“Who told you that crap?” Johnny said to Dino, laughing, his face still twisted in a kind of grimace.
Dino looked at Johnny and put his glass down on the table. “Giani did,” Dino said, almost under his breath.
Johnny gave another of those laughs that seemed to come from another world, and for a moment he actually threw his head back, then turned to look at Dino and Blondie again, his eyes watery from the laughter.
“Well, friend,” Johnny said. “Either Giani is dumber than you or he told you a load of crap hoping you’d swallow it. It was a kickback, Dino.”
Dino looked at Blondie with a grave, perplexed expression, that corrosive substance gradually spreading like acid through his body.
“A kickback?” Dino asked, frowning and leaning forward in his chair.
Johnny looked at Dino with an amused smile, and for a moment he had the feeling that Blondie understood. “Do you really think,” he said, “that resurfacing all the streets costs that much less than having you guys lay stones?”
Dino continued staring at Johnny without saying anything, motionless on his chair with one hand on his glass, like a lump of granite.
“I’m sorry,” Johnny went on, looking him in the eyes and still smiling, “but do you really think the whole town needs resurfacing? Outside the centre, maybe, on the ring roads. It might be useful there. Or else out on those empty streets where all the new building work is going on. But think about it. Do you really believe they’d award a contract to resurface everything, just like that, overnight?”
Johnny took a last sip from his glass and again looked at Dino, who hadn’t taken his eyes off him.
“Well, who knows?” he said, shaking his head slightly, an amused expression on his face, as if he were talking to a little boy. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, using both hands to do so, and laughed. “Maybe that’s why someone planted a bomb.”
Dino stared at him for a few more seconds, then got abruptly to his feet, making the glasses on the table clink and strode off down the street.
“What about the bill?” Johnny shouted after him, laughing as he watched Dino disappear round the corner.
When he looked back at the table, Blondie was still staring at him.
“Blondie,” Johnny said, smiling, “just stay calm, it wasn’t anything to do with me.”
When Dino came into the office, Giani was sitting comfortably in his armchair, talking on the phone with an amused look on his face. Dino slammed the door behind him, walked straight up to Giani’s desk, leant forward, grabbed the receiver, tore it from Giani’s ear, much to his astonishment, slammed it down with all his might, put both his hands flat on the desk and snarled, “Why are you resurfacing the whole town?”
“Dino, are you crazy? What’s the fuck’s got into you?”
“Why are you resurfacing the whole town?” Dino said again, raising his voice even more.
“Hey!” Giani yelled in his face. “Get away from this desk and calm down!”
The two men looked each other in the eyes, and for a moment Giani thought Dino was going to hit him.
“Shit!” Dino cried, straightening up suddenly and going to the window.
“Christ, Dino, what’s got into you?”
“Tell me why you’re resurfacing the whole town,” Dino said, staring at a clump of bushes in the yard outside.
“What’s the matter with you? I already told you. The council did their sums and decided that’s what they were going to do.”
A big pigeon landed near the tall pine in the middle of the yard, pecked at something on the gravel and flew away again.
“It was a kickback, wasn’t it?” Dino said, without even turning round.
“A kickback?” Giani said, frowning.
“Yes, a kickback.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dino lowered his head a little to get a better look at the grey clouds which had appeared from behind the roofs and didn’t look too promising, then turned again towards Giani and leant back against the window pane, his hands and his backside on the sill.
“Why are they resurfacing the whole town, instead of doing one part first? Why all of a sudden? Why now, when there’s a new councillor? Why specifically here, where there’ve always been stones?”
Dino asked all these questions in a calm voice, without taking his eyes off Giani’s eyes, like a soldier demanding to know from his superior officer why they are sending him on a suicide mission.
For a few seconds, Giani sat there, grave and silent, without taking his eyes off Dino, it seemed to both of them that, in some way, they had never been so close.
“I don’t know,” Giani said, as sharp and hard as a rock. “It’s none of my business. And it’s none of your business either. We’re not here to ask questions, Dino, we’re here to do what they tell us to do. Those are the rules of the game.”
For a while, all Dino could hear was his own breathing and the beating of his heart, then the inside of his lips swelled and a little air escaped. The two men looked at each other a few seconds longer, watching resignedly as a wall rose between them, then Dino nodded and without saying a word left the room and closed the door behind him.
For as long as he could, Giani watched Dino walk slowly away down the corridor, then looked down at his desk, leant forward with his elbows on the top of the desk and started crumpling a small sheet of paper.
Chapter Fourteen
DINO SPENT ALL AFTERNOON walking the streets of the city, without even going back to the site to change out of his work clothes. His feet followed one other calmly as they trod that sea of stones. In a way they never had before, the stones seemed to crunch like dry bones.
He walked beside the river for a long time, then along the ring road, and towards evening, as if everything was normal, he went to the billiard parlour, descended the stairs without taking his hands out of the pockets of his overalls, asked for the key, went to the table, took out the cue from its place, and sat down to wait for Cirillo so that he could lose his game.
