About Time (12 page)

“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.

W
HEN 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 waiting 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.

I’m a bit less evasive about my childhood and my strange relationship with my family. I tell her about my mother’s death, and for the first time I manage to talk about it openly, without filters imposed by circumstances, like a child free to draw on a blank sheet. I’m encouraged by the totally natural empathy in her eyes when I describe my claustrophobic years at boarding school and the more carefree ones at university in England, 
or when I tell her how impossible it is for me to go back to my roots.

“I certainly would never have guessed you’re Piedmontese,” she says at a certain point. “You don’t have a trace of an accent.”

“To be honest, I’ve never felt Roman either.”

“But there must be somewhere in the world where you feel at home.”

“Nowhere in particular,” I confess. “Though last year I went to Tuscany, a really beautiful spot in Tuscany, where the countryside has something magical about it, and I suddenly decided to buy a house in the area. I’m currently renovating it. It used to be a monastery, and it’s really lovely. That’s somewhere I think I might actually feel at home.”

As I talk to Isabelle, not far from our table I spot my old friend the Deputy, having dinner with his wife. Our eyes meet and I feel myself turn pale. The last time we saw each other, we were cocooned in the pleasant atmosphere of an evening he thought was private, an evening full of slaps on the back, confidences, friendly smiles, which the director then used for his own ends, and now his eyes are burning with fear and resentment and he looks as if he’d like to beat me to a pulp.

When I pay the bill and we get up from the table to leave the restaurant, the Deputy approaches me. Addressing a forced smile to Isabelle, he takes me to one side. “You should be ashamed of what you stand for,” he says in a voice that’s barely audible but as taut as a violin string, discreetly sinking his nails into my arm. “You think you have me by the balls. I may have some weaknesses, but I’d never be capable of stooping to your level.”

Then he turns away and walks back to his table.

Isabelle is looking at me. “He’s a politician, isn’t he? I’ve seen him on television.” 

I nod, taking her by the hand and leaving the restaurant with her. I can’t hide the sense of unease his words have left me with. In the car, she strokes my forehead, and gives me what’s intended to be a reassuring smile.

The unease grows even more once we’ve entered my
apartment
. Isabelle looks around, but without the amazed reaction the women who’ve set foot in here before her have accustomed me to. No ecstatic smile, no open-mouthed gaping at all the hi-tech gadgetry. The only thing that seems to delight her is the view from the window of the living room, though she does glance briefly at the Bonalumi in the dining room, though not so much as to make it seem like one of the more interesting paintings.

I’m sure she recognizes the uniqueness of the apartment in itself, but I fear that the cold, minimalist style of decoration makes her uncomfortable.

And the fact that there are no books is hardly a point in my favour either. My designer hadn’t seen the need for a bookcase, and what space there is contains just a handful of rather bulky photographic books, and a few others about interior design and the world’s top hotels. When Isabelle starts leafing through one of them, with a slightly wary look in her eyes, I go to her and kiss her on the mouth. And suddenly there are no more deputies or architects or not-very-complimentary thoughts about my life. There is only her body, which I carry in my arms to the bedroom and undress with a hitherto concealed urgency, as if it was a secret, a priceless pearl. There are her hands, modestly covering her maternal breasts, and mine, which have only one purpose: to give her pleasure. She is the centre of my interest, the receptacle of everything good. This bed has seen perfect, gorgeous women, but with her, for the first time, I’m surprised by a sense of inadequacy, which I overcome only by giving myself 
completely, with a dedication I’ve never known before, until I disappear. I no longer exist. I let myself be annihilated by her slow dance above me, while time dissolves. I am her breath, her moods, her pleasure. As I’m about to come, I withdraw, even though she moans to have me back inside her. And I do it so that I can have my excitement at my disposal for as long as I need. We are like two orphans in an air raid, defenceless and at the same time indestructible. Held tight in her arms, wretched as I am in comparison with Your disarming power, I’m not afraid of You any more. All this might come to an end, there might be nothing but oblivion awaiting me beyond this bed, but I’m inside her, I’m part of her, and not even oblivion scares me any more.

We spend two days like this, never leaving the bed except to go to the bathroom or to have something to eat, like two wild animals, from whatever we find in the refrigerator. Two days which in my time have expanded to an indefinable length. I feel like one of Ulysses’ companions, forgetting my identity, drugged with pleasure, at the banquet of the sorceress Circe. We watch a film, we make love, we talk, and we start all over again.

At a certain point, breaking into the idyll of this suspended time without coordinates or directions, a thought crosses my mind. One of those thoughts that seem absurd, nonsensical, until they
insinuate
themselves into your rational perception of things with such force as to demolish it: what if even this image of the two of us, lying abandoned on this bed, was a hallucination? What if Isabelle wasn’t real, or—worse still—what if she wasn’t even possible?

“It may seem illogical to you,” I say to her without warning, “but I have the feeling you may last for ever and at the same time never have happened.” 

