“But what about him?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.”
* * *
A voice on the loudspeaker reminds me that I’m at Linate Airport, with a plane ticket in my pocket for South America. I look up and see that the check-in counter is open now. I walk up and hand my ticket and passport to the young woman in uniform.
“Buon giorno.”
She looks at me and smiles with pleasure. I feel the same pleasure and smile back.
She checks my name on the ticket.
“Buon giorno to you, Signore Sangiorgi.”
Even though it could be considered a piece of carry-on luggage, I decide to check my travel bag. I want to be free, unburdened by any excess baggage, however light. I’ve carried the weight for far too long. I receive directions to the boarding gate, the departure time of the flight, and my boarding pass. I move off with the line of people heading for Security.
* * *
I spent many days holed up in that motel, feasting on the television news until I was cross-eyed, leaving my room only to eat and buy the daily newspapers. I watched the fire grow until it was a towering inferno. I told myself that in time it would dwindle to a bonfire and then the only ones who would remember the scorching heat of the flames would be those who were actually burned. I was also confident that many of them would pass through the flames and emerge completely intact.
The day I decided to emerge from my lair, I went to see Ugo in the office of the notary two floors above his law office. I gave him instructions for cashing in the lottery ticket and I won his eternal gratitude by offering him a fee of a hundred million lire, both for what he had done and what still remained to be accomplished. I took delivery of the permit to visit Carmine in San Vittore Prison. Last of all, I signed papers giving the notary all the authorizations he would need to perform a number of financial transactions on my behalf.
Afterward, as I was leaving his office, Ugo shook my hand and made me smile. Because he asked me the same question I had asked Carla.
“Will I ever see you again?”
I didn’t think this was the time to kiss him and tell him that everything could have been so different between us. I limited myself to a phrase that included all possibilities.
“Who can say?”
* * *
A police officer examines my brand-new passport, processed in record time, a friendly gesture of the Milan police headquarters. He hands the passport back and looks past me to the next passenger. I walk by the duty-free shop and decide to go in and buy a pack of cigarettes. I’ll need them for the plane trip, which promises to be long and dull. With my two packs of Marlboros in hand I head for the cash register. I show my boarding pass and I pay. I continue at a leisurely pace to the gate marked RIO DE JANEIRO. I take a seat. The article about Tano’s arrest takes me back to my last meeting with Carmine, in the visiting room at San Vittore Prison.
* * *
He entered the room, accompanied by a guard. The guard then moved off just far enough to give us a chance to speak privately but still be able to keep an eye on us. Carmine’s physical appearance hadn’t improved. He was still one of the ugliest men I’d ever seen. I felt pretty sure that the other distinctive aspect of his physical makeup hadn’t changed either. I had to guess that it had won him a lot of bets during his time in prison. Men never really grow up, deep down. No one can help it, in certain situations: they always wind up competing to see who’s got the biggest dick.
He sat down across from me. The expression on his face was what you’d expect from a man deprived of his freedom.
“Ciao, Bravo.”
“Ciao, Carmine.”
He turned to make sure that the guard was far enough away that he couldn’t overhear.
“Luciana came to see me. She brought me pictures of the boy.”
“He’s a good-looking boy.”
There was a father’s pride on his ugly face when he agreed.
“Yes, he is. He’s a good-looking boy.”
He immediately fell silent. He was certainly thinking about his son’s condition. His wife must have come to visit him in prison primarily to inform him about Rosario’s health problems. But Carmine had made no mention of it, as if not speaking about a tragic event helps in some way to exorcise it a little.
“She told me what you did for them.”
“It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s a lot. It’s what I wish I could do, if I weren’t locked up in this fucking prison.”
I glimpsed the frustration at his forced state of helplessness stamp itself on his face. The mortification over the mistakes he’d made, mistakes that his son’s illness were making him pay for in a much more painful way than mere imprisonment could ever do.
“Carmine, there is something you can do for your family.”
He lost his temper. Understandable, for a man in his situation.
“What the fuck do you think I can do, locked up in here?”
I lowered my voice, to make him lower his.
“Your boy is sick. He needs medical treatment. And that treatment costs money, a lot of money.”
I felt like a monster as I twisted the knife. But I thought that this summary of the situation was necessary, in view of what I was about to tell him.
“I’m willing to give your wife a cashier’s check for 250 million lire. That’s enough money to pay for Rosario’s medical treatment and ensure he has a good future. Steer him away from certain influences, allow him to live in a healthy environment, make sure he can study.”
I increased my distance from him slightly by leaning back against my chair. As much as was possible in those tight quarters, I left him alone to think it over, to imagine a shred of potential future for his son. The answer was that of a man who’d never been given anything for free in his lifetime.
“What do I have to do?”
I lowered my voice even more.
“Do you know Tano Casale?”
He didn’t bother to answer. Everyone knows Tano Casale. In silence he waited to hear the rest. I gave it to him.
“In a few days he’s going to be arrested. It’s going to be a minor charge, but the police are going to take advantage of the opportunity to convert his arrest into detention and bring him here.”
