About Time (14 page)

T
HERE’S NOTHING SO HUMILIATING
as arriving late to your own father’s funeral.

I missed the first plane, the one I managed to catch landed on time, but the taxi ride ate up two hours. I wasn’t worried until we drew up outside the church and I saw my cousins, who have suddenly become adults, carrying the mahogany coffin down the steps to the hearse.

Although I may have spent the night awake repeating it to myself, it still hasn’t sunk in, and now I’m barricading myself behind the absurd belief that it isn’t his body inside that coffin, that at any moment he’ll come up behind me and say in his usual resentful tone, “Finally made it, eh?”

I can’t feel my legs or my hands any more. I walk, but I don’t feel anything, just a slight sensation of pins and needles. As if I’m dreaming. I recognize a lot of people, some of whom I haven’t seen since I was a child: grey hair, lined faces, serious and composed for the occasion. Dark glasses, vague suggestions of smiles. They are still all here, as if in some way life in this city has been waiting for me. No revolutions, no disasters. Everything is more or less as I left it. Except those who have grown up until they have become other people: my cousin gives me such a tight hug he takes my
breath away. My aunt, on the other hand, is more distant. Her eyes are hard, like a reprimand, not so much for what I’ve done, for my unjustifiable delay, as for what I should have done. And she has my mother’s eyes.

“It would have been difficult to put off the funeral until tomorrow,” she says as she gets in the car. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the opportunity to see him one last time. We’ll talk at the cemetery, are you following us?”

Predictably, I lose them on the way and by the time I arrive the coffin has practically already been buried. My aunt looks at me with a resigned air and raised eyebrows.

I approach the grave with the detachment of someone who just happened to be in the area. Obviously there are no names, dates or photographs yet, and as far as I’m concerned, there could be anybody in there.

“Do you remember Anna? Your father’s colleague.”

A little woman, hidden behind a pair of glasses that are bigger than her, greets me with a hug. “We met the last time you came.”

I nod, returning her embrace. “A couple of years ago.”

“Nearly seven, actually,” my aunt corrects me, with a slight shake of the head.

On the ride home, the grief at last hits me. More than grief, a sense of powerlessness at the thought that he really isn’t here any more. It’s like punching the wind, a rage that finds no outlet. It will backfire on me. And in fact, the first blow soon surprises me, it comes straight to the pit of my stomach and takes my breath away, so that I have to stop on the road, even though I know that this means keeping my relatives, who must be at my father’s apartment by now, waiting even longer. 

I get out of the car and vomit. All that comes out is water. It gushes out of me, until the cramp puts a stop to it. The sky is clear, one of those smiling skies that Turin manages to come up with every now and again, the mountains can be seen on the horizon and the air is fresh. I allow myself just a few mouthfuls of it, then get back in the car and set off again.

It’s Anna who opens the door to me. She has taken her glasses off and her red, swollen eyes tell me she’s been crying continuously and may start again at any moment.

My first impression—that everything in this city is just the way it was—is belied by my father’s apartment. There’s something different, not so much in the furnishings, as in the photographs, in the colours. It’s alive. It’s the home of a dead man, but it’s alive.

I haven’t been to see him for seven years. Seven years. In my head only a couple, at most. I wonder when it was that my perception of time really started to become distorted.

My relatives are talking among themselves, they share moments, memories. I’m not here. I’m cut out. They long ago stopped waiting for me.

When Anna and my aunt tell me about all the bureaucratic formalities I’ll need to deal with, I lose the thread of what they’re saying. Just one thing hits me in the face, like a slap: “Your father had been ill for months,” my aunt says. “He wanted to tell you, it was the thing that mattered most to him. And then, just when he seemed to be responding to the treatment, he had his attack.”

I barely have time to recover when I receive another blow, an even more violent one. “He left you a trust,” Anna says, taking me aside. “It’s a lot of money, more than he could really afford. He made sacrifices all his life to put it aside for you. I know you don’t need it, he was so proud of you, and your professional
success. But he also said that you were his greatest sorrow. He was always very worried about you.”

