Some of us are besieged, others do the besieging, I was thinking by the time I was on my second drink, and those doing the besieging are weary with hunger and homesickness. That’s what I was thinking, as my eyes kept wandering toward the huge white velvet couch on which a man and a girl sat with the absent demeanor of two birds at rest. The man, perched on the arm of the couch in a tangle that suggested he was uncommonly tall and from which his hands stuck out like two short, useless wings, made you think of a bird that, evolving over time, had somehow lost touch with the sky. As for the girl, she was very beautiful. On that couch, she indeed looked like a migratory bird that had found a boat in which to rest while waiting for a storm to pass. Absent, alien, vaguely nervous.
* * *
I’d only just managed to get the bowl of peanuts back into my possession when Renzo took me by the arm and forced me to let go of it and follow him between the armchairs. “What are they promising you now?” he said, referring to the left-wing newspapers for which he’d worked before getting into TV.
“I don’t know, I don’t know anything about promises,” I said pointedly, but he was too caught up in what he was saying to grasp that I was alluding to his having forgotten his invitation to me.
“A job in television, that’s what they’re promising you, certainly not the revolution. Well, all I did was get in ahead of the rest.” He waited for a sign of approval from me. I gave it to him. “When you feel like a job in television,” he went on, “all you have to do is ask for it. You have no idea what a bunch of idiots everyone there is. As long as you’re not an idiot, they’ll think you’re a genius.”
“But of course!” a woman huddled deep in an armchair said with embarrassing swiftness. She had been listening to the same record since I came in. “This friend of yours,” she said, looking at me, “doesn’t look much like a pirate. If anything, he could be one of those stowaways in Conrad. You know, one of those men who’ve committed some terrible sin and expiate it by wandering from port to port? God, how I love him!”
“Who, him?” Renzo said, pointing at me.
“Conrad,” the woman said. The record had come to a close, and she put the needle back at the beginning. I wondered which of the two would win in the end. She again gave it her full attention. There was no trace of sorrow in her, or of passion. Her whole demeanor exuded independence, an independence so absolute as to make you think she hadn’t come into the world like everybody else, in pain and blood, but had simply emerged, like a butterfly.
“Eva, you’ll get appendicitis if you just sit there all the time,” Viola said, joining us before my silence could grow too heavy. Renzo took the opportunity to lead me away, and once again he did so by taking my arm, as if the room was as big as a public square. It was, in fact, big, but not quite as big as his gesture seemed to suggest. After a few steps, we almost bumped into the companion of the girl. He was wandering through the living room with the air of having just hit a piece of furniture in a spontaneous attempt to take flight. She was alone now, on the white velvet couch. With her fingers twined in her long black hair, she was nervously laying out a deck of cards for a game of solitaire as if some redemptive response might come from it. Renzo pulled the bar cart over to her. He’d noticed the direction of my glances and with his usual discretion was taking care of things. “What are you drinking, Arianna?”
She took her eyes away from her own destiny. “Anything above forty proof,” she said. From the smile she gave me, anybody would have thought she’d spent the whole evening waiting for me. It was a smile that isolated the person it was addressed to, raising him to heights he would never have suspected he could conquer. A smile like a blow to the head, in which only one thing remained unequivocal. That she didn’t give a damn about you. “What about that game?” she said, as if the progress of the evening depended on me. I spread my palms wide.
“Here it is!” Viola said, joining us with paper and pencil. Then she took me by the arm and said, “Come with me. You’re not thinking of betraying me with some nymphet!” So I had to go back to my armchair, where I discovered that the bowl of peanuts had disappeared. Ten minutes later, in the silence of the living room, the only sound was the scratch of pencils on paper, the occasional laugh, and, I feared, the rumbling of my stomach.
It was at this point that another soft noise pervaded the room. The girl, Arianna, had abandoned her couch and was proceeding miraculously between the armchairs. The fragility of her body made whatever she did seem courageous, even just walking across a room full of friends. With every step, her glossy rain boots emitted little sighs around her knees. She reached the arm of Viola’s chair and leaned down to whisper something in her ear.
It was now that the woman named Eva intervened, saying, “Come on, Arianna, stop it!” Then, to Viola: “Don’t you think she’s dumb? This morning as she was putting on her blouse, she scratched a spot on her skin, and all day long she’s been trying to phone Venice to talk to her doctor about it.”
The girl barely looked at her, then said she’d heard of people who’d died from scratching a mole.
“Really, Arianna?” Viola said. “Do you have a consultant you trust?”
Well, that’s how things were. The girl had gone to make her phone call, and I was trying to find an excuse to leave and go somewhere to eat when Viola, seeing that I couldn’t make up my mind to write my anonymous message on the sheet of paper, looked at me pensively and said, “Listen, would you go get the ice from the kitchen? I’m sorry, but Ernesto isn’t here, it’s his night off.” Because now they even had a servant. She gave me directions on how to get to the kitchen, informing me that I would find it changed and that only the refrigerator was still the old one.
I had a flash of hope. Two years earlier, that refrigerator had been the best stocked in the city. “My old friend!” I said. “How is he?”
