The Silence of the Wave (11 page)

At the end of the session, the doctor told him that he would be away at a conference on Thursday, which meant they would see each other again in a week’s time, next Monday.

Roberto registered the information but did not realize its full significance until he was going out into
the street, where the rain was still coming down unrelentingly.

His movements around the city, his thoughts, his sleep, his meals, the television, the computer, smoking, drinking, exercising, washing, cooking, shopping—everything revolved around those two fixed times: five o’clock on Monday and five o’clock on Thursday.

The doctor’s conference shifted the center of gravity and produced a kind of landslide in Roberto’s consciousness. Walking in the rain, with the umbrella not really protecting him and the water soaking him to the skin, he was hit by a distressing awareness of the indistinct time opening in front of him. A sea as flat as oil, an infinite, deserted expanse, without terra firma on the horizon.

The week passed with gluey slowness, marked by a constant dull headache that was resistant to pills.

Roberto moved laboriously—as if having to drag a weight heavier than that of his own body—through a succession of identical days strung together.

He woke up early in the morning and went to sleep late at night. He walked obsessively throughout the city in the rain, which lasted a long time, most of the week, almost without interruption. Dripping wet, he would stop to eat in rotisseries and shabby restaurants hidden away on the extreme edge of the city, places he wouldn’t have been able to find again an hour later. He smoked damp cigarettes in the precarious shelter of doorways
or arcades. A couple of times he thought he saw faces he knew, but he had no idea who they were and had no desire to find out. Both times he looked away and moved on quickly, almost furtively.

On Sunday, the headache stopped.

On Monday morning, Roberto emerged from the dark, muddy pool he had been wading through all week.

I made the compilation. It wasn’t easy to choose the songs and it took me several days, partly because I thought there shouldn’t be too many of them, but above all I couldn’t risk putting in stuff she wouldn’t like. In other words, I had to play it safe.

In the end I chose six songs: “Time Is on My Side” by the Rolling Stones, “Everybody Hurts” by REM, “Tunnel of Love” by Dire Straits, “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen, “With or Without You” by U2, and “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, which is my favorite song, because it reminds me of something beautiful, even though I can’t remember what.

I also thought of giving the collection a title, but the ones I thought of didn’t seem appropriate. In fact, they made me want to puke. Stuff like:
Songs for Ginevra
or
Giacomo’s Selection
or other sappy things that make me ashamed just to write them in this diary.

In the end I gave up on the title, put the memory stick in my backpack, and carried it back and forth
from home to school for a week without finding the opportunity or the courage to give it to her. Then she was away, and for two days now she hasn’t been to school. I thought of phoning her, but I don’t have her mobile number, and even if I had it there’s no guarantee I’d find the courage to call her.

Last night, after hesitating for at least an hour, I asked her to be my friend on Facebook. Let’s see what happens.

* * *

I had a nightmare, which hadn’t happened to me for a while.

I was sitting on my bed, sure that I was wide awake, when I heard the rustle of wings. I was about to switch on the light but then, in the semidarkness, I saw a pigeon perched on the lamp, looking at me.

Immediately after that, I saw two more of them on the floor, next to the bed. No, there weren’t just two, there were more. Five, or maybe six or seven, or maybe ten. Or maybe twenty. Now they were all around, on the bedside table, on the desk, on the chair, even on the bed. The room was full of pigeons, and from somewhere I couldn’t see others kept coming in. They were on the wardrobe, on the ceiling light, on the football. And now they were all looking at me. All gray, which in the darkness seemed black, all with the same stupid hostile, nasty pigeon eyes.

But none of them moved.

They were too still, I thought, and so, making an effort to overcome my disgust, I reached out my hand to one of them that was on the bedside table. I touched it with one finger but it didn’t move. I touched another and that one didn’t move either.

Then I tried touching the third one, but a bit harder, and it fell to the floor, making a noise like a paper ball or a piece of cardboard. I tried to push another one and that one also fell, without giving any signs of life. Then, even though it really made me want to puke, I tried picking one up. I took it cautiously between my index finger and my thumb, and at that moment I understood.

