The Past is a Foreign Country (7 page)

GIULIA AND I broke up at the beginning of April. A couple of weeks earlier I’d slept with another girl.

Francesco had introduced us one Saturday morning. Francesco and I were seeing each other almost every day now, even when we weren’t playing poker. We were
friends
. It was the word he himself used, putting a strange emphasis on it.
Friends
. He said he’d had very few friends before me, maybe only two. Whenever I asked him about them, though, he became evasive. In fact he would become evasive every time the conversation touched on his private life.

Francesco, as I’d realised from the start, not only knew a lot of people, he knew many different kinds of people, and I really couldn’t figure out how he’d come to meet some of them.

The so-called decent Bari of professional people, well-to-do
families
, beautiful girls. The world of shopkeepers and people with
social
pretensions, where he went hunting for prospective victims. The kind of characters who hung around underground venues. And the criminal element that haunted the gaming clubs and were involved in all sorts of shady dealings.

He had an extraordinary capacity for blending in. His behaviour, the way he talked, even the way he moved, changed according to the company he was in. And whatever the company he was in, he was always at his ease, or so it seemed.

That Saturday morning, we’d arranged to meet for an aperitif. By the time I arrived he was already in the bar, sitting at a small table
with two girls I’d never seen before. They were both over the top: too carefully made up, too perfumed, too fashionably dressed. Too much of everything.

‘Mara and Antonella, meet my friend Giorgio,’ Francesco said, and smiled – a smile I knew well by now. The kind of smile he had when he was enjoying himself at other people’s expense.

I shook hands with Mara and Antonella and sat down, and we ordered our aperitifs.

Mara worked in the offices of an insurance company. Antonella was studying to be a dental technician. They were both just over twenty, had horrendous local accents, smoked Kim cigarettes and chewed chlorophyll gum.

We talked about all kinds of interesting things. Like horoscopes. Or whether it was better to go to the disco on Friday or Saturday. Or the fact that they had recently left their respective boyfriends – both bores – and now they wanted to enjoy themselves. Mara was particularly insistent on this last point, but both of them looked us right in the eyes, to see if they’d made themselves sufficiently clear.

It was a beautiful day, and after a while Francesco suggested we all go and have lunch in a restaurant by the sea. The two girls raised no objection and we left the bar.

As we walked to the car, Francesco and I a few metres ahead of the girls, Francesco said in a low voice, ‘We’re going to fuck these two this afternoon.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, keeping my voice down too.

‘We’ll get them a little drunk and then we’ll fuck them,’ he continued as if I hadn’t opened my mouth. ‘Not that we really need to get them drunk. They’re already gasping for it.’

He was right, and I felt like laughing. Not that there was anything funny about the situation, I was just nervous. I made an effort to hold back the laughter, but it came out as a stupid smile, almost a grimace.
I could feel it on my lips. So I said the first thing that came into my head, to wipe away that grimace. ‘Where are we going anyway?’

‘Don’t worry, I have a place. Let’s take your car, it’ll impress these two.’

So we took my black BMW, which did indeed impress the two girls. We went to a restaurant by the sea, outside the city, and had a great meal of raw seafood and grilled lobster. We drank chilled white wine and as the bottles and glasses emptied, the
conversation
grew thick with increasingly explicit – and increasingly crude – sexual allusions.

That was the day I discovered Francesco had a kind of
pied-à-terre.
It was a small apartment, two rooms plus kitchen. The
furniture
was new, and the place looked as anonymous as a hotel room.

It was four o’clock by the time we got there. Mara and Antonella were both pretty drunk. There were no formalities, no
preliminaries
, no discussion about how to pair up. Antonella and I ended up in the bedroom, while Francesco and Mara stayed in the living room, where there was a big black sofa.

My eyes and Francesco’s met as I went into the bedroom. He winked at me.

It was like an obscene gesture, that wink, but I didn’t realise it at the time. Or didn’t want to realise it. So, once again, I responded with a smile.

A few moments later Antonella and I were throwing ourselves onto the bed, clinging together. What I remember most is her breath, which smelled of wine and cold cigarette smoke. While we were having sex – we did it several times, and at length – she called me darling, and I said to myself, Darling? Do I know you? Who are you? And again I felt like laughing like an idiot. Here I was, I thought, fucking this girl – a beautiful girl – and I didn’t even know her. At times, I almost had to stop and make an effort to remember her name.

I should have felt uncomfortable, and yet all I felt was a kind of mindless elation.

During a pause, we lit a cigarette and smoked it together. She giggled and nudged me with her elbow at the noises coming from the other room. She even started to say something about it but then stopped abruptly. For a moment, she was completely still, with a strange, rapt expression on her face.

Then she farted.

