“Before she begins mating, the queen has two large pairs of wings, which drop after the nuptial flight.” She actually says that: nuptial flight. It’s a beautiful expression. “It’s been determined that the combined biomass of all the ants in the world surpasses that of human beings. Did you know that?”
No, I didn’t know all the ants weighed more than all of us. Good thing I stopped trying to kill them off.
She’s still talking about ants when we get to her apartment complex. I park and pull out a few bills from my wallet.
“Get the windshield fixed in the morning. Let me know if it costs more than this.”
“Thanks for driving me home,” she says.
“Thank you for the entomology lesson.”
“I talked your ear off, didn’t I?”
“I enjoyed it,” I say. Without thinking, I add, “Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
We sit for a moment, just looking at each other. I consider kissing her.
“My boyfriend’s name is Federico,” says Silvia, as if she can read my mind. “We haven’t been together very long and I don’t want people to know about him yet. Petra thinks I’m single; that’s why she invited me tonight. I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. You’re a nice person, Sergio, really. I just can’t. You understand?”
I nod. There’s nothing more to say. We get out of the car and shake hands awkwardly.
“Well, goodbye.” Silvia walks away as she says it.
Goodbye, Silvia the entomologist. I’ll remember you.
I walk to the taxi stand. There’s hardly anybody around at this time of night. I give the driver my mom’s address.
After he drops me off, I see a city bus driving back to the depot at the end of its shift. I think of my father. He was a bus driver in Milan, but his real passion was art. Volume by volume, he collected a set of encyclopedias called The Old Masters. I remember him in his armchair before work, perusing the Caravaggio volume with his uniform on and his hat on his lap. I think he dreamed of being a painter when he was little, but he never had the courage to try. One night I found him in the kitchen painting with my watercolors. When I asked him what he was painting, he said, “nothing,” and hid it from me. I found it crumpled in the trash the next morning. It was an attempt at a portrait of a woman—maybe my mom—but it was so childish it looked like a six-year-old had done it.
One day I asked him, “How many kilometers have you driven in your bus?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Definitely enough to go around the world.” Then he gave me a strange smile and added, “But I’ve never been anywhere.”
The next morning, he went to the depot to start his shift. He greeted his colleagues, put on his hat and jacket, got into the bus and closed the doors.
The bus didn’t move. It just sat there in the parking lot.
The other drivers were confused. When they went to see what was going on, they saw that Luigi Monti—Gigi—had collapsed over the steering wheel, his cap lying on the floor and his foot still on the clutch.
“Sergio! My goodness… What’s wrong?” my mother says over the intercom. It’s two o’clock in the morning.
“Everything’s fine, Mom. Let me in and I’ll explain.”
I take the elevator to the second floor. My mom is waiting for me on the landing, wearing that bathrobe she’s had since I was little. It’s worn so thin you can see her nightgown under it.
“Did you run out of gas or something?”
“I had dinner out with Roberto. I didn’t want to make him drive me all the way back home. Sorry for waking you up.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m getting used to you showing up unannounced.”
She leads me into the study and gets out a pillow, a pillow case, and sheets. She makes up the bed. From the closet she pulls out a pair of light blue pajamas, complete with a little pocket on the shirt.
“These were your dad’s.”
When she leaves, I strip down and stare at the pajamas folded on the bed. I never wear pajamas to sleep, especially not old ones like these. I pick them up and put them on anyway. The clean material feels good on my skin, and the smell of mothballs is strangely comforting. I turn off the light and crawl into bed.
Through the window, I can hear the rumble of a night bus hurrying to the depot.
11
I spent Sunday with my mom. In the morning I cleaned the dishwasher filters and adjusted the tuning on her television set. Then I took her out to eat at the usual trattoria. The owners are more or less her age, Mario and Flavia. We heard them arguing in the kitchen, then they took turns coming over to the table to complain about each other. They’ve been doing it for fifty years.
During lunch my mom told me about the news stories that have made an impression on her lately. Husband and wife stab each other to death and are found by their daughter in a state of decomposition. Grandson takes grandmother for a walk in her wheelchair and she falls off the sidewalk just as a van is passing; her head is neatly sheared off. Stuff like that.
“These sorts of things happen more often in the summer,” she declared, “because of the heat.”
After we drank our coffee, she went out to smoke while I paid the bill.
“Will you come to the mountains with me in August?” she asked me on the way home. She’s reserved a room in a guest-house in Abruzzo with her neighbor Lina. “It’s beautiful up there, and cool too.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, even though I have no intention of going. I can’t go away. I have to stay home and wait. I’ll wait all summer if I have to.
I’ll wait for you.
On Monday morning I took the bus home. From the stop in town I had to walk up the hill to my house. The sun was beating down and I tried to stay in the shade of the trees. After two kilometers I came to a curve where I stopped to rest. I could see the side of the hill that had burned in the fire. Next to it were the buildings under construction. Seen from there, it looked like Nino was right––that they had set fire to the hill on purpose, just so that they could keep on building.
