Scent of a Woman

by Giovanni Arpino

  ‘Why did he need to turn off the lights? Why would he?’ Sara asked again, peering up.

  I didn’t have time to say a word.

  The first gunshot, though from a closed room high among the walls, came roaring down on us, the sound already shattered in endless reverberations.

  11

  I was racing up the stairs when the second shot, more muffled, exploded.

  And as the shrieks and screams of the fleeing girls faded behind the door, as I heard Sara breathing hard behind me, I had a momentary clear awareness that all of it – those shots, my sprint, the darkness and the hour and him up there – could not possibly have ended otherwise.

  But when we reached the landing my hands were fumbling, and it was Sara who angrily snatched the keys from me.

  She moaned, her mouth tight, trying the door.

  ‘I should have known, I knew it, I always knew it, silly fool that I am,’ I thought I heard her say.

  The pitch darkness in the hall stopped us.

  ‘Quick!’ Sara cried.

  Shutters banged inside the courtyard, and there was even a voice, I thought, but it immediately fell silent.

  In the room next to the living room the lieutenant was slouched in his armchair, his head sideways, a thin trickle of blood from under his ear dripping into his collar. And him, a few steps away: standing there, his arms dangling, his lips twisted and crumpled.

  The gun: black on the carpet, in the few inches between the armchair and his shoes.

  I couldn’t make myself go in, my shoulders and knees suddenly leaden. I saw Sara approach him, trembling, she grabbed one arm then the other with increasing force and desperation, to drag him, pry him away.

  ‘Do something! You! Something!’ she shrieked.

  I couldn’t answer her, my breath frozen between my teeth. It wasn’t fear, not at all, but rather an insurmountable, boundless inertia that sandbagged my veins and my sense of reality, and made me insensible to that place, to any possible pain.

  Vincenzo V.’s bulk between the two arms of the chair seemed swollen, a gelatinous grey and white heap.

  And she was still tugging. She pushed him as far as the doorway where he stood leaning against the door jamb, rigid, bent over like a marionette, barely breathing.

  ‘You and your God! Why don’t you move?’ Sara cried again, widening her eyes at me.

  ‘No. It’s not true. No …’ his wooden mouth uttered confusedly.

  But Sara had already managed to place a glass in his right hand, and with mechanical obedience he brought it to his lips, drained it. It might seem that the violent impact of his cough would be able to stir him, rouse him, but instead his fingers quickly let go and the empty glass dropped.

  ‘His belongings. Quick!’ Sara yelled, holding him up against the wall with both hands.

  I ran here and there without thinking and returned with an armful of clothes, my uniform, medicine bottles inside the jumble in his military bag, the bamboo cane. Desperate, I kept trying to search my brain for all the things I had missed and left scattered between the two rooms and the bathroom.

  ‘Idiot, the suitcase!’ Sara ordered in an icy voice, yanking a vial from the satchel.

  From the hallway, as I mindlessly stuffed the suitcase, I saw her open his mouth, cram in a sleeping pill with steady fingers, make him drink again.

  With her arms around him, she tried to drag him to the door.

  ‘Quick,’ she urged, pressed against him.

  ‘What about him? How can we—Where are you thinking of going? It’s the stupidest thing,’ finally came from my throat.

  ‘That one must already be dead,’ she cried straining. ‘And what does that have to do with us? You don’t want to? Do as you like.’

  Inwardly I was swearing up a storm as I bent over the suitcase: I’m not leaving here, let them go, as soon as they run off I’ll call someone, or else I’ll phone; then tonight, my train.

  I heard her groaning from the landing.

  I carried the suitcase out. She looked at me pathetically; he was in total collapse between the wall and that embrace.

  ‘Down to the door. Just as far as the door. Show some mercy. Help me. Then I’ll get the car. And you won’t have to give it another thought, you won’t be involved any more,’ she sobbed.

  We dragged him down the stairs. He was light and disjointed, like a bundle of dry twigs. In the courtyard she was quick to check the balconies and shutters upstairs and down, but everything seemed bolted up, deserted.

