I closed the office, returned home, had dinner with Margherita and just as we were going to bed I told her I was going down to my apartment. I had to work, to check some papers for the trial next day, and I’d be up late. I didn’t want to disturb her, so it was better if I slept downstairs.
The only true part of this was that I didn’t want to disturb her. There are nights when you know you’re not going to get any sleep. It’s not that there’s any particular, striking, unmistakable signal. You just know it. This evening I knew it. I knew I’d go to bed and lie there, wide awake, for an hour or more. Then I’d have to get up, because you can’t stay in bed when you can’t sleep. I’d have to walk around the apartment, I’d read something in the hope it would make me feel sleepy, I’d turn on the TV, and all the rest of the ritual. I didn’t want that to happen at Margherita’s. I didn’t want her to see me ill, even if it was just from occasional insomnia. I was ashamed.
When I told her I was going to my apartment to work, she looked me in the eyes. “You’re going to work now?”
“Yes, I told you. I’ve got a trial starting tomorrow. There’ll be a lot of preliminary issues, it’s a tricky case, I really have to go over everything.”
“You’re one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Really bad, eh?”
“One of the worst.”
I felt a tightness in my shoulders, thinking that I used to be quite good at telling lies. With her, though, I hadn’t kept in practice.
“What’s your problem? If you want to be alone, you just have to say so.”
Yes, I just have to say so.
“I don’t think I’m going to get any sleep tonight and I don’t want to keep you awake too.”
“You’re not going to sleep. Why?”
“I won’t sleep. I don’t know why. It sometimes happens. I mean, that I know in advance.”
She looked me in the eyes again, but with a different expression now. She was wondering what the problem was, since I hadn’t told her and maybe didn’t even know. She was wondering if there was something she could do. In the end, she came to the conclusion she couldn’t do anything tonight. So she put her hand on my shoulder and gave me a quick kiss.
“All right then, good night, I’ll see you tomorrow. And if you feel sleepy, don’t stay awake just to be consistent.”
I went away with a vague, troubling sense of guilt.
After that, everything went as predicted. An hour spent tossing and turning in bed, in the forlorn hope that I’d been wrong in interpreting the premonitory signs. More than an hour in front of the television, watching a film to the end: Lure of the Sila, with Amedeo Nazzari, Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman.
Many interminable minutes reading Adorno’s Minima Moralia. In the hope, which I tried to keep hidden from myself in order for the trick to work, of boring myself so much that I couldn’t fail to fall asleep. I got bored all right, but sleep was as elusive as ever.
By the time I dozed slightly – a kind of laboured half-sleep – a sickly light and the soft, methodical, remorseless sound of rain was already filtering through the shutters, announcing that it was almost day.
It was still raining as I walked across the city, trying to protect myself with a pocket umbrella I’d bought a few weeks before from a Chinese woman. As usually happens the second time you use an umbrella – and that morning was the second time – it broke, and I got wet. By the time I got to the courthouse, just before nine-thirty, I wasn’t in a good mood.