The Purple Room by Mauro Casiraghi

Author:Mauro Casiraghi [Casiraghi, Mauro]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

I leave the underground garage. Once on the road, I start driving without any particular destination. Along a brightly-lit avenue I see a billboard with the Elixir advertisement. Then another, then another, and yet another. They’ve plastered the city with them. The twenty-by-ten-foot girl in the lilac panties follows me everywhere with her indifferent eyes.

I told Roberto that I hadn’t thought of Gloria in all these years. It’s not true. I was wrong. I thought of her right before Christmas, seven years ago. At the time, I was having an affair with Federica, the mother of one of Michela’s school mates. She lived in an enormous villa surrounded by a luxurious park. Her husband, a famous lawyer, was never at home and she was lonely. A couple of times a week, between eight and nine in the morning, I’d go and see her. Federica would let me in through the front door, without a thought for the maid or the gardener. We’d go straight up to the guest room, tear off our clothes and make love furiously, hurriedly, without a word. Then we’d dress and go down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. For ten minutes we’d talk about out children’s school, about how it was almost winter, about our summer holiday plans. She’d call up her mother or her sister while I finished drinking my coffee, skimming the headlines of her husband’s newspaper. We’d say goodbye at the door, just like a married couple. It was a comforting pretense. After having been to bed as lovers, reciting the part of a husband and wife made us feel less guilty. It created an illusion, for half an hour, that sex and domesticity could both exist under the same roof.

One morning, when it was nearly Christmas, I went to see her as usual. Entering her house, I saw the Christmas tree all decorated with lights and a high star that reached the ceiling. My wife, too, had decided that we should put up our Christmas tree that coming weekend. I could already see myself climbing up the ladder to look for the dusty bag of ornaments, colored lights and silver tinsel. I felt a stab in my chest at the thought of Christmas dinner with my mother and Alessandra’s parents. All those fake smiles to hide the truth, from them and from ourselves. I imagined taking Alessandra aside and convincing her to admit that it was absurd to go on like this. I would have liked to tell her about Federica, talk to her without raising our voices, calmly, until we could both own up to being frightened, unhappy and secretly furious, acknowledge that our life together was over. Then we could have put up the tree, made dinner, opened the gifts. It would have been our last family Christmas. We all could have hugged, the way you do before you set off on a long trip. After that, we would all have gone our separate ways, with pain, bitterness, and a sense of failure, but nonetheless aware of the need to start over.

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