“I didn’t. I’d been going to the courthouse for a few days, walking past the courtrooms and asking people if anyone had seen a lawyer called Guerrieri. Once you passed by just as I was asking someone, and he was going to call you. I had to stop him. Then finally, they told me you were in court that morning, and your trial was just starting. So I went in and sat in on the whole hearing. And I thought you were as good as they said.”
I didn’t think I could hide my childish smugness and so I decided to change the subject.
“Do you mind my asking where your accent comes from?”
Before answering, she opened the window, emptied her glass and took out a cigarette. Did I mind if she smoked? No, I didn’t mind. Which was both true and false.
Her father, as I’d thought, was Japanese, and her mother from Naples. Her name was actually Maria Natsu, but no one had ever called her that. The name Maria only appeared on her papers, she said, and she paused for a few moments, as if this was something important that she’d only just become aware of.
Then she refilled our glasses and told me her story.
How she’d spent her childhood and adolescence partly in Rome, partly in Kyoto. How her parents had died in a road accident, while travelling. How she’d started work as a photographic and catwalk model. How she’d met Paolicelli in Milan.
“Fabio was part-owner of a dress showroom. I was twenty-three when we met. All the girls were crazy about him. I felt so privileged when he chose me. We got married a year later.”
“What’s the difference in age between you and him?”
“Eleven years.”
“How on earth did you end up in Bari, after Milan?”
“For a few years, Fabio’s work was going really well. Then things changed, I never understood why. I won’t go into details, because it isn’t a very amusing story, but his firm went bankrupt and in a few months we were completely penniless. That’s when we decided to come to Bari, which is Fabio’s home town. He was born here and lived here until he was nineteen. This apartment belonged to his parents and was available. So at least we wouldn’t have to pay rent.”
“Was that when you started working as a chef?”
“Yes. I’d learned to cook when I was young. My father had two restaurants in Rome. When we got to Bari we had to make a new life for ourselves. Fabio became the representative for some designers he’d known in Milan, and I found work at Placebo, where they needed a Japanese chef two evenings a week. Then they started to offer me work organizing dinners and receptions. That’s my main job now. Apart from the restaurant, I’m busy at least eight or nine evenings a month.”
“There’s a lot of money in this city. To organize a reception like the one tonight must seem like a good way to show it off.”
I was about to add that a lot of that money was of dubious provenance, to say the least. But then I remembered that her husband’s money might not be all that legitimate either and I said nothing.
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“You live alone, right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you always been alone? No wives or girlfriends?”
I made a noise that was meant to be a kind of bitter laugh. As if to say: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.
“My wife left me some time ago. Or to be more precise, she told me she was leaving me some time ago.”
“Why?”
“Many excellent reasons.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what these excellent reasons were. She didn’t.
“And what happened after that?”
Yes. What had happened? I tried to tell her, leaving out the parts I hadn’t really understood and the parts that were too painful. There were a lot of those. When I’d finished my story, it was her turn again, and that was how we got onto the subject of her ex-boyfriend Paolo and the game of wishes.
“Paolo was a painter. For some reason you remind me of him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in love with him.” She paused, and for a few moments her eyes seemed to be searching for something that wasn’t in the room. “He found a… a really beautiful way to tell me he liked me.”
“What was it?”
“The game of coloured wishes. He said a girlfriend had shown it to him, a few years before. But I’m sure he made it up on the spot, just for me.”
She paused again for a few moments, probably remembering other things that she didn’t tell me. Instead she asked me if I wanted to play the game. I said I did, and she explained the rules.
“You make three wishes. You have to say two of them, the third one you can keep secret. For the wishes to come true, they must have a colour.”
I half-closed my eyes and moved my head slightly towards her. Like someone who hasn’t heard, or hasn’t quite understood. “A colour?”
“Yes, it’s one of the rules. The wishes can only come true if they’re in colour.”
For the wishes to come true, they must be in colour. Right. Now I knew why none of the wishes I’d made in my life had come true. There was this rule, and no one had told me.
“Tell me your wishes.”
I can’t usually answer questions about wishes. Either I can’t or don’t want to. Which comes to the same thing.
Confessing your wishes, your real wishes, even to yourself, is dangerous. If they can be realized, which they often can, stating them confronts you with your fear of trying. In other words, with your own cowardice. So you prefer not to think about them, or you tell yourself they’re impossible, and grown-up people don’t wish for impossible things.
That night I replied without hesitation. “When I was a little boy I used to say that I wanted to be a writer.”
“All right. And what colour is that wish?”
“Blue, I’d say.”
“What kind of blue?”
“Blue. I don’t know.”
She made an impatient gesture with her hand, like a schoolmistress dealing with a pupil who’s a bit thick. Then she stood up, left the kitchen and came back a minute later, with a book called The Great Atlas of Colours.
“There are two hundred colours here. Now choose your wish.”
She opened the book at the first page of the section on blues. There were lots and lots of little squares with the most incredible shades of blue. Under each one, a name. Some I’d never heard of, and not knowing the names I hadn’t even seen them. Things don’t exist unless you have names for them, I thought, as I started to leaf through the pages.
Prussian blue, turquoise, slate, dark sky blue, Provencal lavender blue, topaz blue, cold blue, powder blue, baby blue, indigo, French marine, ink, Mediterranean blue, sapphire, royal blue, clear cyan, fleur-de-lys, and many others.
“You mustn’t be approximate, otherwise your wishes won’t come true. Choose the exact colour of your wish.”
It only took me a few more seconds. “The exact colour is indigo,” I said.
She nodded, as if it was the answer she had expected. The right answer.
“Second wish.”
It was getting harder now, but again I didn’t hesitate.
“I’d like to have a child. Right now I’d say that’s a lot more unrealistic than the first wish.”
She looked at me strangely. She didn’t seem surprised, though. It was as if she’d expected that answer, too. “And what colour is it?”
I leafed through the book, then closed it. “Many, many colours.”
This time she didn’t insist on having me say the exact colour and didn’t make any comment. I liked the fact that she didn’t make any comment. I liked that naturalness, I liked the way everything seemed right, at that moment.
“The third one.”
“You told me one of the wishes can be a secret.”
“Yes.”
“This is the secret one.”
“All right. But you still have to tell me the colour, even if the wish is secret.”
Right. The wish is secret, not the colour. OK. I took the atlas and opened it at the section on reds.
Wine, crimson, vermillion, powder rose, red rose petal, modern coral, neon red, cerise, terracotta, garnet, flame, ruby, academy red, rust, radicchio, dark red, port.