39
I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even try to go
to bed. I sat on the balcony and listened to the sounds from down
in the street. I lit four or five cigarettes, but I didn’t smoke
much of them. I let them burn down slowly between my fingers while
I gazed at the windows and balconies opposite, the antennae on the
roofs, the sky.
A little before dawn the mistral got up and the
very first gusts made me shiver.
They say the mistral lasts for three days or for
seven, so I knew that for three days or for seven it wouldn’t be
hot. Not too hot anyway.
I had always loved the summer mistral because it
cleansed the air, swept away the mugginess and made one feel freer.
It seemed to me appropriate that it should arrive that very
morning.
I thought of the old accounts that were closed and
the new things beginning. I thought I was afraid, but that for the
first time I didn’t want to run away from my fear or hide it. And
it seemed to me a tremendous and a wonderful thing.
I watched the light creeping into the sky and the
grey clouds that were so strangely out of place in the month of
July.
In a short while I would get up and go walking in
the still-deserted streets. I would sit at a table in the open, at
a bar on the seafront and have a cappuccino. I would watch the
streets gradually changing as the
day advanced. I would have another cappuccino and smoke a
cigarette and then, when it was broad daylight, I would go home.
And I would sleep, or read, or go to the sea, and spend the day
doing only what I wanted to do.
I would wait until evening came and only then would
I ring Margherita. I didn’t know what I would tell her, but I was
sure I would find the words.
I thought of all these things and more as I sat on
the balcony.
I thought I would not have exchanged that moment
for anything.
Not for anything in the world.