The Silence of the Wave

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  I also thought of giving the collection a title, but the ones I thought of didn’t seem appropriate. In fact, they made me want to puke. Stuff like: Songs for Ginevra or Giacomo’s Selection or other sappy things that make me ashamed just to write them in this diary.

  In the end I gave up on the title, put the memory stick in my backpack, and carried it back and forth from home to school for a week without finding the opportunity or the courage to give it to her. Then she was away, and for two days now she hasn’t been to school. I thought of phoning her, but I don’t have her mobile number, and even if I had it there’s no guarantee I’d find the courage to call her.

  Last night, after hesitating for at least an hour, I asked her to be my friend on Facebook. Let’s see what happens.

  * * *

  I had a nightmare, which hadn’t happened to me for a while.

  I was sitting on my bed, sure that I was wide awake, when I heard the rustle of wings. I was about to switch on the light but then, in the semidarkness, I saw a pigeon perched on the lamp, looking at me.

  Immediately after that, I saw two more of them on the floor, next to the bed. No, there weren’t just two, there were more. Five, or maybe six or seven, or maybe ten. Or maybe twenty. Now they were all around, on the bedside table, on the desk, on the chair, even on the bed. The room was full of pigeons, and from somewhere I couldn’t see others kept coming in. They were on the wardrobe, on the ceiling light, on the football. And now they were all looking at me. All gray, which in the darkness seemed black, all with the same stupid hostile, nasty pigeon eyes.

  But none of them moved.

  They were too still, I thought, and so, making an effort to overcome my disgust, I reached out my hand to one of them that was on the bedside table. I touched it with one finger but it didn’t move. I touched another and that one didn’t move either.

  Then I tried touching the third one, but a bit harder, and it fell to the floor, making a noise like a paper ball or a piece of cardboard. I tried to push another one and that one also fell, without giving any signs of life. Then, even though it really made me want to puke, I tried picking one up. I took it cautiously between my index finger and my thumb, and at that moment I understood.

  It wasn’t alive.

  It was stuffed.

  They were all stuffed, and as I was holding the one I had picked up between my fingers, I heard a rustling spreading from the room. It didn’t come from any place in particular.

  The pigeons started falling, one after the other, a whole volley of them. A heavy shower of stuffed pigeons. It was really disgusting.

  I shielded my head with my hands, making an effort not to scream, and stayed like that for all the time it lasted. Then, when the shower was over, I looked around, checked the floor and the bed.

  There was nothing there, because I had woken up.

  15

  He was just getting ready to go out when his mobile phone rang. That was something that happened so rarely that at first Roberto didn’t realize the sound had anything to do with him.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, it’s Emma.”

  “Emma, hi.”

  “I remembered you’d written your telephone number in the book.”

  “Yes, it was inside the cover,” Roberto replied, and a fraction of a second later felt like an idiot. If she was phoning him, that obviously meant she’d found the number.

  “The book, yes. It’s very good, thank you. Reading it brought back lots of memories.”

  At that moment it struck Roberto that Emma should have been at the doctor’s office at this hour.

  “Aren’t you at the doctor’s?”

  “Actually, no. I couldn’t go today. And I won’t be going on Mondays anymore, because … Well, it’s not important, something to do with work. Anyway, I’ve changed days.”

  “Oh, so our date is canceled?” He tried to give his voice a light tone, but the thought going through his brain was: if she had changed the day of her session, it was likely they’d never meet again.

  “That’s why I’m phoning you. As if we’d had a real date. I know it may seem ridiculous, but I thought that if you didn’t see me you might get worried.”

  Then she paused, and in those moments of silence it seemed to Roberto that he could hear the frantic murmur of thoughts running out of control.

  “It’s true. If I hadn’t seen you today I’d have been worried. Thank you.”

  Silence, heavy with unexpressed intentions. Each was aware of the other being about to speak and was waiting.

  “Maybe—”

  “I was thinking—”

  “I’m sorry, go on.”

  “No, you first.”

  “If you’re not too busy tonight, maybe we could have a bite to eat or go for a drink. Tonight.” He said tonight twice, although he couldn’t have said why. And as he finished speaking, he was already regretting what he had said. What did he know about her, apart from what he had discovered on the Internet? She might be married—she didn’t wear a wedding ring; come to think of it, she didn’t wear any ring at all: that was his old attention to detail coming out—she might be with someone, she might have had no intention of seeing him and the phone call had been simply the impulsive act of an unstable person.

  “Obviously if you can’t or you don’t feel like it, no problem,” he said hastily. “I don’t mean to be intrusive, I just wanted to say it.”

  She hesitated for a few seconds.

  “I don’t have much time. But maybe a drink would be fine. We’d have to meet near my place.”

  “Of course. Tell me where you live and I’ll come there.”

  “I’m in the Via Panisperna. We could meet at Santa Maria dei Monti, there’s a bar with tables in front … It’s almost hot today, maybe we could sit outside.”

