The Purple Room Read online

  Mauro Casiraghi

  THE PURPLE ROOM

  Original Title

  La camera viola

  Translation by

  Jennifer Delare

  Paige E. Gribb

  Wendy Tombs

  Copyright

  © 2016 Mauro Casiraghi

  To Gioia De Angelis

  wherever she is now

  after all these years

  “I have always felt I lived on the high seas,

  threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.”

  Albert Camus

  1

  I stopped waging war on the ants after I got out of the hospital. I don’t kill them anymore.

  I started exterminating ants sixteen years ago. My wife and I had just bought our house in the country, about a half an hour north of Rome. The garden was full of weeds, and the porch needed painting. I had always lived in the city, and the idea of mowing the lawn, planting roses, and spreading manure didn’t thrill me at all. My wife Alessandra, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get started. She pointed to the trail of red and black ants coming out of the sandstone wall and marching straight for our kitchen.

  “Make them disappear,” she said, planting a kiss on my mouth.

  That afternoon, I went into town and bought the Exterminator’s Kit. I added one percent poisonous powder to ninety-nine percent water, filled the included spray bottle and set to work. I squirted the ants without remorse. I watched them stagger, then curl up and die, and felt like I was waging a righteous war. Alessandra was pregnant with Michela and to me our house felt like it was already teeming with romping children. I had to protect my family.

  The ants came back every spring, regardless of the slaughter. I’d get out my spray bottle and set to work again. Killing them became a routine, like washing the car or mowing the lawn.

  I don’t know exactly when things started to change. I just remember that Michela was still little, and the menacing silence of the country was keeping me up at night. I was afraid of burglars. There was so much talk about our neighbors getting drugged and robbed in their sleep that I started getting up late at night and doing rounds of the house, checking the reinforced door, the barred windows, and the burglar alarm. I kept a length of iron from an old gas pipe under the bed, just in case.

  No one ever broke in. They didn’t even try, as far as I know. In thanks for my efforts, a few years ago my wife left me and took our little girl with her. Since then I’ve been alone, guarding an empty fort.

  The war on the ants continued, even after Alessandra and Michela had gone. While other people were on their summer vacations, I spent afternoons with a bottle of wine in one hand and the spray bottle in the other. I would kneel down drunk and wait in front of the crack in the wall. Every time an ant came out, I tried to hit it with a squirt of my poison.

  The design studio in Rome where I worked would reopen at the end of August, and my days would fill up again. Eight hours in front of a computer and two stuck in the car, staring blankly at the faces of the daily traffic jam’s other victims. In the evening, I’d collapse on the couch and fall asleep before I could get around to eating dinner.

  Saturday afternoons belonged to Michela. Movies, pizza, clothing stores. Sad zoos and sad circuses. On Sundays, weather permitting, I’d go scuba diving with Roberto off the coast of Monte Argentario. I liked going down a hundred feet and staying there as long as possible. More than anything else, I liked the silence and darkness that surrounded me.

  That was all before the accident.

  This morning, I threw the Exterminator’s Kit away. Now I’m sitting here in the garden, watching the ants go in and out of the crack in the wall. I feel like, as long as they’re here, I will be, too.

  At four o’clock the alarm on my cell phone goes off. I set it to remind me about my doctor’s appointment. I really don’t feel like going, but my mother will call to hear the latest, so I don’t have a choice.

  I get up from the patio chair, grab my keys, and drag myself to the car. I haven’t washed it in months. A while ago, someone wrote, Wash me, asshole! on the back window. I see it every time I look in the rearview mirror, but I haven’t bothered to wipe it off yet.

  I drive down the hill, past a flock of sheep and a tractor. I pass the cement frames of thirteen apartment buildings and a new shopping center they’re building on an old pasture. I take the main road towards Rome. After fifteen miles, I reach the Raccordo Anulare, the ring road that encircles the city. I merge into traffic, switch on the radio and try to relax.

  The traffic along the Lungotevere, hugging the Tiber as it winds through the heart of Rome, is even slower than usual. Franco is a good friend; he’ll let me park behind his SUV in the hospital courtyard. I still have a ways to go, though, before I’ll reach the Ponte Garibaldi bridge and cross to the other side. I can’t stand being stuck in here. It’s so claustrophobic. I ditch the car on a sidewalk and start walking.

  It’s a beautiful day. The green river sparkles in the sun. You can almost forget about the trash all along the banks. I see couples everywhere. A man and a woman in a convertible are waiting at the traffic light. She puts her hand on his knee and nibbles on his ear. A young tourist couple with smiling, sunburned faces push a stroller toward Trastevere. On the other side of the road, an old man and his wife are waiting for the bus. Hunchbacked, bent over, eighty years old, and still holding hands.

  I cross the river at the Ponte Sisto bridge. A boy and a girl are making out. Lips locked, hands under T-shirts, deaf and blind to everything except the movement of their tongues. They’re like statues. I regret leaving my camera at home. I just stand there watching them, jealous, until the boy notices and glowers at me.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  I get out of there fast. People can be selfish and merciless when they’re in love, especially towards those who are not.

