About Time

by Simona Sparaco

  “Oh, here it is, just what I was looking for.” Isabelle has finally found her lemon grater. She turns and asks me, “Do you like it?”

  It’s an ordinary yellow lemon grater, with a transparent plastic cover. But the way she touches it, opens it and examines it makes it seem precious.

  “Do you ever come here?”

  “Not often, and you?”

  “I live just up there.” She points to a balcony at the top of a building on the right. “Those geraniums you see are mine.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “A woman comes a couple of times a week to do the cleaning, the rest of the time there’s just me and Giulia.”

  She’s ready to take her daughter in her arms again, and as soon as she takes her off me I realize that I’d like her back. We’d found our own balance.

  As we buy bread and slices of pizza, Isabelle tells me which are her favourite shops, the habits she can’t live without. About a hundred metres from the square, there’s a shop that rents out good films, which is great for her because she’s quite a film buff, and it’s embarrassing to realize that I’m almost completely ignorant on the subject. When it comes to literature, too, it turns out Isabelle has always been a voracious reader, although she prefers the more intimist kind of novel, and I’d like to be able to enliven the conversation with some interesting quotations but, apart from a few historical or philosophical anecdotes, not much comes to mind. I’ve spent most of my life with numbers.

  She doesn’t seem to be bothered by these major differences. She takes me by the hand and gives me a light, infectious smile that seems to be saying: We have plenty of time, we may even discover paths we never thought of exploring before, don’t be in a hurry. And with my hand in hers, walking on these black paving stones that smell of life, the sheer everydayness of this little slice of the metropolis has never seemed so invigorating: the restaurant owner coming to the door for a drag on his cigarette, the florist chatting at the side of the street with the waitress from the bar opposite, the market vendors joking among themselves… Everybody seems so relaxed, even a little indolent to me, but of course they know how to take their time. Isabelle greets them, stops to chat, listens to their confidences and keeps receiving gifts: a rose, some basil, a handful of pine nuts for making pesto. The truth is, she knows how to deal with people. She doesn’t make distinctions, she treats everybody the same.

  We reach the front door of the building where she lives. Inside, there’s a little lift, but she keeps walking right past it towards the stairs.

  “What floor are you?”

  “The fourth.”

  “What about the lift?”

  “I don’t trust the lift,” she says, and I smile. To think that, of all people, I met a woman like her!

  I take Giulia in my arms, and we divide the shopping bags. The stairs are not very inviting: the closer we get to her floor, the steeper they get. After the second flight we hear a dog barking, then a woman yelling “Pablo, stop it!” There’s an odour of fried onions and detergent, while the walls smell of the fresh paint someone has crudely applied to it to disguise a small crack.

  Isabelle’s apartment is much more welcoming than the rest of the building. The dark clay floor and the wooden beams on the ceiling are typical of apartments in the centre, the furnishings are bohemian, the kitchen filled with colourful accessories, and there are piles of books in Italian and French, DVDs and photographs. There’s something comforting about all this untidiness, about Giulia’s toys scattered everywhere, about the old French books on the shelves, the collections of poetry, the 1960s refrigerator that she’s decided to use as a dresser and the antique wrought-iron crib she’s transformed into a window box. Timeworn objects given a second life, like shells gathered on the beach and strung onto a necklace or glued to a jewel box. Isabelle also has a passion for buses, Fifties- and Sixties-style buses with rounded corners. She has collected so many objects showing buses, she’s lost count. There’s a really nice tin clock shaped like a stylized bus just next to the TV set. “Talking of spending your life sitting down,” she says as she conscientiously picks up Giulia’s toys and puts them in a basket. “The only way to feel you’re not missing anything when you travel is to look out of the window. It’s like seeing a good film or reading an interesting book. Sometimes it’s worth stopping, though, don’t you think?”

