What an asshole. What a colossal, incommensurable asshole. What the fuck got into me? The cheeseburger: onion, pickles, mayonnaise, ketchup, and then the French fries—it had been a long time since I’d eaten anything so heavy at night. It must have been the cheeseburger. But, but, but…I’m not sick, didn’t throw up, and even now it’s not as if my stomach feels heavy or something. My cheekbone. My cheekbone does hurt, but not my stomach. And if it wasn’t the cheeseburger, what was it? What an asshole. I left my nice house on Via Durini, driving my nice big black car, piloted by a €2,000 GPS, to go all the way to Gorgonzola and faint—faint—right smack in the middle of a meeting from which a lot of nice people expected to receive good advice on how to talk about death with their children. I interrupted the meeting, or rather I ruined it—“Well, my friends, I think it would be better to stop at this point.” There is no redemption for this. Better to forget all about it as quickly as possible and go on about my business as if nothing had happened. Anyway, nobody knew me there and I’ll never go back. List of places where I’ll never go back: the Parentogether salons. Better yet: I never went there. Take a hammer to my hard drive, DELETE ALL. Tomorrow I’ll tell Barbara-or-Beatrice that unfortunately I was unable to go because I had a small accident in the kitchen—“I bumped my cheekbone against the refrigerator door, here, can you see?”—and if she attends another one of those meetings, maybe the one next month on grandparents, she whose parents and husband are still alive, if I understand correctly, from the way she always talks about her in-laws, “my in-laws,” “my in-laws’ house,” so she might actually be assailed by doubts over whether grandparents are a help or a hindrance, so if she does go there and hears people talk about the mysterious shithead who at the previous session collapsed on the floor, unconscious, halfway through the lecture, and then, once he’d been revived, ran away, asininely rejecting all offers to help him, get coffee, call a doctor, or, as the enchantress with the lisp insisted on suggesting, even an ambulanth, she will hardly think of me. Why would she? Nothing ties me to that person, seeing as I wasn’t there. She won’t think of me. No way. People think of us infinitely less than we believe. To be honest, they almost never do.
But, but, but…It still happened: why? Why did I faint? Why did I faint? Why did I faint? While I’m driving through the warm night, this question is the only thing on my mind, and it’s strange, but, with more than a million people between me and that room, comforted by my renewed familiarity with the city, I have the impression that I know exactly why, but it’s as if the reply flashed through my mind for only a moment, a single shining moment, and then it disappeared. It’s a strange sensation, like when you’re about to remember something but the very act of remembering drives the memory away again. I’m probably not concentrating enough, I think, and then I pull over and stop. Where are we? Piazzale Loreto. Good. I light a cigarette. I only want to understand why I fainted. Fuck! In other words, my brain has suddenly turned off, abandoned my body as if it wanted to shed it, and it happened to me, this evening, a little while ago, at a precise moment in my life (well, the moments of life are always precise, for that matter), a moment that I arrived at fully conscious, as fully conscious as I am now: there must be some reason. All I have to do is concentrate, think. It could have been the cheeseburger, as I was saying. Or a slightly brutal way of feeling tired. This morning Carlo spoke to me about a fainting spell, he described it to me: it could have been the power of suggestion, sympathy. Or else the influence of that she-devil, the sight of her blood, the dreadful misunderstanding that was generated…I have the answer, I feel it inside, but it keeps darting around too quickly for my mind to grasp; I can’t catch it, I can’t even slow it down—goddamn, it’s unbearable. What can I do? Well, I’m going to have to come up with something, because I don’t feel at all well, I feel a killer anxiety building inside me and I obviously can’t go home in this state: Claudia is there, and we transfer our feelings to our children—isn’t that what they just told me? Okay, maybe there is a way: Where’s my notebook? Where’s it hiding? I used to keep it in the glove compartment, why isn’t it there anymore? I start looking for it, but while I’m looking for it the cigarette falls out of my mouth; I jump back, afraid it’s going to burn my clothes, so it falls right on the leather seat; the tip separates from the rest of the cigarette on impact, and while it’s rolling around on the floor the rest stays on the seat; I try to brush it away with my hand, but the fucker has already started burning the leather, what a stench, it’s already stuck; so I grab a CD cover and smack it down on top, to put it out, and I do put it out; but now of course there’s a hole in the seat, plus the burning smell hasn’t gone away but actually seems to have gotten worse; and in fact there’s smoke