The Purple Room (11 page)

13

When he sees
me arrive, Roberto gets up from the table and comes towards me, concerned.

“What
happened? You look like you’re in shock.”

We order a
couple of Negronis and I start telling him the story of my amnesia, up to the
moment when I found the initials G.D.

“The first
time I saw her I was in eleventh grade. I’d just turned sixteen and all my best
friends had already lost their virginity. The only one in the group who hadn’t
even gotten close was me.”

“Yeah,” says
Roberto, chewing on an olive, “I remember that feeling. Such awful anxiety.”

I tell him how
I went through mountains of porn magazines back then, just like all the other
kids our age, but that I spent as much time looking at the naked women in my
father’s art books. I liked the small breasts, the pale skin, the bends and
curves of the bellies of Titians’ and Botticelli’s Venuses.

“I used to whack
off thinking about Dr. Russell in
Space:
1999,
” says Roberto, “but what’s this have to do with your amnesia?”

“I’m getting
there.”

The waiter
brings two more Negronis. I take a of couple sips, then keep on telling him
about Gloria Decesaris. She had come to our class from another school, and she
lived outside Milan, in Pantigliate. She sat in the back, by herself, didn’t
talk much, and blushed whenever anyone spoke to her. I sat in the front, to be
near this girl Stefania who, back then, I thought was beauty personified. In the
springtime we went on a class trip to Florence. It rained for three days in a
row. I was dragging myself along the corridors of the Uffizi Museum with the
rest of the class, hoping the visit would end as quickly as possible, when we
stopped in front Caravaggio’s painting of the
Medusa
. We listened to what our teacher had to say, then we all
moved on. But Gloria stayed there, staring at it. She was just standing there, looking
up at that painting, completely rapt. I went back and asked her what she was
doing. “The resemblance is striking,” she said. “It’s the same face my mother
makes when she screams. The spitting image, identical.” She opened her eyes
wide, imitating the gorgon, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “GO TO YOUR
ROOOOOM!”

I didn’t talk
to her for the rest of the trip.

On the way
back to Milan, I ran into her on the train, at the end of the carriage. She was
smoking. She asked me if I wanted a cigarette. I replied that I didn’t smoke.
“Neither do I,” she said. “I bought them at the station just to try it.”

We started
chatting. Gloria told me that her folks were separated. Her dad was a doctor.
Her mother never left the house and spent all day yelling at her and her older
sister Ursula. “She’s crazy,” she said, talking about her mother, “but not
enough to have her put away. My dad couldn’t take it anymore, so he got out.”

The two
sisters were left alone to look after her. They’d bought some wax plugs. As
soon as their mother started to scream, they’d stick them in their ears. While
Gloria was talking, I kept an eye on the stations. I’d gotten this urge to kiss
her, but the train had already passed Piacenza and I still hadn’t worked up the
courage. When we got to Lambrate, Gloria started away to go get her suitcase
out of her compartment. It was my last chance. I barred the way and asked her
if I could give her a kiss.

“Well, then,
you were a bigger dolt than I ever was,” says Roberto. “You should have just
kissed her. She must have laughed in your face.”

“I expected
her to say no. But the point was to see if it would be a nice kind of ‘no,’ or
a straight up ‘fuck you.’ At that age, the difference was very important.
Instead, Gloria looked at me with a wry little smile, like she was kidding, and
said, ‘Yes.’”

“So you kissed
her?”

“Of course,” I
say. “I wasn’t that big of a dolt. We locked ourselves in the bathroom and
kissed until the train pulled into the station and everyone had gotten off.
Before we pulled apart, Gloria looked at me like she was seeing me for the
first time and said, in this strange voice, ‘Who are you?’

 
“From that day on, we never stopped
kissing. We kissed everywhere. At school, on the street, in the park, at the
cinema, in churches. We did nothing else but kiss. Hours and hours of kisses.
I’ve never kissed so much in my life as when I was kissing Gloria Decesaris.”

I drain the
last of my Negroni and realize I’m getting drunk. Roberto has had quite a lot
to drink, too. He’s chewing on olives with a glassy look in the eyes.

“I don’t know
how you manage to cope, living this way,” he says shaking his head. “You sit
there digging up every little bit of your past, like a mole.” He thrusts a
handful of peanuts into his mouth. “I’d go crazy.”

His phone
starts ringing. He looks at the screen, snorts, then answers. “Yes, Loredana…
No, I’m here with Sergio… I don’t know… I’ve told you I don’t know… Fine, do
what you want.”

“I’ve kept you
out too late,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

“I’m not going
anywhere.”

“I don’t want
you two to fight because of me.”

“It’s not your
fault. Anyway, I want to hear the rest of the story. I still don’t know what
any of this has to do with your amnesia.”

While we’re
walking to the car I tell him about the time I called Gloria up. Ursula
answered and said she didn’t know if she’d be able to pass her sister the
phone. Their mother was at it again. In the background I could hear Mrs.
Decesaris screaming things like, “I’ve got a stomach ache! Who let the cat out?
Gloria! Go and look for the cat!.”

When Gloria finally
got to the phone, I didn’t feel like giving her the speech I’d planned. I told
her it wasn’t important, that we’d see each other at school the next day.

“Tomorrow’s
Sunday,” she said, “and I’ll miss you terribly.”

Then I plucked
up my courage and told her I wanted to be there with her, in her room, in her
bed. I wanted to make love to her. It was what I wanted most in the world. I
asked her if she wanted it, too. There was a silence on the phone, filled by a
couple of her mother’s screams (“Turn on the light! Bring me my drops! My
drops!”). Then I heard Gloria’s voice again. “Yes,” was all she said. Just like
when I had asked her for a kiss on the train. “Yes,” she said. She was my girl,
the one who said yes. I was crazy about her.

