“Your attention, please. Alitalia flight Z245 to Paris is now boarding. I repeat: Alitalia flight Z245 to Paris is now boarding.”
The hostess’s words are delivered in such a husky, sensual voice that I’m actually distracted for a while. The girl is quite a looker, too: if she went into the pilot’s cabin, she’d probably cause the instrument panel to seize up. I’m just getting to my feet when the woman with the little girl in her arms once again appears ahead of me. She’s moving quite slowly, and I suspect she’s afraid of waking the girl. I offer to help her with her luggage but she thanks me and says she’s fine, she doesn’t need any help. As a courtesy, I pretend to be touched by the sleeping child, give her a very forced smile, and wish her a pleasant journey. And now suddenly everything slows down, and my attention is caught by an apparently insignificant detaiclass="underline" the little girl rubbing her angelic face against the woman’s neck, as if looking for a shelter in which to sleep more soundly. I’m troubled, almost annoyed, so I grab my bag and push forward as much as I can.
A moment later, it all passes. I’m swallowed up by the flow of the queue at the boarding gate, and the woman disappears among the other passengers.
Once on the plane, a bigger problem awaits me: confronting my anxiety, which is starting to increase at an unacceptable speed. My first instinct is to get off, I’m sure we’re heading for a disaster, we’re going to crash, I can’t breathe. I imagine tomorrow’s headlines: Sixty Passengers and No Way Out. There’s my name in capital letters, with the word Dead next to it. Svevo Romano is dead. The plane crashed in the Alps, they found my body still sitting in its seat with the belt fastened. Some are starting to speculate about the circumstances of the accident, my lovers mourn, remembering our nights of sex, my mood swings, how much of a bastard I could be. Some even say: When you come down to it, dying was the only thing he still had left to do.
I feel as if I’m going mad, and yet on the surface everything’s fine. I’d like to beg the hostess to let me off, but I don’t have the guts. All I can do is resort to one of the things I always use to ward off bad luck.
I’m obsessed with the number five, although obsession isn’t quite the right word. I call it my joker, the thing I use to overcome small glitches on a journey, when a valve cracks and the whole mechanism seizes up. It doesn’t happen often but it happens, and five is a ritual that comes to my aid, like a prayer. Before sitting down in my seat I count to five. Once seated, trying not to attract attention, I tap the little table in front of me five times, and then, almost childishly, repeat the number five, five times, as I force myself to fasten my seat belt.
I clear my head and try to think rationally. The flight is only one hour and fifty-five minutes, I keep telling myself. I’ve planned every second and now I’m ready to close my eyes and take off.
One hour and fifty-five minutes.
“We would like to show you some of the safety features of this plane.”
One hour and fifty-five minutes.
“An oxygen mask will automatically fall from the compartment above your heads.”
One hour and fifty-five minutes.
“Cabin crew, prepare for take-off.”
One hour and fifty-five minutes.
We’re in the air.
Now at last the warning light goes out, which means I can loosen my belt. I even start to feel a bit more relaxed. I gradually ease my grip on the arms of my seat. We’ve pierced the sky at high speed and now, as we gain height, the plane even seems to have slowed down.
Outside the window, the sky is so dark, it’s swallowed up all the stars. I have to ignore the aisle to my left, which becomes increasingly narrow and oppressive.
I’m getting ready to devote twenty minutes to my first item of reading material, as planned, when the light goes on again unexpectedly.
Apparently, we have to fasten our seat belts again, even though there hasn’t been the slightest touch of turbulence.
I turn to Federico and ask for an explanation. His answer is worse than a death sentence.
“We’re landing,” he says. “We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.”
We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.
Paris. In ten minutes.
It’s not possible. One hour and fifty-five minutes. I haven’t even had time to open my first magazine and we’re already about to land.
“Are you joking? What did you say we’re doing?”
“What do you mean? Don’t mess about… We’re arriving in Paris.”
It isn’t a joke, the plane really is losing height, my ears are getting bunged up. One hour and fifty-five minutes. How is it possible? My heart is beating faster, the plane itself seems to be going faster. It descends, it keeps descending, and I have the impression that everything around me has inexorably speeded up.
At first I think it’s one of the effects of fear: I know time and space can be distorted when I look at the world through the lens of my anxiety. I remember a sentence I read in some book or other: “That which is far in time appears imminent, there is only the present.” But then all it takes is a moment when you start to lose control and nothing matters any more, except the instinct for survival. And this moment comes without warning, when I realize that time going crazy like this can’t be the result of my mind, it’s too real, it’s actually happening. I unfasten my seat belt and leap to my feet.
One hour and fifty-five minutes. What happened to all those minutes?
“No!” I scream.
One of the hostesses comes to my aid, a blonde girl with glasses, who looks even more scared than I am. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll hit her, or that I plan to throw the whole plane into a panic, or open the emergency door.
It’s pointless, I can’t regain control. The girl looks at me indulgently, she’s talking to me, but I can’t make out what she’s saying, her voice sounds weirdly distorted. The passengers are looking at me pityingly. Some have even risen from their seats. Federico is dismayed and embarrassed at the same time, he’s never seen me in this state. “Svevo, what’s happening to you? We’re landing. There, look, we’re almost on the ground. Calm down, we’ve arrived in Paris.”
The minutes and seconds are getting all mixed up and he’s asking me to calm down. The noises fade. I see the stewardess’s lips moving, but can’t hear what she’s saying. All I can hear now is my own breathing, which gradually slows down, until I surrender to the push of her slender arms.
“There’s no danger,” I hear her distorted voice say, and then I feel the plane touch down, it taxis for what seems like a few seconds, then brakes suddenly and comes to an abrupt stop.
4
I CAN’T MEASURE THE TIME it takes us to get off the plane, reclaim our luggage and take a taxi. To me it’s like a few minutes, rushing past like mice running from a flood.
I watch in dismay as the road speeds past the window. I wish the asphalt didn’t look that way. Like the surface of a disc, a stream of grey lines without end. Maybe that’s how it would seem to a racing driver if he was able to turn and look at it for a moment in the middle of a race, and yet according to the speedometer we aren’t going fast at all, in fact we’re going even slower than the permitted limit.
I keep telling myself it’s just tiredness, I try to console myself with the thought that a comfortable suite awaits me at the hotel and I’ll soon be sinking into a hot bath. The bellboy will be impeccable, as always, and as soon as he’s wished me a good stay, this horrible feeling will immediately disappear.