She was waiting for me to say why I’d wanted to see her. I was waiting until we’d finished eating, because one has to be patient and do everything at the right time. It seemed to me I’d understood this fact, among other things.
So we shared a big lobster dressed with olive oil and lemon, and drank chilled white wine. Every so often we caught each other’s eye, said something of no consequence and went on eating. And every so often she gave me a mildly questioning look.
When we had finished I paid and asked her if she’d like to go for a stroll. She would.
As we walked I began to speak.
“I’ve been through a very… a very singular experience. A number of things have happened to me…”
I paused. It wasn’t a great start. In fact it was a lousy one. She said nothing. She was waiting.
We walked, both staring straight ahead, among the boats of a little harbour.
“Do you remember saying that sooner or later one has to pay up?”
“I remember. And you said that before that you’d get out from under. If they wanted, they could sue you.”
Smiles, both of us. That’s exactly what I’d said. If they wanted, they could sue me. I expected Sara to say I had always been a dab hand at wriggling out of paying. She would have been absolutely right, but she didn’t say it. And I went on.
“One of the things that has happened to me is that I haven’t managed to wriggle out of it this time, not as quickly as before. So they caught me and made me pay up all the arrears. It hasn’t been a lot of fun.”
I sat on the side of a boat, very near the water. She sat on another, facing me. I had reached the most difficult part and I couldn’t find the words.
“So in all this at a certain point I realized that… well, if I was settling all my debts, there was one that I absolutely couldn’t leave unpaid.”
She watched me with her head tilted slightly to one side, her eyes fixed on mine. I felt the urge for a cigarette, lit one, and waited for the smoke to hit my lungs before I spoke again.
Then, in the first words that came into my head, I said everything I had to say. She listened without a single interruption, and even when I had finished she didn’t speak at once. To be certain I had really and truly finished. I wasn’t sure, because of the darkness, but it looked to me as if her eyes were moist. Mine were, and I needed no light to tell me so. When she did speak, I knew that I had done the right thing, that evening.
“Today you have given me back every day, every single minute we were together. So many times, before we separated and since, I’ve thought that with you I’d thrown away nearly ten years of my life. Then I rebelled against this idea and banished it from my mind. Then it came back. It seemed as if it would never end, this anguish. But this evening you have set me free. You’ve given me back my memories.”
There was a kind of smile on her face now.
I tried to smile too, but instead I felt tears coming. I made some effort to hold them back, but then felt it didn’t matter a damn. So my eyes filled with tears and then overflowed, all the tears I had, in silence.
She let me get over it, then passed two fingers gently beneath my eyes.
And then I gave her my present. It was a watch, a man’s watch with a leather strap and a big face. Just like one I had had years before. She used to steal it from me because she liked it so much. Then, away on some trip, I lost it and she was upset. Much more than I was. I often thought of giving her another the same but never did. Just as I had never done lots of other things.
She put it on without a word. And then it was time to go home.
I stopped the car some way from her door, where there happened to be a free space. I switched off the engine, turned towards her, and didn’t know what to do. Sara, on the contrary, did know. She hugged me tightly, almost violently, her chin on my shoulder and her head against mine. This for several seconds before breaking away. Thank you, she murmured before opening the car door and walking away.
Thank you, thank you, I said to the empty car as she disappeared into the doorway.
39
I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even try to go to bed. I sat on the balcony and listened to the sounds from down in the street. I lit four or five cigarettes, but I didn’t smoke much of them. I let them burn down slowly between my fingers while I gazed at the windows and balconies opposite, the antennae on the roofs, the sky.
A little before dawn the mistral got up and the very first gusts made me shiver.
They say the mistral lasts for three days or for seven, so I knew that for three days or for seven it wouldn’t be hot. Not too hot anyway.
I had always loved the summer mistral because it cleansed the air, swept away the mugginess and made one feel freer. It seemed to me appropriate that it should arrive that very morning.
I thought of the old accounts that were closed and the new things beginning. I thought I was afraid, but that for the first time I didn’t want to run away from my fear or hide it. And it seemed to me a tremendous and a wonderful thing.
I watched the light creeping into the sky and the grey clouds that were so strangely out of place in the month of July.
In a short while I would get up and go walking in the still-deserted streets. I would sit at a table in the open, at a bar on the seafront and have a cappuccino. I would watch the streets gradually changing as the day advanced. I would have another cappuccino and smoke a cigarette and then, when it was broad daylight, I would go home. And I would sleep, or read, or go to the sea, and spend the day doing only what I wanted to do.
I would wait until evening came and only then would I ring Margherita. I didn’t know what I would tell her, but I was sure I would find the words.
I thought of all these things and more as I sat on the balcony.
I thought I would not have exchanged that moment for anything.
Not for anything in the world.
