The Purple Room (12 page)

He doesn’t say
anything else. I guess my story didn’t impress him much. I still have to tell
him one more thing, though. “I want to find her.”

He looks at me
as if like I’ve just announced that I want to enter the priesthood.

“You seriously
want to look for a girl you went to high school with, after
thirty years
? Who knows where she is
now? She’s probably married, with kids Michela’s age. Or maybe she’s died of
cancer and she’s buried in the cemetery in Pantigliate.”

“I only want
to know what happened to her. What’s wrong with that?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous, Sergio. Okay, when you woke up from your coma, you thought of her.
That’s nice, it really is. But you know how the brain works, right? They’re
just electric pulses. Nothing more. It’s not poetic, but it’s the truth. You
regained consciousness and your brain went ‘click’ and pulled up the first
memory it came across. You said it yourself, that you’d been thinking of her
during the days before the accident. Why attach so much importance to it?”

I don’t know
what to say. I look down, all at once feeling kind of stupid.

Roberto pats
my arm, a paternal gesture. “I’ve gotta go. Loredana’s probably sharpening her
knives.”

He opens the
door and gets in his car.

“Listen to me
on this, Sergio,” he says, before he pulls out. “Do whatever stupid shit you
want to do, but not this. Don’t go looking for someone who doesn’t exist.”

14

I leave the
underground garage. Once on the road, I start driving without any particular
destination. Along a brightly-lit avenue I see a billboard with the Elixir
advertisement. Then another, then another, and yet another. They’ve plastered
the city with them. The twenty-by-ten-foot girl in the lilac panties follows me
everywhere with her indifferent eyes.

I told Roberto
that I hadn’t thought of Gloria in all these years. It’s not true. I was wrong.
I thought of her right before Christmas, seven years ago. At the time, I was
having an affair with Federica, the mother of one of Michela’s school mates.
She lived in an enormous villa surrounded by a luxurious park. Her husband, a
famous lawyer, was never at home and she was lonely. A couple of times a week,
between eight and nine in the morning, I’d go and see her. Federica would let
me in through the front door, without a thought for the maid or the gardener.
We’d go straight up to the guest room, tear off our clothes and make love
furiously, hurriedly, without a word. Then we’d dress and go down to the
kitchen for a cup of coffee. For ten minutes we’d talk about out children’s
school, about how it was almost winter, about our summer holiday plans. She’d
call up her mother or her sister while I finished drinking my coffee, skimming
the headlines of her husband’s newspaper. We’d say goodbye at the door, just
like a married couple. It was a comforting pretense. After having been to bed
as lovers, reciting the part of a husband and wife made us feel less guilty. It
created an illusion, for half an hour, that sex and domesticity could both
exist under the same roof.

One morning,
when it was nearly Christmas, I went to see her as usual. Entering her house, I
saw the Christmas tree all decorated with lights and a high star that reached
the ceiling. My wife, too, had decided that we should put up our Christmas tree
that coming weekend. I could already see myself climbing up the ladder to look
for the dusty bag of ornaments, colored lights and silver tinsel. I felt a stab
in my chest at the thought of Christmas dinner with my mother and Alessandra’s
parents. All those fake smiles to hide the truth, from them and from ourselves.
I imagined taking Alessandra aside and convincing her to admit that it was
absurd to go on like this. I would have liked to tell her about Federica, talk
to her without raising our voices, calmly, until we could both own up to being
frightened, unhappy and secretly furious, acknowledge that our life together
was over. Then we could have put up the tree, made dinner, opened the gifts. It
would have been our last family Christmas. We all could have hugged, the way
you do before you set off on a long trip. After that, we would all have gone
our separate ways, with pain, bitterness, and a sense of failure, but
nonetheless aware of the need to start over. The strength behind our decision,
I told myself, would propel us forward towards a tomorrow that, for the moment,
could only seem dark and terrible.

Even while I
was thinking those things, I already knew I wouldn’t have the courage to talk
to Alessandra. She wouldn’t have had the courage to hear me out, either. The
terror was stronger. It forced us into a sort of slow, dull and unrelenting
self-destruction.

