About Time

by Simona Sparaco

  Her reaction embarrasses me, though I’m still aroused. She’s red in the face, she can hardly breathe. “You’re incredible,” she says, rearranging her hair, “but I can’t take it any more… I have to get up early tomorrow morning, I really should go.”

  According to the clock behind her, nearly two hours have gone by since we finished eating. God Almighty, in real time two hours have already passed, which hasn’t done me any favours. “I’m not feeling well,” I say. “Yes, I think it’s best if you go.”

  “Oh, my God. You aren’t well. I’m sorry, where are my manners?”

  “It isn’t your fault, really.”

  “Look, if you like, I’ll stay a while longer, we could even carry on, I don’t mind…”

  I gently put a hand on her lips to silence her. I’m still aroused by her perfume and I’m sorry to have to deprive myself of her wonderful body so soon, but I don’t have any intention of torturing anybody. I stroke her face and reassure her that she’s behaved perfectly. “I’m really not feeling well, Donatella. But we can meet another time, if you want. It was a very pleasant evening, the spaghetti was delicious.”

  Donatella returns my smile. I help her to get dressed, walk her to the door, and say goodbye.

  It isn’t easy to describe what I’m living through, to go into details with sufficient clarity. De Santis, my doctor, has a lot of questions, he even asks me to tell him everything a second time. The story I’ve just told is grotesque, and the fact that I’m in his clinic certainly doesn’t make things any easier. I hate doctors’ clinics, I don’t find anything reassuring about them. All those drawings of the human body, those indecipherable charts, as if there was a logical explanation for everything, while I feel like a blind man groping in a room he doesn’t know.

  I also tell him about You, about the fact that in my life I’ve never believed in anything that wasn’t tangible or couldn’t at least be experienced physically, and yet I’m convinced that Father Time exists somewhere, maybe in a parallel universe, and is constantly controlling its flow.

  “Father Time, you said?”

  He looks puzzled, but is more serious than I thought he would be.

  I nod. “That’s right, Father Time.”

  De Santis sighs. “You’re going to have a brain scan,” he says, with a somewhat paternal air. “It’ll tell us if there are any traumas or lesions that may have provoked an alteration in your sensory perceptions.”

  He’s known me since I was a child, he looked after my mother before my family moved to Turin, I know he’s worried, even though he’s trying hard not to show it.

  “Svevo, tell me the truth. Do you take drugs? Hallucinogens, LSD, cocaine, or even just a bit of grass every now and again?”

  “Joints make me overexcited, Francesco. I only do coke. A couple of times I’ve dropped a bit of acid, and this summer I had some hallucinogenic mushrooms.”

  In other circumstances I wouldn’t have been so honest, but my health is at stake and I don’t care what he thinks of me.

  “How often do you use cocaine?”

  His professionalism, rather than any affection he may have for me, obliges him not to make any comments and to keep calm and reserved.

  “Until a month ago, maybe two or three times a week,” I admit. “But I’ve stopped now, and just the thought of trying again wipes me out.” That’s no addict’s promise, I certainly don’t need to go any faster than I already am.

  De Santis remains silent, I think he’s trying to restrain himself. In a context like this, any kind of reprimand would be completely inappropriate.

  He asks me to follow him, the scanning room should be ready. He makes me sit on a long contraption that looks like a coffin, they immobilize me with a device that fits over my forehead and tell me to keep calm. There’s a microphone, so that I can communicate with them if I need to.

  When the machine starts, I quickly slide inside the tube. The whole thing lasts about ten minutes, of my time of course, during which my ears are battered by sound vibrations in a stop and start rhythm. It consoles me to know that outside this room a group of doctors is closely examining every corner of my brain.

  When it’s over, I get dressed again and De Santis walks me back to his office.

  Now I’m waiting silently on my chair while my friend the doctor is at his desk, going through my results.

