Last Summer in the City Read online

  “Shall I drive you home?” I said, but she said she was never going back to Eva’s. “Where, then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought your place. For a few days.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You figured it all out, didn’t you?” she said, trying to smile.

  The city was coming back to life. More and more people were returning every day and somehow everything would go back to being the way it was before. Nothing ever changed in this city, that’s the way it was.

  I said I’d take her to a hotel.

  “All right,” she said, searching in her handbag for something. The car filled with the scent of lilac. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

  9

  I was drunk from morning to night. Just like the good old days, truth be told. The days drifted by and summer had turned to fall and fall was turning to winter. The only god-awful moment was waking. Throwing up in the morning is one of the most unpleasant aspects of a period of intense alcoholic activity, but apart from that I couldn’t complain. I kept going to the newspaper office, even when I could barely type because my hands were shaking so much. My fingers would get stuck between the keys and my nails were constantly broken. Most of the time I sat there in front of the typewriter while the disc turned and turned. When the girls got tired of having to do my work for me, they tipped off the head of the department. The pit bull came over all understanding at first, then, getting nowhere with that, conveyed the message that at the end of November I would have to go. But there is a kind of justice in the world, because two days before my time was up his expired. Not that he died, only that there was some kind of revolution at the paper, which I vaguely heard about, at the end of which the head of department was dismissed and his place taken by Rosario. I’d wound up safe and sound.

  In the evening, I would go to Signor Sandro’s and once I’d gotten on top of the situation I would go outside and fight with the police. People in uniform had always bothered me and when I drank I felt an absolute necessity to tell them that. I picked on anyone in uniform, even streetcar drivers, but apart from police officers my favorites were hotel doormen.

  I would get home exhausted. In the morning, if I could manage to stand on my feet, I’d take the movie script and do the rounds of the film companies. I wasn’t doing it only for Graziano but for me. I was still paying his funeral expenses, which had been astronomical. But nothing came of it. I rarely managed to speak with anyone more important than a secretary—I even ended up in bed with a couple of them, I think. Then one day I actually got to see a producer.

  He was young, dynamic, northern, and penniless. He’d read the script and liked it a lot. There was someone else with him in the office, a guy in jeans and sweater, a director. I’d seen some of his movies, Westerns that weren’t as bad as you might have thought, given the titles, and we spoke affably. He liked the project, he said, even though the screenplay would have to be changed in ways that wouldn’t affect the basic story. A lot depended on the price, the producer said rather warily. I said that wouldn’t be a problem, they seemed relieved, and the tone became affable again. They even had the right actor available, a young pop singer who was making a name for himself in movies. True, he was a little young, but one of the director’s ideas was to reduce the age of the main character by about ten years. “I’d make him one of those long-haired young guys from a good family,” he said, “a young pacifist. The fact that he kills his father becomes much more emblematic.”

  “Maybe he should play the flute on Piazza Navona,” I said. The director half closed his eyes, weighing up the idea. He thought it was a good one.

  We talked some more, ever more affably as the bottle of whisky on the table gradually emptied. When it was finished, I pushed it across the table and told them where they could stick it and why. They were very upset by that, and even tried to grab hold of me, but I brandished the bottle and managed to get the hell out of there unscathed. I still had the bottle in my hand when I hit the street, so I headed to the nearest bar. They refused to fill it with hot water and I argued with them at length, maintaining that the bottle was glass, not plastic, and so must still have a modicum of value on the stock exchange. But they didn’t understand about high finance, so I left. The first thing I saw on the street was a policeman getting out of a patrol car. I threw myself at the car door just as he was sticking his head out. I learned later that he lost two teeth.

  As for me, I woke up in an iron bed as a woman’s face with heavy, patient features surmounted by a white cap leaned in a few centimeters from mine. Immediately, I felt a needle piercing my arm. The syringe was full of red liquid. I saw the straps at the sides of the bed. I asked if they’d used them.

  “Only the first night,” the nurse said.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Four days.”

  “Give me my clothes,” I said, sitting up. We were in a large ward full of beds, but only two were occupied, one by me and one by somebody or other near the door. I wanted to see the doctor and get the hell out of there, but when I tried to stand up I felt dizzy and my knees sagged. I was freezing cold even though there were some big radiators against the cracked walls.

  “I’ll bring you another blanket,” the nurse said as she helped me back into bed. “You can see the doctor at noon. Is there anyone you want informed that you’re here?”

  I didn’t reply and pulled the blanket over my shoulders. I fell asleep again until the next day and when I woke I felt fine and wanted a drink. The nurse—not the same one, another one—said that as far as the drink went, I could forget it, but that if I wanted to I could speak with the doctor. That was something, at least, a doctor. I said I wanted to see him right away and then go.

