There followed a succession of strange days. Even the texture of them was strange. Packed, and at the same time suspended, as if time had stood still.
Every now and again I would think about Margherita. Sometimes I wondered what she was doing. If she was seeing anyone, if she would ever come back. My thoughts stopped at that point. I never wondered what would happen if she came back. Whenever I thought she was going out with someone I would feel a twinge of jealousy, but it didn’t last long. Sometimes, in the evening, I would get the desire to call her, but I never did.
We had talked over the phone during the first months she was away. They had not been long calls and gradually, spontaneously, they had stopped after the Christmas holidays. She had stayed there, over those holidays, and I had thought that must mean something. Congratulations, Guerrieri, good thinking.
I hadn’t wanted to think about it any more than that.
Little by little, I had taken all my things out of her apartment. Every time I went there I felt as if I was being watched, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. So I took what I needed and got out of there as quickly as I could.
In the evening, after work, I’d go to the gym, or else do a bit of training at home. Then I’d have dinner and start reading or listening to music.
I didn’t watch television any more. Not that I’d ever watched it much, but now I just didn’t put it on at all. I could have sold the TV set and I’d never have noticed the difference.
I would read for a straight two hours, and make notes on what I was reading. I’d started to do it after the night I’d gone to Natsu’s apartment and after reading the book on the manumission of words, with the idea that maybe, further down the line, I could try to write. Maybe.
When I finished reading and taking notes I sometimes went to bed, and fell asleep immediately.
At other times – when I felt sure I wouldn’t get to sleep – I’d go out for a walk and a drink. I went to places where no one knew me and avoided those I’d been to with Margherita. Like the Magazzini d’Oltremare, where I might meet someone who asked me what I was doing, where I’d been all this time, why Margherita wasn’t with me, and so on.
Sometimes I’d meet people and spend a few hours listening to strangers telling their stories. I was in a strange place, an unknown area of my consciousness. A black-and-white film, with a dramatic, melancholy soundtrack, in which ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ by Green Day stood out. I often listened to that song, and it echoed almost obsessively in my head during my nocturnal walks.
Once, in a little bar in the old city, I met a girl named Lara. She was twenty-five, short, with a pretty, irregular face, and insolent, occasionally restless eyes. She was doing a research doctorate in German literature, she spoke four languages, her boyfriend had just left her, and she was getting drunk, determinedly, methodically, downing straight vodkas one after another. She told me about her boyfriend, herself, her childhood, her mother’s death. The atmosphere in the bar was slightly unreal. There weren’t many people, the few there were were talking almost in whispers, the stereo was playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony at low volume, and there was a slight smell of cinnamon in the air, though I had no idea where it was coming from.
After a while, Lara asked me to take her home. I said OK and paid the bill: one vodka for me, five for her. We walked through the city to her place, which was in Madonnella.
Madonnella is a strange neighbourhood. There are beautiful houses there and horrible municipal housing blocks, millionaires’ residences and shacks inhabited by pushers and other members of the underclass, all cheek by jowl. In some parts of Madonnella you have the impression you’re somewhere else entirely.
In Tangier, for example, or Marseilles, or Casablanca.
Outside her front door, Lara asked me if I wanted to come up. I said no, thanks. Another time, maybe, I added. In another life, I thought. She stood there looking at me for a few moments, surprised, and then burst into tears. She wasn’t crying over my polite refusal, obviously. I felt a kind of distant tenderness towards her. I hugged her, and she hugged me and cried louder, sobbing.
“Bye,” she said hurriedly, detaching herself from me and going inside. “Goodbye,” I said a few seconds later, to the old wooden door and the deserted street.