“Oh, you know,” she said. “One of those cold, unsatisfied types. An aesthete.”
I was already on my feet. In the hallway, the girl was phoning, curled up on the floor, in the dark. I had to climb over her and then went on my way, sensing her eyes on my back as I groped along the wall in search of the kitchen door and the light switch. The light came on to reveal a kitchen as dazzlingly white as an operating room. The refrigerator was in a corner, a bit yellow compared with the rest of the furniture. With the flaking on its door looking like decoration, it stood there, lordly and reserved, but I wasn’t intimidated, and, after searching in the pantry for bread, I walked resolutely over to it. The door opened with a slight click.
Inside, it was full of cool air and French cheeses. Holding the door open with one knee, I ate half a Camembert without any qualms, then, using a knife, levered under the ice tray until that frozen heart of aluminum came loose with a crack so tragic as to make me fear I’d murdered not only the refrigerator but the whole kitchen. Still eating, I turned on the faucet and let hot water run on the tray until the ice broke up, then emptied the cubes into the bucket and went back to the refrigerator. The still-open door lent it a violated air. I looked in the vegetable compartment until I found a very green and velvety zucchini. I placed it on the open wound left by the ice tray and closed the door with the appropriate care. It wouldn’t be the first aesthete to have a zucchini in place of a heart, and, anyway, it was the nearest thing to a flower that I had at hand.
The girl was still in the dark on the floor, and I was about to climb over her again when I felt her grab me by the jacket. It was an imperious gesture to the point that, almost without realizing it, I found myself kneeling next to her, with the ice bucket in my hand. I was surprised to see that she was crying. I tried to think of something to say to her, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I simply stayed there, by her side, while an ironic but consoling voice on the phone kept telling her that she wouldn’t die. The girl didn’t say anything. All she did was listen and cry, and then, when the voice stopped, she stood up, passed the back of her hand over her nose, and vanished in the direction of
Viola’s bathroom, leaving me to replace the receiver. I didn’t take it amiss. I knew the type. There are people who have the singular characteristic of asking for help while at the same time giving you the impression they’re doing you a favor. I put back the telephone and returned to the living room with the ice bucket. Immediately afterward, I began shivering. I knew what it was. One of the most unpleasant effects of alcohol was that it screwed up the part of my brain that regulated my body heat. I went and smoked a cigarette next to what remained of the fire, and soon after that the girl returned. Her transformation was amazing. Nobody could have suspected that, only a short while earlier, tears had been streaking down her conceited face. The perfunctory glance she gave me made me feel I was no more to her than a handkerchief.
* * *
The party came to an end about three. The guests abandoned their armchairs and left, as if answering a call. Everything happened so quickly, I had the impression after a while that I was watching a movie whose projectionist has started showing the remaining footage at double the speed. But that, too, might have been an effect of the alcohol, I don’t know. All I do know is, within a quarter of an hour the room was silent. A curtain swayed in front of an open window, and the turntable was going around and around beneath a pile of empty glasses and full ashtrays.
Viola and the girl were plotting on the couch, Renzo was sucking at an empty pipe, absorbed in his own thoughts, and I was looking at the titles of the books on a shelf. When I moved on to the paintings hanging on the walls, one of them, a freight car abandoned on a disused line, reminded me of my old Alfa Romeo abandoned on the other side of the city.
“You stay here,” Viola said to Renzo, who was about to get up from his armchair. “He can see Arianna home. I’ve been trying to throw them into each other’s arms all evening, and now you want to ruin everything?”
Without saying a word, the girl started collecting her cards, then walked out to the entryway, and Viola took the opportunity to throw me a knowing glance. A moment later, the girl reappeared, wearing a red plastic raincoat that made a loud rustling noise. She put the pack of cards in her pocket. “I’m ready,” she said as if a firing squad awaited her outside. At the door, there were the usual promises of telephone calls and even an official invitation to dinner. In the old days, I would merely have had to turn up at the right time without even calling ahead.
“You’ll have to go down on foot,” Viola said. “Arianna hates elevators.”
The girl didn’t say a thing. We descended the stairs in silence, making sure we waited for each other at each landing.
Outside, the air was shaken by faint gusts of wind. Winter and spring were exchanging their last blows. The seasons change at night, unbeknown to the people, and we were witnessing a spectacle whose grandeur was only equaled by the silence with which it crept up on us. It was one of those nights when you feel that anything might happen. Next to me, the girl, remote, her hands clasped over her raincoat, her eyes half closed, was greedily breathing in the scent of the plane trees with the satisfaction of someone finding herself in her own garden together with a chance guest. To regain a little composure, I looked up at the sky.
It was black and very high, interspersed with big, racing clouds.
3
By the time we got in the car, the street-corner clocks said it was three in the morning. The city was drying out in the night wind, but there were still puddles as big as lakes, and the little English car swished past them. The girl drove in silence, proud of her profile, and I was already thinking that I would soon exit her life—as I would the life of any bus driver, with the door slamming behind me and the driver watching me in the rearview mirror—when she shook out her hair, and said, “What was your name again?”
“Leo Gazzara,” I said. “It still is.”
