A week before the wedding I bumped into Teresa. I’d just left the school and I was walking toward my car, chatting with three of my students, when she passed by on her Vespa, on the other side of the street, and she slowed down, shouting out: Pietro, you wretch, so you’re still alive. And I—maybe because she was all bundled up—turned around to see if the woman who’d shouted “Pietro, you wretch, so you’re still alive” was pissed at me or at someone else. She must have seen me do this, because when I said goodbye to my students and crossed the street to join her, she said, in her usual ironic way, pretending to be remorseful: after swearing ten thousand times that you’d love me forever, you took less than a year to forget me. I defended myself, blaming her hood, her scarf, her heavy jacket, and after some generic chitchat I tried to peel away. But Teresa said there was a new rotisserie where the arancini were delicious and with her typical imperiousness announced: hop on, five minutes, we’ll have a bite and then I’ll take you back to your car.
It was wrong to obey her. It took just a few seconds for our bodies to trust each other again; I recognized the smell of her hair from the wisps that poked out of her hood, and I listened once more to her voice, immediately carried off by the wind, that said: don’t hold onto my hips, you idiot, we’ll fall over that way. I’d always loved it when she took me for a ride on her Vespa. At the start of our relationship, she was willing to take me everywhere, and it was nice feeling her between my legs. Sometimes when we weren’t fighting, I kissed her neck, I rested my head on her back, and she did her part by adjusting herself on the seat so that she was pressed against me as much as possible. In brief, I was moved to see her again. I realized that though our love had ended, the friendship hadn’t, at least a friendship that’s nourished by a physically intimate past, that sometimes lets you retain, without embarrassment, an everlasting trust. I started to tell her about a brief essay on the state of Italian schools, a minor piece of work I’d produced by the by, if only to keep my mind busy after we’d split up, and I summarized it for her, taking a long while to do so, so that she said, amused, well it doesn’t sound so brief or trifling to me! After that I proceeded to tell her about my mother’s sudden death, something that had happened two months ago, and this, yes, I recounted in a few matter-of-fact sentences leaving her space to carry on with sincere words of consolation. Finally, I told her that I was about to get married and talked at length about Nadia.
She, too, seemed at ease. She told me she was about to leave for the United States; she’d received a scholarship from a university in Wisconsin. She talked wittily about a boyfriend—he was also a student—of veterinary medicine. He’d told her: it’s either me or the United States, and she’d told him with no hesitation, The United States. She appeared happy to hear about my marriage, saying: you were born with a silver spoon, now you’ve finally found a foolish woman who has no idea how dangerous you are. This last thing she said somewhat troubled me, but I did nothing to betray it, rather, I laughed, agreeing with her, and murmured: I’ve learned to conceal myself more effectively. But she also realized that she had said something which, in spite of its lighthearted tone, might have sounded unkind, and attempted—and this was something new—to make up for it:
—On the other hand, you have many lovely qualities, and if you let them rise to the surface, this Nadia could be the lucky one.
We bantered back and forth like this for a while longer, and then she took me back to my car. There was traffic, and when she wove through it, when I was afraid that my knees would collide into the sides of a car or a bus, I’d press up against her thighs and feel reassured. At one point I rested my cheek on her back and remembered the evening before my mother’s death. For a few seconds I fell asleep.
—I had fun, I told her when we reached my car, saying goodbye.
—Me too.
—Enjoy yourself in America.
—And you try to behave with Nadia. Don’t torment her the way you tormented me.
—What are you talking about, I loved you very much.
—You could have been better.
—But also worse.
—No doubt. Which is why, don’t forget, if you step out of line with that poor girl, I know things that could ruin your life.
That was what she said, breezily—and it was an instant, a long instant that felt like a needle that was plunged into my stomach and then quickly extracted. I responded, just as breezily:
—And I have some dirt on you, too. Which is why you’d better toe the line.
We planned to kiss each other on the cheeks, but at the last minute, we both changed our minds and gave each other a light kiss on the lips. I repeated, laughing:
—You be good, now.