The Silence of the Wave Read online

  “You know, Roberto, over these months I’ve always told you you were looking better, that you were making progress, and that everything would soon be back the way it was. Do you remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, it wasn’t true. I said it to help you, to cheer you up, but I didn’t think you looked well at all. Not even a bit. You were always distracted. So distracted, I sometimes felt like asking you what I’d just said, and I was sure you wouldn’t have been able to tell me.”

  Roberto looked at him with genuine curiosity.

  “Tonight was different.”

  “In what way?”

  “You were here. Not always, of course. But at least there were times when you were here and your eyes were the same as they used to be. In the past few months you seemed … well, you were different, but tonight I’m really pleased. I can tell you you’re looking better without telling a lie.”

  Roberto did not know what to reply, nor did he really understand what his friend was referring to. The evening hadn’t seemed any different from the others. He gave a slight smile—which could mean anything—and Carella returned it. When things aren’t clear, it’s easier to get by without words.

  He walked back on foot, as usual: walking quickly, it took about an hour to get from the Pigneto to his apartment.

  As he was crossing the Piazza Vittorio he saw a young guy trying to open the door of a car that clearly wasn’t his. Fifty or sixty feet from Roberto, another young guy stood lookout. Without a second thought, Roberto walked to the car and the youngster playing with the lock.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, immediately thinking he’d seldom asked a more stupid question in his life.

  The young man looked at him in surprise. Clearly the question had struck him as strange, too. “I’m stealing,” he said at last, in the tone of someone who thinks everything is far too obvious to require further explanation. Roberto felt like laughing and had to make an effort to control himself.

  In the meantime the lookout had also approached.

  “I’m off duty and on my way home,” Roberto said. “Don’t force me to do my job. Just drop it and go.”

  The two young men stared at each other for a moment, looked Roberto in the face, obviously decided it wasn’t worth taking the risk, and disappeared into the night.

  The next day was sunny, and Roberto took a long walk as far as the Foro Italico. He ate in a trattoria somewhere and then returned home, still on foot. He told himself that he should measure the distances he covered—and then immediately wondered why on earth he would do that.

  He remembered those words of Louis Armstrong. If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

  Every now and again he glanced at the phone to see if by chance anyone had called him without his having noticed. It was an absurd thing to do, because people hardly ever tried to get in touch with him these days, and it certainly hadn’t happened this Sunday. And yet he had the feeling the impulse meant something. Figuring out what was quite another matter.

  He spent half the afternoon and evening watching TV and the other half on the computer.

  He looked again at some of the videos he had seen a few days earlier, although he avoided the commercial for mineral water. He found some new ones, including extracts from stage plays, in which Emma looked very different.

  All of a sudden, he had the nasty feeling that he was using his computer as some kind of giant keyhole through which he could spy without being seen. It seemed to him that he was violating a space he could only legitimately enter with the permission of the person involved.

  The thought made him feel uncomfortable, and so he abruptly cut off the connection, switched off the computer, took his medication, and went to bed.

  9

  The next morning Roberto woke up very early, before dawn. He tried in vain to get back to sleep, but he was feeling too restless, so he got up, dressed, ate a few cookies, drank a glass of milk, and went out, moving quickly as if he were late for an appointment.

  He walked along the Via Panisperna, turned into the Via Milano, quickly reached the Via Nazionale, and by the time he circled the fountain in the Piazza Esedra he was almost running. He got to the Porta Pia, went through it, and it was not until he was in the Via Alessandria that he realized he was very close to the doctor’s office. Except that there were another eight hours to go before his appointment. It was only then that he eased the crazy rhythm of his walk, continued for another half an hour, and found himself inside the Villa Ada park.

  The first thing he noticed was that there was a drinking fountain near the entrance, similar to the one he had seen a few days earlier. The discovery gave him a quiver of joy.

  He should have been feeling tired, he thought, instead of which he felt a kind of excess of energy, something that needed releasing and working off. He descended a slight, grassy slope and looked around to see if there was anybody about. Obviously there were a few people, even though the park was half deserted. Who cares, he told himself, everybody comes here to exercise, and he started doing push-ups.

  He did them until he collapsed face down. When he got up again, his arms were shaking and he found it hard to control his breathing.

  An elderly man with an Alsatian on a lead was looking at him anxiously. There were other people exercising in the park, but in tracksuits and sneakers. Someone doing push-ups in jeans and a regular jacket was unusual to say the least. When the owner of the Alsatian realized he had been spotted, he looked away. Obeying an instinctive impulse, Roberto walked toward him.

  “Good morning,” he said in a cordial tone, trying to recover his breath.

  “Good morning,” the man replied, somewhat puzzled. The dog was following the scene, its senses alert.

  “Alsatians are my favorite dogs,” Roberto said.

  The old man seemed to relax. “Mine too. I’ve always had Alsatians, ever since I was a little boy. They’re the best.”