  I opened the door, leaned him against it.

  ‘Just for a minute. Not even a minute—’ She ran off, angrily wiping away tears from her eyes.

  ‘Sir,’ I tried, ‘can you hear me?’

  I was holding him up with my hand under his arm braced against the rough wooden door.

  His head lolled as though unhinged, from his nostrils came harsh, laboured breathing.

  The three girls suddenly flashed into my mind. Who knows where they’d run off to? By this time they must already have awakened mothers, fathers, relatives and told them everything. And the people facing the courtyard, those slammed shutters, that voice …

  I heard the car screech.

  ‘In back. Here, in back. Careful. Slowly,’ Sara whispered, moving the seats forward to make room.

  I saw a bottle of whisky on the seat, a blanket.

  He lay curled up there in the back like a poor ungainly dog, ridiculously pale. His dark glasses slipped but Sara’s hand stopped them. Carefully and gently she put them back in place.

  ‘Go now. Dear God, go, don’t give it another thought,’ she said, sitting behind the wheel.

  ‘But where? And you? Where are you running to now?’

  ‘I know a place,’ she replied without looking at me, the engine running, her white knobbly fingers tightly gripping the steering wheel.

  The road, empty and clear, stretched ahead in sharp curves, still dark, though the headlights were already paling against the effect of the brightening sky.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake. It’s pointless to run away. It’s worse that way. Don’t you see?’ I tried to reason with her.

  The image of the lieutenant in the armchair, that red trickle behind his ear, flashed before my eyes.

  ‘Will you go?’ she screamed, though quickly controlling her voice. ‘Who asked you for anything? Go away. Beat it. It’s my business, our business.’

  I opened the car door again.

  ‘I brought him here. I’m responsible,’ I objected fiercely. ‘Dead drunk as he is, you made him swallow a sleeping pill to boot. He could drop dead here, right now, do you realize that?’

  She nodded weakly, but as though what she heard was of no importance. Her chin was trembling, but she had managed to contain her tears.

  ‘Whatever may have happened,’ she said then, ‘let’s take him someplace, away from here. So he can wake up there, explain it to us. Have time to think straight. As soon as he wakes up, he’ll decide. He’ll be the one to decide. We can do that, that much at least. For him.’

  Her voice died in her throat.

  ‘But where will you take him?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she retorted, then quickly, reluctantly added: ‘To a house my mother owns. Not far away. It’s empty, there’s no one living there. Come on. Before he wakes up.’

  ‘Why? I don’t get it. Why do you want to do this? We’re the two most foolish …’

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘My darling, my poor angel. I should have known, I should have …’ she murmured, staring at the road.

  Legs, shoulders, arms were already moving independently of the lifeless, arid void I felt inside.

  I was aware of sitting down, closing the door.

  The car jerked forward.

  Lying dishevelled behind us, he was coughing, his mouth open. When the coughing stopped, his breathing was laboured.

  ‘Mother of God, will you loosen that damned tie of his? Let
him breathe at least!’ she barked.

  ‘It’s the sleeping pill you stuck in him. The drinking. He’s in bad shape. We should—’

  ‘Nothing. We should do absolutely nothing,’ she snapped.

  She was driving in angry jolts, her face tense and clenched like a fist. The dark rings under her eyes had devoured half her cheeks. She was peering into the rearview mirror, relying only on her hands to follow the road. At a crossroads we skidded fearfully on a rail junction, miraculously avoiding a tram platform.

  ‘Two more minutes and we’re there,’ she said.

  ‘And then? What do we do then?’

  ‘We’re just there,’ she shouted, tears suddenly appearing. ‘The important thing is to get there. Give him time.’

  ‘You’re nuts. And I—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Shut up, don’t tell me!’ she shouted again, leaning over and wrenching away from the wheel. ‘You? Who cares about you! Who asked you for anything? Who are you? Why didn’t you disappear, like you wanted to!’

