THE MONKEY
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Nico was busy playing Subbuteo. He was expecting an important call from his agent and while waiting had decided that instead of wasting the afternoon he would get out that old green box from the back of the wardrobe. It had been a birthday present from his sister a couple of years earlier. He had never learnt how to play Subbuteo, and ever since he was a child he had envied those friends of his who spent their afternoons bent over a plywood surface and the next day at school talked about their matches as if they’d been playing in the World Cup finals. That green box, those plywood shelves and those little men on their tumblers had always aroused in him the same embarrassing envy as table football. You’re not really a man if you can’t play Subbuteo and table football, he had always thought, and it was a complex that had somehow stayed with him all his life.
When his sister had given him the Subbuteo set, Nico’s first thought had been that there was some kind of sinister ulterior motive behind the gift — but then he’d thought, Who cares? and had again promised himself to learn as soon as he could. But the box had ended up at the back of the wardrobe. When you get down to it, we are what we are. That afternoon, though, had seemed like a good time to do something about his old resolutions.
Nico walked nonchalantly to the low table on which the phone stood, without taking his eyes off the Subbuteo mat and those tiny coloured players.
“Hello, Angela?”
“Hi, Nico. It’s Maria.”
“You’re not Angela?”
“No, I’m Maria.”
“Shit, I was hoping you were Angela.”
“Sorry about that. I can try and play her part if you like, even though I don’t know her. Who is she?”
“My agent. I’m expecting some important news.”
“I’m sorry I’m not her.”
“Yes, so am I.” He thought for a moment. “Sorry, but Maria who?”
At the other end of the line, Nico heard the hint of an unconvincing laugh. “Piero’s sister.”
“Piero’s sister?”
“Yes, you remember Piero, your friend Piero?”
“Yes, of course, it’s just that … Never mind. How are you?”
The first time Nico had seen Maria she had been half-lying on a small wicker sofa in her garden, reading a thick paperback novel. She was wearing a light yellow dress that moved slightly in the breeze, and a wide-brimmed straw hat shaded her face from the sun. She looked like something out of a story by F Scott Fitzgerald. Nico had immediately fallen in love with her, and for years Maria had been his erotic fantasy, the inaccessible, almost mystical creature everyone encounters some time during their adolescence.
“Not bad,” Maria said. “And you?”
“Oh, not bad. You know how it is …”
“Of course,” Maria said with a smile in her voice.
Nico thought it unlikely that that almost unreal creature with all those eccentric friends and that glittering life really knew how it was, but when you get down to it that’s the kind of thing people say.
“How’s work?” Maria asked. Some people had a particular way of saying the word “work”, an imperceptible change of rhythm which made it sound ridiculous.
“Pretty good. I’m expecting a call from my agent, but, you know, everything’s going along OK.”
“It must be interesting work.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nico said. “Better than working down a mine, though.”
Maria gave a half-laugh, Nico gave a half-laugh, and then they both let that trite remark drift off into silence.
“Listen, Nico, I need to talk to you about my brother.”
“Yes, of course. What is it, has he run away again? I haven’t seen him. Haven’t even heard from him for about a month-and-a-half. I know you two were supposed to be going on holiday together.”
“Yes … No … The thing is … Listen, Piero has started acting like a monkey.”
“Started doing what?”
“Acting like a monkey.”
“Like a monkey? I’m sorry, how do you mean?”
“I mean some time this summer he started bending double and grunting like a monkey. It was funny at first, we thought it was a game, but then he wouldn’t stop.”
Nico said nothing for a long time. Odd coloured images of his friend passed in front of his eyes, followed by images of monkeys, but he couldn’t seem to fit the two things together.
“Nico, are you still there?”
“Yes, it’s just that …”
“Yes, I know,” Maria said.
Nico was silent again for a few seconds. “It’s just that I find it hard to imagine.”
“Yes, I realise that.”
The thing Maria probably didn’t realise was that what Nico found really strange wasn’t this business with Piero but the fact of being on the phone with her. It was as if the monkey story had immediately been relegated to some surreal, comical region which had little to do with reality.
“I was thinking perhaps you could come here and see him.”
Nico sank into the armchair and almost laughed.
“Nico, are you there?”
“Yes,” Nico said, trying to hold back his laughter. At that moment, the idea of going to see a friend of his who was acting like a monkey seemed ridiculous, nothing more. And his sister’s grave tone even more so. “I’ll come as soon as I can,” he said. “I just need to sort out a few things here.”
“Great, we’ll be waiting.”
Nico put down the phone and sat there looking at the receiver. After a few minutes, he took an old, chewed-up orange pencil from the little table next to the armchair, one of the ones he liked to draw with from time to time. He stuck the pencil between his teeth and looked around the room, lost in thought. Every object he rested his eyes on seemed to have some more or less direct connection with Piero.
It was as if after a while some people got inside you and somehow remained forever part of what you were and what you did, even if you hardly ever saw them. It was as if despite himself that boisterous friend he’d practically grown up with but now almost never saw was an integral part of what he was.
Nico looked at the telephone again, lifted the receiver and dialled a number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Angela, it’s Nico.”
“Hi, Nico.”
“Any news?”
“Nico, you called me half-an-hour ago.”
“Yes, I know. Any news?”
“No, no news.”
“Nothing from Star Films?”
“Were you expecting news from somewhere else?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“No, there’s nothing from Star Films. Are you planning to call me every half-hour until we hear something? It could take days, you know.”
Nico imagined Angela sitting comfortably in her leather armchair in her splendid office overlooking the Tiber. He could just see her sitting there with the receiver wedged between her head and her shoulder, making bored little noises and sarcastic faces as she spoke, especially if her secretary was there. Angela wasn’t exactly what you’d call friendly, but there was something about her and her sarcastic manner that Nico couldn’t do without. She was one of those overweight women with their wombs full of cement who at some point in their lives have decided that a good business deal is better than sleeping with a man. One of those emancipated women who can’t cook and don’t read books, but who go around with big Hermès scarves round their necks and save face by reading the arts pages of the weekend financial paper. Basically, Nico wasn’t supposed to go to bed with her, and all Angela had to do was get him as much money as she could, which was why the fact that she had a womb full of cement and put a good business deal before anything else wasn’t such a bad thing when you got down to it.
“No, listen, I just wanted to tell you I have to go home for the weekend. Is that going to be a problem?”