His life had suddenly become all about salami and bread and cold cuts for lunch and white shirts and jokes with the ladies who came there every day to do their shopping. Nico had often wondered what had happened, where Marco had found that thing which had stopped his heart beating too fast and given him the calm and serenity of someone who has realised something that other people haven’t. Nico had wondered where he had found that thing; if it was somewhere in the South Seas, or in the mountains of New Zealand, or if quite simply he had found it in the ham he cut day after day. Nico had even promised himself that he would ask him one day where he had found that thing. But then it always turned out that he never did anything, it always turned out that even just the idea of asking the question made him feel stupid.
When Marco arrived, Nico was sitting on a moped reading the last pages of the newspaper. He had got up late, and after chatting a bit with his parents had come down into town and slowly made his way to Vinaino’s, where he had arranged to meet Marco, stopping first at a news-stand, then at a café, where he had had a nice breakfast sitting out in the sun.
“Hey,” Marco said.
Nico put down the newspaper and looked at his friend, raising his eyebrows. “Hey,” he said.
“So?” Marco asked.
“So what?”
“Are we going to stand here all day like idiots, looking into each other’s eyes?”
Nico looked at him a moment longer, then he smiled and got off the moped. “Let’s go,” he said.
They walked along the street for about fifty metres until they got to a small restaurant with a wooden façade and four tables outside on the pavement, on a platform.
A distinguished-looking lady who looked a bit out of place there greeted them as if she had known them for ages and seated them at one of the outdoor tables. They sat down opposite each other and ordered a bottle of wine.
“House wine will be fine,” Marco said.
Nico passed his hand over his face. “How are things?” he asked.
“Oh, not bad. Usual stuff.”
Nico gave a half-laugh. “And Anna?”
“Fine. She’s at home with the kid. She wanted to come and say hello to you, but she was dead tired.”
“Why?”
“We were up late last night.”
“Doing what?”
“That’s our business. And you?”
“No, I wasn’t up late last night. I had dinner with my parents and talked a load of crap. When I arrived, my father was naked in the living room. What do you think that means?”
“How you mean, ‘naked in the living room’?”
“I don’t know. When my mum opened the door, I saw him zoom upstairs stark naked.”
“Your dad.”
“I swear.”
“I thought he even wore a tie to take a shower.”
Nico gave another half-laugh. “Apparently not.”
“And what the hell was he doing walking naked around the house?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Who knows, maybe your folks were …”
“All right, I get the picture, let’s drop it.”
Marco gave a half-laugh. “Poor guys, though.”
“Why?”
“They can’t even do what they want to in their own house without some pain in the arse turning up.”
“Yes, like their son.”
“For instance.”
“It’s funny, though.”
“What is?”
“I always wondered how they’ve managed to stay together all these years.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Now it doesn’t seem so strange any more.”
“Just because you saw your dad run upstairs naked?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Nico took a piece of bread and put it in his mouth and looked Marco in the eyes, trying to sort out what he wanted to say.
“It’s as if I’d realised that my father was actually quite a different person, someone who runs around the house naked for instance. That means by now he could be anyone, even the kind of person who’d manage to stay with my mother for thirty-five years.”
Marco looked at Nico for a couple of seconds with raised eyebrows. “Go to hell,” he said.
Nico smiled and turned to the lady, who had approached their table with a notepad in her hand. They both ordered roast loin of pork with potatoes, then sat sipping their wine.
Nico played with the breadcrumbs for a moment. “Piero has started acting like a monkey,” he said.
Marco was silent and still behind his big sunglasses.
“I’m telling the truth,” Nico said.
“What do you mean, ‘like a monkey’?”
“This summer he was with his sister and apparently one day he just bent double and started acting like a monkey. At first they all laughed, but then he wouldn’t stop. That’s why I’m here. Maria called me yesterday and asked me if I could come and visit him, to see if he was getting any better.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I saw him yesterday afternoon.”
“And how is he?” Marco asked, taking off his sunglasses.
“Impressive. He’s just like a monkey. He grunts and slaps his head and crouches on the floor playing with pistachio shells.”
“Pistachio shells?”
“Yes, he piles them up and makes shapes. I joined in for a while.”
“You and Piero played with pistachio shells?” Marco’s face twisted in what looked like a grimace of pain.
Nico nodded. “Yes.”
Marco looked at him for a couple of seconds. “Are you sure you’re not bullshitting me?”
“I’ve never been more serious,” Nico said, and started playing with the breadcrumbs again. “The strange thing is, when Maria called me I assumed it wasn’t true. Or rather, not that it wasn’t true: as if it was something amusing; something weird and cool to talk about. But when I went in that room and saw him …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He really seemed like a monkey.”
“But what the hell does it mean?”
“I don’t know what it means, Marco. I haven’t the faintest idea. I only know it was quite a blow.”
After lunch Marco offered to take Nico to Piero’s house. They climbed up into the hills in the old blue Fiat 500 that had once been his mother’s.
“Sure you don’t want to come in?” Nico asked when they were outside Piero’s gate, just before getting out of the car.
“I don’t think so,” Marco said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Nico nodded.
“Say hello to them for me,” Marco said.
“Sure,” Nico said.
“And don’t worry.”
“OK.”
Nico shook Marco’s hand, got out of the car, watched his friend drive away, then walked to the gate.
He put his hands on the grey, slightly blistered paint. Once that gate had been green, then it had been brown, and finally grey like now. Nico remembered the few times over the years when he had seen the gate all orange, covered in anti-rust paint. That was something that had always made him feel good. It was as if that orange paint gave objects a kind of grandeur. Ever since he was a child, he had told himself that he, too, would like to paint something orange one day.
For a while, he stood there, hanging on the bars of the gate, moving his hands over the little blisters in the paint. In places, rust was starting to show. He looked through the bars. The drive rose between the trees until it disappeared round the bend. Somewhere there, at the end of the drive, were Miriam and Maria and Piero and that mass of unspoken things that burnt like hot coals.