  “Yours must be three or four years old.”

  “You have a good eye. He’s actually three and a half.”

  “Isn’t he a bit of a handful when you take him for a walk?”

  “You mean that because I’m old he might drag me or make me fall?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that, I—”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’m eighty-one. If he decided to send me flying he could do it easily.”

  “But he doesn’t.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He’s a good boy, very well trained.”

  “Trained by you?”

  “Yes. Training dogs was my hobby when I was younger. I was quite good at it, I took part in competitions and often won.”

  “What kind of competitions?”

  “Do you know something about them?”

  “A bit. I’m a carabiniere, I’ve had quite a bit to do with dogs.”

  “Ah, I used to have quite a few friends in the Carabinieri’s canine unit. I’ve lost touch with all of them; I have no idea if they are still alive. Anyway, I took part in competitions in the utility and protection categories. The last one I went in for must have been about twenty years ago.”

  It was a neutral phrase but he seemed suddenly overcome with emotion. It was as if he were looking into the distance but couldn’t find what he was searching for.

  “Does he let people stroke him?” Roberto asked at last.

  “If I give permission,” the old man said, with a hint of pride. And then, turning to the dog: “It’s all right, Chuck, he’s a friend.”

  The dog started wagging his tail soberly and approached Roberto, who stroked his head and then scratched him behind the ears.

  “Can I ask you a question?” the man said.

  “Of course.”

  “Why were you doing push-ups in your street clothes like that?”

  “I looked a bit strange, didn’t I?”

  “Actually, you did.”

  Roberto shrugged.

  “I’m just coming
out of a very difficult period of my life. There was an earthquake and now I’m dealing with the aftershocks.”

  The old man looked at him with an expression of aroused curiosity and nodded as if he had understood, but maybe—Roberto thought—he was only trying to be kind.

  “Well, I have to go. Congratulations on the dog, he’s very beautiful.”

  “If I were your age I’d try not to waste time. We never get back a single minute that we waste. Good luck.”

  Roberto said good-bye and the man left, the dog walking perfectly in step with him, like a soldier happy to follow orders. Roberto had the impulse to go after the man, stop him, and ask him to explain what he could do so as not to waste a single minute. Of course he didn’t. He stood there watching the man walk away, thinking that, like most of the people he had met in his life, he would never see him again.

  * * *

  He arrived at a quarter to five. He went into the bar opposite the doctor’s office and ordered a juice, keeping his eye on the building. He had just come out and was crossing the road when the front door opened.

  “It seems we have a date,” she said smiling at him.

  Roberto responded to the smile, while thinking, with a vague sense of panic, that he did not know what to say.

  “It seems we do.”

  “It occurs to me we haven’t even introduced ourselves. My name’s Emma.”

  Roberto held out his hand, and told her his name.

  “I already know your name. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I had a look at some of your videos. From what I gather, you’re very good.”

  He spoke quickly, as if fearing he wouldn’t be able to say everything he wanted. She did not seem either touched by the compliment or annoyed by the intrusion.

  “At my best, I was good. I mean, I wasn’t bad, but that’s my old life. I don’t act anymore.”

  Roberto managed to hold back the question. What was she doing now? Better not to ask questions when you don’t know what they might lead to. A lawyer friend had told him that once. It was a rule of trial procedure, but it was obviously valid in many other cases.

  “I saw that you also acted in the theater.”

  She seemed thrown, as if the subject made her feel uncomfortable, or at least was completely unexpected.

  “Do they have those things there as well? I mean, can you actually find those videos on the Internet? I never use it, just sometimes for e-mail.”

  “I saw that you acted in Shakespeare,” Roberto insisted, but as soon as he had finished the sentence he felt awkward and stupid. He had spoken in the confident tone of someone who goes to the theater and knows all about Shakespeare.

  The only times he’d ever set foot in a theater in his whole life was when he’d been to a few concerts—apart from once, to arrest a couple of prop men who supplemented their income by dealing cocaine in theatrical circles. That was the one occasion he’d actually seen a play. If his memory served him correctly, it was by Pirandello and, while he was there in the darkness, something in the dialogue had struck him.

  “Do you like the theater?”

  Here it came.

  “To tell the truth, I haven’t seen much. But yes, the little I have seen I liked. I like Pirandello.” There, he’d said it. Now she would ask him what he liked by Pirandello, he wouldn’t be able to reply, he would look really stupid, and she would realize what a slob he was.

  “I was once in As You Desire Me,” she said. “We toured Italy with it.” From the faraway look in her eyes it was obvious it was something she had long forgotten that had suddenly come back into her mind.

  Roberto nodded his head slightly, with the expression of someone who is perfectly familiar with what is being talked about. He hoped intensely that she would change the subject, and swore that this evening he would go on Wikipedia and find out all about Shakespeare, Pirandello, and that play, the title of which he had memorized: As You Desire Me.

