The Purple Room (2 page)

2

This house is too big for me. I should have sold it after Alessandra and
Michela moved back to the city. I didn’t. Whether out of laziness, habit, or
stupidity, I don’t know.

Last year I locked up the upstairs bedrooms and moved into the studio I
had built in the basement. I call it my bunker. There’s a bathroom, a mini
fridge and a sofa bed. In the storeroom is my archive filled with all the
thousands of photographs I’ve gathered over the years. There’s a darkroom down
there, too, but I don’t use it anymore.

It’s very peaceful here. The landline hardly ever rings, and my
cellphone is usually off. Lately, though, I’ve kept it on day and night. You
never know.
Hello, Sergio? What’ve you
been up to? Why haven’t you called me back?
I’m expecting a woman’s voice
to ask, while my heart pounds against my ribs and I try to connect the voice to
a face I can’t remember.

“Hello?”

“Sergio, how are you? What did the doctor say?”

My mom. At seventy-two, she’s still the one who keeps my feet on the
ground. When I notice that I’m losing touch with the real world, I go and have
lunch with her, and by the end of the afternoon I feel sane again.

I got into the habit of collecting and cataloging photos because of her.
She does it with every certificate, letter, receipt, ticket stub, or coupon
that comes into the house. She started fifty-two years ago, when she worked as a
secretary in an accounting firm in Milan. She lost an important document right
after they hired her, got a talking to from the boss, and never misplaced
anything again, as far as I know. Not so much as a pin.

In her basement, there are fifty-two boxes cataloged by year. Recently,
just out of curiosity, I opened the seventh box, from the year I was born.
Inside, along with my birth certificate, favors from my christening, and
receipts for a washing machine, I found an X-ray of a tiny arm and an emergency
room report. It said I’d broken my elbow when I was eleven months old. No one
had ever told me. I asked my mother what had happened, and her eyes filled with
tears as soon as I brought it up. It mortified her to tell me about it. She was
alone with me that day, and her bad back made it too hard to bend over and wash
me in the bathtub. She had to do it in the sink instead. She had left the towel
on the side of the tub. When she turned around to get it, I moved suddenly. I
slipped out of the sink and fell on the floor, breaking my arm.

“I’m so sorry, darling, so sorry,” she sobbed. I hugged her and told her
there was no reason to be upset. Nothing terrible had happened and my arm had
never given me any problems. My mother dried her tears and breathed a sigh of
relief, like I’d just acquitted her of a horrible crime. She’d been carrying
that guilt around for forty-five years.

On the phone, I tell her that the doctor says that I’m fine and that I
should get back to work. My mom thinks that’s a good sign.

“So, are you coming for lunch on Saturday? I still have those curtains
to put up.”

“Sure. I’ll bring Michela, too, if I can persuade her.”

“I haven’t seen her in a long time… Oh, and remember to pay your taxes
tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Did you write it down? You’ll forget if you don’t.”

I start to write “bank” on the calendar she gave me for Christmas, but
the pen isn’t working. I give up.

“Done!” I say. “Bye, Mom, see you on Saturday.”

I’m opening a beer when the phone rings again. It’s my ex-wife. I give
her the same health update I gave my mother. We make plans for Saturday. I’m
going to pick up Michela in the morning and take her shopping. I can never
figure out her taste, so it’s safer to let her choose her presents for herself.
They’re usually pre-ripped clothes that cost an arm and a leg, or steel-toed
combat boots.

“Try to buy her something pretty this time.” Alessandra’s voice is more
nasal than usual. She’s allergic to pollen. Springtime is a nightmare for her.
“I can’t stand seeing her dressed all in black anymore.”

“I’ll do my best, but…” I don’t finish my sentence.

“But…? But what?” says Alessandra, annoyed. When we were married, one of
the things she got on my case about was my habit of not finishing sentences. I
swore that she was wrong, that she just didn’t pay attention when I talked. It
wasn’t my fault if she didn’t hear what I said. Alessandra secretly recorded a
conversation we had in the kitchen and made me listen to it. She was right. I
would leave one sentence hanging and start another, and then I’d abandon that
one to say something else. I sounded like I had dementia. Since then, I’ve
tried to be better about it.

“Michela’s gotten pretty stubborn,” I say. “It won’t be easy to get her
to choose something more to your taste than hers.”

