Rome Noir

by Chiara Stangalino

  “Fine, let’s continue … So then”—he clears his throat. “So then, the other small building … in order, let’s say.”

  “And the girl? The ‘artist’?” Massimiliano urges him on with sarcasm.

  “The girl on the top floor … she’ll pay in a few days, she says. Because it’s a little expensive for her…”

  “And we have a painter in our building who wants to be an alternative artist!” Massimiliano retorts. “And the Chinese?”

  Quirino takes the money out of the drawer. “On time.” He puts the bills on the table. “Decent people, who work … and pay the rent.”

  “Decent people, fine people,” Massimiliano mimics his father, shaking his head. “Do you know how many clothing stores they supply, those people? Do you know?”

  Quirino shrugs.

  “Of course they pay … that pathetic amount we charge.”

  “A storeroom, Massimì. How much should we make them pay for a storeroom?”

  “And how much do you think they pay those poor devils who work for them day and night like chickens? Nothing! So let’s take it out of their hide, why not?”

  Quirino doesn’t answer, he counts the hundred-euro bills, enters the amount in the notebook. “There, done,” he murmurs. “And then,” he adds quickly, almost taking the words out of his son’s mouth, “and then … there’s the whole thorny matter of this building here.” He taps his finger on the tabletop.

  Massimiliano twists his lips into a grimace that distorts his handsome, carefully shaved face. He suppresses a sudden fit of anger.

  “Where sometimes they pay, sometimes they don’t pay…” Quirino continues. “Their pensions aren’t enough … Sor Quirì, another day or two … And a little loan here, a little loan there … and the interest is too high … What can I do about it, Massimì, if the bank doesn’t want to lend them money?”

  “What can you do? Throw them out, once and for all, that’s what you should do!” his son snarls.

  “What, I should start throwing people out on the street now? All these old people whom I’ve known a lifetime, Massimì? I have to keep duplicate keys to their apartments, in case they leave theirs inside, they’re so forgetful … What can I do? I raise the interest on the loans … What more can I do? … And then they come crying to me over a dead cat and whatnot … and what am I supposed to do? We’ll talk about it later, I tell them.”

  “I’ll tell you what to do!” Massimiliano barks. “Sell, that’s what you should do.” He bangs his palm on the tabletop an inch from his father.

  Quirino looks at him stubbornly. “Sell…” he says ironically.

  “Sell, that’s right. To my real estate friend, who tells me every day, Whatever you want, Massimo, for that building there on the pedestrian strip. Name your price and I’ll pay it on the spot.”

  Quirino throws up his arm. “Your friend the real estate agent…” He gives his son a scornful glance that makes him draw his head back between his shoulder blades. Then he points a finger right between his eyes. “Get it through your head.” He shakes his finger. “Quirino buys, he doesn’t sell. A little at a time … A loan here, a loan there … That’s how you get ahead: a little at a time.” He lowers his hand, begins stroking the open page of the notebook with his fingertip. “Was Rome built in a day? A little at a time, that’s how the urbs was built! Was it those real estate agents of yours who think they’re God—did they build Rome?”

  Massimiliano offers a doglike expression. “What does Rome have to do with it?” Then he raises his voice. “Everything’s changing fast,” he exclaims, snapping his fingers. “The people, the money that’s circulating … And if we don’t jump at the chance we’ll lose our ass, get it, with all these whining beggars. We have to be shrewd, Dad! Shrewd!” he repeats, almost shouting. “And then”—his eyes travel over the room—“if you, too, were to go, to—”

  “To…” Quirino interrupts, flaying him with his eyes. “Where is it that your father should go?”

  “Away from here … if you were to leave here,” Massimiliano says hastily, changing his tone, “to a nice apartment, I mean … You can afford it.”

  Quirino drops the pen on the notebook. He sets his eyeglasses on the table. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” he says, pronouncing the words one by one. Massimiliano frowns, not understanding. “And I,” Quirino continues, “we … are not God, who can create the world in seven days. We have to take our time … without biting off more than we can chew … in our own way … in our own house,” he adds.

  Massimiliano shoves his chair back abruptly. “Then go on … go on letting these good-for-nothings take you for a ride.”

