She said it aloud, even though there was no one to hear her.
When she was young she had dreamed of becoming a movie actress. Everyone said she had wonderful self-confidence, and she liked to sing and dance. She had a pretty voice, rather common but pretty. Then she had met a salesman of beauty products who brought her to the capital to do advertising photos for a night cream. She had sent the photographs home, in an envelope, with some money. For a few months she had tried to succeed with singing, but it didn’t work out. Things went better with the ads. Nail polish, lipstick, once some kind of eye-drops for redness. She had given up on movies. They said you had to go to bed with everyone, and she didn’t want to do that. One day she heard they were looking for TV announcers. She went to a tryout. Since she was wonderfully self-confident and had a pretty, common voice, she passed the first three tryouts and ended up in second place. They told her she could wait, and maybe something would open up. She waited. After two months she got a job doing radio shows, on the first national channel.
One day she went home.
She had married well.
Now she had a café, in the center of town.
The woman—the one at the table—leaned forward slightly. The man had stopped crying a little before. He had pulled out of his pocket a big handkerchief and had dried the tears. He had said:
“I’m sorry.”
Then they had said nothing else.
It seemed, indeed, that they no longer had anything to understand, together.
And yet at a certain point the woman leaned toward the man again and said:
“I must ask you something a little stupid.”
The man looked up at her.
The woman seemed very serious.
“Would you like to make love to me?”
The man stared at her, motionless, silent.
So the woman was afraid for a moment that she had said nothing, that she had only thought of saying those words without having in fact done so. So she repeated them, slowly.
“Would you like to make love to me?”
The man smiled.
“I’m old,” he said.
“So am I.”
“…”
“…”
“I’m sorry, but we’re old,” the man said again.
The woman realized she hadn’t thought about that, and had nothing to say about it. Then something else occurred to her and she said:
“I’m not mad.”
“It doesn’t matter if you are. Really. To me it doesn’t matter. It’s not that.”
The woman thought for a moment and then said:
“Don’t worry, we can go to a hotel, you can choose it. A hotel that no one knows.”
Then the man seemed to understand something.
“You want us to go to a hotel?” he asked.
“Yes. I would like that. Take me to a hotel.”
He said slowly:
“A hotel room.”
He spoke as if by pronouncing the words it had become easier for him to imagine the room, to see it, to understand if he would like to die there.
The woman said he mustn’t be afraid.
“I’m not afraid,” he said.
I will never be afraid again, he thought.
The woman smiled because he was quiet and this seemed to her a way of saying yes.
She looked for something in her bag, then she took out a small purse and pushed it across the table, to the man.
“Pay with this. I don’t like women who pay in a café, but I invited you, and I’ll stick to it. Take this. Then give it back to me when we’re outside.”
The man took the little purse.
He thought of an old man paying with a purse of black satin.
They crossed the city in a taxi that seemed new and still had plastic on the seats. The woman looked out the window the whole time. They were streets she had never seen.
They got out in front of a hotel called California. The sign went vertically up the four floors of the building, in big red letters that lighted up one by one. When the word was complete it shone for a little while, then went out completely and began again from the first letter. C. Ca.
Cal. Cali. Calif. Califo. Califor. Californi. California. California. California. California. Darkness.
They stood there for a little while, one beside the other, looking at the hotel from the outside. Then the woman said, “Let’s go,” and moved toward the door.
The man followed her.
The desk clerk looked at their papers and asked if they wanted a double room. But without any inflection in his voice.
“Whatever there is,” the woman answered.
They took a room that looked onto the street, on the third floor. The desk clerk apologized that there was no elevator and offered to carry up the suitcases.
“No suitcases. We lost them,” said the woman.
The clerk smiled. He was a good man. He watched them disappear up the stairs and didn’t think badly of them.
They went into the room and neither of them made a move to turn on the light. The woman placed her purse on a chair and went to the window. She pushed aside the transparent curtains and looked down for a while, into the street. Occasional cars passed, unhurried. In the wall of the house opposite, lighted windows told the domestic tales of little worlds, happy or sad—ordinary. She turned, took off her shawl, and put it on a table. The man waited, standing, in the middle of the room. He was wondering if he should sit on the bed, or maybe say something about the place, for example that it wasn’t bad. The woman saw him there, with his overcoat on, and he seemed to her alone and timeless, like a movie hero. She went over, unbuttoned his coat, and slipping it off his shoulders let it fall to the floor. They were so close. They looked into each other’s eyes, and it was the second time, in their lives.
Then he slowly leaned over her because he had decided to kiss her on the lips. She didn’t move and in a low voice said, “Don’t be silly.” The man stopped, and he stood like that, leaning slightly forward, in his heart the precise sensation that everything was ending. But the woman slowly raised her arms, and taking a step forward embraced him, first gently, then hugging him to her with irresistible force, until her head rested on his shoulder and her whole body pressed against his. The man’s eyes were open. He saw before him the lighted window. He felt the body of the woman who was holding him, and her hands, light, in his hair. He closed his eyes. He took the woman in his arms. And with all his old man’s strength he hugged her to him.
When she began to undress she said, smiling:
“Don’t expect much.”
When he was lying on her, he said, smiling:
“You are very beautiful.”
From a room nearby came the sound of a radio, just perceptible. Lying on his back, in the big bed, completely naked, the man stared at the ceiling, wondering if it was weariness that made his head spin, or the wine. Beside him the woman was still, her eyes closed, turned toward him, her head on the pillow. They held each other by the hand. The man would have liked to hear her speak again, but he knew there was nothing more to say, and that any words would be ridiculous at that moment. So he was silent, letting sleep confuse his ideas, and bring back to him the dim memory of what had happened that evening.
The night outside was illegible, and the time in which it was vanishing was without measure. He thought that he should be grateful to the woman, because she had led him there by the hand, step by step, like a mother with a child.
She had done it wisely, and without haste. Now what remained to be done would not be difficult.
He held her hand, in his, and she returned his clasp. He would have liked to turn and look at her but then what he did was let go of her hand and roll onto his side, giving her his back. It seemed to him that it was what she was expecting from him. Something like a gesture that left her free to think, and in a certain way gave her some solitude in which to decide the final move. He felt that sleep was about to carry him off. It occurred to him that he didn’t like being naked because they would find him like that and everyone would look at him. But he didn’t dare tell the woman. So he turned his head toward her, not enough to see her, and said: