And when, at the end of the third day of rain, it was 25 October, Carlo Andreoli found himself clutching that inert mass, night had fallen many hours ago to enclose him in the circle of waiting, his eyes were red and swollen now, they pressed against his eyelids. He was clad in fear, he felt cold and hard beneath the fabric of his shirt, and many hours had passed now, many hours, and the whole day had passed now, and he was left with the fatigue that had assailed his knees, that had forced its way into his nerves and tendons. Sadly now he went back into his house and stayed there listening to the sound of the door closing behind his quivering back, and stood smelling the silence of the dark house, and from outside the rain drew questions on the troubled breathing of the city, and the flat was sweet and empty and silent. Carlo Andreoli felt as lonely as a limping dog. He felt his feet in the corridor and he felt his heavy swathed clumsy body falling on the bedcover, and in the fear of night he lay there with his eyes open reflecting and nothing appeared before his eyes, nothing apart from little black dots, and however much he traced things back and forced his breathing and set his gaze alight, he could grasp nothing, nothing at all, and the anxiety and the fear and everything, but he was weary now, let Naples crumble, oh yes, crumble. And he closed his eyes.
The Fourth Day
The fourth day of rain was 26 October, that is to say the following day, and this day announced itself with a pale and changing dawn, as if the morning lights were pressing on the horizon, and still nothing appeared but luminescent greys and the rain came down softly as it had done in the course of the night. He sat up in the middle of the bed to reflect: somewhere there must be a key to understanding. Running his hand over his face he saw from his window rivulets of rain carrying mud and detritus and drenched papers and stones, little twigs of shattered trees, debris came down from the hill of Posillipo towards the grey mirror of the sea in the distance. He heard the sound of the child from below, sitting down on a high wall, under cover from the rain and outside the range of adult hands, beginning his grotesque repetitive chant and insistently hysterical laughter, and how many times had he heard it and sometimes stood watching him: the child made himself comfortable on the wall and waited for people to pass by, and if a girl passed by he immediately said with that blank and stinging voice of his what lovely legs you have, miss, what lovely legs you have, and then he started laughing, laughing, his laughter stretched out in time and for long minutes, accompanying the girl into the distance and far away and even when the girl couldn’t see him any more and had disappeared and was gone the echo of that incredible cheerful laughter still remained dragging on in time and for long minutes, hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!, and then an old man passed by with glasses and a hat, with the serious step of Dignified Old Age and he from his wall said what a lovely hat you have, what a lovely hat, and then off he went laughing with his shrill and stinging laugh, with those high and penetrating notes, hee hee hee hee, hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!, and noticing the sound of the child from below Carlo Andreoli reflected that it was getting late, that he had slept enough and too long that night, and now with this new day of course he had to move if possible. Even if indubitably he also had to reflect on where to move to?, because in fact the problem was still there, full and harsh in front of him in its entirety, and none of it had been eroded, not even its thin crust: his poor journalist’s brain had found itself impotent and ridiculous when faced with this great round ball of problems from the previous days, and this day too and everything indicated that the thing would go on like that, in this way, with no chance of recovery. Had it not been for the fact that it was nearly a new day, he would have thought forget it, because in the end it wasn’t etched in stone anywhere, but in fact the real truth is that you can’t, no, you can’t, and even if the beautiful key to understanding existed somewhere, complete with its various accessories, perhaps everything began at a precise spot. That was it, start from one spot and disentangle everything, detail after detail, and in the end it would come out, oh yes, it would come skipping out, that ridiculous and insignificant truth, and then perhaps someone would say to themselves but how stupid not to think of it before!, and in the end there was the determination to start again, that much is certain, but still there was the going about the house, and looking at himself in the bathroom mirror before shaving. Looking at himself like that he thought of the time when he was sent to Via Cavalleggeri d’Aosta because a woman had died and no one knew quite how, and he remembered it very clearly that time, because as he passed through the hall he noticed clearly and immediately that if there was a place to die that place was definitely the one beneath his feet right now, and it was a strange and cruelly unusual sensation to feel beneath the soles of his shoes that if there was a place that was fit for death, well, that place was beneath his feet right now and who knows why. But in any case he climbed the flight of stairs and on the first floor he went into the flat, that time, and there wasn’t much