by André Aciman
He entered the town at walking pace, headlights ablaze and windscreen wipers on the go. He could hardly see a thing. The smoky dark, his impatience to sit down before a sumptuously laid table and, most of all, the persistent feeling of being pursued, absurd as of course he knew it was but no less real for that, made him unable to turn his gaze away from the unbroken yellowish glare that was revealed before him by the headlights. He progressed laboriously as if through a kind of underground alleyway ever more anxiously impatient to be in the dining room of the Bosco Elòceo. The small lobby of the hotel and the floors above it he more or less knew. But the dining room, doubtless adjoining the lobby on the other side of the wall opposite the staircase, what was that like? He imagined that, by now, at a quarter past three, it was full of loud happy folk, of eaters and drinkers used to eating and drinking for hour after hour, slowly and without pause, in a warm, perhaps overheated atmosphere flooded with electric light and impregnated with the smells of food, damp clothes and greasy leather. And he couldn’t but marvel that for such surroundings, which in normal circumstances he would have faced with reluctance, oppressed in spirit, fearful of unpleasant encounters, he now experienced such a strong and irresistible attraction.
Cutting across the dark fluctuating lake of mist which submerged the square, he took the narrow road toward the Bosco Elòceo, and in a few moments was in front of the hotel. Parked along the curb on the other side of the street opposite the hotel was a row of cars. But there was no shortage of parking space, right there in front of a lateral strip of neon, already lit. As he was maneuvering into the space, Bellagamba came into his mind again. Perhaps he would be willing to take the game off his hands? In which case, parking the Aprilia there would be very convenient. Unburdening the boot of the dead birds and carrying them inside would be a cinch and the neon light would further facilitate the whole operation.
He got out of the car. As the guns were in the boot as well, he didn’t bother to lock the door. He crossed to the other side of the street. He pushed open the hotel’s glass door and entered, taking off his cap in the warmth and the smell.
No one was in the small office with the desk, not even the old guy with the salt-and-pepper thatch with whom he’d exchanged a few words that morning. But the confused noise of voices and crockery that issued from behind the swing doors to the right of him immediately set his heart racing. So he wasn’t mistaken! In no time, when he arrived in the dining room, he would surely find if not a plate of food ready for him to devour immediately, then everything else he desired: calm, safety, a better mood, a precise and balanced sense of things. But then, during the brief wait for some real food to get his teeth into, couldn’t he just begin with half a loaf of bread and with a glass of house wine? Drinking had never really been his thing. Yet today, perhaps because of the dank cold he’d endured in the hide, he felt a real desire for wine. Almost more than for food.
As soon as he’d entered the dining room, he saw it was a huge crowded space, noisy and smoky, just as he’d imagined it, true, but much darker, and so with something sad and squalid about it. Bellagamba rushed to welcome him with open arms. When he’d first come in, the man was standing gesticulating by a table of ten or so customers, far away, the farthest from the door, beneath a window on the back wall. He was laughing and making the others laugh—telling them who knows what. Until he spotted him. Then he immediately abandoned the company.
“I was convinced you’d gone straight back to the city,” he said in dialect, raising his voice above the noise. “So how did it go?”
He shook his hand between both of his own while studying him solicitously with his gaze. With no jacket on, he was still wearing that rust-grey pullover, with a kind of cyclist’s high collar and extending over his riding breeches.
He winked.
“Have you already had lunch?”
“No.”
“What an appetite you must have by now then.”
“Not too bad, but I’d like to eat.”
He’d expressed himself drily, much more so than he would have liked. The fact was that he found this long preamble exasperating.
“Right away. Right away,” the other stammered, intimidated, stepping aside.
He was looking round.
“Would you like to sit over there?” he finally proposed, pointing to a table in the corner, to the left of the entrance.
From a distance, he noticed the tablecloth covered with crumbs, used toothpicks and wine stains, and once more felt a shiver of disgust. But there was no other choice.
“Thanks,” he said.
He walked on, reached the table and sat down.
He took a deep breath.
“What can you offer me?”
“Whatever you’d like,” Bellagamba replied.
He was facing him from the other side of the table, a little bent forward, resting his hands on the back of a chair. Behind him the waiters, four or five stout country lads with dirty white jackets like hospital stretcher bearers—continually in demand, laden with plates, red in the face, their necks dripping with sweat and constantly rushing between the kitchen and dining room—went by without giving them a look.
“I still have that fine turbot,” he added, winking again. “I’ve kept it aside specially for you.”
“Good. Will it take long to cook?”
“Depends. Depends on whether you’d like it boiled or grilled. Boiled would be only twenty minutes.”
He’d have to be patient. He lowered his eyelids.
“And grilled?”
“Longer. At least half an hour.”
He opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Three thirty.
“I’ll have it boiled then,” he said. “But in the meantime, have you something already prepared? To have now.”
Bellagamba revealed his small compact teeth in a nervous smile. The veins in his forehead were strangely swollen. What was wrong with him? From the depths of their sockets his blue eyes were staring at him bewildered, or so he thought: with the anxiety, for whatever reason, of an animal that senses danger.
