Time Ages in a Hurry Read Online Free

millions, he fixed himself right up with that crash. Unfortunately mine is only vertebral, he replied. The conversation was mouth to ear, so the restaurateur wouldn’t wake up and start reciting the second part of the recipe for tagliatelle with lobster. Don’t come anymore, she said, sitting in that chair day and night is destroying you, with that spine of yours, stay at home a few days. What are you saying? he said, excuse me, I stay home lazing awaylike the doctor would want while you’re here in this bed, at home I get depressed, at least here we chat. Don’t be silly, she said, what chatting, in a whole day I get out three words, I don’t have the breath anymore. And she smiled. It was strange, the smile on her face; on the suffering mask drawn by illness the smile restored that beautiful woman with prominent cheekbones and enormous eyes whom the disease had buried in extensive swelling, as if she’d reemerge stubbornly, that young woman who had acted as a mother to him when he was a kid and his own wasn’t able to. And an image returned that his memory had erased, a precise scene, the same expression on the aunt’s face now, and her voice saying to the sister: don’t worry, just go to the hospital, I’ll take care of the boy like he’s my own, I’ll think only of him. And right after came the image of Enzo, surfacing from an eternity of time came Enzo, the judicious student of jurisprudence, Enzo, so proper and so polite, who after graduating was supposed to join the firm of his grandfather as an intern because he’d be marrying this aunt, and he was so earnest, Enzo, everybody used to say, and still surfacing from the well of memory here was Enzo now, waving his arms and shouting, he, who was so proper and polite, was yelling at the aunt, telling her that she was crazy: but you’re crazy – I’m taking the bar exam and you’re heading to the mountains for three months with the kid, and what about us, when are we supposed to get married! And he saw again his self from back then, a scrawny little kid, wearing glasses because he was nearsighted, he didn’t understand, and then why was his left knee always hurting, he didn’t want to go to the Dolomites, they were faraway, and up in the mountains he couldn’t play bandits with his friend Franco, his aunt whirled around, her voice was icy and low, he’d never heard her use that tone before, Enzo, you don’t understand anything, you’re broke, and you’re also a bit of a fascist, I’ve heard that you and your friends criticize my father for his ideas, this kid has tuberculosis of the knee, he needs to be in the mountains, and I’m taking him to the mountains with my own money, not yours, which you don’t have, except for what my father is kind enough to give you every month, and if you ever feel like taking a real curve, now’s the moment. Go ahead and take the curve: was it possible his aunt had used this expression? And yet the words resounded in his ears: go ahead and take the curve.
    For the rest of the afternoon the woman talked about her gallstones, his aunt murmured in his ear, it’s not possible they’d put her in a ward like this for gallstones, it has to be more than gallstones, poor woman, and then she watched
Big Brother
, her favorite show, I pretended to sleep, so she took off her headphones and lowered the volume but I could hear too, I didn’t want to call the nurses, what do you expect, educating people is a waste of time, besides, by now these people have made their money and
Big Brother
has educated them, that’s why they vote for him, it’s a vicious circle, they vote for those who educated them, you’ve lost the tail end of the tagliatelle with lobster, but I wanted to humor myself, you know how much she charges her demanding diners for a lobster tagliatelle? Fifty euros, and it’s frozen lobster, I made her confess. She seemed to want to stop talking, turning her head on the pillow. But then she murmured: Ferruccio, I