—And how is your father?
—Fine. He has some trouble with his heart, it’s nothing serious.
—Tell him hello.
—Of course.
—And you, things are going well?
—I’m great. You remember, right, that I wanted to go to Germany? Well I went and I’m finally having some luck. What are the options in Italy? Nil. In Germany, on the other hand, I set up a little factory. I work with leather, I make bags, jackets—quality merchandise that sells.
—I’m happy for you. You’re married?
—Not yet, I’m getting married in the fall.
—I wish you all the best, and again, say hello to your father.
—Thanks, you have no idea how happy he’ll be.
I waited for him to leave but he didn’t. We stayed like that for a few seconds, with smiles glued to our faces, without saying a word. Then he started shaking his head:
—No, wait, who knows when we’ll see each other again. I’d at least like to give you and your wife a gift.
—Another time, we have to go now.
—It’ll just take a second, I’ll get it right away.
The man got out of his car. He was speedy, decisive. He opened his trunk. Here, he said to Vanda, handing her a shiny little purse that she accepted uneasily, as if it would soil her. Meanwhile, the stranger had selected a black leather jacket, and he held it up against me, saying, it’s perfect. I tried to fend him off, saying, it’s too much, I can’t accept. But he went on, turning back to Vanda, wanting to give her a jacket as well, with shiny clasps. It’s just your size, he said, satisfied with himself. At that point I tried to stop him. You’ve been very kind, thanks again, but enough with the gifts, it’s getting late, we’ll hit traffic. At this he changed; the face, slippery until now, stiffened.
—Please, it’s nothing, a guy does what he can. I’m only asking a small favor, a few euros for gas, I need to get to Germany, it’s not necessary though, if you think it’s too much don’t worry, the gifts remain gifts.
I was bewildered: the father, the gratitude, the little German factory, the business going smoothly, and now he wanted a few euros for gas? I reached mechanically for my wallet, looking for five euros, ten, but all I had was a hundred-euro note. Sorry, I muttered, but meanwhile my forehead was pounding. I was about to say to him: As a matter of fact I’m not at all sorry, take back your stuff and get out of here. It took an instant. With a precise gesture, like quicksilver, the man descended on my wallet, squeezing together his thumb and index finger, his digits clasping the hundred euros, snatching them from me with a polite look of gratitude. The next minute he was behind the wheel, calling out, Thank you, Dad will be so pleased.
If the scam involving the girl with the solenoid had only embittered me, this episode pained me. The car still hadn’t faded from view at the end of the street when my wife, incredulous, exclaimed:
—You gave him a hundred euros?
—I didn’t give him anything, he took it.
—This stuff isn’t worth a penny. Smell it, it stinks. It’s not leather, it stinks of cod.
—Throw it all out in the dumpster.
—No, I’ll give them to the Red Cross.
—Fine.
—No, it’s not fine. We were raised in Naples for God’s sake, and you let yourself get scammed like this?
3.
I drove for hours, to the sea, nauseated by the stench of the jacket and the purse. Vanda couldn’t get over it. A hundred euros, she kept saying, two hundred thousand lire, how can it have happened? But then her irritation died down, she drew a deep breath of resignation and said, fine, oh well, let’s not think about it anymore. I nodded at once and tried to say something just as decisive. But I didn’t come up with anything convincing and meanwhile I started to feel as if any blow might shatter me. The fault, I think, of the connection I’d established almost instantly between the dark-haired delivery girl and the swindler with aging teeth. For both of them—I thought—one look was enough for them to say: Here we go, this one’s easy. And they’d been right, I’d fallen for it. Evidently my alarm system was worn out to the point of being deactivated. Or, who knows, over the years the mark of a man you don’t fool with—a certain look, a scowl—had faded. Or, put more simply, it was as if I’d gone foggy, having lost the vigilant elasticity that, in the course of my life, had enabled me to escape my meager origins, to raise children, to thrive in difficult situations, to earn myself a little prosperity, to adjust for good or for ill to the circumstances. I didn’t know precisely how or to what degree I’d changed, but it now seemed clear that I had.
