She opened her eyes. The Jaguar was there, just inches from the motorcycle, motionless. Babi heaved a sigh of relief and released Step’s jacket from her terrified grip.
With an impassive face, Step gazed at the car’s driver. “Where do you think you’re racing to, asshole!” Then he started the motorcycle back up.
The guy, a man about thirty-five with a perfectly groomed head of hair, thick and tightly curled, lowered his electric car window, displaying his angry face. “Excuse me? What did you just say to me, kid?”
Step turned off the motorcycle. He smiled as he got off. He knew this type of guy. He must have a woman sitting beside him and didn’t want to come off looking like a fool. Step walked over to the car. Sure enough. Through the glass, he saw a pair of feminine legs next to the man. A pair of shapely hands crossed on an elegant black evening bag and a fancy evening gown. He tried to glimpse the woman’s face, but a streetlight reflecting on the glass concealed her. Kid. He called me kid. Wait until you see what this kid does to you.
Step opened the guy’s car door very politely. “Come on out, asshole. Maybe you’ll be able to hear me better.”
The man started to get out. Step grabbed him by the jacket and dragged him hurtling out of the car. He slammed him down on the Jaguar’s head. The short antenna of his telephone vibrated. Step cocked his fist back, poised in midair, ready to slam down.
“Step, no!” It was Babi. Step turned to look at her. For a second, he’d completely forgotten about her. He saw her standing next to the motorcycle, her gaze filled with concern, her arms hanging helplessly at her sides. “Don’t do it!”
Step released his grip, and the guy took advantage immediately. Free now and a coward at heart, he punched Step in the face. Step’s head rocked back. But only for a moment. Surprised, he raised his hand to his mouth. His lip was bleeding. “You filthy son of a…” Step lunged at him.
The guy threw his hands up and dropped his head, trying to flee in fright. Even he didn’t know why he’d dared to hit Step. Step grabbed him by his curly hair, yanked his head down, ready to slam his knee into the guy’s face, when suddenly he was hit again. Differently, this time harder, a blow that went straight to his heart. A short, sharp jab. A mere word. His own name.
“Stefano…”
The woman had stepped out of the car. Her handbag was sitting on the hood, and she was nearby. Step looked at her. Then he looked at her bag but didn’t recognize it. He wondered who’d given it to her. What a strange thought.
Slowly he opened his fist. The lucky curly-haired guy was suddenly free. Step stood gazing at her in silence. She was as pretty as ever. A faint “Ciao” issued from his lips.
The guy pushed him aside. Step moved back, letting himself be pushed.
The guy got back into the Jaguar and started the engine. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Step and the woman stared at each other for one last instant. Between those two similar pairs of eyes, a strange magic unfolded, a long history of love and sadness, suffering and the past. Then she got back into the car, beautiful and elegant, and as quickly as she had appeared, she left him there on the street, with his lip bleeding and his heart in pieces.
Babi ventured closer to him. Worried about the only wound she could see with her eyes, she delicately dabbed at the blood with her hand.
Step recoiled from that kind touch, so filled with a new burst of love. He mounted his motorcycle in silence and waited until she was seated behind him before he took off, in anger. He shot forward. The motorcycle tried to resist at first but soon, docile and submissive, it veered to the right, turning onto the Lungotevere. Step upshifted. Then he twisted the throttle, and the motorcycle shot out onto the road, the rpms climbing steadily.
Without thinking, Step started racing. He left old memories behind him, accelerating to outrun them. Eighty kilometers per hour, ninety. Faster and faster. The chilly air pricked at his face, and that new source of suffering seemed to provide some relief. Ninety-five, a hundred. Faster and faster still.
With his turn indicator blinking, he went racing between two cars side by side. He almost brushed against them as his half-open eyes looked elsewhere. Happy images of that woman filled his tangled mind.