“Would you like a fish starter?” he murmured. “Prawns, baby octopus, mantis shrimps, marinaded eel . . . there’s a bit of everything.”
He felt his mouth fill with a gush of saliva.
He swallowed.
“Go on, bring them,” he replied.
And while the other man was already walking away toward the door that opened onto the kitchen, he added:
“Don’t forget the bread. And the wine.”
Soon he felt suffocated by the heat.
He stood up, took off his heavy jacket and one of the two pullovers he was wearing and threw them down in a heap with his fur cap on the seat opposite. Despite this, as soon as he sat down again he realized that wouldn’t do. The skin on his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, enflamed by long exposure to the sun and the wind had begun to feel swelteringly hot. With his elbows leaning on the table and his face in his hands, he reflected that, naturally, the only thing to do would be to have a wash in some cold water straightaway. And he was about to get up to look for the ground-floor washroom when, seeing Bellagamba rushing toward him between the tables, laden with plates of antipasto and bread, and also with a bottle of wine clasped tightly under his left armpit, and with a clean tablecloth folded in four, he changed his mind. For now he might as well fill up with a bit of food. And later, if he still wanted, he could go and freshen up.
2.
BELLAGAMBA WISHED him buon’ appetito, and before the man had turned on his heels, he had already started in on the antipasto. He was famished—what an appetite! It felt like he’d never had such an appetite in his whole life.
He filled his mouth with the sweet and sour pulp of crustaceans and swallowed, then washed it down with gulps of wine and stuffed himself with bread. Very quickly, however, he felt disgusted—with the food and with himself. What good was it all? he wondered. With his head lowered, in his corner, in that heat, in that stink, in that greasy an
d promiscuous half-darkness, to be chewing away, swallowing, sucking, swilling. As his stomach swelled his sense of disgust increased.
Worse than ever—that, unfortunately, was how things were.
Once again, there was nothing that didn’t grate and jostle and hurt him. Between one mouthful and the next, he only had to lift his head, let his eyes rove around the dining room and each time he did so, whether his gaze fell on that long table entirely composed of hunters that when he’d entered he’d spotted Bellagamba attending to—he’d gone back to them and had immediately began talking, arguing, bawling confusedly, laughing—or else if he exchanged glances with another customer, it didn’t matter which, but especially with a woman of about thirty, dark-haired, pale, stout, heavily made-up, who was sitting at a table not far from his own—without doubt a prostitute: her mouth declared it to him, the way she smoked, her nails, her dark, too-respectable trouser suit, her fur coat arranged with care, as if on a coathanger, over the back of the chair beside her, her large handbag placed in plain view beside the ashtray crammed full of butts and her eyes, mainly her eyes, black, opaque, a bit like an animal’s, which roved untiringly in search of clients perhaps to take upstairs (of course with the connivance of the owner, of Signor Gino) to one of the hotel rooms . . .—each time he was overwhelmed by a sense of envy very like that which had tormented him all morning in the hide, when he hadn’t managed to find the strength to fire off a single shot despite the double-barrelled shotgun he’d been toting in his hands. How careless and happy they were, all these others! he kept repeating to himself lowering his head to his plate once more. How clever they were to be able to enjoy life! His food, it was clear, was of a different kind, irremediably different from that of normal people who, once they’ve eaten and drunk, think of nothing else but digesting it all. Throwing himself at the food and drink would do him little good. When after the antipasto he had guzzled the rest of it, the turbot, the gorgonzola, the orange, the coffee, he would slump back into his glum ruminations about the usual things, both old and new. He felt them waiting in ambush for him, ready to leap on him as before and as ever, and all of them together.
Wherever he was, Bellagamba didn’t lose sight of him for a second, that he was sure of. The birds, he thought. Why hadn’t he immediately asked Bellagamba to take them? Perhaps the disquiet that continued to torment him was down to that and only that.
He raised his hand and signalled.
Passing swiftly between the tables, the other man came toward him.
“Is everything fine?” he asked with a worried air, nodding at the plate.
He swallowed and dried his lips with the napkin.
“Perfect,” he replied.
He didn’t know where to begin.
“Listen,” he finally said. “My car boot is full of game. Would you like to have it?”
He saw that Bellagamba was smiling. It was obvious: the man thought he was proposing a deal, a business arrangement. Or perhaps a kind of small exchange in kind: some game for a lunch and later a bed.
“It’s a gift,” he added. “Let’s be clear about that.”
He downed the whole glass of wine in one swig and again wiped his mouth.
“With all the ducks and coots,” he went on, “I think there might be more than forty birds. Among them all there should even be . . . even be a heron.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed Bellagamba. “A heron. How did you manage to shoot that? It will be one of the white ones, I’m guessing.”
“No. A red one.”
He said this. And suddenly, in the dusky light, after the shots had been fired, as if the large earthy and confused face that was leaning down in front of him from the other side of the table had been whisked away, he once again saw the dog with the heron in her mouth. Utterly bled dry—among the tobacco-colored plants of the shoreline to his right, the dog had reached it when it was already dead—how much could it have weighed? Little more than its feathers did, so hardly anything . . .
He blinked.
