Gentel returned to his colorless, bachelor existence in Ohio. He dated on occasion, mostly women his friends introduced him to, but he thought only of her. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready yet,” was his standard line when the dating evenings ended.
He concentrated on his research, watched television, and obsessed about her. She became his best friend and the woman he shared his life with. He ignored the fact that she was married to someone else and gone. He spoke to her in muted tones. That he didn’t know her name kept her mysterious, a woman of his dreams, a clandestine, invisible mistress, with none of Rachel’s imperfections and reproaches. It was as if her previous life had been preparation for her secret affair within him. She seemed happy enough in his mind, smiling and laughing at his jokes, and he loved that. He imagined that he could feel her move sensuously rather than lie motionless on his lap as she did the night of the murder. She was completely his now.
Gentel’s intimate, imaginary relationship with her didn’t absolve his sense of guilt. He agonized about not having tried hard enough to save her, and worried that someone had seen her on his lap, or had noticed him leaving the scene and eventually would accuse him of murdering her. Or, ironically, perhaps the man with the knife had told the police that he saw him stab her and had sketched a picture of him. His story would be corroborated with Gentel’s fingerprints on the handle of the knife. It was just a matter of time. But there was no news of her murder, as if it had never happened.
Every time someone knocked on his door or the telephone rang, Gentel was scared that it was a policeman, who he imagined would say, “Excuse me, but did anything unusual happen when you were in Florence for a scientific meeting in July, 1972? We have some questions about a brutal murder of a young lady and have reasons to think that you might know something about it.” Gentel listed all those “reasons” in his mind many times.
Although tormented, he also had a nagging sense that if she had been alive and if he had saved her, she wouldn’t be his anymore. She would be in Italy with her husband. This gave him a tinge of satisfaction that he did not save her. Would he act the same way again? He didn’t know, and concluded that it was an irrelevant question. Circumstances never repeated themselves exactly.
Gentel’s imaginary relationship lasted for twenty years and distracted him from his career, which faltered disappointingly. He published little and gave lackluster lectures to the students. He suffered recurrent nightmares. One was of handcuffs bearing his initials and of people staring at him as if he was a murderer. Another dream was of her looking at him adoringly, but always remaining at a distance, never approaching him.
The third dream was the most comprehensive. It started with him conversing on a park bench with a strange man, while she watches. The stranger tells him that he’s just back from Florence where he was studying criminology. Gentel asks if there were many murders in Florence, and the man answers, “A few, mostly crimes of passion. It’s painful when a young woman is the victim.” When a young woman is the victim…a young woman the victim…echoes in Gentel’s mind as he sleeps. He sees his love reaching out to him, her blouse torn and covered in blood. She disappears in a narrow tunnel lined with cobblestones.
The scene changes and Gentel is perched alone on a hard, wooden stool in a cramped, windowless dungeon. A bright beam of light coming from nowhere glares in his eyes. He asks a uniformed policeman with an enormous badge bearing the initials AP if there are many unsolved murders in Florence. The policeman retorts, “You seem very interested in murders. Did something happen to someone you know in Florence?” Every time at exactly this point in the nightmare, Gentel woke up, drenched and anxious.
These dreams continued for years.