“Well, we’ll see. Don’t take her to the flea market. There’s a cute
little boutique on a street off of Via Nazionale…”

She goes on and on, explaining the exact location of the shop. My cell
phone overheats, and I have to switch it from one ear to the other a few times.
Right before hanging up, though, she manages to say something nice.

“I heard you’re not going back to work until September.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to push it.”

“We can make do without your checks until then, if you like.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll send it like always, but thanks anyway.”

My mother told me that Alessandra stayed with me the whole time I was in
a coma. She didn’t leave me for a minute. Michela insisted on staying in the
hospital, too. They slept on benches there in the intensive care hallway. For
three days, for as long as I was more dead than alive, we were a family again.
When I opened my eyes on the fourth day, the room exploded with joy. Everyone was
around the bed, smiling. Alessandra was smiling, too, but I think that deep
down she was disappointed. Maybe she had thought I wouldn’t make it. By
surviving, I failed to live up to her expectations yet again.

I put some frozen fish in the oven for dinner. I’m opening a bottle of
wine when the phone rings for the third time. It’s Roberto. He was with me when
it happened. Truth be told, he was the one who screwed up the timing for our
swim back up, so the embolism was his fault. We haven’t told anyone that,
though. It’s something that has to stay between us.

“How are you?”

“Fine, Rob. Any news from the office?”

“We miss you, you know. The girls want to throw you a surprise party
when you come back. I told them it was a stupid idea and that you’re not that
kind of guy, but they want to do it anyway. Don’t tell them I told you, okay?

“All right.”

“When are you going to come by and see us?”

“Maybe next week.”

“Great. I’ll show you the Elixir project. It turned out exactly how you envisioned
it.”

“Thanks, Rob. Talk to you later.”

I hang up and go look at the calendar, trying to figure out what he was
talking about. What project? What did he mean?

The accident happened on the last Sunday in April. I remember that we
hadn’t gone diving the Sunday before that, because the weather was bad. I’d
stayed home scanning photos and organizing files. In the afternoon I’d visited
my mom and helped her carry a couple cases of water bottles up to her
apartment. She had asked me to take down her curtains, too. She’d wanted to wash
them. I spent Monday morning at the studio, working on an ad for an
anti-wrinkle cream. We had our soccer game that evening, and afterwards Franco,
Roberto and I went out for pizza. We were supposed to have a meeting to assign
new projects on the following day, Tuesday.

I can’t remember anything about Tuesday. On the calendar I scribbled
something like
DET,
or
DEN
—I can’t even read it. What was
it? Detergent. Detox? Denise. Do I know a Denise? The cleaning lady who comes
every once in a while is named Elvira. Denise… Denise… Denise… The name doesn’t
ring a bell.

My headache is coming back.

I go and lie down on the couch. Closing my eyes, I keep running through
the possibilities in my head.
Det, den,
det, den…
I have some bread stuck in my teeth. As I work at it with my
tongue, the word
dentist
pops into my
mind. I jump up from the couch, rush into the bathroom, and look at my mouth in
the mirror. There it is: a brand new filling. White, shiny, perfect. Now I
remember. Sunday evening at my mother’s I forced a curtain hook open with my
teeth and popped out my old filling. I called the dentist’s office on Monday
and went to an appointment the next day.

Or maybe not. Maybe I just
assume
I went to the dentist—probably the same one I always go to, near my office—but
I don’t actually
remember
it. My
memory loss must start with that Tuesday, then. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and
Saturday: utter darkness. On Sunday, I had the diving accident with Roberto,
which they’ve told me all about. Three days in a coma and we’re up to Tuesday.
I woke up on Wednesday morning.

A week of total nothingness. The only memory that remains is of a woman
looking out of a window in a purple room and the painful feeling that I want to
see her again, but I can’t.

I don’t recognize the voice on the phone at first. For a second, I think
it’s
her
. It’s not.

“Sorry for calling so late. I wanted to give you some good news.”

While she talks, I can hear her nails clicking on a keyboard. She must
work late. I imagine her husband (if she has one), wearing an apron over his
shirt and tie, waiting with dinner ready on the table while the candles burn
down and drip onto the tablecloth.

“I assessed your compatibility with the ladies we have on file and I
found a match right away. Her name is Marilena. Forty-three, single, works in a
bookstore. And guess what? Her favorite color is purple. I got in touch with
her this afternoon and told her about you, and she gave me the go-ahead. She’s
charming, Sergio; I’m sure you’ll like her. I have her telephone number right
here. What do you think? Shall I give it to you?”

