About Time (9 page)

Here goes. “I was on a plane to Paris. I should tell you that… well, let’s just say I’m afraid of flying.”

He listens tome, nodding from time to time but never
interrupting
. All at once, he starts looking at his watch, I realize that his face has changed expression, he’s assumed a manner that’s definitely not very professional, I’d even say he seems disorientated, as if he was wandering in completely unexplored terrain and hasn’t 
the least idea what to do. If he hadn’t been recommended to me by De Santis, I’d advise him to just concentrate on looking for his pen.

By the time the session is over, I already know I’ll never see him again. It’s all too obvious that I’m in a hurry to say goodbye and go, but who cares?

Two days later it’s the turn of Federico’s former shrink: I found the number in my diary and phoned him to fix an appointment.

“Time. Ah, time…”

That’s how he begins, after listening to me for a few moments.

“Time, like space, is an element intrinsic to our universe and therefore only exists in relation to matter, in its manifestation as mass and energy. Outside matter, it could even be said that time doesn’t exist…”

He launches into an elaborate speech on the subject which, predictably, I find myself unable to follow. He moves casually from the sea of time in esoteric physics to the possibility of time travel. I fail to see what any of this has to do with my problem.

I really can’t stand it a minute longer, so as soon as he gives me a prescription for a series of homoeopathic remedies, I quickly say goodbye. If nothing else, I now have a clearer psychological picture of the man who used to be my best friend.

G
AËLLE IS IN ROME
this evening. She and Federico are having dinner somewhere in the centre of town. I imagine them together, on that brightly coloured merry-go-round their lives resemble, and I gradually realize what a profound state of solitude I’ve been living in. Not the forced solitude of these last few months, not the isolation, the abyss that has just swallowed me up, but that carousel of laughter, pleasantries, music, mood shifts and addictions. Empty, meaningless words, eyes that hide unknown abysses. I see everything with disarming clarity now. We’re like floating bubbles, incapable of communicating. We’re so afraid of bursting that we refuse all true contact with each other.

Despite everything, out of pure survival instinct, I have to regain some kind of control over my life. I want to go out, see people. Staying shut up at home doesn’t help me slow things down, and besides, any party, even the most pointless, will pass quickly anyway. So I decide to summon up courage and call Luca, an old friend who doesn’t move in the same circles any more. I ask him if he has any plans for the evening and he suggests an informal dinner at a restaurant on the outskirts of Rome, the kind of restaurant where the fettuccine tastes of fresh eggs and the only wine served is house wine. 

“Isn’t Federico coming?” he asks me.

“I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing serious,” I say quickly. “That life was starting to tire me.”

Luca uses this remark as an excuse to launch into a lecture. “I always said you were overdoing it. I don’t know how you managed to keep up the pace. I guess it was fun, but in small doses. In the end I was waking up in the morning feeling as limp as a rag. Not to mention the problems I was having at work. I was heavily in debt.”

I have no wish to go further into the matter, let alone to contradict him. “You’re right,” is all I say. “Listen, what time did you say this evening?”

“About nine. The restaurant is called Il Cacciatore. Are you coming in your car or would you like me to pick you up?”

“I feel like driving. I’ll see you there.”

There are places in the country, sometimes even quite close to a large metropolis, that smell healthy and clean and make you want to pull the window down, fill your lungs and let the wind caress your face. If only the country air could help me get back to normal.

I had to leave home quite early. My watch says 8.45, the road is clear, and there aren’t too many bends. I’m going very fast, I don’t want to get there half an hour late.

Il Cacciatore. My headlamps light up the sign, which is an old plywood board with a bearded man in a hunting cap drawn on it, hanging from two small chains that squeak as they move in the wind. It’s the kind of sign you used to see. I park my Aston Martin on the gravel in front of the steps leading up to the restaurant, jump out and quickly run to the entrance. 

The place seems nice and even quite crowded. If Federico was here, at this point we’d exchange a knowing glance: a couple of overweight, badly dressed families, a table of young boys covered in tattoos, and a few whores in miniskirts.

The group who are expecting me for dinner are sitting at a table next to a stone fireplace hung round with sausages: Luca and his new friends, who all look intellectual and well-behaved.

“Ah, here’s Svevo! Do you know each other? Paolo, Marco, Ginevra and Susanna.”

“Hello, everyone.”

I sit down next to Luca. “Is anybody else coming?”

“We’re just waiting for Giorgio and Isabelle,” he replies. “They’ll be here soon.”

