Last Summer in the City Read online

  “Do you love him?” I said.

  She said they were getting married at the end of the summer.

  “Good.”

  “Why do you say good? You, of all people, should say bad.”

  “Bad.”

  She shrugged, left me high and dry, and walked into a store. I realized I would never love another woman in my entire life. I followed her in. She was looking excitedly through the dresses hanging on a long rack. “There’s never anything here,” she said, completely ignoring the salesclerk. Then she walked out and went into the store next door.

  We went through six or seven stores before she decided on a red dress with one hell of a price tag. In her purse she had a checkbook as thick as a finger. In many of the stores, given that she was asking me to advise her, the clerks looked to me. “This afternoon will cost me my life!” she said, laughing. “He’s so jealous!”

  “In that case, I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Why?” she said. “I’m not afraid of dying anymore. And anyway, it would be so romantic!” She grabbed hold of my shoulder and pressed her cheek to it. “Your smell,” she said. “You always smell so good! Some of it’s the smell of your car. Do you still have it?”

  “Yes,” I said as fragments of the previous year started to rain down on me. In a moment I was buried in an avalanche of forgotten emotions, memories of my life with her in the last summer of my life. I didn’t say anything else and she too was silent but must have been thinking of the same things because when by accident our hands touched they remained clasped. Her hand in mine was very small and very cold. Around us people’s faces had become blurred, were just bright patches above their shoulders. “Listen,” I said, “let’s go to my hotel and slash our wrists.”

  “If we really do need to go to a hotel, we can do something more amusing there,” she said. “Aren’t you in that apartment anymore?”

  “No,” I said. “I left it. And besides, it wasn’t the same anymore.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I wasn’t there.” She’d stopped in front of a bookstore. “I’d like to buy you a gift,” she said, “but not a book. Something gray, to match your eyes.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Please!” she said.

  I shrugged and she started dragging me from one store to the next until she found a gray silk shirt.

  “Do you think he can afford it?” I said.

  “Oh,” she said without taking offense, “he can afford a whole lot of things. As long as people buy paintings, at least.”

  “Especially bad ones.”

  “Yes,” she said, after thinking this over. “They are bad. But he knows that.”

  “And do you think he can afford these too?” I said, pointing to a pair of pants with silver arabesques. They were the most fucked-up pants I’d ever seen.

  She started laughing. “I think he can afford a few pairs,” she said. “Do you have anything against the ones with red arabesques?”

  I had nothing against the ones with red arabesques and we bought them. Then we went on to buy a pair of English shoes, two dozen Chinese ties, complete with dragons, and a pair of cardinal red slippers.

  By the time we left the store we were loaded down with packages. Every now and again we would lose one and there would always be someone to point it out until Arianna finally turned furiously and told them not to bother us, that we weren’t the kind of people who picked things up off the ground.

  “A blue smoking jacket,” she said, stopping in the middle of the street and looking up above the roofs, “the same color as the sky.”

  “It’ll be hard to find one,” I said.

  “Then let’s wait for sundown,” she said. “I saw a pink one on Piazza di Spagna. What would you say to a solid silver cigarette case with your initials? Or else a gold key ring for the car?” she said. “You know, those awful ones with the name of the make on them?”

  “As long as it’s gold,” I said. “Otherwise, the car won’t start. But I’d prefer a pipe.”

  “Why just one?” she said, walking into a tobacconist’s.

  We chose seven, one for each day of the week. For some mysterious reason, the one with the inlaid bull’s head made her double over with laughter.

  “What about him?” I said. “It seems impolite not to bear him in mind. Do you think he can afford a box of cigars?”

  “Two,” she said. “Don’t be a skinflint.”

  “What time is it?” I said, indicating the little gold watch she had on her wrist.

  “It’s terribly inaccurate,” she said with a grimace. “But it’s teatime anyway.”

