The Silence Of The Wave Part 12

She looked at him as if she did not understand. As if the question had been formulated in another language. Then she relaxed. She made an almost amused face, although with a remote hint of dismay.

"Did I start seeing the doctor because of my actress's paranoia? No, that would have been too sophisticated a reason. And it certainly wouldn't be enough to justify spending the money I've spent and am still spending on him. The only reason I started seeing the doctor was because my life had fallen to pieces. Just a little thing like that."

Roberto would have liked to reply that this meant they'd both started seeing the doctor for the same reason. He didn't do so, because he wasn't sure he'd find the right tone. She said that smoking a third cigarette was excessive, that it would be better to avoid it. Then, with perfect consistency, she lit one. She blew out the smoke and emptied her gla.s.s.

"Part of me is telling me to drop this, another part has a great desire to tell you everything. Can we drink something a little more interesting? I don't know, a fifteen-percent Primitivo from Apulia? Shall we get them to bring us something to eat?"

He looked at her without formulating the question, although it must have been quite clear on his face. So clear that she was immediately aware of it.

"Now you must be thinking I told you I didn't have much time."

"You did tell me that."

"I wanted to keep a way out open. Who is this man, after all? Someone I met by chance, and at the psychiatrist's to boot. Maybe I'll be bored after just ten minutes. Maybe he's got the wrong idea about me-after all, he's crazy like me, like everybody who sees the doctor. Maybe he's a pervert, maybe he has homicidal tendencies, maybe he's a potential rapist, whatever. In other words, I wanted to be free to run away at any moment, without any ha.s.sle."

"So what happened?"

"What happened is that I haven't felt like running away. I like the way you listen. It makes me want to talk. I suppose that means you're good at your job."

What job? He didn't have a job anymore. He still drew a marshal's salary while on extended leave for health reasons, but a job-something he knew, something he was able to do-he no longer had. When the maximum period of leave for health reasons was over, he would have to come to a decision. Either go back, maybe in command of a station like the one he'd happened to land up in at the beginning of his career, dealing with petty disputes between neighbors, people driving without a license, and thefts of car radios. Did anyone still steal car radios? No, not anymore. So not even that.

Or else leave. That might be the best solution. Was he ent.i.tled to a pension? He had never wondered about that, maybe because the question had never crossed his mind until that moment, as he was talking to her. Maybe he was ent.i.tled to a disability pension even before he reached the age limit. Or maybe, he seemed to recall, with at least twenty years of service, you had a right to a pension even though you had to wait until you were a certain age. A certain age, what a horrible expression. Where could he go to find out what it was, that certain age when he would get his pension?

Her voice revived him.

"Hey, are you there?"

"I'm sorry. You mentioned my job and I started thinking. I got distracted."

"You really did. You looked as if you were somewhere else entirely."

"Then let's sort out the rest of the evening. If we want a gla.s.s of wine and something to eat, it might be better to go to a restaurant. Do you have any preferences?"

"You bet I do," she said with a smile. She was suddenly like a little girl, and he could feel his heart breaking and crumbling and becoming something insubstantial. "It's been ages since I last ate Indian. There's an Indian restaurant right near here that I used to like a lot. I don't know if it's still as good as it was. But we could try it, if that's OK with you?"

Giacomo

Ginevra hasn't been back to school-she's been absent for three days now-and hasn't even replied to my friends.h.i.+p request on Facebook. n.o.body knows why she's away and I'm starting to get worried.

I think that's why I woke up very early today and couldn't get back to sleep. I couldn't just stay in bed so I got up and started writing down last night's dream, to pa.s.s the time and get over my nervousness.

I fell asleep reading (my mother must have come in to turn off the light) and soon afterward found myself back in the park. Scott wasn't there, and unlike the other times the sky was quite cloudy, the air was cooler, almost cold, and the gra.s.s seemed taller. I looked around, and in the middle of the lawn I saw Ginevra. I waved to her but she didn't respond; she turned and walked quickly away.

