Rage

by Sergio Bizzio

  "What about the dishes?" hissed Rosa.

  "I'll sort that out; you open up. Do they usually come into the kitchen first thing when they arrive?"

  "They never arrive at the tradesmen's entrance. I can't think what could have happened!"

  "They must have lost the keys to the front door."

  "Possibly... Oh my God, they were supposed to come back next week!..."

  "Do you see? That tornado you were talking about must have struck..."

  The bell went on ringing, ever more insistently. Maria pushed Rosa towards the door. Then he grabbed his plate and shoved it into the dishwasher, and hid himself behind the dresser.

  Rosa reappeared with Senor and Senora Blinder, carrying their suitcases. The Senora asked why she'd taken so long to answer the door. Rosa explained that she'd been upstairs in her bedroom tidying up. Senor Blinder pushed open the kitchen door and lost himself in the depths of the house, silent and ill-tempered.

  4

  One of the first things to catch his attention was the sharpness with which the street sounds penetrated the house; at certain hours of the night you could even hear the scratch of a dog's toenails on the pavement. As he set about exploring the interior of the house, he recalled his surprise at discovering how small its interior really was, compared with how it looked from outside. It seemed the more so because there weren't that many pieces of furniture or ornaments, and because from the outside you could take the whole thing in at a glance, something impossible to achieve when you were indoors.

  He had installed himself on the top floor, in the attic, where he felt himself to be more invisible. The first night, he didn't sleep at all. The second night, for fear of someone coming in, he slept underneath the bed. The key stayed in the lock, but it took another day before he decided he could close the door and remove the key: if for some reason somebody came to the room and found the door locked, presumably they'd assume that someone else inside the house had left it locked up; they'd look for the key, and when they didn't find it, they'd either call a locksmith or else they'd simply abandon the attempt to get inside. What would they come looking for inside this room anyway? There was nothing there apart from a bed with an old mattress and an empty wardrobe.

  Even so, for the first nights he spent in the house, he took fewer precautions than Rosa did when she first started working there. For Rosa, despite having received a catalogue of obligations and prohibitions which one way or another took care of her working and leisure hours, ended up feeling lost, diminished, often frightened. But once she'd learned where to find the floor polish or the ironing board, or in which drawer the Senor kept his socks or the Senora her blouses, she felt more at ease, increasingly comfortable with the domestic routines into which she gradually became integrated.

  Two years had gone by since she first came to the villa. During that whole time, she had never done anything untoward. A few days after the Blinders' unexpected return, her personality began to change: she became taciturn, distracted, went everywhere bright-eyed, on the brink of tears, wringing her hands. She had received no further news of Maria at all.

  Three days had gone by since the Tuesday, during which she heard nothing of Maria. On the Wednesday she waited with an escalope sandwich: she thought of going out onto the pavement to give it to him wrapped in greaseproof paper, so he could eat it on the bus. Now that the Blinders were back, her meetings with Maria would have to revert to being restricted to the tradesmen's entrance. But Maria didn't appear. Rosa guessed he must have been a bit nervous as a result of the Blinders' sudden return, the fact that they'd been on the point of surprising them there together, and supposed that must have been the reason for his few days' delay in coming to see her again. He didn't appear on Thursday either. Rosa began to get worried. Her assumption that Maria would like to leave a couple of days' pause before coming to see her again could by now only apply to this last day.

  On Friday, she stopped by the building site on her way back from the Disco supermarket. Someone told her he wasn't there, that he hadn't come in for the past few days. She realized the atmosphere seemed charged, but she couldn't tell why.

  She was on the point of leaving, when an unskilled worker, on his way in with a bucket of sand, approached and told her that Maria had been thrown out of his job.

  "What? When?"

  "On Tuesday."

  "I didn't know anything about it... what do you mean, he got thrown out?"

  "Yes, he got the sack."

  "He didn't tell me..."

  "Sorry," replied the builder, as he continued on with his bucket: the new foreman had come out of a portable toilet and lit a cigarette, then stared at her through the smoke, with the hungry look of a wild beast.

  That afternoon the police came to see her. There were two of them: a tall one with a black moustache as stiff and straight as a toothbrush, and a young one with long hair, both in plain clothes. They spoke to her in the main entrance. They asked her a thousand questions about Maria. They wanted to know where he lived, his phone number, if he had been with her on the Tuesday. She told them he lived in Capilla del Senor, and didn't have a phone number. Yes, he had been with her the previous Tuesday. Had anything happened to him?

  "It would seem that the earth has swallowed him up," said the moustache, with heavy irony.

  Rosa was bereft. She was relieved that neither the Senor nor the Senora were home at the time, for although they always spoke respectfully of the police, they disliked the idea of having them around. A few years ago the police had killed a burglar just outside the house, and had blocked off the pavement, where they remained for over an hour, until they finally decided to remove the body. In the interim, one of the policemen rang the bell, asking for a glass of water... Senora Blinder took his request as indicative of a scandal, since there were a dozen more appropriate houses to call on along the block, more suitable to involve in satisfying a basic need such as that for a drink of water. Years had gone by, and from time to time Senora Blinder would still mention the matter of the policeman's thirst. The Senora would clearly never forgive Rosa if the police came to the house to discuss her boyfriend with her.

