When I open my eyes again, the surface of the sea on the horizon is pink, interrupted by the flight of a few fleeting seagulls. The sun is melting between the waves, like a snowball on a summer’s day. So slowly. I’ve just re-emerged on the backs of the wave, to follow it wherever it decides to lead me.
Antonio joins me on the beach. “May I?”
And he sits down next to me.
“I’m sorry you’re going, I wanted to tell you.”
I smile, I could reply that I’m sorry too, but my extraordinary calm would contradict me.
He is about to stand up again, but I stop him. “Stay, if you like.”
He sits down again and there we stay for a while, in silence, looking at the sea. Me and my Charon, the man who until today barely had a face.
“I never noticed it in all this time,” he says after a while, looking at my hair.
“What?”
“That tattoo, there, behind your neck, it’s easier to see when you’re wearing a T-shirt. I didn’t have you down as someone who’d go in for tattoos.”
I frown. “Actually I’m not. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There’s something written there,” Antonio insists. “A bit faded, but there are definitely words.” The sound of Isabelle’s laughter echoes in my head, I see the amusement in her eyes as she holds the marker in her hand.
“May I?” Antonio asks. He reaches out a hand, moves my T-shirt slightly and reads: “For ever… never. That’s what’s written: For ever never. What does it mean?”
Memories are like taste, sometimes you need only a slight hint for a whole world to open up to you, an infinite echo chamber. Isabelle lying on my bed, me with my head on her belly, like a castaway washed up on a beach. There are love affairs that remain inside you for ever, even though you’ll never experience them, she said, and she wrote it on my skin. There are love affairs that are like cloaks, they keep us warm, they protect us, and there is something magical about them, as if they could go beyond the borders of time and space and never come to an end. They are like moments that imprint themselves in our memories, leaving you grateful that you have had them, whatever happens.
“For ever never. It’s a paradox. What does it mean?”
Smiling at his curiosity, I turn and nod: “That’s just it, it’s a paradox.”
A moment later I get to my feet. “Take me back to the city, Antonio. I’ll ask you one last favour: don’t take me home, drop me in the Campo de’ Fiori.”
19
ISABELLE MUST ALREADY have put Giulia to bed by now, maybe she’s reading a book. When I say goodbye to Antonio, closing the car door behind me, I have the taste in my mouth of things postponed, made even more bitter by the smell of my father on the sweatshirt I’m wearing. I force myself to walk to her front door, I owe it to myself to confront her, now, and to strip myself naked, to ask her for a second chance.
Maybe she’ll invent an excuse, she’ll certainly insist that I leave, but I can’t give up yet, not before I’ve told her my story. A story of time racing, of a life that can’t keep up with it and a new love that’s able to slow it down.
In the late evening, the square has divested itself of its frills and is bathed in the golden light of the street lamps. The front door is closed. I’m about to press the button by the entryphone, but before I have time a man rushes out, allowing me to slip inside. Better that way. It’ll be easier to try and convince her when we’re looking each other in the eyes.
As I climb the stairs of the building my legs are shaking, because I’m afraid, just as I always am when I’m about to see her again.
One, two, three…
Abruptly I stop counting.
I don’t need to get to five any more.
I ring the bell. The neighbours’ dog has started barking. “Pablo, stop it!” its mistress immediately yells at it.
Isabelle comes to the door. She sees me through the spyhole, and I sense that she gives a start. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
“I need to talk to you. Please, open the door.”
She half opens the door without taking off the chain. She’s in a nightdress and dressing gown. Her eyes are cold. “It’s late,” she says in a trembling voice. “Giulia’s asleep and I was just about to join her. Please, Svevo, go away.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you, Isabelle, you’re in my blood,” and I feel fear relaxing its grip.
Her eyes become watery.
I take a deep breath. “Since I met you, so many things have happened…I don’t even know where to start…Maybe with that day at the airport. When I saw you…”
“When was this?”
“A few months ago. You were on your way to Paris with Giulia. We saw each other just before getting on. I asked you if you needed a hand to carry your case…”
She remembers, I’m sure, but she continues to keep her distance. “I don’t know where you’re going with this.”
“For a start, I’d like to come in.”
“Svevo, it’s late.”
“No, it isn’t late. It would be late if I left. And if I look back, it seems to me all I’ve ever done in my life is leave. My father died three days ago…” And as I say this, the image of his coffin parades in front of my eyes, and I realize only now that it really happened. I see my grief reflected in her eyes, which open wide in surprise, and in the features of her face, which crumple in a grimace of sorrow. She’s about to take off the chain, but I stop her, taking her hand in mine. “Give me just a few minutes, Isabelle. I don’t want your compassion, I want your respect. I’m not proud of what my life was and I can’t hide it from you. Maybe you deserve a simpler story, someone capable of loving you without complications. I don’t know what love is, I’ve never believed in it. But I believed in you from the first moment I saw you. In your power to change me, to make me see things in a different way. I can’t turn back, without first insisting… I want to try my hardest for you, Isabelle. I don’t want to harm you, and I could never harm your daughter, above all I don’t want to leave anything unresolved, any loves ‘for ever and never’. Time doesn’t forgive, and I can’t risk regretting this moment: the promises I could have made you, the words I should have said to you. I’ve accumulated too many heavy silences, I won’t leave without first telling you what I think…”
As I speak, her hand reacts to my touch until her fingers intertwine with mine. I see her yield little by little, her eyes turn large and round and full of hope. She takes off the chain as I continue to speak, and looks at me, but I know that her mind has flown ahead, to the consequences of this choice. “Just give me a few minutes…” I say again, and find her lips pressed to mine. She hugs me tight, tighter, then moves back to let me into the apartment. Her kisses are like promises, she wants to give me more than a few minutes, she might even be mad enough to grant me a whole lifetime.