  We weren’t far from a very elegant tearoom, but we couldn’t go somewhere like that loaded down with packages, so we called a taxi, put the things in it, and sent it to my hotel.

  “And we can’t have a proper tea without a dachshund,” I said, stopping outside a pet store with a dachshund in the window.

  “Yes,” she said, enthusiastically. “It looks sufficiently repugnant.” She strode resolutely into the store. “Give me that tyke,” she said. The tyke cost a whole bunch of money and had a more complex family tree than a count of the Holy Roman Empire. He was no more pitiful than most dachshunds and he walked behind us, a little scared of the traffic.

  The tearoom was full of old ladies laden with jewels. We ordered two teas with orange and every kind of brioche and biscotto they had. There were even madeleines.

  “Let’s dunk them in the tea,” I said. “Did you ever finish Swann’s Way?”

  “It’s the only thing I read all winter,” she said, giving a madeleine to the dachshund. “Every now and again I tried to read some of it to him aloud, but it bored him so much!”

  “They’re very good,” I said, taking another madeleine. “Just like they used to be.”

  “Of course,” she said. “This is the only place you can find them these days.”

  “They’re getting harder and harder to find.”

  “My darling, the world is closing in on us! What’ll become of us?”

  It was a game we knew how to play.

  I said I could see it all. “We’ll meet secretly in tearooms until I find a very rich old lady, kill her, steal her jewels, and escape with you to Vienna.”

  She didn’t smile but made a face. “Even old people aren’t the same as they used to be,” she said. “You should see him when he dresses like a hippie.” She pushed away her cup. “These madeleines are disgusting,” she said, putting her plate down in front of the dachshund. “Do you think they’ll take a check in this joint?”

  I called the waiter and repeated everything to him in detail, about the madeleines, the joint, the check. He listened to my words, pursing his mouth a little, as if he were tied to a pole and we were throwing rocks at him. He wouldn’t accept the check and called the manager. We handed over the dachshund as payment and left while the ladies looked on glassily.

  “Oh,” Arianna said, collapsed in the backseat of the taxi taking us to my hotel, “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since he slipped on the steps of the villa and broke his leg.” That’s what she said, while I was thinking there was a God in the world after all. “This afternoon was so boring to start with! He doesn’t like me ever to laugh, doesn’t like me to cry, I never know what to do with him! I’m so unlucky!” She was despondent, and when I put my arm around her waist she took refuge against my chest. “God, how I loved you,” she said hoarsely. “How I loved you,” she repeated, giving me lots of light kisses on the lapel of my jacket.

  “You always denied it.”

  “I was so stupid! I was scared of everything, even words. Where is this hotel?” she said, still covering my jacket with kisses.

  “I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s very modest.”

  “Oh, I love modest hotels. He always goes to the posh ones. Are there hookers?”

  “On Saturday and Sunday,” I said, and she asked how I managed on Saturday and Sunday. She couldn’t bear not knowing how I managed o
n Saturday and Sunday, she said, kissing my lips with those kisses of hers, as light as rain.

  “You’re drunk on tea,” I said. “They’re terrible, these tea binges!”

  “Yes, if you say so, you must be right. God!” she said loudly. “I don’t have any ID. Will they let me in to see you?”

  But the lobby was empty, and we climbed the stairs to the top floor. The first thing we saw when we walked into my room was all our packages heaped up on the bed. I went to the window and opened it. You could see the roofs, the trees along the riverbank, the summits of the churches. In the distance, black clouds were massing in the darkening sky. I felt her arms around my chest and her head leaning against my back. “You’ve lost weight,” she said. “I only just noticed.”

  * * *

  “Don’t you have any records?” she said, loosening her hair in front of the mirror. I found an album of old songs from the previous year and put it on the portable record player I’d brought with me from the apartment overlooking the valley, and Arianna went and sat down on the bed, pushing the packages off onto the floor. When I turned, she slapped her hand down on the blanket. “Come here,” she said, making room for me, “I want to smell you.” We lay down, side by side. She kept smiling. “I want to kiss you,” she said as her mouth descended toward my neck. I felt her fingers loosening my shirt, then felt her mouth on my chest, moist and cool. Through the window I could see the sky losing color.