It was a thin, prolonged sound, like a toy trumpet, in the
semi-darkness
of that strange room.

She put her hand over her mouth for a moment, then said, ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry. It sometimes happens after I’ve had a good fuck. I can’t hold back. It must be because I’m so relaxed.’

I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to say.

What can you say in reply to something like that?

Don’t worry, I also like to let out a nice noisy fart when I’m relaxed? Depending on my mood and what I’ve eaten, I also burp a bit? That kind of thing, just to put her at her ease?

I didn’t say anything, and in any case she was already perfectly at ease, without any help from me.

She took my hand and moved it over her belly and then down between her legs. I let her.

It was evening by the time we left, and I realised I hadn’t thought about Giulia once the whole time.

I WAS SUPPOSED to be taking civil procedure at the beginning of May – I was considered good enough to take it early – but I’d hardly opened a book in the previous few weeks. On the day of the exam, I went to the university like a sleepwalker, filled out the form and waited my turn. When they called the name of the person who was before me on the alphabetical list, I stood up and left.

It had never happened before. I had consistently high grades, and had never missed an exam.

Until that morning in May.

I left the university, feeling slightly dazed. I wandered around for a while, barely aware of what I’d done, but with a vague sense of imminent disaster.

Then I thought, what the hell, these things happened. I’d done the right thing not taking the exam, because I’d been a bit distracted in the past few weeks and hadn’t studied much. I’d avoided an
unnecessary
bad mark, which would have affected my average.

No, I’d take one or two days off and then I’d get back to
studying
. I’d take civil procedure in June, or July at the latest. I’d graduate in December instead of in the summer. I’d still be ahead of all my friends who were doing the same course, anyway. There was nothing wrong with slowing down a bit. I’d been going too damn fast, up until now. What was the big deal?

Thinking these things calmed me down and I started to feel better
as I walked home. I was pleased I never told my parents
beforehand
when I had an exam. I wouldn’t be forced to make up any lies today.

I took those two days off.

Then I took some more, because I didn’t feel ready yet to start again. And then even more, because I’d gone out too many times and been up too late at night, and had to catch up with my sleep during the day.

Then I just stopped thinking about it.

Apart from anything else, I’d been studying a new subject in the past few weeks.

ONE EVENING, WHILE we sat in the car, smoking and
chatting
about this and that, I asked Francesco why he didn’t teach me some of his tricks. I said it like that, off the top of my head, one of the many things you say that never leads to anything. Of course, I liked the idea of doing what he did with cards, but I didn’t think he would take my question seriously.

In fact, he took it very seriously.

‘Are you sure you want to learn?’ he said, catching me off guard. He always did things differently from the way you expected. I’d say something serious and he’d treat it as a joke. And I’d feel
embarrassed
, and start to think, maybe yes, when you came down to it, it wasn’t really serious.

Or else you’d say something as a laugh, a joke, whatever. He wouldn’t laugh and would look at you in surprise, almost offended, and not say a word. Or else he’d tell you that
this
was a serious subject, no laughing matter at all. And again you’d feel embarrassed or uncomfortable, and would think he was probably right and that once again something had eluded you.

He had this ability to pass judgement on everything in a way that seemed irreversible, and always with a hint of contempt for anyone who didn’t agree with him.

All this I’ve realised since. At the time I simply thought he knew more about the ways of the world than I did, and had a clearer idea of how to behave in different situations.

‘Manipulating cards, like manipulating objects, is more than just a matter of simple dexterity. The real skill of a magician is the
ability
to influence minds. Performing a magic trick successfully means
creating
a reality. An alternative reality where you’re the one who makes the rules. Do you follow me?’

‘I think so. As far as I can see–’

He interrupted me. It was obvious he wasn’t interested in my reply. ‘Anyone who tells you that life isn’t a constant series of
manipulations
is either a liar or a fool. The real difference isn’t between manipulating and not manipulating. The difference is between
manipulating
consciously and manipulating unconsciously. Take a guy who’s only recently got married. One evening he comes home and tells his wife he’s been invited to a reunion of old friends, or maybe a poker game, if we want to keep to the subject. Does she mind if he goes out? No, he can go if he wants to, she says after a short
hesitation
, but her face says the opposite of what she’s just said in words. If you don’t want me to, I’ll stay at home, he replies. No, no, you go, she says, in words. Her face, though, says, It’s obvious you don’t care about me if you want to go out on your own. So then he feels confused, because he’s getting these mixed messages, and he starts to get a bit rattled. It doesn’t really matter, he insists, he can stay at home. No, she insists, in words, he can go. In the end, he feels so guilty, he
decides
not to go out. He can’t accuse her of forcing him to stay, because she told him he could go if he wanted to. And he can’t complain because he was the one who decided not to go out. So now he feels really uncomfortable. She’s manipulated him, but neither of them know it, at a conscious level.’