Overcome by her enthusiasm, I write Marilena’s number on a napkin.

“Please call her right away. Don’t be one of those men who play hard to
get for two or three days. Make a date for coffee or a drink. Dinner is too
much for the first time. Let me know how it goes! Good luck!”

I turn the napkin over and over in my hands. I can tell I’m about to do
something stupid. I know I’ll hurt myself and someone else. Still I pick up the
phone and call Marilena, forty-three, works in a bookstore, single. Favorite
color: purple.

“Hello?”

“Hello, could I speak with Marilena?”

“Speaking.”

“Hi, Marilena, this is Sergio. Sergio Monti. I got your number from the
dating agency.”

“Right. Luisa told me you’d be calling.”

“Do you want to meet up for a drink?”

“When did you have in mind?”

“Does tomorrow work for you?”

“Tomorrow sounds great.”

“Where in Rome do you work?”

“Right downtown. Torre Argentina.”

“How about seven o’clock at Angolo Divino, the wine bar? Do you know
where that is?”

“Yes, in Campo dei Fiori. But let’s make it seven thirty.”

“Perfect. See you tomorrow.”

I’m so ridiculous and pathetic. What do I think I’m doing? Getting a
second chance at happiness? Starting all over? With a dating agency? I scare
myself sometimes. It’s like someone else is taking over. Someone who makes
terrible life decisions for me and runs around the city wreaking havoc, while I
stay at home hiding under the blankets.

3

My headache wakes me at dawn.

I lie in bed for a while, trying to get my thoughts in order. I know I
should plan out my day, but I can’t bring my commitments into focus. After a
while I give up and let my thoughts wander.

I don’t feel like breakfast this morning. Not even coffee. I feel like a
cold beer. It’s starting to get hot out, and a cold beer is all I want right
now.

I sit down in the garden to drink. I find the newspaper I bought two
days ago and never even unfolded. I try to read something. My eyes skip lines,
slip from one word to the next, bounce from headline to headline. I give up on
reading the articles and concentrate on the images instead. I do better with
the cartoons. It’s too bad there are so few of them. Next I study the photos
and advertisements. I notice flaws in the graphic design and imagine how I
could fix them to improve the composition.

I play this game for a while, keeping part of my brain busy while I try
again to think about what I have to do today. The word “bank” pops into my
head, somehow connected with my mother. A moment later, I remember I need to
pay my taxes. Good. That’s a start. I know there’s something else, though.
Something complex and requiring organization. Something scary. As I’m staring
at a movie ad where the title takes up too much space, I remember my date with
Marilena. A little more effort, and I remember the time, too: seven thirty.
It’s still ten hours away.
I have time.

I put the newspaper down and look over at my neighbor’s house. Nino’s bald
head bobs over the top of the hedge. He’s standing on a ladder, clipping and
shaping his laurel shrubs. He gives me a nod, cheerful as always. I wave back
and turn to look at my yard.

It’s a jungle.

The grass is so long that it reaches my calves. The hedges and trees all
need pruning. When things get this bad, I usually just hire someone to do the
gardening for me. This morning, I have something else in mind. I rush into the
garage and grab all of my equipment: my weed whacker, lawn mower, clippers, and
gardening gloves. I strip off my shirt and get started, cutting, mowing, and
pruning with a vengeance. It’s a huge and exhausting job, and it makes me feel
good to do it.

I work hard all morning, until the garden looks presentable again. The
only thing left to do is cut back some of the bigger branches on the trees. I
go over to Nino’s and ask if I can borrow his chainsaw.

“Hang on, I’ll come give you a hand.”

He holds the ladder steady while I cut off the sick and dead branches.
We chop them up into smaller pieces, bundle them and load them into a
wheelbarrow. Then we take them to the garage, where we stack them up neatly.

“Now you’ve got a good supply of winter firewood,” says Nino.

He says it, but he knows I haven’t used the fireplace since Alessandra
and Michela left.

When we’ve finished, I ask him, “Feel like a beer?”

“Sure. I’ve got some sausages we can grill, too.”