There was curiosity in his glance, even though he’d probably already understood.
“So?”
I looked him in the eye. Rarely in my life have I been so calm. Or so happy at the idea of something happening.
“I want you to kill him.”
* * *
The voice of the stewardess announcing my flight drowns out the voice of Carmine as he called the prison guard to take him back to his cell. I stand up and get in line with the other passengers waiting to board. I scrutinize the faces of the people around me. There’s no one I know. When it’s my turn, I hand my boarding pass to the young woman in uniform and I receive in exchange a beaming and pro forma Have a good trip.
Before I walk out of the terminal and head down to the shuttle that will take me to my plane, I turn around to look at the place and the people I’m leaving. I’m leaving all alone, a condition that at times can be a burden, at other times a form of liberation.
Bravo didn’t even come to say good-bye.
MAY 1988
EPILOGUE
Pilar moves in her sleep, extending her leg so that it touches me.
I wake up and open my eyes. The morning light filters through the openings in the blinds. It never really gets dark in this room. In the half-light I turn my head and watch her sleep, with my head resting on my pillow. The sheet has slipped off her and she’s completely naked. Her hair is short and glossy, her breasts are small, her ass is nicely shaped, her legs are long.
She’s tall, slender, and strong.
In the middle of the night she left the boy she’d just made love with in the other bedroom. For a little while I sat with them myself, seated in an armchair at the foot of the bed, watchi
ng those young bronzed bodies, in the full blush of a youth I no longer possess, writhe and coil in an exchange of pleasure. Every time that it happens, I can’t help but remember; every time I remember, I can’t help it happening again.
At a certain point I got up and came back to my bedroom. I lay there facedown on my bed until I heard the thump thump of bare feet on the floor coming nearer. Then I felt the sheet move and Pilar slipped into bed next to me.
She drew close and slipped in between my arms. Her breath was hot on my cheek.
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
I felt a hand rise up to caress my face. Then her soft voice in my ears.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
With a fluid movement, she stretched out on my body and began moving on top of me. I felt the warmth of her flesh against mine and her breasts against my chest. She began kissing me and kept on moving until I felt something that had been oppressing my belly melt and flow so far away that it almost fooled me into believing that it would never come back.
I turn onto my side. In the half-light I stretch out a hand and stroke her thigh. Not so she can feel my presence, but in order to be certain of her.
* * *
Last night we went out on our own. We hadn’t had a night out to ourselves for a long time. We dined in a restaurant at Playa El Yaque, near one of my hotels. After dinner, attracted by the voices and the light of a bonfire, we wound up at a surfer party on the beach. There were guitars, boys and girls, and beer. Sitting on a rock, with a cold can in my hand, I watched Pilar by the glow of the fire as she talked with one of the surfers, a young American with blond hair and freckles on his tan face. They were laughing, and in the bright white flash of their laughter I understood that they liked each other. By the shimmer of the flames I watched Pilar turn around to catch my eye. I smiled at her and when we left for home, the young man was in the car with us.
I get out of bed. I’m naked. I’ve learned not to be ashamed of my body. I’m discreet, but I’m not ashamed. I didn’t think it was wise to tell Pilar who taught me that. There are things that belong to me alone, and if I share them with someone else I have the impression that I’ve given part of them away.
I give her the same freedom.
I walk barefoot to the bathroom. I open the French door and walk out onto the terrace that it shares with the bedroom. My house is isolated and no one can see me. Stretching out before me is the vast reach of Ensenada La Guardia, an inlet that lets my view of the ocean extend endlessly. Today the sky is clear, and bluer than the human mind can conceive or absorb.
A warm morning wind caresses my skin.
I’m still not used to this sense of peace.
I go back into the bathroom with its rough walls and decorations that are reminiscent of Moorish architecture. Fastened to a wall is a full-length mirror in which I seek myself, see myself, and accept myself. My eyes are unchanged, even if there’s a little gray creeping into my hair. I’ve gone back to playing sports fairly regularly and my physique has improved markedly. I’m lean and muscular enough to look younger than my forty-five years.
I turn on the shower and jump under the spray. I soap up and let the scent of sex slide away with the foam. I stand under that stream of water until not even a drop of memory is falling from above.
Then I step out of the shower stall and put on my bathrobe.
I go back to the bedroom. Pilar is still asleep. She hasn’t moved since I left. She’s a patch of golden amber against the white sheets, in the middle of the wrought-iron bed frame. But this bed doesn’t have any hiding places in the legs. It’s been a long time since I needed to hide my money.
I walk into the closet and put on a pair of linen trousers, a shirt, and a pair of comfortable shoes. Here on the island everything is designed with simplicity, personal comfort, and freedom in mind. With that concept seamlessly incorporated into my mood, I decide I’m ready to start my day.
I step out of the sleeping quarters and walk across the large living room, full of sofas and coffee tables looking out over another terrace that also serves the kitchen. Feliciana, my housekeeper, has set the table outside for breakfast. I sit down and pour myself a glass of orange juice. The view from here is more or less the same as the view from the bedroom.
