Listen to My Voice (8 page)

By nine the following morning, I was already in the living room. Before opening the diary, I put the photographs on the table in front of me as though they were cards in a game of solitaire: photos of her alone, photos of her with her girlfriends, photos taken by her, photos of members of the opposite sex. These last, however, were in the minority, and for the most part they were group shots.

Of all these photos, there was one that had been taken in a booth. It must have been winter, because she’s wearing a scarf and a woollen beret in the picture. There’s a male presence next to her, covering his face with one hand; in between his spread fingers, you can barely glimpse his
eyes
and a bit of his beard. Was it carnival time? Were they horsing around? What does that open hand represent? A rejection? A barrier? Maybe he was married and didn’t want to compromise himself, or maybe he simply didn’t like recording the fact that he maintained personal relationships with his female students.

I compared this photograph with the one where the group is making a toast. Besides the man with the beard, there’s another guy standing next to my mother. This one’s somewhat punier than the other, and his face is covered with acne. Farther to the right, crouched like a football player in front of a couple of girls – Carla? Tiziana? – there’s a pale fellow with bulging blue eyes and a red scarf too tightly wound around his neck.

Might I be
his
daughter? Or the pimply guy’s? The only one with a beard, in fact, is the man standing right behind her. I compared his hands to mine, his eyes to mine, and then I started reading again.

I progressed very cautiously through the pages, like a driver reading the warning signs – danger landslides, danger falling rocks, danger sheer cliffs – but not stopping, driving on with his foot hovering above the brake, his hand ready to downshift, his heart in his mouth, because that’s the only road in the world he wants to follow all the way to the end.

6 January, 1970

The Twelfth Night fairy, that old witch, brought me a gift. Against my will, I was dragged to a party where I didn’t know anyone, and there I met Professor A
.

When I saw who it was, I kept my cool, or at least I tried to, but my cheeks were glowing all of a sudden, and so I turned towards the wall and started chatting with a woman I hardly knew, someone I’d glimpsed at a feminist group meeting, all the while thinking about how I was going to approach him
.

Which turned out to be unnecessary, as he was the one who walked up to me. ‘I have a feeling we’ve met before,’ he said, searching my eyes while sipping slowly from his glass of red wine
.

I think my voice came out unexpectedly shrill: ‘Yes, at the supermarket!’ I said (what an idiot), and then, fortunately, I added, ‘I’m one of your students.’

He slipped his arm under mine. ‘You’re interested in philosophy?’

‘Very much.’

After the party was over, we went for a walk under the porticos and kept going until we came to the irrigation ditches. Banks of fog were rising, and in the silence of the sleeping city, we could hear only the lapping of the water and the sound of our own breathing. By the time we crossed the piazza in front of the basilica, his arm was practically locked against my side. In the
east
, the sun began to rise, illuminating roofs and the façades of buildings
.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Philosophy and the sun resemble each other. Both of them serve to chase away the night – physical night and the night of the mind – which oppresses human life with dark superstitions.’

We said goodnight at the main entrance to my building. ‘Will we see each other again?’ I asked him. He waved goodbye mysteriously with an open hand
.

11 January

Unfortunately, I’ve started chewing my fingernails again. I looked for his name in the phone book, but there’s no Massimo Ancona. I can’t call him and I don’t know where he lives. All I can do is wait
.

15 January

I got to the lecture hall an hour early so I could sit in the front row, but he never looked at me, even though I was right in front of him. Maybe he didn’t want to be distracted; he didn’t want to give himself away in front of the others
.

I waited for him at the door, but a red-headed guy was quicker than me. They went down the corridor together, talking as if they’d known each other a long time. Probably one of his final year students . . 
.

25 January

Two more useless classes. I think I’m going nuts. I’ve been going to the supermarket a lot, hoping to run into him. Nothing
.

28 January

One carnival party after another, but I’m not having any fun at all. The women from the group dressed up like witches, but I went as a skeleton, because that’s the way I feel without him, without a look from him: dead. I go to parties only in the hopes of finding him there. And then he’s not, and I wind up smoking one joint after another. At least that makes the time pass more quickly . . 
.

30 January

I’d like to interrupt the class and scream in his face: Why won’t you look at me any more? Last night I dreamed about doing it, and in the morning my jawbone was rigid like steel. Unburdened myself to C. She says my only problem is fear; her intuition tells her that the feeling between him and me is too big, too important, and that’s why I’m afraid to go any further. I think she’s right
.

Why should I run away, when nothing has happened between us? C. advised me to make the first move. Times have changed. The days are gone when girls acted like pretty little statuettes in public and moaned in private
.

2 February

Finally managed to leave a note in his mailbox in the professors’ lounge. After thinking for a long time, I wrote, ‘The light of intellect chases away the shadows of superstition. I’m free any night to wait for the dawn together.’ Then, as a precaution, I signed it with my name and address
.

6 February

Lost in the crowd in the lecture theatre. I think he started looking for me. I smiled at him, and it seems to me that he smiled, too
.