I started going after her, quite fast, but however fast I went I couldn't catch up with her. The quicker I went, the greater the distance between us. I tried to start running, but my legs seemed really heavy, I felt as if I was moving in slow motion, and after a while I slipped and fell. Ginevra was getting farther and farther away, and growing smaller and smaller, until she completely disappeared into the gra.s.s.

I sat down on the ground, discouraged. I felt very alone and very unhappy.

Everything all right, chief?

I turned and saw Scott trotting toward me.

"Scott. Thank goodness you're here. Where have you been?"

Hey, chief, you look terrible. What's happened?

It didn't strike me at the time, but Scott is very good at not answering questions when he doesn't want to.

"Ginevra was here. I waved to her and she didn't wave back. I tried to go to her and she got away."

Scott looked at me with an expression I couldn't figure out.

"What's happening, Scott? Ginevra hasn't been to school for days, and now that I meet her here she runs away."

I don't know, chief, but I get the feeling something's wrong on the other side.

"What do you mean?"

The other side is when you're awake, chief, you know. But that's a territory I don't know much about.

Even though I was worried and sad about Ginevra, Scott's words reminded me of things I'd been wanting to ask him for a while.

"Do you remember the first time we met, Scott?"

How could I ever forget, chief?

"You remember who was with me ..."

Your father.

Your father.

I don't think anyone's ever said those two words to me. Or at least I don't remember. The few times when Mom talks about my father she says your dad, and with Grandma and Grandpa it's the same. When I think about my father I almost always use the word father, but hearing someone else use it, I don't know, it just gives me the idea that it's true and not something that only exists in my memory and my imagination.

Your dad isn't a bad expression, not at all. But-it's difficult to explain-it gives me the idea of a relations.h.i.+p between a man and a child. In other words, the only thing there's ever been between him and me, which is over forever.

"Why did he leave and never come back?"

As I was finis.h.i.+ng the sentence I realized I wasn't sure if I was talking about the first dream where I met Scott or about when my father left home and never came back. And I realized I was angry-very angry-with him, because he had gone and never come back. In the real world, or in the dream, or in both.

Scott said nothing and continued looking at me with the same serious expression as before.

"You know my father was a writer?"

Yes chief, your father and I know each other well.

"If you know each other well, why don't you ever let me see him? I really need to talk to him."

Your father is always around here somewhere, even though you can't always see him. There are things he has to tell you, but he doesn't know how.

"What does he have to tell me?"

Now Scott didn't just seem serious, he seemed sad and even uncertain-which was unlike him-about what to do.

"What does my father have to tell me, Scott?"

He sighed and maybe made up his mind to reply. But at that precise moment I woke up. I tried to get to sleep again and go back into the dream to hear that reply, but it was impossible.

It's always impossible.

17.

When the moment came to drink the Cabernet they had ordered and poured in their gla.s.ses, Roberto hesitated for a moment, and Emma noticed.

"You're not teetotal, are you? No, you can't be, you had a spritz."

"It's just that I'm still on medication and apparently you have to be careful not to mix it with alcohol. I've already had one drink ... But it's all right, there's no problem, I'll drink the wine but won't take any medication tonight. The doctor said I can, from time to time. Even though I've never done it before, and to be honest the idea makes me a bit nervous. Well, if worst comes to worst, I won't sleep tonight."

"Still on medication? How long have you been seeing the doctor?"

"I've been going since ..."

Again that unpleasant sensation of not being able to locate things in time. How long had he been seeing the doctor? He floundered, as he had when he'd been trying to remember the year his mother had died.

He had started seeing the doctor just after the end of summer.

Yes, in September. It was April now, which made seven months, give or take.

"Seven months, more or less."

And what day is today? Monday, of course, because he'd been to the doctor's and should have met Emma there, but she hadn't gone. It seemed to him as if it wasn't just a few hours that had pa.s.sed since he'd been getting ready to go out, but days, quite a few days in fact. The feeling was so strong that Roberto wondered if it actually had been several days and he was getting confused, caught irreparably now in this personal trap of time. But, to go back to the question, what day was it in April? What date?

