Trust by Domenico Starnone

Author:Domenico Starnone [Starnone, Domenico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2021-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

20.

I trace the start of my new life back to that night in Milan, even though, for many years now, I’ve believed that it’s self-deceiving to think of beginnings and endings in terms of ascribed dates. The very next morning, things went remarkably smoothly. Tilde and I had breakfast together, with genuine good cheer, as if the day before, fearing a deadly illness, we’d undergone decisive clinical tests and, now that our bodies had been declared utterly healthy, we were now boldly alive.

On the trip back, we even managed to talk about what had happened between us, and we had a good laugh. At a certain point, however, while she was driving, I turned serious, and traced my finger over the hem of her dress—a boundary that ran quite close to her slender knees—and tried to put words to an impression that I had in mind ever since we’d shut ourselves up in the car. Had we made love, I said, my finger, now, would feel nothing of what that fabric beckons. And she agreed, and we went on to imagine how much our perceptions would have been lost forever if, in the course of that night, we’d gotten to know every square inch of each other, rendering us deaf to each other’s details. The list amused us, and there was only one painful moment when Tilde suddenly cried out, just as I was talking about the shape of her small ear, which barely had a lobe and adhered to her nape:

—What idiocy.

—What, no more kidding around?

She shook her head vigorously:

—No, no, keep going. But now I know that the last thing I wanted to do was make love to you.

—Then what did you want?

—I can’t explain it without sounding ridiculous.

She uttered that last bit with a twitch of her mouth, all the more surprising if you bear in mind that, up until a few seconds ago, she seemed happy. I wavered, and was about to say, go ahead, be ridiculous, but I decided not to, because I thought of something extremely similar that Teresa had said to me, yelling in the course of one of our fights. We were in the apartment in San Lorenzo. She was trying to tell me something that had to do with her need to be loved, and I’d reduced that need to a sarcastic triviality. She who, even though she went delirious with pleasure every time we made love, said distinctly: hey, excuse me, you really think I’m with you because of that silly little thing you have between your legs, is that what you think? And, in a rage, she started breaking objects, yelling that there was no way to explain herself, not to me who seemed to understand everything, absolutely everything, even the most elusive feelings, even the most ineffable thoughts, but instead I was worse than the dullest of men, I broke the bones and slit the throat of whoever ended up on top of or under me, I was a trap, a trap that was well hidden.

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