“No, what are—”
“You can talk: you’ve got that brass band to keep you company.”
“I usually knock myself out with drink first.”
“A bad habit.”
“And what isn’t?”
There was a moment’s pause as they sat and listened to one another breathing. Their last exchange had created a strange embarrassment. When the silence became too awkward, Nives said, “Loriano?”
“Yes.”
“I’m asking you as a doctor: is it normal to replace a husband with a chicken, and not to miss anything about the husband, not even for half a minute?”
Bottai rolled his eyes. “Grief plays tricks on you. You’ll see.” A light bulb suddenly clicked in his head. “What did you mean when you said she’s crippled?”
“Just that: one leg is crooked.”
“That must be it, then. Is there any pus? Is it infected?”
“Not at all. It’s an old story, at least a year old. She was left with a gammy leg. Like Favilli, who lost the three fingers of his right hand, the ones he left in the lathe. He’s not dead, right? He drives the tractor alright, though maybe he shouldn’t!”
“Is she still asleep?”
Nives turned around to look into the living room. “It’s like she’s sculpted.”
“Lucky her!”
“She’s starting to spook me.”
“Try smelling salts.”
“But you’ll come tomorrow, won’t you?”
Loriano paused. Then he gave in to the temptation. “Listen, are you saying it works?”
“What?”
“This thing with a hen on your bedside table?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you saying it makes you sleep better?”
“I was reborn. My poor old ma used a cricket.”
“A cricket?”
“It saved her nerves.”
“A cricket.”
“She kept it in a jar. It was called Guglielmo. Whenever she told me about it, I laughed and laughed.”
“I bet.”
“But it did save her nerves. She talked to it.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t arrived yet. In any case, I tell Giacomina stories.”
Bottai’s head was spinning, both from the wine and from the bombshells being dropped from the Raulli household on the other end of the phone. With every word she said, the woman pulled a wild-card out of thin air. Once the widow’s words were aired, anything could happen. “For example?”
“The tale of Giuccomatto. Keeping Giacomina on my bedside table has made me remember a whole flurry of stories. They were Nonna Landa’s stories, handed down from a century ago.” Nives could hear a rhythmic noise across the line. She listened harder. “Has a cicada gotten into your house? It’s not even the season.”
“It’s Donatella. Now you know what I mean.”
“Poor thing.”
“Poor thing? What about me?”
“It sounds like a moped.”
“It sounds like the life sentence it is.”
“You’re exaggerating. She’s a good woman.”
“No arguments here. But she even bores into the eardrums of our upstairs neighbor.”
Nives gathered her thoughts. “Pagliuchi.”
“Yes, him. But I’m just saying.”
“How handsome he was when he was young. When he walked by, all the girls went gaga.”
Loriano had no idea what to say. In the end, all he could manage was an incomprehensible, “Eh . . .” This felt like a good moment to try and get away, “Nives, I—”
“When he was a boy, he used to go into town and play the gigolo.”
“Yes, so I hear.”
“People do what they can to get by.”
“Those were the days. Nives, now I—”
“That business with Rosaltea was a nasty shock.”
“Mother Mary, look what you made me remember—”
“Everyone said she wasn’t all there. The truth is, she was just crazy with love.”
“They’re things you can’t really explain, they are.”
“After being dumped so many times, one day she threw herself from the belfry.”
“I was there.”
“What?”
“The day it happened; I was there in the piazza.”
“Did you see her fall?”
“Almost. I was having a cup of coffee at the bar. I can see it so clearly: it was market day. I was talking to Tancredi, God bless his soul. Suddenly, there was a dull thud, as if someone had thrown a bag of cement down from a third-floor window.”
“It wasn’t a bag of cement.”
“No.”
“It was Rosa.”
“In a nightie,” Bottai added.
“I didn’t know that.”
“I dreamed about it for ages.”
“When they told me, I fainted.”
“You and everyone else in the neighborhood.”
There was a heartbeat’s silence. Bottai was about to worm his way into the pause to bring the phone call to an end—what with hens and crickets the conversation had taken a turn that would have robbed even an angel of their sleep.
Nives beat him to it. “I wonder what it’s like.”
Loriano longed for a rifle shot to end things. “What?”
“Living with death on your conscience.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. What led Rosaltea to the belfry was her illness. Renato had nothing to do with it.”
“Unless the man is a monster, he must have asked himself a few questions. If he’d welcomed her overtures, maybe Rosa would still be alive today.”
“You can’t command love.”
“I heard dear old Pagliuchi didn’t mind diving under her skirts every now and again.”
“Nives, we were boys, not pieces of wood.”
“You know, some poor woman is drooling all over you and what do you do? You exploit her, out of greed. For you, it’s a cheap thrill. For her, it feels like a chance. One minute later, you’re riding another mare. Dear old Renato Pagliuchi has the girl on his conscience alright. In the meantime, as far as I’ve heard, he never even got married. Am I wrong?”
