Malacqua

by Nicola Pugliese

  Rumours circulated, subsequently, on that second day of rain, that men were rebuilding themselves as men and the Higher Urban Authorities would soon once again become the Higher Urban Authorities. It also became clear, subsequently, that nothing disastrous was forming on the horizon, nothing at all, because the Appropriate Offices were keeping watch as they always did. The vague dot on the horizon was not a Greek trireme or a pirate schooner, it was nothing but a battered cargo ship transporting ferrous materials. It would continue along the route it always travelled, and berth at the usual time at the usual dock. The sailors would turn off the engine as they had always done in the past, and would throw the cables, and then it would be unloaded, certainly it would be unloaded as ever, and the scrap would continue on its way on fume-spewing lorries, and the boat would resume its route, so everything would be normal and there was nothing to worry about. If that does not happen, if people are worried, well, never go beyond thirty seconds, please, don’t go beyond that. And from the doll lying still on the wooden tables, the Prefect’s eye flew temporarily to the tip of his shoes and temporarily his lips had an imperceptible wrinkle and then his eye came back sharp and sure to say that it had got late now. And that no one was to touch anything. Tomorrow we will come back and look at things calmly. And we will talk of it to no one, please, particularly the press. What would the population think? Let us always remember the population, my dear friends. And here for the moment let us leave everything as it is, and now you should leave and no one I mean no one will have permission to enter this room until tomorrow. We for the moment are going to the Prefecture for a small meeting. The police patrol will remain in its place. If they are to do guard duty let them do it, but no one I say no one is to come in here until tomorrow morning. It was extremely clear to everyone present at that moment that the Prefect had assumed full responsibility, and that he himself was not now the man to act, but the legitimate representative of the legitimate government and of the state, and even if some people had reservations about the government, well, so be it, my dear friends, but it is not appropriate to have reservations about the state, the state is us, we are the state, etcetera etcetera. In short, these thoughts were broadly similar enough for everyone, and everyone agreed, and everyone made for the exit and then they stopped, at that moment, to consider the rain which was coming down, and the displaced water that was invading the courtyard, the streams of water rushing along the walls below the crenellated bastions, from the corners, from the recesses of the windows. That rain was coming down with an intensity that was not the same as it had been that morning, or the day before. It had grown in force, yes, certainly, it had grown, perhaps imperceptibly, perhaps by a small amount, but it had grown. And it was very clearly apparent, all of it, just as it all was distinctly apparent, in the air, that the following day would be similar in every respect, meteorologically speaking, to this day, the second day of rain, and the first that had come before, which no one had forgotten, oh no, no one at all. And it was with these considerations in mind that the Higher Urban Authorities got into the cars that had been waiting with the drivers who had been waiting inside them. The cars set off with a gentle roar of their engines, and each one of them noticed with pleasure: from the moment when the bench had been dismantled and the doll brought to light, from that moment no fearsome voice had fallen again upon the city, none at all. Perhaps no voice like that one would come down, perhaps no such voice, ever again. There were things, however, that remained to be considered, oh, my, there were things that remained!, and on the other hand the small meeting in the Prefecture had been organised with that precise purpose in mind. When the Higher Urban Authorities were gathered together at the long table of the audience room in the Government Building, before any other business was attended to the Prefect called Luisa Sorrentino and told her to make herself comfortable somewhere and record all interventions in shorthand. Because he had the firm and resolute intention to preserve the most detailed possible minutes of that meeting. Those minutes would also have to serve as the basis for the official communication to the Ministry of the Interior, if there was going to be such a communication. Luisa Sorrentino, who had spent the whole afternoon looking out the window at the falling rain with a vague and indecipherable expression, Luisa Sorrentino concluded mournfully that it was going to be a long one tonight as well.

