She had taken her final exams more than a week before. In theory she should have gone straight back, and in fact all the other scholarship holders had already left.
She had stayed on, asking for an extension of the grant, claiming that she had to do further work on some subjects. The extension had been refused and yesterday she had had a fax from her country ordering her to return. If she didn’t do so, and at once, she would lose her position at the Ministry of Agriculture.
She had no choice, she said. Even if she stayed she could do nothing to help Abdou. Without money or a job.
Without anywhere to live, since they had already told her to vacate her room at the annexe as soon as possible.
She would go back to Nubia and try to obtain temporary leave. She would do everything she could to come back to Italy.
She had collected all the money she could to pay for Abdou’s defence, meaning me. It came to nearly three million. I must do all I could, all I could to help him.
No, Abdou didn’t know yet. She would tell him tomorrow, at visiting time.
However – she repeated, too quickly and without looking at me – she’d do everything she could to come back to Italy. Soon.
We both knew it wasn’t true.
Curse it, I thought. Curse it, curse it, curse it.
I had an urge to insult her for leaving me alone with all the responsibility.
I didn’t want that responsibility.
I had an urge to insult her because I saw myself in her unexpected mediocrity, in her cowardice. I recognized myself with unbearable clarity.
There passed through my mind the time when Sara had talked about the possibility of having a baby. It was one October afternoon and I said that I didn’t think the right moment had yet come. She looked at me and nodded without saying anything. She never mentioned it again.
I did not insult Abajaje. I listened to her justifications without saying a word.
When she had finished, she backed away, as if afraid of turning her back on me.
I was left standing near the door, with the cardboard box containing Abdou’s things, holding the roll of banknotes. Then I picked up the telephone on my secretary’s desk and without really thinking rang Sara’s number, which had been my number.
It rang five times, then someone answered.
The voice was nasal, fairly young-sounding.
“Yes?” The tone was that of a man who feels at home. Maybe he’s just back from work, and when the telephone rang he was loosening his tie, and now while he’s answering he’s taking off his jacket and tossing it onto a sofa.
For some unknown reason I didn’t hang up.
“Is Stefania in?”
“No, there’s no one here called Stefania. You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Could you please tell me what number I’ve rung?”
He told me and I even wrote it down. To be certain I’d heard right.
I looked for a long time at that piece of paper, my brain circling round and round a nasal voice, faceless, on the telephone in my own home.
17
“That was a lovely film this evening. What are the actors’ names again?”
“Harry is Billy Crystal. Sally, Meg Ryan.”
“Wait, how did it go… the bit with the dream about the Olympics?”
“ ‘Had my dream again where I’m making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I’d nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10
from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me 5.6.’ ”
She bursts out laughing. How I love her laugh, I thought.
A person’s laugh is important because you can’t cheat. To know if someone is genuine or fake, the only sure way is to watch – and listen to – his laugh. People who are really worthwhile are the ones who know how to laugh.
She made me jump by touching my arm.
“Tell me your three favourite films.”
“ Chariots of Fire, Big Wednesday, Picnic at Hanging Rock. ”
“You’re the first who’s ever answered like that… quickly. Without thinking.”
“This favourite film game is one I often play myself. So you might say I was ready for it. What are yours?”
“Number one is Blade Runner. No doubt about it.”
“ ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. And all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time – to – die.’ ”
“Well done. It’s said just like that. ‘Time – to – die.’ With the words spaced out. And then he releases the dove.”
I nodded and she went on talking.
“I’ll tell you the other films. American Graffiti and Manhattan. Tomorrow perhaps I’ll tell you a couple of others – Blade Runner is a fixture – but that’s them for today. I’ve often said Metropolis, for example.”
“Why these for today?”
“I don’t know. Come on, shall we go on playing?”
“All right. Let’s try this game. An extraterrestrial arrives on our planet and you have to give him an example of what’s best on earth, so as to persuade him to stay. You must offer him an object, a book, a song, a quote or, well there’d also be films but we’ve already done those.”
“Good idea. I already know the quotation. It’s Malraux: ‘The homeland of a man who can choose is where the biggest clouds gather.’ ”
We remained for a moment in silence. When she was on the point of speaking, I interrupted her.
“You must do me a favour. Will you?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“If you fall madly in love with me, I’d like you to tell me at once. Don’t trust me to know instinctively. Please. Is that all right with you?”
“Fair enough. Does the same hold good for me?”
“Yes, it does. And now tell me the other things for the Martian.”
