Gaëlle is enjoying being the centre of attention, but she never takes her eyes off me. In the car on the way to the club after dinner, she whispers a few exciting fantasies in my ear, then leans back in her seat, amused.
“Can you stop looking at me like that?” she says, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke into the air.
“Are you trying to provoke me?”
“I just want to let off steam.”
“And I want to see you dance.”
I slip a couple of grams in her purse and tell her to be good.
In the car park, before getting out, as usual I check that everything’s neat and tidy. She’s let a bit of ash fall on her seat, I seem doomed always to go for women who smoke. As I give my baby a little clean, Gaëlle doesn’t miss the opportunity to tease me. So I grab her by the arm and kiss her roughly. I’m about to slip my hand inside her knickers, just to make it clear that nobody jokes with me, but before I can do that she pushes me angrily back inside the car.
From the outside I guess I’m a pretty reprehensible specimen. I like touching my baby’s steering wheel and running my fingers over the slightly rough stitches of the leather while Gaëlle’s lips move up and down without stopping. I like it when the insignificant people who are waiting in line outside the club move aside to let us pass. I like the big white leather sofas in the private area and our women, always a little tipsy, jumping on them for fun. Gaëlle dancing on the glass table and half the club watching her wiggling her hips like a professional go-go dancer. Federico letting his ear be licked by a young blonde as he knocks back one shot of tequila after the other. And me being carried away by the music, until I feel like all the others and stop being disgusted by them. When you come down to it, we’re all human, we all go crazy when the rhythm is in time with our heartbeats and the club becomes our world and we turn into one single entity dancing.
3
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN AFRAID of planes. Maybe it’s some kind of trauma from my childhood. What scares me is the thought of being trapped in a pressurized box at a height of ten thousand metres and a speed of almost a thousand kilometres an hour, without any control over what’s happening. In a situation like that, I feel it’s more necessary than ever to take charge of time, to know how much of it we’ll take to reach our destination, and exploit every last second of it. That’s the only way I can stop my mind from getting the better of me.
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m at the airport with a group of friends, waiting to board a plane for Paris, where Gaëlle is waiting for me. We’ve been invited to a party for the French Oscars or something like that. I’m pacing restlessly between the check-in desks. I’ve put the hands of my watch five minutes back, to be in sync with the airport clocks. I’ve bought all the magazines I can, hoping they’ll help me keep my mind occupied during the two-hour flight. One hour and fifty-five minutes, to be precise.
I’ve booked a seat by myself, an aisle seat in the fifth row, because I don’t like chatting, it makes me lose my concentration. On top of all that, Federico has to talk business with a daddy’s boy he’s been working on for a few weeks now, and has also brought along a couple of Romanian women togged out in designer clothes from head to foot.
Going through security, one of the Romanian women is asked to remove her boots because they’ve set off the metal detector. She loses her temper, and starts sounding off about how pointless the whole procedure is. I feel embarrassed even though I’ve only just met her. Federico tries to intervene, but the bitch won’t calm down, she even turns for support to the person in the queue behind her, a young woman with a little girl asleep in her arms.
“Do I look like a terrorist? I mean, I ask you…They’ve got it in for me, that’s obvious. Do you really think I look like a terrorist?”
The woman with the little girl is unfazed. In a calm, seraphic tone of voice she replies, “You can’t even say for certain that people who look like terrorists are actually terrorists.”
The Romanian woman is taken aback, she certainly wasn’t expecting an answer like that, but she quietens down and takes off her boots.
I look away, and my eye falls on the little girl the woman in the queue is holding with such care. The child is probably only about one, or maybe a little older, and has just opened her eyes, awoken by her mother gently stroking her hair. Still half-dazed, she allows herself to be put down at the request of the security staff, then waits patiently for her mother to collect the luggage and take her in her arms again.
The woman must be about the same age as me, judging from the skin on her face, the maturity of her expression, her eloquent eyes. I wouldn’t call her beautiful, but there’s something attractive about her long neck, the elegant way she holds herself. She has red hair, a haze of red hair, freckles on her face and between her breasts, large smooth lips, clear-cut features, prominent cheekbones. Her eyes have an undefined colour similar to those of the little girl she’s holding in her arms. And the little girl herself is almost insanely beautiful. She’s fallen asleep again, cradled by the devoted love her mother gives off like a perfume, a scent of milk and tenderness that overwhelms me on the escalator.
We head for the gate. Federico walks ahead quickly, along with the rest of the group, while I drop behind, still watching the woman and the girl. “Come on, Svevo, get a move on,” he calls to me, moving away.
The woman is walking slowly, her daughter’s little legs dangling by her side. To that sleeping little creature, her mother is a universe, her broad shoulders are the limits of space. She whispers sweet words to her, in a reassuring tone. Those that reach me evoke a jumbled series of impressions: the hay in a stable, a juice stain on a worn tablecloth, an embrace in the dead of night, a hand passing through sweaty hair.
I think I hate children. Basically, they’re just little parasites, never satisfied with what you give them. The fact is, I can’t bear the idea of someone depending totally on me, like a dog. Children die if you don’t feed them, cry if you shout at them, copy you even when you behave like an idiot. The children I’ve never had would probably have been little monsters.
Federico stops in front of a poster advertising an expensive watch. “This is your next present to me,” he says ironically, and for a moment I lose sight of them. Then, just as I’m about to walk right past them, I see them again. They’ve stopped by a postcard stand. For an instant, a slight but disturbing jolt spreads through my chest like hot liquid: the woman with the red hair, now holding a postcard in her hand, notices me and gives me a rapid glance which makes me feel naked. She has a serious expression on her face, but her eyes are smiling, as if they were speaking an unknown language.
“Did you hear what I said? You could easily afford this. Come on now, don’t be stingy!”
Almost without realizing it, I’ve come level with Federico, who gives me a humorous slap on the back and says, “Hurry up or we’ll miss the plane.”
By the time we get to our gate, which is B10, I’ve lost sight of them again. I don’t even know why I’m so determined to see them, the woman isn’t really my type. I’ve never liked red hair, or women over thirty with lines around their eyes, or even the faded colour of the sweater she’s wearing. I’m the kind of person who cares about such things. And anyway, I have a plane to catch, and my fear to keep under control.