The Silence of the Wave (16 page)

Just as Roberto was thinking that he would go mad with fear, everything suddenly disappeared and the room went back to normal.

Normal.

Ginevra came back to school today, but that’s not good news.

She came in late, after the first hour had already started. As soon as I saw her I realized something was wrong. She was sloppily dressed, which has never happened before, not in all the time I’ve known her. But what struck me most of all was her expression. I watched her all through the five hours of lessons. She was absent, her eyes were staring, she didn’t hear whenever anyone—not me, I didn’t have the courage—said something to her, and she didn’t smile once all morning.

The Italian teacher caught her not paying attention three times during her explanation and in the end gave her a warning. It was the first time I’d seen her get a warning in these last two years.

At the end of the fifth hour she left without talking to anybody, moving like a junkie, and didn’t even seem to know where the way out was. There wasn’t anyone
waiting for her outside on a moped or anything like that. She left alone, after passing like a sleepwalker between all the boys and girls chatting and making a noise outside the main entrance.

I had a bad feeling as I went home, wondering what could have happened to her. I’d have liked to meet Scott immediately, to see what he thought and get his advice about what to do. It was such a strong need that after a while I even thought of trying to fall asleep just so that I could dream about him and talk to him.

I lay down on the bed, closed my eyes and tried to sleep, concentrating on the images of the park, and on Scott’s face.

But it didn’t work: I couldn’t sleep, and when I got up after a while I felt very sad and alone.

“They’re called hypnagogic illusions.”

“What kind of illusions?”

“Hypnagogic illusions. They’re a kind of hallucination. They occur in the transition phase between waking and sleep, which is actually called the hypnagogic phase. In that phase—which can last from a few seconds to several minutes—it’s very difficult for the individual to distinguish dreams from reality. That’s what happened to you. Did you also have the impression you couldn’t move, that you were alert but paralyzed?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I was awake, my eyes were open and I was moving them, looking around, and I could speak—actually I think I did speak, I had a conversation with this person, I mean with this apparition—but I couldn’t move. Yes, paralyzed is the exact word.”

“That’s another characteristic of hypnagogic experiences—paralysis. On the whole it can be quite a troubling experience.”

The doctor paused for rather a long time and looked Roberto in the eyes.

“In some cases it can even be a frightening experience.”

And after another few minutes’ silence: “Who was the person you saw?”

It was obvious he was going to ask that question. Roberto shouldn’t have told him what had happened if he didn’t want to hear that question. That much was clear.

Roberto took a pen from the desk, removed the cap, looked at the tip as if it were really interesting, then put the cap back and a few seconds later repeated the same sequence. And then again. And then yet again. The doctor watched him but did not intervene.

“Why don’t you say anything?” Roberto asked, abruptly interrupting the obsessive rhythm of that movement.

“I’m afraid you’re the one who should be saying something, if you want to.”

Roberto resumed playing with the pen. A few minutes passed.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Maybe because I don’t feel like it. Maybe because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

“As I said, I don’t want to.”

“Actually I think you do, but you can’t summon up the courage. But maybe now’s the time.”

He was right, as always, and Roberto knew it. He felt his anger grow and break the bounds.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You tell me what we’re talking about.”

The doctor’s voice was still calm, but there was a touch of hardness in it that Roberto couldn’t stand. He felt as if he were about to lose control. He stood up and swept everything off the desk and onto the floor. The doctor made no attempt to stop him, did not even move his chair back, and said nothing.

“You know what I really don’t want to do? I don’t want to keep listening to your bullshit, so I’m going. I don’t think I’ll be back.”

He felt the impulse to kick the desk, but managed to restrain himself. He left without turning around, but still seemed to see the doctor sitting motionless on his chair, watching him go out and disappear.

