We stood side by side in the garage doorway, our shoulders and faces slightly wet, watching the rain fall in the garden without saying a word. The grounds across from us were very dark and the gate at the end of the gravel driveway was still open. Far off we could see the rain falling onto the road where it formed into two rivulets and flowed slowly over the asphalt onto the shoulder. The lawns were soon completely soaked, and as the earth must already have been saturated with water from all the showers in recent days, in just a few minutes a large puddle had formed across from us on the driveway into which the rain clattered down, splashing water all around. The man stood beside me without moving and finally took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and, without a word, held it up to offer me a cigarette. Then, with the same gesture I’d already seen him use that morning, he slowly brought the pack to his mouth to pull out a cigarette with his lips. He searched for a lighter in his pocket and gave me a light before lighting his cigarette. This could go on for a while, he said, taking a long drag, this could go on for a while. He moved off toward the back of the garage and, passing the upturned fishing boat, he went and hunched over beside a big wooden box, no doubt a toolbox, from which he took out two pairs of pliers and a screwdriver, putting them on the ground beside him. I’ll be back, he said picking up the tools, and, opening the little metal door at the back of the garage, he disappeared inside the house.
I stayed alone in the garage and looked for a moment at the little metal door that he’d just closed behind him. The garage was very dark, and the upturned fishing boat took up almost all the room. Diverse objects lay here and there in the dim light, two or three spades in a pail, some tools, a couple of flower pots lining the walls. The downpour hadn’t let up and the rain continued to fall onto the roof of the garage, reverberating on the corrugated metal above my head. The gravel driveway looked almost like a swamp by now, with dead leaves drifting in puddles all around, while a curtain of rain continued to beat down on the lawns. Ten or so minutes had already gone by since the man had disappeared and I could now hear sounds in the house, indefinable sounds of steps and objects being moved, then the steps came closer and the man reappeared in the garage to say that I might as well wait out the rainstorm inside the house. I joined him in the back of the garage and he led me through into the cellar, shutting the door behind me. But wasn’t it a mistake to follow him? Because Biaggi was in the house perhaps. Biaggi was in the living room of the house right now.
There was almost no light in the cellar, a single naked bulb hung from the ceiling, and I followed the man into the kitchen where some old sheets of newspaper were spread out to protect the floor. The door under the sink was open, revealing an iron bucket full of dirty, stagnant water under a bent water pipe. The man collected the tools and tidied up the newspaper, which he rolled into a ball and threw into the garbage before turning off the kitchen light and heading into the living room. I followed him down the hall, where all of the lights were off and all of the shutters closed. When we got to the living room he walked over to the bay window in the darkness and pulled several times on the cord to raise the metal blind, slowly letting the gray light of day into the room. Even when the blind was completely open the living room was still very dark. We could have switched on the light but neither of us bothered to do it. I’d gone over to the fireplace and was now standing behind the couch beside the little sideboard containing the aperitif bottles. Our wet shoes had left traces on the floor, two long streaks whose separate itineraries you could follow across the room, one heading to the fireplace and the other straight over to the window where the man was still standing pensively, a pair of muddy old tennis shoes on his feet, watching the rain fall in the garden without paying me any further attention. I took a few random steps, my hands in the pockets of my coat, lingering for a moment in front of the bookshelf. Then, while the man continued to stand at the window with his back to me, I walked silently over to the telephone and bent down discreetly over the little transparent window of the answering machine to look at the tape inside. It had turned since the last time I’d seen it, there’d been one call without question, no more, a single call, the call I’d made that morning in all likelihood, but no one had listened to my message.
I’d sat down in one of the leather armchairs facing the couch to wait out the downpour, and I remained sitting there in my coat, with my legs crossed and my hands in my pockets. The man hadn’t moved from the window, he’d lit a cigarette and was smoking it while looking outside, only leaving his place to come flick his ash in the little hexagonal ashtray that lay across from me on the coffee table. He bent down for a moment right in front of me, his jacket almost brushing against my face, before immediately taking up his post again at the window. A very soft light still pervaded the living room while the muffled sound of the rain continued to reach us from outside, lessened somewhat by the thick windows. I picked up an old magazine that was lying on the coffee table and flipped through it absently with one hand, looking just at the photos or an occasional headline. Finally I put it back down and, setting it on the table just as the man was coming over once again to stub out his cigarette, I asked him why Rafa wasn’t there. He took the time to put out his cigarette in the ashtray and, lifting his eyes for a moment, he told me while returning to the window that Rafa had gone to hospital for heart surgery. A vasectomy, he said, indicating the location of his heart on his shirt, where he started to trace precise little drawings with his finger to give me a quick overview of the operation. It’s not very serious, he said, but he’s got to rest, you understand. I said that yes, I understood.
I’d gone over to join him, and now we were both standing at the bay window looking out. It was still raining outside and the window was dotted with a network of raindrops, some of which trickled slowly down the pane. A bit of condensation had formed, a slight veil of vapor behind which the garden furniture was visible on the terrace. The old gray Mercedes was parked a little farther off down the driveway, the doors and windshield dripping with rain, and I looked at it pensively from behind the window. The man didn’t move beside me, he was also looking outside, and it struck me then that the old gray Mercedes must have been his, that in fact it was his car, and that each time I’d seen it in the village he was the one who’d been driving it, and that each time I’d seen it parked somewhere he was the one who’d parked it. And that he was also the one who collected the mail from the Biaggis’ mailbox and put it inside the house. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. Could it really be him? Could it be, to sum it all up, that the Biaggis had been absent from Sasuelo ever since I’d arrived, and that every time I thought I’d detected a sign of their presence, it was in fact this man’s presence I’d sensed?
After dinner that evening I went out on the terrace for a breath of air. There were still a few guests in the dining room when I got up from the table, and I walked over to the window, sliding it back softly and leaving the hotel. The sky was completely clear over the treetops, a limpid and transparent blue-black, cloudless and washed by the rain. A long, untroubled puddle of water stretched out on the ground, and I advanced over the terrace, leaving the low rock wall that was being built behind me on my right. I walked on until I got to the edge of the terrace, from where the jetty and the sea were visible behind the grove of tamaris. The water was calm and silent, with the stillest of waves lapping up against the crevices in the rocks, while silvery wrinkles of moonlight reflected off its surface in the distance. I leaned for a moment against the low wall at the edge of the terrace and looked out at the water, no longer thinking about a thing. It was then that a small light bobbing imperceptibly in the port caught my eye. It looked like a lantern, the quivering ray of a lantern lighting up a silhouette in a boat. I looked more closely and thought I could see who it was, not that I recognized his features at all, it was more the cut of his figure and his massive back and shoulders now covered by a thick jacket.