  But why were they looking for him? What on earth had happened to Maria? Where on earth was he?

  Worst of all, she had no one to talk to, no one in whom she could confide her worries. OK, fine, so they had sacked him from his job, and it appeared he hadn't wished to inform her of the fact, but that wasn't a sufficient reason simply to disappear. Could he be ill? Maybe so, and perhaps that was the likeliest explanation. If he weren't ill, why would he just disappear? Wasn't it obvious to him that, if the cause of his disappearance were the shame of losing his job, at any moment she would be bound to show up at his workplace to enquire after what had happened to him, and would then be informed of what had actually occurred? He had to be ill.

  She wasn't mistaken: Maria was running a temperature. Stretched out on the mattress in the room he had made his own, he was shivering with cold. Hours had gone by since he'd last made a move. The index and middle fingers on his left hand were still wrapped in a cobweb which he'd unintentionally leaned on that morning, when he got up to go to the toilet. He was weak. Even turning onto his side on the bed required a major effort; also, although the mattress was of superior quality, an old coil-spring number, the bed's wooden slats creaked and he was afraid someone would hear, which meant he had to remain there utterly immobile for hours on end. In addition to which, two days had gone by without him eating a thing. The venetian blinds in the room were down and, if it weren't for the sounds from downstairs, he would have had no idea whether it were night or day.

  As soon as he began to feel a little better, he returned to the bathroom. He had found the toilet the previous night, in a courageous and very daring excursion, reconnoitering the terrain across a large part of the attic floor. Even the bathroom looked abandoned, just like the room in which he'd installed himself. It was clean enough (Rosa must have been wiping it down from time to tim
e), but it was obviously out of use. He took advantage of his expedition to try the doors of the rooms along the passage: most he found locked, others gave onto more empty spaces, and one was employed as a sort of loft or store in which all kinds of junk was heaped, from old clothes to plastic bags to children's toys.

  Getting himself up and going to take a leak was a whole new adventure. He left the bedroom door open, just as he'd found it, so that anyone who suddenly decided to come upstairs wouldn't notice any difference, assuming such a thingwere possible, and also in order to be able to listen out and have enough time to go and hide, should it prove necessary. The principal problem arose when it came to pulling the chain, an operation which required a considerable amount of time; the cistern was ancient, and the water tank located at a distance from the bowl and inserted in the angle between the wall and the roof, from which dangled a chain ending in a wooden handle which he would lower an inch at a time, until the first trickles of water began to flow downwards. These little trickles, amounting to no more than a small leak, Maria caught and used to wash his face, and did so with such care than not even he could hear a sound.

  Incredibly, sometimes a drop of water would break away from the main flow and plink on the edge of the bowl, or else he himself might, while urinating, wet the edge of the seat, which he would then need to cautiously wipe clean (with a piece of paper, or with his shirt tail) before leaving the bathroom.

  Up until Thursday night, when he decided to venture into the kitchen, he had stayed entirely in his room, except when making his occasional forays to the bathroom, or his one and only investigation of the attic floor. He hadn't moved anything, nor left the slightest trace of his presence there: every item was properly in its place.

  His fever was so high that he spent the first few days lying on the bed; he had put his work clothes on over his street wear, covering himself with a pair of trousers and even with his rucksack, but he was still shivering. The cold weather of early spring combined with the cold atmosphere in the house and the cold shivers of his fever. Yet he never for an instant considered leaving his hideout. On the contrary: he needed to stay there to recover, and to do that he needed to find food.

  Thursday night he went downstairs to the kitchen. The villa was arranged on four floors, and he wasn't certain even as to how high up he was, but he reached the kitchen far more quickly than he'd anticipated. He went barefoot, having left his shoes in the rucksack under the bed. Some parts of the house were in total darkness and he could see nothing at all; other rooms admitted moonlight from the garden through odd openings, or else the light of the garden lamp, permanently left on, penetrated some part of the building and allowed him to see where he was going. Not that this left him feeling any more secure. After all, what could he see? Nothing but pictures, mirrors, carpets.

  The wall clock over the kitchen door showed three o'clock in the morning. He opened the fridge: the light hurt his eyes and made him blink. He quickly shut it again. What would he possibly remove without Rosa noticing something missing when she came down the next morning? On the floor, beside the chair, he saw a plastic bag which had split a moment beforehand, and was still coming apart and unfolding like a flower. He grabbed it and started opening it: it was a Disco supermarket bag and made a frightening amount of noise. Maria exploited the sound of a passing car to rip it open. Then he filled the bag with some bread he found on the sideboard, before opening the fridge door again and helping himself to a little of everything inside it, without paying overmuch attention to what he took.

  On turning to leave, he glanced at the clock again: it wasn't three in the morning but half-past midnight. He had spent fifteen minutes in the kitchen: the clock must have been showing a quarter-past twelve rather than three o'clock when he arrived. He was shocked: it was too early to have come downstairs, someone in the house might still be awake. He left the kitchen, every muscle tensed, more alert than ever, and mounted the service stairs two or three steps at a time.