Loriano had to make an effort not to hang up. “You’re not wrong,” he exhaled, exhausted.
“All those fireworks when he was young, and now he’s all alone, like a dog, already looking old age in the face.”
Bottai didn’t want to give in to the woman, not on this point. “He looks fine to me.”
“How do you know? Maybe inside he’s hollowed out?”
“It doesn’t look like it. He gets up early, goes off on long walks as if he were still young. He’s only beginning to go bald at the back of his head, whereas for me it started ages ago. Driving coaches doesn’t seem to have worn him out one bit. I’ll tell you something more: women still look at him, even women twenty years his junior.”
Nives took in his defiant reaction with venom stuck in her throat.
“Which only means he’s still thinking with what’s below his belt. You need to know that life’s not one big hand-job. You’re all pathetic.”
Bottai realized he was enjoying himself. Making this old friend, who had woken him up so rudely, choke on Pagliuchi was a great way to get his own back. “We’re all pathetic? What have I done?”
“You men are all of a kind.”
He wouldn’t let go. He’d found her soft spot and continued to prod her there. “You seem quite upset. What do you care about Renato?” He couldn’t stop himself from going further. “It must mean you got burned as well.” He regretted saying this immediately. It wasn’t a nice thing to say to a woman who’d just been widowed.
Nives ca
me out with the last words Bottai ever imagined he would hear. She uttered them calmly. “For that matter, not just me, there’s Donatella, too.”
Some of the alcohol that had been pickling him evaporated on the spot. “Excuse me?”
“We were girls, not pieces of wood.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what I said.”
“My Donatella? With Pagliuchi?” Loriano choked back his laughter. He made it last a little too long, trying to make it sound spontaneous. “Nives, what are you saying?”
“Ask that horn-player in your bedroom. Ask her how certain summer afternoons at the old gully tasted.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“July ’66, to be precise. I could be wrong, though. It might have been August.”
Bottai threw himself into calculating. He counted with his fingers. It was easy to work out, but he was so groggy it took him three goes to confirm it. In the end, it was clear. As if he were thinking out loud, he said, “She was fifteen.”
“Exactly like yours truly.”
Loriano knew he hadn’t been the first to touch his wife. There had been Nando, for example. There’d been another guy, whose name he couldn’t remember, too. They’d been short-lived affairs that lasted a few months, at most a year. As for him, he’d attracted her attention when she was twenty. He’d had no idea that Renato Pagliuchi had also stuck his nose into certain sweet places. There was nothing sacred about it, but it still upset him. “She never told me,” he said. “I reckon you’re mistaken.”
“Sorry, but would there be anything wrong with it?”
Bottai took pride in sounding relaxed. “Nothing, for goodness sake.”
“You seem quite upset. It must mean you got burned.”
Loriano decided to tone things down. He saw the trap he’d fallen into. He felt sorry for Nives: there, in that house on Poggio Corbello, with only a spellbound hen for company. She wouldn’t get off the phone. She’d thrown herself into upending a marriage that was sailing serenely toward a half century the first chance she got. While hers no longer existed. It was no skin off his nose to go along with the poor woman. His hangover was sinking down into his nether regions; all that was left was a sense of shock that made his face fizz. Anyway, who cared? There was nothing blasphemous about Donatella having had a bit of fun in the fields. He looked towards the bedroom, from whence came the snores of an ogress. “More power to you,” he thought, adding out loud, “You had a good time. I’m happy for you.”
“The trick was not to get all mushy.”
“What?”
“With Pagliuchi, I mean.”
“Ah, him again.”
“You got on top of him and had your twenty minutes of fun, as God intended. If you started writing love letters, he would drop you on the spot.”
“At least he made himself clear.”
“You’d have to be an idiot to get stuck with a tool like him. Renato Pagliuchi was sculpted by golden hands, but who would ever have taken him seriously? Just thinking about setting up a family with him was enough to sprout a pair of horns. It was more fun for us girlfriends—us bad girls, I mean—to go somewhere and talk about him. You know, like girls of that age do.”
“Bitches in heat,” Loriano thought. All of a sudden, he felt a thud in his stomach because he imagined Donatella there in the group.
Nives concluded, “Wanting something exclusive with Pagliuchi was like signing your death warrant.”
Bottai spoke without thinking, “That’s what happened with Rosa.”
There was silence. Like before a storm, when the monsters are unleashed from the depths. Nives grabbed on to one of the monster’s horns. “What are you saying?”
“No, nothing.”
“It was different with her. You know she was sick.”
“True.”
“She was obsessed. She wanted him all to herself.”
“May she rest in peace.”
“With a dead husband, do you really want to hand me this cross to bear, too?”
“Which?”
“You know.”
“Nives, really, don’t—”
“It wasn’t our fault.”