  She was fiddling with the buckle of my belt. She unfastened it and continued kissing me, then I lifted her head, moved it away, and started undressing. She also undressed now, throwing her skirt and blouse on the floor. The pale marks left by her swimsuit were still on her body. She jumped on the bed, laughing. Then she stopped laughing and her voice grew somber as she hurriedly murmured words she had never said before. I turned and kissed her hard. She fell silent, and when I put my lips on her breasts she froze, listening. Then she started again with those hoarse words and my anger turned into the languor I had so long looked for with her. She felt it too and laughed, pressing her belly up against mine.

  “Now,” she said hurriedly. “Now!”

  The sky was dark when I stood up to restart the record player. “I like the songs,” I heard her say. “I’m so fed up with that damned Bach.”

  Her voice glittered in the darkness of the room, but there was something different about it. It was like hearing an instrument whose clear voice was pervaded by the hidden rasp of tortured strings. I went to the window. The clouds were looking down on the buildings and a few drops of rain were falling. On the street, people were hurrying along and from time to time you could hear the slam of shutters being lowered.

  “It’s starting to rain,” I said.

  “You’re sad,” she said. “I can tell you’re sad.”

  “No,” I said.

  “How unlucky I am,” she said. “I always make the wrong choices. I’m going home now, and I’ll throw all these packages in his face.”

  “No,” I said again.

  “Why not?” she said, her voice starting to quiver.

  “We can’t afford it,” I said. I felt she was mine. I had never before felt that so much as I did now, when she was someone else’s. What lousy luck. I knew what it meant, that she could only belong to me when she was someone else’s. When she too was a leftover. She started crying, silently. “Don’t cry,” I said.

  “At least you let me cry,” she said angrily. I went to her and sat down on the bed. “I’m ashamed,” she said. “I’m so ashamed. I make love like a hooker.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “No, I mean it. He taught me how, he’s always going to hookers.”

  I didn’t say anything. We were so old, it was so late, everything had gone so badly.

  “Graziano’s dead,” I said abruptly. “Did you know?”

  From the darkness came a moan and her voice broke into desperate weeping. I knew immediately that it would never again be as it had been before. It was the only thing I thought, that I had broken her voice for good.

  She wept for a long time, clutching my hand, while I thought about her now dead voice. Then gradually she calmed down. “I want to go home,” she said.

  On the street, the rain poured down with a noise like something that had suddenly fallen. We dressed in silence, while the record continued with the old songs from the previous year. When we went down into the lobby, the doorman didn’t look up from his Corriere dello Sport, but Arianna’s face hardened all the same.

  By this time, the street was already dry and we walked in silence as far as a taxi stand. When we got in the cab I realized I couldn’t leave her like that. I wanted to explain, to tell her something, but even when we were in the cab, surrounded by traffic, and I’d put an arm around her shoulders, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then she let herself go and laid her head back on the seat, terribly tired. “All in one year,” she said. “It’s such a short time, one year.” She closed her eyes. “Sometimes,” she said, “I wish I could go back to the clinic, but this time I wouldn’t want anybody to come and get me.”

  “I would.”

  “Yes, you would,” she said. When the taxi, having managed to extricate itself from the traffic, stopped outside Sant’Elia’s villa, she wouldn’t kiss me. She got out in a hurry, in that conceited way of hers. She opened the gate and I saw her run up the steps, press the bell, and stand waiting, surrounded by the scent of lilacs. She never turned around. Then she went in.

  I looked at the taxi driver, who was asking me where we should go. I wasn’t far from the hotel and felt like walking, so I paid him and set off on foot. A few drops were falling again and the city smelled of dust.

