The Night of the Moths

by Riccardo Bruni

  “These are the babies?” Enrico says, picking up a photograph from a shelf. It’s a picture taken in London last year, when they went to see Margherita. Chiara and her sister are hugging and smiling in a park. Chiara likes that photo. She used it for her sister’s profile picture on her iPhone. Her sister is beautiful, everyone says so. Long hair, full lips. She’s tall, taller than Chiara, who year after year sees the illusion of becoming like her fade even more.

  “Yeah, the babies,” Maurizio says.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “We don’t see Margherita much, but we know that things are going well for her, so it’s okay with us.”

  “Why London?”

  “Well, at the time we had the chance to send her. It was a great opportunity and she . . . How should I put it . . . Wasn’t very happy here.”

  “Too small a town.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Her father is speaking in that slurred way that happens when he drinks. He must be on his fourth gin and tonic at least.

  “And Chiara?” the guest asks.

  “Chiara wants to go be with her sister.”

  They smile.

  Betti returns, carrying the tray with the appetizers and glasses of prosecco. She sets the tray on the table and hands the glasses to the men in her life. The tinkling of crystal. Her mother glances toward the stairs and Chiara knows that she’s about to call her. So she goes down.

  “Chiara, do you remember Enrico?” her mother asks her.

  “How can she remember me?” Enrico says.

  “A little. Not much, though.”

  There’s a moment’s pause. An air bubble.

  “Shall we sit down?” Betti says, breaking the silence.

  It’s strange how adults always manage to talk about something else. To avoid names and facts as though they were obstacles along a course. No one reminisces about the past, for fear they might end up talking about that girl, Alice.

  Chiara watches her mother closely. She starts to relax after the second prosecco, after she’s covered the entire table with plates and saucers and little bowls and sauces and condiments. Little by little they loosen up, as if they were slowly beginning to recognize one another. A memory or two enters their conversation: “That summer . . . That time . . . That night when . . .” Until at some point the inevitable arrives: “Alice was there that night too.” And it’s Enrico who says it. Then they go on talking, telling stories. Chiara remembers when she was little and their house was always filled with people: all the friends who stayed for dinner, chatting, listening to music. She looks at her mother, whose eyes, as usual, are teary. It’s to be expected. It’s strange how all this seems to make them happy. Because when adults talk about the past, it’s sad, Chiara thinks. They talk about things they no longer have, about people they haven’t seen, about friends lost along the way. How can they not be crushed by sadness? How can they not be afraid of all that lost time?

  Chiara stays with them for a while, until she can tell from their conversation that they aren’t going to say anything more that night. Only then does she say good night and go upstairs. She lies down on the bed, turns on her computer to select a movie, and picks up the phone to tell her grandmother about the evening. No one knows that she’s in touch with her. If her mother found out, she would make a scene.

  When she hears Enrico leaving, she goes to the window, not letting them see her from below. They’re in the garden. Their last exchange with one another. Her mother laughs and continues wiping her eyes. She’s hopeless. Enrico came on foot because he’d felt like walking, but now her father wants to drive him back.

  If the police stop him and make him take the balloon test, they’ll take away his license.

  As the car pulls away, Betti remains standing there. She draws her cardigan around her. Then she looks up at the sky. Chiara knows that her mother likes stars. She sees her half close her eyes and smile. She follows her as she goes back into the house and knows that for at least an hour now there will be a clatter of dishes and glasses and running water and silverware tossed about between the sink and the dishwasher basket. Things which, for that matter, will already have been washed by hand before the dishwasher is even turned on; it’s one of those things about her mother that she will never understand.

  “Here we are,” Maurizio says. He took the long way to show him something. They get out of the car. In front of them, a hill with a fenced-in area. “The construction will take place here. Cubic volumes transferred from the urban center and applied here to build the houses and facilities and golf course between the hill and the valley on the other side. A significant investment, but safe, see? All you have to do is put in the money and you’ll double your investment, but it’s no use. It took me years to form these friendships, to get into this circle, but she doesn’t give a shit.”

  “How come she doesn’t talk to her mother anymore?”

  Maurizio rummages through his jacket pockets for the pack of cigarettes. When he finds it, he pulls it out and takes one, twirls it around a bit between his fingers.

  “They had an argument, a bad one. Her mother is a pain in the ass, but all she’d have to do is put up a couple of apartments as security for the loan and I could get into the association.” He puts the cigarette between his lips and lights it, then blows out a thick cloud of smoke. “But it won’t happen. And you know Betti, when she makes up her mind about something, there’s nothing you can do. She won’t listen to reason, even if it means fucking up the project of a lifetime.” He again offers the pack to Enrico, who refuses. “You quit? Good for you, this stuff will kill you. But, as they say, something or other will . . . You know, we’re not really that sweet little family picture we served you at dinner.”

  “No one is.”

  “Yeah.” Maurizio takes a deep drag. “And I’m left here watching this fucking hill and all that money that could be mine, all that work I did for years getting into that circle of loaded assholes. Fuck it. Life is full of missed opportunities.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Maurizio inhales, making the tip flare up, and blows the smoke out in puffs, trying to make big rings.