  He sneers as he heads for the door, followed by Quirino’s voice: “The notebook, don’t forget!” Quirino then puts everything back in the drawer, turns the key in the lock, slips it carefully into his pocket. He gets up. He goes over to Cesarino’s little white cage. He watches for a while. He removes a golden feather stuck between the bars, blows it away. “Beauty is important, Cesarì,” he says, as if to justify himself. “Money and beauty … and some manners, as well…” He lets the bird peck his finger. “With good manners, everything is possible.” He smiles faintly.

  “Killed!”

  Signora Iolanda spreads her arms wide as she wanders desperately around the small courtyard that opens up beyond the entrance to the building. “They’ve killed them…” she whispers, turning her eyes toward her husband, who watches helplessly as she bends down, her breasts hanging like swollen pouches on her belly, brings her fingers to her mouth, then places them on the small bodies lying on the ground. “They’ve killed them,” she repeats, racing around like a madwoman in the courtyard’s faint light. She turns suddenly, frightened, when she hears a key fumbling in the door. She clings to her husband, who presses her head to his chest.

  “It’s probably one of the tenants coming home,” he stammers, also turning toward the entrance in a rigid, unnatural movement.

  Sor Quirino closes the door behind him. He leans the umbrella against the wall. He straightens his light overcoat that has been pulled to one side. “Some spring,” he mutters. “Who can figure out this crazy weather anymore…” Then he falls silent. He squints in an attempt to bring into focus the two shadows framed in the space beside the open glass door leading to the courtyard. He picks up the umbrella and takes a few steps. “Who’s there?” he calls out to bolster his courage, then breathes a sigh of relief. “Signora Iolanda…” he says, as the woman comes toward him, unspeaking, gesturing for him to follow.

  He walks the few meters that separate him from the courtyard and turns a questioning glance toward Sor Antonio, the greengrocer, who mutters, “An atrocity,” pointing mechanically at the ground.

  Quirino apprehensively lowers his eyes. “Poor things…” he whispers. He gets down on his knees with some difficulty, reaches a hand out toward the bloodied neck of a tiny kitten, curled up in the doorway, then spots another ragged heap behind the cistern, then another, and another … He turns his head, incredulous. He gives a start when he sees the red drip, drip, drip slowly staining the ground behind the cleaning bucket, where the body of the mother cat hangs, upside down and gutted. “Poor thing…”

  “And there were two more,” Signora Iolanda whispers, “that … I can’t find anywhere.” She starts searching again, desperate.

  Quirino pulls himself back up, holding onto the handle of his umbrella. “Who was it?” he asks, just to say something.

  Sor Antonio widens his arms. “Who could it have been? Someone—”

  “The person who … who also stoned Signora Lavinia’s cat, who scalded Sor Giacomo’s dog with hot water in the middle of the street the other morning,” Signora Iolanda breaks in, still wandering around the courtyard. “That poor dog, he was just going around doing his business, not bothering anybody. Who would Sor Giacomo’s dog bother, right, Sor Quirino? Who could he bother…? The drunks who live it up unt
il the early-morning hours? Who? Who were these kittens bothering? So clean, their mother licked them every morning … and how they meowed in their tiny voices when I came down to give them their food. And someone … someone … without a heart … Who knows where the other two have ended up … They must have eaten the other two … I’ll bet you anything, they ate them … those Chinese people!” Signora Iolanda finally bursts out. “Those … those…” She covers her face with her hands.

  “What do you mean, Signora Iolanda?” Quirino exclaims, looking for some sign of agreement on the stony face of Sor Antonio, who, lowering his eyes, mutters, “They must have eaten them.”

  “What do you mean, eaten them?” Quirino asks, pointing to the mangled bodies of the cats in the courtyard. “What about these? Did someone eat these?” His hand moves to his neck, he opens the top button of his shirt, takes a deep breath. “Those sons of bitches,” he cries out suddenly, starting up the stairs, climbing faster and faster as a thought begins gnawing at his brain; he stumbles, and his hand trembles as he fumbles with the lock, and “Cesarì!” comes out in a stifled scream that dies in his throat when he sees the little bird curled up quietly on his perch, his head tucked under the beautiful feathers that slowly rise, swelling in rhythm with his breath.

  There is a dazed silence in the lobby. “Like during the war, when we were all quiet, mute, so we wouldn’t get bombed,” Sor Giacomo whispers, wringing his hands.

