by Martin Rua
But Anna had begged me to remain calm and to keep pretending. So I returned the embrace, trying to overcome the revulsion she inspired in me and communicate the affection I felt for Àrt. The real Àrt.
*
In the bathroom I had another unpleasant surprise, and it was not just the grime which surrounded me. Looking into the mirror which hung from the wall on a wire, I was horrified to see how awful I looked – I was gaunt and unshaven, and my hair was dishevelled. I hardly recognised myself.
“What has happened to me?”
Could it be that they weren’t feeding me? Apart from having skipped dinner the night before, I couldn’t remember what my habits were. The thought even flashed through my mind that this might actually be my real life, and it was everything that I remembered, or thought I remembered, that was some kind of dream, or hallucination. Perhaps that woman really was Àrtemis, and this really was my home. I stared at my face in the mirror, then shook my head.
That wasn’t possible – it was an absurd idea.
I splashed some water on my face and looked for a razor, but in that dilapidated bathroom there was nothing but a bit of soap and some towels. And in any case, I thought, it would have seemed strange to suddenly shave that day, given the state I was in. So I went into the bedroom to get dressed. I opened the only wardrobe and found three suits wrapped in cellophane. Without thinking, I took one, noting that it was rather threadbare.
Questions echoed incessantly in my head. Why did they keep me like that? Why?
I dressed, slipped Spider-Man into my pocket and walked towards the front door where a lone, tatty black coat hung. I put it on, and the pseudo Àrtemis joined me at the door with a glass and a pill.
“Here we go”, I thought.
“I don’t think it’ll matter if you take your pill on an empty stomach,” she said, with a frosty smile which showed her perfect white teeth.
“Oh, of course – my pill. Yes, in fact I am feeling a bit better.”
She literally stuck it into my mouth, perhaps out of fear that I might hide it in my hand and only pretend to swallow it, then pressed the glass of water to my lips. I took a long sip and gave her a kiss before leaving.
As I descended the stairs, I put two fingers into my mouth, pulled out the pill and gave it a quick look. The only odd thing about it was the silver capsule. In every other respect it was an ordinary pill. I slipped it into my pocket. Maybe I could have it analysed.
Once in the street, I realised that I was in my own neighbourhood. To be exact, I was in a dark, narrow alley which runs from the street upon which Palazzo Aragona is located up to Corso Vittorio Emanuele. I turned around to look at the building from which I had emerged and saw that it was an old one which I knew and which was only a few hundred metres from my house. A building which had once belonged to a noble family, and was now dilapidated and uninhabited: the remains of its beautiful decorations and its garden now overgrown with weeds spoke of happier times.
I walked towards the top of the alley the building overlooked and saw from afar the disused news kiosk at the corner of my street. I had been trying to convince the council to have it removed for years, but always without success.
As I looked at it, I suddenly remembered that the day before I had met Anna right there, although my distorted perception had made the kiosk seem to be in much better condition. I turned towards it and saw a man sitting inside, wrapped in a heavy coat and with a hat pulled down over his eyes. A name surfaced on my lips. Fausto—
I don’t even know a Fausto who runs a news stand. That name and that character must have been implanted in my mind for some reason.
As soon as the man saw me, he stiffened. He had an intent look on his face, almost like a policeman. What the hell was he doing sitting in a ruined newspaper kiosk? And why did I have the strange feeling that I was supposed to ask him something? I approached him with these concerns in mind, trying to guess which question I should come out with.
As it turned out, he didn’t even give me time to come up with anything and immediately handed me some sheets of paper folded up like a newspaper. I realised immediately that he was neither a homeless man who had found shelter there nor a policeman, but had instead something to do with the nightmare that I was trapped in. We stood for a fraction of a second looking at each other, then he said, “Good day, Mr Aragona.”
I nodded to him and went on my way, casting an eye at the papers he had given me. They were covered with incomprehensible markings, symbols and strange optical illusions. They disturbed me and made me feel dizzy, as though they were doing something to my mind.
Without realizing it, my head still seized with incredible confusion, I found myself in front of my garage.
I didn’t understand how I could have walked there, passing right in front of my real home, without even realising it.
The thought of finding Àrtemis almost made me retrace my steps when, putting my hands in the pocket of the rumpled coat I was wearing, I found the keys of the garage. A voice inside me suggested that I should go inside.
I decided to go along with it.
I opened the shutter of the garage and found myself in front of my BMW X6, the monstrous machine that I had bought despite my wife’s resistance.
“What the hell are we to going to do with a tank like that?” she had protested when she saw it in the dealership. But that time, I, usually so little interested in cars, had been adamant. That tank, as she called it, had won my heart.
I was once again undecided as to what to do, but something told me I should start the car and go somewhere. I was convinced that these strange sensations, like subconscious commands, the origin of which was unknown to me, had been grafted onto my mind to make me perform a series of pre-determined actions. But now it was different – now I was conscious. I decided to go along with the orders, though, principally to see where they would take me but also so as not to arouse the suspicions of those who had put me in that state. I walked over to the car. It was open and the keys were in the ignition. A plump little man, walking past on the sidewalk in front of the door, threw me an intense look. He must be there to keep an eye on me.
