The Night of the Moths

by Riccardo Bruni

  “What the hell happened to you? Look at the shape you’re in,” Maurizio says.

  Enrico is disoriented, but only for a moment.

  His old friend bursts out laughing. “You were speechless. You should have seen yourself! You haven’t changed at all.”

  “You haven’t changed either, still the same asshole.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Just a little more tanned.”

  “A little time at the gym, under the lamp, otherwise you can forget seeing pussy anymore.”

  “Come on, come in and put down that stuff.”

  Maurizio is familiar with the house. He’s the one who’s been taking care of it these past years for the agency. He sets the box and the bag down on the coffee table in the living room and turns to Enrico again. They hug each other.

  “Ten years, Erri. Hard to believe.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  When they break apart, there is a moment of silence.

  “These are the things I was telling you about,” Maurizio says, pointing to the box on the table. “The ones that were left here in the house. I wanted to tell you right away. You would have figured it out anyway and you would have gone on staring at the box. So now we can put it out of our mind. I’ll leave it all here for you. You can decide what to do with it. Now we’ll deal with this.” He picks up the paper bag. “I guess as usual there’s nothing to eat in this house. Am I right?”

  Enrico realizes what he’s pulling out of the bag. He smiles as Maurizio produces two cans of tuna, a jar of mayonnaise, a packet of pitted olives, two focaccias, and two cans of Coke.

  “How many of these must we have eaten?” Maurizio wonders.

  “Thousands.”

  “Scrounge up a knife, so we can have some lunch.”

  A few minutes later, they’re sitting in the garden beside the empty pool, focaccia sandwiches in hand. For a moment, it is as if those ten years had never existed, that everything had just aged overnight. Like that science fiction story in Urania that Enrico read some years ago, about a guy who undergoes an experiment in order to see the future, but all he’s able to see is the present grown old. The people in front of him, the places they’re in. It’s as if Maurizio were holding the same focaccia from ten years ago, in the same position as then. And yet everything is different, older. Around them, even the garden seems to belong to another time.

  “You’ve decided, Carmen told me. You’re selling it all.”

  “Right, I want to buy a house in Rome, a bigger house.”

  “Yeah, she told me. Too bad.”

  “Why?” Enrico is curious.

  “Because I always figured that one day you’d come back and we’d hang out here again, like now. But not to end it all.”

  “You thought I’d come back?”

  “Why not? This was a little like home to you.”

  “Not ‘a little,’ it was my house, period.”

  “And you never thought, even for a moment, that . . .”

  “You know how it was.”

  Maurizio takes a bite of the sandwich. He looks around, squinting his eyes.

  “A lot of times I thought of calling you,” Enrico says, “of talking to Betti, of coming back here. But I would always have been Alice’s boyfriend. People would have looked at me and thought about her. You should have seen Carletto’s face today as soon as he recognized me. The same expression that even you have. You come bearing focaccias and Cokes, yet within ten minutes here we are talking about Alice. Why would I come back?”

  Maurizio wipes his mouth with the paper napkin. He lights a cigarette. Blows out the smoke. He offers the pack to Enrico, but he refuses with a shake of his head and a faint smile.

  “And the girls, how old are they?” Enrico asks.

  Maurizio smiles at the change of subject. “Margherita is twenty-six, a grown woman. We hardly ever see her. She’s in London. Chiara is sixteen. And she can’t wait to join her sister.”

  “I can picture Betti. How is she?”

  “Betti . . . is still Betti.”

  “And the others?”

  “Some have left, some are still here. But you know how it is, at some point you lose touch. You feel less and less like going out. Maybe in December we’ll go to Egypt with Marco and Valeria, remember them?”

  “They’re together?”

  “Yeah, they started going together a few years after you left.”

  “But wasn’t she going with . . .”

  “Andrea.”

  “Right, the surfer.”

  “One night Valeria caught him with a Brazilian who arrived in town with two kids. And shit, you won’t believe it, but they were both his kids. Andrea’s. Apparently every time he told her he was going to Brazil to go surfing, he was riding more than the waves.”

  “And how did it end up?”

  “It ended with them getting married, him and the Brazilian, and now they run a beach establishment nearby. Obviously with a surfing school attached.”

  Enrico tries to sort things out. To rearrange his memories. Maurizio gives him time, watching him, before finally asking, “How did you find the house?”

  Enrico knows that the question is just a way to see how he’s feeling.

  “Okay, eventful.”

  “Eventful?”

  “There was a thief here earlier.”

  “A thief?”

  “I think so, somebody who was watching me.”

  “That’s odd, the area is patrolled. I can tell the security guard to make a few extra rounds.”

  “Maybe it isn’t important.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t want me to notify the police?”

  “Is that marshal still there . . . What was his name?” Enrico narrows his eyes, trying to come up with it.

  “Torrese,” Maurizio tells him.

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Bad memories, huh? But no, he’s been gone for some time. But, if you need me to, I’ll tell the security service. After all, we pay them, and since we pay quite a bundle, they take us seriously.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Enrico takes a breath. Holds it. Then takes the leap.

