I move her away from me and ask her to go, to go now.
She sweeps her hair back from her face and again pours out all her resentment on me. I lose the thread of her attacks. “You’re not like me,” she says. She mentions my inability to love, my superficiality, the drugs, the boredom, the pain. “If you’ve got to your age like that, I doubt you’ll ever be able to change. You’re just a poor bastard.”
Then she opens the door and leaves my apartment without another glance.
In a moment, faster than ever, Gaëlle is out of my life. I wonder if she was ever part of it. Of everything she’s said, that unstoppable flow of words she’s poured over me, one truth remains: I was never able to love her. I’ve never been capable of loving anybody. The most alarming thing is that now everything seems devoid of meaning. It hardly matters that sex is something that’s over in an instant, that a beautiful girl turns suddenly into an old woman, or that my baby is nothing but a dusty relic. In this exhausting race, my life is overtaking me, and almost everything that was part of it leaves me completely indifferent.
The morning light is coming in through the living-room window. Another night has flown past.
I’m exhausted. I’ve almost lost the will to start running again.
But Isabelle and what I felt when I saw her last night oblige me not to give up.
I have to find her. Somehow, I have to start living again.
It’s the middle of the day, and I’m out and about in the city trying to attend to all the things I’ve left unresolved. Federico keeps calling me on my mobile, he’s filled my voicemail with messages, but I have no intention of calling him back.
Instead, I call Luca. “I had a great time with all of you the other night,” I tell him, trying to get straight to the point before the time at my disposal is used up. “I hope there’ll be an opportunity to—”
“What are you talking about, Svevo? Of course there will be. I had a great time, too.”
“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” I go on, my tone changing. “Tell me about Isabelle… Do you know how I can find her?”
Luca’s tone changes, too: he’s on the defensive. “Svevo, listen, I don’t want to get into that. Giorgio’s a friend.”
“But they’re not together.”
“No, but he likes her a lot. And I think he’s right for her, we just have to give her time.”
“You’re talking like a priest, Luca. Let me put it another way. You know me, you know I tire quickly of things, but this time it’s different. I have to see her again, it’s important.”
Luca sticks to his guns, and for a specific reason. “I also know your hang-ups,” he says. “Isabelle’s a nice girl. Believe me, she’s not for you.”
“For once, you have to trust me,” I insist. “You know I don’t bullshit, you have to admit that at least.”
He sighs. He’s still reluctant, not to mention all the time I’m making him waste.
I suggest a compromise. “Let’s do something, you give me a clue, I don’t know, somewhere she does her shopping, the place where she works. Give me just one thing, I’ll see to the rest.”
Luca hesitates some more, but finally gives in. “She takes her daughter for a walk in Villa Balestra park most afternoons.”
“Thanks, Luca. You’re a friend.”
At lunchtime, I’m sitting on a bench with a roll in my hand — my usual meal over the past three months — waiting for her.
It’s quite a small park, finding her shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s quite windy today, though, so she might have decided not to come. The thought of coming here every day doesn’t bother me, waiting has become easier since the minutes have started flying by so quickly. I have a weight on my stomach like a stone, but I don’t really care. I haven’t felt like this since I was young: maybe the first time I had sex or when I graduated.
A smell of grass smoke reaches me on the wind. A group of young guys close to the little fountain are smoking joints and listening to the Beatles. This park doesn’t seem like the best place to take a little girl for a walk. I assume Isabelle lives in the neighbourhood. Instinctively I glance at the buildings beyond the railings, trying to imagine her apartment, the style she chose to decorate it in. I walk to the far end of the park, behind the cafeteria, where some ladies are sipping tea. There’s a little playground, a skating lane shaded by pines and a few benches with words scratched on them, some little boys are hopping on the gravel, a dog runs beside them, but there’s no sign of Isabelle and Giulia.
Soon the sun starts going down. It’s the first sunset I’ve happened to see in this new dimension. In an instant, the sun is swallowed up by the horizon, as if You’re in a hurry to hide it from me and are forcing it down with a big, invisible hand. The sky is tinged with red as quickly as a tablecloth is stained with wine when you knock over a bottle by accident. All this can’t just be the result of my imagination. My mind alone wouldn’t be able to devise something like this.
I leave the park and the pitiless spectacle You’ve just offered me. How long will it last? I look up at the sky, now calm and full of stars, and shout, “What are You waiting for?”
“Maybe it’s too late,” I mutter to myself, before getting back in my car.
12
I’VE BEEN BACK to Villa Balestra every day for two weeks. The same disquieting spectacle every time, but no sign of Isabelle. Luca doesn’t answer my phone calls any more. Almost nobody is looking for me. I’m learning to live with my lateness, with the constant race that my life has become.
The day I go back to work, I find myself impatiently pressing the button of the lift, after dismissing Paola, the switchboard operator, with a hurried greeting, when all she wanted was to know about my convalescence. I’m getting back on the right track. This time I can’t stop any more, whatever happens, whatever hallucination waylays me.
“So you’re back…” Smiling, Barbara sticks her head round the door of my office. “Had a good time, did you?”
I make an effort to tease her the way I used to. “Consider it maternity leave.” I’ve equalized, one-all.
She laughs, then comes in and gives me a hug. “Joking apart, you gave us a real fright.”
A fright they quickly recovered from, apparently, seeing that none of them even bothered to phone me.
“Do you really think you can manage?” she insists, ironically.
“You’re radiant… Why? Is there any news?”
She gives me a broad smile. “Apparently there’s a promotion in the air.”
I must have opened my eyes wide.
“At least that’s how I chose to interpret the director’s words,” Barbara continues, “when he summoned me to his office and showered me with praise over the way I handled a couple of things.”
“Congratulations,” I say, trying to maintain my usual tone. “At this rate you’ll be taking my place.”
Barbara, too, chooses to continue on the path of irony. “Anyway, you’ve always known what my intentions were,” she says. “Get rid of a man like you and replace him with a woman like me. You know what a blow that is for all male chauvinists?”
“Sounds encouraging. But don’t crow too soon.”
“And don’t get to your appointments too late.”
I find her sense of humour totally inappropriate at a moment like this, and can’t help thinking of the look of indifference on her face the day I was taken ill. I’d always thought she wasn’t quite as cynical as she wanted me to believe, that our constant teasing was just an innocent game. But I was wrong, completely wrong. I’m certain she’d climb over anybody or anything to get that promotion.