Isabelle. For some reason, the name brings me up short. “Who’s Isabelle?”

“A friend. Don’t give me that look, Svevo, I can tell you right now she’s not your type, even though she’s French. She must be about your age and has a one-year-old daughter. Plus, Giorgio’s fallen madly in love with her.”

A moment later, the door of the restaurant opens. I don’t know how to explain it, but suddenly everything disappears except for those eyes and that haze of red hair. She advances slowly, almost swaying, step after step, until she reaches our table and gracefully slips off her shawl.

“Svevo, do you know Isabelle?”

No, I don’t know her, but I would’ve liked to get to know her the first time I saw her, at the airport, before I got on the flight that would change my life.

She smiles at me. Luminous, transparent eyes, like freshly washed windows, small segments of sky. She says hello to the rest of the table, and with each gesture she makes, each word she 
utters, I can’t help looking at her. There’s something magnetic about the way she moves and speaks.

I’m in luck, because she sits down just opposite me.

She isn’t a classic beauty, at least not what passes for a classic beauty these days. She looks as if she’s stepped straight out of one of those eighteenth-century French prints: a full, not entirely regular mouth covered with freckles, like the rest of her face, a high, commanding forehead. “Haven’t we met before?” she asks me.

I decide to lie. “I thought so, too, but I can’t remember where.”

“Svevo, right?”

“Yes, Isabelle.”

The laughter and chatter at the table gradually increase in volume, while this unknown woman and I continue looking at each other in silence. Every now and again she turns to listen to what somebody is saying, answer a question or smile at the idiot who’s sitting next to her, this Giorgio she came in with, who can’t stop flattering her, pouring wine and water for her, serving her starters, lighting and relighting the candle when it goes out. He seems so proud of his task as knight errant, but from what I can tell he appears to know he has no hope.

As for me, I haven’t lavished any ridiculous compliments on her, I’m not trying in any way to seduce her. I’m only searching for something interesting to say, and for the first time I’m not in a hurry, I’m not obsessed with the problem of time. I’ve decided to ignore the clock, I want the evening to follow its natural course. However absurd it is, I have the strange, inexplicable feeling that I’m on the verge of something, that something new is about to start. I’ve become a child again and I haven’t yet committed any sins. She doesn’t scare me, she’s like a regenerating force. She could be the one, among so many, who’s ready to join me 
without any fear of bursting. I imagine the two us, floating, one large bubble.

“I have an image in my head of you with a child in your arms, a little girl.”

“I’m a mother. My daughter’s thirteen months.”

“So it’s true. We have met before.”

“Apparently, yes.”

Luca gives me a sideways glance.

“Are the two of you married?” I ask, indicating Giorgio.

“The two of us? No, we’re just friends. I’m not married.”

Giorgio can’t hide his disappointment. That “we’re just friends” must have made him choke on his bruschetta.

“Maybe we met at work,” I insist, hoping to find out something about her life.

“I’m a photographer, when I’m not a mother, which means not often.”

“A photographer? That’s interesting.”

“I used to do travel stuff,” she says, slipping a breadstick out of the packet, “now I’m in the fashion field.”

“I like photographs. These days, with mobile phones and everything, anybody can take them, our whole lives are filled with them.”

“It’s a pity everything’s digital now,” she replies, biting into her breadstick. “I like to touch photographs, to smell them.”

At this point, Giorgio butts into the conversation. “I agree with you,” he says. But Isabelle doesn’t take her eyes off me.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I find myself involved in an interesting conversation. We talk about the fact that technology is apparently more democratic: today everyone can aspire to perfection, at least in a photograph. In fashion, she says, retouching is almost obligatory, but she also tells me 
that when she worked in Paris, for a scientific monthly, it was the most authentic photos that gave her the greatest satisfaction. “In journalism, you almost always look for the truth,” she says. I can see the panoramas she describes to me, the populations of those remote villages where she spent much of her youth, taking photographs.

She must be more than thirty but, I think, not yet forty. She certainly doesn’t have the youthful freshness I usually go crazy over in a woman. And yet I have the impression she knows better than anyone how to wear the time that passes. She doesn’t seem bothered by the small lines around her eyes, and she clearly hasn’t resorted to anything unnatural to try to stretch them. She doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t wear jewellery, her style is minimal, clean and elegant, somewhat old-fashioned. She doesn’t have a touch of make-up on, except maybe a bit of lipgloss, which reflects the quivering light of the candles as she moves her lips. I notice her slender fingers, her short, unpolished nails. I like looking at them as she gesticulates or arranges her hair behind her ears. There can be great sensuality even in an ordinary gesture like that.