  “Giancarlo is dead, right?”

  Maurizio sets the Coke down on the table. He nods, as though he’s been expecting the question. “Yeah, he died a few years ago. While he was in prison. Something sudden.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for that too.”

  “It took me ten years to come back here. We might as well talk about it at this point. The thing is I thought a lot about him. About what he did. It’s strange, you know, but in the end, I think he was the only one to do exactly what was expected of him.”

  “He wasn’t a good person, you know that.”

  “The Half-Wit killed Alice, his daughter. He was still holding her necklace when he found him. It must have happened a short time before. It may seem absurd to you, but sometimes I think I understand what Giancarlo was feeling when he killed him.”

  “Has there been even one day when you haven’t thought about that night?”

  Enrico doesn’t answer right away. Yet the answer is there. It’s as if he needed to embrace it before setting it out in the space between them. “No.”

  Maurizio waits. He gives him breathing room.

  Enrico stares at a point in the hedge and continues, “When I got there that night, to the place where they’d found Alice’s body, I saw Sandro. I could feel the hate he directed at me. Maybe I even wanted him to pounce on me. Beat me to death. I wanted him to extinguish the pain I felt inside. Help me spit it out. Maybe he would have killed me. Done to me what his father did to the Half-Wit. I read in the newspaper that when they put him in the body bag to take him away, he no longer had a face. That face. At times I think I can see it. At the instant Alice gets out of the car, furious. She slams the door behind her. She bangs it as hard as she can. I reach out my hand. I’m about to get out, to persuade he
r to come back inside. I’m about to, but I see her reflected in the rearview mirror, stalking off. I am about to, but I don’t do it. I don’t know why. That’s the moment. There are no others that mattered as much. For Alice, for me, for everyone. And it’s at that moment that I have the impression I can see it, that face. The Half-Wit. It’s as if he were shrouded in darkness. In the woods. He looks at me. He smiles. His eyes narrow when he senses my hesitation. When he realizes that I will not open the door, he knows that Alice is his. And that’s the face that I can’t get out of my head. That pasty, morbid, obsessed, brutish face staring at me and relishing my weakness. He stands there. Motionless. Waiting for Alice. And I’m the one who drove her to him.”

  The cell phone rings on the coffee table inside. Enrico turns toward the sound, pulled back from a long journey into the past. He gets up as Maurizio lights another cigarette.

  Enrico picks up the phone. A text.

  The octopus will have olives. If those bitches don’t like olives, they can eat something else. They’ve stressed me out. XXX.

  Nine

  The sound of Enrico’s yellow Beetle was unmistakable, announcing its approach even before it appeared around the curve.

  Enrico stepped out of the car. Jeans and shirt, disheveled hair, a few days’ growth of beard. He raised an arm to wave to my father, some distance away, as he came toward me.

  “Enrico, dear, how are you?” The voice of my mother, Luciana, reached us from the terrace where she was lying in the sun with a glass in her hand. Usually she put a little peach juice in it to give it some color and disguise the prosecco or, on more inspired days, the vodka.

  “Morning, Luciana.”

  “Have you seen the construction? What do you think of it?”

  “It will be a fantastic place.”

  I said good-bye to my mother and got in the car. We pulled out of the driveway, but the moment the car started heading down to the road, I saw Sandro walking toward my father and behind him, half hidden by a bush, the Half-Wit. He had spoken to him.

  My father, Giancarlo Bastiani. He was standing among the workers, explaining what they had to do. He only had to have the surveyor sign some papers. My father always pretended to be busy when Enrico came to pick me up, because he didn’t like him. He didn’t want him to take me away. For him it was unthinkable that with all the guys around here, I would choose an outsider. At first he said that I was too young, then he said that Enrico was too old, then that Enrico wasn’t suitable, that with his kind you never knew what to expect. And then he started in with his Why do you want to leave, don’t you see how beautiful this place is? and on and on.

  “Did you have breakfast?” Enrico asked me.

  “I’ve been up since seven.”

  “How come?”

  “Because the workers get here early.”

  “The workers show up at seven?”

  “Giancarlo always has to ask for more.”

  “And people don’t say no to Giancarlo.”

  That was a subject he liked. Enrico joked around a bit about my father. Guys do that. It’s as if a kind of competition had been triggered between them.

  “You’re still wearing that thing around your neck?” Enrico asked, pointing to my pendant, a small plastic turtle found in a Kinder egg a few months earlier. Without thinking, I had started fiddling with it, to give myself time. There was that thing I had to tell him, and maybe it would be better to tell him right away. Find a way to start, like, Can you pull over somewhere before we go to the bar? I have to talk to you.

  “This is Mr. Toby,” I said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “You know the fable of the frog and the turtle?”

  “No.”

  “It’s an ancient Chinese fairy tale.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The frog was happy living in her pond and boasted about it. Then one day the turtle described to her how deep and vast the Eastern Sea was. So the frog became sad.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s a kind of warning.”