“How long are you stopping?” my aunt asks, her bag already over her shoulder.

“I have to leave tomorrow, I have an important meeting. But I’ll come back soon.”

She raises her eyebrows again, but doesn’t say anything. Soon afterwards the house rapidly empties. Once I’m alone, surrounded by half-empty wine glasses and extinguished cigarettes, all I can think about is that worry he never expressed, all those cowardly bank transfers which seemed like some kind of solution at the time. Then the excruciating feeling of remorse at the fact that I was never able to talk to him, not even once, about anything, that all I ever did was put things off, thinking that maybe one day… Without realizing that I was filling my life with postponements. With so many unforgivable
not nows
.

I look at him there, posing in the last photographs, framed in the old way. He doesn’t even seem to be the same person: a calmer man, a man at peace with his conscience. Only now do I realize that in his way he was trying to break through the wall of ill feeling that had built up between us. I can’t say he didn’t try. In his own way, of course, but I can’t say he didn’t do it.

How could I have imagined an outcome like this? Standing here alone in the apartment where my father lived, the man whose love, respect and understanding I kept looking for all through my childhood. A man overwhelmed with grief and inadequate to the role that had descended on him without warning. And now that he’s no longer here, everything appears so different. Around my stooped exhausted body, a line of photographs. Of course, I’m in some of them: the day of my graduation, a few birthdays or family meals. I always look so absent, many of those occasions
I don’t even remember. I was looking at the camera, but I was looking somewhere else, looking ahead to what I still had to do, to all those things that would have to fill my little days. And then, seven years pass, like a flash, and he goes, without my even giving him time to tell me. The last thing he wanted to tell me is all in those silences, in the heavy breathing that fills the last messages in my voicemail. Now, unexpectedly, he smiles to me from these photographs, and among these objects, tidily collected over the years, I discover something more about his life: the journeys he took, the money he put aside, without ever telling me that he never did anything with the money I sent him. Maybe he was too embarrassed. Or maybe he was just trying to humour me. In his study, there’s a wall covered in papers, notes, photographs. My father wrote thoughts, read novels, had a companion. I would never have imagined it. There’s a photograph showing him together with Anna in Guatemala. The wind is blowing hard, they are smiling and holding hands. Anna seems about to fly away. Behind them, a stormy sea, a wave almost a couple of metres high is about to crash on the beach. On the back of the photograph, a pencilled note:

I turn the photograph over again and take another look at his smile.

His life is all here, among these papers. He may be gone, but everything is still in its place, and this apartment, like Anna’s tears, tell me about him, about the marks he left in time.

My apartment, on the other hand, wouldn’t say anything to those left behind. It’s a shop window, the work of a brilliant designer. Spotless and antiseptic. A shrine to efficiency and technology. Efficient, above all, at cataloguing parties, tits, arses, fucks. All the same. Perfect bodies, Botoxed, plastic, racing against time, but all the same. My life has been nothing but a long sequence of moments, all of them the same. An hour or a minute, it doesn’t matter. How much time wasted, sitting behind a table, spending money or accumulating things which, when the day comes, will all be left behind. I open the desk drawer and there I find my mother, her dark unruly curls, held in place by a gaudy yellow clip. In some photographs I’m with her: those endless afternoons by the sea, playing under the beach umbrella. My mother reading a novel, my father leafing through the newspaper with one hand and stroking her hair with the other. In these photographs, I look at the camera without thinking about what I will be in twenty years. I’m smiling at whoever is taking the photograph, with my hand held tightly in my mother’s and the little plastic bucket filled with sand. My fears are small ones, of monsters that don’t exist, life itself does not scare me.

I collapse on the bed, and am overcome by the unmistakable smell of tobacco and the aftershave my father used for more than twenty years. I imagine I still have that look, the one I had as a child, and that I’m not afraid, I don’t fear the passing of time.