  ‘Hey, Sara!’ I too shouted.

  She swallowed, tensing the muscles of her arms and torso to give herself strength and regain control.

  ‘Okay,’ she said quietly, ‘okay. Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

  Everything had once again distanced itself from my heart. Unreachable. In my gaze, those fleeing walls, narrow roads, the sky above now indifferent and hostile.

  ‘Talk to me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just this: you should be careful. We should.’ I spoke without conviction, my own voice detached from me. ‘But what are we doing? Let’s not make matters worse. You think you’re helping him. I’m here for the same reason. But what if—’

  ‘Why two shots?’ she interrupted, not paying any attention to me. ‘Did you notice that? Two shots?’

  A sudden apprehension cleared the cobwebs out of my head.

  ‘Maybe the first one missed. Or they shot just to test the gun,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you say “they”? Who did? Him. Just him. He shot, tried, maybe missed the other shot. At himself. They had decided together, but he was the only one who shot,’ she suggested, her voice cracking.

  ‘Decided? To commit suicide together?’

  A moan escaped her.

  ‘You think they made a pact? All planned out?’ I asked again.

  She nodded, her lips sealed.

  ‘Couldn’t it have been the drinking? All the rest too, of course, but especially tonight’s drinking …’

  ‘No, no,’ she objected wearily. ‘They were prepared. Now I realize it. Even the party. All an understanding between the two of them. That’s why he came. For that reason. And I, damned fool not to have seen it right away, God help me …’

  ‘But what about him, then. Why nothing?’

  ‘He must have missed. Or dropped the gun. And we got there too soon,’ she suggested with some confusion.

  ‘Or because he was drunk too. His fingers couldn’t even hold a cigarette. Or maybe he was afraid.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t fear,’ she disagreed.

  ‘Why not? At the last minute …’

  ‘He wasn’t afraid. Not him!’ she shouted again.

  I didn’t have the energy to contradict her. And it all seemed unimportant. I could still hear those gunshots in my head, and picture the lieutenant’s body slumped in the armchair, dead or alive. But those images and sounds were insignificant, merely exaggerated, superfluous: they had nothing to do with reality, mine, ours, his as he lay obliterated in sleep.

  ‘We’re here. Right behind there,’ she announced unemotionally, accelerating.

  Only then did I notice the narrow road with its steep curves, between chipped walls and glimpses of dark green: gardens divided by wire fencing.

  We turned onto a dirt track and when I got out of the car I saw the edges of several low houses, set apart among the locust trees. The calm, flat surface of the sea, still grey, was far in the distance. It was daybreak: a promising, chalky light preceded the sun, distinguishing the contrasting spaces and forms of the surrounding trees, the minute fiery spots of ripe tomatoes in the gardens, the jumbled rooftops of the darkened city that lay supine down below.

  The house was abandoned: not a chair, not a stick of furniture, just rolls of dusty old carpets along the wall of the largest room. Even the inside doors were missing. A faint pale light seeped in from the closed shutters. I could smell the scent of whitewash, of moss-grown wood.

  ‘Over there, in the hallway. What are you waiting for?’ she asked, pointing to the carpets.

  She settled him near the bathroom door on the rolls, his back against the wall, the blanket covering him from ankles to stomach. With a timid gesture, immediately withdrawn, she brushed his hair at the temples, smoothed his forehead. She turned the taps on in the bathtub and the sink, letting the water run full tilt. She placed the open bottle a few inches from his right hand.

  Finally she stood looking at him, her clenched fists clamped under her arms.

  ‘Poor angel, at least some water, no?’ I heard her barely whisper. ‘And you, good Lord, if you would …’

  I went outside to sit on the step. An electrical wire without a bulb hung from the doorway, the few feet of dirt in front of the house were invaded by yellowed weeds and scorched scrub.

  I saw the looming morning light grow all around in silence. Distant humming already filled the air and a chirping came from far-off trees, but I was too wasted by fatigue to ask myself any more questions.

  It wasn’t a wall, but a kind of precariously high metal fence, perhaps hundreds and hundreds of headboards, that I had to climb, fearful of falling and splatting. My cement feet would not move, refused to obey me. From up there, swaying, a soldier was shouting something at me, a blank comic-strip balloon with no words came from his uselessly waggling mouth …

  I woke up.

  From my watch I saw that I had slept for less than half an hour. I shivered despite the fact that the air was already warm. A murky consciousness broke in on me again.

  She too was sitting on the step, elbows and forehead resting on her knees.

  A cigarette, right. But no matches. With a great deal of caution I moved into the hallway, drew back his blanket, and rummaged for his lighter.

  He was breathing more regularly, his brow damp with a film of perspiration.

  Strolling around the house I saw only piles of debris, pieces of wood, a bucket with no bottom. The ground quickly rose more steeply among scattered trees with rust-coloured trunks to a structure half-hidden by foliage, branches on which large patched sheets were hung out to dry. A stray yellow dog stared at me from afar, wagging his tail suspiciously. He disappeared, running crookedly beyond the curve of the hill.

  ‘Why do you think we made a mistake?’ she greeted me, barely raising her face.

  She was exhausted, beaten. But my thoughts too were fragmented, lifeless.

  I sat down on the grass, careful, however, not to sit facing those dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘Running just to get away, we should have taken everything with us. Our stuff, the lieutenant,’ I strained to reply. ‘Do you realize how many things we forgot? Shoes, the gun, the other suitcase. What’s the point of running away like that?’

  But each word weighed me down as soon as I said it: a stone plunging into the dark pit of a well, that’s what I was.

  She didn’t answer, her face once again hidden in her arms, her shoulders rising faintly as she breathed.

  ‘Your sister, the other two, by now they must have told the whole story to any number of people,’ I continued. ‘And let’s hope so, given how stupid we were. Let’s hope the lieutenant isn’t dead, that someone came to his aid. What more can I say?’

  ‘So you’re having second thoughts. If you are, what are you still doing here? Did I beg you to stay? Go ahead, go to the lieutenant, go wherever you want,’ she replied from inside her shelter. Not angrily, though.

  ‘What does tha
t have to do with anything? Could you stop that? I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here, right? So cut it out,’ I retorted half-heartedly.

  She yawned, jumped down from the step, smoothed out her sleeves, her white blouse all crumpled.

  ‘God, if only I at least had a comb.’ She tried to laugh. ‘That uncouth habit of mine, going around without a purse. Do you think they’ll come looking for us? Way out here?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘How long does it last, that sleeping pill?’

  ‘Not long. Hardly any time. Always just a short while, I think. Depending on how many he takes,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. It is addictive. Anyway he’ll wake up soon. And be able to decide. You’ll see.’

  She paced up and down in front of me, two steps towards the car, two steps back towards the house, the weeds crunching under her feet. I watched her walk back and forth rubbing her arms, which had gone to sleep, feeling her face, her hair at the back of her neck.

  ‘If he wanted to die as you say, will he still be capable of deciding anything?’ I asked.

  She stopped, the tip of her shoe idly jabbing at the dirt.

  ‘I’m not afraid. Not in the least,’ she said softly. ‘I would go back right now, if it would help him. Could we have left him there? So he could go through a thousand miseries? What else could we have done? For you it’s different, I know that.’

  ‘I should be on the train, that’s where. My leave has run out. Assuming nothing else happens, at best I’ll end up in jail. Satisfied?’

  She laughed, pacing again.

  ‘And what would that mean, to a soldier? Inside or out, isn’t it all one and the same? Tell me, do you have any money?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Before everybody gets out on the streets,’ she thought quickly, ‘we should buy something. A container of coffee, cigarettes, croissants if you can find them. Will you? There’s a shop immediately to the right after the track. They have everything. You’ll be gone and back in five minutes.’

  ‘Why me and not you?’

  The dusty tip of the shoe quickly lost patience and began jabbing again.