  “A warning?”

  “That you can be happy with what you have only if you’re unaware of all the rest.”

  “But not everyone is made for the sea.”

  “That may be, but as I see it, it’s the idea of home that fools us.”

  “The idea of home?”

  “The need to have one.”

  “I’m an architect. I make my living on that need.”

  “You’re from a rich family, that’s what you live on. Besides, wouldn’t you like having your home always with you? Take just a few things with you, not needing anything more, and go?”

  “Go where?”

  “That’s the point, there’s no need for a ‘where’ to go. You don’t need a specific place, when you have everything you need with you, like a turtle in the Eastern Sea.”

  “Now I get what you mean.”

  “Seriously? I barely get it myself . . .”

  “They’re called campers, and I hate them.”

  I had to laugh—but only briefly, because I had that thing to tell him, that would maybe change everything.

  I was so close to letting it all out, but it’s like when you search for words and come up with them too late. I missed my moment. We got to the bar without another word.

  As usual Enrico left the car in the middle of the street.

  All the others were there. We were a big group, like groups on vacation always are. We filled the outdoor tables at the Centrale as if it were a second home. Carletto would give you a discount on the service, but you had to pick up your glass at the counter, which was one way to save on the peanuts and pretzels and not hire waiters for the tables.

  When you’re part of one of those groups, it seems that winter doesn’t exist, because you have the feeling you’ve gone from one summer to another. Every discussion, interrupted the year before, picks up where it left off, and the months that have passed in the meantime are summed up as nothing much, just the usual. For me, however, the winter had existed. It had left a deep rift that I could no longer carry inside me.

  Today I’m confiscating the Settimana enigmistica, no crosswords, you’re playing beach volleyball . . . What, you’re still wearing those worn-out Filas, you know there are flip-flops with the Brazilian flag that are more stylish . . . Carletto, some ice at least, I’m not asking for an olive but at least some ice . . . I got a new scooter but I always go at the same speed as before . . . And I think I screwed up, but we can also go for pizza, come on, and maybe go to the movies early and then go for a drink on the waterfront . . . Yeah, but see, at IKEA they have air-conditioning, and if you go at this time, there won’t be anybody there, and you won’t even have to stand in line for the meatballs . . . Yeah, but you don’t have midfielders, it’s useless to go play at the ends, put in the forward and let him make the kick . . . Did you see that? . . . I disconnected the account because I was hooked and I played even at work, so I just said enough because it was a mess . . . Whatever you think, but if we vote again tomorrow, the same guy will win because this is a shitty country . . . No, no series, I want a film that begins and ends because if I have to wait a week to see what happens, I’m already pissed . . . I tried to read it but after about fifty pages it really didn’t grab me and I put it down . . . With fish you need garlic . . . Look, beer is healthier than that colored stuff . . .

  “Alice!” Betti called to her. “Tonight my mother is watching the babies so we can have a little supper at our place.” The babies—we all called them that. They were inside, at a little table. Chiara, notebook open and a box of colored markers scattered on the table, and Margherita, earbuds and sunglasses. They were beautiful. Chiara, a little girl. Margherita, already something else. The bored pout of a sixteen-year-old, a skimpy little dress that left her legs uncovered, sandals unstrapped, and a bare foot moving in time to music that only she could hear. “I think Maurizio was going to tell Enrico,” Betti said. “We’ll sit out in the ga
rden for a bit, cold pasta and cold cuts, though, because since the girls are with their grandmother, I want to relax.”

  Enrico and Betti had known each other forever. As children they went to the same beach club in the summer, and in winter they wrote each other long letters that Enrico still kept in a shoebox that a pair of Nike soccer pros came in.

  Betti had had her first daughter when she was barely of age. Enrico told me that he had gone to sit in on her final school exam and there she was in front of the teachers, with her big belly, talking about Euripides’s Medea.

  “Shall we go to their place?” Enrico came over with two glasses of prosecco and handed me one.

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Why? Don’t you feel like it?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  “Is something bothering you?”

  “No, it’s just so hot.”

  “Come on, we’ll take a little drive and then go home.”

  He turned to finish a conversation he’d started with some guy, about soccer, Roma, the attackers, the transfer market, and all the rest. I didn’t want to be alone at that moment. In part because I had that thing inside me that was becoming heavier by the minute. In part because looking at Enrico and forcing myself to smile at him as he talked about Totti, they weren’t his eyes I felt on me. They were other eyes. The ones I had fallen into by mistake. The mistake that Enrico had to know about, that would maybe change everything. And I felt those eyes because he was there, among the others, a short distance away from me. And I was afraid that if I caught them, I wouldn’t be able to pretend that nothing had happened. Fortunately, I saw Sandro ride up on his motorbike and I managed to take a breath. Usually my brother hung around with another group, but he knew all my friends too. He climbed off the bike. Black T-shirt, taut muscles, Ray-Ban Aviators, his helmet unfastened. He first went to greet Enrico, with his gladiator version of a handshake, then he came over to me.