When you’re a child everything seems to go so slowly. Feeding all our needs is that love in its pure state, without compromises. That’s the kingdom of childhood, where everything is exaggerated, suspended, without coordinates or directions. Happiness is there, in that unmeasured time, in that hand guiding you, in the smell of her skin, which, when life starts racing, you somehow end up forgetting.

T
HERE COMES A MOMENT
when we have to come to terms with what we have been, what we are and what we hope to become. There comes a moment when it is necessary to try to make peace with our own failures, and to dig down into the sometimes nauseating magma of our own consciousness in search of answers. I mustn’t erase anything. It isn’t too late, I can still start all over again.

This afternoon, the top brass are meeting to sign the long-awaited contract that will give us control of Righini’s company, on which the director set his eyes last year. And this very morning, when the agreement gets his signature, I will no longer be formally part of his team, because I’ve decided to hand in my resignation.

No elegant suit and matching tie for me, I’ve deliberately opted for a T-shirt and a tracksuit top that I found in my father’s wardrobe, still impregnated with his smell. Even though I’m still running, still trying to keep up with You, I at least need to feel comfortable, and the absurd fantasy that I can still feel him near somehow gives me a sense of security.

To tell the truth, my last race was the one at the airport, because I knew the plane wouldn’t wait for me. As for the rest, I want to
respect my time, and everyone else has to adapt. I have already done enough running.

Antonio is waiting for me when I leave the airport, with his usual disapproving look, the look of someone who’s tired of waiting. Not that there’s any reason: the plane arrived on time, Signor Romano has no luggage to reclaim, why the hell is he taking so long?

When I get in the car, I tell him that there’s no need to go fast, I’m not in any hurry. He seems surprised: maybe he thinks I’m still overcome with grief.

I am, but discreetly, it doesn’t show through in any way, it’s just a persistent background, which I’ll have to learn to live with. During the lightning-fast ride I don’t look at the road, I don’t care how long we take. For the first time in I don’t know how long I feel like chatting.

I didn’t know that Antonio had an eighteen-year-old daughter, I’ve never before heard him laugh, but I hear it now in response to a joke of mine about young girls nowadays. “A constant worry,” I add, talking the way a father would talk. And he knows he can trust what I say, after all, I’ve known a lot of girls in my life. I don’t know how long he’s been parked outside our office building, but when the conversation runs down and he throws me one of his questioning glances, I get out of the car and prepare to face my last day at work.

I go in through the glass door, knowing that it’s the last time I’ll do so in my official role. Everyone is immediately struck by the way I’m dressed. Paola quickly closes the fashion magazine she’s been leafing through and gives me one of those contrite, pained looks that pass for condolences.

Then it’s Elena’s turn. The same look. The same words, too, as if it’s the protocol. Apart from a few additions: “The meeting
is fixed for five. I have to admit I was afraid you wouldn’t be here in time. But you’re early for once.”

“Why? What time is it?”

“Four. You’re lucky there wasn’t a lot of traffic from the airport, it’s usually chock-a-block at this time of day. Take all the time you need.”

And she leaves me alone in the room.

I should feel relieved, but I stay on my guard, I know all Your changing moods by now.

In a few hours of my time, this problem will be completely out of the way. I can’t deny that there’s a touch of bitterness in this final look around my office. After all, until not so long ago, this place was my life. A small part of my consciousness, the part which up till now has found nourishment in ambition and social recognition, continues to clamour inside me, telling me I should consider all this a defeat.

I unplug the intercom, so that Elena won’t be able to disturb me, then lower the blinds and switch off the light. I want to be in the dark, sitting in my armchair. For a few minutes I try to sink into the silence, knowing that it’s only apparent, because behind that door there’s a world that never stops, that keeps on producing, keeps on churning out money. I kept on track as long as I could, but now I’ve got off.

Suddenly the door opens and light floods the room.

