The fear felt by a homing pigeon (
Columba livia
) flying over Rome at a cruise speed of about 70 kilometres per hour when it realizes that a peregrine falcon (
Falco peregrinus
) is plunging straight down towards it from the opposite direction at a speed of just under 200 kilometres per hour is the kind of fear that nobody will ever be able to describe.
And it doesn’t matter if at that speed the impact is so great that it causes the death of the falcon itself, even when it barely touches its prey with its talon. Nor does it matter if it wounds its prey first, then finishes it off by pecking it to death either in flight or on the ground.
What matters is that at the exact moment the falcon enters its field of vision, the pigeon’s little heart starts beating so fast that it actually stops.
That’s fear. The fear of not being there. Of not being there any more. It may last only a moment, but it seems like an eternity.
It is the fear that eats at us, the fear that stops us, the fear that drives us. The fear we have, the fear we will have.
(The day of The Ceremony)
O
N THE DAY OF THE CEREMONY
, the sun rose at 5:29 and was due to set at 21:02. In the morning, the pressure at sea level was 1,014 millibars. A minimum temperature of 20°C and a maximum of 32°C was forecast, with an average humidity of 72 per cent. The maximum wind speed would be no greater than ten kilometres per hour, and no major phenomenon was forecast for Rome. That depends, of course, on the kind of phenomena we are concerned with. In short, it was a beautiful summer’s day. Perfect for winning, or losing, a literary prize.
The Master and his bladder rose, as always, very early, in time to see a diffuse gleam rise behind the brown tops of Prince—’s pines and a young shepherd lead a flock of emaciated sheep across the uncultivated fields.
The Writer got up at seven-thirty and went straight into the shower. He soaped his feet, groin and armpits with particular care. Then he put on a tracksuit, went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, a jug of orange juice and some slices of toast with butter and organic quince jam. He put everything on a tray and took The Second Wife breakfast in bed. But she refused it, because she had never liked quinces, and because it was too early and she wanted to sleep a bit longer.
The same was true of The Beginner, who was still fast asleep, his arms around The Girlfriend, entertained by a dream of no particular importance.
The Master waited until day had properly risen for everyone, then walked down the road in slippers and vest as far as the café
attached to the car wash, where he had breakfast every now and again. He ordered a cappuccino and a cream doughnut. He wanted to scrounge a newspaper to see what they said about The Prize, but as he put it down to take his breakfast to the table, a young boy with his hair gelled so that it stood up on end pinched it from him and there was no way to get it back. The cappuccino was lukewarm and the doughnut left a lingering aftertaste of fried food in his mouth. He walked back beneath a sun that had no pity on anyone, let alone the old.
The Beginner woke up just before midday, with the ill humour of someone who knows it is too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The Girlfriend had gone to see her mother, who lived on the other side of the city, and had left a Post-it for him on the computer screen.
LOSE FOR ME ;–)
I’LL GIVE YOU THE BEST PRIZE EVER!
SEE YOU LATER
I LOVE YOU
The Beginner rolled the note into a ball, put on his dark glasses and his iPod headphones and went out onto the terrace in his pants to sunbathe.
At eight-thirty on the dot, The Publisher arrived at The Writer’s house in his freshly washed and hand-waxed Porsche Cayenne. The Writer greeted him with a plain nod. Then they both loaded the pushchair and a bag full of nappies in the boot. The Writer did not deign to look at The Dog, which kept trying to jump into the wide-open boot, as if into the jaws of a shark, nor The Ukrainian Nanny, who caught the hem of her skirt in the door as she got into the Porsche. He kissed The Baby on the forehead. He hugged The Second Wife, moving aside her hair to reach the hollow at the back of her neck, a kind of inside-out oyster
just below the hairline which he had always found very sensual, and kissed her, too. When all the women had got into the car, the two men embraced in a manly way, but without excessive camaraderie or, worse still, sentimentality. With the dexterity of a drug courier, The Publisher dropped an envelope into The Writer’s jacket pocket.
“It’s all there, you just have to copy it,” The Publisher whispered.
The Writer nodded.
The Publisher looked at him just slightly too long behind his photochromic glasses and—a fraction of a second before he started to feel moved—got in the car. The six-cylinder 300-hp engine started up with a loud roar. The Writer pushed the button to open the automatic gate and the Porsche, as glossy as petrol, drove through. Through the squeaky-clean, almost invisible windows The Writer saw—for the last time—The Second Wife blow him a kiss and The Publisher make an unmistakable V for victory sign with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. The Writer did not have the strength to respond.
