“Could you please give me a hand? I’m about to collapse.”

My neighbour Margherita. It was a wonder she hadn’t collapsed already. She was lugging a bursting briefcase, numerous plastic bags full of food and a long tube of the kind used by architects to carry drawings around.

I gave her a hand, meaning I took over all the shopping. So we set off walking side by side.

“Just as well I met you. A week ago I was in more or less the same straits when I met old Professor Costantini, and he offered to help me. I gave him the shopping bags and after one block he was on the verge of a heart attack.”

I gave her a faintly idiotic smile. I should evidently have known who this Professor Costantini was.

“Who is Professor Costantini?”

“The one on the second floor of our building. Excuse my asking, but how long have you been living there?”

It struck me that I’d been living there for more than a year. And I didn’t know any of the tenants by name.

“More or less a year.”

“Congratulations! You must be a really sociable type. What do you do? Sleep by day and go round at night in tights and a cloak and mask, ridding the city of criminals?”

I told her I was a lawyer and she, after pulling a rather wry face, said that she too, long ago, had seemed destined to become a lawyer. She had done the training, passed the exams and was even on the rolls, but then she had done a switch. Total. Now she worked in advertising and other things. However – we agreed – in a sense we were colleagues, so we could address each other as tu. She said that made her feel more at ease.

“I’ve always had trouble using lei. It really doesn’t come naturally, I have to force it. They tried to teach me some years ago that a well-brought-up girl doesn’t use tu with strangers, but I’ve always had serious doubts about being a well-brought-up girl. How about you?”

“About being a well-brought-up girl? Yes, I do have some doubts about that.”

She gave a short laugh – a sort of gurgle – before speaking again.

“I can see you have doubts all along the line. You always look ... I don’t know, I can’t find the word to describe it. As if you were turning over questions in your mind and didn’t much like the answers. Or didn’t like them one bit.”

I turned to look at her, slightly disconcerted.

“Seeing that this is the second time we’ve seen each other, may I ask what you base this diagnosis on?”

“It’s the second time you’ve seen me. I’ve seen you at least four or five other times since I came to live in this building. On two occasions we passed in the street and you literally looked straight through me. So much so that I didn’t even feel inclined to say good morning. It hurt my vanity, but your thoughts were wandering.”

We walked on in silence for thirty or forty yards. Then she spoke again.

“Have I put my foot in it?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about what you said. Wondering how come it was so obvious.”

“It isn’t so obvious. It’s that I’m observant.”

We had reached the entrance to our building. We went in together and up the few steps to the lift. I was sorry the moment had come for us to part.

“You’ve succeeded in arousing my curiosity. Now how should I set about having a more detailed consultation?”

She thought for a moment or two. She was making up her mind.

“Are you the kind who gets the wrong idea if you’re asked to supper by a girl living on her own?”

“In the past I was a professional getter of the wrong idea, but I’ve given that up, I think. I hope.”

“In that case, if you don’t get the wrong idea and you’re not otherwise engaged, this evening would suit me.”

“This evening would suit me too. Are you on the sixth or the seventh?”

“The seventh. I’ve even got a terrace. A pity it’s still too cold in the evenings, otherwise we could have eaten outside. Is nine o’clock all right for you?”

“Yes. What can I bring?”

“Wine, if you drink it, because I haven’t any.”

“Very good. This evening, then.”

“Don’t you take the lift?”

“No, I use the stairs.”

She looked at me for a moment without saying anything, but with a faintly questioning air. Then she nodded, relieved me of her shopping and said goodbye.

I felt as I had on afternoons in May in my last school years.

Almost no one ever attended classes any longer. Those who went were the ones who had to make up for poor marks and resit exams. Very few others.

For all of us they were the first days of the holidays, and the best. Because they were in a sense illegal. According to the rules, we should have gone on attending school, but we didn’t. They were days stolen one by one from the school calendar and given over to freedom.

Perhaps this was why there was that electricity, that strange tension laden with expectation, in those May afternoons suspended between school and the mysteries of summer.

Something was about to happen – something had to happen – and we felt it. Our time was bent like a bow, ready to shoot us who knows where.

That is how I felt that afternoon, as in those indelible memories of my adolescence.