Isabelle smiles in that reassuring way of hers, and snuggles closer to me, placing her head on my chest. “I’m a mess, really,” she confesses, drawing little circles on my skin with her forefinger and thumb together. “With a little child, in a foreign country. Sometimes I think my life has been a long series of mistakes, but I assure you that I really am here. There’s only one thing I hope: not to make any more mistakes. I have happened, oh yes, I can swear that I have happened, and I hope to happen for a lot longer.”

“I like the way you say things.”

“I like the way
you
say things. For ever and never, I think those were the final words of a love letter in
Mauvais sang
by Leos Carax, a film that’s been almost completely forgotten. Love can be so overwhelming, it stays inside you for ever, even if you’ve never experienced it.”

I stroke her hair and look at her, thinking of all the men she has loved before she met me, maybe that long series of mistakes she spoke about a moment ago, and I feel a pang in the pit of my stomach, a sensation I’ve never felt before. I assume it’s jealousy, the kind of jealousy that may even become intolerable. “Have you ever known that?” I ask her. “A love for ever and never?”

Isabelle pulls a face that puts everything back in perspective, even my jealousy. “I don’t like leaving things unresolved,” she says. “And I feel relatively at peace with my own conscience. If there were accounts to settle, I’ve settled them. Nobody has stayed inside me like that.”

I think about things unresolved in my own life, festering wounds. They have nothing to do with love, at least not with love as she means it. They look like my father and sound like all the words I’ve never been able to say to him.

“What about you? Have you ever known a love that was for ever and never?” 

She wouldn’t believe me—she might even think me
ridiculous
—if I told her I’ve never been in love. So I just smile at her, a shy smile, to which she responds with an amused pout, like a little girl. “I’m always the one to reveal myself, but never mind.” She gets out of bed to fetch a glass of water, wrapping herself in the sheet as she does so: now I’m the one revealed.

“I don’t think so,” I say, pulling on the sheet to undress her.

Naked now, Isabelle tries modestly to cover herself with her hands. “I feel embarrassed,” she says, coming back to the bed to take possession of the sheet again.

She’s turned red. Suddenly overwhelmed by tenderness, I take her face in the palm of my hand. I’m surprised by such girlish modesty in a woman like her.

She confesses that it’s the first time since she had Giulia that she’s slept with a man. For her, this beautiful interlude in my bed has the fresh taste of rebirth and the bitter taste of guilt. For more than a year her body has been a cradle, transforming itself to welcome a new life. She tells me that in the first few days after Giulia was born, she would look in the mirror and wonder if sex would ever again be part of her life. The last time before that had been the bored, mechanical act of a Sunday afternoon, a clear symptom of the fact that, after almost ten years of living together, she and Giulia’s father had reached the end of the line, and yet it led, mysteriously, to conception. Even from the final stages of a love affair, something much bigger can come, overcoming everything, even death.

Again that pang in the pit of my stomach. I imagine that sharing in the conception of a new life is a gesture of absolute, unforgettable love, even for two people who are barely on speaking terms. A gesture which is like a bond, something set in concrete. 

I stroke her stomach, that soft, maternal stomach, which she keeps hiding from my gaze, and touch her belly button with one finger. She smiles, I keep pressing with my finger, as if the belly button was a hole in a balloon and I was afraid that she might deflate at any moment and fly away. Then I tell her that she’s mine, mine and nobody else’s.

“People aren’t like apartments or cars,” she answers, with a distant smile. “You can’t own people.”

“But I feel that I’m yours,” I tell her, trying to keep my tone light, however serious the words. “You could do anything you like with me.”

“I’d never put a label on you, like those people who tattoo their bodies with names and dates… That’s always disgusted me.”

“Well, then I disgust you too,” I continue, still lightly. “Tomorrow I’m going to have your name tattooed on my chest in capital letters. Or rather no, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to have my whole body covered with your initials. I’m yours! I want to shout it to the whole world!”

She bursts out laughing. “Stop it! I’m sure you’d even be scared of one of my magic markers,” she says, reaching out her hand to her bag, which is under the bedside table. She takes out one of the markers I saw in her bathroom, her face like a naughty child’s. “Want to bet?”

“You really are obsessed!” I say, with a laugh. “Don’t tell me you were intending to scribble all over my apartment.”

She approaches me, brandishing the marker threateningly. “Didn’t you just tell me you wanted to have my name tattooed all over your body?”

“And didn’t you just tell me you were against possession and would never put a label on me?” 

We start fighting, like two little children. We tickle each other, we laugh, we laugh until we can’t breathe, ending up looking each other in the eyes, motionless, and at the same time wanting to go beyond those eyes. I’d like to penetrate the most inaccessible cavities of her mind.

Isabelle is the first to look away. “Come on, let me write
something
on your body! You said I could do anything I wanted with you, and now you’re scared of a few measly words!”