It wasn’t alive.

It was stuffed.

They were all stuffed, and as I was holding the one I had picked up between my fingers, I heard a rustling spreading from the room. It didn’t come from any place in particular.

The pigeons started falling, one after the other, a whole volley of them. A heavy shower of stuffed pigeons. It was really disgusting.

I shielded my head with my hands, making an effort not to scream, and stayed like that for all the time it lasted. Then, when the shower was over, I looked around, checked the floor and the bed.

There was nothing there, because I had woken up.

He was just getting ready to go out when his mobile phone rang. That was something that happened so rarely that at first Roberto didn’t realize the sound had anything to do with him.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s Emma.”

“Emma, hi.”

“I remembered you’d written your telephone number in the book.”

“Yes, it was inside the cover,” Roberto replied, and a fraction of a second later felt like an idiot. If she was phoning him, that obviously meant she’d found the number.

“The book, yes. It’s very good, thank you. Reading it brought back lots of memories.”

At that moment it struck Roberto that Emma should have been at the doctor’s office at this hour.

“Aren’t you at the doctor’s?”

“Actually, no. I couldn’t go today. And I won’t be going on Mondays anymore, because … Well, it’s not important, something to do with work. Anyway, I’ve changed days.”

“Oh, so our date is canceled?” He tried to give his voice a light tone, but the thought going through his brain was: if she had changed the day of her session, it was likely they’d never meet again.

“That’s why I’m phoning you. As if we’d had a real date. I know it may seem ridiculous, but I thought that if you didn’t see me you might get worried.”

Then she paused, and in those moments of silence it seemed to Roberto that he could hear the frantic murmur of thoughts running out of control.

“It’s true. If I hadn’t seen you today I’d have been worried. Thank you.”

Silence, heavy with unexpressed intentions. Each was aware of the other being about to speak and was waiting.

“Maybe—”

“I was thinking—”

“I’m sorry, go on.”

“No, you first.”

“If you’re not too busy tonight, maybe we could have a bite to eat or go for a drink. Tonight.” He said
tonight
twice, although he couldn’t have said why. And as he finished speaking, he was already regretting what he had said. What did he know about her, apart from
what he had discovered on the Internet? She might be married—she didn’t wear a wedding ring; come to think of it, she didn’t wear any ring at all: that was his old attention to detail coming out—she might be with someone, she might have had no intention of seeing him and the phone call had been simply the impulsive act of an unstable person.

“Obviously if you can’t or you don’t feel like it, no problem,” he said hastily. “I don’t mean to be intrusive, I just wanted to say it.”

She hesitated for a few seconds.

“I don’t have much time. But maybe a drink would be fine. We’d have to meet near my place.”

“Of course. Tell me where you live and I’ll come there.”

“I’m in the Via Panisperna. We could meet at Santa Maria dei Monti, there’s a bar with tables in front … It’s almost hot today, maybe we could sit outside.”

Roberto did not reply. Santa Maria dei Monti was no more than two hundred yards from where he lived.

“Are you still there?”

“No, I mean yes, I’m sorry, something came into my head—it happens sometimes—and I got distracted. Santa Maria dei Monti would be perfect, I know the bar. What time shall we meet?”

“Maybe you’re a long way away and it’s hard for you to get to Monti, but I can’t go far, I’m sorry.”

“Monti really isn’t a problem for me. Shall we say eight o’clock?”

“Yes, eight o’clock’s fine,” and then, after a brief hesitation: “I’m sorry …”

“Yes?”

“I warn you I’m about to make a fool of myself again, but I never listen to names when I make someone’s acquaintance …”

“Neither do I.”

“…  and I didn’t hear yours. I’m sorry.”

“Roberto.”

“Roberto. You could have written the name next to the phone number. That way you would have spared me the embarrassment of asking you.”

“You’re right, it’s my fault. Tonight I’ll let you have my full particulars and even leave you a photocopy of my ID, for all eventualities.”