to see, not much, with those two wretched rooms and that acrid smell everywhere, an inexpressible stench, and then he also saw the woman at the foot of the bed and he took a photograph and everything, but he didn’t remember it because of that wretched corpse, definitely not, it was more because of the unsettling memory of the two windows in the bedroom overlooking the street, and from the street he had already noticed that those windows were all covered with reddish dust, of course, and that dust had become layered starting from the four corners of each window, and in the end it happens everywhere, in the district of Fuorigrotta and in Bagnoli, but this time no one had resisted the reddish dust, that was it, no one had opened the windows and no one had gone with a cloth in their hand or with a duster to remove this dust, no one had done it, and the reddish dust had accumulated day by day on the two panes of the two windows, from the corners of each window it had risen to the centre, and covered the whole of the surfaces until no light had been able to enter the house. That same day, as he drove back towards Coroglio, reaching the second hairpin he found himself pausing on the way down, and beyond the street, towards the sea, there was a park and patches of green and a few trees, and a few couples dotted about the place fooling around, and that was the spot, he almost recognised it, where he felt that sweet thing within him, tender and benign. Because one day one year long ago his father had said you see?, it was at that precise spot in Coroglio, one far-off day many years ago, that Grandpa Nicola first fooled around with Grandma, and in that phrase that he had uttered there had been a son’s quiver, and also a faint smile, and a thought, and a profound pondering look, that time he had looked at the precise spot and had seen nothing, nothing at all, but now that he had stopped on his own something seemed to have survived, something had escaped, perhaps but how far away and how indecipherable. And so it was that Carlo Andreoli stopped looking at himself and said, fine, let’s shave then. From the white cabinet with the mirrors gently and slowly he took his razor and brush and the little tub of shaving cream, and turning on the left tap he let the water run until the water was hot, and then he put in the plug and for a moment he stood watching that scalding water steaming and steaming, and he ran a finger along the blue porcelain and an opaque trace remained for a moment and then vanished. There was this clear fact, and this doubt, and also a decision to be taken if possible. A faded light fell through the frosted glass of the bathroom, if you listened carefully you could hear the muted sound of the rain coming down for that fourth day in fine threads as it had fallen for the three previous days, and who knows for how much longer, how much longer. In fact let’s say that the situation in the city had worsened considerably, not so much because of extraordinary events, because in fact nothing at all extraordinary had happened, the usual emergency phone calls and requests for assistance to the fire brigade, a piece of cornicing had fallen off here, there a sinkhole had opened up, and the cellars below, some streets had been rendered entirely impassable by the rain and the blocked sewers that had ceased to flow, an ancient buttress s
et up to maintain a shaky building on Via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi had also shown signs of danger and unsteadiness, a containing wall had collapsed on top of the parked cars, and nothing in short that was extraordinary, nothing at all. In many factories in San Giovanni a Teduccio they hadn’t even started work because of the water and the public transport that now worked barely at all and services were constantly cancelled, and in fact really sometimes you don’t know how to get by, and because of a flash flood even the underground train had stopped that morning, and a team of engineers was trying to get some kind of understanding, seepage of water on this scale was far from normal, all they needed was for water to come down on the underground train every time it rained, some hope, in this fucking city, but from a wall that suddenly opened up there came that endlessly gushing flood of water, there were cobblestones on the rails, bouncing across the wooden sleepers and on the two polished iron strips. The glass of the bathroom window brought him the voice from below, Franceeescaaa, and for a moment Carlo Andreoli paused to hear if Francesca would answer, but Francesca didn’t answer and the person who had called thought it best not to press the issue, because perhaps it was entirely pointless, perhaps Francesca had gone down somewhere with her girlfriends, twelve-year-old girls always have lots of things to tell their friends, and they have these delicate budding breasts, in their eyes the uneasy melancholy of the woman who is already on the way, and quick oblique hidden glances, and because of that faint light that was coming in he decided to turn on the light and there with that light perhaps it would be better: when he went downstairs to get the car and Francesca was out and about, Francesca gave him a secret look with that serious adolescent expression, and he looked at her too, and after a while there came the nudges from her friends, stifled laughter, hidden jokes, and he couldn’t, of course, there was nothing he could do, and he reached the car, he locked himself inside, set