I left the office at about half-past seven and went to a wine shop. I didn’t know what we were going to eat or what Margherita’s tastes were, so I couldn’t get only red wine, which I would have done as a rule. I don’t much care for white wine.

So I chose a Primitivo from Manduria and, just to show myself for the provincial I was, a Californian white from the Napa Valley.

When I had chosen the wine I had some time to spare so I went for a walk along Via Sparano.

The crowds milled round me and time, it seemed, had been suspended.

The air seemed full of gentle melancholy, and also a certain something I didn’t quite manage to grasp.

I got home at a quarter to nine, had a shower and dressed. Light-coloured trousers, denim shirt, soft, light leather shoes.

I shut the door, holding the two bottles by the neck in my other hand, and bounced up the stairs, the image of Alberto Sordi impersonating an American in Rome.

The result was that I tripped up and only just avoided smashing everything. I couldn’t help laughing, and when I knocked at Margherita’s door two flights above I must still have been wearing a rather stupid smile.

“What’s up?” she asked after saying hello, narrowing her eyes in puzzlement.

“Nothing, it’s just that I nearly fell on the stairs, and since I’m a bit of a loony anyway I found it amusing. But don’t worry, I’m harmless.”

She laughed, again with that kind of gurgle.

Her flat had a good smell to it, of new furniture, cleanliness and well-cooked food. It was bigger than mine, and evidently some walls had been knocked down, because there was no hallway and one entered straight into a kind of living room with a big french window giving onto a terrace. Not much furniture. Just a kind of low cupboard that looked Japanese, a number of light wooden shelves attached to the wall, and a glass and wrought-iron table with four metal chairs. On the floor a large coconut mat and, on two sides of the room, a number of big coloured candles of varying heights, blue glass jars containing some kind of crushed stone, and a black stereo unit.

The shelves were full of books and knick-knacks and gave the impression of a home that had been lived in for some time.

On the walls were two reproductions of paintings by Hopper, Cape Cod Evening and Gas. That one of petrol pumps out in the country. They were beautiful and moving.

I said so, and she gave me a quick glance as if to see whether I was talking simply to show off. Then she nodded, gravely. Pause. Then: “Can you eat hot things?”

“I can eat hot things.”

“I’ll just slip into the kitchen, then, and finish getting it ready. You look around if you like, it’ll be ready in five minutes. We’ll chat when we’re at table. I’ll open the red wine because it goes with what we’re going to eat. And in any case the white won’t get chilled in such a short time.”

She vanished into the kitchen. I began to examine the books on the shelves, as I usually do when I enter an unknown house.

There were a lot of novels and collections of short stories. American, French and Spanish, in the original languages.

Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Carver, Bukowski, Fante, Montalban, Lodge, Simenon, Kerouac.

There was an ancient, tattered edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There were travel books by an American journalist – Bill Bryson – that I liked a lot and had thought I was more or less the only person who knew them.

Then there were books on psychology, books on Japanese martial arts, catalogues of exhibitions, mostly of photography.

I took out the catalogue of an exhibition in Florence of Robert Capa and leafed through it. Then I looked at Chatwin and then Doisneau, with his black-and-white kisses in the Paris of the 50s. There was a book on Hopper. When I opened it, I saw there was a dedication, so I quickly turned the page, embarrassed.

I read a line or two of the introduction: “Images of the city or the country, almost always deserted, in which are mingled realism of vision and an agonizing feeling for landscape, for people, for things. Hopper’s paintings, beneath an appearance of objectivity, express a silence, a solitude, a metaphysical astonishment.”

I put back the Hopper, took down Ask the Dust by John Fante and went with it onto the terrace. The air was cool and dry. I wandered around a while among the potted plants, looked down into the street, stopped to finger some strange little flowers with the consistency of wax. Then, leaning against the wall under a kind of wrought-iron lantern, I flipped through the book to the last page, because I wanted to re-read the ending.

“Supper’s ready.”

I came to with a slight jolt and went inside. The table was laid.

The Primitivo was in a carafe, and in another like it was water. There was a tureen of chilli con carne and a dish of boiled rice. Arranged on a plate were four corncobs with some whorls of butter in the centre.