We’d almost reached our destination when I received another slight confirmation that I was in danger of losing control of the entire delicate system of weights and counterweights that had kept my life in check for five decades. While I reluctantly navigated the heedless summer traffic, I tried to remember whether I’d ever been cheated in the past, but nothing came to mind. Instead a detail resurfaced from long ago when I’d been the one to come out on top. Breaking a long silence and, without preamble, in keeping with my thoughts, I recounted to Vanda, who was half-asleep with her forehead against the glass, the time—it had surely been spring—that she’d gone with me to the RAI studios. I don’t remember now exactly what year it had been, or why: Maybe, I said, it wasn’t even RAI, maybe I wasn’t working there anymore, who knows where we’d gone. But what was certain was that at the end of the taxi ride I’d paid the driver with a fifty-thousand lire note, that he’d claimed it was ten thousand, and that we’d started to bicker. The man was even rude to my wife, who had clearly seen the fifty thousand and wanted to back me up. I became haughty as I knew how to be. I asked the driver his first name, last name, and so on, and then I declared that he could keep the fifty thousand but that I was about to go to the carabinieri. First he spat out all the details, gruffly, and then he started muttering: I shouldn’t have gone out today, why the hell did I? I have the flu. In the end he gave me the right change. Remember that? I asked her, proud of myself.
My wife roused herself. She looked at me, perplexed.
—You’re mixing things up, she said, coldly.
—That’s just how it happened.
—I wasn’t in the taxi with you.
I instantly felt a flush shooting up my chest, burning my forehead. I chased it back down.
—Of course you were there.
—Enough.
—You’re the one who doesn’t remember.
—I said enough.
—Maybe I was alone, I muttered, and then, abruptly, I stopped talking, just as abruptly as I’d started.
What little was left of the journey passed in sulky silence. Our spirits lifted only when we arrived at the hotel, when we were given a room that overlooked the beach, and the ocean. Dinner that night was excellent, and once we came back to the room we discovered that the air conditioner was blissfully quiet, and that the mattress and pillows were ideal for cushioning Vanda’s bad back. We took our medications and sank into a deep sleep.
Little by little I cheered up. The weather was lovely all seven days, the water transparent. We went for long swims, took long walks. The countryside and the houses were airy. The sea, at certain times of day, revealed a greenish-blue that sparkled under the strong sun. The sunsets were scarlet. Even though, at the buffet, both at lunch and dinner, there was savage competition among the guests to see who piled on the most food, and Vanda reproached me for barely filling my plate, and the room reverberated unpleasantly with the cries of adults and children, and after eleven at night the waiters startled us, warning us not to go to the beach because it was dangerous, to the point of barricading our sleep behind an impressive number of gates leading both to the sea and the street, all the same, we had a lovely vacation.
—What a nice breeze.
—I haven’t seen water l
ike this in years.
—Mind the jellyfish.
—Have you seen jellyfish?
—No, I don’t think so.
—Then why scare me?
—I’m just saying.
—Or to ruin my swim.
—Don’t be silly.
At Vanda’s insistence we were even able to get an umbrella in the first row. In the shade, stretched out in chairs facing the drowsy sea, my wife read books on scientific predictions, telling me, now and then, about the subatomic world or outer space, while I read novels and poems that I shared with her softly from time to time, not so much to read them to her but to grant myself further pleasure. After dinner, on the terrace, we both often happened to see the wake of a falling star at the same moment, and this delighted us. We admired the night sky, the fragrance of the air, and by midweek not only that beach, that sea, but the entire planet seemed a miracle. In the days that remained I felt quite wonderful. I savored the fortune of being, for a good seventy-four years, a happy transmutation of the sidereal substance that roils in the furnace of the universe, a fragment of living thinking matter, without too many aches and pains to boot, and barely scathed, purely by chance, by misfortune. The only bother was the mosquitoes that bit at night, me mostly, leaving Vanda in peace, so much so that she claimed there weren’t any. Apart from that, how wonderful it was to live, to have lived. I marveled at my own optimism, a sentiment I have little calling for.