  At last he breaks the silence. “Svevo,” he says, his tone one of relief, “you don’t have what I was fearing. If you want my expert opinion, I’d say it was a freak incident, caused by stress, and perhaps also drug abuse. But you’ve been lucky, you haven’t suffered any visible damage. For now I can only advise you to make an appointment with a colleague of mine, his name is Giuliani and he’s an excellent analyst. I’m sure he can be of help to you.”

  “I only want this thing to end as soon as possible.”

  “It’ll end as soon as you realize that it’s your head that’s creating all this. It might be a kind of autosuggestion, and the only way to fight it is with will-power.”

  “It’s no suggestion, Francesco, believe me. It’s real, at least as real as anything in my life until now.”

  “You’re physically healthy, so the only thing I can prescribe is tranquillizers. But listen to me, make an appointment with Giuliani. There’s no shame in it. As I said, he may be able to help you.”

  When I’m at the door, De Santis lets out a sigh, as if up to now he’s been holding back, and asks me about my father. “Have you heard from him lately?” His expression is grave. He knows my father and I have never been on especially good terms, that I don’t see him often and don’t have much respect for him, and I’m sure he disapproves. Like my relatives, he may have hoped we’d become reconciled over the years.

  “Yes, I spoke to him on the phone…Don’t look at me like that.”

  De Santis won’t let go. “At a time like this, his presence may be of help to you, have you thought of that? I’m sure he needs you, too. I’m saying this as a friend: now that you know how pitiless time can be, don’t leave things unresolved.”

  I smile at him: let him believe I’ll follow his advice if he wants to. But my soul is divided into many compartments, and my father has ended up in the darkest and most cramped. The walls are long and narrow, and I’ve tried to take him out of there many times, but never succeeded.

  When I get back to my car and make ready to plunge back into the unstoppable flow of the city, I find myself thinking that it’s done me good to talk to De Santis after all, even though I would have preferred a concrete answer, however tragic. An enemy I could fight, not just a suspicion of madness. I refuse to believe that my mind is doing everything by itself, that the hallucinations and the strange things that are happening to time are just inventions of my sick psyche. How can I get used to a perception of reality in which things and people suddenly get older, or to a strong relentless wind called time that sweeps everything away without distinction?

  So here I am, stuck in an uncomfortable leather armchair, facing an elderly, white-haired psychiatrist with a vague air, who can’t even find his pen. He’s supposed to be someone who can deal with even the most difficult situations but he’s going crazy looking for a missing pen. Not what you might call an encouraging start. But I have to trust him, you’ve got to start somewhere.

  “When and how did the first disturbances manifest themselves?”

  Here goes. “I was on a plane to Paris. I should tell you that… well, let’s just say I’m afraid of flying.”

  He listens tome, nodding from time to time but never interrupting. All at once, he starts looking at his watch, I realize that his face has changed expression, he’s assumed a manner that’s definitely not very professional, I’d even say he seems disorientated, as if he was wandering in completely unexplored terrain and hasn’t the least idea what to do. If he hadn’t been recommended to me by De Santis, I’d advise him to just concentrate on looking for his pen.

  By the time the session is over,
I already know I’ll never see him again. It’s all too obvious that I’m in a hurry to say goodbye and go, but who cares?

  Two days later it’s the turn of Federico’s former shrink: I found the number in my diary and phoned him to fix an appointment.

  “Time. Ah, time…”

  That’s how he begins, after listening to me for a few moments.

  “Time, like space, is an element intrinsic to our universe and therefore only exists in relation to matter, in its manifestation as mass and energy. Outside matter, it could even be said that time doesn’t exist…”

  He launches into an elaborate speech on the subject which, predictably, I find myself unable to follow. He moves casually from the sea of time in esoteric physics to the possibility of time travel. I fail to see what any of this has to do with my problem.

  I really can’t stand it a minute longer, so as soon as he gives me a prescription for a series of homoeopathic remedies, I quickly say goodbye. If nothing else, I now have a clearer psychological picture of the man who used to be my best friend.