“Is that how you’re going around now?” Cirillo said, approaching the table, opening the display case and taking out his cue.
Dino gave a little laugh. “I left my clothes at the site.”
Cirillo took a piece of chalk and gave the tip of the cue a couple of strokes. “I see,” he said. “You look a mess. I hope at least you washed your hands?”
Dino gave him one of his exasperated looks, although they were usually meant more as a joke than seriously. “Play, Cirillo,” he said.
Cirillo looked at him. “What’s the matter?” he asked, gravely, as he started arranging the balls for the game.
“Nothing, don’t worry.”
“If you like,” Cirillo said, “I’ll let you win.”
“Fuck off, Cirillo. Play.”
The game was like so many others—one perfect shot after another, with both men more interested in just being there, safe and secure, around that table and all its geometries, than in actually winning. But this evening, there was something else, a kind of distraction that moved from time to time between one ball and the next like a breeze, shifting the balls just a few centimetres from where they ought to have ended up.
Nearly halfway through the game, when Dino was ahead by a couple of points—not an unusual occurrence before the end—he stretched across the baize, ready to shoot, hoping he would hit two cushions and then Cirillo’s ball. It was one of those awkward shots you made more in order to get into the cover than to score points, and which if you weren’t careful might end up with your hitting the pins with your own ball and losing points to your opponent, but if you shot it well it made you feel really clever, for some reason.
The tip of the cue rested on Dino’s bridge hand, just in front of the ball, and started to move backwards. Right at the bottom of Dino’s index finger, just below the last bone, there was a small but deep bitumen stain he had not managed to get off even with soap. Without letting go of the cue, Dino lifted
his hand slightly and scratched the skin where the stain was, hard, with his thumbnail, but without much success.
Cirillo frowned, wondering what the hell his friend was doing, trying to overlook the fact that he had never seen him break off just before a shot. “What are you doing?” he asked, standing on the other side of the table with his cue in front of him.
Dino’s fingers froze. Then he ran his hand over the baize and put it together with his other hand at the edge of the table. He leant on the table, his arms as straight as posts, the cue propped between them, his head drooping. After a few seconds, he raised his head and looked at Cirillo. His eyes were those of a scared little boy. They didn’t even seem like his eyes. “I can’t do it, Cirì,” he said.
Cirillo stood there on the other side of the table with both hands on his cue, not saying a word
“I can’t do it. I can’t spend every day in that black shit. It was different before. Before, everything seemed the way it ought to be. Before, I didn’t ask myself any questions. Before, I spent the days counting how many stones it would take to make my child. Now I spend the days trying not to ask myself any questions, especially not how much more of that coal-black cancer I’ll have to spread so that my child can have a life.”
Dino let his head droop again between his arms, then flung the cue on the table and went and sat down on one of the chairs nearby. He threw his head back and took a deep breath.
Cirillo looked at Dino for another few seconds without moving, rubbing one lip against the other pensively, then propped his cue next to the scoreboard and went and stood in front of Dino, just a little away from him, with his bottom resting on the edge of the table and his arms and legs crossed.
Dino brought his head down and looked at Cirillo. It seemed to Cirillo that he was looking like a man again, maybe more like a man than ever.
“Listen,” Cirillo said after a while, as if wondering if he should say what he had to say or not. “There’s a tournament in a couple of weeks.”
Dino frowned slightly. “A what?”
“A tournament,” Cirillo said.
“A tournament? What kind of tournament?”
“A poker tournament. What kind do you think? A billiard tournament, you idiot.”
Dino looked at Cirillo for a few more seconds, in an attempt to figure out was he was trying to tell him. “So what? We don’t do tournaments.”
“No, Dino,” Cirillo said. “I don’t do tournaments, you can do whatever you like.”
Dino looked at Cirillo without saying anything, and swallowed a lump that had suddenly come into his throat and made him feel more alone than usual.
“It’s called the Ingot Tournament, because the winner gets a gold ingot. They’ve been doing it every year for I don’t know how long. You know how much a gold ingot is worth?”
“No,” Dino said after a while, shaking his head.
“Quite a bit,” Cirillo said.
Dino and Cirillo continued looking at each other for a while without saying anything, as if searching in each other’s eyes for answers to questions they didn’t even know they had asked.
“And what if I lose?” Dino asked after a while.
“If you lose,” Cirillo said, “you carry on shovelling shit.”
Chapter Fifteen
HE’D NEVER DO IT, Dino told himself. Inside that gigantic concrete edifice that was like the belly of a monster, three rows of shiny new billiard tables had been lined up, fifteen of them in each row. Above the rows of billiard tables were metal bars with large green lamps hanging from them, and the bars themselves were secured to steel tie beams which were up there somewhere in the darkness of the ceiling, amid immense ventilation ducts. The playing area with the rows of tables was cordoned off by high railings, and beyond the railings were concentric rows of terraced seating, the seats themselves funny little coloured things shaped like a person’s backside. Even though there were hundreds of spectators, less than a fifth of the seats were occupied. This animal’s belly seemed to come from a place that had little to do with this earth, and Dino wasn’t even sure he would get out alive.