“The book is The Catcher in the Rye. I’m pretty doubtful about the song. ‘Because the Night’ by Patti Smith. Or else ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen. Or ‘Ain’t No Cure for Love’, by Cohen again. I don’t know. One of those. Perhaps.”
“And the object?”
“A bicycle. Now tell me yours.”
“The quote is really a quick exchange. From On the Road. It goes like this: ‘We gotta go and never stop going till we get there.’ The reply: ‘Where we going, man?’ ‘I don’t know but we gotta go.’ ”
“The book?”
“You’re sure not to know it. It’s The Foreign Student, by a French writer-”
“I’ve read it. It’s the one about a young Frenchman who goes to study in an American college in the 50s.”
“Nobody knows that book. You’re the first. What a coincidence.”
Her eyes flashed for a moment in the darkness of the car, like little knife blades.
We were parked on the cliffs, almost sheer above the sea at Polignano. Outside it was February and very cold.
Not inside the car though. Inside the car, that night, we seemed to be sheltered from everything.
“I’m glad I came out with you this evening. At the last moment I was about to call you and say I wasn’t feeling up to it. Then I thought you must have already left home and that anyway it would be bad-mannered. So I said to myself: we’ll go to the cinema and then I’ll ask him to take me home and I’ll get an early night.”
“Why didn’t you want to go out?”
“I don’t want to talk about it now. I only wanted to tell you I’m glad I came. And I’m glad I didn’t ask you to take me home right after the cinema. Let’s play some more. I like it. Tell me the song and the object.”
“The object is a fountain pen. The song is ‘Pezzi di vetro.’ ”
“Can I say something about the book?”
“What is it?”
“I’m no longer sure about The Catcher in the Rye.�
�
“You want to change?”
“Yes, I think so. The Little Prince. It seems more appropriate, maybe. What does the fox say to the little prince when he wants to be tamed?”
“ ‘The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…’ ”
She turned and looked at me. In her eyes was a childlike wonder. She was very beautiful. “How do you manage to remember everything by heart?”
“I don’t know. It’s always been like that. If I like something, I only have to read it or hear it once and it sticks in my mind. But The Little Prince I’ve read lots of times. So it’s not really fair.”
“What do you think is the most important quality in a person?”
“A sense of humour. If you have a sense of humour – not irony or sarcasm, which are different things entirely – then you don’t take yourself seriously. So you can’t be catty, you can’t be stupid and you can’t be vulgar. If you think about it, it covers almost everything. Do you know any people who have a sense of humour?”
“Very few. On the other hand, I’ve met a lot of them – men especially – who take themselves a hell of a lot too seriously.”
She had a moment of hesitation, then added: “My boyfriend is one of them.”
“What does your boyfriend do?”
“He’s an engineer.”
“Pompous person?”
“No. He can make you laugh, he’s nice. What I mean is, he’s intelligent, he makes funny remarks and so on. But he can only joke about other people. About himself he’s always tremendously serious. No, he hasn’t got a sense of humour.”
Another pause, then she went on, “I’d like it if you had a sense of humour.”
“I’d like to have one too. To tell the truth, in view of what you’ve just said, I’d sell my mother and father to the cannibals just to have one. Without taking myself seriously, of course.”
She laughed again and we went on chatting like that, in the car that protected us from the wind and the world. For hours.
It was past four in the morning before we realized that we ought to get back.
When we arrived outside her place, in the centre of town, the sky was already beginning to lighten.
“If tomorrow you think you still want to come out with me, phone me. If you call, I’ll give you a book.”
Sara took my chin between finger and thumb and gave me a kiss on the lips. Then, without a word, she got out of the car. A few seconds later she had disappeared through a shiny wooden door.
I gave myself a couple of light punches in the face, on one side and the other. Then I started up the car and drove away, music playing full blast.
Ten years later there I was alone in my empty office, with my memories and their heart-rending melody.
It was a long time since I’d been able to memorize songs, passages in books or parts of films just by hearing or reading them once.
Among the many things gone down the drain there was also that.
So I had to go home at once, hoping that among the books I had brought away with me I would find The Little Prince. Because at that hour there were no bookshops open and I was in a hurry, I couldn’t wait till the next morning.
It was there. I turned to near the end, where the little prince is about to be bitten by the snake and is saying farewell to his airman friend.
“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… You – only you – will have stars that can laugh! ”…
“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them ‘Yes the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy.”
18
I slept for exactly two hours.
I slipped between the sheets a few minutes before three, opened my eyes at five on the dot and got up feeling strangely refreshed.