I don’t ask her anything about her past, like how she came to be alone in Italy with such a small child, but I do ask her to talk tome about her daughter, whose name is Giulia, she just told me.

“Giulia is…” her eyes light up and she looks in the air, searching for the right words. “Giulia is a force of nature,” she says at last. “She calls me mam
ma
, with the accent on the second syllable just like in French, and she’s always smiling.”

“Isabelle, do you want to taste a little of my pasta?” Giorgio interrupts us again, this time with a touch of impatience.

“No, thanks,” she replies. “Mine will be here soon.”

Soon
, she said. I haven’t been served either. And we’re only on the starters. I thought much more time had passed. I feel 
extraordinarily relaxed, I can’t believe this is really happening. I almost have the impression that my time is finally slowing down.

You’re going more slowly. I like to imagine You’ve stopped to look at us.

I lift my wrist to my ear and start listening to my watch ticking calmly. For the first time, it gives me an incredible sense of peace.

“Is your watch broken?” Isabelle asks curiously.

“I think so,” I reply, almost euphorically. “I really think so.”

I suggest a toast. Just like that, without any reason, just the two of us, an excuse to smile at her in silence. Actually, what I’d like to do is thank her, I have the feeling this sudden sense of relaxation that’s come over me is all down to her. Isabelle raises her glass, the others look at us in surprise. This cheap red is the best wine I’ve ever tasted and this toast is the most important one of my life. Nobody knows I’m toasting my own recovery, my hope that I’ve got back to normal.

A veil of lightness comes to rest on all things, on the fat, badly dressed women, the tattooed boys, the suggestive looks of the whores, even the strings of sausages over the fireplace. In the meantime I continue talking to her, this woman who knows how to slow down time.

“So,” I say, “Giulia’s always smiling.”

“Always. Every day she learns something new. My God, it seems to me only yesterday I was expecting her, she makes me feel…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I understand perfectly well what she means. She can’t imagine how I live with that feeling every day, and in the most exaggerated, nerve-wracking manner possible.

“Time flies,” she concludes with a shrug. She’s so serene about it, it’s almost infuriating.

“And doesn’t that scare you a bit?” 

“No, no more than a lot of other things. I know I’ve used my time as best I could, and now that I have my daughter I don’t want to miss even a moment of her life. Sometimes I imagine her as she’ll be when she’s a woman, and I feel so proud of her, I can hardly wait for that day to arrive.”

I listen to her and I’d like her to take me by the hand, as you do with children when they get restless.

In the meantime, Giorgio must have reached the end of his tether. He tries to butt in again. “I’d like to propose a toast, too,” he says. “To children.”

Everybody raises their glasses. I’m probably looking a bit puzzled, Isabelle must have noticed. She joins in the toast,
without
any enthusiasm, then asks me, “What about you? Are you married?”

I smile. The idea has never even occurred to me, which is no secret to anyone. “No, I’m not married.”

“So no children, I assume.”

“No children.”

There’s nothing judgemental about her attitude, the way she looks at me is reassuring, at least as reassuring as the discovery that I finished my pasta before the others.

“Do you work hard?”

“Quite hard.”

My life is what she’s interested in now. I’ve never thought about it before, but I’d like to dig into it and find something that makes it more interesting. I have the feeling that my work, my clubbing, my vices are as far away from her world as it’s possible to be. All at once, the table seems to grow between the two of us. I know I might scare her off. I’m not like this Giorgio who keeps
pouring
her wine, I’m not a good person. Some people seem to be enveloped in a halo of benevolence, a halo that prevents anger 
from turning nasty and becoming hate. In my life, though, anger has become indifference. I’m capable of committing despicable acts and dismissing them as if they were nothing to do with me. I learnt betrayal at school. At the age of twelve, I persuaded Alice, with whom I shared a desk, to take off her knickers in front of my friends. Every time she tried to push our hands away from her thighs we would laugh, with that taste for wickedness which at the age of twelve may appear innocent. One day I told her I loved her, all I wanted in return was to know what people meant when they talked about sex. A week later, I shifted my attentions to her best friend, whose skin smelt of fruit.

I imagine that if Isabelle looked in my memory and found Alice’s eyes, just as I remember them, she’d stop smiling at me. The point is that her smile is like a hand that comes to rest on your back, like a push. Perhaps for the first time since I came into the world, I’m staring into the abyss of my own conscience.