goes back to sleep. The figure she saw at the foot of the stairs will only be a play of shadows to her, a fragment from an interrupted dream, glimpsed and then forgotten.

  The loft has a low sloping ceiling. A mosquito net hangs over the bed, enveloping it like a cocoon. Gloria is lying on her side, on top of the sheets. Her clothes are sitting on top of a linen chest. She has taken off everything but her panties.

  In the corner there’s an easel holding a half finished portrait. It’s of a little girl, about eight or nine years old, with big melancholy eyes and Gloria’s mouth. I stand there looking at it, wondering why she has left this portrait of herself as a child unfinished. It was turning out well.

  Then I see the big box filled with dolls, toys and brightly colored books. I see the childish drawings done in felt-tipped pens collected in a clear plastic folder. I see a pair of red patent leather shoes, the toes slightly scuffed. They peep out from beneath a first-communion dress displayed on a hanger.

  Now I understand why Gloria wanted to isolate herself from the world. I understand that the biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves. It was hard but I did it. Now I’m free. That’s not true, Gloria. Look around you. Look at your bedroom. You’re imprisoned by the memory of your pain. You, like me, are clinging desperately to what you have lost, to what you cannot forget.

  Moving ever so slowly, I lift up the mosquito netting. I slip onto the bed as delicately as I am able. I lie down next to her. The tip of her nose is less than an
inch from mine. I can smell the saltiness of her breath. On her upper lip there are miniscule droplets of perspiration that I’d like to lick off with my tongue. The curves of her hips and stomach are even softer than they were long ago. The desire to touch her, to place my fingers in the folds of her skin, to sink my face into her, is overwhelming. Gloria. I wish I could hold you close and cry with you, then fall asleep beside you. But I don’t do it. I don’t do anything. I can’t offer you my consolation. All we have been granted is this one moment in time, suspended in the stifling afternoon air. We’ll have to be content with that.

  There’s a noise from below. Someone’s coming up the stairs, then moving around beneath us, in the sitting room. Then the quick little footsteps, closer and closer, are coming up the steps to the loft. I lift up my head and look towards the staircase. A fuzzy white face pops up from the floor. It sniffs at the air. It recognizes my scent and comes towards the bed, tail wagging. Good Lucky, good dog. Don’t make a noise. Don’t bark. Can’t you see that Gloria’s sleeping? We mustn’t wake her. Five minutes is all I ask. Five minutes lying here beside her. It’s so simple, in the end. No complications. No need to talk or argue. Just this, lying here beside each other. Like the first time.

  24

  Lucky is curled up asleep on the seat next to me, its muzzle resting on its paws. Every now and again, the dog gives a sigh that sounds like a whimper. My lip has swollen up. I can feel it pulsing in time with the beat of my heart. With the tip of my tongue I touch the place where Gloria bit me. I’m happy to have the mark of her teeth on me. Perhaps it’s the best gift she could have given me.

  I don’t have the slightest idea where I’m going. I only know that I’m not going home. As I drive, I think back to the day of the divorce ruling. Alessandra had gotten her hair cut and was wearing a new pair of shoes with high heels. At first glance, she looked younger, but a closer look revealed that her skin was tired and drawn. Her freckles were covered with a coat of foundation and a deep line dug a furrow between her eyebrows, like a scar. The judge asked us the ritual question: were we sure we wanted this separation?

  Alessandra was the first to reply. Yes, she was sure.

  The judge repeated the same question to me. I looked at Alessandra, expecting her to meet my eye. Ten seconds went by. Twenty seconds. Half a minute. She could feel me looking at her, but she didn’t move a muscle. She kept staring at the judge’s desk. Her gaze was focused on a marble paperweight as though it were a lifeline. Almost a minute of silence went by. The judge coughed and repeated the question, articulating every word. Was I certain I wanted to go forward with the divorce by mutual consent? Without taking my eyes off Alessandra, I said yes. Whatever my wife wanted would suit me, too.

  We left the courtroom in silence. Without saying a word, we each knew what was going through the other’s mind. Every moment of our life together, from the day we first met, until the exact moment when it all ended. It was the inventory of our successes and failures, many of which weren’t the same. I had mine, she had hers. Standing there, on the stone steps of the courthouse, the moment had come to leave each other for good. To go our separate ways. It was then that we felt the elation of failure. A weight had fallen from our shoulders. At long last we could abandon the struggle to love and respect each other until death do us part. We could stop feeling incompetent and guilty. We had been relieved of our duty. We were fleeing from the battlefield like two deserters. It didn’t really matter that I’d been the first to start running. Now we were the same. Alone again, face to face, just like the day we met.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Alessandra said. There was something strange in her voice. “I’ve got an umbrella.”

  I looked up at the sky. “It’s not raining anymore.”

  She ignored my objection. We walked off together towards the parking lot. When we reached my car I slowed down, but Alessandra looped her arm through mine and propelled me onward. Now she was looking at the toes of her shoes the same way she’d stared at the marble paperweight before. She sank them into the puddles without worrying about wetting her feet.