A hundred five, a hundred ten, a gentle rise and the motorcycle practically flew through an intersection. A stoplight that had just turned red. The cars on the left honked their horns, stopping short just after starting up at their green. Obeying the dictates of that arrogant, bullying motorcycle, as fast and dangerous as a navy-blue chrome-plated bullet.
A hundred ten, a hundred twenty-five. The wind was whistling. The road, its sides blurry now, merged at the center. Another intersection. A distant stoplight. The green vanished. The yellow appeared. Step pressed his thumb down on the small button on the right, marked in English as the HORN. The horn sounded its voice in the night like the scream of a wounded wild animal, galloping to its death. Step shouted into the darkness, like an ambulance siren, piercing as the shout of the wounded man it was carrying. His scream came out loud and deep, a suffering mirror of what he was feeling.
Closer and closer now. The traffic light changed again. Red light.
Babi started pounding her fists against his back. “Stop, stop.”
At the intersection, the cars started up. A wall of metal, dozens of colorful, expensive bricks, was suddenly erected, loud, in their path. It drew closer and closer, dangerous and insurmountable.
“Stop!” That last scream, that cry for life. Step suddenly seemed to snap out of it. The throttle, suddenly released, quickly dropped to zero. The engine downshifted under his domineering foot.
Fourth gear, third, second. His left hand clenched down hard on the steel brake handle, practically bending it. The motorcycle shook as it braked to a halt, as the RPMs dropped dizzyingly, in a rivalry with the speedometer to drop to zero. The tires left two deep, straight stripes on the asphalt. The smell of burning rubber swirled around the smoking pistons. Motionless.
The cars went rolling past just inches from the motorcycle’s front wheel, just beyond the white stripe, the limit line. None of the drivers had noticed a thing.
Only then did Step remember Babi. He turned around. She’d dismounted. He saw her there, leaning against a wall at the side of the road.
He put the bike on the kickstand and got off, crossing the street to join her. Fragile cries were emerging from her chest, unrestrained like the tiny tears that streaked her pale face. Step didn’t know what to do now. Standing there, facing her with his arms spread, fearful even of touching her, afraid of the idea that those faint nervous hiccups might be transformed by his mere touch into an unstoppable wave of sobbing.
Nevertheless, he dared to touch her. But her reaction was unexpected. Babi pushed his hand away forcefully, and her words came pouring out in something approaching a shout, broken by her cries.
“Why? Why are you like this? Are you insane? What made you think you needed to drive like that? So reckless, so crazy?”
Step didn’t know what to say to her. He looked at those eyes, so big and glistening, bathed in tears.
How could he explain it to her? How could he tell her what lay behind this? His heart tightened into a silent vise grip.
Babi looked at him. Her suffering, inquiring blue eyes sought an answer in him, a tranquil beach where it was possible to lie comfortably in satisfied peace.
Step shook his head. I can’t, he seemed to be repeating deep inside. I just can’t.
Babi sniffed loudly and then, as if gathering her strength, launched into it again. “Who was that woman? Why did you change all of a sudden? Step, you have to tell me. What was there between you two?”
And that last phrase, that huge mistake, that unthinkable misunderstanding seemed to hit him full on. In an instant, all his defenses collapsed. The constant, powerful guard he always kept up, trained by an enduring silence, day after day, suddenly fell. His heart let go, for the first time unafraid and tranquil.
He smiled at that naive young woman. “So you want to know who that woman was?”
Babi nodded.
“That was my mother.”
Chapter 15
Just two years earlier, Step was pacing back and forth in the privacy of his room as he tried to go over his chemistry lesson. He leafed back through his notebook full of notes. It was no good. Those formulas just didn’t want to enter into his head.
He let himself fall back into his chair and went on studying, with both elbows braced against the table, fists driven into his forehead, determined to do well on that exam. It was his last year of high school at Villa Flaminia.
Suddenly, from the top floor of the building across the way, loud music started up. It was Lucio Battisti, singing loud and clear, You come back into my thoughts, sweet as you are…
Step looked up. Lucky you, he thought. Nothing comes back into my thoughts, and I hate chemistry.