We began with the corncobs and butter. I picked up the carafe of wine and was about to pour her a glass.

She said no, she didn’t drink.

“I had what they call a drinking problem. A few years ago. Then it became a big problem. Now I don’t drink.”

“Forgive me, if I’d known I wouldn’t have brought the wine ...”

“Hey, it was me who told you to bring wine. For you.”

“If it upsets you, I can drink water.”

“It doesn’t upset me.”

She said it with a smile but in a tone of voice that meant: discussion over.

All right, discussion over. I filled my glass and set to work on the corncob.

We talked very little while we ate. The chilli was really hot and the wine suited it to perfection. For pudding there was a date and honey cake, also Mexican.

It was scarcely a slimming meal and after it I felt the need for something strong. For obvious reasons I said nothing, but Margherita went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of tequila gold, still sealed.

“I bought it for you this afternoon. One can’t have a Mexican meal without finishing off with tequila. Take the bottle with you afterwards. And the white wine.”

I poured myself a tequila, pulled out my cigarettes and then – too late – thought that perhaps she didn’t like people smoking. But in fact Margherita asked for one and fetched a kind of mortar of volcanic rock as an ashtray.

“I don’t buy cigarettes. If I do, I smoke them. But when I can, I bum them off someone else.”

“I know the method,” I replied. For many years it had been my method. Then my friends had begun to say no, I had become not a little unpopular and, well, in the end I was forced to buy them.

I took a sip of tequila and remained silent a moment too long. She read my thoughts.

“You want to know about my problem with alcohol.”

It was not a question. I was about to say no, what was she thinking of, I was just enjoying my tequila.

I said yes.

She took a hefty drag at her cigarette before starting.

“I was an alcoholic for three years, more or less. When I got my degree my parents gave me a present of a three-month holiday in the United States, in San Francisco. It was the most fun time of my life. When I got back I realized for the first time that my future was to be a lawyer in my father’s office. No. That’s not exactly it, that way you won’t understand it. I know now that that was my motive, but at the time I didn’t realize anything, not consciously. But I felt it clearly, even if unconsciously. In short, recreation time was over and I wasn’t ready to go back into the classroom. Not into the one I was destined for.

“To complicate matters, when I got back from the States I found myself a boyfriend. He was a sweet boy, eight years older than me. He was a notary, he had good manners, and my parents took to him at once. An excellent match. My parents had liked almost none of my previous boyfriends. They weren’t the kind to whom they would have entrusted their only daughter for life. I had always been – how can I put it? – a bit on the lively side and a bit fickle, and this didn’t go down well with them. Not that they said anything. That is, my mother sometimes said something, but they had never made any particular fuss. Or so I thought.

“However, when Pierluigi appeared on the scene it was clear that he was Mr Right. I mustn’t let him get away. I began to drink soon after the beginning of my affair with him. I drank – a lot – especially in the evenings when we were out together. I drank and became more likeable. Everyone laughed at my jokes and my fiancé was obviously proud of taking me around. To show me off.

“Then we decided – he decided – that it was time to get married. I was working with my father and would soon be a lawyer, he was a notary and, let’s face it, he wasn’t badly off. There was no point in going on being engaged. He spoke the word and I went along with him.

“After that decision I began to drink even before going out. He would come to pick me up and on the intercom I’d tell him I’d need five minutes to get ready. Then I knocked back whatever I could find – beer, wine, spirits, whatever there was. I brushed my teeth to take the smell away, put on some perfume and went downstairs. We met friends and I was always so charming. And I drank. I drank the aperitif, the wine or beer with meals, and then a drop – or two, or three – afterwards. I was very fond of tequila gold, the very brand you are drinking now. But I wasn’t choosy. I drank everything that came to hand. Sometimes I had the unpleasant feeling of being out of control. Sometimes I thought that maybe I ought to cut down, but for the most part I was convinced that when I decided to stop it would be no problem. Would you let me have another cigarette, please?”

I gave her the cigarette and lit one for myself. She took a couple of strong drags and went to put on a CD.

Making Movies. Dire Straits.

She took another couple of puffs before starting to speak again.