We decided to
do it on a Thursday afternoon, at my place, when my mother was at the office
and my father had a union meeting. I was so tense. My stomach was in a knot and
my mouth was dry. After I’d gotten home from school, I’d showered twice, but I
was still sweating. I’d look at my watch every five minutes. The closer the time
came, the more frightened I got. Part of me hoped that our plan would fall
through. I’d just got out of my third shower when Gloria called to say that
something had come up. She had to go with her mom to the vet. The cat was sick,
it had gastroenteritis and might die. The disappointment made me furious. I
didn’t know who to take it out on. I hoped the cat really would die.

The days that
followed were chaotic. The school year was coming to an end and we were all
anxious about our final grades. Gloria became distant. The cat had recovered,
but she didn’t say anything about our plans. We’d see each other briefly in
class, then she’d rush off home. She claimed she was really busy. I was sure
she’d changed her mind. My chance had vanished and Gloria was deserting me.
Probably for an older boy. Maybe a friend of her sister’s. I was a wreck. I
wasn’t eating. I moped around the house sighing, closed myself in my room. My
mother thought I was coming down with something. “It’s nothing,” my father
would say, winking at me. “I went through the same thing at his age.”

On the last
day of school, when I had lost all hope, Gloria took my art history book and
wrote, “Today, after three, at my house. I’ll be waiting for you. G.” She
didn’t say anything else, but I knew what that invitation meant. After school I
called my mother at the office and told her I would be spending the afternoon
with my friends. Then I set off for Pantigliate.

Gloria lived
in the suburbs, in a two-story townhouse house with green shutters. I rang the
door bell. She came out through the garden in bare feet and let me in. She was
wearing a cotton dress and her hair was gathered up at the nape of her neck. It
was held in place with a pencil. She said her mother and sister had gone to
visit an aunt. They wouldn’t be back till evening. Then she took my hand and
led me upstairs.

Her room was
completely purple. The walls were a raspberry color, the curtains lilac. There
was a fuchsia carpet, pink cushions and even a violet lamp. The room was
divided in two. On one side was Ursula’s bed, and on the other side, near the
window, Gloria’s. The sheets were purple, like everything else. She hugged me
as hard as she could and gave me a kiss. It was as if she were breathing
through my mouth. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get undressed.”

I took
everything off and lay down on the bed to watch Gloria take off her clothes.
She slid the pencil out of her hair. It fell down over her shoulders. She
lowered the straps of her dress, let it slip down and pushed it away with her
foot. Then she put two fingers under the elastic band of her panties and slid
them off, too. She looked towards the window. The sun was falling into the room
like a sword. “Too much light,” she said.

Covering her
breasts with her arm, she walked around the bed to the window and leaned out to
pull in the shutters. Right there, at that exact moment, I really understood
what it meant to be happy. I just knew that, from then on, I would have to
measure my happiness by comparing it to that moment. I wondered if the rest of
my life would ever measure up to it.

When I woke from
the coma, the first thought I had, the first image that passed through my
brain, was of Gloria, at sixteen, in front of that window. The feeling I had
was the same.
 

“Wait a
minute,” says Roberto. “There’s something I don’t understand.” We’ve reached
his car but we keep on talking, leaning on the hood. “You were working on the
Elixir project
before
the accident,
so you were already thinking about Gloria.”

“That’s just
it. For thirty years I’ve lived with the memory of Gloria buried away inside
me. What you’re saying is right. I don’t know how or when I started remembering
that afternoon in the purple room. Maybe it just happened because of an
association of ideas, when I was looking for an image for that ad, but the
important thing is that it happened. It means that, in the days before the
accident, I had started thinking about her again.”
 

“Ok, but
what’s so strange about that? It happens to me, too, sometimes, to think about
the first girl I slept with.”

“I didn’t do
it with Gloria,” I clarify.

“You’re kidding.
So what happened in that room?”

I tell him about
how, after closing the shutters, Gloria lay down beside me. She was very
embarrassed, covering herself with her arms. She said she felt ugly. I started
touching her. With the tips of my fingers I caressed her legs, her stomach, her
little white breasts. She closed her eyes and let me. I explored the whole of
her body, inch by inch. I studied her moles, the places where she bent and
curved, the tiny imperfections on her skin. The shape of her wide hips, her
elbows, her ankles, every detail was imprinted on my hands. Little by little,
as I caressed her, her breathing became regular, her muscles relaxed. Without
opening her eyes, she whispered, “Now I know who you are.”

Then she fell
asleep. I stayed there a long time, looking at her. She was sleeping so
peacefully. I didn’t wake her. I got up and dressed quietly. Before I left, I
turned and looked at her one last time. Lying there on that bed, naked and
asleep, she looked like the women in my father’s books, a work of art.

The next day,
I called her, but no one answered. I tried again in the evening, and then again
the next day. Finally, her sister answered. She said that Gloria was in the
hospital. I went to see her. Her mother and father were there during visiting
hours, too, so we couldn’t speak alone. Gloria looked all right, just a little
pale. She had to get some blood tests done. That’s all I was able to figure
out. I wanted to go back the next day, but that weekend I had to go to the
mountains with my parents. I promised I’d get in touch when I got back on the
following Monday. “I’ll be waiting for you,” were the last words I heard her
say.

“On Monday I
showed up at the hospital, only to find the bed empty. A nurse told me her
father had taken her away. I must have called her house a hundred times. No one
ever answered. I went to Pantigliate. The house was closed up. I asked the
neighbors, but no one knew where they’d gone. Since then I’ve never had any
more news of her.”

Roberto plays
with his car keys. He’s very quiet.

“Well, what do
you think?”

“It’s a good
thing you remember who the girl was,” he says. “At least you won’t have to
obsess about it anymore.”