“It’s ok, I’m taking the car, see?”
Apparently satisfied, he pretended to continue with his walk. Another watchdog eluded.
*
I went down San Martino to the Vomero and then went on towards the centre.
As I drove through the busy streets, it was as if I saw my city for the first time: the colours, the noise, the crowds – everything seemed unusual. From time to time my head span, and sudden flashbacks restored fragments of memory. Slowly, as though following a path laid out by my unconscious, I came to an alley between Mergellina and Corso Vittorio Emanuele, not far from the Églantine.
I parked and looked right and left at the various buildings until I eventually spotted a rather shabby building containing a shop on the ground floor with a miserable glass and aluminium door. The old sign bore a single word: ’refurbishment’. The instinct that had led me this far pushed me in that direction.
I summoned up my courage and went in.
It was an old warehouse, cluttered with the decaying remains of pieces of mass-produced furniture, illuminated by neon lights which made it appear even more sad and ghostly. It was the most dismal place I have ever seen. Apart from the apartment in which I had awoken, of course. At the back of the large room I saw a tiny office with aluminium and glass walls, through which a man was visible.
I reached the door and the man inside greeted me without showing the slightest emotion. He had a thick foreign accent.
“Oh, hello Lorenzo. I’ve just set a new record for sales: I only opened half an hour ago and Doctor Ciliento has already given me the first cheque for the purchase—”
“Of the Riesener console,” I said to myself, already knowing what he would say.
“—of the Riesener console.”
“Of course,” I thought.
The way he said the
word Riesener made me think that the man – who had pale skin, short blonde hair and was wearing a black suit of decent quality – must be German.
What were my lines now? I improvised.
“That’s great, we must celebrate.”
“Let’s wait for him to give us the other two cheques,” said the man, with a slight smile, before placing some sheets of paper in front of me. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like us to do a cross-check of the pieces sold, optioned and those which we have seen recently together.”
At that point, my mind went completely blank.
“Erm. Okay, then, let’s do it.”
A slightly surprised expression appeared on the man’s face, as though my answer had puzzled him. He pulled himself together quickly, however, and began what he called a cross-check. The papers that he had given me contained places, dates, times, names of people and strange, meaningless symbols, like those I had found on the pages of the newspaper.
“I’ll read first and you repeat after me, ok?” The man said, as though speaking to a child with learning difficulties.
“All right,” I said placidly.
“Jerusalem, 1118, the Temple Mount.”
I read aloud from my own sheet that same phrase, next to which there was a symbol. At the sight of this strange sign, which appeared to be some kind of rune, I was overcome with a dizziness that lasted only a few seconds. The man must have noticed.
“Are you all right? Do you want to tell me something?”
The date and location didn’t bring anything to mind except some memories related to my medieval studies. I wondered what the reason was for this strange interrogation I was undergoing, and to which I may have already been subjected to in recent weeks. Why did those symbols cause those strange sensations?
I had no way of knowing what answers I had given the man on previous days. Just as I did not remember reality when I was under the influence of drugs, I did not remember the precise details of my fake life now that my mind was almost free.
“I don’t know, is it something to do with the Crusades?” I said.
“Do you remember any details in particular?”
“What kind of details?”
“Names that this date and this place bring to mind – symbols, numerical sequences.”
Another absurd question. It was like the ones Deckard used in Blade Runner to identify the replicants. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, nothing in particular.”
He just nodded.
“All right, let’s move on. Berlin, March 1945, New Synagogue.”
Another date and place that meant nothing to me. Why so many questions about distant events and places that meant nothing to me?
This game was starting to get on my nerves, so I snapped, “Look, I’ve no idea, this one doesn’t mean anything to me either.”
Showing no signs of giving up, he set before me another sheet, and when I saw it I could not conceal my reaction. It showed a simple spoked wheel, but there was something familiar about it. Instinctively I touched the Spider-Man toy in my pocket, and the man noticed.
“Perhaps you’d like your friend to help you?” he asked, pointing to the pocket of my coat.
He knew. The man knew, and that could only mean one thing. They had been spying on me when my old toy had caused those visions.
“Maybe if you concentrate you can tell me something useful, and in return I could tell you something about your wife.”
He had decided to show his hand.
I jumped up from the desk, bent over the sheets in front of him and looked into his eyes, then moved away slowly.
“My wife is everything to me. I don’t care about anything else. Tell me where she is, you son of a bitch.”
I thought that my reaction had taken him totally by surprise, but I was wrong. His left hand, in fact, slipped under the desk and, as quick as a flash he was on me, trying to inject something into my neck with a jet injector.