Again that sense of panic, that impression of being lost in unknown territory. A place where monstrous ent.i.ties might be hiding behind familiar everyday objects. Ent.i.ties that could jump on you or eat you up. He couldn't reconstruct what day it was-it must be round about the middle of April-and thought of looking at his mobile. But he would have had to take it out of his pocket and actually look at it, and that struck him as impolite and somehow cowardly. Tomorrow he would buy a calendar and make a note of what day it was, every day. And little by little he would reconstruct the chronology of the past few months, and then of the past few years, of his life.

"What day is today?"

"Monday, April eighteenth. Why?"

"Every now and again I get mixed up. And yes, I am taking various medications."

"I stopped taking the heavy stuff a few months ago. I still take a dozen drops of Minias in the evening, though. The doctor says that's all right, that it's important to sleep and that a few drops of tranquilizer never hurt anybody."

Roberto was a little surprised by this light, cheerful way of dealing with the subject. In the end he raised his gla.s.s in a toast, Emma responded, and they drank. She was looking at him and he couldn't interpret her expression but he liked it.

Everything came at the same time: plates and bowls with rice, naan bread, chicken tikka masala, lamb curry, vegetables.

Emma flung herself on the food as if just coming off a long fast, and for about ten minutes they did not talk much.

They emerged from silence as they were waiting for dessert.

"So, to sum up: you said you don't act anymore?"

"I suppose you'd like to know what I do."

"If that isn't confidential information."

"I'm a shop a.s.sistant." She said it with a slight but perceptible note of aggressiveness in her voice.

"I'm sorry?"

"My friends all get angry when I say that. They say it's a way to feel sorry for myself and that I'm not a shop a.s.sistant. Let's say I'm a high-cla.s.s shop a.s.sistant, but I'm still a shop a.s.sistant."

"Maybe you should give me a few more clues."

"When I realized I couldn't and didn't want to be an actress anymore, I started looking for a completely different kind of job. The problem was that there wasn't anything I knew how to do. There still isn't. Apart from singing a bit, and producers aren't exactly lining up to sign me up for a record deal. Anyway, I had to find something suitable for someone who doesn't know how to do anything. I put the word out and, after a few ridiculous propositions, a friend called me. Actually he was a friend of a friend, and he told me he was about to open a kind of art gallery, or rather a cross between an art gallery and a high-cla.s.s furniture shop. Paintings, sculpture, furniture, objects. Would I be interested in working there? Of course I would, but I wasn't any kind of expert, either about art or about furniture. High-cla.s.s or otherwise."

"What did he say to that?"

"He's a self-made man. A good man in his way, but not exactly sophisticated. He said he didn't want me for my expertise. He said, and here I quote, that I was dishy, I had a fairly well-known face and knew how to deal with people."

"And what did you say?"

"Overcoming my annoyance at that bit about being fairly well-known, I told him we could talk about it. We met and, to cut a long story short, I agreed. And I made the right decision. It isn't the life I'd dreamed about when I was studying to be an actress, but the work isn't hard, and I get to meet interesting people in pleasant surroundings. The wages are nothing to write home about, but I've lowered my standards compared with the past. And I don't have to ask my parents for money to provide for my son, to pay the doctor, to go to the movies or a few concerts. But I never go to the theater. I still don't think I can bear being in the audience and not up there on the stage."

"The theater was your pa.s.sion?"

"It was my pa.s.sion. I did quite a bit of it, I even played Viola in Twelfth Night, but let's be honest about it: I was very average as an actress. And when I was a little girl and dreamed about being an actress, I didn't dream about being average. For years I looked for and found all kinds of explanations for why I was so average. The most obvious one only became clear to me when I stopped, or rather some time after I'd stopped: I just wasn't talented enough."

Roberto noticed at that moment that the waiter had a slight limp and produced a kind of syncopated tapping, that there was music in the background, and that the door of the restaurant made an unpleasant squeaking sound when it opened and closed. It was as if a m.u.f.fler had been taken off the surrounding sounds.

"Now you're wondering why I stopped. Am I wrong?"

"No, you aren't wrong."