I went
upstairs with Federica and made love with more frenzy and desperation than
usual. Once we had finished, I just lay there on my back, completely still. I
had the sensation that I was made of marble, that my body weighed a ton. It was
embedded in the mattress and no one would have been able to shift it.

“How do you
feel?” Federica asked, stroking my arm with her finger tips.

“Fine,” I
said, without much conviction.

“Did something
happen at home?”

“No, nothing
happened.”

“Christmas
depresses you?”

“I think so.”

“Me, too.”

She lay on top
of me and embraced me. Our bodies fit together perfectly, her nipples pressed
against mine. I was uneasy. I felt like an intruder in that house. I had the urge
to leave but, at the same time, I wanted to prolong the alienation I was
experiencing for as long as I could. I needed it to stay awake. I’d had enough
of closing my eyes and slipping head-long towards disaster.

“I want to
show you something,” said Federica. She jumped up and put on a dressing gown. I
watched her, without moving. “Come on, get dressed,” she said, tossing my pants
at me. I made the effort to dress and followed her downstairs. We went outside,
ran across the lawn, shivering from the cold, and went into the garage.
Federica turned on the lights and showed me her husband’s car collection. There
was a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Jaguar and a gorgeous 1960 Lancia Flaminia––and
those were just the ones I could recognize at a glance.

“We never use
them, but Alberto keeps on buying them.”

At the back of
the garage was a car covered by a grey canvas tarpaulin.

“This is my
Christmas present,” she said, uncovering the car. It was a nineteen-forties
Bugatti. A convertible. I’m no expert, but I knew it would have cost an
exorbitant amount. I sat in the driver’s seat and stroked the wooden steering
wheel. Federica sat down beside me and rested her head on my shoulder.

“How nice it
would be to set off on a trip,” she said absentmindedly.

“Why don’t
we?”

She smiled
without answering. She didn’t think it was a serious question.

“Is there any
gas in the car?” I asked.

 
“Yes.”

“Go and get
dressed and come straight back here. I’ll take you to Spain. We’ll celebrate
New Year’s in Madrid.”

“Sure,” said
Federica, “and Alberto will have a heart attack.”

“Over you or
the car?”

“The car,
naturally.”

“He gave it to
you, didn’t he? You can do what you like with it.”

“That’s true.
When it comes down to it, I suppose we could leave. It’s too bad you have to go
to work.”

“Who cares
about work?”

“And I have to
pick up Elisa from school.”

“Send the
maid.”

“I also have
to plan a dinner party for twelve. This evening we have
important
guests.”

“No dinner, no
guests. Leave a message saying you’ve gone on a trip and you’ll be back after
New Year’s.”

Federica
laughed, shaking her head.

“You’re so funny,
Sergio.”

She was
enjoying herself. She liked my ridiculous rebellious impulses, the little
transgressions I acted out during our twenty minutes of frenzied lovemaking.
Only this time I wasn’t joking. I’d made a decision. I wanted to leave in that
car and not come back until after the holidays. It wasn’t a romantic getaway.
It was a violent and brutal way of telling my wife––and
myself––how things really stood. Maybe the only way. If I had to
self-destruct, I might as well do it in style.

“I’m asking
you in earnest to come away with me,” I said, “and you have to give me an
answer now. Yes or no?”

Federica
shivered. She was naked under her dressing gown and it was cold in the garage.
She snuggled up and started to kiss me. She slid on top of me with her legs
apart, moving her pelvis back and forth, gripping the back of the seat to push
harder. It was her way of answering, I sensed, but I wanted her to look me in
the eye and say it. I took her by the wrists and forced her to look at me.

“Yes or no?” I
repeated harshly.

She gritted
her teeth, gasping, and tried to pull free. I tightened my grip.

“Yes or no?
Yes or no? Yes or no?” I shouted.

She stopped
struggling. She threw back her head to get her hair off her face and looked at
me. She wasn’t thinking over what to say, she had already decided before I
asked her the question. She was simply weighing the consequences of her reply.
She was wondering if she would lose me. Little by little, I loosened my grip.
Federica let her arms fall into her lap. She let herself go completely limp
against me. Then she brushed my cheek with her lips and whispered, “I’ll be
waiting for you tomorrow, Sergio.”

