“I’m working here at the airport now. I’m with the border police. I left the judicial police. I was exhausted. You can’t work like that your whole life,” said the policeman, continuing to look over at Caterina, who just kept listening to her music and ignoring him, me, and everything that was happening around her.
“That was a wise decision,” I said, struggling to remember the policeman’s name, but without success.
“Are you traveling for business, Counselor?”
Maybe you should mind your own fucking business, friend. It’s great that we said hello. It’s wonderful that we had a short, polite chat. I’m delighted that you updated me on the latest developments in your career, unasked I might point out, and okay, I can see you eyeing Caterina as if you wanted to have sex with her right here in the airport, but now do you think you could get the hell out of here? Please?
That’s not what I said, however. I told him that, yes, in fact, I was going to Rome on business, and I hoped he would excuse me, but it was time to get in line. Otherwise I might not find room to stow my bag; it looked like this flight was going to be pretty full. I was happy to have run into him, congratulations on his new job, best of luck. I turned and walked over to the boarding line. Unhurriedly, with a smile, Caterina joined me.
27.
The plane was taxiing onto the runway and Caterina finally was obliged to turn off her iPod.
“How do you know about Mike Patton?”
“Why, is that confidential information?”
“Come on, you know what I mean.”
“You mean I’m too old to know about that kind of music.”
“No, but you have to admit it’s not the kind of music people your age listen to. It’s pretty hardcore hip-hop. My parents listen to the Pooh and Claudio Baglioni.”
“How old is your dad?”
“Fifty-two. My mom is forty-nine.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I have a younger brother. He’s seventeen.”
That information stirred up a series of vague and unsettling thoughts that I rapidly suppressed.
“What did you tell your parents?”
“What do you mean?”
“About this trip.”
“I said I was going to Rome because there was a party tonight. Sometimes I go to Rome for things like that. I decided that it would just be too complicated to explain everything, so it might be best to avoid a lot of questions. Do you think I did the right thing?”
I ignored the question.
“Tell me about Nicoletta. What’s she like?”
“Anxious and insecure. She’s very pretty, as I told you, but that’s not enough to make her confident. And she can’t seem to make a decision, even about something that’s not important.”
“She’s not like you.”
She was about to say something but then changed her mind and-I’m certain of this-said something else instead.
“Why did you ask me for a picture of Michele yesterday?”
“Did you find one?”
“I found a few group pictures, but none of them are close-ups. You can’t really make out the faces. Why do you need a picture of Michele?”
I hesitated for a moment, but then I realized I couldn’t conceal the reason from her.
“I talked to an old client of mine. He’s a coke dealer, and he works the so-called respectable circles of Bari. I asked him if he had ever heard of someone named Michele in his milieu. He doesn’t know him, but he asked around a little bit, and he found a small-time dealer who might know a guy by that name. To be certain, he needs to show him a photograph.”
“And who are these two coke dealers?”
“Why do you care? I can’t imagine their names will mean anything to you. The important thing is the information they can give us. That is, if it turns out there’s a link to Manuela’s disappearance, of course.”
I realized that I’d answered her sharply, with irritation, more or less the way a policeman answers when someone-a prosecutor, a lawyer, or a judge-tries to pry the name of a confidential informant out of him. It just isn’t done. Caterina looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and resentment.
“Why are you getting mad?”
“I’m not getting mad. It’s just that there’s no reason for you to know the names of professional criminals. Among other things, I’m a lawyer, and I can always claim attorney-client privilege, but you don’t have that option.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if for any reason, which we can’t even imagine right now, we were questioned about what we’re doing, by the police, by the Carabinieri, or by a prosecutor, I could refuse to answer by invoking attorney-client privilege. But you would have to answer their questions, and you’d have to tell the truth about anything you know concerning crimes and people who may have committed them. Believe me, the less you know, the better.”
I paused for a moment, then added, “And I’m sorry if I sounded a little harsh.”
She seemed about to say something, but then she decided against it and just shrugged.
A short while later, the plane began its descent toward Rome.
We finally got a taxi after standing in a long line. While we were in line, Caterina started talking to me again. She’d been giving me the silent treatment to let me know she was offended, I guess. If she wanted to make me feel guilty for what I’d said to her on the plane, she had succeeded brilliantly.
There were no books in that taxi. Instead, there were decals with Fascist double-headed axes and silhouettes of Il Duce. The taxi driver was a twenty-something with a soul patch, a shaved head, an imperial Roman eagle tattooed on his neck, and a dangling lower lip. I felt a sudden, intense desire to land a few hard punches to his head and face and wipe away his dull-eyed, arrogant expression.
I told Caterina about the taxi driver I had the last time I was in Rome and how he’d learned to love reading. It didn’t seem to make any particular impression on her.
“I don’t really like reading. I rarely find a book that I care much about.”
“Have you read anything lately that you liked?”
“No, nothing recently.”