  “How’s your appetite?”

  Franco checks my eyes with a penlight. His big, thickly mustachioed face is close to mine. His breath smells like coffee and peppermint.

  “Normal.”

  “Are you sleeping well at night?”

  “Falling asleep is hard. Lots of images whirl around in my head.”

  “How about your job? Have you started back?”

  “Not yet. Maybe in September.”

  “Well, don’t wait too long. It’ll do you good to get back to work.”

  He turns off the penlight. We’re done. I button up my shirt.

  “There’s one more thing,” I say, like it’s not very important. “I still have those gaps in my memory.”

  Franco looks at me, stroking his moustache.

  “When is your last clear memory from?”

  “A week before the accident.”

  “Well, then it’s nothing serious. It’s called retrograde amnesia. Memory loss can happen after a coma like yours.”

  “Can you do anything about it?”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll all come back. You just have to be patient.”

  While Franco flips through his calendar to schedule our next appointment, I decide to tell him about the woman.

  “I must have met her before the accident. We were in a bedroom. Not at my house, somewhere else. She was looking out the window. I don’t remember anything else about her.”

  Franco looks me in the eye, trying to figure out whether I’m serious. For a while, after my divorce, I used to joke around all the time. Whenever I opened my mouth, it was to mess around or say something stupid. I’d talk about anything except how I was feeling. Now it’s different, though.

  “See that ficus?” He points at a plant flourishing in the corner of the room. “You could have ended up like that. A vegetable. You could have been paralyzed
. You could’ve had permanent brain damage. But you’re here, safe and sound, with a little bit of amnesia. You were damn lucky. Do you realize that?”

  I nod silently. It’s at least the third time he’s said that.

  “You know what I think?” he goes on. “Lucky bastards like us should be able to see things differently. So stop brooding over everything. Go back to work, go out, have fun. Who cares about some woman whose name you don’t even remember? The world is full of beautiful women. Enjoy life, Sergio!”

  He slaps me on the back. Hard. We agree to go out for dinner sometime.

  Back at the car, I see a flyer stuck under the windshield wiper. Find your soul mate. It’s an ad for a dating agency. I check the address. It’s only ten minutes away by foot.

  That famous photo by Doisneau is hanging in the waiting room. Two lovers are kissing in the middle of a Parisian street. It looks like they’re unaware of being photographed. Actually, the photographer caught them kissing and asked them to do it again, to repeat what they had just done. The image is both candid and staged. It’s a good choice.

  “We’re all set with your enrollment. It’s time to fill out your profile.”

  The woman shows me to her office. She sits behind a glass-topped desk. I can see her smooth legs crossed underneath it. She must be around forty, with dyed red hair and a nose job. I’ve forgotten her name. She told me five minutes ago, and I’m too embarrassed to ask her again.

  “Age?”

  “Forty-five. Almost forty-six.”

  She types my answers into the computer. She’s sitting in a strange, twisted position, with her crossed legs pointed one way and her torso the other, toward the screen. She turns her head unnaturally, like a doll. Her body seems pliable, flexible, ready to respond to commands. I try to picture her naked on a rumpled bed, waiting for round two. I try, but I fail. As soon as I see myself in underwear, entering the frame, the image fades away.

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a graphic designer.”

  Her painted fingernails click on the keys. She’s not wearing a wedding ring. Not that that means anything. I kept wearing mine for a long time after Alessandra left me.

  “Divorced?”

  “Six years ago.”

  “Children?”

  “One. She lives with her mom.” For no reason at all, I add, “It’s her birthday on Saturday.”

  The woman smiles, looking me straight in the eye. She’s about to ask me an important question and wants my undivided attention. It feels like she’s looking right through me.

  “Now, tell me your vision of the person you want to meet.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She blinks. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I don’t really have a clear idea.”

  “You must have preferences. What’s your type? Tall, short, thin, plump? Blonde, brunette, redhead? With a degree, divorced, Italian, foreign...?”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “You don’t have a type? I’ve never come across that. Every man has an ideal woman. Tell me about yours and I promise I’ll find her for you.”

  I’m starting to sweat. Why on earth did I come here?

  “Maybe I used to have a type. I guess I did, yeah—but now I want to start from scratch.”

  A patient sigh, a swish of her skirt as she shifts on the chair, a red mark where her knee had been pressing against her calf. I get lost in that kind of detail.

  “I know how you feel, Sergio. We all experience heartbreak and lose faith in love sometimes. That’s why I’m here. I just need you to tell me some kind of preference I can use to sort through the hundreds of women in our system. Take a moment to think about it.”

  My headache is coming back. It hasn’t happened since the first few days after I got out of the hospital. It’s like a cold knife slowly piercing my skull, just behind my ear. I wish I were out of this office, at home, sitting in the garden until dark and watching the ants march back and forth.