  “Nothing, stuff from long ago.”

  “I got two messages from Alice’s number.” Enrico says it just like that. The words slip out by themselves, casually.

  “What? When?”

  “A few weeks after that night.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I just found them.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The box you brought me also contained the cell phone. It automatically saved the messages in the phone’s memory. A number of messages came in over the days following that night. A bunch of people telling me things. And there were those two messages, sent from Alice’s phone.”

  “I remember that thing about her phone.”

  “What?”

  “They searched for it, but didn’t find it. You didn’t know that?”

  “They didn’t find her phone?”

  “You didn’t follow the news much when you left, did you, Erri?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t find it. But in any event the case was closed quickly. There wasn’t a whole lot to investigate.”

  “But those messages were sent later.”

  “Are you worried about it?”

  “It gave me a strange feeling, as you can imagine.”

  “I’ll send my security guard over. He’ll check out the house, take a look, and we’ll see. I have some idea as to who might be busting your chops, including the visit you had today in the garden, before I got there.”

  “Sandro?”

  “Bingo.”

  “You think he had the phone?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure it was him this morning at your house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because on my way there I passed his car.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”


  “Because you already seemed stressed out, and I didn’t want to add more tension. Sandro hasn’t turned out well, but I don’t think he can cause you any trouble. Still, I’ll call my security guard.”

  “What do you mean he ‘hasn’t turned out well’?”

  “After Giancarlo died in prison, he was left alone. His mother never recovered from that hideous night. She stayed shut up in the house and they say her mind is no longer all there. And Sandro let himself go more or less. Said to hell with it all, started doing drugs and dealing. Nowadays he’s one of the many specters heroin has left to drift around in this shitty place.”

  The hill. The night. Silence.

  “Do you mind taking me home?” Enrico asks. “I’m a little tired.”

  “No problem.”

  Filthy undershirt stained with blood. Biceps shiny with sweat. Unkempt beard and thinning hair. Icy stare. Detective Lieutenant John McClane in Die Hard has Bruce Willis’s sharp-edged face. The sound comes through an earbud stuck in the ear of Enzo Porretta, the security guard employed by the local real-estate agency. His favorite movie is that first one. The images play out on the screen of the small DVD player propped up on the dashboard of the company car. A giant bag of corn chips rests between his legs. A long straw extends from a can of Fanta Lemon, secured in its proper place on the armrest; Enzo made it by joining four straws together, so he could drink without removing the can from its holder. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt with the logo of the security service for which he works, a size too small, to show off his biceps, but when he’s seated he has to undo the buttons over his belly. He shares Lieutenant McClane’s thinning hair, but his face is less angular, tending more to fat, with a hint of an unkempt beard, or rather stubble that has never grown well. At night he goes out on his rounds, for which the agency’s clients pay a lot more money than he ever sees, and leaves the calling cards that confirm he’s been by. Sometimes he stops and watches part of a movie, like now. Behind him lay a disastrous past as a municipal police officer and a contract that was not renewed due to a series of gunshots that exploded in front of a supermarket, when he thought he saw a thief fleeing. But it doesn’t matter: the agency’s badge is way cooler, resembling that of an American policeman. Besides, he can always say he is a former police officer who is now a private investigator. Now that McClane has an automatic weapon, and announces the fact to his enemies with “NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN HO-HO-HO” stamped on the T-shirt that is his touch of class, Enzo knows the best part of the film is about to start. But just then his cell phone lights up in its holder on the dashboard. Enzo is forced to let go of the handful of corn chips that he had just scooped out of the bag. He rinses his mouth with a little Fanta Lemon, grabs the Bluetooth earbud hanging by the phone, puts it in the other ear—so that he now has the phone in one ear and Die Hard in the other—and presses the green button.

  “Porretta,” he says, responding with his last name like they do in the movies, even though his surname is sadly unsuited to that kind of thing.

  “Enzo, the guy from Beta Realty called for some extra drive-bys to check on a house.”

  “Roger.”

  “What?”

  “Roger.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Okay, okay, which house?”

  The guy from the agency tells him the address on Via delle Ortiche.

  “Roger.”

  “Again?”

  “It means ‘I got it.’”

  “So then tell me you got it.”

  “I got it.”

  “And don’t do anything stupid. Beta is a good client, you know. Okay?”

  “Ro . . . Got it.”

  He ends the call. He hangs the earbud back in its place. He shuts off the DVD player and puts it on the passenger seat. He stuffs a handful of chips in his mouth, closes the bag, and slides it into the compartment inside the armrest. He wipes corn chip crumbs off his hands, and takes a moist towelette from a compartment under the steering wheel. A sip of Fanta Lemon. He tightens his lips the way Bruce Willis does, looks around, thinks about how everything would be different if there were lighted skyscrapers surrounding him instead of these sad, discolored apartment buildings with clothes hanging outside and pots of basil on the balconies. He narrows his eyes. He imagines his tough-guy look and avoids the rearview mirror so as not to break the spell. He turns on the ignition, puts the car in gear, and goes to do his dirty work.