  On the other side of the road, not far from the courthouse, shone the green sign of a Holiday Inn. Without needing to say a word, we stepped down off the sidewalk and ran across the road through the traffic. We arrived in the hotel lobby breathless. We rushed through the formalities at the reception desk. I grabbed the keys and we raced up the stairs without waiting for an elevator. We flung ourselves into the room, clutching at each other the moment we were through the door. I lifted up her dress, pulled down her stockings, and we did it right there, up against the door, clinging to each other in a desperate frenzy. Alessandra was hanging on to my neck, balanced precariously on one high-heel. Her other leg was wrapped around my waist, while I propped us up by pressing my forehead against the doorframe. There was nothing familiar or recognizable about the way our bodies came together. It was nothing like going back in time. We were two different people, strangers, saying goodbye without ever having really known each other.

  Afterwards, while she was smoothing out her wrinkled dress, Alessandra burst out laughing. It was a slightly hysterical sound.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking that we’re ridiculous. Isn’t it ridiculous? I mean, doing it today, of all days?”

  My head started spinning. All the pent up feelings of guilt from the years of our marriage pounced on me all at once.

  “Why don’t we try again, Alessandra? You and Michela could come home for a while. A month or two, until the holidays. We could try it out. Do you want to?”

  Even while I was talking, I knew perfectly well that what I was saying was idiotic. I knew it, and so did she. Still, Alessandra let me finish what I had to say, and when I’d spoken the last word of it there was no need to respond or comment. She gazed at me with the look of someone who can understand such moments of weakness and, even if she disapproves of them, for once she doesn’t want to rub it in. I envied her that serious look. It was enough to forever cancel out the foolish words I had said.

  “Goodbye, Sergio,” she said, adjusting the lapels on my jacket. She picked her purse up off the floor, opened the door and left.

  I sat there in the room at the Holiday Inn, wondering obtusely why my marriage had failed. What had gone wrong? Apart from the cheating, I mean. Where and when had the end of it all begun? I just couldn’t understand it. I only knew that at that moment, as the sensation of Alessandra’s body was already beginning to vanish, I could not stop feeling, alongside the deep sadness and melancholy, an equally strong sense of relief.

  It was as if the state of being separated––a state I’d only officially entered into that day––had always been my destiny. It felt right that I not try to escape that solitude any longer. This was my life now, and that was how it had to stay. If I could accept that state as my new identity, I sensed that I would gain quite a few advantages. There was something comforting in viewing my status as a divorcé as a point of arrival. No risks. No feelings. No commitment. I was free to love nobody––and it had been like that for years, until the day of my brush with death.

  That was when I had begun searching for a happiness from a time much further in the past, a more innocent happiness. In my attempt to find it, I had discovered that Gloria, like me, had hidden herself away in a solitude of her own construction, as a way to escape her pain. Hers was a greater grief, more tragic, but equally private and inaccessible.

  I recall what Michela said about Gloria’s house. You’d have to go live on a rock in the middle of the sea to be more isolated than this.

  Right. The sea.

  When I get to Siena I take the highway in the direction of Grosseto. I get off at Albinia and take the coast road towards Porto Santo Stefano. I drive past camp grounds, people riding bikes in their swimsuits, families crossing the road loaded down with sun umbrellas and air mattresses, until I come to the small side road I’ve been looking for. I turn on
to a gravel lane that runs past little houses hidden in the pine wood. Then the road ends. Beyond that there’s the beach, full of people soaking up the last of the afternoon sun. I leave the car and walk the rest of the way.

  Roberto’s vacation house looks right out over the water. The gate is closed. I climb up onto the fence and look in. His car isn’t here. Roberto and Loredana must have stayed in Rome this weekend. To make babies, I guess.

  I go back to the car, get the dog and lift it over the fence. Then I climb over into the garden. Roberto’s rubber dinghy is in the shed. It’s abandoned, covered in sand and pine needles. No one has used it since the day of the accident.

  I take out one of the lounge chairs and pull it out into the shade of a pine tree. I’m exhausted. Lucky goes off chasing butterflies, while I, in an instant, have already fallen asleep.

  It’s the sound of the waves that wakes me. I can hear them booming as they break on the shore, on the other side of the fence. I have no idea what time it is. It’s gotten dark. I get up and take a walk around the house to look for the dog. I call for it over and over, but it’s nowhere to be seen. I open the gate and walk out onto the beach. There’s not a soul in sight.

  The sea’s rough. It swells in the moonlight, then dashes its waves all the way up to my feet. The warm sirocco wind blows the spray into my face.

  Further down the beach there’s a pack of stray dogs. They’re trotting away from me, sniffing at the sand. They move in single file, close up against the fences of the beach houses, so as not to wet their paws. I can’t tell whether Lucky is with them. Their thin silhouettes trot further and further away, until they disappear into the mist of spray rising from the surging sea. In the distance I see the lights of Porto Santo Stefano and the dark mass of Mount Argentario. That’s where it happened. I keep wondering why I’m not still down there, below.