Laughter.

“Good idea, then I can check you’re really a carabiniere. See you tonight, then.”

“See you at eight.”

Roberto was feverish with excitement. He thought of calling the doctor’s office, saying something had happened and he’d have to cancel that afternoon’s appointment. He dismissed the idea almost immediately. He left home and ran most of the way, in order not to be overcome by the mental pins and needles that had taken hold of him after Emma’s phone call.

Toward the end of the session—it had slipped away like a pleasant chat between two strangers on a train—the doctor asked him if everything was all right. Roberto said yes, everything was fine, but he had to excuse him if he was a bit distracted, for some days now he had been surprised by his own reactions, he didn’t really know what to expect from himself, and now he really had to dash because he had an appointment this evening, sorry again, see you on Thursday.

As he left, he could feel the doctor’s penetrating gaze on him, and told himself that by Thursday he would have to find an explanation for his behavior.

* * *

After his shower he looked at himself in the mirror and realized that he had a paunch. Of course he’d known that for some time. Years and years of bad food and copious amounts of alcohol in different places around the world don’t pass without leaving their mark.

But even though he’d known, it was only now that he became fully aware of it. In other words, that he
saw
it. He stood at the mirror, first to the side, then again facing it. It occurred to him that he also needed to see himself from the back, but he didn’t have a second mirror and so he couldn’t. He tried to hold his breath. Then he contracted his abdominal muscles—which he definitely had, partly because he had been exercising again for a while. But equally definitely, they weren’t visible. Many years earlier, he told himself, his abdominals had been like those you saw in commercials for bathing suits. Now, they most certainly weren’t. When had they started to disappear beneath a growing layer of fat? He didn’t know. The years he’d spent living that absurd life were enveloped in a thin but distressing layer of fog. He knew he had been to Madrid, Geneva, London, Marseilles, Bogotá, Caracas, New York, Miami, and lots of other places, but he couldn’t put the memories of all those journeys, all those airports, all those hotels, all those meetings, all those lunches and banquets into any kind of order. Or
all those women. Yes, that was another worrying thing. He couldn’t remember the names, or even the faces, of many of the women. He remembered their bodies and in some cases even their smells. But not their faces or their names.

All right, he told himself. Best to stop right there and finish getting ready.

He realized he did not even have one bottle of cologne at home. I’ll have to buy one, he promised himself, while starting to think about what to wear. This immediately produced a kind of mental paralysis, a sense of panic. How long was it since he’d last been shopping for clothes? All the clothes he had were old and—he thought, feeling embarrassed—rather pitiful. His apartment, too, was scruffy and pitiful. He was dismayed at the thought that Emma might come in here, see where he lived, and find out who he was, who he really was.

Then, beneath heaps of washed but unironed shirts, T-shirts, odd socks, pants with the elastic stretched, and a few long-unworn ties, he unearthed, as if by a miracle, a new shirt, still in its plastic packaging. He unwrapped the shirt and put it on, then slipped on a pair of jeans—jeans are always more or less the same even if you’ve had them for quite some time—and finally took out the most presentable jacket he had in the wardrobe: the top part of a suit he’d had for years but had only worn two or maybe three times.

He felt better. He pulled in his belly and straightened his back, and it seemed to him he was not as rundown as he had thought just a while earlier. He made a few more grimaces to try and bring a little color and expression to his face.

As he went out he decided that as soon as they met he would tell her they were neighbors, to avoid misunderstandings that might become unpleasant.

As he was early, he walked slowly and got to the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti at five to eight. That gave him a reassuring sense of control and a little leap of joy. There was a carefree atmosphere, the sense of slightly euphoric anticipation typical of the first evenings of spring. A few young people sat laughing on the steps of the fountain, two overweight elderly ladies were chatting in Roman dialect, a man was collecting, with a little shovel and bag, what his dog had just deposited on the cobblestones.

Roberto sat down at an outside table and continued to look around with the same curiosity and a vague sense of surprise, as if this were the first time he had been to this square.