The Past is a Foreign Country Read online

  I don’t remember what we talked about all those evenings in the kitchen of the De Cesare apartment, among the rows of pans hanging as if on display, immersed in that clear light and that clean, comfortable smell. A smell of home and fresh food and expensive soap and leather.

  That was what I liked most when I arrived there: to smell that nice, reassuring smell. And sometimes I wondered what people smelled when they entered my home, and what that smell – which I was no longer aware of – told them about my family.

  The evening after the poker game with Roberto and Massaro, I got to Giulia’s a little earlier than usual. I’d cashed my share of the winnings that morning, and I’d bought her a bag. In order to beg her forgiveness for the previous evening’s quarrel, and to quell my own vague sense of guilt.

  I gave her the gift and she opened it, looking rather surprised. When she saw what it was, she looked at me, even more surprised, because it was an expensive bag and there was no reason for such a big gift.

  ‘I wish I had a boyfriend like that,’ Alessia sighed as she left.

  When we were alone, I told Giulia what had happened. The part I could tell her, obviously. I’d played some poker, and I’d been incredibly lucky and won a lot of money. That was more or less it.

  ‘How much did you win?’ Giulia asked, wide-eyed, moving her head closer to mine. As if to make sure she’d understood.

  ‘A few million lire, I told you.’ Instinctively, I realised it was better to keep it vague.

  ‘A few million. Have you gone crazy? Where did you play?’

  She wasn’t angry. She was astonished, incredulous.

  ‘At the home of a…a friend of Francesco Carducci’s.’

  ‘Ah, you’re really a friend of Francesco Carducci’s now, aren’t you? First you get into a fight together, then you go gambling with him. What next? Are you going to be off chasing skirts with him? Should I tell my mother to be careful when you’re around?’

  ‘He invited me because they needed a fourth player. I told you yesterday, when you got angry.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me who had invited you.’

  ‘Well, as you see, I had nothing to hide. For a while it was a perfectly normal game. Then there was this incredible hand, with two fours dealt. I didn’t do anything to push the game in a particular direction, that’s just the way it worked out.’

  As I spoke, it struck me very clearly that my life was splitting into two halves. One half was normal and the other had moved into a shadowy area I couldn’t talk to anyone about. At that moment I knew I’d started leading a double life.

  And I liked the idea.

  ‘What I don’t understand is how the two of you ever became friends.’

  ‘We haven’t become friends. Not that there’d be anything bad or strange about it if we had.’ I was aware of a curious tension in my voice as I said this, as if I had to defend Francesco from the prejudice implicit in Giulia’s words. And even at that moment, I realised, I wasn’t being honest with her. I really had become a friend of Francesco’s, and I wanted him to become my friend.

  ‘That night when we got into a fight at Alessandra’s, we left together. After what had happened, it seemed quite natural. When we said goodnight, we agreed to meet again some time. Then he was missing a fourth at poker and he called me. That’s all.’

  ‘And what if, instead of winning all that money, you’d lost it?’

  ‘There was no way I could have lost that hand, not with four queens.’ It was the truth, I told myself. I was just leaving out a few details.

  Giulia was silent a while. Then she picked up the bag again, turned it around in her hands, and tried putting it over her shoulder. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  I nodded, and smiled like an idiot.

  Finally, she put the bag aside, and asked me if she ought to be worried: you know what they say about people who are lucky at cards. I said I didn’t think there was anything to worry about, but if she liked, we could check. As long as we had a little privacy. Well, we had privacy all right, given that her sister had been married for six months, her father was away at a conference somewhere, and her mother was out playing burraco. Just for a change.

  We made love in her room, and I was strangely conscious of all my movements and gestures. Even the most insignificant. It was disturbing, how much I felt in control. I was aware of being there, as our bodies moved together in a way they’d never moved before, and simultaneously of being somewhere else.

  We lay side by side in her bed and Giulia said that if winning at poker had that effect on me, well, she was willing to let me play a few more times. I didn’t say anything.

  I was looking up at the ceiling. I was alone in the room.

  8

  AT LEAST TWO weeks had passed, and Francesco hadn’t called me again. After a few days I’d become convinced that he’d had second thoughts, that he’d realised he’d made a mistake and had decided to drop me. Quite rightly.

  I’d thought of calling him myself, but hadn’t. I didn’t want him to see how tempted I’d been by his proposal. I didn’t want to admit it even to myself. I told myself it was better this way. My life resumed its sluggish course.

  One Friday afternoon, as I was trying to apply myself to the manual of civil procedure, the call came. When I heard his voice, I had a rush of adrenalin. He didn’t tell me why he hadn’t phoned before and I didn’t ask him. Did I fancy going out that evening? I said yes, thinking about what I could possibly tell Giulia. Obviously I’d have to make something up.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll pick you up about ten. We’re going outside Bari.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To a party.’

  As it turned out, Giulia wasn’t a problem. She’d gone down with flu and when I called her she herself told me it was better I didn’t come over tonight if I didn’t want to get ill myself. All right, I said, trying to sound disappointed. In that case, I might go out for a drink with some friends – my friends – just to pass the time.