  10

  GAËLLE IS IN ROME this evening. She and Federico are having dinner somewhere in the centre of town. I imagine them together, on that brightly coloured merry-go-round their lives resemble, and I gradually realize what a profound state of solitude I’ve been living in. Not the forced solitude of these last few months, not the isolation, the abyss that has just swallowed me up, but that carousel of laughter, pleasantries, music, mood shifts and addictions. Empty, meaningless words, eyes that hide unknown abysses. I see everything with disarming clarity now. We’re like floating bubbles, incapable of communicating. We’re so afraid of bursting that we refuse all true contact with each other.

  Despite everything, out of pure survival instinct, I have to regain some kind of control over my life. I want to go out, see people. Staying shut up at home doesn’t help me slow things down, and besides, any party, even the most pointless, will pass quickly anyway. So I decide to summon up courage and call Luca, an old friend who doesn’t move in the same circles any more. I ask him if he has any plans for the evening and he suggests an informal dinner at a restaurant on the outskirts of Rome, the kind of restaurant where the fettuccine tastes of fresh eggs and the only wine served is house wine.

  “Isn’t Federico coming?” he asks me.

  “I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Nothing serious,” I say quickly. “That life was starting to tire me.”

  Luca uses this remark as an excuse to launch into a lecture. “I always said you were overdoing it. I don’t know how you managed to keep up the pace. I guess it was fun, but in small doses. In the end I was waking up in the morning feeling as limp as a rag. Not to mention the problems I was having at work. I was heavily in debt.”

  I have no wish to go further into the matter, let alone to contradict him. “You’re right,” is all I say. “Listen, what time did you say this evening?”

  “About nine. The restaurant is called Il Cacciatore. Are you coming in your car or would you like me to pick you up?”

  “I feel like driving. I’ll see you there.”

  There are places in the country, sometimes even quite close to a large metropolis, that smell healthy and clean and make you want to pull the window down, fill your lungs and let the wind caress your face. If only the country air could help me get back to normal.

  I had to leave home quite early. My watch says 8.45, the road is clear, and there aren’t too many bends. I’m going very fast, I don’t want to get there half an hour late.

  Il Cacciatore. My headlamps light up the sign, which is an old plywood board with a bearded man in a hunting cap drawn on it, hanging from two small chains that squeak as they move in the wind. It’s the kind of sign you used to see. I park my Aston Martin on the gravel in front of the steps leading up to the restaurant, jump out and quickly run to the entrance.

  The place seems nice and even quite crowded. If Federico was here, at this point we’d exchange a knowing glance: a couple of overweight, badly dressed families, a table of young boys covered in tattoos, and a few whores in miniskirts.

  The group who are expecting me for dinner are sitting at a table next to a stone fireplace hung round with sausages: Luca and his new friends, who all look intellectual and well-behaved.

  “Ah, here’s Svevo! Do you know each other? Paolo, Marco, Ginevra and Susanna.”

  “Hello, everyone.”

  I sit down next to Luca. “Is anybody else coming?”

  “We’re just waiting for Giorgio and Isabelle,” he replies. “They’ll be here soon.”

  Isabelle. For some reason, the name brings me up short. “Who’s Isabelle?”

  “A friend. Don’t give me that look, Svevo, I can tell you right now she’s not your type, even though she’s French. She must be about your age and has a one-year-old daughter. Plus, Giorgio’s fallen madly in love with her.”

  A moment later, the door of the restaurant opens. I don’t know how to explain it, but suddenly everything disappears except for those eyes and that haze of red hair. She advances slowly, almost swaying, step after step, until she reaches our table and gracefully slips off her shawl.

  “Svevo, do you know Isabelle?”

  No, I don’t know her, but I would’ve liked to get to know her the first time I saw her, at the airport, before I got on the flight that would change my life.

