About Time (3 page)

And it’s in my baby that I pull up outside the hotel. Gaëlle emerges through the main door, looking every inch a diva, and the roar of the 460-horsepower engine is joined by the echo of her heels on the paving stones. She comes to me, lightly touches
my face with her fingertips, and with an air of intrigue whispers, “
Merci, mon cher
.” Then she gets in the car, leaving me with an idiotic smile on my face.

I’ve always let Gaëlle treat me like shit. The truth of the matter is, she drives me wild and she knows it. Self-controlled, aloof, sometimes almost mechanical, just like my Aston Martin, she knows exactly what gets me. The more elusive she is, the more I want her. She says she’ll call me back, then disappears for weeks without a trace. She’s the only woman who’s able to keep my interest alive, one of those women who have the spirit of conquest in their blood. And on that basis, we’ve struck the right balance, we’ve learnt how to get along.

At the restaurant, I can’t take my eyes off her, and I don’t think I’m the only one. A stunning face, with the kind of casual, involuntary beauty that verges on perfection, two icy blue eyes you just can’t escape if they glance in your direction. She’s
wearing
bright lipstick and has a simple but classy hairdo. She jokes with my friends, letting her head fall back when she laughs, her eyes lighting up with mischief. There isn’t the slightest suspicion of a line around her eyes. She likes to joke with her girlfriends about the preventive effects of Botox: she makes it seem like an innocent game.

“What kind of dessert do you suggest, Svevo?” she asks me in her captivating French accent.

“Yes, go on, Svevo, recommend a little dessert!”

Federico is teasing me, but his presence makes everything more familiar. We understand each other perfectly, sometimes all we need is a smile. We’re on the same wavelength. He’s probably thinking the same thing I am right now: that it would take an artist to paint the group at this table. Two blonde models who seem to have come straight from a painting by Degas, elegant,
ageless ballerinas, and the two of us, young and attractive, smiling brazenly like sheikhs. With a bit of coke circulating in our veins we feel indestructible.

The restaurant is luxurious and a bit unusual. At the back of the room, behind a large pane of glass, there’s a wall of rock with little circles of stones embedded in it according to some geometrical pattern, it must be some kind of Zen idea—you find those stones everywhere these days. Attractive waitresses parade nonchalantly between the tables in their gorgeous blue-green kimonos, with their hair gathered in buns, smiling at whoever’s turn it is, in this case Federico, who tells me with his eyes that he’s crazy about this place. I care a lot about the mood of the people around me.

Gaëlle is enjoying being the centre of attention, but she never takes her eyes off me. In the car on the way to the club after dinner, she whispers a few exciting fantasies in my ear, then leans back in her seat, amused.

“Can you stop looking at me like that?” she says, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke into the air.

“Are you trying to provoke me?”

“I just want to let off steam.”

“And I want to see you dance.”

I slip a couple of grams in her purse and tell her to be good.

In the car park, before getting out, as usual I check that
everything’s
neat and tidy. She’s let a bit of ash fall on her seat, I seem doomed always to go for women who smoke. As I give my baby a little clean, Gaëlle doesn’t miss the opportunity to tease me. So I grab her by the arm and kiss her roughly. I’m about to slip my hand inside her knickers, just to make it clear that nobody jokes with me, but before I can do that she pushes me angrily back inside the car.

From the outside I guess I’m a pretty reprehensible specimen. I like touching my baby’s steering wheel and running my fingers over the slightly rough stitches of the leather while Gaëlle’s lips move up and down without stopping. I like it when the insignificant people who are waiting in line outside the club move aside to let us pass. I like the big white leather sofas in the private area and our women, always a little tipsy, jumping on them for fun. Gaëlle dancing on the glass table and half the club watching her wiggling her hips like a professional go-go dancer. Federico letting his ear be licked by a young blonde as he knocks back one shot of tequila after the other. And me being carried away by the music, until I feel like all the others and stop being disgusted by them. When you come down to it, we’re all human, we all go crazy when the rhythm is in time with our heartbeats and the club becomes our world and we turn into one single entity dancing.

I
’VE ALWAYS BEEN
AFRAID
of planes. Maybe it’s some kind of trauma from my childhood. What scares me is the thought of being trapped in a pressurized box at a height of ten thousand metres and a speed of almost a thousand kilometres an hour, without any control over what’s happening. In a situation like that, I feel it’s more necessary than ever to take charge of time, to know how much of it we’ll take to reach our destination, and exploit every last second of it. That’s the only way I can stop my mind from getting the better of me.

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m at the airport with a group of friends, waiting to board a plane for Paris, where Gaëlle is waiting for me. We’ve been invited to a party for the French Oscars or something like that. I’m pacing restlessly between the check-in desks. I’ve put the hands of my watch five minutes back, to be in sync with the airport clocks. I’ve bought all the magazines I can, hoping they’ll help me keep my mind occupied during the two-hour flight. One hour and fifty-five minutes, to be precise.