The sun is rising, painting a beautiful May day, minute by minute.
It’s not yet time for the cloudbursts, especially the nighttime cloudbursts that characterize the island’s climate from June to August. The downpours are exactly like all of life’s adverse experiences ought to be.
Rapid, violent, sudden.
Then everything turns clear again, including your mind.
When I first left Italy, I traveled around the world. South America, Asia, the United States, and Canada. I had plenty of money. The money in my family was on my mother’s side. Even though I’d left without saying good-bye, and despite the fact that I’d never gone to see her when she was sick, she still made me the sole heir to her estate. That is and will always be something that I regret and mourn. I discovered it only after my father’s death, and I gave orders to liquidate all the property. Scorched earth behind me, a carpet of flowers ahead of me. I was suddenly a wealthy man: to the tune of twenty-eight billion lire. That was a considerable sum ten years ago. It still is today.
I never touched the estate of Amedeo Sangiorgi. During my last meeting with Ugo Biondi in his law office, I authorized the notary to give all his money and his property to certain charities. With special attention to the victims of the Mafia.
Feliciana walks in silently from the kitchen. She’s a stout middle-aged woman, with an olive complexion. She has been taking care of my house and me for seven years now, with the assistance of a local girl who doesn’t live with us, but commutes every day from Piedras Negras. We also have a gardener and jack-of-all-trades named Cristóbal, who does the various small maintenance jobs required in such a large house. Impossible to guess his age: he is the father of four kids and the husband of two wives, unfailingly cheerful and smiling. He lives in La Guardia and drives up every other day with his truck full of tools and equipment. There is often wine on his breath, and his mouth is missing more than a few teeth.
He’s a man who never utters a cross word, as Beefsteak might have quipped about those puzzle-like gaps in his teeth.
Feliciana lays a couple of newspapers on the table.
“Señor, here are the newspapers from Italy. Cristóbal brought them from Porlamar.”
I reach out to pick up a copy of Il Corriere della Sera that has traveled a long way to be here this morning. As I unfold it, Feliciana reminds me that she is a cook, as well as a housekeeper.
“What would you like to eat today?”
“Scrambled eggs and toast. Then coffee and a slice of your coconut cake, if you’ve baked any.”
Feliciana looks at me, stung to the quick.
“Of course I baked it. There is always Feliciana’s cake in this house.”
I’ve lived here for eight years and my Spanish has evolved over time: from pathetic to not bad to what I’d now describe as excellent. My unequaled housekeeper, however, is impervious to any curiosity about foreign languages and she doesn’t speak a word of Italian.
She understands it, but she refuses to speak it.
For that matter, now that I think about it, why should she?
She bustles off, slightly indignant that I should have dared to doubt the availability of her masterpiece of confectionery. I plunge into the newspapers, reading about things that all these years later don’t even arouse my curiosity. Sometimes I have the impression that if you took the newspapers from ten years ago and substituted new names, you could just publish the same articles. Political squabbles, the underdeveloped south that refuses to grow, the working class that never went to its worker’s paradise. Still, in spite of everything, I am and I remain an emigrant. A pinch of nostalgia, tiny but tough, is still there.
Here on
Isla Margarita, the Italian newspapers always arrive a couple of days late.
Today is the eleventh of May.
On the copy of Il Corriere that I’m holding, the date is the ninth of May.
Ten years ago, on that very same day, the lifeless body of Aldo Moro was found in the trunk of a Renault R4. That desolate image appears at the center of an article on the third page, the editorial page in Italy, retracing the stations of his calvary.
I remember a few chilly words in a hotel room.
Aldo Moro is already a dead man …
The state funeral had the scale and imposing gravity that a person of his stature, killed in such tragic circumstances, deserved and required. The funerals of my father and my uncle were carried out with the furtive haste usually employed in sweeping dirt under the carpet. No one was interested in being seen attending them and no one cared to say farewell to either man. Now they’re nothing but a couple of names and a photograph on a headstone and, in certain circles, a lingering awkward moment whenever they are mentioned.
Just like everywhere else in the world, in Italy we sometimes choose to remember. And we sometimes choose to forget.
The scrambled eggs and toast are served at the exact moment that Pilar emerges in her bathrobe through the glass door of the living room. She’s barefoot and her hair is glistening with water, which means she just took a shower. She takes a look at the view and stretches before coming over to sit next to me.
“¿Cómo estás, mi hermoso italiano?”
I take her hand and kiss her skin, which smells of bubble bath and pretty woman.
“Wonderfully well. How could I be otherwise?”
Pilar points to the eggs and speaks to Feliciana.
“Could I have the same?”
As the woman heads back to the kitchen, Pilar steals a slice of toast from my plate. She starts chewing it, pretending to be a hamster. I laugh, the way I always do when she pulls that sight gag. She pours herself a glass of coco frío from a pitcher.
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