* * *

The days had gotten longer, Roberto thought as he came out of the building. It was still light and yet he was sure it had been dark at the same hour the previous time. Even though now he had come out at least half an hour early. Then he told himself that was absurd, that the previous time it must have been light as well, given that it was late April. Why, then, did he remember it as being dark, with the street all lit up as if it were winter? He would think it over later; right now he was confused.
Very, very confused. And he felt a strong tingling sensation that started in the spine and went all the way to the groin.

“My nerves are on edge,” he said aloud.

The tingling sensation became almost unbearable as Roberto walked, thinking all the while that he had no desire to walk.

There was a taxi at a stand he had never noticed before, a few hundred yards from the office. The driver was reading a magazine. Without thinking, Roberto got in. The driver put his magazine down on the seat next to him and turned around to greet his customer. He moved slowly and calmly. He was an elderly man. He even seemed too elderly to still be working. Judging by his appearance, he must have been about seventy, or just under. Roberto wondered if a man should still be driving a taxi at that age.

“Good evening, signore, where can I take you?”

Yes, where?

“I want you to show me Rome.”

The driver looked at him with vague surprise. Show him Rome, in what sense? He smiled, waiting politely.

“Let’s go to the Coliseum and to the Forum, to start with.”

“Is this your first visit to Rome, signore?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take you, signore, but it’s late. By the time we
get there they’ll be closing and they won’t let you in.”

“Never mind. We’ll stop and take a look out of the window. Then maybe I’ll go back another time.”

The man looked at him for a few seconds, then gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, turned, started the engine, and set off.

The movement of the car, the fact that there was a temporary destination to reach, calmed Roberto a little.

He had once read an article in an in-flight magazine about places of transit. The author of the article had talked about the comforting sense of temporariness we feel in places we arrive and leave from. Airports in particular, but also railway stations, bus stations, motels where you stop for just one night, where there’s nothing around but a supermarket, a fast-food restaurant, and a few houses where you can’t imagine people actually live. The article spoke of our restlessness, our premature nostalgia for places we have to leave very quickly.

When he was working undercover, Roberto was always temporary, wherever he went. That was why he felt at ease in those situations, why he almost grew fond of the absurd routines of that fictitious existence. His condition was one of impermanence, and this, paradoxically, made him feel as if he wasn’t temporary.

When everything had fallen to pieces, even that dubious equilibrium had been shattered. The prospect of staying in the same place, with the same identity, doing
a normal job, had made him see, with sudden clarity, the absence of reference points in his life.

Now he was sitting in a taxi, without any reason or objective, without even a center of gravity, riding along the streets of a city where he had lived for years and which he had never really gotten to know. He felt a sudden sensation of peace.

They turned into the Via dei Fori Imperiali and there ahead of them was the Coliseum.

“Do you want me to stop here, signore?”

He said yes, but in such a low voice that he had to repeat it to be heard.

The driver pulled up and Roberto got out. He only lived a few hundred yards away, and yet everything around him was completely unknown to him.

He felt as though he were hanging upside down in the air. And from that position he had the impression that he was starting to understand. He didn’t know exactly what, but it seemed to him he was starting to understand.

Upside down like that, he felt that he was
seeing
what was around him. The world was acquiring a distinctness, a transparency, an intelligibility that hadn’t existed before. The succession of arches and vaults enclosing windows of dark blue sky concealed a solution. The sky was taking on the form given to it by the Coliseum. In reality, Roberto was not seeing the Coliseum, he was seeing the sky as enclosed by the Coliseum. That
altered perception gave him a sense that time was completely standing still.

“Excuse me, signore …”

“Yes?”

“We can’t stay here too long. If the traffic police come by, they’ll make me wish I’d never been born—or become a cab driver.”

Roberto felt a surge of sympathy for the old man. He got back in the taxi and they drove off again, proceeding toward the Coliseum and then circling it.

“Is this really your first visit to Rome, signore?”

Roberto nodded, almost believing it himself.

The old man peered at him in the rearview mirror.

“You are Italian, aren’t you?”

He nodded again.