I’ve booked a seat by myself, an aisle seat in the fifth row, because I don’t like chatting, it makes me lose my concentration. On top of all that, Federico has to talk business with a daddy’s boy he’s been working on for a few weeks now, and has also brought along
a couple of Romanian women togged out in designer clothes from head to foot.

Going through security, one of the Romanian women is asked to remove her boots because they’ve set off the metal detector. She loses her temper, and starts sounding off about how
pointless
the whole procedure is. I feel embarrassed even though I’ve only just met her. Federico tries to intervene, but the bitch won’t calm down, she even turns for support to the person in the queue behind her, a young woman with a little girl asleep in her arms.

“Do I look like a terrorist? I mean, I ask you…They’ve got it in for me, that’s obvious. Do you really think I look like a terrorist?”

The woman with the little girl is unfazed. In a calm, seraphic tone of voice she replies, “You can’t even say for certain that people who look like terrorists are actually terrorists.”

The Romanian woman is taken aback, she certainly wasn’t expecting an answer like that, but she quietens down and takes off her boots.

I look away, and my eye falls on the little girl the woman in the queue is holding with such care. The child is probably only about one, or maybe a little older, and has just opened her eyes, awoken by her mother gently stroking her hair. Still half-dazed, she allows herself to be put down at the request of the security staff, then waits patiently for her mother to collect the luggage and take her in her arms again.

The woman must be about the same age as me, judging from the skin on her face, the maturity of her expression, her eloquent eyes. I wouldn’t call her beautiful, but there’s something attractive about her long neck, the elegant way she holds herself. She has red hair, a haze of red hair, freckles on her face and between her breasts, large smooth lips, clear-cut features, prominent cheekbones. Her eyes have an undefined colour similar to those 
of the little girl she’s holding in her arms. And the little girl herself is almost insanely beautiful. She’s fallen asleep again, cradled by the devoted love her mother gives off like a perfume, a scent of milk and tenderness that overwhelms me on the escalator.

We head for the gate. Federico walks ahead quickly, along with the rest of the group, while I drop behind, still watching the woman and the girl. “Come on, Svevo, get a move on,” he calls to me, moving away.

The woman is walking slowly, her daughter’s little legs dangling by her side. To that sleeping little creature, her mother is a
universe
, her broad shoulders are the limits of space. She whispers sweet words to her, in a reassuring tone. Those that reach me evoke a jumbled series of impressions: the hay in a stable, a juice stain on a worn tablecloth, an embrace in the dead of night, a hand passing through sweaty hair.

I think I hate children. Basically, they’re just little parasites, never satisfied with what you give them. The fact is, I can’t bear the idea of someone depending totally on me, like a dog. Children die if you don’t feed them, cry if you shout at them, copy you even when you behave like an idiot. The children I’ve never had would probably have been little monsters.

Federico stops in front of a poster advertising an expensive watch. “This is your next present to me,” he says ironically, and for a moment I lose sight of them. Then, just as I’m about to walk right past them, I see them again. They’ve stopped by a postcard stand. For an instant, a slight but disturbing jolt spreads through my chest like hot liquid: the woman with the red hair, now holding a postcard in her hand, notices me and gives me a rapid glance which makes me feel naked. She has a serious expression on her face, but her eyes are smiling, as if they were speaking an unknown language.

“Did you hear what I said? You could easily afford this. Come on now, don’t be stingy!”

Almost without realizing it, I’ve come level with Federico, who gives me a humorous slap on the back and says, “Hurry up or we’ll miss the plane.”

By the time we get to our gate, which is B10, I’ve lost sight of them again. I don’t even know why I’m so determined to see them, the woman isn’t really my type. I’ve never liked red hair, or women over thirty with lines around their eyes, or even the faded colour of the sweater she’s wearing. I’m the kind of person who cares about such things. And anyway, I have a plane to catch, and my fear to keep under control.

“Your attention, please. Alitalia flight Z245 to Paris is now boarding. I repeat: Alitalia flight Z245 to Paris is now boarding.”

The hostess’s words are delivered in such a husky, sensual voice that I’m actually distracted for a while. The girl is quite a looker, too: if she went into the pilot’s cabin, she’d probably cause the instrument panel to seize up. I’m just getting to my feet when the woman with the little girl in her arms once again appears ahead of me. She’s moving quite slowly, and I suspect she’s afraid of waking the girl. I offer to help her with her luggage but she thanks me and says she’s fine, she doesn’t need any help. As a courtesy, I pretend to be touched by the sleeping child, give her a very forced smile, and wish her a pleasant journey. And now suddenly everything slows down, and my attention is caught by an apparently insignificant detail: the little girl rubbing her angelic face against the woman’s neck, as if looking for a shelter in which to sleep more soundly. I’m troubled, almost annoyed, so I grab my bag and push forward as much as I can. 

