20
“They’re called hypnagogic illusions.”
“What kind of illusions?”
“Hypnagogic illusions. They’re a kind of hallucination. They occur in the transition phase between waking and sleep, which is actually called the hypnagogic phase. In that phase—which can last from a few seconds to several minutes—it’s very difficult for the individual to distinguish dreams from reality. That’s what happened to you. Did you also have the impression you couldn’t move, that you were alert but paralyzed?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. I was awake, my eyes were open and I was moving them, looking around, and I could speak—actually I think I did speak, I had a conversation with this person, I mean with this apparition—but I couldn’t move. Yes, paralyzed is the exact word.”
“That’s another characteristic of hypnagogic experiences—paralysis. On the whole it can be quite a troubling experience.”
The doctor paused for rather a long time and looked Roberto in the eyes.
“In some cases it can even be a frightening experience.”
And after another few minutes’ silence: “Who was the person you saw?”
It was obvious he was going to ask that question. Roberto shouldn’t have told him what had happened if he didn’t want to hear that question. That much was clear.
Roberto took a pen from the desk, removed the cap, looked at the tip as if it were really interesting, then put the cap back and a few seconds later repeated the same sequence. And then again. And then yet again. The doctor watched him but did not intervene.
“Why don’t you say anything?” Roberto asked, abruptly interrupting the obsessive rhythm of that movement.
“I’m afraid you’re the one who should be saying something, if you want to.”
Roberto resumed playing with the pen. A few minutes passed.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Maybe because I don’t feel like it. Maybe because I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?”
“As I said, I don’t want to.”
“Actually I think you do, but you can’t summon up the courage. But maybe now’s the time.”
He was right, as always, and Roberto knew it. He felt his anger grow and break the bounds.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You tell me what we’re talking about.”
The doctor’s voice was still calm, but there was a touch of hardness in it that Roberto couldn’t stand. He felt as if he were about to lose control. He stood up and swept everything off the desk and onto the floor. The doctor made no attempt to stop him, did not even move his chair back, and said nothing.
“You know what I really don’t want to do? I don’t want to keep listening to your bullshit, so I’m going. I don’t think I’ll be back.”
He felt the impulse to kick the desk, but managed to restrain himself. He left without turning around, but still seemed to see the doctor sitting motionless on his chair, watching him go out and disappear.
* * *
The days had gotten longer, Roberto thought as he came out of the building. It was still light and yet he was sure it had been dark at the same hour the previous time. Even though now he had come out at least half an hour early. Then he told himself that was absurd, that the previous time it must have been light as well, given that it was late April. Why, then, did he remember it as being dark, with the street all lit up as if it were winter? He would think it over later; right now he was confused. Very, very confused. And he felt a strong tingling sensation that started in the spine and went all the way to the groin.
“My nerves are on edge,” he said aloud.
The tingling sensation became almost unbearable as Roberto walked, thinking all the while that he had no desire to walk.
There was a taxi at a stand he had never noticed before, a few hundred yards from the office. The driver was reading a magazine. Without thinking, Roberto got in. The driver put his magazine down on the seat next to him and turned around to greet his customer. He moved slowly and calmly. He was an elderly man. He even seemed too elderly to still be working. Judging by his appearance, he must have been about seventy, or just under. Roberto wondered if a man should still be driving a taxi at that age.
“Good evening, signore, where can I take you?”
Yes, where?
“I want you to show me Rome.”
The driver looked at him with vague surprise. Show him Rome, in what sense? He smiled, waiting politely.
“Let’s go to the Coliseum and to the Forum, to start with.”
“Is this your first visit to Rome, signore?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take you, signore, but it’s late. By the time we get there they’ll be closing and they won’t let you in.”
“Never mind. We’ll stop and take a look out of the window. Then maybe I’ll go back another time.”
The man looked at him for a few seconds, then gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, turned, started the engine, and set off.
The movement of the car, the fact that there was a temporary destination to reach, calmed Roberto a little.
He had once read an article in an in-flight magazine about places of transit. The author of the article had talked about the comforting sense of temporariness we feel in places we arrive and leave from. Airports in particular, but also railway stations, bus stations, motels where you stop for just one night, where there’s nothing around but a supermarket, a fast-food restaurant, and a few houses where you can’t imagine people actually live. The article spoke of our restlessness, our premature nostalgia for places we have to leave very quickly.
When he was working undercover, Roberto was always temporary, wherever he went. That was why he felt at ease in those situations, why he almost grew fond of the absurd routines of that fictitious existence. His condition was one of impermanence, and this, paradoxically, made him feel as if he wasn’t temporary.
When everything had fallen to pieces, even that dubious equilibrium had been shattered. The prospect of staying in the same place, with the same identity, doing a normal job, had made him see, with sudden clarity, the absence of reference points in his life.
Now he was sitting in a taxi, without any reason or objective, without even a center of gravity, riding along the streets of a city where he had lived for years and which he had never really gotten to know. He felt a sudden sensation of peace.
