I don’t ask her anything about her past, like how she came to be alone in Italy with such a small child, but I do ask her to talk tome about her daughter, whose name is Giulia, she just told me.
“Giulia is…” her eyes light up and she looks in the air, searching for the right words. “Giulia is a force of nature,” she says at last. “She calls me mamma, with the accent on the second syllable just like in French, and she’s always smiling.”
“Isabelle, do you want to taste a little of my pasta?” Giorgio interrupts us again, this time with a touch of impatience.
“No, thanks,” she replies. “Mine will be here soon.”
Soon, she said. I haven’t been served either. And we’re only on the starters. I thought much more time had passed. I feel extraordinarily relaxed, I can’t believe this is really happening. I almost have the impression that my time is finally slowing down.
You’re going more slowly. I like to imagine You’ve stopped to look at us.
I lift my wrist to my ear and start listening to my watch ticking calmly. For the first time, it gives me an incredible sense of peace.
“Is your watch broken?” Isabelle asks curiously.
“I think so,” I reply, almost euphorically. “I really think so.”
I suggest a toast. Just like that, without any reason, just the two of us, an excuse to smile at her in silence. Actually, what I’d like to do is thank her, I have the feeling this sudden sense of relaxation that’s come over me is all down to her. Isabelle raises her glass, the others look at us in surprise. This cheap red is the best wine I’ve ever tasted and this toast is the most important one of my life. Nobody knows I’m toasting my own recovery, my hope that I’ve got back to normal.
A veil of lightness comes to rest on all things, on the fat, badly dressed women, the tattooed boys, the suggestive looks of the whores, even the strings of sausages over the fireplace. In the meantime I continue talking to her, this woman who knows how to slow down time.
“So,” I say, “Giulia’s always smiling.”
“Always. Every day she learns something new. My God, it seems to me only yesterday I was expecting her, she makes me feel…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I understand perfectly well what she means. She can’t imagine how I live with that feeling every day, and in the most exaggerated, nerve-wracking manner possible.
“Time flies,” she concludes with a shrug. She’s so serene about it, it’s almost infuriating.
“And doesn’t that scare you a bit?”
“No, no more than a lot of other things. I know I’ve used my time as best I could, and now that I have my daughter I don’t want to miss even a moment of her life. Sometimes I imagine her as she’ll be when she’s a woman, and I feel so proud of her, I can hardly wait for that day to arrive.”
I listen to her and I’d like her to take me by the hand, as you do with children when they get restless.
In the meantime, Giorgio must have reached the end of his tether. He tries to butt in again. “I’d like to propose a toast, too,” he says. “To children.”
Everybody raises their glasses. I’m probably looking a bit puzzled, Isabelle must have noticed. She joins in the toast, without any enthusiasm, then asks me, “What about you? Are you married?”
I smile. The idea has never even occurred to me, which is no secret to anyone. “No, I’m not married.”
“So no children, I assume.”
“No children.”
There’s nothing judgemental about her attitude, the way she looks at me is reassuring, at least as reassuring as the discovery that I finished my pasta before the others.
“Do you work hard?”
“Quite hard.”
My life is what she’s interested in now. I’ve never thought about it before, but I’d like to dig into it and find something that makes it more interesting. I have the feeling that my work, my clubbing, my vices are as far away from her world as it’s possible to be. All at once, the table seems to grow between the two of us. I know I might scare her off. I’m not like this Giorgio who keeps pouring her wine, I’m not a good person. Some people seem to be enveloped in a halo of benevolence, a halo that prevents anger from turning nasty and becoming hate. In my life, though, anger has become indifference. I’m capable of committing despicable acts and dismissing them as if they were nothing to do with me. I learnt betrayal at school. At the age of twelve, I persuaded Alice, with whom I shared a desk, to take off her knickers in front of my friends. Every time she tried to push our hands away from her thighs we would laugh, with that taste for wickedness which at the age of twelve may appear innocent. One day I told her I loved her, all I wanted in return was to know what people meant when they talked about sex. A week later, I shifted my attentions to her best friend, whose skin smelt of fruit.
I imagine that if Isabelle looked in my memory and found Alice’s eyes, just as I remember them, she’d stop smiling at me. The point is that her smile is like a hand that comes to rest on your back, like a push. Perhaps for the first time since I came into the world, I’m staring into the abyss of my own conscience.
By now the candles are flickering and the evening is winding to its end. Everyone is walking towards their own cars. Kisses, words of farewell. I don’t lose sight of her for a moment. I’m waiting for her to approach me and say something.
“Goodbye, Svevo. It’s been nice meeting you.”
I take her hand and she squeezes mine in return. All I can find to say is a whispered “See you soon”. I’m usually more talkative, more self-confident. If it was any other woman, I’d already have her phone number in my pocket.
She hesitates, as if she wants to ask me something, but Giorgio is still calling her. I see her get in his car and I can’t do anything about it. I’ve become afraid of time again, I sense You’re about to resume Your race and I don’t know how to stop You.