  By now almost all the beds in the ward were occupied. I was led to an office with a cupboard and a desk. Behind the desk was a curt old man. The first thing he said, after I’d sat down opposite him, was to ask if I wanted to die.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then look at this,” he said, holding out a sheet of paper. I didn’t take it. He gave me a glance and put it down on the desk. “Do you know what sundown syndrome is?” he said. I shook my head, and he started reading aloud what was on the paper. I heard him say a whole lot of stuff about confusion, primitive personality disorders, anxiety attacks, mood swings, delirium, confabulation. I liked confabulation a lot. “Do you ever see mice?” he said. This one scared me. Why should I see mice? I wasn’t at that point yet. I didn’t say anything, but he noticed my concern and put the paper to one side. “Do you recall throwing an empty bottle at the mirror in a bar and then attacking the police? There’s a report about you.” All I remembered was the police officer. The doctor kept looking at me, then he dropped his pencil on the desk and delivered his verdict. “You should never touch another drop of alcohol,” he said. “Your liver won’t let you. You have to be careful. There are people who can drink and people who can’t. You can’t. Get that in your head, if you want to go on living. Otherwise, do what you like.”

  “I won’t drink anymore,” I said.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “I won’t drink anymore,” I said again. “Can I go now?”

  “If you feel up to it,” he said. I thanked him and headed for the door. As I opened it, he spoke again. “Gazzara,” he said. I turned because his voice sounded different, kindlier. “It’ll be hard,” he said when I looked at him.

  “I know,” I said. “I tried once before.” Suddenly, I felt like crying.

  “Come back if you need help,” he said.

  I closed the door and headed along the corridor. A nurse was pushing a cart loaded with red syringes. It clinked like a cart full of bottles. I stopped her and asked her if I could have my clothes. I went back to the big ward and sat down on my bed and waited. When the nurse came in with my clothes, I asked her what day it was. It was ten days to Christmas.

  * * *

  Whenever you quit drinking, y
ou get the impression the world is taking the opportunity to attack you from all sides, but, in my case, it wasn’t only an impression. The next day, at home, I was awakened by a kind of muffled, monotonous throbbing I’d never heard before. I went to the window and saw that the valley was done for. In the cold December sun, a digger was uprooting the trees, leaving a dark trail across the meadow like a wound. They were constructing something and as usual they were starting by destroying everything. It went on like this for days and days, and every now and again the throbbing of the digger was joined by the crack of a tree being felled, but from this point on the only time I was home was to sleep.

  I could barely keep on my feet. The alcohol had gone from my veins, leaving a void I didn’t know how to fill. I forced myself to eat a lot of meat and fresh vegetables, one of the recommendations on the sheet of paper I’d been given on leaving the hospital, along with some blue compresses, but all I could manage to drink, and then only with difficulty, was a little tea and some orange juice.

  One day, thinking it might be easier to eat with company, I phoned the Diaconos. Viola answered, but hearing behind her voice other voices I knew I made an appointment for the following evening.

  When I arrived, I walked in and there in the living room, behind the white velvet couch, was a Christmas tree not much smaller than the one in the Rinascente department store. “The city’s gone crazy,” Viola said. “Have you been downtown lately?”

  I’d carefully avoided doing so. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was the decorations on the streets and the white-bearded Santas outside the stores. Even Christmas trees I’d been unable to stand, since they’d started making them out of plastic. But I didn’t tell her that, not only because the Diaconos’ tree was a real tree, with scent and everything, but because I was fine as I was and didn’t want to talk. I watched the servant going back and forth, setting the table. There was a nice family atmosphere just then, as we waited for Renzo to get back from the TV center.

  And there was something else. I’d seen colorful packages heaped up in the hallway and they’d reminded me of long-buried Christmases in Milan: the cold, damp air, the smell of fog and mandarin oranges, and especially the stores, the magnificently decorated delicatessens with their mountains of fresh cheeses, strings of sausages, delicious hot dogs. At Christmas my father would order whole baskets of provisions, and all afternoon, on Christmas Eve, errand boys would be coming and going, ringing the doorbell and unloading stacks of marvels on the kitchen table, while my sisters would shriek and start to taste a little of everything, annoying my mother because they would ruin the appearance of the dishes. God, we were actually happy once! I was seized by the sudden urge to go to Milan.

  “Christmas used to be more intimate,” Viola said. “Now this whole gift thing is completely crazy. Do you know how much Renzo’s had to spend on gifts?”

  “This is for you,” my father would say, “and this is for you, and this is for you,” as he distributed the gifts. He never said our names. God knows why.

  “Have you heard from Arianna?”

  “Why should I?” I said, a knife starting to twist inside me. “Maybe she’s growing lilacs.”

  “Crazy stuff,” Viola said. She didn’t know what I was talking about, but then she hadn’t been outside Sant’Elia’s villa. “What’s his name, that Arlorio, he’s stopping her from seeing her sister, which means she can’t see us either. Eva’s desperate. She’s in a terrible state.” She looked at me. “You did know she’s with Arlorio, didn’t you?” she said hesitantly. I said no and she bit her lip, so I told her I’d assumed it and she recovered. She grew meditative. “Why did it end like that, Leo?” she said, but I didn’t reply. Managing not to think about it was difficult enough without other people interfering. But Viola wanted to talk. “A lot of it’s Eva’s fault. She was absurdly jealous. I’m not even referring to Livio—that was pure madness, in my opinion—I’m referring to before, to you. She couldn’t bear it that Arianna was in love with you.”

