by Fabio Volo
“No, why are you asking me?”
“Because you’re different from last time. I can see you’re happy to see me, it’s not that, but you’re so quiet. At times you seem distracted.”
“No, there isn’t anyone else. Do you want another margarita?”
“Yes, are you having one?”
“I’d rather have a coke.”
“Didn’t it feel good being with me?”
“Don’t approach our story that way…”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t ask that kind of question. It has nothing to do with our story. You know that. Don’t trivialize it.”
Those words quickly brought me back to my senses. In the end I don’t know whether I ordered two or three more margaritas; I only know that I was drunk. She wasn’t. It was our last night together. When we went back home we made love and we cuddled a lot. From my point of view everything was surrounded by that soft atmosphere you experience when you’re drunk. I remember I felt like crying at the thought of not seeing her again. I didn’t insist because perhaps it was better that way. But maybe because of that sudden melancholy, because of the pain I was feeling, or all the alcohol I drank, I told her, “Come on, let’s make a baby.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m serious,” I answered.
“No, you’re not serious, you’re drunk.”
“That’s true. But I still want to do it.”
“Let’s sleep on it.”
And we collapsed.
We got up late Sunday morning. We had breakfast without speaking much. Everything echoed in my head. After a while, after we showered and got dressed, Michela told me, looking straight into my eyes, “Last night you asked me to have a child with you. Luckily, you were the only one who was drunk.”
I had the impression that whenever she spoke about children she was only partially joking, she wanted to see how I reacted to the topic.
“I don’t know if I said that because I was drunk, but I think I really meant it. I told you I want to have a child with you. Perhaps now is not the best time.”
We went out for a walk.
As we were sitting in a café, while she read a newspaper and I a book, she asked me, “Listen, let’s do this:let’s not keep in touch, let’s not call each other, let’s not look for each other. End of story. I won’t be looking for you and you must not look for me, promise me that.”
“I promise. I thought we already decided that yesterday.”
“Yes, I know, but listen to my proposal: in three months I’ll be in Paris for an important business meeting. If in three months you still want to have a child with me and I with you, we can meet there. It’s a date. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure I understand. We’re scheduling a date in Paris in three months and if one wants to have a child with the other, he or she shows up, otherwise nothing?”
“Exactly. I think I’d like to have a child with you but not right now. I need to put some distance between us in order to have better perspective. Maybe in the next three months you’ll meet another woman, or maybe I won’t feel like having a child with you anymore… Who knows? But let’s give us a chance, before saying goodbye forever.”
How did Michela manage to convince me and intrigue me all the time? I liked playing.
I told her, “You are the woman I’ve always hoped to find. No matter what happens. Let’s give us a chance. Our story deserves it. And where should we meet?”
“I don’t know, let’s decide together… How about the Statue of Liberty?”
“I thought you said Paris, not New York…”
“Yes… Yes, Paris… of course.”
“Paris has a Statue of Liberty, too? I didn’t know that.”
“It has two of them actually, a big one on the Seine and a small one in the Luxembourg garden. If in three months we still feel like having a child together, we’ll meet at the Statue of Liberty in the Luxembourg garden. It’s the only good reason we have to see each other again, to move forward, otherwise it’s best not to keep in touch and remember our story the way it was.” As I was thinking about that absurdity, Michela told me, “The best day would be September 16th.”
“This is crazy.” Then I added, “I’m in. What time?”
“You decide.”
“Let’s meet at eleven in the morning. How does that sound?”
“September 16th at eleven in the morning. Then or never.”
28
Paris
Silvia is happy. She lives in her new house with Margherita. In the end Carlo understood and he wasn’t as bad as we’d feared. He is doing better, too. Margherita is a happy child and we were all surprised to see how she handled the change. She proved to be the best of the three. They told her that although they lived in separate houses they still loved her as much as before. They had a psychologist help out. Silvia’s mother, in the end, had to admit she did the right thing by leaving, if she wasn’t in love anymore. Sometimes people are very strange.
There is no need to explain why I’m in Paris. I want to have a child with Michela. Three months have past since the last time I saw her, and not only did I not forget about her but actually my desire for her has grown over time. I want a child with Michela because, to me, she has always been a house with a glass ceiling: I can see the sky and feel safe at the same time. Now I’m walking, leaving Place des Vosges behind, I’m on Rue de Rivoli and heading to the Hôtel de Ville. I’m taking off my sweater because the sun came out and the stroll warmed me up. It’s ten thirty. I could go by Notre Dame and take Boulevard Saint-Michel. But I’d rather take a prettier route. I'll take that path on the way back, since after today, no matter what, I will be emotionally upset and I won’t notice anything around me, not even if twenty pink ponies were to cross in front of me on the sidewalk. If she doesn’t come, I believe I’ll start to age. I’ll grow old very quickly. I’m walking to the Ponte des Arts, a wooden bridge that is full of people having picnics on summer nights. In Place Saint Germaine des Prés I turn onto Rue Buonaparte, which takes me to Place Saint-Sulpice. Then I’m finally at the Luxembourg garden.
