Rome Noir

by Chiara Stangalino

  He parked the rented blue Fiat outside the ramparts and walked up the stone street into the town, past the arches and fortifications.

  The small cottage where they had frozen and spent thirty-six hours all that time ago was still there. He wondered what sort of couple was now inside in that unforgettable bedroom you could only access through a shaky wooden ladder (aaahhhh, the vision of her climbing those stairs, stark naked, his eyes looking straight at the voluptuous and bouncing flesh of her ass as he ascended behind her, his cock hard and ready, his mind aglow with tenderness and desire…).

  He walked by the steep stone steps to his forgotten paradise and ventured past narrow alleys, closed craft shops, and clothes hanging loose from windows until he reached the narrow promontory that dominated the valley below.

  The view was quite beautiful, rugged, untamed. In the distance, forests dominated the landscape, but below the damaged stone walls protecting this side of Calcata was a giant lunar expanse of rocks.

  He sighed.

  Best remember the good times.

  When she smiled at him and her eyes expressed a million things unsaid.

  He pulled that silly gun from the plastic bag and hurled it into the void. It fell in a large arc and it felt like almost a minute before he saw it actually hit the ground some five hundred meters below. It didn’t go off. He had left the safety catch on. No need to draw attention to himself, even though there didn’t appear to be a soul for a mile around.

  He closed his eyes.

  My sweetie, she would call him.

  He took a deep breath.

  My wild gypsy, he would often say to her.

  He pulled his left leg over the wall, raised himself energetically so that he now stood on the edge of the precipice.

  Looked down a final time.

  Those fierce and distant rocks should do the job, he reckoned.

  And jumped.

  EATEN ALIVE

  BY EVELINA SANTANGELO

  Via Ascoli Piceno

  Translated by Anne Milano Appel

  Springtime in Rome, a dawn populated with chattering birds. An impalpable veil of smog that slowly dissipates, as though steadily absorbed by the great sponge of the sun in its methodical climb toward the vault of the sky. White wisps of clouds scattered here and there in the blue that watches over the peaceful city and its outlying areas, still sunk in a stubborn Sunday morning slumber, broken by the din of garbage trucks, the rumble of a bus. “The 105 or the 81,” Quirino murmurs, rinsing the coffee cup under the faucet and placing it on the drain board. He fills a glass, takes some big sips. “Ah, the taste of Rome’s cool waters!” With a mechanical gesture he tightens the tie of his light woolen blue-and-white striped robe and gazes at the beautiful, mutilated structure of the Colosseum, licked by the first rays of the sun: the “big windows,” as he calls them, that run along the circular walls. “Solid,” he murmurs, satisfied, the tip of his index finger following the play of depressions and reliefs carved out of the fake marble with industrial precision, imitating with the touch of a master the irregularities of the stone worn away by time. “Centuries,” Quirino murmurs, drawing himself up and resting the palm of his hand on the edge of the credenza. He slips his bare feet into his slippers, and goes over to the window that looks out on the street, a modest strip closed to cars and flanked by low houses: The cables of television antennae hang down along the façades from the rooftops like improbable, permanent festoons, working their way somehow or other into window frames or cracks in the walls below the sills. “Television … everyone has a television…” He lowers his eyes to the street littered with beer bottles and small shapeless piles of trash. A cat emerges silently from an empty dumpster still sunk in shadow, and quietly licks a paw.

  The stillness is broken only by the monotonous swishing of a street sweeper’s broom. The cat turns to watch the almost phosphorescent green plastic bristles, then resumes licking, indifferent to the other paw. It starts suddenly when it sees the broom rise—“Drunken kids!”—and angrily thump the dumpster’s grimy metal, barely missing its tail. “Drunken kids,” the street sweeper mutters again, wiping his forehead with his arm, his hands stuffed into enormous work gloves.

  Quirino leans out, nods to him. “Got a bee up your butt tonight?” he says, relishing those first words of conversation. “Nice morning,” he adds, throwing his arms wide in a gesture that embraces heaven and earth.