They turned into the Via dei Fori Imperiali and there ahead of them was the Coliseum.
“Do you want me to stop here, signore?”
He said yes, but in such a low voice that he had to repeat it to be heard.
The driver pulled up and Roberto got out. He only lived a few hundred yards away, and yet everything around him was completely unknown to him.
He felt as though he were hanging upside down in the air. And from that position he had the impression that he was starting to understand. He didn’t know exactly what, but it seemed to him he was starting to understand.
Upside down like that, he felt that he was seeing what was around him. The world was acquiring a distinctness, a transparency, an intelligibility that hadn’t existed before. The succession of arches and vaults enclosing windows of dark blue sky concealed a solution. The sky was taking on the form given to it by the Coliseum. In reality, Roberto was not seeing the Coliseum, he was seeing the sky as enclosed by the Coliseum. That altered perception gave him a sense that time was completely standing still.
“Excuse me, signore …”
“Yes?”
“We can’t stay here too long. If the traffic police come by, they’ll make me wish I’d never been born—or become a cab driver.”
Roberto felt a surge of sympathy for the old man. He got back in the taxi and they drove off again, proceeding toward the Coliseum and then circling it.
“Is this really your first visit to Rome, signore?”
Roberto nodded, almost believing
it himself.
The old man peered at him in the rearview mirror.
“You are Italian, aren’t you?”
He nodded again.
“How much time do you have?”
How much time did he have? In general, how much time did he have? He heard himself say, “A couple of hours. Then I have an appointment.”
“Do you like movies, signore?”
Does anybody ever answer no to a question like that? Does anybody ever say they don’t like movies? Yes, he liked movies, why did he ask?
“Seeing as how you want to do a quick tour of Rome, let me suggest something.”
“What?”
“To see the city in a slightly different way.”
“What kind of way?”
“Let’s do a tour of the places where they shot the most famous movies set in Rome. They’re some of the most beautiful places in the city and so at least we have a theme for the ride. We have a—what can I say?—a yardstick. We have a yardstick. What do you think?”
We have a yardstick. It’s a good thing to have a yardstick. Movie locations as a yardstick. It had to mean something.
“Why not?”
The driver smiled, straightened a little on the seat, and when he started speaking again his tone was slightly different.
“Then let’s start with Roman Holiday. Remember Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn riding around on a Vespa? One of the images on the posters was taken right here, as they were driving down the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Even though there was a bit less traffic in those days, shall we say.”
Roman Holiday. Audrey Hepburn. A yardstick. They all say I look like Audrey Hepburn. Do these things happen by chance?
Roberto had fallen silent and the taxi driver peered into the rearview mirror.
“You have seen the movie, haven’t you?”
“I’ve seen a few scenes, the odd clip. I’ve never seen the whole movie.”
“That’s not good, signore. My father was an extra on that film, and I actually visited the set, though I don’t remember much about it because I was small. At home I have a photo of my dad with Audrey Hepburn. God, she was beautiful. You remember her, don’t you?”
Actually he didn’t remember her very well because Emma’s face was superimposed on hers. She resembled Audrey Hepburn, she had said. Roberto imagined the few scenes he knew of the movie with an actress who was Emma, and he remembered that evening a few days earlier as if he had spent it with Audrey Hepburn, even though her face was very out of focus, almost unrecognizable.
All he said to the taxi driver was: yes, of course, he remembered her well. Which in a sense was true. As often happens, it was only part of the truth.
“You know what Gregory Peck did when they were shooting the film?”
“What did he do?”
“He was already a big star, whereas Audrey Hepburn was an almost unknown young actress. Gregory Peck’s name should have been bigger in the credits, that was normal. After seeing how Audrey Hepburn acted, he asked for their two names to be the same size. He said Audrey Hepburn would win an Oscar and he didn’t want to look like a fool, with his name bigger than the name of the Oscar winner in the credits of the film.”
“And did she win an Oscar?”
“Of course. She won an Oscar and then lots of other awards. And Gregory Peck always said those months he spent in Rome were the happiest of his entire career.”
Roberto did not say anything, but the driver did not notice. He seemed to have jumped at the opportunity of talking about his passion for movies, and nothing was going to stop him.
“Of course, things were different in those days. The war was only just over. There was a hunger for life, a joy, a beauty, which are gone now. We’re all sad now. Even though we may have more things. I’m also sadder now. But when I’m sad I know what to do. I watch one of those great movies again and I feel like a different person. Anyway, we’re just passing the Campidoglio on your right. They shot a scene from Souvenir d’Italie there, when cars could still get up there. Now look behind you, you can see the Vittorio Emanuele monument, right? Do you see the optical illusion, the way it looks like it’s getting bigger? Like the beginning of Cinema Paradiso, which won the Oscar—you know it, surely? Now we’re in the Piazza del Popolo, where they shot the famous encounter between Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi in We All Loved Each Other So Much. I can’t get to the Trevi Fountain with the taxi but a lot of things were shot there. The scene of Anita Ekberg bathing in the fountain, of course, but also the one where Audrey Hepburn gets her hair cut by a hairdresser on the square and the one where Totò sells the fountain to an American tourist. The Spanish Steps, where Satta Flores imitates the scene from Battleship Potemkin …”
It lasted an hour and a half, maybe, and at the end—after a quick trip to the Coppedè district where Dario Argento had shot The Bird with the Crystal Plumage—the old taxi driver dropped Roberto a few hundred yards from where he had picked him up.
