‘Yes,’ he said, nevertheless, ‘great party.’
When he was installed in the back seat of the taxi, waving goodbye to Joan, who was standing in the doorway of the house, Scanlan appeared at his wife’s side, waved his hand and rushed down the slate path, shouting something that Mario didn’t hear because the car windows were all wound up tight.
He unenthusiastically prepared Tuesday’s classes when he got home. Then he opened a bottle of Chablis, sprawled out on the sofa and drank and smoked and watched television for a while. At eleven he got into bed.
He slept fitfully. Towards dawn a nightmare woke him. He tried to retain it, not to let it be dissolved by wakefulness, but he couldn’t. The only thing he managed to recall was Berkowickz’s voice. ‘Excellent bibliography,’ he was muttering. ‘Excellent bibliography.’
XII
Immediately after his divorce from Lisa, Mario felt as though he’d been freed from a crushing burden. Soon this initial relief turned to unease. At first he felt inconvenienced at having to assume all the responsibilities he’d left to Lisa; later he realised he’d got used to trusting her and loving her in his way, and that her absence left a hole, not in his feelings but in his affections, which he had nothing to cover with. Solitary living became unbearable: he came to detest the house he’d shared with Lisa (they agreed when they separated that he would stay there; she chose to move to an apartment on the outskirts of the city). To all that was added the increasing agitation of seeing Lisa almost daily in the university, since the history and linguistics departments were located in the same building. The peaceful course her life seemed to take, her fabulous appearance and the infinite vitality she radiated and that hadn’t been diminished, but perhaps the opposite, by the shock of the separation, the news of her constant professional successes, which Mario always heard from someone else, never Lisa, and the growing academic prestige she derived from them: this series of circumstances, along with his own state of moral neglect, contributed to convincing him he’d fallen back in love with Lisa.
He decided to speak to her. He arranged a date. At length he explained his point of view. He asked Lisa to move back in with him. She smiled sweetly.
‘Mario,’ she said slowly, as if caressing the words, ‘your problem is you confuse love with weakness.’
Two months later Lisa married one of her students, who was five years younger than her. By then Mario had decided to leave Brown University. He again thought of returning to Italy. In the meantime he applied for jobs at various North American universities. When he received the offer from the University of Illinois he didn’t doubt for a second before accepting it.
In August he took up his new position. He didn’t like the university or the department to which he was assigned. Nevertheless, since he knew he’d be staying there for a while, he hastened to make friends, something he managed almost immediately, thanks more than anything to the open and congenial disposition of the rest of the professors in the department.
On one of the first days of the semester a graduate student burst into his office. She was of medium height, with long straight hair, dishevelled in an orderly manner, blue eyes and fleshy cheeks. She was wearing a lilac T-shirt that strove to contain the vigour of her full breasts, and a white miniskirt, which trimmed her hips and revealed her pale, somehow childish legs. Her name was Ginger Kloud. They spoke for a while; Mario noticed her eyes shone and guessed she was about twenty-five years old. When she left his office, Mario had agreed to supervise her thesis.
Ginger attended one of Mario’s classes. They chatted often. He treated her in a slightly off-hand but flirtatious manner: he was aware of being rather attractive to her, and this fact, perhaps paradoxically, flattered him at the same time as it made him feel uncomfortable.
At the beginning of October Ginger invited him to a party at her house. They drank whisky, danced, smoked marijuana, chatted.
The next day, when he woke up, Ginger was still at his side.
From then on they saw each other frequently outside of class. Mario, in spite of that, still kept a certain distance between them. At first that attitude came naturally to him: he did not want to fall into another emotional dependency. Later he cultivated it consciously, because he observed that distance was an instrument of domination: Ginger would continue to be dependent on him as long as he kept it up. He also discovered that the situation afforded him a constant well-being and brought back the balance he’d lost when he separated from Lisa: he enjoyed all the benefits of Ginger’s devotion and withdrew from all the concessions and subjugation that investing his affection in her would have entailed. At the beginning Ginger readily agreed to the tacit conditions Mario had imposed: she declared that she didn’t want their relationship to go any further than close friendship. Later, although she still told him about the occasional affairs of the heart she found herself involved in, she began to complain of the scant attention Mario paid her and the inconsiderate way he treated her. Finally, since she was unable to overcome the barrier he’d placed between the two of them, she became obsessed with Mario: in a single evening, with barely a transition, she would sleep with him, get annoyed, cry, contradict herself, insult him and leave the house slamming the door behind her, while Mario took refuge behind an indifferent silence. Hours later a telephone call from Mario would reconcile them.
This went on for almost a year.
The night before Mario left for Italy on vacation, they went out to dinner. He thought as they said goodbye that he was going to miss her.
During the month-long vacation he missed her: he wrote her a postcard from Nice and another from Amsterdam, where the airplane made a stopover, as well as several letters from Turin. In one of them he wrote: ‘It’s as if I’m condemned always to want what I don’t have and never to want what I have. Managing to get something is enough to make me lose interest in it. I suppose that ambition is born of things like this, but I’m not even ambitious: I lack the energy to desire constantly.’ In another letter he confessed: ‘I’m only capable of appreciating something once I’ve lost it.’
By the second week in Turin he wished Ginger had come with him. At one moment he thought he was in love with her. Another time he told himself he’d soon be thirty and, if he were to get married again, Ginger was undoubtedly the right person.
By the time he landed in Chicago, back from his vacation, he’d decided to propose to Ginger.
XIII
The next morning Branstyne came by his house at nine-thirty to pick him up. Mario heard a car horn, looked out the window of his study, saw a car and went out.
‘How’s the ankle?’ asked Branstyne, turning left from University Avenue on to Goodwin.
‘Fine,’ answered Mario. ‘Sometimes I get the impression that when they take the bandage off and the crutch away I won’t be able to walk.’
Branstyne smiled. ‘When does it come off?’
‘They told me to go back on Sunday,’ Mario explained, ‘but I’ll probably go before that. I think the swelling’s gone down.’
Branstyne dropped him off at the door of Lincoln Hall. Mario thanked him for bringing him that far.
‘If you want, I can come by your place at the same time tomorrow,’ said Branstyne. ‘I’ve got another class at ten.’
Mario accepted. They said goodbye.
He went into Lincoln Hall. The corridors were crammed full of students. He went up to the second floor and into Room 225: some students were already waiting for the class to begin. Mario sat down behind the teacher’s desk, which was on a wooden platform, leaned the crutch against it and took some papers out of his briefcase. When the bell rang, twenty-four pairs of eyes were upon him.