We carry the beers over to his place. We open a bottle of red wine
there, too, and drink it while the sausages sizzle on the barbecue. We talk
about the local elections, the hideous new apartment blocks they’re building in
the valley, the ever-rising price of water. Nino owns a barbershop in town, but
he lets his son run it. His son is twenty and can’t wait to take his father’s
place. He says he likes cutting hair. Strange kid. Nino and his wife Sabrina
are the most easygoing people I’ve ever met. They’re always smiling. I’ve often
wondered what their secret to happiness could be. “Maybe they have amazing
sex,” Alessandra once said, hinting at the fact that we no longer did.

I go straight downtown, stopping at the bank on my way. I park before
reaching the Ponte Garibaldi bridge and walk the rest of the way to the Torre
Argentina neighborhood. I still have a couple of hours before my date, so I
decide to do some reconnaissance.

The bookstore where Marilena works is three stories high. I pretend to
browse as I roam around the store, but really I’m looking at the shop
assistants.

On the second floor, near the travel books, there’s a blonde that could
be her. She cuts a box open and pulls out a stack of travel guides that need
shelving. Her hair is cut in a bob and I can see the nape of her pale, slender
neck. I watch her for a good long while. On the next floor down, I spot another
possible Marilena. A statuesque, forty-something brunette with heavy makeup.
She’s looking something up for a customer. When she looks like she’s about to
offer me her help, I turn around and leave. On my way out I come across a third
Marilena. She’s replacing a colleague at the cash register. She moves slowly,
dragging her feet. She has bony shoulders that she hunches and she’s wearing
her hair in a ponytail. I try to catch a glimpse of her nametag, but I can’t
make it out. I watch the lethargic, absent-minded way that her hands move as she
takes money and gives back change. Then she puts on a pair of glasses, pulls a
book from under the counter and starts reading.

I met my wife thanks to a book. I had dropped out of the Academy of Fine
Arts in Milan and was traveling around Italy, looking for work and trying to
make a living selling photos to newspapers and magazines. In an entire year, I
had only managed to sell two shots, which I had taken at the Palio in Sienna.
The horse magazine that bought them didn’t even spell my name right.

I lived in Rome for a while during that time, making ends meet by sketching
portraits for tourists in Piazza Navona. I sublet a room with a college student
from Catania named Filippo. One day, our landlord told us he’d found a buyer
for the apartment, and we had to leave. Just like that, he threw us out.

Filippo asked two of his classmates to put us up while we looked for
another place. Giovanna and Marisa. Two sisters from Sicily, like him. They
were like mothers to us. They fed us pasta with eggplant and washed the clothes
we’d been wearing for days. Filippo slept on the couch, and I stayed in the
third roommate’s bedroom, since she was away for the week, visiting her family
in Turin.

I liked that room. A long shelf held a bunch of books stacked in piles.
There were too many of them, so many that the supports were bending under the
weight. On the wall hung a print of Balthus’s painting
La Chambre
. A naked woman lies draped over an armchair. The
sunlight falls obliquely through a window from which a dwarfish figure in a
skirt has pulled aside the curtains. I loved that painting, too. It was
mysterious and disturbing, with an air of recent tragedy, or maybe impending
and violent disaster. On the shelf there was a biography of the artist.
Asterisks, dashes and exclamation points filled the margins. I devoured that
book, feeling closer and closer to the person who had read it before me. Just
like the girl who lived in that room, I was intrigued when I read that Balthus
had bought a castle in Montecalvello, near Viterbo, in the early seventies. Two
exclamation points and the words “must see” marked that passage.

After a week, Filippo and I found an apartment in another part of the
city. It was time to go. Giovanna and Marisa made us a cake as a parting gift.
The girl who loved Balthus was coming back the next day, so I wasn’t going to
meet her. I used the bathroom mirror to sketch a self-portrait. I gave myself a
straighter nose and a magnetic gaze I didn’t have. Underneath, I wrote, “Thanks
for your hospitality,” and the name of a bar where I offered to buy her a
gelato the next evening. I left the drawing on her desk, where she couldn’t
miss it.

I waited at that bar for over three hours. No one came. Later, Filippo
told me that the girl from Turin had gotten mad at Giovanna and Marisa for
letting a stranger—and an “arrogant and vain” one, at that—sleep in
her bed.

The next day I drove back to the Sicilian girls’ apartment. I had
borrowed a friend’s car. I had a shopping bag full of groceries in the back
seat: cheese, a salami, bread, and two bottles of wine. When Alessandra opened
the door, she was even prettier than I had imagined. She had amazing freckles.

