I had no more excuses. I organized every minute of the four days I would be gone: food ready in the refrigerator, visits from girlfriends happy to do all they could for a slightly mad scientist, a depressed student ready to babysit the children if their father had unexpected meetings. I departed, leaving everything in scrupulous order, except that Marta had a slight cold.
The plane to London was full of well known young academics, my rivals, who in general had been much more aggressive and active than I in the race to find a job. The professor who had invited me was reserved, brooding, a gruff man. He had two grown children, a kind and gracious wife, a lot of teaching experience, was highly cultured; yet he was seized by panic attacks when he had to speak in public. During the flight all he did was revise his paper, and as soon as we were in the hotel he asked me to read it to see if it was persuasive. I read it, said it was wonderful, soothed him—that was my function. He hurried off and I didn’t see him for the whole first morning. He appeared only in the late afternoon, just in time to give his paper. He read the text smoothly, in English, but when there was some criticism, he was distressed, responded brusquely, and went off to his room; he didn’t even come down for dinner. I sat at a table with other participants like me, hardly saying a word.
I saw him again the next day. There was an eagerly awaited paper, given by Professor Hardy, an esteemed scholar at a prestigious university. My professor didn’t even greet me; he was with others. I found a place at the back of the hall, diligently opened my notebook. Hardy appeared: a man in his fifties, short, thin, with a nice face and extraordinarily blue eyes. He had a low, enveloping voice, and after a while I was surprised to find myself wondering if I would like to be touched by him, caressed, kissed. He spoke for ten minutes, then suddenly, as if his voice were coming from within my erotic hallucination and not the microphone through which he was speaking, I heard him pronounce my name, then my last name.
I couldn’t believe it, I felt myself blushing bright red. He went on; he was a skillful speaker, using the written text as a guide, and now improvising. He repeated my name one, two, three times. I saw that my colleagues from the university were looking for me throughout the hall, I was trembling, my hands were sweaty. Even my professor turned with a look of astonishment; I exchanged a glance with him. This English professor was citing a passage from my article, the only one I had published up to then, the same one I had given long ago to Brenda. He quoted it with admiration, he discussed a passage minutely, he used it to better articulate his own argument. I left the hall as soon as he finished his talk and the applause began.
I ran to my room, feeling as if all the liquids inside me were boiling up under my skin; I was filled with pride. I called my husband in Florence. I almost shouted to him, on the telephone, the incredible thing that had happened to me. He said yes, wonderful, I’m pleased, and told me that Marta had chicken pox, it was definite, the doctor had said there was no doubt. I hung up. Marta’s chicken pox sought a space inside me with the usual wave of anxiety, but instead of the emptiness of the past years, it found a joyous future, a sense of power, a blissful confusion of intellectual triumph and physical pleasure. What’s chicken pox, I thought, Bianca had it, she’ll recover. I was overwhelmed by myself. I, I, I: I am this, I can do this, I must do this.
My professor called me in my room. We were not on any kind of familiar terms, he was not a friendly man. His voice was hoarse and always sounded slightly annoyed; he had never thought much of me. He was resigned to the pressures of an ambitious graduate student, but without making promises, in general dumping on me the most boring tasks. But on that occasion he spoke to me kindly, got mixed up, muttered compliments for my success. Among other things he said: you’ll have to work harder now, try to finish your new essay quickly, another publication is important. I’ll tell Hardy how we’re working, you’ll see, he’ll want to meet you. Impossible, I said, who was I. He insisted: I’m sure.
At lunch he had me sit beside him, and I suddenly realized, with a new wave of pleasure, that everything around me had changed. From anonymous graduate student, without even the right to give a short paper at the end of the day, I had become in the space of an hour a young scholar with some slight international fame. The Italians came one by one to congratulate me, young and old. Then some of the others. Finally Hardy came into the room, someone whispered to him and gestured toward the table where I was sitting. He looked at me for a moment, headed toward his table, stopped, turned back, and came over to introduce himself. Introduce himself to me, politely.
Afterward, my professor said in my ear: he’s a serious scholar; but he works a lot, he’s getting old, bored. And he added: if you had been male, or ugly, or old, he would have expected you to come to him and offer the proper homage, and then would have dismissed you with some coldly courteous phrase. This seemed to me spiteful. When he made malicious allusions to the hypothesis that Hardy would certainly renew his pursuit that evening I murmured: maybe he’s really interested in my contribution. He didn’t answer, then said yes, and made no comments when I said, beside myself with joy, that Professor Hardy had invited me to sit at his table at dinner.
I dined with Hardy; I was clever and confident, I drank a lot. Afterward we took a long walk and on the way back, it was two o’clock, he asked me to come to his room. He did it with wit and tact, in an undertone, and I accepted. I had always considered sex an ultimate sticky reality, the least mediated contact possible with another body. Instead, after that experience, I was convinced that sex is an extreme product of the imagination. The greater the pleasure, the more the other is only a dream, a nocturnal reaction of belly, breasts, mouth, anus—of every isolated inch of skin—to the caresses and thrusts of a vague entity definable according to the necessities of the moment. God knows what I put into that encounter, and it seemed to me that I had always loved that man—even though I had just met him—and desired no other but him.
Gianni, when I got home, reproached me because in four days I had called only twice, even though Marta was sick. I said: I had a lot to do. I also said that, after what had happened, I would have to work very hard to take advantage of it. I began to go to the university, provocatively, ten hours a day. When we returned to Florence, my professor, suddenly available, did all he could to help me finish and publish a new essay, and he collaborated energetically with Hardy to enable me to spend some time at his university. I entered a period of painful, frenzied activity. I studied intensely and yet I suffered, because it seemed to me that I couldn’t live without Hardy. I wrote him long letters, called him. If Gianni, especially on the weekends, was home, I hurried to a pay phone, dragging Bianca and Marta with me so that he wouldn’t become suspicious. Bianca listened to the phone calls and, although they were in English, understood everything without understanding, and I knew it, but I didn’t know what to do. The children were there with me, mute and bewildered: I never forgot it, I will never forget it. Yet I radiated pleasure against my own will, I whispered affectionate words, I responded to obscene allusions and made obscene allusions in turn. I was careful—when they pulled me by the skirt, when they said they were hungry or wanted an ice cream or insisted on a balloon from the man with balloons who was just over there—never to say, That’s it, I’m leaving, you’ll never see me again, as my mother had when she was desperate. She never left us, despite crying that she would; I, on the other hand, left my daughters almost without announcing it.