I had no commitments that morning, so I thought I’d go for a walk. I had a shower, shaved, put on some comfortable old cotton trousers, a denim shirt and a sweatshirt. I wore gymshoes and a leather jacket.
Outside it was starting to get light.
I was already at the door when it occurred to me that I might take a book, stop and read somewhere. In a garden or a cafe, as I used to do years before. So I looked over the books that I’d never arranged but were there in my flat. All over the place, scattered provisionally.
I had a momentary thought that they were provisional there just as I was, but immediately I told myself that this was a banal, pathetic notion. I therefore stopped philosophizing and returned to simply choosing a book.
I picked up Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story, in a cheap edition that fitted easily into the pocket of my leather jacket. I took some cigarettes, deliberately did not take my mobile, and left the house.
My flat was in Via Putignani, and immediately to the right as I went out I could see the Teatro Petruzzelli.
From the outside the theatre looked normal, with its dome and all the rest of it. Not so inside. One night nearly ten years ago it had been gutted by fire, and since then there it stood, waiting for someone to rebuild it. It was inhabited meanwhile by cats and ghosts.
It was towards the theatre that I turned, feeling on my face the cool, clean air of early morning. Very few cars and no pedestrians at all.
It reminded me of the time towards the end of my university days when I often used to come home at that hour.
At night I used to play poker, or go out with girls. Or simply stay drinking, smoking and chatting with my friends.
One morning at about six, after one of these nights, I was in the kitchen getting a drink of water before going to bed, when my father came in to make coffee.
“Why have you got up so early?”
“No, Dad, I’ve only just got home.”
He looked at me for only a second, measuring me up.
“It is beyond my comprehension how you get the urge to make idiotic jokes even at this time in the morning.”
He turned away and shrugged with resignation.
I reached Corso Cavour, right in front of the Teatro Petruzzelli, and continued on my way towards the sea. Two blocks later I stopped at a bar, had some breakfast and lit the first cigarette of the day.
I was in the part of Bari where the finest houses are. It was in that neighbourhood that Rossana used to live – my girlfriend in university days.
We had had a rather stormy relationship, all my fault. After only a few months it seemed to me that my freedom was, as they say, jeopardized by that relationship.
So every so often I stood her up, and if I didn’t stand her up I almost always arrived late. She got mad but I maintained that those were not the things that mattered. She said that good manners did matter and I began, with a wealth of sophistical arguments, to explain to her the difference between formal good manners – hers – and real substantial good manners. Mine, of course.
At the time it didn’t even remotely occur to me that I was being no better than an arrogant lout. On the contrary, as I was so good at twisting words to suit my purpose, I even persuaded myself that I was right. This led me to behave worse, including in the meaning of “worse” a series of clandestine affairs with girls of dubious morality.
I came to realize all this when we had already separated. I had several times thought back on our relationship and come to the conclusion that I had behaved like a right bastard. If I ever had an opportunity I would have to admit it and apologize.
Perhaps seven or ei
ght years later, I came across Rossana again. In the meantime she had gone to work in Bologna.
We met at the house of some friends during the Christmas holidays, and she asked me if I’d care to have a cup of tea with her the next day. I said yes. So we met, we had tea and stayed chatting for at least an hour.
She’d had a daughter, was separated from her husband, owned a travel agency which made her a pile of money, and was still very beautiful.
I was glad to see her again and felt relaxed. It therefore came quite naturally to me to tell her that I’d often thought of when we were together and that I was convinced I’d behaved badly towards her. I just felt like telling her, for what it was worth. She smiled and looked at me in a rather strange way for a few moments before speaking. She didn’t say exactly what I expected.
“You were a spoilt child. You were so intent on yourself that you didn’t realize what was happening around you, even very close to you.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“You didn’t so much as suspect that for nearly a year I had someone else.”
I’d like to have seen my face at that moment. It must have been a pretty picture, because Rossana smiled and the sight of me seemed to amuse her.
“You had someone else? Excuse me, but in what sense?”
At that point she stopped smiling and began to laugh. Who could blame her?
“How d’you mean, in what sense? We were together.”
“How d’you mean, you were together? You were together with me. When did you see each other?”
“In the evening, almost every evening. When you took me home. He was waiting for me round the corner, in his car. I waited in the doorway and when you’d gone I went round the corner and got into the car.”
My head started spinning rather weirdly.
“And where… where did you go?”
“To his place, on the Walls in Old Bari.”
“To his place. In Old Bari. And what did you do on the Walls in Old Bari?”
Too late I realized I had said something too stupid for words, but I wasn’t connecting very well.
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