After breakfast, The Master returned home and looked for something decent to wear that evening, but couldn’t find anything. He thought about what he would have for lunch. He looked in the fridge and cupboards. Only an already-started packet of penne. That was all right, though: you only win if you’re hungry. He boiled the pasta, drained it and added oil, garlic juice, home-grown tomatoes given him by his neighbour, the wife of the caretaker of Prince—’s estate, and two leaves of basil he had grown on the window sill. As this was a recipe for cold pasta, he put it in the fridge to cool down.
When he was alone, The Writer walked through the empty spaces of his house as if floating in the light. He sat down at the computer. Using the home banking service, he transferred 200,000 euros into a savings account he had set up for the children he had with The First Wife (100,000 for The Boy,
100,000 for The Girl). If, when they were adults, they were ever interviewed for a documentary on The Writer’s life—which was extremely likely—they wouldn’t be able to say they hadn’t had a generous father.
While cooking, The Master had built up an appetite. He was too hungry to wait. He took the pasta out of the fridge and ate it lukewarm, just as it was. He knocked back a bottle of chilled white wine from Torchio Wines, smoked a couple of cigarettes in his pants, closed the shutters because it was so hot that a fire might have been raging around the house, and switched on the fan, which made the fuse box blow for the umpteenth time. Cursing, The Master switched the circuit-breaker back on. He took off his pants and vest. With the fan not working and the heat more unbearable than ever, he got into bed naked. No sooner had his eyelids fallen like creaky shutters over dirty windows than the telephone rang. At the other end, a young woman’s voice informing him that the courier would be coming that day to deliver the prize.
“What do you mean, the courier?” The Master said, confused. “Don’t they give it at The Academy?”
“We have to deliver the prize from Torchio Wines.”
“Oh, that prize.”
“Yes.”
“Not today. Bring it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow isn’t possible. Our courier is only in Rome today.”
“And I’m telling you I can’t do it today, don’t waste my time.”
“There’s no need to lose your temper. We’ll find a solution.”
“There’s a perfectly simple solution. Keep your prize.”
He uttered these words with a sense of satisfaction, as if he had thought up a beautiful line for a poem, but no sooner had he said them than he regretted it. Obviously the prize from Torchio Wines was nothing compared with The Prize, but it was still something. Could he afford to spit at a computer? After he
won The Prize he would have time to learn, to take lessons, to spark the Copernican revolution of his writing. And besides, he really couldn’t let all that hard work done by his liver go to waste.
“There must be a safe place to leave it. Isn’t there a doorman?”
“No.”
“A neighbour?”
“No.”
“A bar, a shop, someone you can trust?”
“No. There’s nobody here.”
“How can that be? Are you sure?”
“There’s a prostitute outside the gate, how about her?”
Meanwhile, The Beginner had gone down to get a kebab, without onion. Back upstairs, he put the air-conditioning full on because it was too hot on the terrace and switched on his PS3. A game of Pro Evolution Soccer 2011, which for the first time made it possible to play the Master League online, was the best way to relieve the tension, with so little time left before The Ceremony.
As it takes hours and hours of playing to complete the Master League, given that The Master has nodded off again after the phone call, and considering that between now and eight in the evening—the hour when finalists are expected in the grounds of Villa Naike, the evocative setting where the winner will be announced—the two do not have a great deal to do, it may be worth once again keeping the third finalist company: The Writer. Because dying alone isn’t an easy matter.
After making the transfer, The Writer changed, putting on the outfit for The Great Moment: cream-coloured trousers, a white shirt with a mandarin collar, a blue jacket and white dentist’s clogs. He looked at himself in the full-length mirror used by The Second Wife: he was still a handsome man. It really was a pity it had to end like this. How many women could he still seduce? But the decision had been made, he had a date, a date with the most demanding lover of all.
He left home, took a taxi and asked the driver to drop him at a florist’s near the clinic. He bought a large quantity of flowers: orchids, gerberas, tulips, chrysanthemums. He entered the clinic, asked to be taken to see The Mother and gave the young nun a lot of money she didn’t dare refuse in order to be left alone with her. He arranged the flowers around the bed and kissed The Mother on the forehead.