  The way she looks at me, after expressing such a flexible yet resonant idea, is so extraordinarily relevant to what I’m living through, it takes my breath away. In my life I’ve had to deal with politicians, bankers, people in authority, I used to know how to rattle off clever remarks, obtain favours, box people into corners if necessary, but nobody ever left me speechless. Nobody until today.

  Beyond the door of the bedroom, I see a few photographs on the walls and recognize her. She’s very young, and wearing a ballerina’s tutu. Now I understand where she gets that long straight neck, that elegant bearing. “I used to dance when I was a little girl,” she says, when she notices me looking at them. “But it was never very serious.”

  “So you stopped?”

  “I love life too much to let it be taken over by a single passion,” she says as she goes into the kitchen to sort out the lunch at the stove: the water for the pasta, the cherry tomatoes for the sauce. Everything about the way she talks and behaves suggests a deep culture, but she’s also an old-fashioned, highly organized mother and housewife. She moves with great dexterity in this cluttered space. Here too, there are plenty of photographs, most of them of Giulia: having a bath, at the sea, with a funny hat and a joke pair of glasses. Isabelle stops in front of one of them and with the air of someone who never gets tired of looking at it says, “This is my favourite. There’s so much of me in her, in that smile of hers.” I also look at it closely, and for a fraction of a second have a feeling I’ve already lived through this moment. Now we’re again looking straight at each other and I want to kiss her. I feel a kind of enthusiasm growing inside me that I’ve never known, or that I may have forgotten in the disenchantment of all the easy lays I’ve collected over the years. It’s just a kiss, a tender little kiss, where you hold back desire for the sake of something bigger, and yet it’s like one’s first ever kiss, a completely different way of looking at the world.

  I like the taste of her, so different from what I’m accustomed to, and I especially like the fact that when we catch our breaths and look at each other again there isn’t the slightest trace of embarrassment between us. It’s all so natural, so spontaneous.

  In the meantime, Giulia is sitting in her high chair waiting for her baby food. Isabelle goes back to the stove to liquidize some vegetables and the kitchen fills with inviting smells. I sit down next to Giulia. She’s exploring the upholstery on the back of her seat with her tiny fingers, while also trying to loosen her belt, but before she can get upset her mother intervenes promptly with a biscuit. Giulia takes it, drags it across the feeding tray so that it crumbles a bit, then lifts it. I don’t think she has any intention of eating it, she seems to be wondering what would happen if she dropped it on the floor. After a while, she stops wondering and just drops it. That’s the nice thing about children, there are many things in my life I wish I had the courage to deal with the way she’s dealt with that biscuit.

  Her food is ready, and I ask Isabelle if I can be the one to give it to Giulia. She laughs her head off at my attempts to deal with Giulia’s constant moving. I try to persuade the child to eat by imitating a plane, and get a spoonful in the face for my pains.

  The spaghetti with fresh pesto and small tomatoes is delicious, and the most surprising thing is that I have all the time I need to savour it. Isabelle doesn’t hurry me, just keeps looking at me with that enchanting smile.

  When we finish eating, I help her to clear the table. I don’t think I’ve ever cleared a table in my life, and she’s amused by my clumsy attempts to hide the fact. As far as I can remember I’ve never even washed a plate, but Isabelle doesn’t hav
e a dishwasher, the one she had is broken and she’s never replaced it. “There are a whole lot of things I always forget to do,” she says, adding, “I’ve never been much good with machines.” She pours a little detergent in the sink and I offer to help her. She laughs again. “Don’t be silly, I can do it myself.” But I insist, and find myself sharing the sink and a little sponge with her, earning some more laughter from her.

  We put Giulia to bed and sit down on the sofa. I find an open book under the cushion. She starts to tidy it a little, but I stop her with a kiss. I kiss her on the mouth, on the neck, again on the mouth, I’m like a young boy trying to hold in his excitement. I don’t have the courage to go further, not because I don’t feel the desire, but out of respect, the kind I’ve never had for any other woman before. Not only is Giulia sleeping in the other room, but given how incredibly slowly time is passing when I’m with Isabelle, there’s no urgency. I’m not so crazy as to risk ruining everything.