I was looking at him: where was he going with this?

‘Magic tricks – or cheating at cards – are a metaphor for
everyday
life, for relationships between people. There are people who say things and at the same time do things, and what they’re really doing is hidden behind their words and above all their gestures. And it’s
different from the way it appears. Only the person doing it is aware of it and controls the process. The substance of things, their
truth
, is almost always different from what we generally think it is. Things really happen at times and in places which are different from those we believe or experience through our senses. Our true intentions are different from our stated intentions. Look, for example, at what
really
motivates people to perform so-called charitable acts. You won’t like what you find. The truth is hard to bear, and not everyone can face it.’

I tried to get a word in edgeways, but it was impossible. He had to express his ideas fully, and he was just coming to the part that meant most to him.

‘Look at poker, for example. Anyone sitting down to a game of poker does it because he wants to hurt someone else. You have to be cruel, it goes with the territory. Let’s take a mediocre player who sits down to play, hoping his luck will be good to him and bad to his opponents. Now imagine that someone – an angel or a devil –
appears
to this hypothetical mediocre player before a game, and tells him he has a way of making him win a lot of money in that game. In return, he wants half of the winnings. Our player asks, how is this possible, and the other person tells him not to worry. He just has to decide: yes or no. If it’s yes, he’ll have to promise to give him half the winnings of that game. And that’s it.

‘What do you think our hypothetical player will do? Do you think he’ll refuse because knowing in advance that he’s going to win is a violation of the ethics of poker? Do you think anyone would ever refuse a proposal like that?’

I took out my cigarettes and lit one. Francesco took it from my mouth after the first drag and kept it for himself. As I lit another, he started speaking again.

‘Our player will accept. He’ll get a kick out of sitting down to play with the awareness that destiny is already on his side, and he’ll
enjoy every moment of the game. The only thing that’ll bother him a little is that he’ll have to share his money at the end of the game.

‘Or else take a game between Sunday players and a
professional
gambler. I don’t mean a card shark. I mean a professional poker player. What chance do you think these amateurs have against a professional? Do you think they’d have more chance than they would if they played us? No. They’d have exactly the same chance – none at all. The methods are different but the results are the same. Luck has nothing to do with it.’

His eyes glowed in the semi-darkness of the car. His cigarette had burned down almost to his fingers. The windows were down, the air was mild, and the silence was broken only occasionally by a passing moped with a souped-up exhaust.

‘Until we became partners, you used to play poker normally. Do you remember the emotion you used to feel when you had a good hand and the pot was a big one? Was it any different from the
emotion
you feel now when you have a good hand, even though you know it has nothing to do with so-called luck?’

He was right. Damned right.

‘People manipulate and are manipulated, cheat and are cheated constantly, without realising it. They hurt other people and are hurt themselves without realising it. They
refuse
to realise it because they wouldn’t be able to bear it. A magic trick is an honest thing because we know in advance that the reality of it is different from the
appearance
. And in a way, on a universal level, cheating at cards is honest, too. I mean, we’ve taken control of the situation away from pure chance and put it in our own hands. I know you understand. That’s why I chose you. I wouldn’t say these things to anyone else. We’re challenging the mindless cruelty of chance and defeating it. Do you understand? Do you? You and I are violating commonplace rules and choosing our own destiny.’

He’d said these last words in a curiously high-pitched voice. Now
he suddenly broke off. He seemed exhausted. He took the packet of cigarettes from my pocket and lit another one, having only just put out the previous one. We were both smoking too much, I thought: I had a stale taste in my mouth. For a few moments, I felt dizzy. A sentence was going round and round in my head: ‘It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.’ It was a weird phenomenon: I could see the words inside my head as if they were on a blank page, and at the same time I could hear them as if someone was saying them, also inside my head. I had a sense of them as an actual physical entity.

I didn’t say anything, though, and when Francesco started
speaking
again, after rapidly inhaling half of his cigarette, those words dissolved.

‘I’ll teach you. You’re the only person I can teach, because I know you understand what I’m doing.’

I nodded and then he asked me to take him home. He was very tired.

I started the car and switched on the tape deck. The BMW glided through the poorly-lit streets, as liquid as mercury.

Inside the car, the voice of the young Leonard Cohen was singing
Marianne
at low volume. Francesco was silent now, looking straight ahead. He was miles away.

Suddenly I felt alone and afraid and frozen to the bone. I
remembered
something from when I was a child, but it was only a vague memory and vanished before I could catch hold of it. Like a dream, the kind you have in the morning, between sleep and waking.

A sad dream.