Alas, the very day we were leaving—at six in the morning to avoid the traffic—things took a turn. The sky grew cloudy and we traveled all the way back under fat, heavy drops of rain, and between the lightning and the impressive thunder the highways were far more dangerous than they’d been on the way there. I drove the whole time, as I had going (Vanda’s a terrible driver), even though I repeatedly felt I no longer knew how to keep to the road, and, especially on the curves, feared I’d end up in the truck lane or against the guardrail.
—Shouldn’t you slow down?
—I’m not speeding.
—Pull over and wait for it to stop raining.
—It won’t stop.
—Good God, look at the lightning.
—Now you’ll hear thunder.
—Do you think it’s raining in Rome, too?
—I don’t know.
—Labes is scared of thunder.
—He’ll be OK.
My wife who, at the sea, had mentioned the cat only when she called Sandro and Anna to make sure everything was fine, now talked about him, worried, the whole way. Labes represented the tranquility of the house to which she, all the while torturing me for my reckless driving, couldn’t wait to return. Her anxiety mounted when we discovered that, even in Rome, it was raining violently. The water flowed, filthy, at the sides of the roads, pooling in large dark wells in front of manholes. We parked on our street at two in the afternoon. It was oppressively hot in spite of the rain. I unloaded the bags. Vanda wanted to hold up the umbrella for me, but since we were both getting wet I told her to go in. After protesting a little she agreed, and I loaded myself down with the bags and the suitcases, arriving, soaked, at the elevator. My wife, who’d already gone up, yelled down from the landing:
—Leave the bags and come up right away.
—What happened?
—I can’t open the door.
4.
I didn’t pay her much attention. If Vanda has to wait a few minutes, I thought, the world won’t come to end, and I reorganized the luggage in the elevator while replying calmly, —Coming, I’ll be right there—to her increasingly pressing requests. It was only when I heaped the suitcases and bags on the landing that I realized how truly scared she was. She’d unlocked with the keys but there was something wrong. Look, she said, gesturing towards the door, half-open. I pushed, but nothing much happened; it was jammed. Then with a painful twist of the neck I stuck my head into the small space there was.
—Well? asked Vanda, distraught, holding me by the shirt as if she were afraid I’d fall in.
—It’s a huge mess.
—Where?
—Inside.
—Who did it?
—I don’t know.
—I’m calling Sandro.
I reminded her that our children were by now on vacation: Sandro had surely left that morning for France with Corinne’s children, and who knew where Anna was. I’m calling anyway, said my wife, who trusts her son more than me, and started looking in her purse for her cell phone. But then suddenly she gave up. She remembered Labes, calling for him loudly, with authority. We waited: no noise, no mewing. Then, together, we pushed the door, and because we persisted, after a certain scraping sound against the floor, the sliver widened. I entered the house.
The foyer, usually tidy, was unrecognizable. The sofa and the living room table had ended up one on top of the other, as if dragged down by a tidal wave. Anna’s old desk was leaning on one side. The drawers were pulled out—or had been pulled out—and were on the floor, one upright, the others overturned among old notebooks, pencils, pens, compasses, T squares and dolls that belonged, in childhood and in adolescence, to our daughter.
I took a few cautious steps, but I immediately felt a crunching underfoot, fragments of what remained of various knickknacks. My wife called out, Aldo, Aldo, what’s going on, are you okay? I examined the door. Some of the debris that was scattered on the floor was stuck under it. I pulled a piece free and opened the door wide. Vanda came into the house, unsteadily, as if fearing she’d trip and fall. She’d turned quite pale, her tan had become a greenish mask of clay. Since it looked like she was about to faint I gripped her by the arm. But she shook me off, saying nothing, heading quickly toward the living room, the rooms once occupied by our children, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom.