coming from the carpet below my feet, and it’s not coming from the carpet, oh fuck, it’s coming directly from my feet, actually from my trousers, yes, from the cuffs of my trousers, I don’t believe it, there’s an ember still burning inside the fold, fuck, the ember that’s stuck in the seat was not the only piece that was still lit, there was another one attached to the part of the cigarette that fell straight into the cuff of my trousers, would you believe it, right there, and I lift my leg to help it fall out but it won’t, I shake my leg, smack it against the steering wheel, there’s no room, so I open the door, put my leg out, and kick at the air, with my hand I shake the cuff of my trousers and finally the cigarette falls to the ground in a flutter of sparks, and finally I snuff it out with my shoe, yes, I crush it I disintegrate it I pulverize it; yes, it’s done, now it’s completely out; yes, nothing’s burning; and I start checking the damage, you can imagine, cotton trousers, a hole as big as a finger; and then the hole in the seat, complicated by—what’s happening now? What’s that horn? Oh, I’ve stopped in a zone reserved for taxis, go figure, thanks for screaming at me, young cabdriver who’s probably driving with a gun under his seat, the reason why I will not point out to you that there are much less shitty ways to—all right already, I’ll move, asshole. A roar of the engine, a squealing of tires, my shoulders slam against the seat back, peeling out like an asshole in the middle of the road, I’m suddenly as neurotic as a monkey and I want to press the pedal to the metal, race off, peel out, scream and shout, and I shift into first as if I wanted to kill the engine and I feel my bowels twisting in my stomach and I shift into second, and if I don’t cut it out right away it’ll mean that I’ve gone nuts and then I’ll be in real trouble: calm down, for Christ’s sake! What are you so pissed off about? Calm down! I slow down. Drive slowly, for Christ’s sake. The song that’s playing on the stereo is saying the same thing at this very moment: “Hey man, slow down, slow down.” I breathe. I think. What’s gotten into me? What’s happening to me tonight? “Idiot, slow down, slow down…” Idiot is right. What an idiot. What would have happened if a child had been crossing the street while I was peeling out as if I were in a Grand Prix race? Or even if a dog, a cat, a damn pigeon had been crossing? “Where the hell am I going at a thousand feet per second?” Exactly. Where the hell am I going? I have to be very careful if I want to stay out of trouble: I’ve already made enough of a mess tonight, all I need now is a car accident. I put on my seat belt. After all, come to think of it, almost nothing really happened; sure, a short fainting spell, a tiny hole in the seat, a pair of trousers I have to throw away: what’s the big deal? Calm down. It amounts to nothing. Calm down. And that taxi driver was right, I wasn’t supposed to park there, I was wrong. It was simply the wrong place, for me, too, for what I wanted to do, regardless of the prohibition: it was too whatever. The cabdriver only wanted to help me, that’s how I should see it: his manners don’t matter, he only wanted me to realize that I was in the wrong place, he only wanted to push me in the right direction—toward the place where I could stop and clear my head and regain some peace of mind before returning home. And he succeeded, that’s the nice thing, he helped me, because all of a sudden I know exactly where to go, and I’m going there, slowly but surely, at twenty miles an hour, and I feel much better. But of course. It’s close, and above all I know my way: without traffic it won’t take me more than five minutes. It’s really close, how come I didn’t think of it before? I’ll go there, it’ll calm me down, I’ll relax, reassure myself, and I’ll go home…
Done. Here I am.
This is the place.
I open the car door, but I don’t get out of the car. The dark school is an imposing, romantic pile. I’ve never seen it like this: it looks useless and desolate, like a broken toy, like everything that belongs to children and that children leave outside. It’s just standing there, a mere product of spatial forces, as if it were swallowing the time separating it from its daytime glory. Everything seems to sustain it in the silent struggle to make it to tomorrow: the absurd summer tranquillity of this October night, the trees, the park, the road, the buildings across the street, the parked cars—over which the wounded and unclaimed C3 holds court. I breathe deeply, repeatedly, and although I’m in the center of Milan, what fills my lungs feels like fresh air, fresh and fragrant. I breathe, I scan the profiles of things softened by darkness, I listen to the noises coming from the avenue: everything is so completely familiar, comforting, reassuring…And this is truly an amazing spot, a place in the world brimming with apotropaic forces: the Longobards must have come here to honor their loutish gods, some Christian girl must have suffered the martyrdom that would make her a saint, some young Merovingian must have been transformed into a deer by love…
This is the place.
