The Silence of the Wave by Gianrico Carofiglio

Author:Gianrico Carofiglio
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, International Mystery & Crime, Fiction, Suspense, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780847841394
Publisher: Rizzoli
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

17

When the moment came to drink the Cabernet they had ordered and poured in their glasses, Roberto hesitated for a moment, and Emma noticed.

“You’re not teetotal, are you? No, you can’t be, you had a spritz.”

“It’s just that I’m still on medication and apparently you have to be careful not to mix it with alcohol. I’ve already had one drink … But it’s all right, there’s no problem, I’ll drink the wine but won’t take any medication tonight. The doctor said I can, from time to time. Even though I’ve never done it before, and to be honest the idea makes me a bit nervous. Well, if worst comes to worst, I won’t sleep tonight.”

“Still on medication? How long have you been seeing the doctor?”

“I’ve been going since …”

Again that unpleasant sensation of not being able to locate things in time. How long had he been seeing the doctor? He floundered, as he had when he’d been trying to remember the year his mother had died.

He had started seeing the doctor just after the end of summer.

Yes, in September. It was April now, which made seven months, give or take.

“Seven months, more or less.”

And what day is today? Monday, of course, because he’d been to the doctor’s and should have met Emma there, but she hadn’t gone. It seemed to him as if it wasn’t just a few hours that had passed since he’d been getting ready to go out, but days, quite a few days in fact. The feeling was so strong that Roberto wondered if it actually had been several days and he was getting confused, caught irreparably now in this personal trap of time. But, to go back to the question, what day was it in April? What date?

Again that sense of panic, that impression of being lost in unknown territory. A place where monstrous entities might be hiding behind familiar everyday objects. Entities that could jump on you or eat you up. He couldn’t reconstruct what day it was—it must be round about the middle of April—and thought of looking at his mobile. But he would have had to take it out of his pocket and actually look at it, and that struck him as impolite and somehow cowardly. Tomorrow he would buy a calendar and make a note of what day it was, every day. And little by little he would reconstruct the chronology of the past few months, and then of the past few years, of his life.

“What day is today?”

“Monday, April eighteenth. Why?”

“Every now and again I get mixed up. And yes, I am taking various medications.”

“I stopped taking the heavy stuff a few months ago. I still take a dozen drops of Minias in the evening, though. The doctor says that’s all right, that it’s important to sleep and that a few drops of tranquilizer never hurt anybody.”

Roberto was a little surprised by this light, cheerful way of dealing with the subject. In the end he raised his glass in a toast, Emma responded, and they drank.

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