You did what needed to be done, chief. I"m proud of you and your father would be too.
I sniffed again, but that sentence had sent a quiver through me and made me feel better.
"When I have another dog I"ll call him Scott-you know that, don"t you?"
I felt him lick my hand, but he didn"t say anything.
"Scott, did you hear me?"
He didn"t answer me.
Then I opened my eyes and saw that he had gone away forever.
32.
The car was moving slowly, so that they wouldn"t miss the badly signposted turn-off for the beach. The sky was becoming lighter, and through the lowered windows a sharp breeze came in, penetrating their light clothes and making them shiver. It was bound to be hot later, but right now the air was still cool and sharp. It was the perfect moment that precedes the arrival of certain summer days.
Emma was driving and Roberto was looking at the road. He was aware of the changes inside and outside himself; he registered them, and let them happen. Just as the doctor had taught him. Images from his past-or maybe sometimes from his imagination-succeeded one another, pa.s.sed by, and disappeared. Every now and then a wave of fear arrived, but it pa.s.sed quickly and turned into a kind of tingling of the soul.
They had left Rome very early, to be at the sea before the sun rose. The forecasts had said storms at sea. Santa Marinella isn"t Dana Point, but that day there would be some very large waves. Exceptionally large for the Tyrrhenian Sea and for the month of July.
Together with the waves, an extraordinary influx of surfers was predicted, so it was vital to get there very early, or else the beach would be too crowded and the sea impenetrable.
They parked in an open area where there were already a few cars. Roberto had the feeling that his strength was abandoning him completely. He had the impression he was moving laboriously, almost in slow motion. He got out of the car and stood there, motionless, unsure what to do.
"Are you planning to go in the water fully dressed?" Emma said, a mixture of irony and apprehension in her voice. Maybe she was wondering if this had been a good idea. The last time this man had surfed had been more than thirty years earlier. What was to say he"d be able to do so again? He turned his gaze toward the sea. It was an expanse of foam, illuminated by the pale, uniform light of dawn.
Without saying anything, Roberto got back in the car to change. He came out in his bathing trunks, an old T-shirt, and old blue-and-white tennis shoes. He took the surfboard from the roof rack, put it under his arm, and looked at Emma.
"Roberto, if you don"t feel up to it ..." The hint of irony had disappeared.
"Let"s go," he said, and they walked toward the sea.
On the beach they glimpsed a few boys and a few surfboards planted upright in the sand. n.o.body seemed to have gone into the water yet. A northwesterly wind was blowing, not too strong, but dry and full of dangerous promise.
You won"t make it, Roberto said to himself as they walked down onto the beach. That feeling of sluggishness wouldn"t let go of him.
There"s no way you"re going to make it. You"re old and you"ve forgotten how. How old were you the last time? When was the last time? You can"t even remember. Did that period ever exist? It"s not just remote, it"s in another world. Would you be able to say how you can tell memories from dreams? Those waves you remember are silent, just like dreams. So maybe they aren"t real.
You won"t make it.
What was that sentence the doctor had quoted? It"s one thing to wait for the wave, another to get up on the board when it arrives. Precisely.
Emma was walking behind him. For a very long moment, Roberto thought-really believed-that she was his mother and he had the impression he was in another place and in another life that could have been and hadn"t been.
The wind again carried the salt smell. The same as so many years before. He took off his shoes. His feet sank into the cool sand. On his face, on his body, on the surfboard, he felt the eyes of the boys who had already taken over the beach. Gazes first of hostility, then, after getting a proper look at him-an old man-full of scorn.
One of the boys stood up and took a few steps toward him. Maybe he wanted to tell him something. Maybe he wanted to tell him that this beach, at least at this time of the day, was their property. It was their place, not his. Or maybe he didn"t want to tell him anything and had stood up only to stretch his legs. What was certain is that the boy"s eyes and Roberto"s met just as the sun was rising. Then the boy looked away and decided to turn back and forget about whatever it was he had thought of doing.
He sat down again on the sand, near the boards, exchanging embarra.s.sed jokes with his friends, laughing a bit louder than necessary, making sure he was heard.
But Roberto did not hear him. He stopped for just a few seconds to listen to the roar of the waves. The sun was rising behind him, casting his long shadow onto the beach, as far as the water and down into the sea.
At that moment, as he was looking at his shadow mixing with the foam, he remembered something he had read years before.
In the early nineties a merchant ship carrying a cargo of toys from Hong Kong to the United States was caught in a terrible storm. Thanks to the very high waves, a dozen containers ended up in the water and broke open, spilling into the ocean tens of thousands of yellow plastic ducks, the kind you give to little children to play with when they have a bath. It was-it seemed-an ordinary shipping accident, to be filed away in the insurance company"s records.
The ducks did not agree. They spread through the oceans, letting themselves be pushed cheerfully by the wind, the waves, and the currents, letting themselves be washed up on the beaches of the world, and making it possible for oceanographers to understand many things about the workings of the oceans and the currents.
The image of the intrepid, smiling little ducks on the crests of gigantic waves in a stormy ocean filled Roberto with an absurd, incredible, invincible joy. He thought of the current that had brought him to this beach after a long stormy voyage, and it seemed to him, now that he was here, that there was only one thing he had to do. Just one.
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 pa.s.s 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, s.p.a.ce, 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.
About the Author.
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.
ALSO BY GIANRICO CAROFIGLIO.
The Guido Guerrieri Novels.
Involuntary Witness.
A Walk in the Dark.
Reasonable Doubts.
Temporary Perfections.
The Past is a Foreign Country.