This is my reason for fainting. A way for me to grasp it, identify it, name it…
And again the song that was playing on the stereo levels the distances and leaps into the foreground with a sentence that trans-fixes me because it seems to be addressed directly to me: “And now that you find it,” it says, “it’s gone / And now that you feel it, you don’t / I’m not afraid.” Because this is exactly what I’m feeling: it’s the same sensation as before, the same subcortical perception of a flickering light, except that it’s no longer annoying and I’m no longer afraid. Because it was fear, before. Also when I fainted, it was fear. And now it’s gone. In fact, I realize that it doesn’t interest me anymore. Why did I faint? Afraid of what? And what does it matter? It’s only one of the many questions that I can’t answer. Why is sea water salty, while glaciers, rivers, and the rain are not? Why does the score in tennis go 15, 30, 40, and not 45? Why do you have to dial the area code for local calls nowadays? What happens at the ATM if I enter €250 and only €150 comes out? What the hell does common-rail engine mean? Here comes the refrain again: “And now that you find it,” it repeats, “it’s gone / And now that you feel it, you don’t / I’m not afraid.” I don’t understand the rest, and the song ends.
It’s starting to interest me, this strange phenomenon with the stereo. Or rather not with the stereo, with Lara’s Radiohead CD that I found in the car and that I keep listening to over and over. Most of the time I ignore it, and I especially ignore the words; but there are times, like a little while ago, or earlier, when I was driving, and also in recent days, now that I think about it, quite a few times, in which a single verse or an entire refrain literally jumped out at me and allowed itself to be understood with great naturalness, as if English were my native language; and when this happens those words always seem to be aimed directly at me, and they are always wise, appropriate, perfect. As if that CD were looking at me and trying to speak with me, give me advice.
I start looking for the case. Not without reason: maybe the time has come to take this bequest from Lara a little more seriously, and if the case has the lyrics to all the songs, maybe I’ll find written loud and clear the things that—here it is; unfortunately it’s not the original CD, just a compilation someone burned, and on the cover the only thing written is RADIOHEAD. PER APPRESSARM’AL CIEL DOND’IO DERIVO. TO GET CLOSER TO HEAVEN FROM WHENCE I COME—nice, wow: who is it by, Petrarch?—in Lara’s round, sensual handwriting. Or is it Marta’s? They always had pretty much the same handwriting. Of course, it’s Marta’s. Now I remember. Once the same thing happened in her car. Right across from here, right after I had smashed up the Citroën to clear the road, while she was finishing up her striptease. I also remember what the CD was saying: “We are accidents waiting to happen.” I bet it was the very same CD: Marta must have been the one who burned it and gave a copy to Lara, or was it the other way around?
Now the song is over and you can hear applause, shouts. The singer says something I don’t understand—I understand only “old selection.” He must be announcing the title of the next song, because he says, “It’s called” something or other, getting an ovation, after which a very sad guitar riff starts, which is repeated for a few beats. Then the voice starts to sing, slowly, languidly.
“This is the place,” it says. I swear.
“Remember me?”
Hah, I do remember you…
“We’ve been trying to reach you…”
Of course. It’s hard not to realize, Song. What’s up…
“This is the place / It won’t hurt, it will not hurt.”
It’s true, Song: it doesn’t hurt, I feel no pain; especially in this place. And let me tell you something: it’s fantastic to converse with you. Tell me something: How do you see this strange life of mine? What do you think I should do, I mean in general?
But now I don’t understand anything: the singer starts slurring the words, and the music takes over. Nice, yeah, languid and all, but what I’m interested in are the words. “Recognition,” “face,” “empty,” I can make out a few isolated words, fragments: “to go home,” “at the bottom of the ocean,” and again “face”…
Who knows what important thing you’re telling me, Song, that I don’t understand. Anyway, I also realize that if I could understand everything it would be too easy; even the responses of the oracle at Delphi were impenetrable and had to be interpreted. Not to mention that to these things there is usually a dark side, terribly complicated evil things, that it’s much better not to know. And then it could simply be that I understand only the questions addressed to me, maybe that’s how it works. I’m hardly the only person who listens to these songs.
“’Cause it’s time to go home.”
This I understand perfectly, for example, and in fact it’s true: it’s time to go home. But I don’t get the last verses, the song ends, and yes, I do go home. The same thing is said by the nice gratifying sound of the superreinforced car window closing—shlomp: it’s time to go home. Thank you, Song; thanks also for the applause I’m getting now, long, sincere, and passionate: I’ve never been applauded in all my life. Not even once. And instead sometimes a nice round of applause is exactly what you need to go home peacefully, with your heart filled with chaos and tranquillity…