“I didn’t say it was. I don’t think it was.”
“Renato carried on with her. He pitied her, and, anyway, she was beautiful.”
“There’s nothing else to say.”
“We girls would go to the gully with him, but we didn’t want to hurt her.”
“Okay, calm down now.”
“You see, now I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of seeing Rosaltea here in her nightie with her head split open.”
“There’s no one there.”
“I’ve summoned her now. I might go into the bathroom and see her in the mirror.”
“Nives, don’t talk nonsense.”
“Maybe she’s the one who put a curse on my hen. As soon as I hang up, she’ll open her beak and start talking to me.”
“It’s just hypnotized.”
“It’s been going on for a while. This is what she wanted: for me to call you, dig up things from fifty years ago, and then make me die of a heart attack. Have you thought of that?”
“What?”
“No, you haven’t thought of it.”
“What?”
“Fernanda Demaria, for example.”
Loriano remembered his dear friend’s funeral, a year ago already. “Now, what does that poor woman—”
“Lorenza Tucci. That’s without counting the ones who were ten years older or more, like Bonelli. Do you remember Bonelli? Or that big woman, Vanda? They’re all dead.”
“Nives . . .”
“Rosa’s already started.”
Loriano couldn’t control it. A shiver ran through him, like a comb going the wrong way. This was followed by a combination of amusement and pity. The woman’s forced solitude had conjured up unexpected ghosts. “Are you serious?”
“She cuts us down with her scythe one by one. In my case, it started with Anteo. You should have seen his test results from the clinic: they came back perfect; they were so clear that you could see through them.”
Bottai attempted to do his job properly. It appeared he was being called upon to perform a task that was much more delicate than diagnosing the condition of a hen trapped inside a commercial. “Death is perfectly natural,” he said. “Take Bonelli, for example. Does her passing at almost eighty seem like the curse of some spirit? If there’s anything that punishes the living, it is life itself. We don’t need to bring ghosts into it. In any case, it has another name.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. A ‘guilty conscience,’ for example.”
“Guilty conscience.”
“For example.”
“And what kind of little ghost would that be?”
“What you see. What you want to see.”
Loriano had the impression that Nives had stopped to think about this for a while. The pause would have been the perfect moment to say goodnight, but he was human, after all. His friend was scared. She was regurgitating things from her past, and they were visiting her in the night, taking on the semblance of a real presence. He didn’t want to have her on his conscience.
“She’s already started,” Nives insisted, unaffected by his words. “If she starts doing to you what she’s already done to me . . . what about your prostate? How’s that doing? To name just one thing.”
Bottai instinctively touched his balls to ward off evil. But he had to remain rooted in fact, like a real doctor. “Let’s keep our feet on the ground, shall we?”
“Aren’t your capillaries popping?”
“What?”
“Around your eyes. Your cheeks, too. They’re full of spidery, red blotches. It could be yo
ur blood pressure.”
Loriano took a step to one side to look at himself in the mirror that hung there. It was a giant catafalque of a thing, with rusty edges. The impressive thing about it was its gilded frame. Past reflections of generations of Bottais inhabited it. The old patriarch had always said, right to the end, that the mirror went back to the beginning of the 1800s, before all the ingredients of Italy had been thrown into the stew. He saw in the reflection that he was disheveled. His jowls were firm and solid. Sometimes the friends he played Tresette with would say, “Lollo, have they put you under the press?” He laughed. But inside he was sorry he was not as fit as he used to be. He’d never been handsome, but when he was in good shape, he’d cut a dashing figure, even after he’d gone almost completely bald. On the sides, and at the back, he still had some curls. His prize feature, however, was his eyes, which were a rare silver-gray color. He dabbed at his cheekbone. The tip of his finger sunk in halfway up his nail. “I feel fine.”
“It’s the drink. And that pot belly. It weighs on your heart. Five steps and your ticker leaps into your throat, right? Tell me the truth.”
Bottai felt the palpitations coming on. “Never felt better.” It came out oddly, though, like a death rattle.
“You don’t believe it yourself.”
“Now you’ve become a doctor, have you?”
“Anyway, Donatella used to lie down in the shade of the chestnut grove.”
“Good for her.”
“She made poor Rosaltea sick, like many of us. Take Tucci, or Demaria . . .”
With all that business of hypnotized animals on bedside tables, escapades under the skirts of a young wife, and ghosts at ten in the evening, Loriano had gotten a little dizzy. He made a shuffling noise with his slippers on the tiles. “Nives, it really is late.”
“That’s how it started with Anteo; he was always tired. In his final days, you needed to fire a canon to get him out of bed in the morning.”
“I have to get up at six o’ clock, excuse me if—”
“Caffe latte and Fernet?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“And you don’t stop slugging it down until the evening.”
“That’s my own business.”
“That’s how she’s dealing with you.”
Nives Page 3