“Hey, you!” Dino heard from somewhere on his right, out of the din of voices echoing on all sides.
A tall thin man with grey hair and an electric-blue waiter’s jacket was calling him.
“Yes?” Dino said, walking towards him with his cue in his hand, although of course, strictly speaking, it still wasn’t his.
“Are you registered for the tournament?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Dino said.
“Then go over there to that little table and give them your name. Quick now, it’s late.”
Over to the right of the lines of tables was a small table with a red cloth and some signs on it. Behind the table, two men were sitting, also wearing those funny electric-blue jackets, and in front were two long lines of people. Almost all of them were wearing shirts with coloured waistcoats and little ribbons, and all of them were carrying small cases.
Dino was still wearing the white shirt and brown velvet jacket that Sofia had made him put on for the occasion. He walked slowly between the rows of tables towards the two lines of people in front of the small table, looking around like a little boy and hoping that this vast animal’s belly did not produce dangerous gastric juices.
He went to the end of one of the lines, leaning on his cue with every step, as if it were a mountaineer’s stick. Two men from the other line looked him up and down as he took his place, then by chance their eyes met and they laughed and shrugged their shoulders. The one in front even seemed to shake his head. They, too, were wearing waistcoats and rosettes. Dino wondered why they were all dressed like waiters, and felt rather out of place. He wondered if it was the custom here, as if when you were in the belly of an animal it was natural to dress like people bearing food.
“Card, please.”
Dino had gradually moved forward until he was just in front of the small table, and one of the men in the electric-blue jackets, a very short man the top of whose head was as round and shiny as a billiard ball, which when you thought about it was quite appropriate, was sitting there with a large white exercise book full of columns and little words, writing with one hand while holding the other out, palm turned up.
“I’m sorry?” Dino said leaning forward slightly, still clutching his cue like a mountaineer his stick. A man in the other line, who was also in front of the little table and was also wearing a waistcoat and rosette, looked at him and smiled for a moment, then went back to doing whatever he was doing.
The man with the round, shiny head slowly looked up at Dino and was clearly surprised by what he saw. He looked first at Dino’s jacket, then at his cue without a case, and while he was wondering where this character had sprung from he said again, “The card. The licence from the federation. The permit. The thing that says you can play.”
For a moment, Dino felt like saying that he did not understand, then all at once it came back to him and he put his hand in the large pocket of his jacket. “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” he said with an embarrassed smile. “I only just got it.”
“Of course,” the man with the shiny head said, nodding. He took the card from Dino’s hand and bent over to write again.
Dino glanced again at the other line and saw another man wearing a waistcoat and rosette take his card out of a small, elegant black leather case as smooth and soft as a baby’s cheek, and once again he wondered what the hell he was doing in this place where everybody seemed to know a lot more than he did.
It had only taken Cirillo one day to get him the card. That was one of those things about Cirillo that Dino had learnt not to ask questions about over the years. A few years earlier, as he was waiting to lose his game, Dino remembered having a chat with another player at the bar in the billiard parlour. The man had told him that he was applying for a card to play in official tournaments, but that it was a long process, because among other things he didn’t yet have enough games under his belt.
&n
bsp; “Of course,” Dino had said, although he hadn’t the slightest idea what the man was talking about, and had completely forgotten about that chat later. It had come back to him, though, when, after only a day, Cirillo had handed him that damned card and wished him good luck in the tournament. Dino’s first thought had been that it was better not to ask too many questions, then it had occurred to him that he didn’t know how many games you needed under your belt to be worthy of that stupid card, but that he had surely played quite a lot of games, and so without giving it any more thought he had put the card in his pocket.
“Table twenty-three,” the man with the shiny head said, giving Dino back his card. Dino took the card and thanked him, but barely moved.
“Over there,” the man said, pointing behind Dino and to his left with his chin.
“Oh,” Dino said smiling. “Thanks.”
He turned in the direction indicated, with his cue in his hand.
Over every table, hanging from the metal bar next to the lamps, was a white sign with a number on it. Dino tried to find a logic in the sequence of numbers, but for some reason couldn’t. He couldn’t find a logic in the numbers, and he couldn’t find a logic in all these people dressed like waiters, or in the dark sky filled with tubes in the belly of the animal, or in all the commotion that echoed in the air like the boom of a bass drum. Nothing here was like what he knew, and this rumbling stomach had no connection with that silent place where he played shots that were almost like prayers.
Dino stopped a couple of times as he walked past one or other of the tables and asked timidly if they knew where table twenty-three was. Each time, a man wearing a waistcoat and rosette looked him up and down with a puzzled stare, gave him a slow smile, and indicated a corner of the room. Dino thanked him, and both times, as he walked away, he heard the men behind him say something to each other and laugh. Dino felt the cold rise from inside his spine and bones, and apart from regretting that he had come to this hell filled with waiters, he also regretted that he hadn’t brought a sweater.
The Break Page 7