The Silence of the Wave (25 page)

It was then that he entered the water.

They were fine waves, he thought, paddling out with his hands off the sides of the board. Considering how far from any ocean they were, they weren’t bad at all. At least five feet, maybe even slightly more. He let the first one pass underneath him, without even trying to stand. He felt a calm sensation of inevitability. The kind that lets you delay things as long as you want without any fear or anxiety.

He let the second wave go by, and then he saw a bigger one forming, more than seven feet high. The one he’d come here for.

He stiffened his arms and gripped the front of the board, pushed the tips of his toes onto the back and stayed like that, still. As if everything around him had become motionless and eternal.

Then eternity ended.

He stretched his arms, grabbed the rails of the board, contracted his abdominal muscles, and swung himself up. His knees were probably hurting, but he did not notice. He got up into a standing position and the board shot forward.

If he had already read then the books he would read later, Roberto would have been able to describe the sensation he felt, once again riding the wave, as if he had never stopped, not even for one day.

He would have been able to say that it was an intoxication that cut everything straight down the middle: time, space, sadness, good and evil, love and pain and joy and guilt. And forgiveness—even the most difficult kind, the kind we ask of ourselves. And the circle of life, and the stories of fathers and sons and their desperate search for each other.

Gianrico Carofiglio was born in 1961 in Bari, where for many years he has worked as an anti-Mafia prosecutor. From 2008 to 2013, he served as senator of Italy’s Democratic Party. He is best known as the author of four award-winning, bestselling Guido Guerrieri crime novels:
Involuntary Witness
,
A Walk in the Dark
,
Reasonable Doubts
, and
Temporary Perfections
. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.