  “Under siege,” Signora Iolanda echoes him, following Quirino’s restless steps, as he paces up and down in silence, waiting for everyone to sit down on the chairs, which have been arranged in a circle.

  Signora Iolanda looks up at the ceiling, stares at the naked bulb of the lamp hanging overhead. She shudders. She twists in her seat. “Who could have told Tito, poor thing, that it would end like this?” Sor Pietro looks at her, beside himself. “In his sleep,” he adds. “In his own house … in our house…” His head sags, he cleans his glasses and places them on his sweaty nose. “A good dog, a decent soul … big … I taught him everything … hanged by the neck from the television cable, with his teeth out … such a decent dog.” His eyes hidden behind the glasses turn toward Quirino, who continues to pace, trying to come up with an idea, something appropriate to say, fingering the drawer key in his pocket as if it were an amulet. He clutches it in his fingers. He hears an agitated whispering in the corner. “Let’s begin the meeting,” he says uncertainly, but giving his voice an authoritative pitch. All the residents start, as if those were the first words of God on earth. They instinctively turn their heads toward the front door, to make sure that it is firmly shut.

  Quirino watches the two Zorzi brothers, who are huddled together. “Do you have something to say?” he asks, trying to maintain his tone.

  The two exchange a few nervous glances. Then: “Yes,” says Sor Paolo, raising his hand to ask for the floor. “I do.” But he is silent when he sees all those eyes turn toward him expectantly.

  “The fact is,” Sor Geno intervenes, with a nod of agreement toward his brother, “the fact is that we two … we don’t have animals at home and … who are they going to take it out on, those people, if they get it into their heads to break a window, a door, whatever … in our house…”

  “We’re the only ones they can take it out on,” Sor Paolo concludes, his bald cranium sinking between his shoulders, while Sor Antonio says, “Because the point is, Sor Quirino, that now they’re even entering our homes, you see? Entering our homes…”

  “To terrorize us,” Signora Iolanda chimes in.

  “When we’re asleep, when a person … How does one defend oneself, Sor Quirì? How can a person defend herself alone,” Signora Lavinia wails.

  “By talking to the district committee,” Sor Antonio speaks up. “That’s how we defend ourselves!”

  Quirino gives him a dubious look. “And since when has there been such a committee?”

  “The district committee,” Sor Geno says sarcastically. “That bunch, all they do is make up questionnaires ‘to survey people’s needs,’ they say … And what are the people’s needs, according to them?” He spreads his fingers and starts to count: “Bike and pedestrian paths, maintaining the green spaces, urban quality of life, chemical toilets … chemical toilets, for God’s sake! How much do you think people like us are worth in their eyes, huh? A bunch of penniless old people…” He feels his brother nudge him in the ribs and turns. “Am I wrong, Paole?” he mutters, his face livid.

  “So what do they want, then? For us to go away? Is that what they want? To throw us out?” Sor Pietro says in a low voice. “To hang us all?”

  “They want to eat our hearts,” Signora Lavinia breaks in, pressing her hands to her chest.

  “All those drunken kids, those filthy immigrants, those Chinese, those junkies, those spoiled daddy’s boys, those building speculators who buy and sell and buy … and open new businesses … and we don’t have the slightest idea what they’re planning to do with this neighborhood of ours…” Signora Iolanda rants, to a murmur of agreement. She fidgets in her chair while her husband grabs her by the arm and casts a furtive look at the door.

  “Calm down,” he says quietly. Then he turns firmly toward Quirino. “Let’s get back to the point. Who’s the one who has keys to our houses?” he hisses. “Who’s the one who can come and go as he pleases? Who’s the one who takes the bread out of our mouths…” He breaks off, stifling his rage and continuing to stare at Quirino, who turns pale.

  “What are you trying to say, Sor Antonio?” Quirino murmurs, sneaking a glance at his watch and cursing his son, who still hasn’t shown up. Finally, trying to compose himself, he says: “If you want the keys, we can give them to you,” as if to evoke, with his words at least, the son who should already be there, at his side.

  “Keys, what keys?” snaps Sor Pietro. “I … I’m going,” he says, leaving them all dumbfounded.

  “Where are you going? To Stazione Termini?” Sor Geno asks with a flare of sarcasm.

