“Come with me,” he says. “Do you have time?”
“Yes.”
His fingers curl round mine.
We walk to a small hotel on Via Palermo. They have a room on the second floor, at the front of the building. I hear the muted roar of a vacuum cleaner. There’s a coolness about the place, a feeling of suspension. A hush. It’s that hidden moment in the day, the gap between checking out and checking in.
On the stairs he’s behind me, watching me. My hips, my calves. The small of my back. I can feel my edges, the space I occupy. We reach the door. He steps past me with the key. He smells of wood and pepper. As soon as we’re inside he kisses me.
The room has a high ceiling and surprising lilac walls. From the window I can look down into the street. He pushes me back onto the bed. I tell him to wait. Lifting my hips, I pull the apple from my pocket. He smiles again.
We take each other’s clothes off carefully. We’re not in any hurry. One button, then another. A catch. A zip. The TV watches us from the top corner of the room. The curtains shift.
When he’s about to enter me I hand him a condom from my bag.
“You’ve done this before,” he says.
“No, never,” I say.
He looks down at me. He thinks I’m lying but it doesn’t bother him.
“I carry them to stop it happening,” I say. “It’s the opposite of tempting fate.”
“You’re superstitious?”
I don’t answer.
The noise of the traffic shrinks until it’s no louder than the buzz of a fly trapped in a jar. There is only the rustle of the sheets and the sound of our breathing, his and mine, and I think of that place in Brazil where the rivers join, two different kinds of water meeting, two different colors. I think of white clouds colliding in a sky of blue.
I cry out when I come. He comes moments later, quietly. When I turn over, onto my side, he adjusts his body to mine. He lies behind me, fitting himself against me as closely as he can, like a shadow. I feel him soften and then slip out of me. This too is part of the coloring-in.
Afterwards, I follow him downstairs. Out on the street I’m worried he will tell me his name and ask if he can see me again but all he does is put one hand against my cheek and look at me.
“Mia piccola strega.” My little witch.
He kisses me and walks away.
Later, I think of the apple we left in the hotel room. Lying among the crumpled bedclothes, its red skin glowing.
/
The next day I go to an outdoor screening of The Passenger, which is one of my father’s favorite movies. I’ve seen it before, at least twice, and it has become a favorite of mine as well. A warm evening, not a breath of wind. Stars glinting weakly in a dull black sky. I’m slumped low in my seat waiting for the movie to begin when I become aware of an English couple sitting in the row in front of me. I can’t see their faces, only the backs of their heads. The man is wearing a raspberry-colored shirt, and his bald spot gleams. The woman has nondescript brown hair. They’re talking about a friend of theirs who lives in Berlin. His name is Klaus Frinks. Klaus is upset, the woman says in a high-pitched voice. Terribly, terribly upset.
“Upset?” the man says. “Why?”
“That girl he was in love with. She left him.”
“I never liked that girl.”
“Didn’t you?” The woman turns to look at her companion. Long nose, receding chin.
“I didn’t trust her,” the man says.
“She was beautiful.”
The man shrugs but says nothing.
“Poor Klaus.” The woman sounds oddly gratified. “He really thought she was the one.”
I sit up straighter in my seat.
Klaus, I think, and then I think, Berlin.
If Klaus is German, and his surname is pronounced “Frinks,” it’s probably spelled with a g, as in “Frings.” If I hadn’t studied the language at school I wouldn’t have known that. My brain cracks open, floods with light.
Klaus Frings.
The man with the bald spot looks round, curious to see if anyone is listening. He’s one of those people who talks loudly in public places because he thinks he’s interesting. Well, for once in his life he’s right: he is interesting — to me, at least. When he notices me, he tugs at his shirt collar as if to loosen it, then looks beyond me, pretending to be checking on the whereabouts of the projectionist. Tell me more, I whisper inside my head.
Facing the screen again, the man is silent for a few seconds, then he says, “Is Klaus still living in the same apartment?”
The woman nods. “Walter-Benjamin-Platz.”
“Penthouse, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. Amazing place. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
“Once. There was that party —”
The lights dim.
The Passenger intrigues me, as always, but I find that I can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about Klaus Frings and his apartment in Berlin. The inexplicable shock of recognition when I heard his name. The sense of being summoned, singled out. The sudden disappearance of my heart, as if it had been sucked into a black hole at the center of my body. There have been so many dry runs and dress rehearsals, but I always knew that sooner or later one of the messages would feel right. And now, finally, it does.
When the film is over, I linger in the courtyard outside the cinema. The English couple are standing by the gate. In the same loud self-important voices they are discussing the famous scene in which the director, Antonioni, moves the camera out through the bars on Jack Nicholson’s hotel window — how Nicholson is alive when the camera leaves, and dead by the time it returns. The woman is taller than the man. Older too, despite her girlish voice.
She catches me staring at her. “I’m sorry. Do we know you?”
I laugh. “No, you don’t. I’m grateful to you, though.”
“Grateful?”
“It’s all right. You’ve played your part.”
The woman flushes.
“You can go now,” I say.
The man fixes me with small hard eyes, and I remember something my aunt Lottie told me. Some men are horrid when they meet you but you shouldn’t worry. It’s just because they fancy you. It’s actually a kind of compliment. She paused, then said, I wouldn’t get involved, though — not with one of them. I wonder if the man in the raspberry-colored shirt is “one of them.” I wonder if he was horrid to Klaus’s girlfriend too.
I set off through Trastevere, making for the Ponte Sisto. I have plans for the evening — a late dinner, then a new club on the outskirts of the city — but I decide not to go. I feel too elated, too giddy. As I cross the river I replay the conversation I overheard. Certain phrases have stayed with me. Penthouse, wasn’t it? She left him. They’re clues to a future I can’t as yet imagine, fragments of a narrative in which I’m about to feature as a character.
/
September 3. Alone in our rooftop apartment on Via Giulia I stretch out on the sofa with the French windows open. My father’s away, as usual. The dome of St. Peter’s floats above a jumble of palm trees, sloping tiles, and TV aerials. It’s nearly six o’clock. I yawn, then close my eyes. I hear my mother asking if I would like to go somewhere at the weekend. We could drive to that forest — the one with the yew trees, remember? She’s dressed in a green T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her arms are slender, tanned. This would have been in England, at a time when she was well … It’s dark when I wake up. The snarl of a passing motorino, the clatter of plates in the restaurant downstairs. Rome again.