Then, seeing that they were really determined to make him listen to the whole album, he lost his temper. They’re out of their minds! He slammed both hands down on the table. That’s the last thing I needed.
He stood up and looked out the window. Nothing. In the building across the way, there was no sign of anyone.
He opened the window. “Are you done listening to that music?”
For a second, Step thought he saw a curtain move in one of those windows. Then he decided that he’d been seeing things. “Hey! Would you turn it off!”
Slowly, the volume of the music was lowered. “Those idiots.” Step went back down and focused on those rumpled sheets of notes from his notebook.
A few minutes later, the telephone rang. He looked at the clock. It was almost four. That must have been Pollo. He went to the telephone to answer it. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?” On the other end of the line, silence. “Hello?” Still more silence, then a simple click. Someone had just hung up. They hadn’t liked his voice. Stupid crank calls. He slammed the telephone receiver down.
“Stefano…”
Step turned around. His mother was there, right in front of him. She was wearing a dark brown fur coat with stunning highlights, light and golden. Her legs peeked out from under a burgundy skirt. They were sheathed in fine stockings that vanished into a pair of elegant, dark brown high-heeled shoes.
“I’m going out, do you need anything?”
“No thanks, Mamma.”
“Well, we’ll see you this evening then. If Papà calls, tell him that I had to go out to take the papers he knows about to the accountant.”
“All right.”
His mother came over to him and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. From the curls of her black hair, slightly long and twisted, came a caress of perfume. Step decided that she’d put on a little too much. He also decided not to tell her so. Then, watching her as she left, he realized he’d made the right decision.
She was perfect. His mother basically couldn’t make mistakes. Not even when it came to putting on perfume.
Under her arm, she carried the purse that he and his brother had given her. Paolo had contributed nearly all the money, but it was Step who had selected it, in that shop on Via Cola di Rienzo where he’d watched his mother stop, undecided, far too many times.
“You’re quite the connoisseur,” she’d whispered into his ear after unwrapping it. Then she’d put it under her arm and, swiveling her hips in an exaggerated, funny fashion, she’d done a sort of runway presentation. “Well, how does it look?”
Everyone had replied, laughing. But actually, she only wanted to hear the verdict of the connoisseur. “You look beautiful, Mamma.”
Step heard the kitchen door shut. When was it they’d given her that purse? Had it been for Christmas or for her birthday? He decided that, for the moment, the best thing he could do was focus on trying to remember the chemistry formulas.
Later, his decision proved to have been the right one. It was almost seven, and he was three pages short of finishing his planned course of study. He was on edge. He wanted to go to the gym—he’d already made plans to do so with Pollo—but he wasn’t going to be able to make it.
Then it happened. Battisti started singing from the half-open window of the top floor of the apartment building across the way. Louder than before. Insistently. Provocatively. Showing no sign of respect for anyone or anything. No respect for Step, who was studying and who wouldn’t be able to go to the gym. This was too much.
Step grabbed the house keys and went running out the door, slamming it behind him. He crossed the street and went into the lobby of the building. The elevator was occupied so he galloped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Enough’s enough, I just can’t take it anymore. They’d hear from him now.
He had nothing against Lucio Battisti, in fact. He loved him. But to treat him like that.
Step reached the top floor. Just then, the elevator door opened. Out came a delivery boy with a gift-wrapped package in one hand. He beat Step to it. He checked the surname on the little plaque on the door. Then he rang the bell.
Step stood beside him, catching his breath. The delivery boy looked at him with some curiosity. Step exchanged the glance with a smile and then focused on the package the delivery boy was holding. Written on the package was Antonini. This must be a box of the famous pastries from Caffè Antonini. His family ordered from them, too, every Sunday. His mother was crazy about their canapés. They had every flavor imaginable. With salmon, caviar, assorted seafood. At last, a voice came from behind the door: “Who is it?”
“Antonini. It’s the pastries you ordered, sir.”