When I get back behind the wheel, my mind clouds over and all I can do is press my foot down on the accelerator. All the same, I have the feeling I’ll see her again. There must be a reason she’s entered my life at this particular juncture, a reason she’s managed to slow down my time.
By the time I get to the garage, my watch has taken a leap forward and it’s already two o’clock in the morning. The whole evening reminds me of one of those music videos where some of the images are speeded up and others are suddenly slowed down, and when they slow down she comes towards me, swaying, with her haze of red hair.
Just before I put my key in the lock, I hear a woman crying behind me.
11
WHEN I TURN, I see Gaëlle, curled up on the mat by the door that leads up to the terrace of the building. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her crying.
“Gaëlle, what are you doing here?” I ask, sitting down next to her. “What’s the matter?”
She looks so defenceless, my first instinct is to put my arms around her. But Gaëlle aims at me those sapphires she has instead of eyes and asks me to switch off the light on the stairs. “I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of seeing me in this state.” Her tone is sharp and irritable. She doesn’t give me time to open my mouth. “Look, I know you’re enjoying this.”
I shake my head, I’d like to tell her she’s wrong.
“Don’t be a hypocrite.”
“It’s the last thing on my mind,” I reassure her in a paternal tone that doesn’t even sound like me.
“You like it, don’t you?” she insists. “Seeing me crumble like this. You can’t fool me, I know how your mind works. You vanished because this is what you wanted, to see me crumble at last.” She throws me a fiery gaze, then immediately turns away.
She’s pale, there are rings under her eyes, and her lipstick is smudged.
“What are you talking about?”
She gives a nervous little laugh. “I hate you,” she says. “And to think I lost my head over you.” More impatient than ever, she gets up and comes and stands in front of me. “Why do
n’t you say anything?”
She doesn’t give me time.
“You’re really hurting me,” she says, with a look in her eyes that in any other circumstances I’d find disarming. “I did everything I could to stay with you, even deluded myself I could be satisfied with that kind of non-relationship. But now I can’t stand it any more…”
“Who are you?” I’d like to ask, but once again I don’t have time, because suddenly Gaëlle opens the door of my apartment. “I’m sleeping with you,” she announces, walking in. “I want to fuck you all night long.”
If everything was normal, a scene like this would have excited me more than you could imagine. Not this time.
“I know you like it when I talk like that,” she continues, but it’s as if she’s addressing someone who doesn’t exist any more.
She touches my neck, first with her fingertips, then with her lips, which are cold and damp. I remain rigid, distant. She bursts into tears again. Because of my accelerated time, her behaviour comes across as psychotic, which of course it may actually be. “I shouldn’t have…” she stammers. “I knew I was wrong, but I wanted to hurt you in some way… I didn’t think anything would make me feel better.”
She’s on the verge of a confession, which is the last thing I’d have expected of her. I make an effort to appear surprised. “What are you talking about?”
She wipes her tears. “I’m talking about Federico,” she says. “I slept with him.”
I know this is the image of her that will remain with me, perhaps the most genuine: her head held high, that angry, accusing look in her eyes, even as she admits to a nasty gesture like that.
“Did you hear what I said?” Her voice rises in pitch. “I slept with your best friend!”
I give her a slap, just to make her stop. Shouting it at the top of her voice won’t make it seem like my fault.
I wonder if two months ago I would have forgiven her, or if I would have continued sleeping with her, even knowing. Now I’d only like to pick her up out of the hole she’s rushed headlong into. She seems like a little insect that’s dying, her wings crumpled, too weak to fly again.
She lays her cheek on my chest and at last closes her eyes. I hold her in my arms, while she asks me to understand her. “I did it to take everything from you,” she says, “the way you took everything from me.”
She’s fragile, a beautiful orchid deprived of water. Her hair is unkempt, and she’s breathing heavily. “Don’t leave me.”
I don’t know who she is. All those nights of sex, those forbidden games, the shameless phone calls and messages, and now I don’t have the slightest idea who she is. It’s incredible, the distance I’ve ended up putting between myself and people.
She presses her lips to mine with a new urgency that’s unusual in her.
A moment ago she told me she knew how my mind worked. Who was that man you filled your head with strategies for, Gaëlle? Tell me, I’d like to know too. How did I look at you, what did I say to you? This kiss is pointless. You know that too, don’t you?
I move her away from me and ask her to go, to go now.
She sweeps her hair back from her face and again pours out all her resentment on me. I lose the thread of her attacks. “You’re not like me,” she says. She mentions my inability to love, my superficiality, the drugs, the boredom, the pain. “If you’ve got to your age like that, I doubt you’ll ever be able to change. You’re just a poor bastard.”
Then she opens the door and leaves my apartment without another glance.
