12
Double Lives
Rome, 1995-2005
Looking after his son while Stella was in the hospital was not as tiring as Salman had expected. There were still quiet times. Paolo was a baby with a sunny disposition. Salman could take him everywhere, and he would lie quietly in his stroller. When necessary, he would take Paolo with him to the office. Chiara liked the boy and could watch him while Salman dealt with business. Apart from that, Salman dedicated himself to the child. He also read many books during that time.
Once Paolo had been washed and fed in the morning, he would sleep for two hours solid. Salman would put the baby monitor near his crib and go to the Caffè Arabo, less than a block away. There he would read the paper and indulge in some people watching, but after an hour at most, he would hurry back to Paolo.
One day, an old man he had known for years asked Salman why he was so sad. He found it strange that the question should come from this man, whom he didn't like. He was nearly eighty, and small, with a perpetual frown. Three scars on his face complemented his cold, protruding reptilian eyes. It was rumored that he had been a Mafioso, but his miserable demeanor was not in keeping with the legend. He did his best to appear elegant: white shoes, white hat—a cheap imitation Fedora, blue jacket, white shirt, and a red tie. And he always clenched an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. He would read the newspaper, comment on the news, greet all the customers, and never drink more than a single espresso.
In all those years, Salman contented himself with a polite nod and avoided addressing the man. If he was in an especially good mood, he might add a “Buon giorno."
But that morning, Salman began to chat with him. “My wife is in the hospital," he said, wondering about his openness. As if on cue, the man came immediately to Salman's table.
“Oh, nothing serious, I hope, is it?"
“No, no. It's…" Salman hesitated.
The man leaned toward him over the small bistro table. “An abortion?" Salman nodded silently.
“Oh, that can be dangerous. I lost my first wife, Emma, after an abortion… in 1960. We went to one of these criminal ‘angel makers.' The woman's work wasn't clean, and Emma died three weeks later. I had myself sterilized afterward."
“Isn't sterilization dangerous?" Salman asked, hypocritically, since the only danger he cared about was loss of potency. But the reptilian eyes smiled in reassurance.
“Don't worry, young man. I may not be Fellini's Dottore Cazzone, who recorded ten thousand lovers on tape, but I've had my thirty lovers—ten before the operation and twenty after. I never fucked better in my life than after the operation, because you can then fuck without any fear or guilt. I could never be content with one woman, but I kept worrying about producing children left and right. Ilse, my second wife, lacked for nothing, and she let me service the other women. She had a big heart."
He lifted his hat, massaged his thick but cheaply dyed hair, pressed the hat down to his forehead, and grinned.
Only then did Salman notice that the old man had just greeted an old lady wearing too much makeup, who walked past and gave the man a prolonged smile.
“Her too?” Salman asked mischievously.
“Don't be deceived by the wrinkly exterior. Gabriela loved nothing better than to suck me up to the neck.”
Salman realized that the lady's erotic play with the old man had once been wild. His eyes followed the old woman as she put on an elegant gait, but he stuck to his role as hypocrite.
“Maybe I should be celibate. It would be best for everybody.”
“What are you talking about?” the old man shouted indignantly. “Bacteria and viruses can be celibate—not human beings. Even a worm wants to fuck, and if it can't find another, it will fuck itself... When I kick the bucket,” he said, laughing so much that his eyes became alive for a short moment, “I will tell the Lord of the Worlds that if He wants to save humankind, He must immediately start producing hermaphrodites.”
~
Stella was touched when Salman told her, one week after she had been back from the hospital, that he had made an appointment at the urologist. And because he described the operation in dramatic terms, she seemed impressed by his courage. Salman seized the opportunity and asked her to invite her parents to a reconciliation dinner. He felt guilty about her fighting with them. Stella did not object. Her parents came on the same day, and they were grateful to Salman for all his help with Paolo. They spent the weekend in Rome and returned to Trieste feeling relieved.
The operation was actually simpler than Salman had imagined. It required only a local anesthetic, and Salman was able to go back home after one night at the hospital. But then he was haunted by terrible nightmares: men with giant knives or shears castrated him and left him lying there.
Stella seemed to have become indifferent to sexuality. She would kiss him on the cheek in almost sisterly fashion. Whenever he wanted to make love, she would pretend to be tired to hide her listlessness or find some other excuse.
“I'm not in the mood,” she would always say when he kissed her passionately. Instead she was hungry enough for a whole company. She had never eaten so much before. She was soon back to her old freshness and energy. Then one day she passed one hundred and forty-three pounds and started to become fat. All around her rejoiced. Salman, however, thought that she had lost her charm and erotic charisma. In less than a year, Stella put on over twenty-six pounds. She was becoming, more and more, a real Italian mama, her mother exclaimed delightedly. Salman's Arab acquaintances in Rome also found Stella more beautiful, and more feminine. He laughed at that. “The hunger of your Bedouin ancestors is still deep in your bones, and when you see a woman you want to eat her up. And the rounder she is, the heartier the feast.”