“Thank you for everything you gave me. I’m doing this for you, mother.”
The Writer saw the switches and tubes thanks to which the life that had given rise to his life was still holding on. He was tempted to tear everything out, pull the plugs from the wall sockets,
disconnect
the tubes from the machines and take The Mother with him to writers’ heaven. Then it struck him there wasn’t room for everyone up there, and that if she wanted she could get there by her own efforts. He closed the door again and left.
By now it was lunchtime. The Writer had booked the best table in his favourite restaurant, where they knew and respected him, a place half hidden in the back alleys of medieval Rome. He ordered a pinot grigio, as a starter red crayfish from Ponza (almost impossible to find now in the overfished Tyrrhenian Sea), as a first main course spaghetti with fresh razor clams, and for the second a dentex he had seen buried in ice. A thin-hipped waiter took the order, clicking his heels, but then turned back to see if he had understood correctly. The fish weighed one kilo, 900 grams, he said: was the signore
expecting
guests? The Writer said he was alone and the waiter had indeed understood correctly: he wanted that dentex. Before taking the fish into the kitchen, the waiter showed it to him on a tray. It had black fins and a magnificent brownish-blue body, and in the light its scales looked like decorations on a silver shield. The Writer lifted its gills: they were red, suffused with blood. He felt the abdomen, still as hard and muscular
as when it was escaping from fishermen’s nets on the rocky seabed. This animal was more alive than he was. He looked at it with envy. He met its tired yellow eyes, and saw they were full of gratitude. The dentex was begging to be eaten by him, and by him alone. The Writer gave his verdict and the fish was led to the mouth of the oven.
To finish off the meal, he had pear and chocolate pie and a decaffeinated coffee. He did not even look at the bill. He held out his card, holding it between two fingers. The waiter brought him the receipt to sign. The Writer took his fountain pen from his pocket, and as he did so it struck him that one of the things he would miss terribly in a few hours was signing copies. The elegant gesture of the act of signing, as he had declared in a recent interview.
“What’s your name?” he suddenly asked the waiter as he was about to walk away. The young man stopped dead.
“Stefano… Is something wrong?”
The Writer magnanimously shook his head to reassure him.
To Stefano
, he wrote on the credit card receipt. He folded the paper in two, put it under the glass and left, with a nod to the owner and the cook, who had come out of the kitchen specially to shake his hand: he had read all his books.
Leaving the restaurant, he took a long walk, his eyes half closed in the blinding sunlight. It occurred to The Writer that if they performed a post-mortem on him they would find fish and wine in his stomach.
When he got home, it was after four. And he had planned everything for six. There was no time to waste. Death can wait, but only up to a point.
He called The Second Wife to find out how they were. She said they had had a wonderful day, they had eaten pasta with small clams and taken a walk on the windswept promenade with the pushchair to give The Baby a breath of sea air, and they would
be back in an hour, in time for a shower before they went with him to The Ceremony. The Publisher wanted to talk to him for a moment, said The Second Wife. The Writer said no, he didn’t want to talk to him. She told him not to worry, everything would work out as it was supposed to. Those were her exact words. Then she hung up. He went into his study and locked the door, even though he was alone in the house. He sat down at the desk, took a paperknife with an ivory handle and opened the envelope The Publisher had slipped into his pocket. There was a letter. The farewell letter prepared by The Publisher. All he had to do was copy it on the computer and e-mail it to a few selected contacts. He read it. Then he read it again. It was about corrupt prizes, mercenary critics, ignorant readers, mediocre writers, how
pointless
it all was—writing, reading—and what a relief it was to say farewell to such a world.
He sighed.
No, things weren’t like that. In his long career he had met talented people, honest writers, shrewd critics, sincere readers. Not many, but he had met them. He hadn’t got close to them, perhaps for fear of discovering that they were different, but he had met them. This letter was rubbish. A disgrace.
Surely he could do better? If there was a single cell, a single sequence of amino acids in his whole body that made him a writer, now was the moment to demonstrate it.
He cracked his fingers, lit a Cohiba which he kept for special occasions (and nobody could have objected that this wasn’t one), poured himself a glass of whisky and sat down at the computer. It had been years since he had last faced that ski run, that wall of ice on which he had broken his collarbone when he was young: the blank page.