I arrived at the top soaked in sweat. I look into Nino’s yard but I didn’t see anyone. Only the dog came to say hello. It licked the hand I pushed through the bars of the gate. They’d put a collar on it, with a tag shaped like a bone. It said, “Lucky.” It’s the right name.
Now I’m back here, sitting in the garden drinking an ice-cold beer. I turn on the phone I left at home on Saturday evening. There are three messages. One is from Roberto. “How did it go with the entomologist? Let me know.”
The second one is from Luisa, from the dating agency. “If you change your mind Sergio, I’m always here. Remember that love never dies. There’s one of our members, Fabiana, forty-seven, widow, loves horses…” I delete it. The third one is from Michela. All it says is, “Check your email.”
The mailman comes by, thrusting envelops into my box. I get up to check: bank statement, flyers, the bill from the dating agency. I take the letters down into the bunker and turn on the computer. While I’m downloading my messages, I open my bank statement. A few years ago I opened an equity fund. I did it for Michela, in case one day she needed money to go to university or buy a car. The fund is always losing money, but at the bank they keep telling me to have faith.
A selfie of Michela appears on my screen. She’s posing like a French film star, with a beret on her head, sun glasses, and a ballpoint pen in the corner of her mouth, like a cigarette. Daniel is hugging her from behind, burying his face in her hair. Under the photo it says: “Paris, j’arrive!!!” In the background you can see a tennis racket hanging on the wall. It must be Daniel’s room. Maybe I should tell Alessandra that our daughter spends her afternoons at a boy’s house, and that she isn’t exactly going to Paris to learn French. Although, now that I think about it, I guess she’ll probably learn French anyway.
I print out the photo of Michela and Daniel, write the date on the back and put it away i
n my files. Another thread to tie onto the other memories. Then I check my credit card statement. I haven’t bought much in the last two months, so one item immediately strikes me as odd. “Park Hotel, Rome.” I don’t remember spending money in a hotel. Not in Rome, anyway.
I look at the date. The 22nd of April. Four days before the accident.
I start sweating again. Weak knees, stomach cramps and all the other symptoms hit me all of a sudden. The Park Hotel. It’s a common enough name for a hotel, but it reminds me of something specific. I remember a yellow sign on top of a building. A long, busy road. Via Salaria. Near the exit from the ring road there’s a hotel with that name. I pass it every day when I drive home from work, but I’m sure I’ve never stopped there.
At least, I don’t think I ever have.
Driving into Rome you hardly notice the lit up sign. It’s no great loss. The yellow neon is faded and a couple of letters are dark. The façade of the hotel is gray and the window frames are aluminum. The ramp from the ring road rises directly in front of the bedroom windows. The parking lot is deserted apart from one battered old scooter. The flowers in the cement flowerpots by the entrance are dead and the restaurant connected to the hotel is closed for renovation. From what I can see of the inside, I don’t think it’ll be reopening anytime soon.
I go into the reception. I’m surprised that the air-conditioning works. Behind the counter, there’s a skinny kid with his tie loosened. As I walk up he hides the joint he’s smoking.
“I need some information,” I tell him. “I got a room here a couple of months ago. Do you remember me?”
“No,” the kid says.
“It was the end of April. Are you sure you don’t remember?”
“I’ve only been here a week.”
“Well, can I check the register to see if my name’s there?”
The kid eyes me suspiciously.
“Why? What do you want to know?”
“My company has to refund me the cost of the room. I’ve lost the receipt and I don’t remember exactly what day it was.”
“Hold on a sec.”
He bends down beneath the counter and pulls out a daily planner with a fake leather cover.
“What’s your name?”
“Sergio Monti.”
“When did you say you were here?”
“The end of April. Must have been around the twenty-second.”
The boy turns the pages over backwards. Very slowly. A couple of minutes later we’re still in May.
“Do you need a hand?” I ask.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“No, but...”
“If your name’s here, I’ll find it. No need to get all worked up.”
He carries on with his backwards search until he gets to the month of April.
“Here it is, April twenty-second. Monti, Sergio. Room 106. Check in: eleven-thirty p.m.. Check out: midnight. Payment: Visa. All right?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want another receipt?”
“No, I don’t need one. Could I see the room instead?”
“106?”
“Yeah.”
“You wanna rent the room?”
“No, just see it.”
“Why you wanna see it?”
“Because I’d like to.”
“If you’ve already been here, you know what it looks like. Why do you need to see it again?”
“Ok,” I say. I’m almost out of patience. “I’ll take it. Give me room 106.”
I toss some money onto the open planner. The kid takes it and slips it into his pocket. Then he closes the book and puts it back under the counter. He grabs the key to 106.
“Follow me.”
We take the elevator up one floor and turn left down a hallway. The kid leads the way, walking in slow motion. I have to watch out not to step on his heels. I keep looking around. The carpet is blue and covered with cigarette burns. The walls are bare and faded under the fluorescent ceiling lights. The numbers on the room doors are in raised black plastic. 102, 103, 104, 105. Nothing I see looks familiar. It’s like I’ve never been here before.
