Ferocity

by Nicola Lagioia

  So now he was there, in the open air and silence of the morning. For the past few minutes, a tiny swallow had been wheeling through the scaffoldings. That meant that the number of live insects within its range of activity had already declined.

  He inserted his key into the padlock. The chain fell away and he was inside the prefabricated shed. He pulled the can of coffee off the shelf. He twisted the coffeemaker tight and set it on the camp stove. He picked up the newspaper that had been forgotten there by the construction workers. With the paper under one arm, he turned off the flame, poured the espresso into a plastic cup, and sat down. As he was reading the news from the day before, he heard a bolt vibrate in its joint. He looked up, folding the pages of the newspaper. The oil tankers in flames got mixed up with the husbands clubbing their wives with shovels. The noise stopped. Alberto took another sip of coffee. He got to his feet and stepped back out into the open air.

  The dawn was lighting the area all around. The sun was tinging the cranes and earthmovers pink, turning glassworks and printing plants in the distance red hot. Something had broken away from the background noise of the state highway. The cloud of dust, white and disintegrating, curved toward the right, tightening around a postage stamp of glittering metal.

  The silhouette took on the features of a high-performance automobile.

  The vehicle slowed down as it came even with the first bulldozers, stopping a few yards short of the columns wrapped in their scaffolding of tubular struts and joints. Alberto had the sun in his face, and all he could see was the black figure of a man carefully smoothing his suit as he walked in his direction.

  It wasn’t uncommon for his father-in-law to come and check on how work was progressing, but at this time of the morning it struck him as an intrusion. Alberto raised one hand, uncertain whether he was waving hello or miming the rejection of a nuisance. Nothing, in any case, compared with what the old man did once he was standing in front of him.

  “So this is where you bring them, is it!” he snarled, slamming into him with his shoulder.

  His father-in-law strode past him. Alberto was forced to turn around. With the sun behind him, he was able to focus on the man more clearly. He was wearing a lead-gray tweed jacket, and in his face there was a phosphorescent pallor. From his height of six foot one, he looked like a utility tower about to discharge its voltage into the earth.

  “Here, on my construction site,” he smiled horribly. He pointed to the pillars and the cars and the shed behind him.

  “Signor Salvemini, sir, what are you talking about?”

  Alberto immediately detected in that “sir”—which hadn’t changed after years—a second source of weakness. The first was having opposed madness with common sense. Because it was obvious, something must have gone wrong with the man’s arterial pressure.

  “I pay my construction workers enough that they can afford a hotel room for their nights out,” Vittorio hissed, “or do you think they don’t cheat on their wives?”

  Absurd though it was, thought Alberto, there was something theatrical about the situation—the aura of farce that sugarcoated the savage lunge with which Vittorio concluded a deal when he was dining with the lords of the steelplants, old satraps of the industrial aristocracy that he’d corner by telling a joke and then snapping right back to the importance of driving down prices.

  “Signor Salvemini, sir, this is crazy. I don’t bring anyone here.”

  “They don’t tell you about it,” Vittorio didn’t even bother pretending he had to listen to him, “they catch a whiff of official documents and they steer clear. All they do is take your orders. But they tell me things. I’m the one of them who’s made the most money. They tell me where they take the girls. How do you think all those shitty little hotels between Palese and Santo Spirito manage to stay in business?”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Would you please explain to me where—”

  “You could actually buy yourself a small hotel,” Vittorio started walking toward the prefabricated shed, the dust kicked up the wind caressing his shoes, “but you’re such an idiot that you disrespect your wife in the last place you ought to—” he knocked twice on the aluminum wall—“I’m going in to say hello to your girlfriend.”

  He grabbed the door handle and two seconds later had vanished into the prefabricated structure. Alberto lifted a hand to his forehead. It seemed absurd to him that Vittorio should be lecturing someone for not handling his illicit affairs with sufficient prudence. Him, of all people, Michele’s father. Alberto looked straight ahead again. Vittorio reappeared in the doorway. In one hand he held a small coffee cup. He was looking at him with a grin of relieved disappointment, the grimace the old use to scold the young for not having had time to make enough mistakes.