  Roberto did not reply. Santa Maria dei Monti was no more than two hundred yards from where he lived.

  “Are you still there?”

  “No, I mean yes, I’m sorry, something came into my head—it happens sometimes—and I got distracted. Santa Maria dei Monti would be perfect, I know the bar. What time shall we meet?”

  “Maybe you’re a long way away and it’s hard for you to get to Monti, but I can’t go far, I’m sorry.”

  “Monti really isn’t a problem for me. Shall we say eight o’clock?”

  “Yes, eight o’clock’s fine,” and then, after a brief hesitation: “I’m sorry …”

  “Yes?”

  “I warn you I’m about to make a fool of myself again, but I never listen to names when I make someone’s acquaintance …”

  “Neither do I.”

  “… and I didn’t hear yours. I’m sorry.”

  “Roberto.”

  “Roberto. You could have written the name next to the phone number. That way you would have spared me the embarrassment of asking you.”

  “You’re right, it’s my fault. Tonight I’ll let you have my full particulars and even leave you a photocopy of my ID, for all eventualities.”

  Laughter.

  “Good idea, then I can check you’re really a carabiniere. See you tonight, then.”

  “See you at eight.”

  16

  Roberto was feverish with excitement. He thought of calling the doctor’s office, saying something had happened and he’d have to cancel that afternoon’s appointment. He dismissed the idea almost immediately. He left home and ran most of the way, in order not to be overcome by the mental pins and needles that had taken hold of him after Emma’s phone call.

  Toward the end of the session—it had slipped away like a pleasant chat between two strangers on a train—the doctor asked him if everything was all right. Roberto said yes, everything was fine, but he had to excuse him if he was a bit distracted, for some days now he had been surprised by his own reactions, he didn’t really know what to expect from himself, and now he really had to dash because he had an appointment this evening, sorry again, see you on Thursday.

  As h
e left, he could feel the doctor’s penetrating gaze on him, and told himself that by Thursday he would have to find an explanation for his behavior.

  * * *

  After his shower he looked at himself in the mirror and realized that he had a paunch. Of course he’d known that for some time. Years and years of bad food and copious amounts of alcohol in different places around the world don’t pass without leaving their mark.

  But even though he’d known, it was only now that he became fully aware of it. In other words, that he saw it. He stood at the mirror, first to the side, then again facing it. It occurred to him that he also needed to see himself from the back, but he didn’t have a second mirror and so he couldn’t. He tried to hold his breath. Then he contracted his abdominal muscles—which he definitely had, partly because he had been exercising again for a while. But equally definitely, they weren’t visible. Many years earlier, he told himself, his abdominals had been like those you saw in commercials for bathing suits. Now, they most certainly weren’t. When had they started to disappear beneath a growing layer of fat? He didn’t know. The years he’d spent living that absurd life were enveloped in a thin but distressing layer of fog. He knew he had been to Madrid, Geneva, London, Marseilles, Bogotá, Caracas, New York, Miami, and lots of other places, but he couldn’t put the memories of all those journeys, all those airports, all those hotels, all those meetings, all those lunches and banquets into any kind of order. Or all those women. Yes, that was another worrying thing. He couldn’t remember the names, or even the faces, of many of the women. He remembered their bodies and in some cases even their smells. But not their faces or their names.

  All right, he told himself. Best to stop right there and finish getting ready.

  He realized he did not even have one bottle of cologne at home. I’ll have to buy one, he promised himself, while starting to think about what to wear. This immediately produced a kind of mental paralysis, a sense of panic. How long was it since he’d last been shopping for clothes? All the clothes he had were old and—he thought, feeling embarrassed—rather pitiful. His apartment, too, was scruffy and pitiful. He was dismayed at the thought that Emma might come in here, see where he lived, and find out who he was, who he really was.

  Then, beneath heaps of washed but unironed shirts, T-shirts, odd socks, pants with the elastic stretched, and a few long-unworn ties, he unearthed, as if by a miracle, a new shirt, still in its plastic packaging. He unwrapped the shirt and put it on, then slipped on a pair of jeans—jeans are always more or less the same even if you’ve had them for quite some time—and finally took out the most presentable jacket he had in the wardrobe: the top part of a suit he’d had for years but had only worn two or maybe three times.

  He felt better. He pulled in his belly and straightened his back, and it seemed to him he was not as rundown as he had thought just a while earlier. He made a few more grimaces to try and bring a little color and expression to his face.

  As he went out he decided that as soon as they met he would tell her they were neighbors, to avoid misunderstandings that might become unpleasant.

  As he was early, he walked slowly and got to the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti at five to eight. That gave him a reassuring sense of control and a little leap of joy. There was a carefree atmosphere, the sense of slightly euphoric anticipation typical of the first evenings of spring. A few young people sat laughing on the steps of the fountain, two overweight elderly ladies were chatting in Roman dialect, a man was collecting, with a little shovel and bag, what his dog had just deposited on the cobblestones.