  “To join the beggars?” Sor Paolo is more precise, helping his brother out.

  Signora Lavinia, looking around as if lost, moans: “Now what will we do? After forty years…”

  “We’ll occupy a building,” Sor Antonio interjects. “We’ll certainly be better off than here, with all this moisture—”

  “It’s eating us alive,” Signora Iolanda interrupts. “It’s eating us alive,” she repeats, glancing at Quirino, who leans against the wall.

  “I’m eating you alive,” Quirino mumbles in bewilderment, clinging to the key to the drawer jammed in the bottom of his pocket. Then he bends down and opens the leather folder on his chair. Feeling the breath of all those angry dogs hot on his neck, he begins rummaging, dumps everything out, then lifts his head, his hair falling over his forehead. “They’re not here,” he whispers with a groan, “the keys … they’re not here.” A voice insinuates itself furtively amid the confusion of his thoughts, rivets him there in the middle of the lobby. Well? What do you think, Sor Quirì? Then the voice impels him up the stairs. He’s getting away now, Sor Quirì! One floor, then another. He’s going down, he’s going down … and he finally reaches his door.

  Ready to drop, he rushes to the drawer and searches it frantically. “They’re not here,” he repeats, sunk in evening shadow, while the voice has now become a phrase stuck in the exact center of his brain: We have to be shrewd …

  “That son of a bitch!” he hisses in a flash of lucidity, slamming his fist on the table. “He thinks he can throw people out just like that!”

  He feels a sharp pain start along his arm and spread throughout his body, now trembling with rage. He takes a deep breath. He tries to calm down. “Cesarì, see what he did, that son of mine?” he groans, holding onto the credenza and making his way with unsteady steps toward the cage—“Cesarì … Cesarino … Cesa…”—which hangs there, shattered.

  PART IV

  LA DOLCE VITA

  FOR A FEW MORE GOLD TOKENS

>   BY ANTONIO PASCALE

  Quartiere Pigneto

  Translated by Ann Goldstein

  The Architect

  On May 20, 2006, a hot sunny afternoon, the young architect-in-training Riccardo Tramonti, thirty-one, was completing an exploratory tour of the Pigneto neighborhood. In a few minutes—at 4:10, according to the police report—and just a few steps away (around two hundred meters) from the café where he had stopped (he had felt himself becoming weak, and dizzy, and he wanted something cold), the crime would take place. Of what happened next, which he would witness as the involuntary protagonist, Riccardo knew nothing. At 5 in the afternoon the next day, which is when he woke up, after nearly twenty-four hours in a coma, the first thing the nurse said to him was: You’re in all the papers.

  It was, in truth, the only sentence that impressed itself in his memory, at least until, finally, after seventy-two hours in intensive care, he was taken to a rehabilitation ward, where he could have visitors. The first people to cross the threshold of his room (his mother and father; his girlfriend came that evening, just before visiting hours were over) said to him, taking for granted that he was fine, You’re in all the papers. There are even television cameras outside.

  Riccardo was supposed to draft a report on “structural changes in the Pigneto neighborhood.” The job had been commissioned by the City of Rome and was part of a larger project of assessing the redevelopment of outlying neighborhoods. The firm (quite a well-known one) where Riccardo had been working for three years now (without anyone having recognized his ideas, Riccardo claimed) had won the contract; as a first step, it was supposed to review “the anthropology of the neighborhood,” and the young architect-in-training had been sent there on this exploratory mission.

  Riccardo’s first sensation, as soon as he set foot in the neighborhood, was that of belonging: His appearance was not at all out of place among the inhabitants. Riccardo was tall and thin. He always knew what to wear, how to dress, in order to emphasize the idea that he was an architect—that is, someone who could devote himself to the spaces of others because he was able to devote himself to (taking care of) himself. Although he had undergone a notable loss of hair while preparing for an exam (which covered engineering concepts through difficult and obscure applications of mathematics and physics), he had pretended not to be very concerned about this change in his physical appearance. The reaction to this unpleasant development had occurred in three stages: He had shaved his head, grown a beard, and bought some stylish nonprescription glasses with thin gold frames. He could see perfectly well but thought that the look he had created for himself more closely resembled what people expected to see when they shook the hand of an architect.