“So?” I ask the woman with eyes like yours. “Another one who thinks she’s me. So?”
“So, you fool, this might alleviate all your suffering. Don’t you understand, don’t you see that the only connection between the two of you is him? The only point in common might be the love that links you to him.”
“What the hell do you mean? That it wasn’t Viola but that bitch Penelope who was jeopardizing my relationship with Thomas? Are you saying I’m blind, as always?”
Her eyes are sweet again and that makes me nervous. “No,” she says, “she’ll come after you. She doesn’t yet exist in his thoughts. She’ll come if you decide, if you go downstairs, open the letter, and see the photograph she’s sent you. You’ll be able to decide whether to survive or to die…and quite honestly I don’t know which is worse,” and she laughs, modestly putting a hand in front of her mouth.
“Shut up! Shut up…stop laughing. Tell me more clearly,” I beg.
She composes herself and says, “Do it like this. If you want to die outright, the best thing to do is the following: you invite her over to your place one of these days, and a few hours before she turns up, you leave. You get out of there. But you really have to go for good. In the meantime make sure that he’s at home, so that when she rings the bell, he’s the one who answers the door, and she’ll be forced to accept his invitation to come in, because she’s just had a long journey…and that way you’ll die, but at least you’ll be happy. And you’ll know that everything’s real and nothing is imagined anymore.”
I look at her again, think for a moment, bite my lip, and then whisper, “I’ll go and see her.”
I open my mailbox and see that the letter’s there, and I don’t care, I don’t give it a thought. But when I see her photograph only one thought occurs to me: She’s more beautiful than I am. And my mind’s made up.
Thirty-seven
I’m on the train. The landscapes of Lazio and then of Umbria run parallel to my face, but my eyes are fixed on the seat opposite mine, and I am listening to a familiar but by now an ephemeral voice.
Thomas looks at me as he looked at me some months ago, straight into my pupils, with his eyes gleaming, his nostrils twitching, and his mouth half open. He looks at me as he looked at me when my excess of life was still so feeble.
I no longer have death in my heart, because my heart has already been stripped down to nothing. Now death is advancing like a tumor; I feel it itching as it settles among my joints and muscles.
It’s slow, tender, sinuous, feline. I’m not afraid. It’s playing its part well; it knows how to catch human beings in its noose.
I’m abandoning him and going back to the red house on the hill, bringing his torn-up T-shirts impregnated with his smell. I don’t sleep because I sense that if I did, I would never ever wake up again. I huddle up on the sofa and think, until the light’s excitement has subsided; then at night I light the fire and bring tears to my eyes by fanning the flames.
I don’t know what Penelope did — I wonder if she ever came. I really hope she did, so I huddle up and think of the two of them. He says, “Come on in. Melissa should be here any minute,” and she says, “Oh no, I’m sorry, I’ll come back later,” and then he looks at her and realizes that she has beautiful eyes and a beautiful face framed by beautiful hair. But he doesn’t desire her, no, not yet. She goes downstairs to wait for me, and I will never come, so she will ring the doorbell and say to him, “Listen, she hasn’t arrived yet. My train has gone…I can take the ten- thirty,” and then inevitably he will invite her up and maybe offer her a cold beer, and then, only then, will he realize, as he watches her sipping her beer, that she has the most beautiful mouth he’s ever seen. And then, only then, will he decide to kiss her.
And I go to sleep.
Thirty-eight
I follow him at night as he runs about the city on a moped with Penelope’s breasts pressed up against his back. I remember when we used to enjoy ourselves counting the holes in Rome, the huge crevices that pierce the streets. From Trastevere to the Esquiline we counted thirty-eight holes; from Piazza Fiume to the Cassia there were too many to count.
I stagger among the stinking narrow streets, a poodle is shitting on the steps near our apartment, the shutters are closing, the mechanics are saying good-bye to one another, arranging to meet again tomorrow, and people are walking their dogs on leads. He comes out of the door first, followed by her, and then by the dog. I hide behind the steps and watch the girl lift up her dress and climb onto the moped — she sits like Audrey Hepburn in
She has a beatific smile I know very well, full cheekbones, and tousled hair. He has a kind of moribund sense about him, a dirty inheritance he must bear which also smells bitter.
I’d like him to fall hopelessly in love…not because his well-being makes me happy, but perhaps because I enjoy the harm I am doing myself.
Five months later, I go and stand beneath the balcony and hear her moans of pleasure, and I go home and cut my skin. I carve his name and mine with a box cutter, writing what I used to write in the toilets at school: “Melissa and Thomas forever.”
He will never know of my pain, because my eyes are silent dogs that follow him, foaming at the mouth.
His happiness gives me pleasure because it’s the very source of my pain, the harm I’m doing myself.
That’s why I’ll be eternally grateful to him. Damnation.
I curse them all.
