The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe Read Free Book Online Page A

two
days’ time. I hadn’t been introduced to Annamaria before, but it wasn’t this that
held me back. All that held me back, at first, was my noticing that he was in the
middle of trying to call someone on his mobile. I decided to let him finish, before
stepping forward, before saying hello.
    The relationship between us (right word, again? I don’t think there is one,
to cover this strange situation) had been going on for three months, by then.
Stefano’s wife, despite her promises, was still being unfaithful to him. He kept
saying that he was going to leave her. Whenever we talked about this, I refrained from giving any advice. I could not trust myself to be impartial. It was
in my interest that he left her. No—I’ll put that less coldly. I was desperate for
him to leave her. I was willing it with every muscle in my heart. But I never
said anything. Falsely, our situation had cast me in the role of friend, and the
only thing I could do, in that capacity, was remain silent. So we persisted with
our lunches, and drinks, and our unspoken desires and the decorous, passionless
kisses that marked the beginning and the end of our meetings. And as for the
feelings that were giving me such grief, such unassuageable pain, I tried to pretend that they didn’t even exist. I tried to be a heroine. Which was stupid of
me, really, although I suppose that underneath it all I was kept going by the
thought that one day, in the tolerably near future, my patience would miraculously pay off.
    The person he was trying to call didn’t answer. I heard him say to
Annamaria, “No, she isn’t there.” And Annamaria said to him, “Can’t you
remember, Papa, which one she likes?” They were looking at two bowls of plump
green olives, laid out on a self-service counter, and he was hesitating between
them. But this was no ordinary hesitation. Not at all. No—it was really,
really
important to him that he bought his wife exactly the olives that she liked best. And
I could see at once that it was on little, everyday choices like this that the whole
happiness of their shared life was founded. Which means that in that hesitation—
at that moment—with sickening clarity, I glimpsed it: the unquenchable love that
he felt for this woman, that he continued to feel for her despite all her betrayals,
the love I had chosen to hope, in the leaden weeks building up to this moment, that
he would one day transfer to me. That hope withered and died in a flicker, in the
tiniest fragment of time. One second it was there, the next second it was gone. And
its leaving felled me. I turned away from Stefano and his daughter, a different 
person—unrecognizably
different  from the one who had only just rounded the aisle
of the
gastronomia
so carelessly and been on the point of greeting them. My identity had crumbled and dissolved in that moment. That’s what it did to me, that
sudden, terrible gift of certainty: the certain knowledge that Stefano would never
leave his wife. Never, for as long as they both lived.
    Olives. Who would have thought it. I wonder which sort he chose, in the end.
    Oh well.
    The cigarette burns out and I toss it into the marble blackness of the canal.
The cold is creeping into my bones and I know it’s time to go indoors, back to
warmth and comfort.
    Enough of thinking, already.
    Sitting here at my leather-topped desk on the twenty-third floor of the
Regency Hyatt—the last and best of my vantage points!—looking down on the
scattered lights of this newly vibrant city which is so busy rebuilding itself, rein-venting itself, I’m glad that I went to hear Benjamin play tonight. Do you know
why? Because I learned in a priceless instant that he is still lost, still in thrall to the
past, and I saw the pain that he’s causing because of it, and I realized that I cannot
possibly live my own life that way. I’m not talking about Stefano, I’m