“Hi,” I said. “I waited for you last night. Why didn’t you show up?”

“Sorry, who are you?”

She didn’t recognize me. I had made my self-portrait so handsome that it
didn’t even look like me anymore. Alessandra told me she had stood me up
because she didn’t think the person in the drawing looked very nice.

“Who knows what you must think of me in person, then.”

She smiled, then she asked me what was in the bag. I told her I was
going on a picnic at Balthus’s castle in Montecalvello. Did she want to come?

The castle was closed. It turned out that Balthus had moved to Switzerland
a long time before, and all that remained of his interest in the Viterbo
countryside was an unimportant painting of its misty hills. Unable to explore
the castle, we walked along the hillside and lay down under a tree to eat. The
air was full of pollen. Thousands of balls of fluff floated around us like
snowflakes. They drifted into our wine, got into our sandwiches, and ended up
in our noses and mouths. Alessandra couldn’t stop sneezing. She rubbed her eyes
and laughed through her tears. I took lots of pictures of her that afternoon. I
liked her freckles, her blue eyes, the way the pollen made her squint.
I fell in love with her while I was developing the photos in my
darkroom.

Now, the memory of her smile––so wonderful in those pictures
from an afternoon eighteen years ago (pictures I still keep in my files but
don’t have the courage to look at)––brings a pang to my heart. I
can’t help comparing that smile to Alessandra’s face a few years later,
contorted with fury as she screams at me to leave, to never come back,
threatening to gouge my eyes out with the pruning shears I’d given her for her
birthday.

I sit at one of the outdoor tables in Campo dei Fiori, so that I can see
her coming. I order a glass of white wine and drink it down fast. Then I
remember I haven’t eaten yet, so I ask the waiter to bring me something to
snack on—chips, olives, pepper and almond
tozzetti
—and another glass of wine. I wonder which woman
she’ll be: the blonde one with the pale neck, the brunette with all the makeup,
or the reader with the ponytail. I check the time. Marilena is late. What if
she did the same thing I did? Maybe she found a place to hide, and watched me
sitting here drinking and was so disappointed by my looks that she decided to
stand me up. I look at my reflection in the window. My face looks just like any
other. What would she think of it? I have no idea. Still, the agency must have
a good reason for not showing us photos before dates.

Maybe the first thing I’ll have to do is explain to Marilena why I’m
using a dating service to meet people. I’ll have to justify going on dates
arranged by a computer program. Some people might do it out of shyness or a
lack of confidence. Older people might not feel like trying to pick up someone
their own age while they’re on their way to pick up their pensions. What’s my
excuse? What am I doing here?

It’s getting dark and there’s still no one here. Marilena is over half
an hour late. That’s enough for me to decide she’s not going to show up. I’m
not disappointed. Actually, I feel relieved. I’ve avoided an embarrassing
situation of my own making and now I can get out of here.

I turn to ask the waiter for the check, and that’s when I see her.

She’s sitting a couple of tables behind me, smoking a cigarette and
checking her watch, just like I was doing a minute ago. She’s not the
pale-necked blonde, or the made-up brunette, or the ponytailed reader. She’s a
different woman altogether. She has honey-brown bangs, melancholy eyes, and
little wrinkles that show around her mouth as she takes a drag on her
cigarette. She’s wearing purple from head to toe. Purple shoes, purple skirt,
lavender blouse, purple handbag. Fuchsia baubles dangle from each ear.

Now what? I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. I’m not up for this
date. Honestly, I never was.

I leave the money on the table and get up to leave, head down, silently
praying she won’t notice me.

“Excuse me,” says a voice behind me.

Keep on walking, Sergio. Keep walking.

“Excuse me,” the voice repeats, louder.

I would like to keep going, but my feet stop. I’m paralyzed. Slowly, I
turn around.

“Are you talking to me?”

Marilena peers at me. I must look horrible.

“Sergio?” she asks hesitantly.

Say no, and you’re safe, I tell myself.

“Yes.” The word comes out of my mouth on its own.

Marilena’s face lights up. “We’ve both been sitting here for at least
half an hour!”

She holds out her hand. I give it a limp shake. I can’t think of
anything to say. I stand there, rooted in place, looking down.

“Well, do you want to get something to drink?” she asks, refusing to be
discouraged.

“Yeah… Sounds like a good idea.”

I sit down at her table.