A year passed by and Salman realized, bitterly, that he had only had sex with Stella once in all of those twelve months. He felt like a stranger in Rome again and no longer really at home with Stella, and he dreamed increasingly often of returning to Damascus. It wasn't until much later that he would learn that the Damascus he dreamt of in his loneliness existed only in his imagination.
~
So one January day in 1996, he decided to visit a prostitute. He didn't want to love anybody else because he loved only Stella, but the need to make love to a woman was nearly making him ill. So he looked for a love that was strictly commercial, so that he could fulfill his desire in a way that was completely detached from any pleading or begging.
In doing so, Salman didn't even realize that he had now become like those Italians who differentiate strictly between sex and love. You loved your wife from afar and you let off steam with prostitutes. He consoled himself with the fact that he had been faithful for more than fifteen years. And in all those years, he hadn't even noticed once when someone had been interested in him. His entire focus had been on Stella.
It was pure chance that in January he had an appointment with Claudio, his tax advisor. After they had finished their work, Salman invited the old, witty widower for a drink in a bar near the train station. Claudio, however, was in a hurry. He just wanted to have a quick red wine and then catch the train for Bologna. He gulped the wine down hastily, thanked Salman, and left him standing at the bar. A young woman was talking to the Indian bartender. As she turned and faced Salman, he smiled. She smiled back. He found her very attractive and liked her deep voice. When she left, Salman paid and followed her.
It was raining and she stood there under the awning in front of the entrance, waiting. “There's room for you under my umbrella if you'd like," Salman said. The woman laughed, “How could I refuse such a kind offer?" she replied.
He opened his umbrella. She stepped out with him and took his arm under the umbrella.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home. I live just nearby, three streets farther on,” the woman replied. Outside, her beauty was more clearly visible than in the bar's subdued lighting. She had a dark, well-proportioned face and long black hair, with the fragrance of exotic fruits about her. When Salman, somewhat embarrassed, asked her what she did, she said, “Companion,” and laughed. It transpired that she didn't actually live just nearby, but quite far away, in the Via Giovanni Battista de Rossi. They walked through the streets for almost half an hour, and Salman kept the umbrella up, although by then the rain had eased off. With his face hidden by the umbrella, he accompanied Violetta and they almost seemed like a couple in love.
“Your little lie reminds me of a saying of the Bedouins in the desert. When asked how far it is to such-and-such a place, they're fond of replying ‘a stone's throw away.' Do you know how far the sons of the desert can sling a stone?”
Violetta laughed. “I had to get a feel for you first. You never know who's out looking for a woman in Rome.”
“And? Did I pass the test?” he asked.
“Sure. Otherwise we wouldn't be here,” Violetta answered seriously.
They had stopped in front of a three-story house with a pretty front, but modest compared to the others. “I live here,” she said. Salman followed her with his heart pounding. He had never visited a prostitute before. He despised pimps and had always regarded prostitutes as exploited women, martyrs of a sort. Violetta's small apartment was tastefully furnished and more pleasant than he had expected. She said she had been living in Rome for a year and had taken up prostitution of her own free will, not as a result of a hard childhood or abuse.
Violetta poured Salman a glass of wine and answered his curious questions. With total pedagogical detachment, she talked about prostitution in Italy and about how happy she was to have her own apartment. Poorer prostitutes rented more modest apartments or just a room in a rundown hotel. The poorest prostitutes, particularly the foreign ones, worked on the exit roads. They were called lucciole, or ‘glow-worms,' because of the little flashlights that they carried in order to be seen in the dark.
Salman was ashamed that he had lived so long in Rome without the slightest notion about any of this. His shame didn't last long, however. Violetta was so gentle with him that he quite forgot that she was a professional. She exuded calm and affection, as if he was the only one in the world for her. He paid generously. She asked him if he wanted to come again. He nodded. She gave him her telephone number. He lied to her, saying his name was Roberto, but his friends called him Robbie. After years of working as a university professor, he now enjoyed a reputation as an intellectual and had been a widower for two years. He was back living with his old but very rich mother.
She didn't ask any further.
He returned home, satisfied and mellow in spirit. To his surprise, he only felt pangs of conscience just before falling asleep. The following morning, they were gone completely.
When Stella asked him at breakfast why he was so relaxed, he lied to her, saying, “Business is booming.” This first lie plagued him for days. Like the first murder in wartime, it was the most difficult, but after that it was much easier to put off Stella with excuses.
From then on, it no longer bothered him that Stella only had eyes for their pretty little baby. Actually, Salman felt relieved about it, to a certain extent. He never pestered her again, but would wait until she came to him, something that seldom happened, but was all the more passionate when it did. Sardonically, Salman referred to it as seasonal sex, which made Stella laugh.
Violetta, on the other hand, seemed to wait for him. She behaved like a lover, albeit for money, but things were clear—no tears, no infatuation, and no threat to his marriage. That gave him a sense of security. Here his needs were satisfied; there he had love and family. He loved Stella, but the thrill of each secret meeting with Violetta, the possibility of slipping into another personality gave him tremendous joy. One evening at Violetta's, he was reminded of two pictures by Caravaggio. They hung next to each other in the small room of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj on the Piazza del Collegio Romano. One picture showed Mary Magdalene, the other showed Our Lady resting on the flight to Egypt. Caravaggio had chosen the same model for both Marys.