  “Nice morning, nice morning…” the other man repeats, shaking his head and crouching down on the sidewalk to retrieve a bottle stuck between the wheels of the dumpster. He raises it toward the window, dangling it between the black fingers of his bulky gloves. “They’ve trashed the neighborhood, those sons of bitches,” he says, waving the bottle in the air and tossing it in the bag. “You should see the garbage in front of that shitty store, where those deadbeat godless immigrants make money selling beer to young kids until 3 in the morning … A bottle factory? A piss factory!” he adds. He shrugs helplessly, looks around. “Filth everywhere … on the ground, on the walls…” He points to the layers of mimeographed posters pasted on the façades. “A person has his own problems, no place to live … rents here being what they are now … and there, they go and put stuff all over the walls … What a life it would be without rent … What a life it would be without rent…” he reads, stressing each word. “On all the walls … Some like it hot, some like it cold. And they think they’re fascists … social fascists … and there, they go and print these and stick them on the walls! And they still have revolution in their heads … And they go printing that crap about their laboratories for revolution … and there … they go and stick their proletarian solidarity on the walls. Those spoiled brats! To them, going to live in Pigneto seems revolutionary … with money, of course! Not to mention those other … beauties … Chinese, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Indians, Senegalese. Only they know what the hell they are … They come to our country to bust our balls … with their posters … because, what do I know, they have their holidays and they want to celebrate them however and wherever they say. They have houses like this … and they want them like that … Do we have houses like that? Oh, do we? Eight hundred euros a month, yours truly, in Torpignattara…” He holds three black fingers up against the sky. “Eight hundred!” he repeats. “So much for rent control…”

  Quirino, with a sudden feeling of embarrassment, puts on a contrite expression. “That’s how it is,” he says, “with these new euros…”

  “That’s how it is? The hell it is! Yesterday … yesterday, at the corner of Tor Pignattara, right next to my house … flyers everywhere. And why? Because these kids, immigrant sons of bitches, want to play cricket on Sunday … at Villa de Santis, in the park … and our kids follow right along, now they, too, want to play crick-e-crock … And what does it mean, huh, do you know what We want to play crick-e-crock means?”

  Quirino shrugs.

  “Not soccer,” the street sweeper continues, carried away by the heat of his words, “everybody knows what soccer is … No! And where do they want to play that crazy game? In Pigneto! In our neighborhood!” He shakes his head again, ripping some shredded paper off a wall. He looks around gloomily. “They can all go to hell, a person has his own problems…”

  “His own problems,” Quirino echoes him, watching the man drag the garbage bag and the broom toward the end of the street. Then he sighs. He stays there a few moments longer to watch Sor Pietro come back up the pedestrian strip, dragged along by his mastiff, a coal-gray hulk that devours the street in great strides. He watches the man dig in his heels, tug on the leash—“Tito, heel!”—take off a loafer with a threatening gesture. The man argues with the animal, his small body shaking, his eyeglasses crooked on his nose. The mastiff lowers its head and, docile now, lets itself be pet; it slows its gait, now and then turns to its master, who adjusts his eyeglasses and nods blissfully.

  “To each his own problems…” Quirino murmurs with a half-smile, closing the shutters and moving towa
rd the little cage. “Good morning, Cesarì.” He takes out the drinking tray. “Some fresh water, hmm, Cesarì?” He goes to the sink. “A little lettuce … a slice of apple…” He sticks his hand in the cage, arranges everything on the tray. Then he holds out a finger. “Like a ray of sunshine, my little canary!” He begins petting the soft yellow feathers, feels the beak delicately nip his finger. “Hmm, Cesarì…” He slides his hand out slowly, watches the bird cock his head and look back at him. “Good boy, Cesarì!” he exclaims, observing the white cage with the small trapeze hanging in the center. “Go and play, Cesarì, Papa has things to do now.”