I’m early. I’d like to get there and find her sitting there. I’m nervous. I take a walk around the garden, around the fountain where some children are drawing a picture of the palace. At the Musée d’Orsay I once saw a bunch of students sitting on the ground drawing pictures of the statues. It’s nice to see the museums so alive. As I keep walking, I see people playing tennis, running, practicing Tai-chi under a gazebo. Many are reading. Everywhere there are iron chairs you can move wherever you want. Many choose to put them around the fountain, because there is a little iron bar running around it where you can rest your feet. I finally get to the Statue of Liberty. There aren’t any benches in front of it so I grab two chairs and bring them to where we are supposed to meet. One for me, the other for her, I hope. At this point I only pray she shows up. I thought a lot about how this moment would turn out. This could be yet another confirmation of what usually happens: reality never lives up to our imagination. As I stare ahead, hoping to see her, I hope to also feel the warmth of her hands over my eyes and hear her voice say, “Guess who?”
If she shows up, what will happen next? Where will we live? Am I going to move to America or is she coming back to Italy? The answer I came up with every time I thought about these things was that Michela is the only country where I want to live.
Over the three months I spent away from her I felt deeply connected to her. I sat at the edge of life with my feet hanging down and I looked at the infinite space breathing her smell. It seems strange to decide you want a child this way. But it’s not so strange at my age. When I was twenty and I fell in love, I wanted a child with a woman because I loved her. Now everything is different. When I was twenty I would have thought that a story like this was crazy. It would have been unthinkable given my way of understanding love.
I want a child and Michela is the right person to make one with. I want to sh
are this experience with a woman like her. Period. With her I always feel different, as if our encounter had happened at the right moment, in the right way. As if it were written in my destiny. An important passage in my life, an open room I had to enter.
As I waited over those months I helped myself by writing. I wrote my emotions, I entered into that moving world, that lively world. I even wrote many letters to Michela; letters I never sent. I have them here with me. They already have a stamp on them because if she doesn’t come I’m going to mail them to her.
I also put some pictures in the envelopes along with the letters. In one picture you can see a bunch of flowers, in another a table set for two, in another “our” tram. Then there is one I took on her birthday where you can see the calendar, a small package, and two glasses of wine. I shared with her moments we weren’t destined to live together.
It’s ten fifty-four. I have a knot in my throat, which makes it difficult to breathe. I’m looking around and I’m tapping nervously on the box containing the letters. Besides the box, I also have a pair of red shoes, which I bought specifically for her. I chose a pair of shoes as a present because I thought they represented my desire to walk with her toward our future. The fear of never seeing her wear them, however, was growing more and more.
Suddenly a ball rolls toward me. I lift my eyes and a girl runs after it to catch it. As she picks it up, she looks at me for a few seconds and then runs away, back to play. I can hear the sound of the birds, and far away the noise of a drill. I like hearing the noises workers make in the mornings, especially if they’re far away from my house.
I look at my watch. It’s five past eleven. I start wondering how long I should wait for her. “I have to draw the line somewhere,” I tell myself. “If she’s not here by eleven fifteen, I’ll leave. Actually, let’s make it eleven thirty… Better be safe.”
I tried to think about something else, looking at the people around me. There are a lot of us, each with their dream, their joy, their sorrow. Sometimes I think about all the places I have been during my life and I try to imagine people walking around the streets I had once known. When I was little and thought about how many of us there were in the world, I was sure it was impossible God knew I existed.
Eleven twenty. Michela hasn’t shown up yet. I’m starting to think she isn’t coming. I decide I’ll wait until noon.
It would have been beautiful. I’m sad, I’m not happy about having met her anymore. I'm no longer happy that she had made me a better person. I should be, if nothing else, because she’s making me feel ridiculous. Sitting here, in this chair, with a pair of red shoes in my hand and a box of letters I haven’t mailed, I look ridiculous. I won’t mail them, like I promised I would. By now it’s clear, Michela isn’t coming. I only have to accept the fact that my film won’t have a happy ending. “What will I do with you if you don't come?”