Elena, with her five minutes’ head start and her head full of things to remember, stands there in the doorway. Once again, I’ve managed to surprise her. She wasn’t expecting me to be in the dark, or to look so calm, or to be smiling slightly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she says almost hesitantly, “everyone’s been looking for you, and there are appointments to fix.”

“Later, Elena,” I say, rising from the armchair to leave the room. “Later.”

I start wandering through the offices, without a specific aim, I get lots of puzzled glances, a few polite greetings, the usual predictable condolences.

Another wave of condolences awaits me in the conference room. The director utters some polite phrases, without getting up from his chair. In his eyes he still has the unease he had the last time we met, and he can’t hold back a grimace of indignation, I assume because of my totally inappropriate clothing. But because of the situation, he can’t make any comments.

Barbara is sitting to his right, which means she’ll be the one to take my place very soon. She greets me with a slight smile, then her lips narrow and her nostrils flare in that characteristic way of hers that makes her look like a reptile.

Nobody mentions my father any more, because Righini has entered the room and sat down on the other side of the table. It’s time to tackle more important matters.

“You got here early,” Righini says to me. “It’s always an unknown quantity, a meeting with you, or am I mistaken?”

The director quickly intervenes to change the subject. I’ve never seen him so obsequious and accommodating. Christ, he’s gagging for a signature. His gestures ooze impatience. I sympathize with him. I’ll soon be a mutineer, but he’s the ship’s master, the commander, the responsibility is his, if anything goes wrong he’ll be the last one to abandon ship.

I used to accept all his decisions without batting an eyelid. I was like the others, I had the same smile Barbara has now when she pretends to have caught one of his jokes, and I carried out orders, trying, whenever possible, to anticipate his desires. I was part of the court, driven by the need for a secular faith, perhaps,
for someone to believe in blindly. And my happiness, our happiness, depended on the director.

After this rapid and occasionally incomprehensible meeting, we find ourselves alone, the director and I, in his office. This time I’m ready: without even giving him time to open his mouth I tell him I’m resigning.

At first he seems incredulous, perhaps even a little relieved. He tries placing responsibility for what’s happening on my father’s death, he tells me that things will settle down, that I’ll get back on track, but they are empty words and we both know it. I’m not ready to retrace my steps, and the firm can’t afford to wait for me.

Then, for the first time since I’ve known him, the director lowers his eyes as a sign of surrender.

“I did all I could for you,” he says. “I taught you the business, the way I would have done for my son. I was sure we’d do great things together. I thought of you as my winning card, and for a while you were, Romano. We’ve had our successes…”

I’m sorry to see that he’s still keeping his distance from me—and even sorrier that the fact that he’s just concluded such an important deal is helping to cushion the blow for him. There’s no sadness in his eyes, just a programme he knows he has to keep to. He’s probably planned on giving me another five minutes, ten at the most, then he’ll dismiss me, putting off other matters for another time.

I never thought it would be so informal and hurried. In any case, I can’t wait to leave this place. There are games you feel liberated in losing.

A few moments later I find myself back in my car. I don’t want to know what time it is, or how much time I have left before it gets dark. I just want to get to the sea.

Antonio raises no objections, he smiles and starts the car. “Is the beach at Fregene OK?”

I nod, with a sigh. A few hours ago I saw it from the window of the plane. There it was below me, flat, shining in the sunlight, so infinite as to make me feel dizzy, and it seemed like an invitation to hope.

During the ride, Antonio and I chat a bit more. Before getting out, I tell him that I’ll miss his company and that we should have talked more.

“We can still remedy that,” he says.

“Not so easy,” I object. “In a few days we’ll be saying goodbye for good. I’m leaving the company, let’s hope they give you somebody who’s less of a bastard.” Then, as he watches incredulously, I get out and walk down to the beach.

The first thing I do is take off my shoes and socks. My feet sink into the sand, anxious to let every single grain run through them. A breeze smelling of fish and salt tickles my face, this sea reminds me of my childhood. Now, as then, the sky is slowly turning pink, and here I am, waiting for the sunset. Something tells me that this time it won’t be too fast, and that it’ll be quite moving, as it was on those long August days.