“Thank you, signore,” he said as he took the money. “I wish I had a customer like you every day.”
21
He got out of the taxi and looked up at the windows. There was a gleam of pale blue light behind the window of the doctor’s office. The light on the desk must still be on.
It was at this point that he wondered what to do. What to say to the doctor when he rang the bell? Paradoxically, it wasn’t what he had done, the way in which he had left the office some hours earlier, that worried him the most. It was the fact that he didn’t have an appointment. Because without an appointment, it was difficult, if not impossible, to talk to the doctor. This was the rule, never explicitly formulated, but always respected.
He could wait for him down here. And then? I’m really sorry, I got carried away. OK, thanks for the apology, see you in my office next Monday, now if you don’t mind I’m going home. Or else, thank you, but it may be best if you find another shrink, please see my secretary as soon as possible and pay for the last few sessions.
At that moment the door opened and a somewhat overweight woman who might have been Indian or Bangladeshi appeared, dragging four or five garbage bags behind her and with a duffel bag over her shoulder. Roberto held the door open, the woman smiled at him, thanked him, and slipped away with unexpected agility.
As if he were about to do something forbidden, Roberto watched the woman for a few seconds and once he was sure she wouldn’t turn round, he entered the building. He climbed the stairs, reached the landing, and rang the bell, without giving himself time to think.
The doctor opened the door after about thirty seconds, nodded in greeting, and then told him to come in. Roberto remained in the doorway.
“I’m sorry about … earlier.”
“Come in,” the doctor said again.
They entered the office. The desk was tidy again. Apart from everything else, a glass of amber liquid stood on it. From the cabinet behind him, the doctor took another glass and a bottle without a label.
“Would you like some? It’s a homemade brandy, distilled by a friend of mine.”
Roberto was about to say no thanks, but instead said yes. The doctor poured a little brandy in Roberto’s glass, added a little to his own as if to make the levels equal, and sat down.
“For this evening, though, let’s skip the medication.”
“If you give me permission, I’ll skip it forever.”
“I don’t think there’s long to go now.” He took a sip and Roberto did the same. The taste of the brandy reminded him of military cordial, which he had last drunk maybe twenty-five years earlier.
“When you left, I got a phone call from the person who has the appointment after you, the last one of the afternoon. He couldn’t come and so, all at once, my workday was over. We often underestimate the tranquilizing power of routine. Suddenly finding myself with nothing to do, after you’d left in that way …”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Please don’t apologize. As I was saying: I was left a
lone, without anything to do for the rest of the afternoon, so I felt the need to call my son. But as usual I couldn’t get through to him. He won’t call me back.”
“I didn’t know you had a son.”
“He’s thirty years old. Actually, nearly thirty-one—it’s his birthday in a few days. He was born when I was twenty-six and maybe I was too young, I wasn’t ready yet. Assuming there’s a time when we are ready. He dropped out of university and I’ve always thought he did it to spite me. To shatter the expectations I had of him. Of course, that’s an interpretation completely based on my own narcissism. Maybe the simplest explanation is that he didn’t like studying, or didn’t like the studies I’d chosen for him. Anyway, now he works as a clerk in a finance company. It isn’t exactly what I’d imagined for him. But to tell the truth, I didn’t devote much time to imagining anything for him, and maybe that’s the problem. We never see each other and I don’t know anything about him, what he thinks, what he likes, what he hates—apart from me—his political ideas, if he has any. I don’t know if he reads books—I suspect not—if he goes to the movies, if he listens to music. I don’t even know if he has a girlfriend. We only speak if I phone him, he never phones me. And when I phone him he’s put out. I ask him how he is and he tells me he’s fine as usual, and in an effort at politeness asks me if I’m fine, too, and I tell him yes, I’m fine, too, and I sense his impatience, I sense that he can’t wait to hang up, whereas what I want is to ask him if he’d like to meet me, to talk properly, but I can never summon up the courage and our telephone calls always end up being sad and dreary.”
He took a sip of brandy, then another, and then emptied the glass.
“Obviously we shouldn’t be having this conversation. When you rang the bell I shouldn’t have opened, or, alternatively, I should have told you I’d see you at our next appointment. Anything except invite you in to have a drink with me and put up with the confessions of a failed father.”
They were silent for a long time.
“I often think about my son too,” Roberto said at last.
The doctor looked at him.
The Silence of the Wave Page 13