About Time Read Online Free PDF

to my left, which becomes increasingly narrow and oppressive.
    I’m getting ready to devote twenty minutes to my first item of reading material, as planned, when the light goes on again unexpectedly.
    Apparently, we have to fasten our seat belts again, even though there hasn’t been the slightest touch of turbulence.
    I turn to Federico and ask for an explanation. His answer is worse than a death sentence.
    “We’re landing,” he says. “We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.”
    We’ll be in Paris in ten minutes.
    Paris. In ten minutes.
    It’s not possible. One hour and fifty-five minutes. I haven’t even had time to open my first magazine and we’re already about to land. 
    “Are you joking? What did you say we’re doing?”
    “What do you mean? Don’t mess about… We’re arriving in Paris.”
    It isn’t a joke, the plane really is losing height, my ears are getting bunged up. One hour and fifty-five minutes. How is it possible? My heart is beating faster, the plane itself seems to be going faster. It descends, it keeps descending, and I have the impression that everything around me has inexorably speeded up.
    At first I think it’s one of the effects of fear: I know time and space can be distorted when I look at the world through the lens of my anxiety. I remember a sentence I read in some book or other: “That which is far in time appears imminent, there is only the present.” But then all it takes is a moment when you start to lose control and nothing matters any more, except the instinct for survival. And this moment comes without warning, when I realize that time going crazy like this can’t be the result of my mind, it’s too real, it’s actually happening. I unfasten my seat belt and leap to my feet.
    One hour and fifty-five minutes. What happened to all those minutes?
    “No!” I scream.
    One of the hostesses comes to my aid, a blonde girl with glasses, who looks even more scared than I am. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll hit her, or that I plan to throw the whole plane into a panic, or open the emergency door.
    It’s pointless, I can’t regain control. The girl looks at me indulgently , she’s talking to me, but I can’t make out what she’s saying, her voice sounds weirdly distorted. The passengers are looking at me pityingly. Some have even risen from their seats. Federico is dismayed and embarrassed at the same time, he’s never seen me in this state. “Svevo, what’s happening to you? We’re landing. There, look, we’re almost on the ground. Calm down, we’ve arrived in Paris.”
    The minutes and seconds are getting all mixed up and he’s asking me to calm down. The noises fade. I see the stewardess’s lips moving, but can’t hear what she’s saying. All I can hear now is my own breathing, which gradually slows down, until I surrender to the push of her slender arms.
    “There’s no danger,” I hear her distorted voice say, and then I feel the plane touch down, it taxis for what seems like a few seconds, then brakes suddenly and comes to an abrupt stop.

4
    I CAN’T MEASURE THE TIME it takes us to get off the plane, reclaim our luggage and take a taxi. To me it’s like a few minutes, rushing past like mice running from a flood.
    I watch in dismay as the road speeds past the window. I wish the asphalt didn’t look that way. Like the surface of a disc, a stream of grey lines without end. Maybe that’s how it would seem to a racing driver if he was able to turn and look at it for a moment in the middle of a race, and yet according to the speedometer we aren’t going fast at all, in fact we’re going even slower than the permitted limit.
    I keep telling myself it’s just tiredness, I try to console myself with the thought that a comfortable suite awaits me at the hotel and I’ll soon be sinking into a hot bath. The bellboy will be impeccable, as always, and as soon as he’s wished me a good stay, this horrible feeling will immediately disappear.
    We’ve arrived.
    Again