The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 31

or unable to see, or too sensitive, however exquisitely and delicately sensitive, there are terrible things in life and you have to face up to them because that’s what men do, by confronting them they put their humanity to the test and make themselves worthy of it, and he would come to realize that it was impossible, absolutely impossible for him, totally and conclusively impossible, to let his father die without affording him the charity of a single visit, even if such a visit would be infinitely less pleasant than what made up the daily round of his life as a prick, partying and screwing and the vile stupidity in which he wallowed, like a pig on its dunghill, and when he had realized this he would catch the plane without another minute’s delay, and she was so afraid of having to shut him out of her life if she heard the answer he was going to give her now, she was so afraid of having to lose him forever, idiot, incorrigible idiot that she was, that she preferred not to have to listen to his answer and she hung up on him. She went back to Claudie. She was shaking with rage.

“I’ve just had your son on the phone. You’d have done better to . . .”

Claudie looked at her, completely lost and defenseless, and Aurélie congratulated herself on not having completed the sentence dictated to her by the brutal impulses of her churlish heart, though she no longer resisted them as soon as she found herself alone with the man who was sharing her life for the last time. She took refuge behind her glass frontier and on that last night she refused to share her body with him, or her anger or her pain. At Annaba Massinissa Guermat asked her how her visit had gone and if her father was getting better, and she replied that everything had gone very well, but as he was taking her back to the vast, silent desert of the Hotel d’État, she surrendered to the wave of sadness overwhelming her and shook her head, no, everything had not gone well, she had thought her father was dying in front of her, he’d been unable to speak, had seized her wrist with all his strength, so as not to be sucked in by the shifting sands that were already filling his mouth and choking him, and there was nothing she could do, because when you die you are alone, oh, how alone you are when you die, and faced with this loneliness she had simply wanted to get away, nothing else, she had wanted her father to let go of her wrist so as to let her get away, and for him to stop compelling her to face this loneliness which is beyond the understanding of the living, and for a long while she no longer felt either compassion or grief but simply a panic fear, the memory of which now filled her with horror and Massinissa said to her,

“I can’t leave you like this,”

and she turned to him, with a dry throat, unexpectedly feverish and alive, and said to him in commanding tones, without lowering her eyes,

“Then don’t leave me. Don’t leave me,”

and without a moment’s thought she flung her arms around his neck, and with immense solace felt Massinissa’s arms enfolding her. He got up before dawn, so that no member of the team and none of the hotel staff should see him returning to his room. Aurélie waited till dawn. She had a bath and stayed there for a long time in the yellowish water, thinking of nothing, and emerged abruptly to make a call to the man she was going to leave. He was unwilling to believe this, he demanded explanations and, weary of battle, since he needed to have an explanation, Aurélie told him that she had met someone, but this revelation provoked further questions, where? who? since when? and Aurélie replied that none of this had any point because, basically, this encounter had nothing to do with what she was in the process of doing, he must understand this, but he insisted and so finally she said,

“Last night. Since last night.”

He went on talking, now there were sobs in his voice, why was she telling him so soon? why hadn’t she waited? it could be a passing fancy he would never have known about, she couldn’t be certain, and now it was irreparable, why had she confessed something that might well have had no significance, why was she so cruel? Aurélie thought she owed him the truth.

“Because that’s what I want: I want it to be irreparable.”

Two hours before dawn they were walking with Gavina Pintus on the way to Tenebrae on Holy Thursday night. They had stayed on their feet all night at the bar, so as not to have to wake up, they had cleaned their teeth in the sink behind the counter and were now chewing mint-flavored gum lest their breath, heavy with drink, might disturb the piety of this night of mourning. For Easter Monday they had planned to arrange a big picnic with music in front of the bar, and the next day they would leave. Libero would travel to Paris with Matthieu, they would go to see his father and combine this with taking several days’ vacation in Barcelona, where, without being niggardly over the cost, for they could afford it, they had booked a hotel, thus combining the useful with the agreeable and Jacques Antonetti would not be given the impression that they had come to take their leave of a dying man. So on that night of Holy Thursday they were walking along, arm in arm with Gavina Pintus, keeping as upright as possible, the damp wind froze them, the hold of the alcohol became less noticeable and behind them walked Pierre-Emmanuel Colonna, with the friends from the city