  Betti’s mind is blank. The evening has left her sleepless. But it’s not just that.

  After straightening up the living room and kitchen, she opened the cabinet door where she keeps the tins of herbal teas and chose the fennel-seed tea that reduces gastrointestinal distress. She filled the tea infuser, heated the water in the electric kettle, and poured it into the cup. With a gentle, circular motion, she stirred the tea ball, watching it release its wake of color and transform the hot water into the drink that will help her relax. It is in such gestures, repeated each and every time in the same way, that she finds her way to a state of nonthinking, of silence and ataraxia, the relief of a serenity induced by a ritual of small, intimate acts, comforting in the fact that they are already preset in an unvarying and recurring pattern that preserves their identicalness.

  The aroma of the fennel rises lightly, wafted by the steam.

  Betti checks the time. Maurizio and Enrico left quite some time ago. Maybe there’s a little jealousy in thinking that they owe their friendship to her, because she was Enrico’s friend first, and it was she who later met Maurizio, and it is through her that the two men met. But that typical male complicity naturally and callously excludes all women from the after-dinner ritual of brandy and cigars. Even if it’s only having one last beer while leaning against the hood of the car or taking a piss in the open countryside. But it’s not just that.

  There’s a worm of doubt working its way in, gnawing at her, boring into the silence, in that absence of thought resonant with the echo of an evening that is almost surreal in its relationship with time.

  She can’t help it. She picks up the phone, retrieves a message that Enrico sent that afternoon to say hello and tell her that they would see each other in a few hours, and hits “Reply.”

  Excuse me, I hope I didn’t wake you. Is Maurizio still with you?

  Enrico had sat out in the garden for a while, accompanied by half a bottle of Lagavulin he’d found in the house, in the bar cart. He’s always enjoyed certain moments of solitude. When he went back inside, he closed the door gently, hearing the lock click. He took off his shoes, sat on the sofa, stretched his arms along the back, and propped his feet on the coffee table in front of him. He threw his head back and his gaze fell on the ceiling. He stayed in that position, just staring at the ceiling for a while. Then he lowered his eyes and she was there, in front of him, perched on the coffee table.

  “It doesn’t seem like so much time has passed,” he says.

  “How does it make you feel?” Alice asks him.

  “Coming back here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s strange.”

  “How so?”

  “Like finding a piece of myself, which now I’m no longer so sure I want to discard.”

  “You mean the house?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Your friends?”

  “They’ve changed.”

  “You’ve all changed. Maybe you’re the one who has changed the most.”

  “Do you still want to go to Biarritz, to see the ocean?”

  The sound of the cell phone. A text message. Enrico’s thoughts scatter in an instant. The coffee table is empty, there’s nobody there anymore. He gets up, searches for the phone in his jacket pocket. It’s Betti’s number.

  She asks if Maurizio is still with him.

  No, we left each other a while ago. Is everything all right?

  He sets the phone down on the table while waiting for her to text back and pours another glass of scotch. The sound announcing her reply comes
quickly.

  Sorry, everything’s fine. I just heard his car.

  But it’s not true. Betti turns the phone off. She tries to fill the void, which on certain nights yawns beneath her feet, by inhaling the scent of fennel. She switches off the kitchen light and carries the cup to bed. Under the covers, it all seems less painful at times. Maurizio’s side of the bed is empty. He’ll come back later and try to take a shower without waking her, to rinse off that smell that doesn’t belong in this house.

  The tea is still quite hot. Betti already feels the illusion of relief in her stomach.

  The black car is moving very slowly. Its headlights are off. It’s right in front of his gate, from here you can’t see anything else. It pulls up. He’s in the house. He’s back. Better to turn off the engine. Remain in the dark, watching. Enrico left his car outside the gate. He has a station wagon now that must have cost at least forty thousand euro. I wonder if he got rid of that old trendy clunker, the convertible Beetle, as soon as he returned to Rome, while here, they were burying Alice—because of him.

  The sound of a car. Someone coming. No problem, he just has to duck down in the seat to avoid being seen.

  It must just be passing by.

  Negative, Lieutenant McClane. There’s nobody here. All quiet. Cars parked along the street. No suspicious movement.

  Security guard Enzo Porretta steps out of the car and clips the key to his belt, next to the flashlight. He hikes up his pants to cover the generous swathe of exposed pale ass and looks around, narrowing his eyes to ruthless slits. From his shirt pocket, he pulls out an agency card. He crosses the street accompanied by the clomp of his boots and the rustling of a nonexistent wind, the echo of some Western movie whose name he doesn’t remember. He approaches the gate slowly. He slips the card in a crack beside the lock and turns around.

  All quiet. Doesn’t it seem too quiet? Central, we’re gonna take a closer look, these shitty terrorist bastards hole up like sewer rats.

  He takes the flashlight from his belt, clicks on the switch with an abrupt motion, and aims the beam of light on the ground, as if he had drawn a katana, while his eyes look elsewhere.