We ended up rolling on the floor, the syringe dangerously close to me. He was strong, and we found ourselves in the narrow space between his desk and the wall. Desperately, I looked around me for something that I could use, and my eye fell on the large glass ashtray that stood next to the computer. I had to get there, but I couldn’t keep hold of my opponent, so I did the only thing that came to mind in that moment. I spat in his face.
For a split second, he was disorientated enough to enable me to wriggle away. He was fast, though, and turned round almost immediately, but was rewarded for his efforts by a violent blow to the face with the massive glass ashtray, which hurled him to the floor. The blow was extremely hard and he lay unconscious, while I stood there, breathless, watching. I hoped he was not dead, but in that precise moment that was not my first concern. If the place was guarded, someone had certainly seen and heard. I had to get out of there quickly and track down Anna, who was perhaps the only one who could help me find Àrtemis.
She’d said that I could get in touch with her, but I had no idea how. I began to rummage around in that pokey little office but there was nothing there, only piles of those cards with strange symbols and dates, two rather dated computers, a phone and little else.
As I hunted for clues to help me find Anna, I hurriedly searched the man lying on the ground. I moved his arms apart in order to open his jacket and noticed a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. A disturbing tattoo. One which I knew very well.
*
A sword and a swastika. The symbol of the Thule Society – the band of fanatics of Arianism and racial purity which had formed the theoretical and mystical basis of Nazism.
I had to get out of there. It was too dangerous to stay, so I left the office and headed for the entrance of the store. As I went, though, my eye fell upon a door to the left. I opened it, and found myself in a filthy, smelly bathroom. I turned on the light and looked around. Staring at my reflection in the mirror for a moment I had another flashback: I saw myself in that cramped place, slipping something into a crack in the crumbling wall.
The vision only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for me to realise that it was a fragment of memory. Hurriedly, I inspected the wall until I found the crack. I slipped a finger inside and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. On it were a telephone number and the words:
…hide it well. When the time comes you will find it useful. Anna.
That girl had tried in every way to make me open my eyes and, apparently, after one of our meetings I had felt that I should follow her advice. I put the note in my pocket, but as I was about to open the bathroom door I heard footsteps outside.
They were here!
I opened the door a crack and saw two men bent over the one I had laid out with the ashtray. There was no time to think, and, with the strength of desperation, I ran for the door. The two were behind me just as quickly. There were never many people about in that part of Naples, and it could quite easily have turned out to be my grave, but after running at breakneck speed I got to my car, started the engine and set off.
I drove around aimlessly for a while, hoping they weren’t following me, until I came to Via Chiatamone, and as I was passing an antique shop, I suddenly slammed on the brakes right outside it, in the middle of the road.
The Églantine. The real one.
The cars behind me began beeping their horns, so I set off again and a few metres further on came to a car park. The guard was a big man in his sixties with a uniform that was too tight for his body, and his eyes widened in surprise when he saw me.
“Mister Aragona! What a pleasure! How are you?”
Another flashback, another name.
My face broke into a smile and I returned the greeting.
“Hello… Giuseppe. I’m fine thank you.”
“I didn’t think you were in Naples.”
“I’m… I’m back.” I parked and walked back to the exit, where Giuseppe was waiting for me. I looked around with wild eyes, terrified at the thought of seeing the cronies of the fake
Bruno emerge at any moment. The idea of going to the Églantine was probably not a brilliant one, but, again, I had acted instinctively. I couldn’t think clearly. When I approached him, Giuseppe’s expression was quite explicit – he looked at me as though I were a madman, but also as though he wanted to ask me something but did not dare.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Giuseppe?”
“No, no, Mister Aragona. I’m just glad you’re back. One of you, at least—”
“Who else is supposed to come back?”
“Yes, you’re right, Mr Aragona. No one else can come back.”
What the hell did that mean? I was in too much of a hurry to keep talking, but he seemed to know a lot.
“How long have I been away, Giuseppe?”
He looked confused. “Mr Aragona… don’t you remember? Since about July.”
“Sure, sure. Since July.”
I was about to set off towards the Églantine when the sight of two suspicious looking types walking past the entrance to the garage made me change my mind. “Listen, Giuseppe, would you walk to the shop with me? You know, I’d just like a little company.”
The man nodded. “No problem, Mr Aragona, I can leave the place for five minutes. Let’s go.”
I now had a pretty impressive looking bodyguard, and anyone who wanted to get to me would have to think twice.
In a couple of minutes we arrived at the shop. The shutter was lowered and it seemed that no one had set foot inside for a long time. When I looked through the window, I reeled in shock, and Giuseppe rushed up to support me.
The Églantine was half empty, and all that was left inside were some pieces of furniture shrouded with sheets. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, and attached to the shutter was a plastic sign which read:
SUBJECT TO SEIZURE BY THE JUDICIARY – CRIME SCENE, NO ENTRY.
The Églantine closed down by the authorities? Why? What had happened? I looked at the guard with bewilderment on my face.
“Giuseppe, listen, the reason I’ve been away all this time is because I haven’t been well. I have a severe case of amnesia. I have trouble remembering the past, and so I don’t know what happened.”