I was about to push a little further and ask about the last book she had read, even if it wasn’t very recent. Then I realized that I probably wouldn’t like the answer, and decided to drop the subject of reading entirely.
“What do you do in your free time?”
“I really like listening to music. I listen whenever I can, especially on the Internet. I like to go to concerts when I can, and I like to go to the movies. Then I work out at the gym, I see my friends and… oh, I almost forgot the most important one of all: I love to cook. I’m a good cook. I’ll cook for you sometime. Cooking relaxes me. The best thing is if there’s someone else who cleans up after me. But I haven’t asked you anything about yourself. Are you married, do you live with someone, do you have a girlfriend?”
“I could be gay and have a boyfriend or even be living with a guy.”
“That’s impossible.”
“What makes you think that’s impossible?”
“The way you look at me.”
That hit me like a straight-armed slap to the face, a fast one that I hadn’t seen coming. I had difficulty swallowing as I tried to come up with a clever answer. Of course, I couldn’t think of one, so I just pretended I hadn’t heard her.
“No, I’m not married. I used to be, but that ended a long time ago. I don’t have a girlfriend, either; haven’t for a while.”
“What a waste. You don’t have children, either, do you?”
“No.”
“Well, here’s what we’ll do. One evening when we’re back in Bari, you invite me over for dinner. You’ll do the shopping-I’ll tell you what to get, but you’re free to pick the wine-and I’ll cook, but I won’t wash up. Are you in?”
I said that would be fine, I was in. She looked satisfied. She put her earbuds back in and went
back to her music.
28.
This hotel was much nicer than the one I usually used when I had business in Rome that required an overnight stay.
We decided to change and go eat something in a nearby restaurant. Then Caterina would call Nicoletta and make a time for us to meet.
My room was inviting, and it faced a courtyard that was showing the fresh and dazzling signs of an early spring. As I was undressing to take a shower, I realized that it had been years since I’d been in a hotel with a woman. The last time, the woman was Margherita.
Part of me objected indignantly. It was wrong to draw any comparison between two such radically different situations. Margherita and I came as a couple on vacation. Caterina and I were in Rome on business. Not only were we not a couple, but she was half my age and we were sleeping in separate rooms.
It was an impeccably logical argument, so I ignored it. If there is one thing that I’m good at doing, it’s ignoring logic when it comes to my private life.
The last time I was in a hotel with Margherita had been three years earlier. We’d gone to Berlin on vacation with two friends of hers. I was crazy about Berlin. If there’d been no such thing as winter, I would have moved there. I even considered taking a German class when I got back. It was one of the best vacations of my life, and I came home bubbling with enthusiasm.
A few weeks after we returned, Margherita told me that she had accepted a job offer in New York. A job offer that she had been considering for months, and therefore even when she was vacationing in Berlin with the clueless, unsuspecting Guido Guerrieri, who was obviously dumb as a post. In Berlin, I’d been walking around like a happy idiot, while she was already in New York in her mind, leading a new life that didn’t include me.
A few weeks after that she left, telling me she’d only be gone for a year. I didn’t believe her for a second, and in fact she hadn’t come back. Not to stay, anyway.
I half-closed my eyes and saw-as if in a theater of my memory-her slender, muscular, self-aware figure in white underwear, in the dim light of that hotel room in Berlin, on the Oranienburger Strasse. It was a picture that was both tragic and, at the same time, pervaded with serenity. The image included both the perfection of that moment and the awareness, visible in hindsight, that it would not last.
I wondered where Margherita was in that moment. It had been a long time since that thought had crossed my mind.
What had happened to me in the years since she’d left? I couldn’t remember much at all, aside from my dangerous encounter with Natsu, who happened to be the wife of one of my former clients, and my adopting a series of daily rituals. Leaning out over this void of memory gave me a sense of vertigo, the exact same way you feel when you lean over an actual abyss.
I thought back to the letter that Margherita wrote to me from New York to say she wouldn’t be coming back. It was a kind letter. It was clear she was trying not to hurt me and to make that good-bye as painless as possible. So, of course, it was intolerable, I thought to myself as I read it for the third or fourth time, before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into the trash.
Thinking of Margherita’s letter triggered a terrifying plunge down sheer slopes of memory. Those mountainsides became increasingly populated as I tumbled ever further into the distant past. At last, I ended up at the bottom of that deep gorge of memory.
It was the late seventies. Change was afoot in Italy. It was a period of reaction, of backlash. Someone wrote a letter to the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, announcing his intention to kill himself over a love affair, beginning months of interminable, intolerable public debate. And you couldn’t turn around without running into John Travolta. Everyone was trying to imitate him-some successfully, others, including myself, much less so.
I went to see Grease with a girl I was crazy about named Barbara.