“How much time do you have?”

How much time did he have? In general, how much time did he have? He heard himself say, “A couple of hours. Then I have an appointment.”

“Do you like movies, signore?”

Does anybody ever answer no to a question like that? Does anybody ever say they don’t like movies? Yes, he liked movies, why did he ask?

“Seeing as how you want to do a quick tour of Rome, let me suggest something.”

“What?”

“To see the city in a slightly different way.”

“What kind of way?”

“Let’s do a tour of the places where they shot the most famous movies set in Rome. They’re some of the most beautiful places in the city and so at least we have a theme for the ride. We have a—what can I say?—a yardstick. We have a yardstick. What do you think?”

We have a yardstick. It’s a good thing to have a yardstick. Movie locations as a yardstick. It had to mean something.

“Why not?”

The driver smiled, straightened a little on the seat, and when he started speaking again his tone was slightly different.

“Then let’s start with
Roman Holiday
. Remember Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn riding around on a Vespa? One of the images on the posters was taken right here, as they were driving down the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Even though there was a bit less traffic in those days, shall we say.”

Roman Holiday
. Audrey Hepburn. A yardstick. They all say I look like Audrey Hepburn. Do these things happen by chance?

Roberto had fallen silent and the taxi driver peered into the rearview mirror.

“You have seen the movie, haven’t you?”

“I’ve seen a few scenes, the odd clip. I’ve never seen the whole movie.”

“That’s not good, signore. My father was an extra on that film, and I actually visited the set, though I don’t
remember much about it because I was small. At home I have a photo of my dad with Audrey Hepburn. God, she was beautiful. You remember her, don’t you?”

Actually he didn’t remember her very well because Emma’s face was superimposed on hers. She resembled Audrey Hepburn, she had said. Roberto imagined the few scenes he knew of the movie with an actress who was Emma, and he remembered that evening a few days earlier as if he had spent it with Audrey Hepburn, even though her face was very out of focus, almost unrecognizable.

All he said to the taxi driver was: yes, of course, he remembered her well. Which in a sense was true. As often happens, it was only part of the truth.

“You know what Gregory Peck did when they were shooting the film?”

“What did he do?”

“He was already a big star, whereas Audrey Hepburn was an almost unknown young actress. Gregory Peck’s name should have been bigger in the credits, that was normal. After seeing how Audrey Hepburn acted, he asked for their two names to be the same size. He said Audrey Hepburn would win an Oscar and he didn’t want to look like a fool, with his name bigger than the name of the Oscar winner in the credits of the film.”

“And did she win an Oscar?”

“Of course. She won an Oscar and then lots of other
awards. And Gregory Peck always said those months he spent in Rome were the happiest of his entire career.”

Roberto did not say anything, but the driver did not notice. He seemed to have jumped at the opportunity of talking about his passion for movies, and nothing was going to stop him.

“Of course, things were different in those days. The war was only just over. There was a hunger for life, a joy, a beauty, which are gone now. We’re all sad now. Even though we may have more things. I’m also sadder now. But when I’m sad I know what to do. I watch one of those great movies again and I feel like a different person. Anyway, we’re just passing the Campidoglio on your right. They shot a scene from
Souvenir d’Italie
there, when cars could still get up there. Now look behind you, you can see the Vittorio Emanuele monument, right? Do you see the optical illusion, the way it looks like it’s getting bigger? Like the beginning of
Cinema Paradiso
, which won the Oscar—you know it, surely? Now we’re in the Piazza del Popolo, where they shot the famous encounter between Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi in
We All Loved Each Other So Much
. I can’t get to the Trevi Fountain with the taxi but a lot of things were shot there. The scene of Anita Ekberg bathing in the fountain, of course, but also the one where Audrey Hepburn gets her hair cut by a hairdresser on the square and the one where Totò sells the fountain to an American tourist. The Spanish Steps,
where Satta Flores imitates the scene from
Battleship Potemkin …
”