  I look at her: any physical defects I might have noticed the first time I saw her have vanished. The lines around her eyes, the fact that she doesn’t have the fresh skin or perfectly firm body of a twenty-year-old, with a round arse and no trace of cellulite, the kind of arse I’ve always looked for in a woman: none of that matters. Then I don’t see her any more, I feel her and that’s enough, it all boils down to a matter of skin. And the gentle way she disarms me, the confidence visible in every gesture, the way she confronts life as if it would never end. She surrenders to the passing of time, trying to savour what remains, and simultaneously digging within to know herself better every day. I wonder if it’s possible to look someone in the eyes and see all this in such a short time. Isabelle, with her inexplicable ability to slow my life right down, shows me that yes, it is possible.

  We interrupt our adolescent kisses to catch our breaths, and lie on the sofa talking, looking up at the ceiling beams, the veins in the wood with their whimsical shapes. Isabelle strokes my hair and tells me about a book she’s reading for the third time. She says there are certain masterpieces that should be read several times, life is a constant evolution. Reopening a book that has been important to you can mean setting out on a new journey, perhaps a different one, being able to catch references and meanings that may have escaped you on a first reading. She has a visceral vision of things, the ability to focus only on the present without worrying too much about what has been and what will be. And she makes me feel like that book. If she had leafed through me a few months ago, she might not have been able to read me. I myself have never stopped to read myself, and the paradox of this sudden race against time is that since everything has speeded up, in reality I’ve stopped running. And even though physically, in these past few months, I’ve tried to keep up with my own life, my real race began a long time ago. And now that she’s stroking my hair, with gentle, circular, soporific movements, it’s like stopping for the first time, in every sense. The profound tiredness I’ve been dragging around with me for too long is gradually overtaken by the deepest sleep I can ever remember.

  I sleep all the hours it seems to me I’ve never slept. A sleep expanding through time, weightless, dreamless, a pure, regenerative sleep. I sleep so well that when I wake up, I forget my name for a moment. Then I see her smiling at me. “I like to watch you sleep,” she says.

  I realize it’s already dark.

  “Don’t worry, it’s only just eight. I’ve made you something for dinner.”

  A brief moment of unease. “What about Giulia? I’ve taken advantage of your kindness, I really should be going.”

  “Don’t be silly… You don’t have to be so formal with me. I’ve put Giulia to bed, and I really want to have dinner with you, if you don’t have any other plans. We can eat whenever you like. Are you hungry?”

  I ask her if I can take a shower first. She gives me a towel and leads me to the bathroom, which turns out to be the most surprising part of the apartment. The walls, originally white, are almost entirely covered with writing: fragments of songs, passages from novels, thoughts. They have a uniformity of style that gives this fresco a certain artistic refinement. There are a couple of magic markers next to the washbasin, one black and one red. “Don’t pay any attention to this nonsense,” she says apologetically.

  “It’s obvious you’re someone who wants to leave her mark.”

  Isabelle smiles and holds out a marker. “Do you want to leave a mark, too?”

  “Do you ask everyone who comes into this bathroom the same question?”

  “No,” she replies, her eyes fixed on mine. “Only the people I trust.”

  As I go to take the marker, I pull her towards me and kiss her again, with more passion now, my hands glide over her body, I discover her figure for the first time. When my excitement becomes unbearable, I stop, and busy myself with the marker. “One day I’ll write you a nice story,” I tell her, putting it down again next to the washbasins. “A story about you and about time passing.”

  “You’ve made me curious.”

  “I’d really like you to become my story.”

  There’s a lovely gleam in her eyes, a surprised smile, her face has filled with happiness, like a child unwrapping presents. She goes out to lay the table, leaving me to my shower.

