In the beginning it was summer.
The man I sat with at dinner on a warm evening in June was just as beautiful as it had always been since the first day we met. A lot of years had passed before he showed up with me in an email: – Are they in Padua Tuesday, do we eat together? -
The mail struck me for his going directly to the point and for his coming from a distant past and from a man who suddenly blocked me also the Skype contact about six years before and no reason whatsoever. Then I thought it was typical of his, a man always of few words and the elusive look.
At his email, read from the iPad while I was still in bed early in the morning, I answered: – You are crazy, so I come to dinner. Here's my cell phone number.
We had met in the piazza delle Erbe and he had kept intact the intriguing smile and acute look together with the fiery shyness of a teenager.
We sat at the tavern table after he asked for a little reserved place. He ordered a Franciacorta with which he kept filling both glasses.
Surprisingly we had a lot to tell us: I asked about his son who was supposed to be five years old, his wife, but he had a great desire to talk about me. He told me details of my separation seen from another point of view: he called that episode "the bomb" and snoised me words, comments and facts that I did not know.
Among all, at the time, my husband had asked him comfort and an opinion. "What do you think you gave him?" I asked to empty the glass. He lied, and I thought it was better that way, so now things had gone as they had gone.
So we were sitting at the Anphora table, and without any need for stress, he kept talking about me, about how he had seen me from afar, about how he had been mute viewer of a marriage that dwelt on himself without any of us understanding the deep reasons he had well identified. And he said to me, so little he said.
He made a shiny and faithful portrait of my early years of marriage and asked me things he didn't know. I answered, more to myself than to him, troubled by an analysis that I wanted to be able to do before and not after, or at least during. Because the bottle was over, he ordered another bottle. There was a fresh warmth at that table that was in a dark corner, a place of the heart rather than a restaurant and I don’t remember seeing the waiter. The glasses were filled and emptied, the pen shadow prevented me from being acute in thought but in the end I had no weapons, I had no goals and also seemed to have no future. So I was still floating between words and wine without trying to understand things. I stopped asking questions and so I didn't even ask him, who seemed so confident and quiet in spending a couple of hours with me, drinking and chatting.
While we were there, seemingly analyzing my last twenty years of life, his cell phone shook: he was my husband.
The coincidences are never such and I began a suffocated rice, he did not answer and looked at me amazed and then laughed also him and let him ring. On my husband's second phone call (which usually never responds to calls but expects others to do so) he replied with a short text: sorry I am busy at dinner, I'll call you tomorrow. "But did you tell him that you are at dinner with me?" he asked me and I slightly shook the head, tilting the face a little left smiling. "In fact," he said, "I know you well, I know you wouldn't."
We finished the second Franciacorta and asked me if there was anything he could do to help me.
– Non credo – risposi io, così consapevole che l’unica persona che può aiutarmi sono io stessa e magari un colpo di fortuna (vedi mai che esista).
Ci alzammo tardissimo dal tavolo e camminammo nella città ovattata della notte.
Poi, presa la macchina, mi accompagnò a casa che era ormai l’una passata.
Al momento di salutarci ancora con il motore acceso mi disse:
– Te lo dico: sono sempre stato innamorato di te. È stata una storia impossibile sin dal primo momento in cui ti ho visto. La mia vita e le mie scelte sono state in parte il frutto del fatto che tu c’eri ma eri su un’altra galassia. È lo sliding doors.-.
Io sono rimasta pietrificata sul sedile a fianco a lui e la mia annosa amicizia per lui ha preso subito un altro significato. Così mi sono apparsi chiari certi messaggi, certe fughe, certi ostacoli insormontabili, la scelta sempre sbagliata delle sue donne e i loro abbandoni, fino alla moglie e al figlio, sposata perchè bisognava pur fare famiglia e vivere una vita.
Sono rimasta silenziosa a pensare e lui mi ha detto:
– Non c’è bisogno che tu mi dica niente. È l’inizio dell’estate, vorrei tanto che tu risolvessi le tue preoccupazioni. Io vivo bene adesso con le mie scelte anche se so che avrei potuto fare di più e cambiare la mia vita, prima, molto prima ma per qualche motivo avevo bisogno di dirtelo.-
Rimanemmo in silenzio, io che ho sempre le parole adatte a ogni situazione, guardavo l’orlo del pozzo che si era scoperchiato davanti a me, e non vedevo nulla. Lui interruppe il silenzio:
“Dovevo chiudere le slinding doors-
A cervello spento mi si è attivato l’istinto, finalmente libero di muoversi come gli pareva.
L’ho baciato sulla guancia (quanto amo le guance degli uomini, lisce e ruvide come il loro cuore, infossate in angoli impensabili, profumate e morbide, luoghi impervi su cui tracciare percorsi con gli sguardi e scivolare giù, nell’incavo del collo, e poi via, dietro ancora la nuca, l’orecchio e via) e silenziosa sono uscita dalla macchina. Mi sono voltata ho messo la testa dentro la macchina e ho detto: “Grazie”.
Grazie di cosa ancora non lo so, ma ho chiuso la portiera e via.
Quando sono entrata nel portone lui è ripartito e a quel punto io sono ancora uscita per vederlo andare. Dopo una trentina di metri ha fermato la macchina, ha accostato sulla destra ed è rimasto fermo lì, la testa forse posata sul volante, oppure chissà, china sul cellulare.
Io sono rientrata e ho chiuso piano il portone alle mie spalle.
Di lui so che è vivo ma non l’ho più visto. Poi hanno definitivamente eliminato Skype e così non ho più traccia nemmeno delle nostre antiche chat.
Se ti sei perso l’ultimo articolo della Tana del Bianconiglio, un libro di scienza del 1700 lo trovi a questo link
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