Past imperfect
Шрифт:
Rome was blackening outside the window. Flaminio's obelisk pierced the darkening sky. The frozen Tiber loomed to the right. Today, Marco's beloved view from the window did not please him. With a chuckle, he caught himself thinking about summoning a call-girl. However, Marco quickly dismissed the idea, and scolded himself, deciding that he had not quite fallen so low – at least not yet.
He wandered around the living room like a caged tiger. The wall clock showed fifteen minutes until midnight. New year is coming soon, and Marco had nothing to prepare for a celebration – his table was bare. Moreover, what sort of celebration would it be if he was alone?
Marco came up with an idea: when he was a child, his mother had told him about how to attract good luck on New Year's Eve. She said it was essential to dress in red, throw out old junk from the window and eat twelve grapes while the clock struck. One grape at a chime.
Marko didn't believe in all that nonsense, but today he felt especially saddened. Perhaps it was the wine that went to his head, but nevertheless for some reason, he stumbled into his bedroom. There was a photo frame of himself and Paola on the bedside table beside the huge bed. Marco thoughtfully rubbed his stubbled chin and, after considering it, took the photo out and tore it up into small pieces. Not because he hated the girl. He just wanted to make sure there would be nothing compromising if he threw the photo out of the window.
Then he entered the dressing room and pulled out the first red object that caught his eye. It turned out to be a beautiful, large-knit sweater that his mother had made with her own hands. Marco put it on over his sports T-shirt.
Then Marco forced himself to look in the far corner of the dressing room. Having decided, he reached onto the top shelf and took out an old, torn T-shirt that was faded, but very carefully washed and repaired. It was his favourite T-shirt which he wore when visiting his parents in the campagna. He had not lived with them since the age of nineteen, since he started studying.
Two years ago, their house in the village was completely burned down. A remote area, an isolated house with almost no neighbours… His parents didn’t survive. It was fortunate that his brother was not there at the time. An old T-shirt and a vineyard taken care of by strangers were all that remained of that particular past. Marco had the house rebuilt rebuilt in detail, but it never again felt the same.
Marco looked at the T-shirt for a long time, then he took it out of the dressing room, gathered the pieces of the photo on the cloth, and went to the kitchen. It was two minutes before midnight according to the clock. He reached into the fridge, picked out a dozen from a bunch of grapes, rinsed them, and placed them on the table. Some scattered, so Marco collected them in a pile. He opened the window, letting cold air into the apartment. Then he turned on the live broadcast from St. Mark's square in Venice and waited.
Almost immediately, joyful voices came from the TV, announcing that the clock was about to strike. And it was true: the first "boom-m-m-m-m" rang out and Marco put a grape into his mouth. He desperately wanted good luck.
He swallowed the grapes like a duck, without chewing, and with at last stroke, he finished the last of them. The sky lit up with bright fireworks. Marco grabbed the T-shirt and the scraps of photo and walked towards the window albeit reluctantly. He couldn't take his eyes off his burden. His fingers convulsively at the fabric.
At the last moment, he scooped up the paper scraps from the shirt. Placing the cloth on the table, he threw the photo fragments out the window with no regret. There was no shame before Paola, but the desire to release the grief that had tormented him for two years gave rise to a bitter sense of guilt.
Marco sighed heavily, lowered his head, stood there for a minute and finally slammed the window shut. He went into the living room, took the wine and sat down to watch "Christmas Holidays", the plot of which he already knew by heart.
After half an hour, Marco realised that he was not looking at the screen. He turned off the TV and trudged into the bedroom. Stripped naked, he stretched out on the bed on top of the blankets with a sigh. Fireworks were booming outside the window, illuminating the room with coloured flashes.
The sight of coloured confetti made from the photo flying out of his window rose before his eyes. Marco would soon be thirty-nine, many of his classmates were already sending their children to school, and he had just thrown his past affair out of the window.
Marco rolled over on his side. "I wonder what that redhead is doing now? Probably dancing somewhere on the street, in a crowd of other idle revellers" he thought, and immediately regretted it. The image of soft lips picking up red, juicy flesh from a creamy bed instantly burst into his consciousness. Heck! He could describe in details where he would like to see those lips.
He tried to force the image away, but it was instantly replaced by another one: a girl with her eyes closed sat at the piano, slowly swaying to the music, her head tilted back in pleasure. Her open throat was white against red curls and a slight smile played on her full lips. For some reason, in his fantasy, the girl was barefoot. He wondered what else she could do so slowly and delicately?
Marco cursed out loud, slammed his fist unnecessarily hard into the pillow, and tried to lie down on his stomach. After all these thoughts, lying on his stomach was uncomfortable. Marco cursed his stubborn body, which did not want to eat starvation rations, and declared it in every possible way.
Marco realised that he would not be able to sleep. He got up, grumbled through his teeth, and – naked – went back into the living room. He picked up a glass, drained it in one gulp, and poured himself more wine. But it only made things worse. His brain, clouded by alcohol, refused to obey and gave him a series of images of a red-haired temptress one by one.
After two hours of fruitless attempts to distract himself with TV, wine, music, or anything else, Marco gave up and went to take a shower. Standing in front of the transparent wall, he wondered if he could act like a true stoic and stand under cold water. His second option was to stop acting like a moral idiot and get into a warm shower and solve the problem as a real warrior. In other words, as some poor guy who was quite an adult but didn't have access to women in the flesh. Ignoring his ego, Marco turned on the hot water.