  Roberto sat down at an outside table and continued to look around with the same curiosity and a vague sense of surprise, as if this were the first time he had been to this square.

  Emma arrived five minutes late. She, too, was dressed in a springlike way. Jeans, white shirt, jacket, leather bag over her shoulder, raincoat over her arm.

  “I’m sorry, I hate being late,” she said, sitting down with a friendly smile and spreading around her the perfume that already seemed familiar to Roberto.

  “Only five minutes.”

  “Six minutes,” she said, looking at her watch. “You know, up until a few years ago I made it a rule always to arrive really late. Twenty minutes, even half an hour sometimes. Then the subject came up at our doctor’s and he explained what it means.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a way of exercising power. A kind of bullying, a concealed abuse of authority. Anyway, something I really didn’t like. When he told me that, I said I thought that was nonsense, you can’t attribute a pathological explanation to everything, the reason I arrived late was because I always had too much to do and couldn’t get through it, things like that. I was quite unpleasant in the way I replied, quite aggressive. Which happened often at the beginning.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He smiled, which made me even more nervous, and then said that when I felt like it I should ask myself why the subject bothered me so much. And when I felt like it I could tell him what the result of my reflection had been.”

  “Yes, I can almost picture him and hear his voice.”

  “And of course he was right. I’d gotten upset because he was right. He’d caught me out, as on so many other occasions. It took me a while to tell him that, but since then I’ve started to pay attention to this thing about arriving late. It happens much less now, but some habits are difficult to change completely. When it does happen, when I arrive even just a few minutes late, I always apologize. I’m still a convalescent. I brought you this.”

  “What is it?” Roberto asked.

  “I Am a Bird Now by Antony and the Johnsons. Do you know it?”

  “No, but I don’t really know much about music.”

  “I was just leaving and then I thought I’d like to give you something of mine, seeing that I liked your book so much. So I grabbed this. Do you mind secondhand?”

  Receiving a gift was something that hadn’t happened to him for some time, and Roberto realized he didn’t know how to react. He had to make an effort just to say thank you and smile. Then he took the CD and looked at the cover. At that moment the waitress arrived. Emma ordered a light Aperol spritz. Roberto said the same thing would be fine for him.

  “I live in the Via Panisperna … Oh, sorry, I already told you that. Do you know the area?”

  “Yes, I live here.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m in the Via del Boschetto.”

  “Just round the corner?”

  “Yes.”

  “No way. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “When you told me you lived around here I was so surprised that I didn’t have the presence of mind to tell you.”

  “Look at you. We must have passed each other dozens of times.”

  She sighed, smiled, shook her head.

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “Do you smoke?” he asked, in a slightly surprised tone.

  “Other people’s cigarettes. I never buy my own, or else I’d smoke a pack a day.”

  Roberto took out a pack of red Dianas and a lighter, cursing himself for not having thought of buying more.

  “These are all I have. They’re not exactly ladies’ cigarettes.”

  She ignored the remark, took the pack and lighter, lit a cigarette, and smoked half of it greedily, without saying a word. The waitress arrived and placed their drinks on the table, along with peanuts and chips.

  “How long have you been living around here?”

  “It was my mother’s apartment. I lived there with her from the age of sixteen to the age of nineteen. Then I left for the Carabinieri’s officers’ training academy. Twenty-five, twenty-six years went by and, just under two years ago, I came back to live here.”

  “With your mother?”

  “No, she died …” Roberto stopped, completely at a loss. He couldn’t remember when his mother had died. He had to make a great effort to go back first to
the year, then to the month, finally to the day. It was like climbing up a wall without any handholds.

  “My mother died almost five years ago. The apartment was empty until I came, after … certain things changed in my job.” He had been about to tell her that before, for many years, he had lived in safe houses, service accommodation, hotels, apartment blocks. He had been about to add that he had never had a real home of his own in his life, apart from the years in California. He had been about to do so, but then he told himself that now was not the time, not yet at least.

  “I’ve also been here for about two years,” she said. “No, maybe a bit longer, nearly three. But I actually grew up here. Right now I’m living in the same building where my parents live. They have two apartments. They’ve given me one, and I live there with my son.”

  She had speeded up at the end of the sentence, as if she wanted to be sure she got everything in, or as if to overcome her embarrassment.

  “You have a child.” The one you were expecting when you did that commercial for mineral water, he thought, without saying it.

  “When he hears someone call him a child he gets really angry: he’s eleven, almost twelve.”

  “Almost twelve,” Roberto repeated in a low voice and a slightly absent tone. He was silent for a few seconds and then appeared to rouse himself, as if a thought had crossed his mind and then slipped away.

  “And where did you live up to the age of sixteen?”

  “In California. That’s where I was born.”

  He paused.

  “My father was American. When he died, my mother and I left.”

  “You mean you have dual personality … Sorry, I meant dual nationality.”

  Roberto burst out laughing, and it struck him that he hadn’t laughed like that for quite some time.