  The reason I said this was to avoid her calling me at home when I was already out with Francesco. The next day I’d think of something to tell her.

  Francesco was punctual. When I left the building he was already waiting outside, double parked in his DS. He had a smile on his face, a smile I’d soon learn to recognise but would never really manage to figure out.

  We sped through the half-empty streets. In a few minutes, we were out of the city. It was a cold, clear night. The moon was full, and the countryside gliding past us was bathed in a magical pale blue light. You didn’t need headlights, you could go anywhere on a night like this.

  We hardly spoke. Silence usually made me anxious, and I spoke to fill the void, but not that night. That night I felt calm but excited, a kind of tingling inside me. Like being slightly drunk but also completely in control. I didn’t need to speak.

  We turned into an avenue lined with tall pines. The grounds beyond them were like a forest. There was a villa at the end of the avenue, and on the right an open space where a number of cars were parked, most of them shiny and expensive. We parked there, too, and climbed a wide flight of steps to the house.

  ‘Whose party is this?’ I asked, having just realised I had no idea.

  ‘A girl named Patrizia. Her father’s a millionaire. They have hundreds and hundreds of hectares of wheatfields, among other things. It was her birthday a few days ago, I think.’

  I was about to say something about the fact that we’d come empty-handed, then it occurred to me that it was his problem, if it was a problem at all.

  Behind the glass-paned door there was a wide entrance hall. From there we passed into a very large reception room.

  The room was in semi-darkness. The chandelier in the middle of the ceiling was off and the dim lighting came from hidden floor-level lights.

  It was hot. There were a lot of people here, some our age and others older. Quite a few over forty. The room smelled of cigarettes, perfume on warm bodies, wax furniture polish
. There was something tangible in the air, something physical, carnal.

  Francesco said hello to a few people and looked around for the hostess. A girl approached him from behind, took him by the shoulders, turned him round and gave him a big hug. ‘You came! I’m so glad.’

  ‘Why? Is there any reason I shouldn’t have come?’

  I thought I caught a sardonic tone in his voice. Or maybe I imagined it. It didn’t matter at that moment.

  ‘This is my friend Giorgio. Giorgio, meet Patrizia, one of the most dangerous women in the region. She’s a Judo champion.’

  She turned to me and seemed really pleased to meet me: Francesco’s friend. I didn’t know how to react: giving her my hand seemed clumsy, bureaucratic. She solved my dilemma by giving me a hug and kissing me, as if we’d known each other for ages. She was fairly short and solid, with brown hair, dark, slightly wild eyes, and a wide, masculine nose. She conveyed a sense of physical vigour, a cheerful, down-to-earth sensuality. My thoughts had started off along their usual track. I wondered how she would look naked, what it would be like to fuck her. I imagined a white, muscular body against the wall, and me taking her roughly, from behind. Hooray for Judo.

  ‘And are you a bandit like him?’ she asked, cheerfully. ‘Should I beware of you too?’ I didn’t know if I was a bandit or not, I thought. I looked in her eyes and smiled, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘There’s food and drink over there.’ She gestured in the direction of another, more brightly-lit room, where we caught a glimpse of a big table covered with trays and bottles. Then someone called to her from the depths of a sofa. She called back that she was just coming. ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ she said, turning to Francesco, her eyes full of innuendo. ‘Don’t disappear on me like you usually do.’ Francesco smiled at her, narrowing his eyes and nodding his head, with a nice, pleasant, spontaneous expression on his face.

  As soon as he turned, this expression faded like a neon light at closing time. ‘Let’s eat something,’ he said, like someone who’s exhausted the conventions and now has to eat and then get down to work. I followed him.

  The buffet was of a kind I wasn’t used to. At the parties I went to, you’d get foccaccia, panzarotti, ham and salami sandwiches, beer and Coke. Here there was salmon, prawn salad, slices of bread with caviar, carpaccio of swordfish, and expensive wines.

  We filled our plates, Francesco took an almost full bottle of white wine, and we went and sat down on a little sofa in the dimly-lit reception room.

  ‘This is a good place to find candidates for our next game,’ Francesco said, after cleaning his plate – we had eaten in silence – and emptying a few glasses. I nodded. Partly because I didn’t know what to say, and partly because I was learning that it was often better to keep quiet than to speak. He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one before he spoke again.

  ‘I’m going to have a look around. You can wait for me here, or mingle, or have dessert. Whatever you like. I’ll be back when I’ve finished.’

  Again I said nothing, and he slipped away into the semi-darkness.

  There were at least a hundred people here. Many of the men were in jackets and ties, others were more casual. My attention was drawn to one guy in particular: he was about one metre ninety tall, his head was completely shaved – not common in those days – he was wearing a tight black t-shirt, and he had big muscles like a bodybuilder.

  He must have been about thirty-five or forty, and he was with a thin girl, about my age, who had the vaguely anorexic look of a model. She was beautiful, but there was something nervous and overexcited about her that was disturbing. The two of them together made me feel uneasy, as if there was something not quite right about them. As if there was a sickness eating away at them, just beneath the surface.

