“The city at night has a different scent, it seems to me.”
Sono notti porose quelle in cui le cose si mescolano, e le storie, chiuse per anni dentro di noi, vengono raccontate, trovando le parole per cominciare ad esistere.
The suspended time of the night lays bare nostalgia and regrets, exposes us to our vulnerability, and forces us to reckon with time: not the calendar’s, not the measurable kronos, but kairos, the time of quality and possibility, the kind that when it arrives we do not always recognize, because it never comes at our convenience. In these nights one also finds the courage to look life in the eye, facing the guilt of the past.
A Nighttime Story About Fear and Responsibility
The Confession of Elsa by Gianrico Carofiglio (Einaudi) is a nighttime story about fear and responsibility, about love and choices.
This time Guido Guerrieri isn’t dealing with a trial, but with his own insomnia, which drives him to go out and wander the streets, among the scents of the night, him alone with his thoughts, brooding. An unexpected call from his brother Stefano unsettles him: of that distant brother Guido can barely remember the face, and the voice from Australia has awakened in him a sense of emotional distance that has lasted for decades. Time passes without us noticing, in the inertia of days, in the assumption that there is always, still, time to make up for it. That banal “ti richiamo io” with which he still delays echoes in his head.
The Café Milch Inn
The Osteria del Caffellatte (an osteria-bookstore open only at night, well known to Carofiglio readers, ed.) welcomes with its light and warmth those like him, who traverse the night: there is a book presentation on the docket, Guido sits among a crowd of ordinary, unexpected, attentive people. There is a strange composure among the night animals who live a time of their own, and for this they recognize one another as similar and respect each other.
That is how Guido meets Elsa Corsini, a retired academic philosopher, who speaks about her new book, The Good Use of the Word. The meeting between Elsa and Guido, after everyone has left and the Osteria is quiet, becomes a long conversation, spanning literature and philosophy, and gradually delving into the personal realm, embracing stories of love, of sex, of betrayal, of memories kept in the shadows. It becomes a confession, and it becomes an amends, because telling stitches the torn fabric of the offense.
“Stories often mean things the author did not know they were saying. They are creatures whose life, whose development depends on encounters.”
The Persuasive Power of the Word
Guido, used to his work of seeking truth in facts, knows how to tell, understands the persuasive power of words, and knows how to listen, knows how to recognize points of vulnerability, knows how to identify the breaking point from which weakness surfaces. Guido knows that understanding alone is not enough if one merely ruminates: spoken aloud, a story changes state, comes to life, and can become a different way of looking at the facts.
Between him and Elsa the stories reveal themselves in the encircling slowness of the night and cross the mechanisms of memory, talking of mistakes to repair, of missed opportunities, of moments of courage avoided for fear of losing balance. In Elsa Guido finds an kindred spirit, extraordinary.
One can act despite fear, by looking it in the eye and meeting it: The Confession of Elsa is literally a suspended time in Guido Guerrieri’s narration, and it leaves room for his irony, for his innate ability to weave reflections, linking them, moving from one thought to another.
One traverses the night, emerging aware of one’s questions, not of one’s answers, and aware of what we have not become, of all the roads we did not take, of all the choices we did not make. One leaves the Osteria del Caffellatte not lighter, but heavier than one’s own life baggage, of one’s regrets but also of the time that remains.
Carofiglio Shifts the Axis of His Inquiries
In this novel Carofiglio, with his recognizable, dry, measured prose, shifts the axis of his investigations, from the courtroom to the conscience, in a pursuit of truth that is deeply human and real, without defendants, without culprits, and he manages to make Guido Guerrieri feel a nostalgic disenchantment without ever becoming rhetorical.
The pauses, inner monologues, the irony of subtle replies are all traits of a search for everyday empathy, which takes all the time it needs, dwelling on glances, on hands that lift a glass only to set it down, distracted even by the words that finally spill free, because the night has this power: all of this gathers and returns to us Carofiglio’s sensitivity and the human curiosity with which he investigates the shadows of doubt and the wounds of his character’s past with profound discretion and without arrogance.
“I would like there to be a way to say sorry. But there isn’t. So I try to stay here. I ask myself questions and I don’t care if I find the answers. I don’t have a better place.”
Everything happens in one night, for Gianrico Carofiglio: before the day dissolves everything, one can change course, abandon caution, and go toward fear.