  “Are you satisfied now, sir? Or would you like to go search on the scaffolding? Signor Salvemini—” Alberto clenched his fists—“I never disrespect your daughter. What’s more”—he laughed bitterly—“you’ll be surprised to learn that I also don’t beat her on Friday nights and I even let her out to spend time with her girlfriends.”

  “But don’t you see that this very fact is the point, you miserable idiot?” Vittorio walked past the small mountain of cement bags and placed himself in front of his son-in-law, close enough to be able to take a swing at him, “the problem is that you do nothing. That you’ve never been able to do anything.”

  Alberto furrowed his brow.

  “You might be good at calculating the sum total of static forces at work in a building,” he went on, his face twisted by something grim, sorrowful, “but what you didn’t know how to do with my daughter . . . ”

  “Signor Salvemini, excuse me, but has something happened?”

  “That time with the barbiturates.”

  Alberto stiffened.

  “That time she took all those sleeping pills, damn it!”

  “That was a long time ago.” Now Alberto found himself on territory where the burden of proof rested incomprehensibly on him.

  “A long time or a short time, you were unable to do anything,” said Vittorio angrily, “and in fact, this is where I found you today. Where were you when Clara took all those sleeping pills?”

  “It was me who took her to the hospital, for fuck’s sake.”

  “To which hospital?

  “What do you mean, to which hospital?

  “You heard me loud and clear. I’m asking you which fucking hospital you took her to when she took those sleeping pills!”

  He was red in the face, his pupils were dilated.

  “To the Santa Rita.” The words shot out of his mouth like bees from a burning hive.

  “The Santa Rita clinic,” the old man echoed.

  Alberto added nothing, it seemed to him that his father-in-law was satisfied now, for some reason that he was struggling to comprehend.

  Vittorio heaved a long, pained sigh. He took two steps back, stumbled, almost tripped over his own shoes. He set his sights on him again, enraged: “Do you or don’t you know where she is right now?”

  Alberto felt a wave of heat surge upward from his stomach. They’d never talked about it before, of course, but his father-in-law could guess the way things were between him and Clara. He’d come here to humiliate him. One of his arteries was blocked and now his true nature could be unleashed. A savage beast, eager to tear him apart. But, once again, Alberto was wrong. The insult was more serious. Did he have any idea what had happened to Clara? Because Vittorio, he did know.

  After telling him, the old man went on looking at him. Before his eyes filled with tears, Alberto had the strength to ask him how she’d done it. Vittorio waved his open hand back and forth.

  “Down,” he said, “sixty-five feet.”

  Vittorio staggered backwards. He slumped against the bags of cement. Alberto followed his father-in-law’s forefinger, which was pointed at h
im for the umpteenth time. Everything smacked of hallucination. The movement came to a halt before its time. Vittorio picked his cell phone from his inside jacket pocket, answered the call.

  Ruggero slammed the refrigerator shut after drinking the milk straight out of the carton.

  “Shit!” he shouted angrily. He hurled the carton against the kitchen cabinet on the wall, so that a spray of white droplets stuck to the smooth surface.

  His father gazed at him, resignedly.

  Ruggero displayed a sneer between his still-wet lips. He seemed to be blaming Vittorio, and a second later, himself, for the fact that they were there, like that, face to face, as if there were some unforgivable disproportion between the physical bodies of father and son and the silhouettes in which they should have been wrapped. The weave of his tracksuit was drenched with sweat. He’d gone for a run before heading to the clinic, where the deputy director of the Cancer Institute of the Mediterranean came in every morning at 8:50 sharp. The ritual of that run was important. Always three more laps around the track than he could take. The strain helped to lessen his tension, which in turn helped him face patients before whom he’d stage complicated charades that would carry them to the day of their deaths. The effort to resolve those charades confused them. An hour’s run every morning to become a philosopher. Upon his return, he’d found his father waiting for him outside his apartment building, ready to give him the news.

