My father was a courageous man. He did not tolerate obstacles or limits to one’s achievements, particularly so when it came to his own family.
He’d already suffered one heart attack, but still, every morning, I’d see him sitting at the table having his coffee, with a lit cigarette hanging from his lips, even though the doctors had expressly forbidden him to smoke. At first, I’d pretended to ignore him, but one day I’d finally lost my patience and asked him why he was being so obstinate. He replied that it was all because of the heart attack.
So he then explained to me why it was the heart attack’s fault. It had taken him to the very gates of death, but not far enough to reach his destination. That knowledge that he had escaped death’s clutches had made him stronger, and now he believed he was immortal, like God.
I’m sure that if God’s heart had been as damaged as my father’s he would have resisted the temptation to smoke a cigarette every ten minutes or so. But Dad was too enamoured with his dreams of power to think of that, and the second heart attack took him by surprise. One sad December day, his heart stopped and he died. Just like that. He died and was buried like any old wretch.
I inherited very little from my father, heredity wise. Just moral standards I could pass on to posterity.
All I borrowed from him was a taste for smoking. I light a cigarette and I feel invincible, as if I were smoking a piece of God himself, having compressed and rolled the tobacco inside the thin paper, and indulging without a filter. It’s a feeling of omnipotence which gets even stronger, depending on the circumstances; for example, every time I find myself at Marconi airport, returning from a long trip.
I set my feet down on the ground and I feel like a goddess. Strong and powerful. Full of courage and good sentiments, because yet again the plane hasn’t crashed and I am still alive. So I light myself a cigarette and it’s the best one of the day.
“You’re not allowed to smoke here,” a hostess shouts at me. She gestures at me with her arm. “You must go over to the bar.”
“Thanks a lot,” I respond. And turn back towards Mauro who’s come to pick me up from the airport. “What a cow…”
Mauro half smiles as we make our way to the bar. He’d likely smile more but his face is still bruised and painful.
“So, are you going to tell me what happened? Who did this to you?” I ask him.
“Trevor…” he whispers.
“Trevor?”
“Yes, him.” Mauro shrugs his shoulders and looks sad. “I was sure he hadn’t found out.”
“Oh, come on…”
“I’m serious. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“You should have thought of that before. Why in hell did you go to bed with his wife?”
“His ex-wife,” Mauro corrected me.
“Ex-wife,” I repeated after him, incredulous. “Correct. So that was OK with your conscience.”
Mauro was silent for a few seconds.
“It never occurred to me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Trevor. I was always trying to understand his side of the argument, but he’s the one who gave up on Kate. He didn’t make the slightest effort to hold on to his marriage. He was too busy acting the part of the doomed artist…”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said angrily. “He has more talent than the two of us put together. It’s just that Trevor hasn’t broken through yet. Just a question of luck.” My words caused Mauro to fall silent. He looked at me with his wide, nutmeg-coloured eyes, took my hand firmly into his to calm me down.
“Fine, you know better. Trevor is a genius and I’m a piece of shit. But for now let’s make peace and have some coffee.”
We sat down at the airport bar and ordered a couple of coffees and a plate of snacks. I was starving and ate almost all of them, but it wasn’t enough. With hungry eyes I began staring at the warm pastries behind the counter. Mauro couldn’t help smiling at me.
“You haven’t changed at least,” he said. “You still have the appetite of a wolf.”
“You’re wrong. I have changed,” I replied.
“Is that why you’ve returned to Bologna?”
“I was missing spaghetti and tomato sauce.”
“Be serious.”
“I am. You try eating fish and chips seven days a week and tell me if I’m wrong. It’s better here. Even the airport coffee is delicious.” All the while sipping a tar-coloured espresso and pretending to be ecstatic.
“You can tell me,” Mauro insisted. “Did you come back for Trevor? I know he rang you…”
“We just exchanged gossip. Nothing more.”
Mauro’s gaze was fixed on me. I knew he was studying me.
“In England, things were not as I expected,” I confessed to him. “I managed to publish a couple of short stories in a anthology, then nothing more.” As I was talking, I spilt some coffee on my sleeve. Impassive, I wiped the stain dry with a tissue.
“I’ve been offered a job as an editor in Turin. Correcting and improving manuscripts. It’s well paid and I’ve said yes,” I said resolutely.
But Mauro did not approve of my decision.
“It sounds dubious to me. You went to England to write a book and now you’re content to read other people’s books. It’s a pity. After everything you’ve achieved…”
“Actually, I haven’t done that much,” I replied.
“Does that apply to Trevor too?”
Mauro was beginning to get on my nerves. This was becoming more of an interrogation than a conversation.
“Why bring Trevor into it? He’s a closed chapter,” I said.
“I don’t believe you. You go all pale every time I mention his name.”
Sunk. Mauro has caught me out and now my appetite has gone. I can barely breathe in and that’s a damn effort.
“Did he tell you that he’s returning to Canada?”
Go fuck yourself, Mauro. Just shut up.
I’ve tried everything not to have to think about of him and have no intention of doing so now. All I want to look at is the fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling and burning my eyes. I want to stop the tears from running on my face. I want a cigarette but no one here is smoking and I’m losing my mind.
Trevor. Every time Mauro says his name, an invisible hand takes a grip of my shoulder and drags me down a well of memories.
“I want to get out of this bloody place.”
I’m losing my balance. I’m screaming out in pain.
Trevor’s name steals my lucidity and my concentration.
I’m hurting like a dog. And, like a dog, I still feed on the scraps of that night.
“What are you thinking of?” Trevor asks, lighting a cigarette.
“I’m thinking of the book I wish to write,” I tell him.
“Is it that important?”
“It is.”
“More important than me?”
His question hung in the air and stayed there. Like a hook which I could hang myself on if only my hands could reach it. But I didn’t. I knew that hook could not support my weight and I would fall heavily to the ground.
Trevor was asking me how important he was to me. He asked with his eyes lowered and this angered me. I hated it when he did that. I hated Trevor and I hated his eyes when they negligently shifted downwards and avoided me. It made me feel like taking a hold of his face and yelling at him to stop. But on this occasion I controlled myself, but it was to be the last time. It’s his fault, it’s all his fault.
I know that expression, that face. It’s my face superimposed over Trevor’s face. The face of someone with a definite goal and enough ambition to achieve it. But ambition on its own is not enough. Trevor’s eyes betray his insecurity. It will not help him to keep his eyes lowered and hidden behind his eyelids. I know those eyes, because I know Trevor and the doubts that assail him. He is like me. I know that for him too every day starts the same way. I imagine him looking at himself in the mirror and wondering, looking for something inside, a reason to forge ahead with the day or not. I see him, as he blames himself for being so stubborn, reaching wildly for something he should have taken hold of firmly when he was twenty years old, and that now appears like a mirage in the distance.