  He looks up over his reading glasses when he hears a knock at the door. He lays the pen down on the notebook. He glances at the wristwatch that his father gave him more than fifty years ago. “So early…” he murmurs, surprised, pressing his hands down on the tabletop and rising. “Is that you, Massimì?” he says, standing on tiptoe and squinting at the landing through the peephole. He sees the curly, grayish fuzz that crowns the small, turtle-like head of Signora Lavinia. “What’s happened?” He opens the door, peers down at the woman’s pinched face.

  “May I come in?” she stammers, through lips that are even paler and thinner than usual, her pupils glistening beneath her long, dark lashes.

  Quirino pulls the edges of his robe tightly together. For a moment he remains motionless, half-framed by the partly open door.

  “Something has happened,” Signora Lavinia whispers, her voice almost hoarse from sobbing. “Something … terrible,” she says.

  Quirino runs a hand through the steely gray hair that gives him a fierce, youthful look that he has been proud of since he passed the “critical threshold,” as he says, alluding to his accumulation of years. “Come in then.” He shoves his hands into his wide, roomy pockets. “Shall I make some coffee?”

  Signora Lavinia brings a hand to her chest, struggling against the tremors that shake her body. “No, thank you. My heart…”

  Quirino takes off his glasses, presses two fingers against his eyelids. “Ah, the heart … the heart … When it goes, there’s trouble…” Then: “Well, Signora Lavinia?” He gestures for her to sit down. He settles himself in his place, on the other side of the table, facing her, his hands on the notebook.

  Signora Lavinia’s eyes, now even brighter, look at him imploringly.

  “We’ll talk about this later, when the time is right,” Quirino reassures her, closing the notebook.

  Signora Lavinia lowers her head, presses her palm against her forehead. “What happened is that … my Valentina…” She bursts out in a deep sob that cuts off her breath.

  “She was old, poor thing…” Quirino says.

  Signora Lavinia shakes her head forcefully. “They killed her, Sor Quirì,” she says, gulping a mouthful of air and then getting swept up in a vortex of words. “This morning I woke up and she wasn’t there. She must have gone to take her usual little walk, I told myself. Still … I had a kind of premonition … a foreboding, Sor Quirì … I don’t know. So then I went down and started calling her. Here, there. And … do you know, I found her under the little bridge, in the gravel on the railroad tracks.”

  “She was hit by a train?” Quirino asks with a sorrowful expression. “If you knew how many cats I saw end up like that when I worked for the railroad … Poor things…” He reaches a hand out to Signora Lavinia, who shakes her head again, holding back her sobs as best she can. “Killed, Sor Quirì. Killed by someone. Her head bashed in by a rock, or a club … I don’t know … With all these terrible people running around … I don’t know, Sor Quirì … Now what am I going to do?” She twists her handkerchief into a knot around her fingers. “Ten years … we ate together, slept together … everything, Sor Quirì. Now what will I do without those beautiful eyes of hers … a companion, Sor Quirì.”

  Quirino swallows a sour globule of saliva, glances toward the cage. He brightens when he sees Cesarì swinging slowly on the trapeze. “What can you do, Signora Lavinia…?” he murmurs. “Get yourself another one, another cat. What can we do against the blows of fate…?” He shrugs.

  “Fate…” Signora Lavinia repeats bitterly. “So those people can kill another one.”

  “Those people who, Signora Lavinia?”

  “Those people, them … One of those newcomers in the neighborhood, I’m sure of it, they have no respect. What do they care about my little cat, about an old woman … There’s no respect for anything anymore, Sor Quirì.”

  “What do you mean, Signora Lavinia? It was an accident. Surely. An unfortunate accident … Now go downstairs, go home, make yourself a nice hot cup of chamomile … And later, when you feel up to it … when you feel up to it”—he taps two fingers on the cover of the notebook, looks at his manicured nails—“we’ll talk. All right?” he says, composing his face in a stern, paternal expression.

  Signora Lavinia starts. She nods. “Yes, I know that the outstanding amount is considerable … but my pension check still hasn’t come and so … I don’t have the money, Sor Quirì…” She holds out the palms of her bare hands.