  The drops had dripped down the cabinet door. Vittorio explained the situation to him. He’d already told his mother, but Gioia was still sleeping.

  “What do you mean, sleeping?”

  They’d wake her up later, said Vittorio. He’d called Michele, too, but nobody picked up. The first thing he did, in any case, was go see Alberto.

  “That asshole.”

  “Please,” and Vittorio shook his head. He asked Ruggero if he could take care of his younger brother. Then he said something about the Santa Rita hospital.

  But Ruggero was’t listening to him. Now he was violently pulling the drawers open and shut. One loud bang after the other. Slam! Slam! When the sequence began to border on foolishness, he did the strangest thing of all. He picked up a bottle opener and held it in front of his eyes as if it were the first he’d ever seen. He threw open the fridge again. He grabbed a cold Schweppes, opened it, and drank it down. He started to hurl the little empty bottle against the wall. The gesture was so contrived that it failed to fool even him.

  “What the fuck!” He set the bottle down on the table. He went back to looking at Vittorio.

  They should have started showing her the back of their hands when she was small. Made her sit in a corner until she learned to say she was sorry. It wasn’t Clara’s fault. This is what happens to a troubled girl when she never feels the bite of discipline. Hadn’t Ruggero been warning them for years? The absence of rules, the nauseating lack of authority that spilled out of even the family photos . . . Freedom! Nothing more disgusting under the sun than that word. Freedom was an empty proclamation, a dead animal in whose intestines an army of larvae was swelling its ranks.

  “Let the damned fools think they’re right!” he was shouting now, still standing in front of the refrigerator.

  He phoned the undertakers himself. He phoned the diocesan administrator to arrange to have the Mass moved outside of Bari. He phoned Michele, but the line was busy. He phoned the assistant district attorney Piscitelli. He would arrange to send him the certificate they’d discussed. He phoned Michele and the line was free. The fact made him feel strangely uncomfortable. Vittorio hung up before his son could answer. He phoned Engineer De Palo, whom he considered his right-hand man. He asked if he had talked with Bari General Hospital. The engineer said yes, that the man from the crash was still in a coma. Vittorio went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He wanted a cigarette. With fingers still dripping water, he phoned Engineer Ranieri. He, too, would have been a worthy right-hand man, if his excessively servile nature hadn’t compromised his reliability every now and then. Vittorio told him to get in touch with Engineer De Palo and to follow his instructions. Then he phoned his accountant. He asked if there was any news about the Porto Allegro affair. The man reiterated what he had told him two days ago. He spoke of the attachment order as nothing more than a regrettable juridical development. Vittorio interrupted him, annoyed. He asked him where he’d spent his summer vacation. Positano, with the family, said the accountant (his tone now perplexed). Vittorio asked him if he could guess where he’d be spending next summer if the investigating magistrate were to accept the request for protective seizure of assets. The man had the nerve to ask him if he felt well: his tone of voice was a little odd, he ventured. Vittorio told him that he didn’t feel well. Not in your dreams. He hung up without giving the other man a chance to reply. He phoned the tax lawyer, an elderly practitioner who tended to wax dramatic over small mistakes on invoices. The lawyer confirmed that the situation at Porto Allegro was stationary. He said it as if he were announcing the end of the world. Vittorio tried to contain his pessimism. This gave him the push to do what he had intended to do from the start. He called the chief justice of the Bari Court of Appeals. The switchboard operator put him on hold. Vittorio used the melody of Imagine to destroy the minor causal nexus that trembled between him and the person who was about to answer the phone. The chief justice of the court of appeals said: “Hello.” His voice strained to remain neutral. Vittorio informed him that Clara was dead. He said it immediately, without preliminaries. On the other end of the line, silence fell. Then the chief justice of the court of appeals spoke. He asked how it had happened. Vittorio was impressed by the man’s ability to keep his cool. He answered the question. Only then did the judge say, in a faint voice: “I’m sorry.” Now he gave the impression he needed to protect himself from something, and that in order to do so he’d need to take the condolences back in time a few minutes, so that the conversation could start over again from the routine formalities. They spoke about the funeral mass. They said goodbye. Vittorio’s yearning for a cigarette had vanished. He phoned the director of the Banca di Credito Pugliese. He told him that Clara was dead. He phoned the deputy mayor. He phoned the chancellor of the university, who was at the center of a conglomerate of local newspapers. He gave everyone the news. It wasn’t he who was doing it. His fingers, on the keypad, were searching for the numerical equivalent of a hologram, the persistence of the nexus that he had tried to destroy a few minutes earlier. Between one phone call and the next, his cell phone rang. It was the accountant again. He apologized. He said that he’d only just heard. Word was beginning to spread, thought Vittorio. He set the cell phone down on the desk while the accountant went on apologizing. He shut his eyes. He heaved a deep sigh. The time had come to pay a call on his eldest son.