I held back. In general, faced with difficult situations, I slow down; I try to avoid making the wrong moves. She, on the other hand, after a moment of bewilderment, dives headfirst into terror, fighting it with everything she’s got. She’s always behaved this way, ever since I’ve known her, and it was what she did now. While I listened to her footsteps in the hallway, crossing the rooms, I felt once more, with greater impact, that I was fragile and that I could crack. I looked around, I stuck my head into my study, mindful not to trample the prints that, until a week ago, had graced the walls, and that now lay on the floor among broken glass, shattered frames, toppled shelves, tattered books, fragments of vinyl records. I was still there, gathering up an old landscape of Capri, when Vanda came back. What are you doing? she asked, deranged. Don’t just stand there, come look, it’s a disaster. But meanwhile she previewed, in words, the scene of devastation: emptied-out closets, hangers and clothes strewn all over the place, our mattress upended, a furious rage turned upon all the mirrors in the house. The shutters were pulled up, the windows and balconies wide open. God knows how many creatures had come in, lizards, geckoes, maybe mice. She burst into tears.
I dragged her into the foyer again. I moved the desk into a corner, and unburdened the table that was leaning against the sofa, setting it back onto the floor. I put the sofa on its feet, I made her sit down. Stay here, I told her, unable to curb the irritation in my voice, and I went from one room to the next, increasingly dumbfounded. Every room had been turned upside down. It would take days, lots of work and money to make the apartment even remotely livable again. The CD player had ended up on the floor along with shiny discs, old documents once organized in folders and shells—so many shells that Anna used to collect when she was little, and that we’d stored in cardboard boxes—reduced to bits by the sole of a shoe. Everywhere, in the living room, in my study, in the kids’ rooms, I found old furniture that we were fond of, trashed. And the bathroom? A pigsty: medicines, cotton pads, toilet paper, squeezed-out toothpaste, shards of the mirror, liquid soap everywhere. I felt the weight of the pain, but not mine; Vanda’s. She was the one who car
ed for the house as if it were a living thing, who kept it clean and organized, who’d obliged me and the children, though the years, to respect draconian but nevertheless useful rules so that everything could always be found in its proper place. I went back to her. She was sitting in the gloom of the foyer.
—Who did it?
—Thieves, Vanda.
—To steal what? There’s nothing of value.
—Exactly.
—What do you mean?
—They didn’t find anything and they destroyed the house.
—How did they get in? The door was locked.
—Through the balconies, the windows.
—There were fifty euros in the kitchen drawer, did they take them?
—I don’t know.
—And my mother’s string of pearls?
—I don’t know.
—Where is Labes?
5.
The cat, right. Where was he? Vanda leapt up, calling for him, nearly in a rage. I did, too, half-heartedly. We went from room to room, we went up to the windows, the balconies, shouting his name. Maybe he fell, my wife said quietly. We were on the third floor, and below us was the rough stone of the courtyard. No, I reassured her, he must be lost, he must be hiding. Afraid of the strangers who had entered the house. Afraid and repulsed, like us now, at the thought of unknown people touching our things. My wife suddenly wondered, what if they killed him? And she didn’t wait for me to answer, I saw it in her eyes: Yes, they’ve killed him. She stopped calling him. She came back and looked frenetically through the house. She pushed things aside, she slipped in between overturned furniture, she examined what was still standing. I tried to get ahead of her. The thieves might have done to Labes the same thing they’d done, with unleashed fury, to our things. I preferred to find the body first and, if need be, hide it from her. I went to check the little room where we keep our winter clothes, and for a few seconds I was certain that I saw the animal hanged and quartered, as if in a horror movie, among the coats. Instead I found myself facing the usual debacle: the metal pole yanked out, clothing on the floor. No trace of Labes.
Ties Page 4