“I won’t bother you any more,” she says. “How about grabbing a coffee later?”
I nod and give a little smile, while in my mind I see hundreds of cups of coffee flying across a counter, and hands trying to grab them. I smile again, then say goodbye.
I have to fly, too, I have to hurry. One hand on the computer, the other on my mobile. If I had another hand, I’d even be able to hold the receiver of the telephone without having to wedge it between my neck and my shoulder. I have to be quick. I write a message, move an appointment, tell Elena to send a fax. Right now, she could fall down in a faint and I wouldn’t even notice, so determined am I to finish as soon as possible. I want to be back in that park before it gets dark.
I have to wait for a week, another very quick week, before I see Isabelle again. At ten o’clock on Monday morning I go to my bank for a quick chat with the manager. For once I arrive ahead of time, but out of breath. At work, I’m slowly and laboriously regaining ground, and I’ve arranged another meeting with Righini at lunchtime, the director will be there, too. The situation is more complicated than it was a month ago, Righini has had other offers and has retreated from his previous position, but we’re still in negotiation and the game is far from over. In the afternoon I have another important meeting with a young local councillor about that old question of the building permits, which is still unresolved. It’s going to be a difficult day, not that there have been any easy ones lately. My impatience is tangible, I don’t want to risk being distracted for a moment and finding that it’s already the middle of the afternoon. I can’t afford that today.
Anyway, it’s a good thing I got here a bit early and that the manager is keeping me waiting, because when I look around I see her.
I always knew it would happen sooner or later, but it’s like a sudden shock: Isabelle sitting at a table, busy signing some papers. She’s wearing a light raincoat and her curly hair is gathered in a bun. Her daughter is waiting for her silently in the pushchair.
“Giulia?”
I approach the little girl, smiling, and she returns my smile with a disarming and quite unexpected sweetness.
Isabelle, too, seems happy to see me. “It’s you! How are you?”
Fine, now that I’ve found you again in such an unpredictable way. Now that I can stop and look at you and catch my breath.
“What are you doing around here?”
“This has always been my bank,” she says.
I’m surprised to discover that we’ve shared the same branch without knowing it. God knows how many times we’ve both been in the queue, one behind the other, like that day at the airport, without our eyes ever meeting. When it comes down to it, life is a long series of queues, waiting for an encounter.
“I’ve been thinking about her future,” she continues, glancing at her daughter. “A savings account.”
“A good idea,” I say, imagining the day Giulia will come here to take advantage of her mother’s foresight, as if it’s going to happen tomorrow. Isabelle puts the forms in her handbag, grabs her shopping bags, grabs the handle of the pushchair and is about to say goodbye. But I have no intention of letting her escape again. I offer to help her, like that first time at the airport, and she accepts.
“But I thought you were waiting to see someone.”
“It isn’t urgent,” I reply, leaving the bank with her bags in my hand.
The only thing in my life right now is you, Isabelle. I want to see if you can slow everything down again.
I walk with her through the neighbourhood. Turning a corner, we find an ice-cream parlour and a small lawn. We sit down in the open air.
It wasn’t a chance occurrence, limited to that evening. When I’m with her, time quite simply stops racing. The ice cream doesn’t melt, my watch says 10.05, and the clouds in the sky remain where they are.
I feel that for her, too, it’s more than simple attraction, she’s looking for something in me. We’re scrutinizing each other as we talk, moving around each other in a series of seductive little skirmishes that make me feel good, make me feel better than I’ve felt in a long time. Gradually, I forget about time, I’m sure she’ll remind me of it sooner or later, when she has to go home to feed her daughter, and then I’ll go to my appointments. The only thing I’m certain of is that it’s still morning and that there’s suddenly no need to hurry any more.
Isabelle is a caring mother. You can tell that from the way she wipes the chocolate from her daughter’s mouth. I learn a lot about her from these maternal gestures, like that day at the airport, when she made me feel I wanted to be in Giulia’s place. She makes people want to be children again.
I ask her to tell me something about her life. She says she came to Italy for love and stayed out of respect. “Respect for Giulia, who was born here, and who has the right to live the life I dreamt for her when I brought her into the world.”
Giulia’s father is an architect. Apparently their relationship unravelled between all those endless meetings and business trips of his. At a certain point they realized they couldn’t keep going on the way they had been. It was painful but inevitable, she admits. “Luca told me you also work hard and have an active social life.” There’s no trace of reprimand in her voice, although I have the feeling Luca wasn’t all that complimentary about me.
She wants me to tell her a typical day of mine. I don’t hold back. I describe in broad outlines what my work consists of, what I do in my spare time, as if I still had any, and the life I led until not so long ago, when almost every evening I’d book a table in some fashionable restaurant or club, obviously sparing her the more regrettable details.
“So apparently, you spend almost all your time sitting at a table,” she remarks, with an amused smile. “Behind your desk by day, at tables in restaurants and clubs at night. Even your weightlifting is mainly done sitting down. Maybe that’s why you stopped?”
I’ve never thought about it like that. I try to regain a few points by taking her observation as a joke. I’m encouraged by the fact that she’s still looking at me the same way. On paper, I may seem a bit off-putting, I know, I’m the type of man a woman like her ought to run a mile from, but I have the impression that Isabelle doesn’t look at things the way other people do, that she sees beyond appearances.
Suddenly Giulia starts crying. She’s been walking on her own and has fallen on the ground. She hasn’t hurt herself, but you know how children are, she gets upset easily. “Giulia, come here, darling. Let mummy give you a kiss… It’s all right.” But Giulia continues crying. “She’s tired,” Isabelle says. “I have to take her home. It’s best if we go.”
I don’t want to know what time it is and give up this miraculous state of serenity. I still have time for the lunch with Righini, I know. Maybe that’s the secret, I have to keep thinking that there’s no hurry, I mustn’t let my anxieties overwhelm me. Time goes more quickly when I think I don’t have enough of it.
“Are you free tomorrow?” Isabelle asks me as I walk her to her car.
“I’ll be free after lunch.”
“What a pity. Tomorrow morning I’m going shopping at the market near where I live, and it’s something I very much like doing in company.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” I say, implying that I’ll be there, and that for her sake I’d get out of any prior commitment.
I help her to arrange the pushchair and the shopping bags in the boot. “Do you ever go to Villa Balestra?” I ask her instinctively, just before saying goodbye. “I mean… do you ever take Giulia for a stroll there?”
“Villa Balestra?” she replies in surprise. “No. Why should I? I live in the centre.”