“106,” says the kid when we get to the end of the hallway. I feel my heart pick up speed. The kid has a hard time getting the key into the lock. I feel an urge to snatch it out of his hand and do it myself. It takes him almost a minute to get the door open.
“All yours,” he says, stepping aside so I can go in.
The room’s dark. All of a sudden I don’t want to go in there anymore. I just want to turn around and leave.
“Don’t you want to see it?”
“Can you turn on the lights?”
He looks at me like I’ve made some absurd request. He sighs, sticks his arm into the room and flips a switch on the wall.
“Is that good?”
I take a deep breath and go in.
It’s an anonymous room. A double bed, two nightstands and a chest of drawers in a corner. Cold and bare. The walls are white. Absolutely nothing is purple.
But I recognize the window.
The aluminum window frame, the grey curtains, the lowered rolling shutter––they’re the same as the ones in the enlargement I’d left at the camera shop. Now I know that two months ago I came to this rundown hotel and took a picture of the window in room 106. But why? I grab the cord and start to roll up the shutter.
“We usually tell guests they should leave that down,” the kid says.
Through the glass you can see the concrete ramp leading up from the ring road. A car flashes past with its brights on. They sweep across the walls like the beam from a light-house. The aluminum fittings do nothing to muffle the roar of the engine. I stand there staring at the dismal landscape with the feeling that I’ve come to another dead end. Whatever I do, every time I think I’ve discovered another fragment, something to help me remember, I end up with more questions than before. My head starts to ache again, the veins in my temples swelling until they feel like they’re about to burst. I lean my forehead against the cool glass and close my eyes.
“You all right?” the kid asks.
“It’s nothing. It’ll pass.”
I stay like that a little longer, then pull myself away.
“Sorry if I’ve wasted your time.”
“Listen,” says the kid, before I can leave the room, “why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”
“A person,” I answer, “who might not exist.”
The kid gives me a serious stare.
“Can I trust you?”
“I don’t know. About what?”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“No, but if I were, I don’t think I’d tell you.”
The kid sticks his hand into his pocket, pulls out the rest of the joint he put out before, and lights it. He takes a few puffs, leaning on the door frame, staring at me. While I’m waiting for him to tell me what he wants, I sit down on edge of the bed and massage my temples. I wish I were back home, under the covers.
“No, you’re not a cop,” he says after a while. He crushes the butt out with his shoe. He sits down beside me and whispers in my ear.
“Maybe it’s a fucking stupid thing to do, but I want to tell you anyway. There’s a girl who always uses this room, for work. She uses it for half an hour, then leaves. Maybe she’s the person you’re looking for.”
She’s standing in an open lot off of Via Salaria, under a streetlight. She’s talking on the phone and only lifts her eyes when she sees my headlights approaching. Long blond hair. Skin-tight shorts and shiny black boots. Farther on, a group of girls are chatting and making gestures to the passing cars, but the girl the night porter described to me, the girl from room 106––it has to be her.
I watch her from inside the car. I try to find something familiar, but her face doesn’t spark anything in my memory. It’s hard to believe I was with her in that hotel room. In the past, when I’ve tried to go with a prostitute, I’ve never been able to see it through to the end. An em
barrassing waste of money and self-esteem. Why would I have tried again last April?
I approach with the car window down. I let her in.
“There’s a hotel just ahead,” she says. “If not, in the car.”
“Can we talk for a minute?”
“First the money.”
I turn on the inside light. When I hand her the money, I take a closer look at her. Pale skin, high cheek bones, some pimples on her forehead. Pretty girl.
“What’s your name?”
“Jenny.” It seems less a reply than a conditioned reflex.
“Have you seen me before, Jenny?”
“No.”
“Do you mind looking me in the face?”
She turns and looks at me with two pale eyes that give no sign of seeing anything. It’s like she’s blind.
“No,” she says, without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It was two months ago. We went to the hotel. Room 106.”
“What do I know about it?”
“I might have told you something about myself. My name’s Sergio. I’m a graphic artist. Advertising.”
Jenny chews on her gum. Deadpan.
“Maybe we went somewhere else,” I press. “Another room. Painted purple. There was a window. You opened it and the sun shone in. You were looking out and…”
Jenny shakes her head.
“I work at night. No sun. No window. Get it?”
I’m beating my head against a brick wall. Why do I keep doing it? It’s clear now that it was all a hallucination, or else I’m going mad and just haven’t realized it yet.
“Well?” asks Jenny, impatient. “What do you want to do?”
“Nothing.”
I open the door to let her out. She hesitates, like she’s expecting some sort of trick.
“Go on out. I’m not in the mood anymore.”
She shrugs her shoulders and gets out. Right away she starts talking on her phone again, as if the person on the other end has been on hold all this time.
The Purple Room Page 9