Free The Silence of the Wave by Gianrico Carofiglio Page B

reading?”
    It was strange that he should be asking that question now. A little earlier, Roberto had been thinking that he ought to find out something related to Emma’s interests. Do some research on the Internet but also read something. To be ready to talk to her without feeling that he was on shifting sands.
    “I can’t say if I like reading. I haven’t really read much. Whenever I have, sometimes I liked it, but reading has never been a habit of mine.”
    “Do you remember what you liked?”
    What had he liked? He couldn’t remember. He did recall a good book on the history of basketball that he had read a few years before, but that didn’t seem the most appropriate thing to mention. He realized that he was trying to look good in front of the doctor, and that he was ashamed of his own ignorance. More or less the same feeling he had had less than an hour before, talking to Emma.
    “A few years ago I read a book about lies that a lawyer had given me. It was by an American psychologist …”
    “Paul Ekman?”
    “Yes, that was him. They also did a TV series about him.”
    “
Lie to Me
. The book you read was probably
Telling Lies
.”
    “Yes, that’s the one. In a way, I even applied it to my work. I mean it gave me a few ideas.”
    “What about novels? Do you ever read novels?”
    Novels. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever read a novel in his life, which probably meant he hadn’t. And anyway, when would he have had time to read novels? At the age of nineteen he had joined the Carabinieri. The course, then the first posting, the work, always more of it and always more intrusive. In his free time, of which there had been less and less, he had done other things. Most of them things he didn’t like to remember.
    “It’s no big deal if you don’t like novels.”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever read one. It was never something I thought about. Now that I realize, I feel ashamed.”
    “Shame can be a useful feeling. It’s a sign that something’s wrong and it can be a stimulus to change for the better.”
    Roberto felt like crying. He was forty-seven years old, most of his life had passed and fallen to pieces, and he had nothing left to show for it. He was a failure, a lonely, ignorant, unhappy man who had lived in a senseless way.
    The doctor’s voice interrupted this unbearable sense that everything was slipping away.
    “Let’s do something. Now that the session’s over, if you have nothing else to do, go to a bookstore—choose a big one, they’re more suitable for those whoneed practice—and spend a little time there. Look at whatever books you like—sports books would be fine too—and when you find one that looks interesting, buy it, take it home, and read it. Then, if you feel like it, we can talk about it next time.”

11
    The doctor had suggested a big bookstore. He remembered there was a really big one in the Largo Argentina, which he could easily reach on foot from the doctor’s office in less than half an hour.
    He walked quickly, as usual, and it took as much time as he had anticipated. Outside the entrance, two Africans tried to sell him some books of fairy tales and he had to make a bit of an effort to refuse, walk around them, and go inside.
    Once inside, he realized he didn’t know how to behave. Whenever he had been in a bookstore in the past, he had always done so for a particular reason. A specific book, to buy for a specific purpose. Go to the assistant, ask for the book, take it to the cashier, pay, and leave. Without even
seeing
all those other books, thousands of them, on the shelves, on the tables, even on the floor.
    He looked around cautiously, as if the others might notice him, realize he was a stranger there, and startwhispering among themselves while watching him suspiciously. It took him a few minutes to convince himself that nobody was paying any attention to him. More generally, people seemed to be ignoring one another. They were walking around between the books