Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini, John Cullen Read Free Book Online

straps; the sheet, crumpled up at the foot of the bed, where she had kicked it off of her; her face, covered by the thick mass of her hair. I thought, Maybe she was already asleep when I called, and that’s why she didn’t hear the telephone. And that thought soothed me, the thought that she was sleeping while I . . . as if in a dream. I was chewing my bread; my wife was asleep. Her breath was as calm as the sea outside the window.
    I threw my underwear into the laundry basket and got into the shower. Then I went back downstairs in my bathrobe, leaving wet footprints on the stairs. I found my sunglasses and went outside to sit in the pergola. Through my dark lenses the blue of the sea looked more vibrant and intense than it really was. I was in my house, surrounded by the fragrance of familiar things; fear was somewhere else, far away. I had run away from a fire—I could still feel the flames on my face. I looked around and tried to bring things slowly into focus. I had to reaccustom myself to the man I believed myself to be, the one who’d got lost inside a glass of vodka, melted away like those filthy little ice cubes, and given in to a sordid impulse. I put a hand in front of my mouth to smell my breath. No, I didn’t stink of alcohol.
    “Hello, sweetheart.” Elsa put her hand on my shoulder. I turned around and kissed her immediately. My kiss was badly aimed and partially missed her lips. She was wearing her gauze shirt; a hint of her nipples, darkened by the sun, showed through the fabric. Her eyes were still full of sleep. I pulled her close again for a better kiss.
    “You’re late.”
    “I had to do a really difficult operation.”
    I’d lied instinctively, and now there I was, stuck in my lie. I took her hand and we walked on the sand along the seashore.
    “You want to go out to eat?”
    “If you want to . . .”
    “No, it’s up to you.”
    “Let’s stay home.”
    We sat down at the water’s edge. The sun was beginning to show a little mercy. Elsa straightened her legs, thrust out her toes, and watched her toenails disappear and reappear in the wet sand. We were used to being together like this; neither of us objected to sitting side by side in silence. But after being apart for several days, we were spoiled by solitude, and we had to reactivate our intimacy. I picked up your mother’s hand and stroked it. She was thirty-seven years old; perhaps she, too, missed that girl in the orange wool overcoat, the one who swayed tipsily out of the restaurant and sat on the breakwater, doubled over with laughter, while the wind blew the spray around. Maybe she was searching for her younger self there, at the tip of her toes, where the white foam ebbed and flowed over her feet. But no, I was the one who had gone missing. It was me, with my long, unpredictable working hours, my niggardly giving, my hasty taking. In any case, we certainly didn’t start digging about in search of our reciprocal shortcomings, in the sand or anywhere else. We no longer had the courage for that. Courage, Angela, belongs to new love; old love is always a little cowardly. No, I wasn’t her boyfriend anymore; I was the man who waited for her in the car while she went into a shop. Elsa slipped her hand into mine. Her hand was soft, like the muzzle of a horse that recognizes its fodder.
    “Shall we go for a swim?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll put on my bathing suit.”
    I watched her go back to the house; I watched her strong, solid, willful legs as she walked up the beach. I thought about those other, scrawny legs, flaccid on the inner side, where I’d squeezed them so hard. And once again, I relished the taste of her sweat, of her fear. “Help,” she’d murmured at one point. “Help.”
    Now Elsa was going through the gate to the yard, smiling the way we smile at things that belong to us. I turned to look at the sun, which was going down into the sea in a shimmer of pink light, and I thought that I was a stupid man. This