We had met at a party and as we chatted she told me that all her friends had already seen the movie. Now she was stuck: Who would go see it with her? Well, how about that! What a coincidence, I hadn’t seen it either and I’d been wondering the same thing, I lied. We could go together. How about the next afternoon? After all it was Sunday.
She accepted my invitation, and the following afternoon, blissfully incredulous at my luck, I was sitting beside her in a theater filled with kids watching and listening to John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, and their friends-some of them far too old for their roles, unrealistic and even grotesque as they tried to play eighteen-year-old high school seniors-sing, dance, and recite dialogue that stretched the limits of the improbable.
I walked Barbara home and, when it came time to say good-bye, she planted a quick kiss on my lips and then, just as she was vanishing behind the heavy door, she turned and flashed a smile full of promise. Or rather, a smile that I interpreted as being full of promise.
That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I lay there, overjoyed, and when morning came I made up my mind to surprise Barbara by going to meet her after school, since I had cleverly asked her when she got out on Monday afternoons and we had more or less the same schedule.
As I strode briskly and happily toward the Liceo Scientifico Scacchi-Barbara’s high school-my mind was racing with fantasies about our future together.
I was about to learn a valuable lesson: It’s never a good idea to spring a surprise on someone when you don’t have a clear idea of how things stand.
The school bell rang, furious and cheerful, and moments later a clamorous flood of boys and girls surged out into the street. I spotted her almost immediately in that chaotic rush of sweaters, jackets, scarves, backpacks, wool caps, and dark hair, but looking back, I can’t remember her face. If I force myself to focus on the face, all I can come up with is a visual cliche of adolescent beauty-blonde, blue-eyed, high cheekbones, a luminous complexion, and fine features.
I was about fifty yards from her. I started smiling, and then the smile faded from my face, like in a cartoon. Pushing his way upstream through the crowd of students pouring out of the school, and ahead of me-in every sense of the word-another boy was moving toward her, then reached her, then kissed her, and finally took her by the hand.
I don’t know what happened after that, because I instinctively darted into the nearest apartment building lobby with an open door, my cheeks burning from the shame of that visual slap, my stomach churning with despair.
I stood in the lobby for a good ten minutes and ventured out only once I was certain that Barbara, together with someone who all evidence suggested was her boyfriend, had disappeared, and there was no longer any risk that someone-anyone-might see me in that state.
Because in the meantime, I had begun crying, silently, with a swarm of words and questions buzzing around in my head. Why had she gone to the movies with me the day before? Why had she kissed me? How can anyone be so cruel?
I was terribly unhappy for many weeks. After I started to recover, I ran into her, on the Via Sparano. I saw her from a distance. She was with two girlfriends, while I was alone, standing in front of the display window of the Laterza bookshop.
I straightened up, squared my shoulders, and did my best to look proud and unconcerned.
I told myself to be strong, act like I didn’t care, and barely nod to her as we passed. Not scornfully-I had to do better than that. Indifferently. She would probably turn and slow down, but I wouldn’t stop. I’d keep walking, dignified and detached.
What the hell.
We’d gone to the movies one time and exchanged a kiss. So what? That certainly didn’t mean we were married. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time, between modern, freethinking young women and men. We went out, saw a movie, kissed, said good-bye, and went on with our lives. No problem.
By this point we were quite close to each other, but she hadn’t seen me yet. She was deep in conversation with her friends and talking animatedly and suddenly, for no good reason, I assumed that meant she and that boy had broken up. In that case-I said to myself-maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh
, too pitiless. After all, she’d treated me badly, but it was the kind of thing that happened. Maybe I should give her a second chance. The best thing to do, in that case, was to assume an expression that was dignified, but not hostile. Maybe I could even let the beginnings of a smile form on my lips. She must have realized what a mistake she’d made, and I could be magnanimous and give her a second chance.
She only noticed me as we were about to cross paths. “Ciao,” she said distractedly as we passed, and then she plunged back into the conversation with her friends. I was miserable for weeks-again-after that chance encounter. I decided that I’d never look at another girl as long as I lived and that I’d be unhappy forever.
I heard someone knocking on my hotel room door, and I realized I hadn’t even changed out of my bathrobe yet.
“Yes?”
“It’s me. Are you ready?”
“No, sorry. I had a few phone calls to make. I’m running a little late.”
“Why don’t you let me in?”
“Because I’m not dressed. Go down to the lobby and I’ll catch up with you in five minutes.”
“It doesn’t bother me. What, are you shy?”
“That’s right, I’m shy. Go on down to the lobby and I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
As I was tossing my robe onto the bed, I thought I heard a burst of laughter moving away down the hotel corridor.
But maybe it was my imagination.
29.
I was down in the lobby five minutes later, as promised. Caterina was on the phone, and she snapped her phone shut as I walked toward her.
“I just spoke to Nicoletta. She’s waiting for us at her house. She said she canceled all her appointments this afternoon. We can drop by whenever we like.”
“Did you say that she lives over near Via Ostiense?”
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