  That’s how I found out that Arianna had been in love with me. That’s how I found out, in the intimate, persuasive tones of a piece of gossip, that she’d been in love with me. There had been terrible scenes because of me. Eva couldn’t understand how Arianna could be in love with a fucked-up guy like me. All they did was fight, but the most violent quarrel was when I’d run away from the TV center. They were all at dinner together, and Arianna, who was extremely anxious, kept getting up to phone me, until Eva exploded. There were smashed plates and tears and, in the end, Arianna walked out, saying she was going to live with me. But she couldn’t find me and at five in the morning had gone to the Diaconos’. She was in such a state, they had to call a doctor. “She couldn’t breathe,” Viola said. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about the evening after that, when she came to my apartment and I turned my back on her and left her in the armchair.

  Renzo walked in and gave me one of his slaps on the back. “Look who’s here,” he said. “What do you think of the tree?”

  “He’s a barbarian, as usual,” Viola said with a laugh. “He hasn’t given it a second glance.”

  They made me nauseous. I was thinking about what Viola had said as she walked me to the door the evening I’d run away from the TV center. Phone Arianna, you know how she dramatizes—that’s what she’d said. After everything that had happened, after seeing her in that state, that’s what she’d said. But that’s the way they were. They took everything in stride. They were frivolous and sure of themselves. They crushed people with a one-liner and then walked on by, toward the first armchair at hand. Well, this was another place to cross off my list. I had to make an effort to talk to them over dinner. Then I had to make another effort to play chess with Renzo. I was thinking about Milan. I felt a kind of yearning for the serious, slightly dull life of my gloomy city. I was tired of one-liners and social gatherings where you killed people coldly, without drawing blood, as if they were clothes you could discard.

  When I left, an icy wind, the kind that cuts your hands, was wiping the city clean, and above it was a sky that could break your heart. I raised the collar of my coat and got in the old Alfa Romeo. Sheltered from the wind, I counted what money I had. It was enough. There was a train at one, and I just had time to catch it. I traveled all night.

  The train was packed, and you couldn’t breathe in the compartment. So I went out into the corridor and sat down on a stool, resting my forehead against the window. It wasn’t comfortable, but I fell asleep listening to the voices that came from the dark-shrouded compartments. The last thing I heard was a girl laughing, in the silence of some small station, then I didn’t hear anything more, and didn’t feel anything either, not even the cold of the window on my forehead.

  I woke twice. Once was in the middle of the night as the train crossed the Apennines. They were covered in snow, and I sat looking at them and smoking a cigarette. The second time was when it was almost dawn and we were speeding across the Po Valley. Two hours later I was in Milan.

  * * *

  I got off the train into a grim morning. I was at the end of my tether and I could smell that railroad smell on me that you’re always left with after spending the night on a train. I couldn’t show up at home in this state, without even a suitcase. I went to the public baths. The face I saw in the mirror made me realize what a desperate undertaking this was. It was my eyes that betrayed me. They were swollen and red and my cheeks were hollow and flaccid like an old man’s. I took a shower and got a haircut, but it didn’t greatly improve my appearance. Then I tried having breakfast, but the coffee was disgusting and scorching hot, the plastic-wrapped brioche seemed straight out of a tire factory, and the barista was not much more than a dishwasher who did everything in a hurry. I had to make an effort not to get back on a train and leave.

  I knew the smell of the air, that smell of fog and smoking brushwood that Milan always has in winter. It had snowed the day before and the sidewalks were lined with heaps of dirty,
frozen snow. The buildings rose in a light haze that muffled sounds, every now and again brightened by a sun that seemed about to be snuffed out. It was cold.

  I was still stiff when I got on a streetcar—the streetcars there are great—and sat down on one of the smooth, shiny wooden benches. Around me, people were talking in that old, forgotten accent. They were pale and drained, ready for the daily carnage.

  I began to recognize the streets of my neighborhood. There were many new stores since I’d lived there and it was pretty much from the names only that I recognized the streets. That morning I noticed the changes with greater clarity than before, and yet some things reemerged from the past—an osteria with a green sign of a ballerina in a white tutu, the stores run by the Chinese, the tobacconist’s where the hookers went to have a chat and brush their hair—all things that were still standing, huddled between new stores with plate glass windows.

  Then all of a sudden I didn’t recognize anything anymore. Where was that ugly Baroque church? For a moment I thought the streetcar had changed route and instinctively I checked the names of the streets. They were the right ones, but the church wasn’t there, and not only the church, as I could see when I got off the streetcar, but even the hill facing our apartment building. It had been a wooded hill, with granite steps and long slopes down which as a boy I’d slid during long, icy winters, once breaking my arm. It wasn’t there anymore. It had been flattened and in its place was a low, covered market. But that wasn’t what astonished me most. It was the fact that it had all happened so quickly, in not much more than a year.