“What a sad name,” she said after a while. “It sounds like a lost battle.” After the day I’d had, I didn’t feel up to rebutting that, so all I did was search my pockets for a cigarette. As always at that hour of the night, I was betrayed by the fluid in my lighter. I struck it a few times without success. She told me to have a look on the backseat, where I found a few cheap cigarettes, a copy of Swann’s Way, and a bottle of French perfume.
“Coeur Joyeux,” I read on the label. “You mean, not only do you have a heart, it’s actually joyful?”
There was something grateful about her laugh. “It’s my antidote,” she said. “Do you live with someone, or what?”
“Or what,” I said.
“Do you always talk this way?” she said.
We had reached the avenue where I’d left the old Alfa Romeo, so I didn’t reply. Nobody had stolen it and it was grazing in solitude. “This is it,” I said. “Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “And I’m sorry about that scene in the hallway. I’m hysterical tonight.”
She’d finally said it.
“Why?”
“Oh, no reason,” she said, switching off the engine. A glassy silence fell over the avenue. Around us, the buildings seemed to huddle over the sidewalks, and although the sky was still uniformly black, there was a sense that night was slowly orienting itself toward dawn—it’s from three o’clock onward that night rises from its own abyss, dripping with dreams. Any night watchman can tell you that. “Want one?” she said, holding out a pack of very strong French cigarettes. “They’d kill a running buffalo.”
“No,” I said, “I’ve already had a weird enough day.”
“Don’t talk to me about weird days,” she said. “Are you sleepy?”
I was at the end of my tether, truth be told. “Not so much,” I said.
“I’m not sleepy at all,” she said. She was silent for a moment, then threw me a hesitant glance. “Are you ever scared you’ll forget to breathe while you’re asleep?” That’s what she said, and when I started laughing she looked embarrassed.
“Well,” I said, “bars are good places when you’re scared. I know one that’s open all night, although the clientele’s a bit dubious.”
“You know,” she said, starting the car again as if she hadn’t expected anything else, “my demands are few when it gets to this time of night!”
“Are you referring to me?”
“No,” she said, with a smile, “you’re nice. Where are you from? Everyone in Rome is from somewhere else, have you noticed that?” Her change in mood was startling. She was almost expansive now. “What a horrible city!” she said when I mentioned Milan, then, fearing she’d upset me, said the streetcars there were great, and every time she visited she always took a ride on one.
She was from Venice, as I knew, from San Rocco to be precise, which made me think of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion, and the struggle a painter with that diminutive name must have had to produce such a big picture. I asked her why she’d left.
“Why? Don’t you read the papers?”
“You mean they mentioned your leaving?” I said.
She laughed. “Oh, only the local ones! They even brought out a memorial edition! No, I meant because of the sea. It’s terrible, knowing you’re sinking into the sea.” I looked at her. I liked looking at her. Her eyes were too big and her mouth too determined, but all things considered it was they, her eyes and her mouth, that declared courage to still be the ultimate human resource.
“Look, it’s yellow!” she said loudly, seeing a car pass. She knew a game, a kind of solitaire without cards, that could begin only when you saw a yellow car in motion. When it passed, you needed to make a wish and keep your fist clenched until you saw washing hung out to dry, a young man with a beard, a dog with a short tail, and an old man with a stick. It sounded like something that would never end.
“Listen,” I said, “that sounds like it’d never end. Wouldn’t it be better to stop for a drink and then go home?”
“I get it,” she said. “You’re just like all the others. Oh God! Why do people always live as if life can be repeated?”
At this point al
l I could do was keep quiet if I didn’t want to come across like some office clerk, so I kept quiet as we drove into a service station on Via Flaminia. A few slow, powerful trucks passed us, creating an earthquake, before vanishing northward into the dark. Arianna pressed her clenched fist on the horn. After a few minutes, a guy dressed in yellow came out of the booth and walked over to us, rubbing his face with his hand. “Were you asleep?” she said, with mock innocence.
“No,” he said, “I was fishing.”
But Arianna wouldn’t be put off and gave him one of her radiant smiles, as if she were ecstatic that he was the one who would be serving her. The guy was so invigorated by this, he even cleaned the windows without being asked.
“All right,” she said, setting off again. “But first I want to eat. What would you say to a warm brioche?”
“I’d say I’d like a dozen of them,” I said.
* * *
She knew the night like the back of her hand. A quarter of an hour later, we were pushing open the door of a bakery tucked away in a courtyard near the Palace of Justice, and entering a white hell of flour and people at work. There were men taking flaccid masses of dough and pounding them on the tables as if to punish them for their submissiveness, and others cutting them into pieces and sticking them in an oven. There were also women with white kerchiefs over their hair, mixing cream in containers.
“Oh, it’s you, princess,” one of them said. “What do you want tonight?”
Arianna pointed to various types of brioche while the women looked on indulgently. A paper cone was filled for her. She took it in both hands, because it was warm and pleasant to the touch, but that didn’t stop her from stealing a madeleine, then nudging me with her elbow as I wished the women good night on the way out.
Last Summer in the City Page 4