I get up. I can’t sit any longer. I move closer to the statue. There are flowers on the ground, perhaps someone brought them a few days earlier to remember 9/11. I read the plaque on the left side of the statue: La Liberté éclairant le monde. I sit down. I look up at the Parisian sky. A tear runs down my cheek and into my ear. I feel sick to my stomach. I think back on everything I did for her, on everything she made me experience. Since I met her I’ve never been bored, either with her or thinking of her I’ve always been happy; I’ve also experienced pain, as I am now, I felt fragile and invincible at the same time. But I always felt alive.
Suddenly I realize that I’m full of the experiences I’ve lived, but that I have nothing to show for them. At this very moment, inside me, I start thinking that perhaps Michela never existed. Now I understand everything. Who can guarantee it wasn’t just a projection, a fantasy? Who else has seen her besides me? The people to whom I’ve spoken about her have never seen her, met her, talked to her. Not even Silvia. I don’t have any concrete proof of her reality. Only a complete confusion of emotions. Who’s to say that Michela doesn’t live exclusively in my imagination? That’s why everything was perfect. I liked her from the moment I saw her, even before I talked to her; then I got to know her and she taught me how to open up through a silly game. We got married without the foolishness of a real wedding. And now I’m here waiting for her, trying to prove to myself and to us that I want a child. We did everything people normally do, only we did it as a game, as if it were just for our amusement. Sitting on this bench, with a pair of red shoes and a box of un-mailed letters, maybe I’m experiencing the first lucid thought after a long period of madness. Maybe the people I know think I’ve gone mad and that I have an imaginary woman in my head. How can I prove them wrong? I have nothing that belongs to her, not even a picture, a present, nothing. Not even our wedding bands. Everything I have of hers is inside my head and inside my soul. Forever. She is a breath, a thought, an emotion. She is confusion and clarity. Maybe I should look in a mirror and try to find a trace of her in the bottom of my eyes. I imagined Michela and I gave her life. She taught me how to believe in my dreams and in my desires, even if that meant making a fool of myself like what was happening right then and there. What’s important is not that she comes, the only thing that matters is what she taught me. She has never been and will never be my treasure, but rather the tools to finding it. She is the sign that points the way.
I start laughing as I think about my situation. As I laugh, I put my hands over my face, as if I was ashamed. They still smell like butter.
At that point I am suddenly interrupted by a whistle. I look down. She is a few yards away, proving that she doesn’t exist only in my thoughts. My heart explodes, my soul trembles.
Michela, standing motionless in front of me, has tears in her eyes and the usual smile on her face. She is the future smiling on me. She looks like those days when it rains and the sun is out at the same time. I walk toward her then I stop and stand still for a moment facing her direction. As I’m about to take the last step to kiss and hug her, she stops me with a gesture. I don’t understand. She takes my hand and, looking into my eyes, she puts it on her stomach.
In a second I understand everything. Her crazy game, the real reason why she made me wait those months. I look at the stomach I’m touching. Michela is pregnant. I’m beside myself, looking into her eyes. She nods and before we can hug she says, “I was already pregnant when you came back to New York.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to say yes just because it had happened that way. I wanted to be sure of your intentions. If you hadn’t come here, I wouldn’t have told you. You would have never known. I’m happy to see what we have done. You are the partner in crime I’ve always wanted.”
We hug in silence. After what seems an eternity we speak again.
“I remember the names you had chosen for your children, especially the girls. I’m terrified.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll call him Matteo. By the way, aren’t you going to say anything? I learned how to whistle…”
“Well, that’s the reason why I’m so moved. Your whistle startled me. No, it’s because I was afraid you weren’t coming. Anyway, in the meantime, I learned how to dive.”
“Sorry I’m late. I’ve been watching you for twenty minutes. I was afraid and was way too nervous… When I arrived you were already here. Have you been waiting long?”
“Thirty-five years, give or take.”
About the Author
Fabio Volo was born near Brecia, Italy in 1972. He is a writer, actor, and host of popular radio and television shows. He has published Esco a fare due passi (2001), È una vita che ti aspetto (2003), Un posto nel mondo (2006), Il giorno in più (2007), Il tempo che vorrei (2009), and Le prime luci del mattino (2011).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First published in Italy as Il giorno in più
Translated from Italian by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa
Art director: Giacomo Callo
Graphic designer: Susanna Tosatti
Copyright © 2007 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milan, Italy
English translation © 2013 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milan, Italy
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FABIO VOLO
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