A moment later, it all passes. I’m swallowed up by the flow of the queue at the boarding gate, and the woman disappears among the other passengers.

Once on the plane, a bigger problem awaits me: confronting my anxiety, which is starting to increase at an unacceptable speed. My first instinct is to get off, I’m sure we’re heading for a disaster, we’re going to crash, I can’t breathe. I imagine tomorrow’s headlines:
Sixty Passengers and No Way Out
. There’s my name in capital letters, with the word
Dead
next to it. Svevo Romano is dead. The plane crashed in the Alps, they found my body still sitting in its seat with the belt fastened. Some are starting to speculate about the circumstances of the accident, my lovers mourn, remembering our nights of sex, my mood swings, how much of a bastard I could be. Some even say: When you come down to it, dying was the only thing he still had left to do.

I feel as if I’m going mad, and yet on the surface everything’s fine. I’d like to beg the hostess to let me off, but I don’t have the guts. All I can do is resort to one of the things I always use to ward off bad luck.

I’m obsessed with the number five, although obsession isn’t quite the right word. I call it my joker, the thing I use to overcome small glitches on a journey, when a valve cracks and the whole mechanism seizes up. It doesn’t happen often but it happens, and five is a ritual that comes to my aid, like a prayer. Before sitting down in my seat I count to five. Once seated, trying not to attract attention, I tap the little table in front of me five times, and then, almost childishly, repeat the number five, five times, as I force myself to fasten my seat belt.

I clear my head and try to think rationally. The flight is only one hour and fifty-five minutes, I keep telling myself. I’ve planned every second and now I’m ready to close my eyes and take off. 

One hour and fifty-five minutes.

“We would like to show you some of the safety features of this plane.”

One hour and fifty-five minutes.

“An oxygen mask will automatically fall from the compartment above your heads.”

One hour and fifty-five minutes.

“Cabin crew, prepare for take-off.”

One hour and fifty-five minutes.

We’re in the air.

Now at last the warning light goes out, which means I can loosen my belt. I even start to feel a bit more relaxed. I gradually ease my grip on the arms of my seat. We’ve pierced the sky at high speed and now, as we gain height, the plane even seems to have slowed down.

Outside the window, the sky is so dark, it’s swallowed up all the stars. I have to ignore the aisle to my left, which becomes increasingly narrow and oppressive.

I’m getting ready to devote twenty minutes to my first item of reading material, as planned, when the light goes on again unexpectedly.

Apparently, we have to fasten our seat belts again, even though there hasn’t been the slightest touch of turbulence.

I turn to Federico and ask for an explanation. His answer is worse than a death sentence.

“We’re landing,” he says. “We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.”

We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.

Paris. In ten minutes.

It’s not possible. One hour and fifty-five minutes. I haven’t even had time to open my first magazine and we’re already about to land. 

“Are you joking? What did you say we’re doing?”

“What do you mean? Don’t mess about… We’re arriving in Paris.”

It isn’t a joke, the plane really is losing height, my ears are getting bunged up. One hour and fifty-five minutes. How is it possible? My heart is beating faster, the plane itself seems to be going faster. It descends, it keeps descending, and I have the impression that everything around me has inexorably speeded up.

At first I think it’s one of the effects of fear: I know time and space can be distorted when I look at the world through the lens of my anxiety. I remember a sentence I read in some book or other: “That which is far in time appears imminent, there is only the present.” But then all it takes is a moment when you start to lose control and nothing matters any more, except the instinct for survival. And this moment comes without warning, when I realize that time going crazy like this can’t be the result of my mind, it’s too real, it’s actually happening. I unfasten my seat belt and leap to my feet.

One hour and fifty-five minutes. What happened to all those minutes?

“No!” I scream.

One of the hostesses comes to my aid, a blonde girl with glasses, who looks even more scared than I am. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll hit her, or that I plan to throw the whole plane into a panic, or open the emergency door.

It’s pointless, I can’t regain control. The girl looks at me
indulgently
, she’s talking to me, but I can’t make out what she’s saying, her voice sounds weirdly distorted. The passengers are looking at me pityingly. Some have even risen from their seats. Federico is dismayed and embarrassed at the same time, he’s never seen me in this state. “Svevo, what’s happening to you? We’re landing. 
There, look, we’re almost on the ground. Calm down, we’ve arrived in Paris.”

The minutes and seconds are getting all mixed up and he’s asking me to calm down. The noises fade. I see the stewardess’s lips moving, but can’t hear what she’s saying. All I can hear now is my own breathing, which gradually slows down, until I surrender to the push of her slender arms.

“There’s no danger,” I hear her distorted voice say, and then I feel the plane touch down, it taxis for what seems like a few seconds, then brakes suddenly and comes to an abrupt stop.