In a moment, faster than ever, Gaëlle is out of my life. I wonder if she was ever part of it. Of everything she’s said, that unstoppable flow of words she’s poured over me, one truth remains: I was never able to love her. I’ve never been capable of loving anybody. The most alarming thing is that now everything seems devoid of meaning. It hardly matters that sex is something that’s over in an instant, that a beautiful girl turns suddenly into an old woman, or that my baby is nothing but a dusty relic. In this exhausting race, my life is overtaking me, and almost everything that was part of it leaves me completely indifferent.
The morning light is coming in through the living-room window. Another night has flown past.
I’m exhausted. I’ve almost lost the will to start running again.
But Isabelle and what I felt when I saw her last night oblige me not to give up.
I have to find her. Somehow, I have to start living again.
It’s the middle of the day, and I’m out and about in the city trying to attend to all the things I’ve left unresolved. Federico keeps calling me on my mobile, he’s filled my voicemail with messages, but I have no intention of calling him back.
Instead, I call Luca. “I had a great time with all of you the other night,” I tell him, trying to get straight to the point before the time at my disposal is used up. “I hope there’ll be an opportunity to—”
“What are you talking about, Svevo? Of course there will be. I had a great time, too.”
“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” I go on, my tone changing. “Tell me about Isabelle… Do you know how I can find her?”
Luca’s tone changes, too: he’s on the defensive. “Svevo, listen, I don’t want to get into that. Giorgio’s a friend.”
“But they’re not together.”
“No, but he likes her a lot. And I think he’s right for her, we just have to give her time.”
“You’re talking like a priest, Luca. Let me put it another way. You know me, you know I tire quickly of things, but this time it’s different. I have to see her again, it’s important.”
Luca sticks to his guns, and for a specific reason. “I also know your hang-ups,” he says. “Isabelle’s a nice girl. Believe me, she’s not for you.”
“For once, you have to trust me,” I insist. “You know I don’t bullshit, you have to admit that at least.”
He sighs. He’s still reluctant, not to mention all the time I’m making him waste.
I suggest a compromise. “Let’s do something, you give me a clue, I don’t know, somewhere she does her shopping, the place where she works. Give me just one thing, I’ll see to the rest.”
Luca hesitates some more, but finally gives in. “She takes her daughter for a walk in Villa Balestra park most afternoons.”
“Thanks, Luca. You’re a friend.”
At lunchtime, I’m sitting on a bench with a roll in my hand—my usual meal over the past three months—waiting for her.
It’s quite a small park, finding her shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s quite windy today, though, so she might have decided not to come. The thought of coming here every day doesn’t bother me, waiting has become easier since the minutes have started flying by so quickly. I have a weight on my stomach like a stone, but I don’t really care. I haven’t felt like this since I was young: maybe the first time I had sex or when I graduated.
A smell of grass smoke reaches me on the wind. A group of young guys close to the little fountain are smoking joints and listening to the Beatles. This park doesn’t seem like the best place to take a little girl for a walk. I assume Isabelle lives in the neighbourhood. Instinctively I glance at the buildings beyond the railings, trying to imagine her apartment, the style she chose to decorate it in. I walk to the far end of the park, behind the cafeteria, where some ladies are sipping tea. There’s a little playground, a skating lane shaded by pines and a few benches with words scratched on them, some little boys are hopping on the gravel, a dog runs beside them, but there’s no sign of Isabelle and Giulia.
Soon the sun starts going down. It’s the first sunset I’ve happened to see in this new dimension. In an instant, the sun is swallowed up by the horizon, as if You’re in a hurry to hide it from me and are forcing it down with a big, invisible hand. The sky is tinged with red as quickly as a tablecloth is stained with wine when you knock over a bottle by accident. All this can’t just be the result of my imagination. My mind alone wouldn’t be able to devise som
ething like this.
I leave the park and the pitiless spectacle You’ve just offered me. How long will it last? I look up at the sky, now calm and full of stars, and shout, “What are You waiting for?”
“Maybe it’s too late,” I mutter to myself, before getting back in my car.
12
I’VE BEEN BACK to Villa Balestra every day for two weeks. The same disquieting spectacle every time, but no sign of Isabelle. Luca doesn’t answer my phone calls any more. Almost nobody is looking for me. I’m learning to live with my lateness, with the constant race that my life has become.
The day I go back to work, I find myself impatiently pressing the button of the lift, after dismissing Paola, the switchboard operator, with a hurried greeting, when all she wanted was to know about my convalescence. I’m getting back on the right track. This time I can’t stop any more, whatever happens, whatever hallucination waylays me.
“So you’re back…” Smiling, Barbara sticks her head round the door of my office. “Had a good time, did you?”
I make an effort to tease her the way I used to. “Consider it maternity leave.” I’ve equalized, one-all.
She laughs, then comes in and gives me a hug. “Joking apart, you gave us a real fright.”
A fright they quickly recovered from, apparently, seeing that none of them even bothered to phone me.
About Time Page 9