  We’re sharing an unexpected, perhaps premature intimacy, but it’s so pleasant to imagine myself an integral part of her life, to leave the bathroom and find her with two glasses of Martini in her hand, ready for a toast. We kiss again, this time only a thin towel separates me from her body and it’s more difficult to hide my excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever kissed a woman for such a long time without undressing her first.

  This time we eat in the living room, by candlelight. The table is elegantly laid, the menu is a simple one: meatballs in sauce. I can’t remember the last time I ate meatballs. They’re delicious, every bite arouses an age-old memory. She cooked them while I was asleep, she says they didn’t take long, she’s used to making this kind of thing.

  There’s a certain freedom in the way our lives are so different, but at the same time Isabelle makes me want to start all over again, to wipe out my errors, to ignore my sins. It’s easier to hide with people we care about. We’re capable of telling the darkest aspects of our existence to a perfect stranger but when we’re with people who mean a lot to us we keep our secrets, we don’t want even to imagine what they might think of us if they discovered them.

  We both want to make love, the desire for it fairly oozes from our eyes, but for the first time I know what it means to want to wait, to be afraid that I’m not ready.

  After dinner we say goodbye at the door. Once again her kisses and hugs tell me: Stay, I want you inside me, all night long. But I’m afraid that part of her may feel uncomfortable in the cold light of day, and I’m trying to respect her.

  “Tomorrow Giulia’s daddy is coming to pick her up to spend the weekend with her,” she says, holding me tightly in her arms.

  I invite her to have dinner out. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” I add, knowing that as soon as I’ve walked out through the door of this apartment, my time, inexplicably, will start racing again.

  15

  WHEN I’M NOT WITH HER You sweep me away. I have to be firm, keep my thoughts at bay, the anxiety which again envelops everything like a thick icy fog. Like a scene from a bad film, I constantly replay the image of the director, looking at me with that scared expression, as if I was a plague victim to be kept at a distance. As soon as I move away from that oasis of peace which is her life, my responsibilities, my conditioning, everything to do with my life as I’ve thought of it up until now, begins to tire me. I’m screwing everything up, and I still can’t quite accept the idea of throwing away years of sacrifice.

  Luckily there are the messages, the phone calls, all those words that fill the time until dinner. Words coloured with enthusiasm, with the desire to seduce. Words that bring relief.

  I pick her up in my car. I arrive a few minutes late, but she’s wai
ting for me outside her building with an indulgent smile. At last I can catch my breath.

  I’ve booked a table in a top-class restaurant. I know the owner, and he greets us at the door with a great deal of flattery. Isabelle moves casually through the beautifully furnished room, defusing all my usual weapons of seduction: she doesn’t seem the slightest bit impressed by the surroundings, any more than she was impressed earlier, in the car, when I pressed my foot on the accelerator with my usual smugness. From time to time I get the feeling she’s tense. Even when we toast, with a vintage champagne that’ll cost me a fortune, she seems uneasy. And when she places a hand on my arm, with an almost childlike gentleness, I suddenly understand. I’m the one who’s tense and unnatural. I’m expecting the most from all this impeccable elegance without it really being necessary, and my anxiety has spread throughout the restaurant, affecting the other customers and the waiters. I realize that it’s the first time in I don’t know how long that I’ve come to a place like this without any cocaine in my system. But then she strokes my wrist, and I relax, like a child. I look deep into her eyes, and the rest ceases to matter.

  I’d like to be able to tell her about my life, the things I’m not proud about, my weaknesses, especially the incredible adventure I’m living through. But I fear her judgement, I’m afraid of losing her. Can you tell a woman, especially on a first date, that your own time has gone mad? That you’ve been flung into a new dimension, where things and people sometimes get distorted, get old in front of your eyes, due to some kind of hallucination, and that perhaps part of the blame is down to the drugs you’ve overindulged in and all the other uninhibited aspects of a modern lifestyle? All-encompassing though her smile may be, I doubt there is room in it for all that.