12 February

Illusion, illusion, illusion . . . Maybe I should just give up and go back to Trieste and start all over again . . . or drown in clouds of smoke . . 
.

15 February

C. brought over some tabs. She said we could take a nice trip together, a voyage to an enchanted land, to worlds only we can see. I told her that at this particular moment, the only trip I have any desire to take is a trip inside Massimo’s arms
.

2 March

It happened! It happened! It happened! The magical
influence
of spring? Who knows? And who gives a shit? The important thing is that it happened
.

And I was so desolate, so worried! When he rang the doorbell, I was already in bed. I opened the door in my pyjamas (the ones with the teddy bears; not exactly a femme fatale outfit). I stammered, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not . . .’ His warm hands lightly touched my cheek. ‘You’re beautiful like this, too,’ he said
.

15 April

Maybe I was born just so I could experience the days I’m living through now. With him by my side, everything’s changed. I feel like a giant; I’m freed from all my fears, all my urges to conform; my body has no more limits. Massimo has no fear of barriers – in fact, he seeks them out just in order to tear them down
.

Two days at home for Easter: like landing on another planet
.

The M. says, ‘At last, your colour’s good!’ My complexion – that’s what interests my mother. The outside, the mask
.

If she were a different person, I could tell her all about my life now, but what can you tell a dead fish that spends its days in the freezer? Every now and then I think about them. I observed my parents closed up in the airless vacuum they lived in for years, and I saw that they had nothing to say to each other, they felt
nothing
for each other, and I wonder how they ever managed to conceive me. Am I really their daughter? Do I look like them? Or not?

Maybe he was impotent; maybe they adopted me and she doesn’t have the nerve to tell me so. But what difference does that make? In the end, what’s really important is that I live a liberated life, without constraints and without hypocrisy
.

When I said goodbye, for the first time I almost felt sorry for her, poor old mummy, all wrapped up in her ragged bandages
.

1 May

I’m not going to the demonstration because my head is spinning. C. says I should take a pregnancy test. In any case, according to her, I shouldn’t worry, because getting rid of it is a snap. The girls from the group will see to it, and it won’t cost me a single lira. But she says I shouldn’t wait too long; otherwise, she says, I’ll have to go to London, and everything will get complicated. I feel strange, suspended, speechless. I never thought anything like this would happen
.

3 May

Positive
.

All at once, I jump to my feet; the pages and the photographs slide to the floor. I put on my anorak and go out for a long walk along the ridge of the Carso.

Down below, the sea glints like a mirror. Behind me, Mt Nanos is still covered with snow.

Positive.

It couldn’t be me – the year isn’t right. So what became of this sibling of mine?

The next day, the temperature is mild. Ever since dawn, all the birds have been singing together in a nonstop chorus, making a tremendous racket.

Compared to the warmth outdoors, the house seems like a dark, freezing cave. The diary’s still on the table and the letters and photographs are still on the floor. In the darkness of the room, a yellowish light seems to emanate from them.

I take a deckchair from the garage and set it up in the garden, not far from the big plum tree, now completely covered with blossoms, which give off a delicate fragrance that attracts swarms of bees, including many bumblebees. Their frenzied buzzing keeps me company.

This is what I need so I can forge ahead: life, light, the sense that we’re part of a much greater world.

12 May

I didn’t have the nerve to go to class – I didn’t have the nerve to look him in the eye. The way I feel changes every minute. Sometimes I think I’m carrying a lovely little secret around inside me. I want to take a long, romantic walk with him, and afterwards, maybe as we sip some wine, I want to whisper in his ear, ‘You know what? We’re going to have a baby,’ and watch his reaction, which is first astonished and then delighted. Then, all too soon, the whole thing starts to seem like an unbearable burden, something that crushes me and won’t let me breathe
.

I’m afraid of the commitment, the effort, the responsibility; I wanted a life with no limits or barriers, and right away I shut myself up in the claustrophobic cage of motherhood. And what do I tell my mother? That I’m pregnant by a man nearly twenty years older than I am? I could invent some whopper, a romantic adventure in Turkey, seeing that Massimo smokes like a Turk . . . Or I could show up at the house with him one day and say, ‘Mamma, this is the man I love, the man whose baby I’m expecting,’ and I’d think to myself, our relationship will never be as dreary as yours
.

Maybe he can’t wait to introduce me to his family. Maybe, but it’s useless to keep on fantasising. Before anything else, he has to hear the news; we can decide the rest together. Every time I see Carla, she asks me, ‘Well?’ as if to say I’d better hurry up
.

20 May

He hasn’t taken a class in two weeks. I’ve asked around, and it seems he’s ill. By my reckoning, I’m at the end of my second month. The sweet euphoria is fading away more and more each day, replaced by fear and then anger. Is he really sick? Or has he perhaps guessed something and wants to take his time? I haven’t heard from him in a month. Maybe he’s really very sick, and it’s only me, wicked me, imagining anything different
.