  That evening so sweetly autumnal, with all that falling rain defining veils of omertà. Perhaps in all likelihood her boyfriend wouldn’t wait. He would phone, perhaps, and he would understand. The tender enchantment of the previous days would not be repeated that evening, in fact could not be repeated in any way. Unless she decided to do what she had wanted to do for a long time: which was to leave. Yes, leave forever that boring house with her father and her mother and her brothers, that clean and tidy house, and everything in the right place, always, never entered by madness, never entered by adventure, where she saw herself withering away. No, it wasn’t going to happen, and that was that!, what do you think?, that I want to spend my years looking in the mirror taking shorthand of the signs of my skin as it turns flabby?, the folds of my belly?, my breasts wobbling and then sagging day after day? Ah no, my dears, I’m not burning up the years left to me between a tidy Prefecture and a tidy house, and I don’t want to have my thoughts in order any more, I don’t want that in any respect whatsoever, I don’t want to be wise, or have good taste, feel like a sad and balanced girl with her head on her shoulders, oh yes, her head on her shoulders and a gaping pain in her chest, and I don’t want to carry as an abominable shame these two full and resonant thighs and the black, black hair that grows between my legs, and I don’t want to hold them tight together and sad, those two still-girlish legs. I will burn up the anxieties and fears and dreads and my submission, my dears, I will burn that ever-tidy house. From the highest window of the Government Building I will wave dirty tampons and sanitary towels. Around town, stale and dried on my cheeks I will keep the sperm he spurts on me. I will find it stuck to my fingertips sticky and dried and wrinkled. Running my fingers over my cheeks I will remember him, and that thought will go with me through the hours of the day, and as I wait for the butcher to cut me half a kilo of beef, eyes lost in bleeding innards and shattered bones and the heads of goats and the snouts of pigs, I will certainly perceive once more that sweet tender sensation when it grows between his legs and then becomes hard red fire. I shall say it over and over to myself on public transport, in the halls of the National Museum, in the toilets at the secretarial office of Palazzo Salerno, in the chaos of Porta Capuana, in the silence of the church of San Ferdinando. I don’t want to hear another word about ancient common sense, or about duties to be performed, or about models of behaviour, or about the example you have to set in life and the difficulties that you have to confront, and overcome, oh definitely overcome. I don’t want to hear about this masquerade. My love, don’t worry if I’m late again this time and you will stop calling because of your father and because of your mother and because of your brothers, my love don’t worry, because when this evening’s latest farce is over, and over with a good set of minutes, I will be the one who comes back to you, I will be the one who calls, and you will come down from your house without understanding, without comprehending, and you will have a stupid expression on your face, and hidden within you a slight tremor. You already know: women cause endless trouble. Probably you won’t understand, no, you won’t understand a thing, and you will read this anxiety and nothing more. And I won’t reach out my hand to grab the stars that I once wanted to give you. I won’t do it, my love. Because you’re probably nobody too. And of course you aren’t me. Who are you? But it doesn’t matter, oh nothing matters: all that counts is that you will come close to me and slip my hand into your underpants, you will be completely dazed at that moment. And in fact that evening Luisa Sorrentino, who knows why, had made her mind up. Her conviction had grown on her. On that rainy day, the second since it had all begun, she had decided at last, really decided. Th
is time she would do it. Oh how she would do it. And then, with that light, firm thought, with that deep seam of joy, with those laughing eyes of hers, she calmly made herself comfortable and sat down, and spread her legs, and then she rested her notebook on her right thigh and checked her pen by rubbing it on the white paper. And she was ready, completely ready.

  So the meeting was about to begin, and the Prefect said to take note of the day, the time and the place where the meeting was taking place and the names of the participants. And in essence the meeting was ready to begin, when the Chief of Police said would you excuse me a moment, and everyone thought he was going to go to the toilet, but instead he left the hall and asked the whereabouts of a telephone and had a long whispered conversation and for a moment his eyes gleamed, and in the end he said fine, then, hurry up, get everything together and join me here at the Prefecture. Then he went back inside to hear what they were saying. But the things they were saying were obviously banal. In fact, they were evidently groping about in the most total darkness. That much was plain to everyone, including to those who were saying no, that in fact steps had been taken, results had been achieved. But they were saying nothing serious, nothing, and no one felt too much like speaking, because everyone was thinking about this rain that was coming down and coming down and sometimes beating on the windows, and because everyone was considering the matter of the doll, and laughing about it as much as they could, but then they stopped laughing and in fact it was like a worry from within, that lurked and gurgled slightly and certainly created a great confusion all over the place, and thoughts were slow in reassembling, in a truly remarkable fashion, and that unsettling presence of the doll was what everyone was really talking about, but no one was talking about it because no one knew what to say. The discussion continued for a miserable half-hour of painful invectives and without too much engagement, and no one got heated, and no one argued, and no one banged their fists on the table, and everyone was remarkably in agreement, not least because of the fact that until that moment nothing had been said, nothing had been decided. How sad, gentlemen, how sad. Only the Chief of Police sat still and silent, the wrinkles on his cheeks inexpressive, his forehead frowning slightly at intervals. At the end of that half hour a motion was announced by Police Headquarters, and the Chief of Police said excuse me for a minute, and he got up, and left the hall, and the others remained in silence. Because it seemed as if from one moment to the next some news was about to come in which he would, finally, interpret. And sure enough, three minutes later, the Chief of Police came back from inside carrying a large parcel wrapped in newspaper tied with thin but reasonably tenacious twine. He set the bundle down on the table, and while with his own hands he set about opening it, roughly tearing the newspaper, he said gentlemen, we may have something of interest here. Many of those present rose from their chairs, especially those seated at the end of the table, and congregated in the middle, and craned their necks to see, some scratching their heads, some adjusting their glasses. After sheet after sheet of newspaper, out of the parcel two dolls emerged. Bruised and disfigured and still damp with water and damaged as they were it was immediately clear to one and all that those two dolls were perfectly identical to the one in the Maschio Angioino that they had just left. Perfectly identical, truly. With black hair, velvet ribbons in their hair, their arms bare and their dresses covered with little flowers, white, green, yellow. Perfectly identical. That discovery was disconcerting in itself, but even more so was what the Chief of Police said, speaking slowly and in a low voice. Because the Chief of Police said that the first doll had been found on 23 October in the chasm on Via Aniello Falcone, along with the corpses of the two women who had lost their lives there and the two cars that the chasm had engulfed. And that the second doll had been found on the same day in another curious place, among the debris of the building that stood at number 234 Via Tasso, which had collapsed, as we all remember very well, because of the torrential rain on that day which was the first of the days of rain. The very day when, in that collapse, five people lost their lives, all swept away and killed in their sleep by the building as it fell to the ground. So what did those dolls represent, a sign of death?, what?

