The moment Zen picked up the receiver, he knew it had been a mistake to answer the phone.
‘Aurelio? Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you been in touch?’
‘Hello, Tania.’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day! We both have.’
‘Both?’
‘Your mother and me.’
‘The old firm.’
‘What?’
‘How are things? Rome still there? I suppose it must be. Eternal city and all that.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘I’m happy.’
‘Happy? Why?’
‘Why am I happy?’
Laughter pealed out from the kitchen.
‘Who’s that?’ demanded Tania. ‘Have you got someone there with you, Aurelio?’
‘Of course not. It was someone in the street outside. The windows are open.’
‘I see. Well, you may be happy, but I’m certainly not, and neither is your mother. Maybe you should think about that.’
‘Maybe I should.’
‘All you seem to care about is yourself. Out of sight is out of mind as far as you’re concerned. I’ve been talking about you to your mother, Aurelio, and I have to say that I find what she’s told me extremely disturbing. It confirms a lot of things I’d already suspected about you.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the fact that you’re deeply selfish. That you don’t give a damn about other people. They’re just a means to an end, as far as you’re concerned.’
‘That’s what my mother told you?’
‘Not in so many words, but the things she told me made it quite clear that you’d been ruthlessly self-centred and manipulative ever since you were a child.’
‘It didn’t occur to you that she might have an axe to grind herself, Tania?’
He was angry by now, and his tone showed it.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that she’s jealous of this woman who’s threatening to alienate the affections of her darling son and do disgusting things to him in bed, so she’s doing everything she can to frighten you off so that she can have me all to herself again.’
There was a brief silence.
‘That is the most shocking thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about their mother. For God’s sake, Aurelio! What kind of monster are you? Are you seriously suggesting that your mother is sexually jealous of me? That’s just totally sick! It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever …’
Zen quietly replaced the receiver on its rest and walked back to the kitchen. Cristiana raised her eyes to meet his.
‘What was that all about?’
He shook his head wearily.
‘Don’t ask.’
He slumped down in his chair again. He had just lit another cigarette when the phone began to ring again. He sat staring tight-lipped at the table. The phone rang eleven times before stopping.
‘Persistent,’ commented Cristiana when the noise finally stopped.
As though in response, the phone started trilling again. This time it rang fifteen times.
‘Not to say obstinate,’ Cristiana added.
After a brief pause, shrill bursts of ringing jarred the silence once again. Cristiana stood up.
‘May I?’
Zen breathed a long sigh. He waved at the open doorway. Cristiana marched into the living room and lifted the receiver.
‘Yes? Who? No, there’s no one here by that name.’
She slammed the phone down and unplugged the cord from the socket. When she straightened up again, Zen was standing behind her. He caught hold of her shoulders, turned her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. They measured each other with their eyes in a final brief interval of lucidity, then blindly collided again.
It was the strangeness that woke him, the presence of another body in that bed where he had always slept alone, and which was not quite wide enough for two. He closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow, smiling at some memory from the night before. The sheets were still damp with sweat, the whole bed perfumed with evocative scents.
Cristiana shifted slightly in her sleep, as though the memories which were keeping Zen awake had reached into her dreams too. And indeed it might all have been a dream, so unlikely did it seem in the chill darkness of — was it really only ten to six? He put his watch back on the bedside table and rolled over, seeking the precise position which would enable him to complete the jigsaw of sleep.
But whichever way he turned, images of Cristiana darted through his mind like silver fish. All the other women in his life had made him feel that however much they seemed to be enjoying themselves in bed, in the end they were only doing him a favour. With Cristiana, it had been abundantly clear from that very first kiss that everything she did was done for her own pleasure as well as his. She displayed an eager greed for caresses of all kinds, an inclusive sensuality which had brought a succession of climaxes in its wake and raised Zen to a state of exaltation he had never experienced before.
Shying away from the memory of some of the things he had said and done, he sat up in bed. Sleep was clearly out of the question. He had a momentary urge to grasp Cristiana’s plump white shoulder, to turn her over and start feeding on her breasts and belly. Instead, he forced himself to turn back the covers and stand up. What had happened had happened, but to start acting like an adolescent in heat at his age, and at this time in the morning, would be ridiculous.
He walked quickly across the icy tiles to the bathroom. But even beneath the tepid spray of the shower, thoughts of Cristiana’s languorous, compliant body gave him no peace. It occurred to him for the first time that he might be making a complete fool of himself. This prospect finally succeeded in calming the tumult in his loins. He had no precise idea what sort of humiliation might be in store for him, only a lurking sense that he was vulnerable in various ways.
He dressed and went downstairs to make coffee. By the brutal light of the bare bulb in the kitchen, love’s sweet dream faded still further. What had they done? What were they going to do? Above all, what were they going to say to one another? The prospect of greeting Cristiana, of having to sit down and make small talk, filled Zen with limitless dread. The conversation of their bodies the night before had been as effortless and natural as the soft declension of surf on a beach, but to convert that exchange into the hard currency of language and everyday life seemed a daunting prospect.
The coffee gurgled and gushed. He poured himself a cup which fumed in the chill air and scribbled a note to Cristiana, explaining that he had had to go in to work early and would ring her later that morning. Deciding that this looked cold and bureaucratic, he tore it up and wrote another, attempting to explain the riot of emotions in his heart. That ended up in the bin too. The note he eventually left on the table owed more to the first draft than the second, but with several allusions to his feelings about what had happened the previous night.
Outside, the darkness was still untouched by signs of dawn. It was much colder than it had been the day before, a still, rigid cold. There was hardly a breath of wind. The only sounds were the lapping of water and the cries of gulls circling high above. Zen set off walking fast, burning off the energy surging through his body. Thinking about his youth, as he had often done in the past few days, it seemed like a film overlaid with grandiose gushing music which flooded every banal scene with emotion and made it seem transcendent and unique. Being older, he thought, meant living the same film without the music.
Now, though, the soundtrack was back in place. He felt strong and vigorous, invincible and serene. The doubts and difficulties which had beset him earlier now seemed trivial. A woman had offered herself to him and he
