Love, well, what to say? We talk about it a lot, but I don’t think I’ve used the word much, on the contrary, I doubt it’s ever been of any use to me, though I’ve loved, of course, I’ve loved, I’ve loved until I’ve lost my mind and my wits. Love as I’ve known it, in fact, is a lava of crude life that burns the refined one, an eruption that obliterates understanding and piety, reason and rights, geography and history, sickness and health, richer and poorer, exceptions and rules. All that’s left is a yearning that twists and distorts, an obsession without a cure: where is she, where isn’t she, what’s she thinking, doing, what did she say, what did she really mean when she said that, what isn’t she telling me, was she as happy to see me as I was to see her, and feeling better now that I’ve left, or has my absence debilitated her instead, as hers debilitates me, annihilating me, stripping me of all the energy that her presence, on the other hand, generates, and what am I without her, a stopped clock on the corner of a busy street, oh her voice on the other hand, oh to stand next to her, to diminish the distance between us, reduce it to nothing, erase kilometers, meters, centimeters, millimeters, and melt, lose myself, stop being myself, in fact, it already feels like I was never myself other than within her, in the pleasure of her, and this makes me proud, it cheers me up, and it depresses me, it saddens me, and then it jolts me again, it electrifies me, I care so much for her, yes, all I want is the best for her, always, whatever happens, even if she turns cold, even if she loves other people, even if she humiliates me, even if she strips me of everything, even of the very capacity to care for her. Absurd, the things that can take place in your head: to want the best for someone even when you don’t want them anymore, to want the worst even when you care. It’s happened to me, which is why I’ve dodged the word as often as possible. I don’t know what to do with seraphic love, comforting love, love that rings out from the rooftops, love that purifies, pathetic love: extraneousness has kept me from using the word much in my long life. On the other hand, I’ve used several others—yearning, fury, languor, bewilderment, necessity, urgency, desire—too many, I fear, I’m fishing through five thousand years of writing, and god knows I could keep going. But now I’m forced to move on to Teresa, she’s the one who always refused to stay put inside that combination of four letters, and yet she lays claim to it, she still lays claims to it, a thousand times over.
I’d already fallen for Teresa when she sat at a desk next to the window and proved to be one of my liveliest students. But I only realized it when, a year after graduating, she called me, came to wait for me at the school, told me about her turbulent times at university as we were walking on a fine autumn day, and suddenly kissed me. It was that kiss that formally began our relationship, which lasted, all in all, for about three years, caught between needs never truly satisfied—of reciprocal, absolute possession—and tensions that would end up in fights, bites, and tears. I remember one evening in the home of acquaintances, we were a group of seven or eight, and I was sitting next to a girl, originally from Arles, who’d been in Rome for a few months and had such an incredibly seductive way of mangling her Italian that all I’d wanted to do was listen to her voice. Instead, everyone was talking, Teresa most of all, saying, in her usual expansive way, very intelligent things with extreme precision. I must admit that for some months that desire of hers, to always be at the center, ratcheting up the level of even the most frivolous conversations, had begun to irk me, which was why I tended to interrupt her often, with some joking remark, but she glowered at me and said, excuse me, I’m talking. On that occasion, maybe I interrupted her one too many times, since I liked the girl from Arles and wanted her to like me. Then Teresa turned to me, furious, seizing the bread knife and shouting: try to cut off what I’m saying one more time and I’ll cut out your tongue and then some. We faced off in public as if we were alone, and today I believe we really were, such was the extent that we were absorbed with each other, for good and for ill. Our acquaintances were there, sure, and the girl from Arles, but they were inessential figures, all that mattered was our ongoing attraction and repulsion. It was as if our boundless admiration for each other only served to ascertain that we loathed each other, and vice versa.
Naturally there were plenty of happy times, and we talked about everything, we kidded around, I tickled her until she gave me long kisses to make me stop. But it didn’t last, we ourselves were the agitators of our life together. We seemed convinced that the intensity with which we continuously rocked the boat would have transformed us, in the end, into the ideal couple, but we never got closer to that goal, it just slipped increasingly out of reach. The time that I discovered, thanks to some gossip from the very girl from Arles, that Teresa had been seen behaving in an excessively intimate way with a well-known skinny hunchbacked academic, with crooked teeth, weak eyes, and spidery fingers with which he played the piano for his adoring female students, I was overcome with such repugnance for her that I came home and without explanation grabbed her by the hair, dragged her to the bathroom, wanted to scrub her down myself, every millimeter of her body, with detergent from Marseilles. I didn’t yell at her, I spoke with my usual irony, saying: I can look the other way, do whatever you want, but not with someone so disgusting. And she wrested herself free, she kicked, she slapped and scratched me, yelling, so this is who you really are, shame on you, shame on you.
We fought, that time, in a way that seemed to end it, you couldn’t go back after what we’d slung at each other. And yet, even that time, we patched it up. We clung to each other until dawn, laughing at the girl from Arles, at the pianist and cytology teacher. But now we were scared; we’d risked losing each other. And I think it was that fear that prompted us, right after that, to find a way to nail down our codependence for good.
Teresa cautiously put forward a plan. She said: let’s say I tell you a secret, something so awful that I’ve never even told it to myself, but then you have to confide something just as horrible to me, something that would destroy your life if anyone came to know it. She smiled, as if she were inviting me to play a game, but deep down she was quite tense. Her anxiety was contagious, I was stunned, I was concerned that, at only twenty-three years of age, she could already have a secret so very unmentionable. I, at thirty, had one, and it had to do with an affair so embarrassing that I blushed just thinking about it. I stared down at the tips of my shoes and waited for that disturbing feeling to pass. We beat around the bush for a bit, asking who would be the first to confide to the other.
—You go first, she said, in that imperiously ironic way that she had when she was bursting with affection.
—No, you first, I have to determine if your secret is as awful as mine.
—And why do I have to trust you and not the other way around?
—Because I know my secret and I don’t believe you have one as horrible.
In the end, a back and forth, and then she caved, irritated, above all—I wager—that I didn’t believe she was capable of such an unspeakable deed. I let her talk, never interrupting, and when she was done, I couldn’t come up with a single word worthy of a response.
—So?
—It’s awful.
—I told you. Now it’s your turn. And if you tell me something silly, I’m leaving and you’ll never see me again.
I confided in her, first in fragments, then in greater detail, I didn’t want to stop talking, she was the one who told me to stop. I sighed heavily and said:
—Now you know something about me that no one else does.
—The same goes for you.
—We can never split up now, we’re really beholden to each other.
—Yes.
—Aren’t you happy?
—Yes.
—It was your idea.
—Of course.
—I love you.
—Me too.
—So much.
—So so much.
A few days later, without arguing, on the contrary, using courteous language that we’d never used before, we told each other that our relationship had reached its end, and we agreed, mutually, to break up.