The wind becomes more intense, the waves swell before breaking on the shore. I remember my father’s words, written in pen, on the back of that photograph: “You can’t beat the wave. Salvation is inside you.”

That wave is like time. And we are on a journey, cargo ships
sailing
to an unknown destination, entirely at the mercy of the crew. The parts of the ship communicate through the manifestation of symptoms. Sometimes reactions can be externally stimulated: you just need to use a certain kind of substance to transform your perception of time and space, and prepare to veer abruptly in
another direction. At other times, the stimulus comes from inside: the burden of a choice—how best to get through those waves, how to prepare to face the storm—can create a great upheaval on the bridge, the fear of shipwreck. And the restlessness and instability on that bridge—our mind—soon manifests itself. That’s where I started to imagine You as an old man determined to destroy me, when in fact You were inviting me to dig beneath the surface of things, moving back and forth between moral and material, between concrete and imaginary, between long-lasting and ephemeral. And everything started when You stopped with her. De Santis was right, the mind can do incredible things.

I lie down on the sand and close my eyes. I feel as if I’m exhausted after a long run, and I can almost see him, my father, as I’ve never seen him before. He’s waiting for me at the finishing line, with a smile. He wants me to stop, he wants me to realize I’ve left the most important things behind. I feel my little days going back light years beyond the horizon, and I see myself, tiny, at grips with urgent, predictable banalities, in search of a non-existent perfection, in a ridiculous enterprise, devoid of foundation, constantly turned to a pre-programmed future, a path strewn with objectives. And suddenly I feel as if I’ve finally managed to throw off the weight of all this. It wasn’t time that was running fast, but my life. And it wasn’t time that stopped, but my eyes, that day at the airport, when they came to rest on her face, which told me something I didn’t yet know about myself, or that I had only forgotten.

When I open my eyes again, the surface of the sea on the horizon is pink, interrupted by the flight of a few fleeting seagulls. The sun is melting between the waves, like a snowball on a summer’s day. So slowly. I’ve just re-emerged on the backs of the wave, to follow it wherever it decides to lead me.

Antonio joins me on the beach. “May I?”

And he sits down next to me.

“I’m sorry you’re going, I wanted to tell you.”

I smile, I could reply that I’m sorry too, but my extraordinary calm would contradict me.

He is about to stand up again, but I stop him. “Stay, if you like.”

He sits down again and there we stay for a while, in silence, looking at the sea. Me and my Charon, the man who until today barely had a face.

“I never noticed it in all this time,” he says after a while, looking at my hair.

“What?”

“That tattoo, there, behind your neck, it’s easier to see when you’re wearing a T-shirt. I didn’t have you down as someone who’d go in for tattoos.”

I frown. “Actually I’m not. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s something written there,” Antonio insists. “A bit faded, but there are definitely words.” The sound of Isabelle’s laughter echoes in my head, I see the amusement in her eyes as she holds the marker in her hand.

“May I?” Antonio asks. He reaches out a hand, moves my T-shirt slightly and reads: “
For ever… never
. That’s what’s written:
For ever never
. What does it mean?”

Memories are like taste, sometimes you need only a slight hint for a whole world to open up to you, an infinite echo chamber. Isabelle lying on my bed, me with my head on her belly, like a castaway washed up on a beach. There are love affairs that remain inside you for ever, even though you’ll never experience them, she said, and she wrote it on my skin. There are love affairs that are like cloaks, they keep us warm, they protect us, and there is
something magical about them, as if they could go beyond the borders of time and space and never come to an end. They are like moments that imprint themselves in our memories, leaving you grateful that you have had them, whatever happens.

“For ever never. It’s a paradox. What does it mean?”

Smiling at his curiosity, I turn and nod: “That’s just it, it’s a paradox.”

A moment later I get to my feet. “Take me back to the city, Antonio. I’ll ask you one last favour: don’t take me home, drop me in the Campo de’ Fiori.”