  There were a lot of beautiful women here. Apart from the bald guy’s girlfriend, though, I found it hard to focus on any of them. It was like being in a big, shiny luxury department store, full of attractive and inviting things. So many things you can’t decide, because choosing one thing means giving up on others. I had finished the bottle of white wine and was about to light a cigarette.

  ‘Can I have one too?’

  I looked to my left, and up, towards where the voice had come from.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, making as if to stand up. Out of politeness and because I couldn’t see her face properly. She touched my shoulder, told me to stay where I was, and turned me around. I smelled her sweet perfume. She sat down on the sofa in the place left free by Francesco.

  ‘Clara,’ she said, holding out her hand in a feminine way, leaning forward slightly in relation to the line of the wrist.

  ‘Giorgio,’ I replied, unable to prevent my eyes lingering a moment longer than they ought to on her large breasts. I recovered, held out the packet, lit her cigarette and then lit mine.

  She took a drag and blew the smoke into the air. ‘You’re a very polite young man.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I notice the way a man offers a cigarette. Basically there are those who first pull one out and then hold out the packet, and those who just hold out the packet. That’s what you did. You didn’t force me to smoke the one you had touched. That would have been like sticking your fingers in my mouth.’ She said these last words after a brief pause, looking me straight in the eyes. I inhaled slowly, as if giving myself time to ponder the meaning of her words. In fact, I was searching for something to say, something appropriate. I could smell alcohol. It was obvious Clara had already drunk quite a bit tonight.

  ‘And what do you do, Giorgio?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be graduating in law this year.’ As I said this, I felt like an awkward schoolboy saying that he has been a boy scout for ten years. Clara couldn’t be less than thirty-two, thirty-three. She wasn’t pretty but she wasn’t ugly. She had a predatory look about her. Not particularly intelligent, but predatory. I was making an effort not to look at those breasts that filled her white blouse so insolently.

  ‘I used to study law, too. But I dropped out. I don’t think I was cut out to be a lawyer anyway. I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying.’

  I didn’t understand anything, but I nodded knowingly. ‘And what do you do now?’ I asked.

  ‘Now I bring lawsuits against my ex-husband, who’s a tight-fisted bastard who won’t pay me what he’s supposed to. But he will, I’m sure of that. Are you on your own?’

  ‘No, I came with a friend.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and fetch us a drink, Giorgio?’

  I stood up and grabbed a bottle of prosecco. She wanted to drink a toast to the two of us, and as our glasses touched I felt as if I was in another dimension, unreal and dizzying. And I felt like laughing. Not because there was anything amusing about the situation. It was a reflex, the kind I used to feel when I was a child and I was distracted in class – a frequent occurrence – and the schoolmistress noticed and lost her temper. When that happened, I always felt like laughing. It was a stupid thing to do because, of course, it only made her angrier. But I couldn’t restrain myself, or rather, I managed to avoid laughing but instead made the kind of grimace people always make when they’re holding back laughter. The same as now.

  ‘You’re not the kind of man who talks too much. I like that. Men always feel they have to smother you in small talk before they declare their intentions. Which are that they’d like to fuck you.’ She held out her glass to me and I refilled it. She drank half of it straight down, and said, ‘Would you like to fuck me?’

  The whole thing was absurd. The impulse to laugh was greater than ever and I had to make a real effort to restrain myself. I don’t know if I ended up looking inscrutable or just plain stupid. Not that it mattered: she had too much alcohol inside her to notice the difference.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, when I was sure I was in control. I also had more than enough alcohol inside me.

  She kept looking at me in silence, as if weighing up my answer, trying to grasp
its hidden meaning.

  At that moment, Francesco came back.

  ‘Done,’ he said, touching me on the shoulder. He smiled at Clara then turned back to me. ‘Can I talk to you for a couple of seconds?’ And turning to Clara, ‘I’m taking him away for a moment, will you excuse us?’ She looked at him without seeing him. Her eyes had become empty suddenly. Glassy.

  I stood up and followed him towards the front door.

  ‘Congratulations, colleague. I see you haven’t wasted any time.’

  ‘She made all the moves…’

  ‘I know. Of course you can do whatever you like, but I want to warn you. She’s unbalanced.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I heard myself ask, resentfully. As if he had said that any woman who approached me at a party must obviously have something wrong with her.

  ‘She has problems.’ He touched his forehead with two fingers. ‘She’s a nymphomaniac, she drinks too much, and if you want my advice, if you’re looking for a quick fuck I’d look somewhere else if I were you. Apart from anything else, with the number of men she’s had, I wouldn’t feel at all sure about having intimate relations with her. I don’t know if you follow my drift.’

  I followed his drift, and it made me feel ill. ‘How do you know these things?’

  ‘The fact that she drinks you can see for yourself. She’s already drunk, you just have to look at her eyes. As for the other thing, apart from all the rumours, a friend of mine made the mistake of getting involved with her. They even had a kind of affair.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The first night, immediately after they’d fucked, she made a scene. I mean, she went off the deep end, started screaming, told him he was a pig, just like all the others, he was only interested in fucking her, that kind of thing.’

  Instinctively, I turned towards the sofa where Clara was sitting. She hadn’t moved, and was still drinking.