Читать книгу Coma - Federico Betti, Federico Betti - Страница 6

IV

I’m driving, I don’t know toward what destination. And I don’t know where I am. I realize just now that no one is with me. I’m in the car, or at least it seems like that, but there are no passenger’s seats. Around me it’s all dark, homogeneous black. The darkness makes me feel insecure, because I don’t know what to expect. Meanwhile I’m here, sitting in front of the steering wheel. I feel like being still, like in one of those American drive-ins where you watch a movie sitting in the car, but in this case, it seems like the film isn’t projected anywhere. All around I only see the same pitch black.

Where am I? I’ve never been to America, so I’m not at a drive-in. So, where?

I don’t understand. With my left hand I touch the black, but it’s something tenuous, like the night’s darkness. But this is something different, because at night there are some lights on, but not here where I am now. So, where am I? What am I doing? I put my left hand back on the steering wheel, the only certain thing. I know there’s a steering wheel in front of me, but I don’t know anything else. If I had the chance to ask someone, it would be all easier; but there’s no one with me, not even in the proximity. I’m alone. Sooner or later something will happen, something will change, or at least I hope, but now it all seems motionless. I feel like being in a dark room, locked for some reason waiting for a verdict: as if I had to wait that a judge promulgates his sentence for something I did, but I’m sure I didn’t do anything illegal; I never committed a crime, I never made a robbery, I didn’t kill anyone. At least that’s what I know, provided that I didn’t have an amnesia, something that made me completely lose my memory, so in real life I really am in a dark room doing nothing until someone will come, maybe a policeman, to bring me to my destiny.

No, it can’t be. If it really was like that, how could I explain the steering wheel?

I don’t know where I am. If someone could help me understand…

Now I have a migraine too, a pain that starts on the left side of the head and slowly extends up to the right side. It’s not an intense pain, but it’s incessant, constant. I feel it pulsating in my head, moving from one side to another, from left to right, from right to left and, sometimes, I’m aching everywhere. My head is not splitting, but it hurts. Maybe I could use a painkiller to deal with the pain, or maybe I just have to wait that it goes away on its own, just like it came. I think that the only option to choose is the second, since no one’s here, no one I could ask where I am or why, no one that could somehow help me, giving me a painkiller for the headache, or letting me understand something of what’s going on with me. I stay here, alone in front of a steering wheel, in the darkness, at the mercy of events.