  He paused for breath on the first floor. He could feel his heart pound beneath his hand. He needed to get to the end of the corridor, to get to the other staircase and climb the last two floors to reach the attic. He resumed his steps, but halfway along he heard a faint and halfchoked sobbing in the dark. He paused, more than anything afraid of suddenly bumping into the person who was crying, then backed off a few paces, before suddenly noticing that the sobbing came from the room opposite where he had shrunk back, and he carefully applied his ear to the door. It was Rosa. She cried with her face buried in her pillow: a muffled weeping, heartrending but stifled, suddenly interrupted when Maria leaned his ear on the keyhole.

  Two seconds later, Rosa put her head outside the bedroom door and looked down the corridor. The lamp on her bedside table outlined her like a silhouette. There was nobody there. Rosa blew her nose and went back into her room.

  At that precise moment Maria, his forehead on fire and his feet freezing, was sidling up the staircase towards the attic. Once back in his room and eating his food, he thought - with a degree of logic - that Rosa was burying her head in her pillow for fear of being heard. On top of which, she had actually gone into a spare room to have a cry. Or had she been there on some errand or other, and suddenly found herself in floods of tears? There was another question even more important than this one: was Rosa's own room really so near to that of the Blinders that she would need to muffle her tears in a cushion? No. Rosa slept in the east wing and the Blinders in the north wing of the first floor. But Maria wouldn't figure this out for another couple of days. For the time being - and including the following day - he would, unwittingly, be waiting to learn, and from the lips of Senora Blinder herself, that the police had been there looking for him.

  Next morning, he awoke feeling much better. His meal had consisted of no more than a bread roll, five olives, a slice of raw ham, half an onion (likewise raw) and an apple. He was awoken by the street sounds outside, spreading like a mirage through the silence within the house, or perhaps merging with it. However long had he been there? Three days and two nights, he estimated. Or maybe four days and three nights. Lying still in a foetal position on the bed, he thought it must be about time he left. Then, when he rose from the bed, he entertained the possibility of staying a little longer, perhaps one more day. Where could he go? There was absolutely nowhere he could go and hide...

  He was no longer running a temperature, although his bones and his joints were aching somewhat. He observed the door to his room did not make the slightest sound, even if he yanked it open to test it, just as he had when he returned to his lair.

  He emerged onto a landing flooded with a dangerous light, but for the first time he could at least get an all-round view of where he was. He surveyed all of it slowly, mentally noting the arrangement of rooms and passageways, and the position of any object he might have collided with on his previous ventures, or might conceivably collide with on any future excursion.

  He descended a floor. If the attic looked uninhabited, the third floor gave the impression of being a temporary dwelling; maybe this was where the Blinders accommodated their house guests, if they ever had any. Every window was closed, but all the rooms had the necessary creature comforts: deep-pile carpets, a chimney nook, a little trolley loaded with alcoholic drinks, a shelf laden with books, a phone, a television set... The beds were not made up, they were bare of sheets and covered justwith a bedspread, and the atmosphere in these rooms was dry and fresh, as if someone came in and gave them a daily airing. Here and there on the walls there were portraits of serious-looking men andwomen done in oils, eachwith agiltframe. The main staircase descended almost to the main chimney breast. Maria proceeded in the opposite direction, following a corridor leading to the service wing, along which he passed a number of empty rooms of much smaller size: these belonged to the house staff, who years ago must have been a full complement of servants, from butler to housekeeper. Why, then, did Rosa sleep on the ground floor and not upstairs here?

  As
he descended further, he realized the entire house had been reorganized as a result of the reduction in the number of its inhabitants. The room occupied by Rosa must, for example, have originally been used by the housekeeper or head butler. The facilities on the second floor were very similar to those on the third, although the decoration was much heavier, almost baroque in style. The living room contained a remarkable number of tables, side tables, settles, sofas and easy chairs.

  He approached a table covered with framed photographs, and leaned over each one in turn to study it more closely. Each one was a portrait of a blonde woman, aged around forty, always wearing the same smile, although the hairstyle kept altering. At times she appeared alone, and at others she was accompanied by a man of about the same age: presumably either her husband or her brother. The were other men of around thirty-five to forty-five years old and lots of small, blond, smiling or serious children of various ages and in various places - anywhere from in a church to on a beach. One of the men appeared in just one photograph and by himself: even his photo frame seemed to occupy the least important place on the table. In the last photograph Maria examined, everyone appeared together (with the exception of the man of whom only one portrait was exhibited), one linked to the other behind a gentleman and lady seated on cane chairs, both dressed up to the nines... At that moment he overheard a rasping voice up on the first floor. He went over to the staircase.

  Senora Blinder had just learned of the visit from the police. Israel had stopped her on the street a few minutes earlier and, maliciously, had expressed his concern about "the case of Rosa's boyfriend". Alarmed, Senora Blinder raised a hand to her mouth.

  "My God, Rosa, it looks as if your lover killed someone!"

  Rosa's knees collapsed under her. Her head was spinning.