Step smiled to himself. He’d guessed right, and maybe the guy who’d ordered them would offer him one, just to make up for the noise.
The door swung open, and a young man appeared in the doorway, about thirty years old. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, and below it he wore only a pair of boxer shorts.
“Giovanni Ambrosini?” The delivery boy started to hand him the package, but when the young man spotted Step, he threw himself against the door, desperately trying to push it shut.
Step didn’t understand, but he instinctively lunged forward in response. He wedged his foot against the doorjamb, blocking it before the guy could get it shut. The delivery boy reeled backward, doing his best to keep the cardboard tray of pastries upright and level.
Step started shoving back against the door. As he was pushing, with his face pressed against the cold, dark wood, through the opening between door and jamb, he saw it. The purse sat on an armchair, next to a fur coat.
Suddenly it all came back to him. He and his brother had given their mother that purse for Christmas.
Then rage and despair and a burning wish that he could be somewhere else, that he could disbelieve what his own eyes were seeing, increased his strength a hundredfold. He threw the door open, hurling the young guy to the floor.
He stalked into the living room like a baleful fury. And his eyes wished they could be blind rather than see what they were seeing. The bedroom stood open. There she was, amid the tangled sheets, with a different face, unrecognizable to him, although he’d seen it thousands of times. His mother was lighting a cigarette with an innocent expression.
Their eyes met, and in that instant, something snapped, a flame died out forever. At the same time, that last remaining umbilical cord of love was severed, and they gazed at each other, silently screaming, sobbing, and weeping.
Then Step walked away while she remained there, on the bed, speechless and burning steadily down, just like the cigarette she’d only just lit. Burning with love for him, with hatred for herself, for the other guy, for that situation.
Step walked slowly toward the door and stopped there. He saw the delivery boy out on the landing, next to the elevator with the tray of pastries in his hand, who was staring at him in silence.
Then, without warning, a pair of hands were laid upon his shoulders. “Listen…”
Step whirled around. It was that young man. What was he sup
posed to listen to? He no longer felt emotion of any kind. He laughed. The guy failed to understand. He just stood there looking at him, baffled. Then Step slammed a fist right into his face. Destiny.
The strange words of Lucio Battisti, an innocent party, guilty of that unwelcome discovery, rose into the air on the landing or else, perhaps, they just chanced to pop into Step’s mind. Forgive me, for so much, if you can, Lord. I beg her forgiveness too.
At that moment, he realized that he didn’t know anything anymore.
Giovanni Ambrosini lifted his hands to his face, covering them with blood. Step grabbed him by the shirt and, tearing the fabric, hauled him out of that filthy, illicit love nest.
He punched him over and over in the head. The guy tried to run. He started down the stairs with Step right behind him. With a precisely aimed kick, Step knocked him forward, making him trip and fall. Ambrosini tumbled down the stairs.
As soon as he came to a halt, Step was all over him. He kicked him repeatedly, in the back and legs, while the guy clung piteously, suffering, to the railing, trying to haul himself upright, to escape his wrath.
Step was slaughtering him. Step started yanking on his hair, doing what he could to make him release his grip, but even as Step’s hands started filling up with tufts of hair, Ambrosini still clung there, holding on to those iron railings for dear life, shouting in terror.
The doors of the other apartments started to open. Tenants, variously curious about and scared by those screams, emerged. They huddled together in shared concern.
Step stomped on his hands, which were starting to bleed. But there was no loosening Ambrosini’s grip. He held on, certain that it was his only possible salvation.
So Step did it. He swung his leg back and, with all his strength, kicked him in the head from behind. A violent, stunningly precise blow. Ambrosini’s face stamped itself right into the railing with a dull thud. Both his cheekbones were shattered, the flesh lacerated. Blood jetted forth. The bones of his mouth fractured. A tooth dropped, bouncing far away across the marble. The railing started to vibrate, and that metallic noise reverberated down the staircase, along with Ambrosini’s last shout before he lost consciousness.
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