  Quirino puts his index finger to his lips, as if to say, Hush. “Some other time, some other time,” he whispers, getting up and walking her slowly to the door. “Tomorrow…”

  Signora Lavinia looks at him despondently. “Tomorrow?” she stammers.

  “Or the day after…” Quirino says obligingly. “That way we’ll deal with the rent issue and the loan issue in a single stroke, otherwise the interest…” He slowly raises his hand, levels it in front of her eyes in midair. “The day after tomorrow,” he repeats, meeting Signora Lavinia’s forlorn gaze.

  “The day after tomorrow, all right,” she murmurs. Then she plunges back into her own thoughts: “They killed her,” she begins to mumble, holding onto the banister and slowly moving down the stairs.

  In the sunlight filtering through the skylight, the down on her head shines like an evanescent halo, as Quirino says: “Animals … there’s no doubt about it, they’re better than people.”

  “What’s the deal with arriving here at this hour? So late!” Quirino says, looking his son straight in the eye.

  “A problem.”

  “On a Sunday? The Lord’s day and … your father’s?”

  “On a Sunday, on a Sunday…” Massimiliano says, irritated. “A problem on a Sunday. That can happen, can’t it?”

  “All the time, Massimì? Every Sunday?” Quirino says, putting on his glasses.

  “The kid threw up all night, his mother wanted to take him to the hospital this morning … a lot of talk … Let’s go, let’s not go … let’s see if he gets better…”

  Quirino sits down at the table, opens the notebook. “And how is he now?” he asks, running a hand over the rough stubble on his chin, as if to say: More of your usual nonsense.

  “He’s better,” his son says abruptly, sitting down in front of him and crossing his hands.

  “And the new notebook? Did you get it?” Quirino asks, taking the key out of the pocket of his robe and inserting it in the lock of the drawer beneath the tabletop.

  “I bought it, I bought it…” Massimiliano opens a plastic folder, pulls out an ordinary gray account book.

  “What’s that? Quirino asks, startled.

  “What we need,” Massimiliano says, adopting a professional tone.

  “Me, I don’t need that thing! For me … this one here … is all I need.” He bangs the notebook down in front of his son’s eyes, points to the gilded face of Botticelli’s Venus printed on the cover. “I have my method, do you understand? My own way!”

  Massimiliano gives him a dirty look, puts the account book back in the folder, and closes it angrily, with an abrupt snap. “A fine way…” he hisses between his teeth. Then: “Let’s see, come on, it’s getting late.” He leans across the table.

  “All right then, let’s begin with the two small buildings. This one here should be nearly in order.” He takes a stack of bills from the drawer. He counts the
m, moistening his fingertips with saliva from time to time. “Punctual, these ‘out of town students,’” he says, stressing the words.

  Massimiliano runs the bills through his hands, quickly glancing at them. He confirms. He watches his father record the figures carefully in the notebook. “And the ones from the catacombs?”

  “Those… they asked me for a little more time,” Quirino says, concealing his annoyance.

  “A little more time … after being a week late?” Massimiliano exclaims, fidgeting in his chair. “So, even with ten of them, those deadbeat immigrants can’t manage to scrape together the pittance that they owe! And if they can’t even pay for that rathole … why are they complaining, huh? Now they’ve even started kicking up a fuss at the Local Rights Department because There’s mold on the walls, they say! Because the electrical system is not up to code! What do they expect, those deadbeats!”

  Quirino looks at him bewildered. “And what does this Rights Department do?”

  “What does it do, what does it do…? It’s a pain in the ass! But they can stuff it, those jerks, because it’s not like they have proof that they’re paying us! It’s not like anyone sees the money they hand over, right? Who’s ever seen that money? Are there checks? Money orders? No!”

  “So then?”

  “So then, if they continue to give us a hard time, we’ll evict them for arrears, and they’re gone! Problem solved.” He slaps down the palm of his hand as if crushing an insect. “What shit…”

  Quirino runs his fingers through his hair. “A person does all he can to try to please them … turning a blind eye … putting ten people in a house … ten … and just look at what they do—”

  “Case closed, I told you,” Massimiliano cuts him off. “Let’s continue.”