In summer, the gardens of the villas on Violetta's street blossomed into a delight for the eye. Her apartment was on the third floor, with an unrestricted view of the beautiful surroundings. Diagonally across from them, in the garden of a white, supervised villa was a splendid bougainvillea that had been artistically trimmed by the gardener into an enormous lilac bouquet. Sometimes, Salman would gaze out over the flowers and trees, and imagine he was an angel hovering and caressing his beloved.
~
For ten years, it was Tuesdays and Fridays at Violetta's, always for exactly two hours. Each time they met, she was as happy as she had been that first day, spoiled him thoroughly and totaled up for him the price she charged her luxury clients, as she called them. He would joke with her, “Don't you do a bulk discount? No loyalty points?"
She'd laugh. “Yes, when you get one hundred points there's a frying pan. You get that over the head if you ask any more stupid questions.”
Violetta wasn't curious. Salman didn't ask about her work, or her feelings, either. She knew nothing about his marriage, because he never wanted a woman to be able to compare herself to his wife. In his eyes, that was the absolute difference between an affair and paying for sex. A lover who knows about a wife, feels superior to her. She might envy her being able to live with her lover, but as long as the wife doesn't know about the lover, she remains the inferior.
Once, when he couldn't get it up in bed, he ordered some Gigante XXL virility tablets over the Internet. Violetta didn't notice anything or, if she did, she hid it well. Stella, also, didn't seem aware of Salman's secrets—or if she was, she hid it well.
When Salman first met Violetta, she was in her late twenties, and she was in her late thirties when she gave him his marching orders in the summer of 2005. One evening she said off-handedly, “I've no time next Tuesday.”
“What about Friday?”
“I'll already be in Montreal with my husband.”
“What? You got married?”
“Not yet. On Wednesday. We're flying off on Thursday,” she said. She then told him a little about her new life partner and about how tired she was and gave him a little peck on the cheek. “You're a generous, good-hearted man. You're going to have to strangle your mother soon, otherwise you'll be stuck with her forever,” she said with a smile.
“But who's going to comfort me?” he asked, sadly.
“Here's the address and telephone number of Lola. She's Polish but she speaks good Italian. She knows the score and is looking forward to seeing you—and your money.”
He stuck the slip of paper into his trouser pocket and left. Years later, he still remembered how lonely and abandoned he'd felt that night.
Salman often thought about the past and wrote down in Arabic whatever thoughts came to him. He was obsessed with Damascus. He spent every waking minute thinking about how he would manage his triumphant homecoming. That would be the only way to heal his wounds. Day after day, he thought of how happily he would live on his return, but talked about it to nobody. How could Stella, a child of freedom, understand how the wounds of exile felt?
He found himself noting down one phrase again and again: “My soul is in Damascus, wandering the streets of my childhood.” He described the Damascene streets in the gleaming colors called for by his yearning, while he still sought, from the safety of Rome, to uncover just what risk such a journey might entail.
He also wrote about his life with Stella. The simple fact of writing it down seemed to blow away the dust from everything he had experienced. He thought about his first days with Stella in Rome, and how Rome had changed in the last thirty years. Mass tourism, traffic chaos, and cheap shops had all conspired to deface the city. It was heartbreaking to stand by and witness to what extent reality had surpassed the horrific visions and fears of a Pasolini or a Flaiano. The gentry had moved into what had once been colorful and lively districts. The outskirts of the city were becoming rundown and dangerous.
Evening after evening, Salman committed his thoughts to paper under cover of Arabic script. Neither Stella nor Paolo could read Arabic. While they each had their many failings, they respected each other's privacy and secrets. That was what allowed him to write so openly about his wife and son. Paolo had brought him a lot of happiness, but his arrival had robbed him of his beloved. His son seldom caused him any concern, and the quiet little boy always did well at school. Paolo's sunny disposition attracted lots of friends and he was never seriously ill. It was only through his son that Salman had really come to understand everything that his own parents had done for him. When he thought of just how much he had neglected them, he felt ashamed—but never for long.
Three or four times a year, he and Stella would invite friends to their home. On Christmas Eve, their acquaintances could visit anytime between eight o'clock in the evening and three o'clock in the morning. Arab cuisine was the order of the day. There was no obligation on anybody, but all their friends could come and celebrate their “open day," as Stella called Christmas Eve, with them.
Stella was not fond of cooking. When she did cook, it was either spaghetti or minestrone. She preferred to eat out. Salman, on the other hand, enjoyed cooking. He'd had lovely dinners with his German friends, but it was more difficult to cook for Italians. The Germans would try anything, even pizza with pineapple. For centuries, German traditional cooking had offered very little in the way of exotic dishes. In Italy, however, blessed as they were by the Mediterranean cuisine and an ideal climate for growing vegetables, wine grapes, and olives, people were normally mistrustful and rather superior when faced with any new food. And if a guest ran out of arguments, he could always fall back on an old standby: “It tastes different at my mama's."