  I close my eyes, and again that memory emerges from the darkness. Her silhouette against the light of the window. Her hair loose on her bare shoulders. The wall of the room all around, like a frame. The color of the wall...

  “Purple,” I say aloud.

  I open my eyes. The woman is gazing at me, blinking.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “She has to like purple,” I repeat, forcing myself to smile. “It’s my favorite color.”

  2

  This house is too big for me. I should have sold it after Alessandra and Michela moved back to the city. I didn’t. Whether out of laziness, habit, or stupidity, I don’t know.

  Last year I locked up the upstairs bedrooms and moved into the studio I had built in the basement. I call it my bunker. There’s a bathroom, a mini fridge and a sofa bed. In the storeroom is my archive filled with all the thousands of photographs I’ve gathered over the years. There’s a darkroom down there, too, but I don’t use it anymore.

  It’s very peaceful here. The landline hardly ever rings, and my cellphone is usually off. Lately, though, I’ve kept it on day and night. You never know. Hello, Sergio? What’ve you been up to? Why haven’t you called me back? I’m expecting a woman’s voice to ask, while my heart pounds against my ribs and I try to connect the voice to a face I can’t remember.

  “Hello?”

  “Sergio, how are you? What did the doctor say?”

  My mom. At seventy-two, she’s still the one who keeps my feet on the ground. When I notice that I’m losing touch with the real world, I go and have lunch with her, and by the end of the afternoon I feel sane again.

  I got into the habit of collecting and cataloging photos because of her. She does it with every certificate, letter, receipt, ticket stub, or coupon that comes into the house. She started fifty-two years ago, when she worked as a secretary in an accounting firm in Milan. She lost an important document right after they hired her, got a talking to from the boss, and never misplaced anything again, as far as I know. Not so much as a pin.

  In her basement, there are fifty-two boxes cataloged by year. Recently, just out of curiosity, I opened the seventh box, from the year I was born. Inside, along with my birth certificate, favors from my christening, and receipts for a washing machine, I found an X-ray of a tiny arm and an emergency room report. It said I’d broken my elbow when I was eleven months old. No one had ever told me. I asked my mother what had happened, and her eyes filled with tears as soon as I brought it up. It mortified her to tell me about it. She was alone with me that day, and her bad back made it too hard to bend over and wash me in the bathtub. She had to do it in the sink instead. She had left the towel on the side of the tub. When she turned around to get it, I moved suddenly. I slipped out of the sink and fell on the floor, breaking my arm.

  “I’m so sorry, darling, so sorry,” she sobbed. I hugged her and told her there was no reason to be upset. Nothing terrible had happened and my arm had never given me any problems. My mother dried her tears and breathed a sigh of relief, like I’d just acquitted her of a horrible crime. She’d been carrying that guilt around for forty-five years.

  On the phone, I tell her that the doctor says that I’m fine and that I should get back to work. My mom thinks that’s a good sign.

  “So, are you coming for lunch on Saturday? I still have those curtains to put up.”

  “Sure. I’ll bring Michela, too, if I can persuade her.”

  “I haven’t seen her in a long time… Oh, and remember to pay your taxes tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you write it down? You’ll forget if you don’t.”

  I start to write “bank” on the calendar she gave me for Christmas, but the pen isn’t working. I give up.

  “Done!” I say. “Bye, Mom, see you on Saturday.”

  I’m opening a beer when the phone rings again. It’s my ex-wife. I give her the same health update I gave my mother. We make plans for Saturday. I’m going to pick up Michela
in the morning and take her shopping. I can never figure out her taste, so it’s safer to let her choose her presents for herself. They’re usually pre-ripped clothes that cost an arm and a leg, or steel-toed combat boots.

  “Try to buy her something pretty this time.” Alessandra’s voice is more nasal than usual. She’s allergic to pollen. Springtime is a nightmare for her. “I can’t stand seeing her dressed all in black anymore.”

  “I’ll do my best, but…” I don’t finish my sentence.

  “But…? But what?” says Alessandra, annoyed. When we were married, one of the things she got on my case about was my habit of not finishing sentences. I swore that she was wrong, that she just didn’t pay attention when I talked. It wasn’t my fault if she didn’t hear what I said. Alessandra secretly recorded a conversation we had in the kitchen and made me listen to it. She was right. I would leave one sentence hanging and start another, and then I’d abandon that one to say something else. I sounded like I had dementia. Since then, I’ve tried to be better about it.

  “Michela’s gotten pretty stubborn,” I say. “It won’t be easy to get her to choose something more to your taste than hers.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Don’t take her to the flea market. There’s a cute little boutique on a street off of Via Nazionale…”

  She goes on and on, explaining the exact location of the shop. My cell phone overheats, and I have to switch it from one ear to the other a few times. Right before hanging up, though, she manages to say something nice.

  “I heard you’re not going back to work until September.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to push it.”

  “We can make do without your checks until then, if you like.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll send it like always, but thanks anyway.”