  He phoned the clinic and told his secretary to cancel all his appointments. The young woman objected that his first patients were scheduled to be there soon. There were people who’d come all the way from Campobasso, from Reggio Calabria. She said it with an emphasis on how sorry she was, just enough to show it was false. Having to face them in person wasn’t the same thing as dismissing them over the phone. Ruggero felt contempt for her. His secretary asked if he was still on the line. Ruggero replied that there had been a death in his family and hung up. He phoned his brother. After it rang twice, he hung up. He phoned Heidi. He told her that he was sorry, but their date for that evening was off. The girl told him that she had the afternoon free. If he wanted, they could even get together in the morning. Whatever the problem was, the girl’s voice seemed to be saying, she wouldn’t solve it. She’d have put it in perspective. She’d have softened it, caressed it. Ruggero said that he’d pay her anyway and hung up. He tried to call Michele again. He didn’t even finish dialing the number. He phoned his mother. He asked her if she could do him a favor and call his brother in Rome. “I’ve been trying since this morning but the line is always busy.” That’s what
Ruggero said. His mother replied coldly that she’d take care of it. They were about to hang up, but he took a deep breath and asked her. He could guess the answer. In fact, his mother told him that Gioia was still sleeping. All right, he thought. Clara had been dead for hours, and they still hadn’t gotten Gioia out of bed. He had to get a hold of himself to keep from pitching a fit. He phoned Fatima. He told her that their date for that afternoon was off. Unfortunately, as he had expected, the girl started losing her temper. Ruggero assured her that he would pay her anyway. That’s when something very strange happened: Fatima got even angrier. She started mixing her Italian up with her Portuguese. He told her to calm down. If he really cared for her, she replied, whimpering, then he would pay what he owed her right then and there via PayPal. She seemed convinced that she could claim a debt on the grounds of an emotional bond that they had never even considered as an object of negotiation.

  The assistant district attorney Corrado Piscitelli laid a hand on Vittorio’s shoulder and said: “I’m sorry.”

  The lights of morning had not yet penetrated the weft of the sky, and so the space around the parking structure was just a bare patch of asphalt discolored by the streetlamps. At the corners of an intersection, four traffic lights were blinking in solitude. The assistant district attorney was a man in his early fifties from Martina Franca. He was dressed in a casual style that courted fashion while denying the fact with excessive timidity. He used an Italian that had been cleansed of dialect with a skill that most public officials lacked. A trained ear would have recognized it as a nonexistent language.

  Vittorio said nothing. The asphalt had been cleared. The carabinieri had left. By now she was already on her way to the morgue in the company of the medical examiner. The neon bar flickered between one floor and another of the cylindrically shaped parking structure. They were the only two left.

  “I wouldn’t want to make this any harder than it has to be,” Piscitelli went on. “Well, you see . . . ”