I was still lying on my bed in the darkness and I thought that the man wouldn’t be long in coming back now, and that as soon as he got back to the port he’d no doubt also start looking for me in the village, and that, not finding me, he’d probably come see if I wasn’t at the hotel. I got up and quickly put on my clothes, then I crossed the room silently and opened the shutters. It was still just as gray outside, rainy and bleak, and I looked out at the empty road leading up toward the Biaggis’ house. There wasn’t a sound in the village, and I stayed there at the window, hidden in a fold of the curtains, keeping my eyes fixed on the hotel entrance whose front steps I could see down below through the corner of the window. My son was now awake, I could hear him babbling away behind me in the room, and I turned around now and then to watch him play in his cot, amusing himself with the old plastic sandal we’d found on the beach a couple of days earlier, trying in vain to fold it in half, his face concentrated and his little lips pursed with effort. Then, still just as concentrated, looking thoughtful and serious in his white pajamas, he started smacking the sandal against the bedpost. And it was then — when I’d stopped watching the hotel entrance for just a moment — that someone knocked on the door of my room.
There was someone behind the door, someone was now standing in the hall behind the door to my room. The door wasn’t locked, I knew perfectly well that it wasn’t locked because I hadn’t taken the time to lock it when I’d come back in, and I stood there in the room watching this immobile door, which wouldn’t be long in opening. Another knock came and I didn’t move. Then I heard the sound of a key in the lock. Why was the key turning, why was the key turning if the door wasn’t locked? Was someone trying to lock me in? Was someone trying to imprison me in the hotel to prevent me from escaping? When the door had been locked from outside — I was locked in now — I saw the knob turn forcefully and heard someone try to open it from outside, but the door resisted. Immediately the key turned in the other direction and the door opened. The owner stood there in front of me in the shadow of the hall, one hand still on the doorknob and a bucket and broom at his feet, and, seeing that I was still in the room, he apologized and closed the door again right away, saying he’d come back a bit later to do the room. After that I stayed in all morning and no one else appeared, all I heard was the muffled sound of footsteps in the hall several times.
In the early afternoon I decided to go over to the Biaggis’ house while my son was having his nap. The hotel was completely silent when I left my room and, coming downstairs, I saw a suitcase against the wall near the entrance that must have belonged to a guest who was just arriving or departing. I lingered in the hallway for a moment peering through the glass doors, fearing that someone could be posted there to see if I left the hotel, but apparently there was no one on the road. In the abandoned lot across the way I saw that the lone donkey had come up to the fence and was staring over at the hotel. All of a sudden it gave its head and mane a violent shake, after which it came slowly back to its initial position, gently nodding its head. I watched it for a few more moments, then left the hotel and started up the road toward the Biaggis’ house. I’d almost left the village and was now at the bend in the road beside the dump. The wire cage was now empty, and the only things on the ground were several scraps of garbage that must have fallen from the bags when the dump truck passed, lying there beside an upturned coffee filter whose contents were spread out in the grass nearby. I continued along the cliff and looked out at the sea stretching off into the distance, strangely calm around Sasuelo Island. The sky was completely dark now on the horizon, overcast by large rain clouds that the wind was slowly pushing toward the coast. The road had entered a dense grove of trees and was still deserted in front of me, and I’d just started along the wall of the Biaggis’ property when I saw that the gates were open.
I slowed down a little, stopping a little away from the entrance when I saw a man in the garden — massively built, with broad shoulders and closely cropped gray hair, the man who’d been in the telephone booth that morning. He hadn’t seen me, and was busy raking the dead leaves in the garden. There was a little pile of dead leaves beside him on the lawn, and I noticed that the old gray Mercedes was parked on the gravel driveway a little farther off. The shutters were still closed along the front of the house but the garage door was now open, and in the distance I could just make out the contours of an upturned fishing boat and several jerry cans containing oil and gas against the far wall. The man still hadn’t seen me, and continued to rake the lawn without suspecting I was observing him. I stood there at the entrance to the property, my body hidden in an angle of the gate, watching the man move back and forth in the park with the rake in his hand, and, following him with my eyes, I couldn’t help wondering if this man who seemed so at home in the garden wasn’t simply the caretaker. Everything seemed to point to it, in fact, and yet for all I could remember the Biaggis’ caretaker, the man who took care of the garden and guarded the house in their absence, wasn’t this man in front of me but a very friendly old guy who I’d seen once or twice when he came to water the garden in the summer and who everyone had always called Rafa, without my ever knowing if that was his first name or his last name, Mr. Rafa.
I’d taken a couple of steps forward and the man had seen me by now. He stopped raking when I entered the property and watched me come over to him without moving. When I got to where he was it was clear he was waiting for me to say something. I nodded hello and he nodded back, and I explained I was a friend of the Biaggis’. He went back to raking with another nod, as if this simple sentence had satisfied his curiosity as far as I was concerned and allowed him to resume his work in peace. We exchanged another couple of words and, as I remained standing beside him on the gravel driveway looking up at the closed shutters of the Biaggis’ house, I felt that my presence in the garden didn’t bother him at all. We didn’t really converse, I just stood there next to him and watched him rake, from time to time lifting a stray leaf with the tip of my shoe, putting it mechanically back in the little pile on the grass, and, as he continued to rake a little further down the lawn, he finally said that this wasn’t the first time he’d seen me, that he’d already seen me walking in the village with my son, and wondered who I might be. You’re the one with the baby, right? he asked. I said that yes, I was the one with the baby. Yeah, I’ve seen you around, he said, and I noticed then that he had a little stain on his pant leg, a little grease stain that was quite recent and that hadn’t had the time to dry, which made me think — I don’t know why — that it could be boat motor oil. The sky was increasingly menacing over the property and soon the first drops of rain started to fall in the garden, very large droplets that were still spaced far apart, suggesting that a major cloudburst was on its way. Gusts of wind blew the clouds across the sky, shaking the leaves in the trees, and in less than a minute the rain came pounding down, suddenly and brutally, and started to flood all of the paths in the garden as we rushed off the lawn and ran to take shelter in the garage, bending down under the pouring rain.