She got up,
tightened the belt of her dressing gown and left the garage.

I stayed there
sitting in the Bugatti. I didn’t know what would have happened if Federica had
said yes. I only knew I was prepared to go through with it to find out. Now,
however, my little surge of rebellion was subsiding, turning as cold as the
car’s engine. We wouldn’t be going anywhere. Not me and not the Bugatti. I
tried to tell myself it took more courage to stay and witness the slow
disintegration of my marriage than to run away like a coward, just before
Christmas. A captain must never abandon his ship. He has to do his utmost to
ensure that all the others jump into the life boats and are saved. He has to
face up to disaster like a man. Still, a part of me continued to feel that I’d
missed a chance. We’d both missed it, Federica and I.

It was then
that I wondered if I knew any woman who would have had the courage to give me a
different answer. My wife, I was sure, would have acted the same way Federica
had. I thought back to the women I’d known before. There was Viviana, the
editor of a Roman magazine to which I’d tried to sell some photos. She had been
engaged to her boss. We had gone to bed together for a couple of months, until
she got married. Before her, there was Ludovica, a waitress in Piazza Navona,
whom I met while I was sketching portraits for tourists there. She lived in a
tiny garret that got hot as an oven in summertime. After we made love, she’d
always offer me a glass of milk with mint. Before that, there was Olga, an
Austrian student I had met on the train to Siena. The hotel had been packed for
the Palio horserace, so we had shared a single bed. I was much thinner then… I
kept going further back in my memories, to my years at art school in Milan, to
the relationships I’d had with fellow students, then way back, to the first
girlfriends I’d had in high school. I tried to picture what each of those women
might be like now, at the age of forty. I envisioned them with lawyer husbands
and children in elementary school. I made them sit down with me in the Bugatti
and I asked them all the same question I’d asked Federica. They all said no,
just like she had.

Gloria was the
last one I thought of. It surprised me that I couldn’t imagine her as a
forty-year-old. I was incapable of projecting the image of maturity onto her,
as I had onto the others. I kept on seeing her as she was at sixteen. I was
certain that if I’d asked her to leave with me, she’d have looked at me with
that wry little smile of hers and said, “Yes.”

Even so, the
idea of trying to find her never crossed my mind. Our afternoon together in her
purple room had become a distant memory from my teenage years, so long-ago it
could be mistaken for a dream.

“I had a
feeling you were coming,” my mother says, opening the door. She’s holding the
remote. The TV is on at full volume. “I made vegetable soup. Do you want me to
heat some up?”

“No,” I say.
“I’ll be leaving in a minute. I just want to get something from out of the
basement.”

“What do you
need?”

“Just a book.”

She studies me
like as if she doesn’t recognize me. I’ve been telling her for years to get rid
of the stuff piled up in the basement, starting with my old school books. How
come I’m here now, asking her for one of those, specifically? As long as it was
the exercise bike or Dad’s old pajamas, she was glad to have proved to me that
it’s best not to throw anything away. Now, she’s starting to suspect that
there’s something else going on.

“What book is
it?”

“It’s from
high school.”

“What’s the
title?”

“It’s an art
history book. I know which box it’s in. I just need the key to the basement.”

“I can look
for the book.”

“You don’t
have to go down there.”

“You think I’m
paralyzed or something?”

“I’d prefer to
do it myself.”

“You’ll make a
mess. I know you.”

“Just give me
the key, mom.”

“I can’t
remember where I put it.”

“Give it to
me!”

I don’t know
why I shouted. My mother stares at me in silence, shocked and stubborn.

“Fine,” I say,
“I’ll get it myself.”

I go back by
the front door, where the wooden key rack is. Every key is meticulously
labeled. I check them all. The one to the basement isn’t there. I go back to my
mother. She’s pretending to watch TV. Is it my imagination or is she
snickering?

“Where’s the
key ?” I ask, clenching my fists.

Instead of
answering, she disappears into the kitchen. I can hear her rummaging around in
a drawer. I rush to the doorway and block her exit. She’s holding something in
her fist.

“Move out of
the way,” she says.

“Give me the
key.”

“No.”