On the cover is a perfect head, bald, with two dark eyes that stare at me intently, dolefully slanted toward the delicate temples. Timur smiles ironically and confidently, as if only a few hours had passed since our lunch on the terrace of the San Domenico in Taormina.
* * *
‘You haven’t changed a bit, Princess…’
Who else but he could call me that now? I knew I would meet him again, but I never would have imagined hearing his voice in this remote café in Istanbul, surrounded by tombs like decayed tree trunks.
‘I never for a moment doubted it.’
‘You haven’t changed either, Timur.’
‘People who possess great moral intensity grow old, yes, but stay intact, like the immortal marble of the temples. No, don’t go! Grant me a few more moments of your precious time. Your smile is a balm for my nostalgia.’
‘Nostalgia, Timur?’
‘Yes, I confess: nostalgia for your expanses of sun and shadow, for your human and metaphysical spaces … De Chirico122 could only have been Italian.’
‘Your Italian, if possible, has improved.’
‘Distance is a good teacher. You only fully understand that which you have lost.’
‘You never returned to Sicily?’
‘No, the destruction I saw in Rome and Naples was enough for me. I fear I will no longer find the land that our Goethe extolled, our land. A land, as well as art, belong to those who understand them. Is De Chirico Sicilian, Princess?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He must be, because the key to everything is to be found in Sicily … We would have made your island into a garden, not the rubbish heap — is that how you say it? — that I saw in Naples. But why talk about the past? This radiant sun scatters the clouds and impels us toward the future, and the future will be ours. Too bad, though: thirty years lost. We would have made quick work of it, clean and scientific, not this slow blood-letting they call democracy. Hitler was betrayed, but his dream will come to pass: a united Europe led by Germanic genius … But must you go, Princess?’
‘Yes, I really must.’
‘You’re trembling. It’s my fault for keeping you here at this table. Here on the Bosphorus, I sometimes delude myself that I’m in balmy Palermo. Temperate, majestic Palermo, cradled in the rosy corolla of her mountains … but as soon as the sun goes down, the barbarous cold wind of the Asiatic plains brings me back to reality.’
I’m cold and I don’t want to listen to his words or look into his eyes anymore. I have to return to Catania. I feel cold, and I don’t understand why I’m listening to that slimy creature with the eyes of a snake …
* * *
Bambù: ‘Carluzzu, Carluzzu, what’s happened?’
Carlo: ‘I don’t know; she suddenly fell asleep again.’
Bambù: ‘And you’re just standing there, not doing anything?’
Carlo: ‘Nonna, Nonna, for God’s sake!’
Bambù: ‘She’s opening her eyes, Carlo, she’s opening them! But run and get a doctor!’
The Economist has slid off the bed. Its cover, which had showed me a glimpse of my future, lies face down on the floor: a flashy advertisement for a tropical drink makes a fine showing amid sand and palm trees … That encounter took place later, much later, when I had also learned the art of travelling, and finding joy in observing a vase, a statue, a flower … In my eagerness to live, my mind raced ahead too fast.
Bambù: ‘Modesta, Zia, what happened?’
Modesta: ‘Nothing, Bambù. A momentary blackout. I slept too much. Help me get up. You’ll see, with a nice bath and some coffee…’
Bambù: ‘And a doctor, my dear! This time, either you let a doctor see you or I’ll get angry. I mean it, Zia! Carlo, how come you’re back? I told you to go find a doctor!’
Carlo: ‘Calm down, Bambù. Our lucky day! I was about to go and look for a doctor, and who knows where I’d find one. Since Antonio died we can’t seem to get one! It was so reassuring to have a permanent doctor around, dropping by every night … How nice it was! Why did he have to die?’
Bambù: ‘He was eighty years old, Carlo! You’re driving me crazy! Is that all you’re worried about?’
Nina: ‘Look at her, how well she looks. She’s even laughing … Come, Marco. Here she is, our impulsive little girl.’
Bambù: ‘Oh, Nina! Forgive me if I don’t kiss you, but I have to go find a doctor.’
Carlo: ‘But here he is! Marco is a doctor, I told you…’
Bambù: ‘You didn’t tell me that, Carluzzu! When will you stop thinking that you said something you didn’t say!’
Carlo: ‘Didn’t I tell you I met Nina and Marco at the gate and that she said, “Where are you running off to?” and I said, “To look for a doctor and blah-blah-blah”? Come on now, so I glossed over it, Bambù. How old-fashioned you are!’
Bambù: ‘Listen, Marco, you have to examine her.’
Carlo: ‘But there’s nothing wrong with her, Bambù! It’s not as if it were the first time she fell under a spell and flew off to other shores!’
Bambù: ‘Nevertheless, I insist that she be checked.’
Modesta: ‘It’s all right, Carlo. Let’s put Bambù’s mind at ease. How lovely you look, Nina. What’s different?’
Nina: ‘It’s just this white dress, my dear Mody; white makes you look younger. Whenever I put on this dress, she thinks I look nice. Face it, Bambù, our Mody will never understand anything about clothes. No one is perfect, you know … Oh, Carlo, I saw Some Like It Hot again. The more times I see it, the more I like it.’
Nina is right, my dress tossed on the chair is a sickly colour. It might be fine in artificial light, but in the sun like that it has the putrid colour of a poisonous mushroom. I’m embarrassed, and I don’t dare take my eyes off that purplish mushroom. And then who knows what colour undergarments I’m wearing! I’m embarrassed in front of that tall, tall stranger who stands silent, motionless at the foot of the bed. I pull the covers up and with my hands try to guess the colour of my slip. My only hope is that Bambolina put something of hers on me, like the time when they arrested me. It must be so, because I touch a fabric as light as silk. It must be one of those glamorous cotton nightshirts they wear now.
‘So, shall we proceed with this examination?’
From the looks of him I thought the musician would have a faltering way of speaking, as many Englishmen do. How annoying when they start in with “that … um … er … and … um…” But he must be an exception, because after palpating me all over like a rabbit, he pronounces seriously in a deep, well-modulated voice:
‘In my opinion you are quite healthy, but I advise you to have some tests done. Today the clinical eye no longer exists … Tell me: did either of your parents suffer from diabetes?’
‘But aren’t you a musician?’
‘A musician? What makes you say that? Truthfully music is a mystery to me; it sounds like noise and nothing but noise. But you haven’t answered my question.’
From a distance, his musician’s face seemed too smooth and perfect, but up close it has myriads of anxious, elegant lines that enchant the eye.
‘You have such elegant wrinkles, Marco. I’ve never seen wrinkles like that.’
‘It’s taken a lot of work, Modesta: fifty-eight years of dogged effort! But you haven’t answered me.’
‘My parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who knew them! I may have exchanged four or five words with my mother. She was a woman who didn’t know if she was alive or already dead. My sister was a mongoloid. Does that have anything to do with diabetes? Why are you laughing? Is it related or not?’
‘No, it isn’t. And your father?’