Last night, for the first time in eight years, Roxana had smoked a cigarette, and not just one, either. When Violetta had finally shuffled upstairs to bed, with a small glass of warm milk, Roxana had gone into the salotto, where neither she nor her mother ever went except to put another coat of polish on the huge Biedermeier dining table. As if sleepwalking herself, Roxana had gone straight for the inlaid box where Dad kept American cigarettes for visitors, had taken a handful, dry and light as dead leaves, felt the cool weight of her father’s old Zippo in her hand and then she’d stopped. The smell of lavender wax and stale air, the solid pieces of heavy, old-fashioned furniture around her — the sideboard from her grandmother’s house, the upholstered chairs, the glass-fronted display cabinet — familiar in every detail even in the dark, the ugly roll-down shutters: it had all suddenly borne down on Roxana like a landslip, and she felt as though she was about to lose her balance. So she backed out, as far as the front door and beyond, out on to the porch, leaning against the dusty plaster and looking into the street. Quiet as the grave.
Lighting up, she’d taken one drag of the stale cigarette, practically coughed up her lungs, and had walked in the hot night down the road to the machine outside the tobacconist’s to buy a half-pack of MS. On the way back home, as she’d listened to the trickle of the river — a tributary of the Arno — that ran through the suburb unseen, through bamboo thickets and culverts, the heat if anything had seemed to be intensifying.
She’d stood in the garden and smoked among the feathery branches of a big unwieldy shrub her father had loved. There was bougainvillea too, growing up the back of the house, a moth-eaten banana palm, and a fig tree whose fruit was just ripening. She’d heard a whine and slapped fast and hard at her calf; the river drew the mosquitoes. She’d put out the cigarette then and gone inside to get a moon tiger, the coiled incense burner whose smoke was supposed to keep them away. Listening in the hall she’d heard Ma snoring at last, a soft, regular sound through the door. She’d been exhausted, poor old thing.
Sitting at the table in front of their empty bowls, Roxana had interrogated her mother as gently as she could.
‘Was it — one of those people trying to sell you something, Mamma?’
What had been starting to worry Roxana was not the stupid phone call, but Ma’s reaction to it, standing there in the gloomy hall in her slippers, about to burst into tears. The forgetfulness, the panic, the disproportionate anxiety over the whole business.
‘You know,’ Roxana had said, trying not to sound impatient. ‘Mobile phone, or internet or something?’
‘Oh, no,’ Ma had said then, and her face had seemed to clear. ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. She was — a friend of yours maybe? She called you by your name-’
‘Oh, Ma,’ Roxana had said, in despair, ‘they all do that. It’s a kind of trick. A selling tool.’
‘A trick?’ Her poor face falling all over again. ‘I don’t think so. She was upset. She was really upset.’
And now, twelve hours later, Roxana was as far from being ready for work as she’d ever been, her mouth sour from the cigarettes and lack of sleep. She stood outside the only bar near work that was open — the Bar dell’Orafo, an exhausted little tourist dive tucked into a subterranean archway behind the bank — and she considered. Considered how few friends she actually had, friends who would call her if they were upset. Maria Grazia was about it — and she’d spoken to Maria Grazia. Eventually.
Across the street, a garbage truck squealed and hissed into position beside two big dumpsters, the noise alone enough to drown out Roxana’s thoughts. The Bar dell’Orafo seemed pretty quiet, and looking through the window Roxana relented: it wasn’t such a bad little place. Who didn’t serve tourists, in this city? The pastries would be no good — only a handful of pasticcere worked through August, just as very few bakers did, and the very thought of those ovens blazing brought Roxana out into another sweat — but the coffee would be fine.
She went inside, ordered a glass of water and a cappuccino, no chocolate on top. Orlando, the wizened, moustachioed barman, made it with ridiculous care, pouring the milk to make an oakleaf shape in the foam. Either oakleaf or heart; if she’d been a different sort of woman she’d have got a heart, maybe, but Roxana liked the leaf better, anyway. Orlando was the middle of seven children, he’d once told her; not much elbow room in his life; perhaps that was why he was working through August, too.
The coffee was excellent, in fact. Someone standing outside the open door was smoking, and for a second Roxana thought, what the hell. The security guard can wait on the door until Val arrives, ten minutes late as he always is. Stay in this little bolthole half an hour, have another, borrow a cigarette, be five, ten minutes late to work. Life’s too short. Just for a second.
Maria Grazia had heard her inhale on the phone last night, when she had paused for breath herself in the middle of singing the praises of her Romanian forest and lecturing Roxana on how to take control of her life. And had started shouting down the line at her. Are you mad? Do you remember that bronchitis three years ago? Do you remember how many times you’ve told me that giving up was the best thing you ever did?
‘Maria,’ she’d said, and it might have been the nicotine rush but it seemed to Roxana that just hearing the words coming out of her own mouth had made her dizzy, ‘I think Violetta — I think Ma might be losing it. I mean-’ taking a deep breath, ‘I think she might be getting dementia.’
Maria Grazia had gone very quiet. When she spoke eventually Roxana could hear the strained note in her voice. ‘Over one phone call? Forgetting to take a message?’
‘It’s not just the phone call,’ Roxana had said.
And she had unconsciously lowered her voice. Standing in the garden, with the street barely ten metres away, the nearest neighbours no closer, Ma fast asleep upstairs, whom did she think would hear? The pungent smoke from the moon tiger glowing at her feet spiralled into the still, hot, damp darkness.
‘She says there was someone in the garden yesterday. Someone hiding in the garden, and she didn’t dare leave the house all day.’
Damn, damn. It hit Roxana all over again, in the humid coffee-scented gloom of the Buca dell’Orafo, with Orlando’s kindly, tired eyes on her.
‘Your mother still alive, Orlando?’ she asked.
He crossed himself. ‘Not for twenty-five years,’ he said with genuine sadness. ‘God rest her.’ Shrugged. ‘Worn out. She passed away in the middle of scrubbing someone’s floor.’
And Roxana nodded, thinking of her mother on her knees this morning. Better to go that way, she thought, though she didn’t say it.
Ma hadn’t wanted to tell her. Had skirted uncomfortably around it, unable to tell an outright lie but miserably aware of what Roxana would think. After twenty minutes of going round in circles, Roxana had been reduced to taking a tough line, demanding only yes and no answers.
No, she hadn’t gone out. No, it hadn’t been because she hadn’t been feeling well. Yes, she had run out of bottled water and milk and bread. Yes, the supermarket was open all day even though it was August but she hadn’t gone out. Yes, she just hadn’t felt like it, would Roxana please just leave her alone? She needed to go to sleep. No, she hadn’t seen anyone.
But she had heard someone. He had come to the door.
‘A man?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You said he?’
‘I don’t know. I–I just thought it was a man. I don’t know why.’
‘Did he say anything?’
Yes, that was it, the man had called through the door, Signora Delfino, I know you’re in there.
At the bar Roxana signalled to little Orlando, thumb and forefinger about two centimetres apart, for an espresso. He’d bobbed a tiny bow, a smile toothless behind the big moustache, and busied himself.