I give her an affectionate smile. “It’s not your fault.”
Elena nods. Only now do I realize that her watch, unlike mine, is still five minutes ahead. A sense of inadequacy overcomes me. As she’s about to leave the room, I ask her to stop for another moment.
“Should I sit down?”
“Sit in the armchair, I need to talk to you.”
She seems hesitant, she doesn’t know where to look, but I know that by this point nothing could surprise her any more, and I need to clarify things, to talk to somebody.
“I feel like someone who doesn’t have time on his side,” I confess to her, after a long sigh. “But you must have guessed that by now, it’s never pursued me the way it has lately.”
This kind of confidence makes her feel uncomfortable. “It’s not a problem,” she says quickly, “it’s my job.”
“No. It’s never been your job to pick up after me when I miss meetings and lunches. And I want to thank you for doing it. You’ve always organized my life efficiently and it’s not your fault I’ve gone off the rails.”
Her face relaxes, and she smiles at me.
“I’m going through a strange phase,” I continue. “I’m finding even the simplest things really difficult. You’re trying to limit the damage and I’d like you to continue doing that.”
“Of course. You don’t even have to ask. I’m sorry you’re having problems and I hope you manage to solve them.”
“Everything passes in the end, Elena. This’ll pass, too.”
I fall silent and she glances at her watch. I know I’m taking up much more of her time than I think I am. I tell her she can go.
“Don’t worry,” she says encouragingly as she gets to the door, “you know you can count on me.”
Once she’s gone, I turn to look at the window.
What I see is a grim view of a city driven mad by the frenzied pace of its inhabitants. A poisonous curtain of smog lies over the streets, the parks, the buildings. I feel I can almost hear them, all those impatient car horns, like flocks of birds in a poisoned jungle, I can see the pale, exasperated faces of the drivers trapped behind their wheels. They’re all running, thinking they can’t afford to waste a single second of their lives, when in fact they’re already wasting most of them.
Elena reappears at the door. “Signor Romano, I forgot to tell you that your father has been trying to get hold of you again.”
I take my eyes from the street, ready to ask her to make up an excuse, but when I turn to her I’m struck dumb. Instead of young Elena, a little old lady is standing in the doorway, back stooped, watching me in silence. She’s dressed the same way, she’s holding the same sheets of paper, but her skin is all wrinkled, and instead of the usual dark bob, there’s a diaphanous halo of white hair. Her eyes have lost their light, they’re buried in the thin, dark folds of her eyelids, and the way she’s staring at me is disturbing.
“Please…” I implore her.
“What’s the matter?” this old woman asks me in a cavernous voice, advancing slowly towards me, reaching out a pair of limp, shrivelled arms.
I’m shaking, I can’t even cry for help. Her yellowed, hooklike fingers are coming closer, they’re only a few centimetres from my hands.
“Leave me alone, please!” I scream, turning to face the window.
Now I can hear her heavy breathing behind me. She doesn’t say anything, just breathes, then, suddenly, silence.
“Have I done something I shouldn’t?”
It sounds like Elena’s voice again. Maybe she’s gone back to normal. I’m too scared to find out.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I’m terrified, I don’t want to turn and find that she’s a hundred years old. I don’t want to go beyond that threshold and discover a decaying world, devoured by the destructive fury of time.
“Please answer me, Signor Romano. Aren’t you feeling well?”
One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. I need to convince myself that, when I turn, that repugnant old monster will have disappeared, and in her place I’ll find Elena again.
One, two, three, four, five.
Elena, my young Elena, looks really worried. The last thing she expected was to see me bathed in tears and sweat. “What’s happening to you?”
I feel my heart pumping at an unsustainable speed and my breath becoming ever heavier. “I’m scared,” I confess, scrunching up my face in a childish grimace of complaint.
“Scared of what?”
“Of time,” I say with tears in my eyes, unafraid now to seem ridiculous. “Time passing.”
Then I collapse exhausted into the armchair.
Elena is really dismayed by now. “Would you like me to fetch you some water?”
“No. Call an ambulance, I need to see a doctor.”
By the time the paramedics arrive, the office is in turmoil. The high-flying Signor Romano says he feels as if he’s paralysed from head to foot and refuses to leave his chair.
It isn’t easy to move me, because I’m completely stiff. The only thing I seem to be able to move is my mouth, I keep shouting at the paramedic, “Be careful! What’s happening to me? Somebody explain what’s happening to me!”
It’s so embarrassing. I hear Elena stammering something about my being taken ill. “He was perfectly normal, then suddenly he became someone else. I can’t explain it to you, he scared me.”
Even the director has come running to help me, if his indignant air could be called helpful. Maybe he’s only trying to imagine the consequences for our business of my being paralysed. “I have to go, keep me up to date with his condition,” he says quickly before turning his back on me.
Barbara’s here, too. She doesn’t seem upset, only curious. She asks the paramedic for more information, then starts looking me up and down. Every time I give a spasm of pain, she just curls her lips and raises her eyebrows. “My God,” she comments at a certain point, “if it was only stress it’d be worrying.”
Elena has joined Paola, the switchboard operator, in the reception area and they’ve started chatting, I recognize their voices as I’m taken outside on a stretcher.
“You know you’ve lost weight,” Elena is saying to her in a decidedly more relaxed tone.
“And you’ve done something to your face, you look better. Come on, tell me the truth, you know you can tell me… Oh my God, poor man. Let’s hope he gets better soon.”
In the ambulance, I gradually recover my strength: the pain wears off, leaving me with a slight feeling of pins and needles.
“It’s passed,” I tell the paramedic, making an attempt to stand up. I can’t bear the thought of ending up in hospital.
“Calm down now… In a few minutes you’ll be seeing a doctor.”
“Maybe you didn’t understand what I said, I feel much better, I don’t want to see a doctor, I don’t want to go to hospital. I’ll contact my GP, you just have to take me home now.”
I grab him by his coat, but he pulls my hand away and tries to keep me on the bed. It’s one against two, and they’re a lot stronger than I am.
“Just calm down,” he says again, “there’s no reason for you to get excited now.”
“Listen, I’m telling you for the last time: let me out of here!”
“It’s not as simple as that. Once we’ve got to the emergency department you can talk to whoever you need to, I’m not authorized to let you out of this vehicle.”
With a final effort, I manage to grab him by the collar and scream, “Let me out, you son of a bitch!” My rage is uncontrollable, and this time the paramedic doesn’t just hold me down on the bed, he gets his colleague to inject something into my veins, maybe a sedative.
“It’s against the law…” I mutter, then I go completely limp and subside into a confused state.