“With this jolly state of affairs we arrived at the wedding day. In my few lucid moments I was plunged into indescribable desperation. I didn’t want to get married, I didn’t have anything in common with that notary. I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I wanted to go back to San Francisco or escape to anywhere else on earth. But there I was on a moving train and wasn’t capable of pulling the emergency cord. Two or three times I thought I had plucked up the courage to tell my parents I didn’t want to get married – my greatest fear was their reaction, not Pierluigi’s – and that I was sorry but I thought it was better to make a decision of that kind before marriage, rather than six months or a year later.

“Then my mother would poke her head in at my door and tell me to hurry up, we had to go and choose whatever it was, the menu for the reception or the flowers for the church. So I said ‘Yes, mum’, knocked back a miniature bottle of liquor, brushed my teeth – I brushed my teeth the whole time – and went out. I remember that during one of these outings I left my mother in whatever shop it was and dashed off to have a quick beer in the nearest bar. Then all afternoon I was scared she might smell it on my breath.

“Can you guess how I arrived at the wedding? Drunk. I drank the evening before. To get to sleep I mixed alcohol and anxiolytics. The next morning I drank. A few beers, just to relax. Also a tot – or two – of whisky. But I brushed my teeth very, very well. On the way into church I tripped up because I was plastered. Everyone thought it was nerves. All through the ceremony I longed for the reception. To go on drinking.”

She took the last puff, right down to the filter, and then stubbed it out in the mortar, hard. I had an urge to touch her hand, or her shoulder, or her face. To let her know that I was there. I wasn’t brave enough, and she went on.

“To this day I still wonder how they managed, all of them, not to notice anything. Until the marriage and for some months afterwards. Things got worse when I passed my law exams. I had sat the written papers before the wedding and a few months after it I did the orals. I came second in the final class-list. Not bad for an alcoholic, eh? I celebrated in my own fashion. When I got home I felt ill. My husband found me in bed. I had been sick several times and was stinking to high heaven. Not just of alcohol, but certainly of that also. That was the beginning of the worst phase. It began to dawn on him. Not all at once, but in the course of a few months he latched on to the fact that he had an alcoholic wife. In his way he didn’t behave badly, he tried to help me. He removed all alcohol from the house and took me to a specialist in another town. To avoid scandal, of course. I promised to give up and began drinking on the sly. It’s impossible to keep tabs on an alcoholic. Alcoholics are crafty liars, like drug addicts, in fact worse, because it’s easier to get booze than it is ‘the stuff’. One day someone saw me at ten in the morning downing a draught beer in one gulp, and they told Pierluigi. I swore I’d give up and half an hour later I was back to secret drinking. He spoke to my parents, who didn’t believe it at first. Then they were forced to. We all went together to another specialist, in yet another town. Result: the same as before. Let me cut this short. This story dragged on for another year after I was found out. Then my husband left home. And who can blame him? I was going around with great bruises on my face, or grazes, because I would get up in the night to have a pee, having put myself to sleep with a fine mixture of tequila or vodka and anxiolytics, and walk right into doors. Or I just collapsed on the ground. Sex, on the rare occasions we had any, wasn’t a lot of fun for him, I bet. It certainly wasn’t for me. All I wanted was to cry and to drink. In short, in the end he left and he was quite right.

“After he went my memories become really confused. I don’t know how long it was before they grew clearer. I was in a clinic in Piedmont that specialized in addictions of every kind. There were people hooked on drugs, on pills, on gambling, and then there were us alcoholics. The majority.

“That was the toughest time of my life. In that place they were merciless, but they did help me to struggle out of the shit I’d fallen into. It’s nearly five years now that I haven’t had a drink. For the first two I kept count of the days. Then I stopped doing that and here I am. A lot of things have happened in these five years, but they’re a different story.”

I looked her in the face and didn’t know what to say or do. I thought that whatever I said would be wrong, so I said nothing. So she spoke again.

“Maybe you think I tell this story to everyone I meet, right off the bat. If you come to think of it, I’ve practically only met you today. Is that what you think?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. But I like to think that you don’t tell it to everyone.”

For once I hadn’t said the wrong thing. She gave a nod, as if to say: Good.

Then we sat there talking on, deep into the night.