off, went away, truly away, remaining dozy and without the words even to wonder what you can do in such situations, and he would have liked to, definitely, certainly he would have liked to, but what can a man of thirty-five say to a little girl of twelve, what could he say?, in what tone of voice?, with which words?, and now maybe with that rain coming down and coming down they would shut themselves away in a bar somewhere smoking cigarettes and listening to music and would have around them the right little boys their own age, maybe a bit older, and that encounter would erect a further division, another, different separation, and then nothing more, nothing at all, and with the electric light on everything went very well, yes, all very well, apart perhaps from the reflections in the mirror, and in the end you can never have everything in life, you make do with what you manage to grab as best you can. In the end, Carlo Andreoli picked up the shaving brush in his right hand and considered its bristles, and when he pressed them they bent obligingly, and he stood there thinking, and then he set the brush back down on the porcelain and decided that it would be better to soften his beard manually, and in fact rubbing his face with his fingers he felt skin that was distinctly below par, along with the previous day’s beard which woke at the contact there was the skin that was a little weary and chapped and flaking in places. Doubtless at that very moment Francesca was hidden away somewhere with her twelve-year-old anxieties, and otherwise what was to be said, my friends, what was to be said, had he not had his own justified anxieties at that age?, and what was it that troubled him back then?, a sordid little envy?, a mean disgusting envy and nothing more?, everyone has the right to his portion of years, and what do you want?, to repeat the experience?, have a bigger portion than anyone else?, and why? In fact he was left with nothing at that moment but the sad awareness, and a tepid smile in the right-hand corner of his mouth, and Carlo Andreoli went on admiring that smile and then he curled his lips to reveal his moustache, moustaches are always so ineffectual in the morning, and in the brief moment in which he remembered Maria he saw again the house in Castel Volturno in the sunset that can’t be seen because the sun has gone and night with its white lights has not yet come, and there was that greyness all the way to the sea, and the sound of dogs barking, and that flat strip of beach, and I will never go back there, I will never go back, I can’t spend my summers in a place like that, he had said, and with his fingers he had shaken his black hair, and that black expression of his had returned to look at him from within, and he went away, oh yes, she was speaking with that uncertain voice of hers, and meanwhile she was moving irremediably away, she was going in silence and moving away, and she had that strong vivid life within her, Maria, her non-negotiable rights as a young woman, and perhaps she was only in love in a manner of speaking, perhaps she wanted to force herself to experience what she was thinking, but life is always different, different irremediably, and it never coincides, never, and like two thieves they had entered the house with a fist through the closed window and made love in the cold damp silence, voices of caretakers and sounds of cars reached them from the darkness, every now and again, from the unpaved streets and alleyways, and that impressive silence of salty damp air, and around the house there was no sound but the words spoken by the two of them, and then irregular breathless panting, and then that sweet arabesque ahhhh! that went on and on and modulated with the contortions of the fall, and she followed him, she followed him to the end as a tender woman in love to give him warmth, and perhaps there was also that fear of the caretakers who might come, but none of that would happen in all likelihood because in truth there no one guards summer houses in winter, and in his half-lidded iris there was still a long strip of sand with the reflections of the last of the light, and dark shapes falling obliquely, and the still silence, and the noise of dogs in the distance, and the shrill sound of birds, and there was still that face of hers laid bare defenceless as if to say this is the settling of scores, is that it? Curling his lips, Carlo Andreoli stroked his moustache on the right and the left with the index finger and thumb of each hand, but the hairs returned to their previous position of their own accord, moustaches are always so strange in the morning. He took the tub of shaving cream and dabbed a finger into it, then spread it over his face trying to cover every single spot, and then he put his finger in the steaming water and spread it over his face, because the cream dissolves more easily with a bit of water, and it had dissolved in fact and then he gave himself a brief delicate massage with the whole palm of his hand, and beneath his palm he felt that skin of his, and now he renewed his acquaintance with his own face, even though in truth he continued to avoid meeting his own eye, afraid as ever that the mirror would return to him an image that did not really correspond to the way he thought his face must be at that moment, and in fact more than once he had wondered if the image he had of his own face corresponded to the image that other people had of it.
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