  She smiles at me. Luminous, transparent eyes, like freshly washed windows, small segments of sky. She says hello to the rest of the table, and with each gesture she makes, each word she utters, I can’t help looking at her. There’s something magnetic about the way she moves and speaks.

  I’m in luck, because she sits down just opposite me.

  She isn’t a classic beauty, at least not what passes for a classic beauty these days. She looks as if she’s stepped straight out of one of those eighteenth-century French prints: a full, not entirely regular mouth covered with freckles, like the rest of her face, a high, commanding forehead. “Haven’t we met before?” she asks me.

  I decide to lie. “I thought so, too, but I can’t remember where.”

  “Svevo, right?”

  “Yes, Isabelle.”

  The laughter and chatter at the table gradually increase in volume, while this unknown woman and I continue looking at each other in silence. Every now and again she turns to listen to what somebody is saying, answer a question or smile at the idiot who’s sitting next to her, this Giorgio she came in with, who can’t stop flattering her, pouring wine and water for her, serving her starters, lighting and relighting the candle when it goes out. He seems so proud of his task as knight errant, but from what I can tell he appears to know he has no hope.

  As for me, I haven’t lavished any ridiculous compliments on her, I’m not trying in any way to seduce her. I’m only searching for something interesting to say, and for the first time I’m not in a hurry, I’m not obsessed with the problem of time. I’ve decided to ignore the clock, I want the evening to follow its natural course. However absurd it is, I have the strange, inexplicable feeling that I’m on the verge of something, that something new is about to start. I’ve become a child again and I haven’t yet committed any sins. She doesn’t scare me, she’s like a regenerating force. She could be the one, among so many, who’s ready to join me without any fear of bursting. I imagine the two us, floating, one large bubble.

  “I have an image in my head of you with a child in your arms, a little girl.”

  “I’m a mother. My daughter’s thirteen months.”

  “So it’s true. We have met before.”

  “Apparently, yes.”

  Luca gives me a sideways glance.

  “Are the two of you married?” I ask, indicating Giorgio.

  “The two of us? No, we’re just friends. I’m not married.”

  Giorgio can’t hide his disappointment. That “we’re just friends” must have made him choke on his brusche
tta.

  “Maybe we met at work,” I insist, hoping to find out something about her life.

  “I’m a photographer, when I’m not a mother, which means not often.”

  “A photographer? That’s interesting.”

  “I used to do travel stuff,” she says, slipping a breadstick out of the packet, “now I’m in the fashion field.”

  “I like photographs. These days, with mobile phones and everything, anybody can take them, our whole lives are filled with them.”

  “It’s a pity everything’s digital now,” she replies, biting into her breadstick. “I like to touch photographs, to smell them.”

  At this point, Giorgio butts into the conversation. “I agree with you,” he says. But Isabelle doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  For the first time in I don’t know how long, I find myself involved in an interesting conversation. We talk about the fact that technology is apparently more democratic: today everyone can aspire to perfection, at least in a photograph. In fashion, she says, retouching is almost obligatory, but she also tells me that when she worked in Paris, for a scientific monthly, it was the most authentic photos that gave her the greatest satisfaction. “In journalism, you almost always look for the truth,” she says. I can see the panoramas she describes to me, the populations of those remote villages where she spent much of her youth, taking photographs.

  She must be more than thirty but, I think, not yet forty. She certainly doesn’t have the youthful freshness I usually go crazy over in a woman. And yet I have the impression she knows better than anyone how to wear the time that passes. She doesn’t seem bothered by the small lines around her eyes, and she clearly hasn’t resorted to anything unnatural to try to stretch them. She doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t wear jewellery, her style is minimal, clean and elegant, somewhat old-fashioned. She doesn’t have a touch of make-up on, except maybe a bit of lipgloss, which reflects the quivering light of the candles as she moves her lips. I notice her slender fingers, her short, unpolished nails. I like looking at them as she gesticulates or arranges her hair behind her ears. There can be great sensuality even in an ordinary gesture like that.