  Carlo Andreoli took his things, his thoughts aquiver, his knees failing, and in silence the falling rain brought him back to earth. He thought about how life is not a dream, and other things besides. He turned up the collar of his Loden coat and beneath that vertical rain – 24 October, 11am – he thought about the tarmacked bridge and saw the two towers closed forever, and the faded metal sign, ‘Office of Public Safety’. Beyond the pavement he made out his car, and the traffic on Via Partenope, the hotels that overlooked it, and that bright morning light that embroiders the rain and the flashing amber lights. And it was clear to him now, oh how clear it was: his precise duty was to get on with the work he did every day. Go to the paper, sort out the tasks that needed to be done, send out photographs, alert his staff to the fact that he planned to close early that evening because of the people who had died in the chasm and the people who had died on Via Tasso. And he became quite precisely aware of a dense and pathological attachment to this life of his which he spent surrounded by newsprint. That dense material, a fascinating and untidy amalgam. He reached Via Marittima, went upstairs, talked to this person and talked to that. The director wanted to know everything exactly, and in the greatest possible detail. The director was thinking of a fine and accomplished story, while he alone could see clearly: the story would grow a little at a time, and the details would come out one by one, and the victims’ relatives, and all of that. The news would be reassembled to form an intelligible mosaic only later on, what the hell is there to say now while we’re still on the case?, a chasm, a collapse, and seven deaths, and then responsibilities, of course, responsibilities. Legal communication concerning the falling rain?, for the Municipal Technical Office?, for the Mayor?, the Prefect?, the President of the Republic?, for whom? Then he said fine, I’ll go to my desk, 24 October, at twelve o’clock in the morning.

