The Silence of the Wave Read Free Page A

forward on his chair. But he didn’t speak.
    “When was the last time you went surfing?”
    He couldn’t remember. He tried to figure out when it had been, that last time he had surfed, but he couldn’t, and that made him panic. As if there were a danger thateverything might fall apart. As if the border between memories, dreams, reality, imagination, and nightmares had suddenly broken down, and the yardstick for distinguishing one from the other had become intangible and pointless.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Is something wrong, Roberto?”
    Roberto moved his hand over his forehead as if wiping away the sweat.
    “I had the feeling I was losing control.”
    “You mean when I asked you when you’d last gone surfing?”
    “Not when you asked me. When I realized I couldn’t remember.”
    “Would you rather we changed the subject?”
    Roberto hesitated. “No, no. It’s fine now.”
    “Good. Even though you can’t remember the last time you went surfing, can we say it happened when you were still living in California?”
    “Of course. I haven’t surfed since we left California.”
    “How many years ago is that?”
    “Oh, more than thirty years. I was sixteen when my mother and I left.”
    The doctor took a long Tuscan cigar from a drawer. From the same drawer he also took a penknife, cut the cigar in two, placed one half on the desk, and started playing with the other. This all lasted two or three minutes.
    “All right. That’ll be enough for today.”
    Roberto would have liked to add something. But the end of the session was always a moment he found hard to grasp. So after a few bewildered moments, he stood up and left.

Giacomo
    I didn’t dream for several nights, although that’s probably not strictly true: I read in a science magazine that there’s never a night when we sleep and don’t dream. Apparently we dream every night, except that for various reasons, sometimes we remember and sometimes we don’t.
    So maybe it’s more correct to say I don’t remember what I dreamed for several nights, even though at least one night I couldn’t have had very pleasant dreams, because I woke up with a feeling of sadness that took me a while to get over.
    Last night, though, I went back to the park. Even when I was just about to fall asleep, I realized something was going to happen, and soon afterward I found myself back on the same avenue as the other time, in the middle of the park.
    Scott was sitting on the lawn, waiting for me. He was wagging his tail energetically as I approached, sweeping the grass with it. As I stroked him, I realizedhe smelled of shampoo and that he had a collar. I hadn’t noticed it the first time, or maybe he hadn’t been wearing it then. Anyway, the fact that Scott had a collar made me happy. It gave me the feeling he was really mine, not just a friendly dog I’d met by chance.
    You’re here at last, chief. I’ve been waiting for you
.
    “What do we do now, Scott?”
    Let’s go for a walk
.
    And without waiting for my reply he set off.
    On this second visit, I managed to concentrate more on what was around me.
    As I’ve already said, the avenue ran between lawns of high grass, across which the wind made big, silent waves as it passed. In some places on the lawn there were little hills, with quite steep slopes, like embankments on the sides of roads or railway lines. In the distance I could see a forest, which looked a bit scary, but only because it was far away. Every now and again we passed other boys and girls, many of them on foot, but some on bicycles.
    After a while I saw a lake, with water so clear it looked like a swimming pool.
    “Can people swim in that lake, Scott?”
    That’s what it’s there for, chief
.
    I was about to ask him if we could swim right away when I noticed a girl coming toward us. I recognized her, and the sight took my breath away. It was Ginevra.
    Ginevra is a classmate of mine. She’s the prettiest girl in the class; she has blue eyes, blonde hair,