  * * *

  The next morning I went out, intending to go to the newspaper office. During the night it had rained again and the air was clear and fresh. When I found myself stuck in the traffic along the riverbank, surrounded by the clamor of car horns, I looked over at the trees. Their leaves were coming back. Soon, I thought, it would be summer and then fall and then winter and then again spring, and so on forever, or for a time so stupidly long as to seem like forever. What was I going to do? I suddenly knew that the time had come to get the hell out of there. They all got the hell out, sooner or later. The first rule was to not be an exception to the rule. I turned onto the first clear street and drove back to the hotel.

  It didn’t take me more than an hour to pack my bags. I used three suitcases, one for my clothes and two for my books, the ones I never left behind, the ones I always took with me when I went from one hotel to another, from one place to some other place. There was the old Medusa edition of Ulysses, Pavese’s translation of Moby-Dick, Conrad, and the cheap edition of Gatsby, yellowed but still intact. I also took Martin Eden, Nabokov, old Hem, the poetry of Eliot and Thomas, Madame Bovary, The World of Yesterday, Chandler, Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, Shakespeare, Chekhov. All in two suitcases.

  “It’s always like that,” I said to the doorman when he asked me if I was leaving. “It’s the best ones who leave.” He helped me put the cases in the old Alfa Romeo. He didn’t like to see me go because now he would have to buy his own copy of the Corriere dello Sport. I compensated him by giving him all of Arianna’s packages, which I had left in the room. It occurred to me I should phone the paper to say good-bye to Rosario, but I didn’t feel like having to explain myself. I decided not to say anything to anyone. I would write later and ask them to send me the money they owed me. For now, I had enough for the journey and to get by at first in whichever place I ended up. As to what that place would be, I hadn’t the slightest idea. I started to think about it as I drove at random around the city, saying good-bye to her. Basically, I didn’t hate her, but I had no regrets and that made me sad. I looked at the flights of steps, the churches, the open-air café tables, and none of it mattered.

  I got onto the highway that orbited the city and drove along it, reading the names on the signs, but one place was as good as another, so I lim
ited the choice to north or south. I chose south, only because that’s where the sun was, and I’d be able to drive alongside the sea, going the same way I’d gone when I went to fetch Arianna.

  I drove until the signs with the word Rome on them became increasingly rare, then stopped for gas. The landscape was different. I had seen it burned by the sun and now it was green, gentle, swollen. A fabulous morning for traveling.

  The closer I got to the sea, the milder the climate, and after a while I rolled down all the windows. When at last the sea appeared, it occurred to me that I’d like to go for a swim in the bay with the fortress.

  After another hour, there it was, magnificent, even bigger and more desolate than I remembered. There must have been a coastal storm, because the beach glittered with wreckage and sun-blackened pieces of tree trunk. On the right, the Saracen fortress towered darkly and the stony mountains stood out against a harshly blue sky.

  I left the old Alfa Romeo and walked through the scrub. The beach was full of fruit crates, loose planks, cans, and lots of rotted flowers. I reached the water. It wasn’t cold. So I went back to my old Alfa Romeo and started to strip. It was when I slipped my shirt over my head that I realized this was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen and that I wasn’t going anywhere else, that there was nowhere I could go except here. I sat down in the car, lit a cigarette, and smoked, thinking of how to accomplish the only thing it remained for me to do.

  The hardest part was stopping myself from swimming. I thought immediately of the suitcases. The two with the books weighed a ton and I would have to take them one at a time if I wanted to carry them out to the edge of the backwash. I looked for two pieces of rope in the trunk of the old Alfa Romeo. I found only one but managed to cut it in half by rubbing it against a fender.

  I was about to close the doors when it struck me that I didn’t want to do this in my swimsuit. So I searched in the suitcase with the suits, took out the white one, put it on over my bare skin, rolled up the pants, and walked down to the beach.