  At his desk he found the usual mess, the chaos, the confusion, and all those people shouting orders here and there. The few who were not issuing orders were trying to put them into effect as best they could, and in the end they got on with things as best they could, because you can’t work things out anyway, and they haven’t got a clue about anything but shouting in all directions and do this and do that, but in the end leave them to it. Carlo Andreoli still spent hours at his post. And he saw the recovery of the corpses of the two women in the chasm on Via Aniello Falcone. An elderly lady dressed in blue, with rings on her fingers and dyed hair. Her face was smeared with soil, her stockings clinging wretchedly to her legs, unrolled and laddered. The stocking on her right leg was unrolled all the way to her shoes. Except that her shoes weren’t there. All there was wrapped around her old lady’s arm was a fake crocodile-skin bag and inside the bag they found everything, yes, everything: identity card, gold chain with image of the Madonna of Pompeii, photograph of grandchildren: male and female, 340 lire in small change, banknotes totalling thirty thousand lire, hair clips, Social Services Medical Card, scrap of paper with various notes, tiny make-up bag, tram ticket from the previous day. And he also sees the recovery of the second woman. A girl, certainly, because of her jeans, her face disfigured by long open wounds in her skin and on her nose and on her lips and the soil mixed with the blood. That lumpy mass covered her eyes, came out of her mouth, and her fingers were injured and smeared as well, and her woollen jumper was torn too, and beneath it a white bra could be seen, and a pair of glasses without their lenses had been found beside her corpse. Carlo Andreoli shuttled several times back and forth between Via Aniello Falcone and Via Tasso, to check everything, to check everything, but he realised: how do we now ask questions of the civil servant on duty: excuse me, have you by any chance found a doll with black hair and a dress with green and white and yellow flowers?, how do you do it? On Via Tasso he spent some time following the excavation work
in the debris of number 234, and there was a moment when a fireman gave the alarm: she’s alive!, she’s alive!, but sadly it was nothing but a false alarm, because she wasn’t alive at all. And the fireman hadn’t heard a groan, he had only perceived the idea of a groan. But that plaintive sound had not existed, it had not existed at all. Only cries and weeping, in the group of friends and relatives, who had been alerted and who were now on the spot while the family of the woman who lived in Rome was expected at any moment. They too would be arriving shortly, the people from the city of Rome, to check the damage, and fill their eyes with dust, and count the stones, and conceal their fear in their chests. Upon these things and upon these thoughts and upon these people there fell a rain which was the previous day’s rain and which might also be the next day’s rain, and the rain of other days to come. A discreet presence, as silent as possible, muffled the pain of the streams of water that fell and fell, and in the manholes of the gurgling sewers, and on that grey afternoon there was nothing but that frozenness of everything, and that falling silence, and those different inquiring looks, so different, that went searching and fleeing and coming back and beginning the search again, questioning the sky and the asphalt of the street, and patches of green in the distance.

  The visit was composed and silent, even when the Higher Urban Authorities arrived. A formal inspection at most, without the expenditure of too much energy, but one reflecting the sorrowful interest of the case, a disconsolate and silent shake of the head. The friends and relations of the family that had been swept away in its sleep by the collapse of the house had various thoughts, and some thought with more faith and resolution that a share of the blame perhaps resided with the Higher Urban Authorities. For how long had Aniello Savastano been asking to be assigned more safe and decent accommodation?, for how many years had he been filling in forms from the Independent Institute of Public Housing to obtain such an assignment?, how many doors had he knocked at day after day? Perhaps that was the case, and perhaps it wasn’t. Because Aniello Savastano, whose house had collapsed, had been told roundly and clearly by the fire brigade a month before, and more than a month. You must leave here, seriously, a terrible accident could happen. And yet in the end the fire brigade had left and had sent their report to the effect that the Municipality should take care of everything else, the removal, forced or otherwise, of the families certainly did not fall within their jurisdiction, oh no, their duty was only to carry out a survey of the case and ensure that the area was temporarily closed off. And the people from the Municipality were in place too, because Aniello Savastano had been alerted and warned several times to abandon the house with his whole family. This house could collapse at any moment, they had told him, and they had repeated it patiently several times. Aniello Savastano had asked: and where will we sleep if I leave this house? They had shrugged and said, my friend, we do our job and that’s it, this is our remit, for matters concerning public housing you have to speak to the Institute, you know that very well, we at the Municipality have nothing to do with it. Aniello Savastano did know that, so he had gone back to the Institute, and a short fat woman with glasses and a sea of papers on her desk had said my dear Mr Savastano, you have not accumulated sufficient points, the first assignment has been made and there were people with larger families, and unemployed, and you’re number 322 in the list. What do you want me to tell you?, try and have another seven children, that takes us up to ten, and maybe they’ll decide in your favour. Aniello Savastano wanted to ask who they were but asked no further questions, and went back home, to number 234. Now number 234 no longer existed, nothing remained of it now but a few stones. Once the biggest stones had been removed with picks, the fire brigade started working with their hands, you never know in these cases, sometimes miracles happen. But the miracle didn’t happen, not in the slightest. And when the work was completed, with the greatest possible diligence, and with that unbelievable water coming down and coming down, the silent confirmation came: Aniello Savastano, Maria Savastano, Ciro Savastano and Angela Savastano were dead, quite definitely dead. In the end two police guards stayed to keep watch over the ruins, because the magistrate had not yet arrived, and the survey and observation of the case were required, they were quite certainly required. Carlo Andreoli stayed there dubiously watching and within himself he heard an urgent question: excuse me, have you by any chance found a doll with black hair and a dress with green and white and yellow flowers? But how do you do that? How do you do it.