  “The kind of things that come up when you meet someone by chance,” she said at last. Mentally, Roberto sighed in relief.

  “Now I really must dash. Actually, I always have to dash. Next time you could tell me what kind of work you do. Bye.”

  She passed in front of him, wrapping her scarf around her neck and leaving behind her a slight smell of perfume. Roberto watched until she had disappeared around the corner and then went inside the building.

  10

  Climbing the stairs, he told himself there could be no doubt: Emma, too, was one of the doctor’s patients. When a coincidence is repeated, it constitutes first a clue and then evidence. It was a prosecutor Roberto had often worked with who had loved repeating that sentence, but now that he came to think about it, it wasn’t as profound or original as all that. Not at all, in fact.

  For some obscure reason, this thought put him in a bad mood.

  “Is there something wrong today, Roberto?”

  Obviously, the doctor had noticed. Roberto had the childish impulse to contradict him.

  “No, no. It’s only that last night I had a dream that made an impression on me and I was just thinking about it.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  That was it. He had no dream to tell.

  “I dreamed that I met a woman. She was someone I’d seen before, and the encounter happened in a familiar place, but I can’t quite pin down where it was. We talked, she told me her name, and then she rushed off. And as she rushed off I could smell her perfume, which is strange for a dream, isn’t it?”

  He was surprised at himself for how he had concocted the story. It was all true and all false, he told himself. Like lots of other things, come to think of it.

  “Actually, smells in dreams are an unusual experience. But it does happen. What name did this woman give you in the dream?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t remember what she said, but it was as if we were introducing ourselves and then she had to run because she was in a hurry.”

  “And can you identify the smell? Did you like it?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly. It was a light perfume, and in the dream it struck me that she probably only put on a little. But I liked it, yes.”

  Why was he getting all tangled up in this nonsense? He had never before lied to the doctor, and now he was trying to interpret a nonexistent dream. What does it mean to dream about a smell? Or a meeting with a woman who runs away? He felt guilty.

  Immediately, though, and for a few long, disconcerting seconds, he wondered if that encounter a little while earlier had really taken place. The experience, brief as it was, made him feel dizzy.

  “Has that ever happened to you before? I mean: to have dreams that involved smells?”

  “If I have, I don’t remember.”

  Now please let’s change the subject, he thought.

  “If dreaming about a perfume is a novelty for you, then I’d say we have a piece of good news. Another sign of development.”

  The human mind works in a surprising way. There was no dream and so this whole discussion ought to have been meaningless. And yet when the doctor told him that it was good news, that the smell meant things were changing for the better, Roberto believed it. The light perfume that Emma had left behind her was good news for him.

  “I realized something this weekend. I’ve been dreaming a lot more over the past ten days. Really a lot. I never used to dream before. All right, I know, a statement like that doesn’t mean anything. We all dream every night, you told me that.”

  “You did dream, but you couldn’t remember. In a way, though, the phrase ‘I didn’t dream’ is correct.”

  Roberto looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

  “Do you know the story of the tree that falls in the deserted forest, where there’s nobody to hear it crash to the ground?”

  “No.”

  “Imagine an old tree, with its trunk all rotten and eaten away by parasites, which gives way eventually and crashes to the ground, among the other trees, destroying branches, sweeping away bushes,
and maybe rolling once it’s fallen. Imagine there’s nobody in the forest to hear the tree fall and crash.”

  Roberto was looking at him, puzzled.

  “Do you follow me?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “If there’s nobody to hear it fall, does the tree make a noise?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “If there’s nobody in the forest or in the immediate vicinity, and so nobody hears the noise, can we say it existed?”

  “The noise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Obviously I’d like to say yes, but I assume it’s a trick question.”

  “There’s no trick. Did the noise exist or not?”

  “Of course it existed.”

  “How do we know if nobody heard it and—”

  “What has that got to do with—”

  “Wait, let me finish. How do we know if nobody heard it and there’s nobody to tell the story?”

  Roberto did not reply immediately. This was no chance provocation on the part of the doctor, and so, in all probability, the most obvious reply wasn’t the right one. In the past, the doctor had mentioned the fact that paradoxes help us to understand reality and solve problems. Especially those of an agitated psyche.

  “Do you mean that if no one hears it, the noise doesn’t exist?”

  “It’s an old Zen riddle, which also has a scientific basis, though I’m not going to bore you with that. The function of Zen riddles—they’re called kōans—is to confront the pupil—in this case, you—with the contradictory, paradoxical nature of reality. They help to draw attention to the multiplicity of possible answers to the problems of existence and aim to awaken consciousness. In some ways they have a similar function to the practice of analysis.”

  “So?”

  “So thinking about the question of the tree in the deserted forest may prompt you to think about dreams and about what it means to remember them or not to remember them.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “The Zen master rarely responds to such a direct question. The idea is that the pupil, in searching for the right answer, finds himself. In other words, self-knowledge.”