"I wonder what your apartment is like."
"Unpresentable."
"Doesn"t anyone ever come to see you?"
"A friend drops by sometimes, or a colleague. But that doesn"t happen often."
"No girlfriends, nothing like that?"
Roberto shook his head and smiled, as if surprised by the question, as if it were a bit crazy, whereas in fact it was perfectly normal. You"re a single man in good health. It would be only natural for you to see women. And yet the question strikes you as strange, misplaced.
"No, no girlfriends, nothing like that."
"All right, the tone of your answer and your expression tells me I shouldn"t insist. Good night, then."
"Good night and thank you," Roberto said, awkwardly, but she did not go.
"Why did I tell you all those things?"
"Maybe it"s pa.s.sing."
"Maybe it"s pa.s.sing. You"re right. Maybe I went through the fire and survived."
Roberto looked at her in silence.
"Aren"t you going to say anything?"
"Maybe you went through the fire and survived," he said at last. "That"s it. Maybe we survive."
19.
She slipped into the room between the half-open door and the doorjamb. She seemed thinner than last time, but maybe it was only an effect of the dim light. A window must have been open, because Roberto felt quite a strong shiver when she sat down on the bed. Of course, it was an unexpected visit, and at the moment it wasn"t clear how she had come in. She had never had the key to this apartment. In fact, come to think of it, she had never been in this apartment, so how had she gotten in? Maybe he should just ask her. Except that speaking seemed terribly tiresome. Maybe the tiredness was all down to the fact that he"d been about to go to sleep.
She didn"t seem to have any intention of breaking the silence. She sat there and waited. She must have gotten a lot thinner, Roberto thought. She hardly weighed anything at all. When she had sat down on the bed he had not felt her weight on the mattress. Again a cold draft. He had no idea which window was open. Maybe she had been the one to leave it open, whichever window it was. Maybe that was how she had gotten in. He should have gotten up and gone and closed it, but he was so tired, so terribly tired.
He couldn"t even lift his arm. He couldn"t move a single muscle; it was as if his whole body were paralyzed.
Then she spoke, or rather, he heard her voice. The semidarkness prevented him from seeing her lips moving, and the voice came from an unspecified point in the room. It was a bit different from the last time.
It was different from the last time.
You aren"t asking me any questions.
That"s because I can"t find the words.
You haven"t spoken Spanish for a long time.
Am I speaking Spanish? I hadn"t realized.
You hadn"t realized.
But is it a boy or a girl?
It"s a boy.
What have you called him?
My father"s name. What else?
But what does he know about his father?
He knows he"s dead.
But I"m not dead.
She laughed, and the sound was like some mechanical device. Roberto thought he could smell a slight odor of rotten eggs.
You are dead, of course you"re dead.
I had no choice.
I know, n.o.body has a choice.
How is he? How are your lives? Tell me.
They don"t exist. Our lives.
What do you mean?
Nothing exists. For you we"re a dream.
I didn"t want it.
n.o.body wants anything.
I"m scared.
You"re right, it"s scary.
I"d like to see the boy.
He"s there.
Where?
Where you can"t see him.
Why?
You"ll never see him.
Why?
Because I don"t exist, and neither do you.
Roberto sat up in bed, with difficulty, and reached out his hand to touch her or shake her or something else, he didn"t know what. The hand pa.s.sed through her and she slowly lowered her eyes, looking at his hand going through her. Roberto saw her tilted head, her hair, and at the same time, in an unnatural synchrony, he saw her face, her smiling mouth, which then burst wide open in a laugh and became the most frightening thing of all.
Just as Roberto was thinking that he would go mad with fear, everything suddenly disappeared and the room went back to normal.
Normal.
Giacomo
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 pa.s.sing 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.
20.
"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 pa.s.sed.
"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 h.e.l.l 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 bulls.h.i.t, so I"m going. I don"t think I"ll be back."