“What a shame!” Bellagamba said, his lips twisted in disappointment. “The white ones are bigger, more beautiful, and look far better when they’re stuffed . . . But the red ones are lovely big birds as well. Would you like me to organize that, to have it all sorted for your next visit? Here in the square,” and saying this he lifted his arm to point to the square outside, shrouded in fog and shadow, “here in the square we have a shop where they do these things very well,” adding in dialect “a sight better than you’d find in the city if you ask me. If you’d like we can go over there later and take a look. Today it’s a holiday, but they keep the window lit up even on Sundays.”
He shook his head emphatically.
“Heavens no.”
He must have assumed an expression of disgust—the disgust that had always oppressed him at the mere thought of a taxidermist’s workshop—God, what a ghastly stink there’d be, a mixture of a poulterer’s, a chemist’s, a lavatory and a morgue . . . On the other hand, it wasn’t as if he was obliged to explain himself. Better cut things short. Let Bellagamba stand there gawping at him for as long as he liked.
He fished the car keys out of his pocket and pushed them across the table toward him
“Take them,” he said. “You know my car. I’ve parked it out there in front.”
The other stretched out his hand. Half way there, however, it came to a halt.
“Speaking of which,” he said, lowering his voice, his round, catlike eyes aglint, “have you thought any more about it?”
“About what?”
“You know . . . the car!”
He took a seat facing him.
He continued in dialect, with an uncertain smile, full of embarrassed shyness: “Might we come to an arrangement, sgnór avucàt?”
Now it was his turn not to understand.
But then he suddenly remembered their brief discussion that morning a little before he’d left. And while he listened to everything Bellagamba was telling him, specifically that day by day managing the restaurant and hotel without a van was becoming more and more difficult—the bike and sidecar he owned, a Harley Davidson swapped for some tobacco at an A.R.A.R. camp,* which because of its big engine size consumed almost more petrol than a Balilla, he could imagine how inadequate that was!—while he listened and kept on eating and drinking, increasingly, he was overwhelmed by a sense of futility. Bellagamba spared no efforts in persuading him to sell the Aprilia, expatiating in minute detail on all the uses he could put it to. These days—he was saying—it’s not enough to wait for some passing hunter to deliver wild game; if, that is, someone does stop by, that’s all well and good, if not, you just have to keep on hoping. To meet the ever-increasing demand of his clientele it made sense for him to acquire it directly from the “heavyweights” of the hunting world such as Commendatore Ceresa and his associates who’d be likely to bring down a hundred, a hundred and fifty kilos of game at a time. There was no other way to do it—you needed to be there in person in the valleys, at the “source” at around one o’clock in the afternoon, to buy in bulk and then be off. The same thing for fresh fish straight out of the water!—which if you hadn’t the chance of leaving Codigoro really early in the morning, when it’s still dark, so as to arrive at Goro, or Gorino, or Porto Tolle, or Pila, even as far away as Chioggia, just when the fishing vessels came to the shore, and chiefly to be there on four wheels, that was the only way to do it if you didn’t want to come back with just a few kilos of fish. The man kept on talking, explaining, gesticulating. And he, meanwhile, his head ever heavier, could find nothing to argue with. He understood Bellagamba, he understood him and could see how sound his arguments were. The car, of course he needed it. No question about that. Instead of selling it to him, it would almost be better to give it to him. With all the birds in the boot as well.
After a while he shook himself. He looked around. His gaze alighted on the table of hunters, down there, in the smoke. So far away it was as though the whole vast Valle Nu
ova lay between him and them.
“Who are those people?” he asked.
“It’s the man I mentioned, Commendatore Ceresa and his friends,” Bellagamba replied contritely.
They were gentlemen from Milan—he went on—more or less all of them working in industry. Since last year, as an association, they had rented a stretch of the valley from Pomposa to Vaccolino, quite close to Romea, from the Land Reclamation Offices. They usually arrived by car on Saturday evening. They dined here at his place but then prefered to sleep at the splendid deluxe “lodge” constructed entirely out of wood that they had speedily built within spitting distance of the water. “Today, though, they’re about to leave, and should be back in their homes around nine this evening, that’s of course if the big fog on the Via Emilia isn’t to stop them.”
“They’re folk who fork out bigtime, that’s for sure,” he concluded in dialect. “Would you like me to introduce you? When I come back, I could easily do so.”
Left alone, he finished eating the remains of the antipasto, then stood up. His face was flushed and hotter than ever. He had to wash it.
Swaying a bit, he passed in front of the woman in the trouser suit and, having crossed the dining room, went to shut himself in the washroom next to the kitchen.
Besides being cramped and incredibly foul-smelling, and still populous with old flies that had survived the summer, the room was far from comfortable. A small semi-circular basin of chipped porcelain with a greenish, soaked and dirty terrycloth handtowel hung on a hook on the wall next to it. On the floor was the hole of a Turkish toilet, filthy and half blocked with newspaper. Hardly any light. No mirror. Not even a scrap of soap.
He turned on the tap of running water and washed his face as best he could. He dried himself with his handkerchief. Finally, though in no great need, he turned in the opposite direction to urinate.