When I went down to the port the next morning I noticed that the old gray Mercedes that had been parked on the square was no longer there. I couldn’t say exactly how long it had been gone because in my memory it had been parked there all the previous day. I could even remember having seen it when I left the hotel the night before. The sky was still covered that morning, several large and menacing clouds hung darkly over the village. The cat’s body was still in the harbor, floating in the gray water ten or so feet from the jetty. It must have bobbed back and forth like that all night in the same small perimeter, bumping limply against the hull of one vessel and drifting between others without ever making its way out to sea. Its prolonged stay in the water didn’t seem to have altered its state much, there was still no trace of decomposition or any visible lesions on its body, apart from about an inch-long gash on its right ear — the fur had probably been ripped open by crabs — exposing a small pale surface that looked like it had been emptied of blood. But what really struck me on closer inspection was that the fish head and the fragment of fishing line that had hung from its mouth the night before were now gone — as if someone had come down to the port to remove them during the night.
The following night at around two or three in the morning I left my room without a sound to go down to the port. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, as I knew from previous experience that the front door of the hotel was locked during the night, I started down the hall toward the reception area when suddenly, seeing a crack of light under the owners’ door, I stopped and pressed myself against the wall. Had they heard me coming down? Had they only just switched on the light? I stood like that for a moment flattened against the wall, and, still not hearing any noise from behind their door, I started down the hall once again and went into the dining room. There wasn’t a sound, the tables had been set for breakfast and the tablecloths shone weakly in the moonlight. On each table, beside the silhouettes of white cups upturned in their saucers, were little wicker baskets filled with small packets of butter and jam. I crossed the room without a sound and headed over to the sliding window. Looking for a moment over the deserted, shadowy terrace, I slid the window open very slowly and slipped outside.
It wasn’t the first time I’d left the hotel in this way and, turning around once more to make sure no one had seen me, I left the terrace by climbing over the little chain-link gate that led out onto the road. The moon was almost full in the sky, veiled in part by long wisps of black cloud that slid across its halo like lacerated strips of cloth. The wind blew in swirling gusts causing the treetops to bend and sway, and I crossed the main square diagonally while pulling my coat around me. A telephone booth stood in the darkness, weakly lit by the moon, and a white minivan I’d never seen before was parked a little way off in front of an abandoned house. There wasn’t a sound in the village, except for the regular gusts of wind sweeping through the leaves, and I headed toward the port, walking for thirty or so feet along the solid mound of dried seaweed on the edge of the main basin. I could see the port in front of me now, lit by the long beam of light from the lighthouse on Sasuelo Island that appeared fleetingly in the night and swept over the jetty for an instant before disappearing immediately beyond the horizon. I advanced silently along the dock with my hands dug deep in my pockets and looked at the dead cat floating in the darkness a couple of yards from the jetty. The beam from the lighthouse returned intermittently and lit up the cat’s body, and each time it came back the animal’s horribly contorted face appeared suddenly in the beam, transfixed for a moment under my eyes in a flash of light. I couldn’t remember ever having seen the mouth of a cat so wide open, and it intrigued me all the more because if, as I thought, someone had come to the port the night before to pull the fragment of fishing line from its mouth, he would have had to cross over to the animal in a boat and, coming up alongside it under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, he must have leaned over carefully to grab the cat’s body — its heavy, wet body that clung slightly to his hands — and pulled on the line protruding from its mouth with a sharp tug, so that now the cat’s mouth would have to show further traces of mutilation, it seemed to me, because as it came unstuck the hook must have torn its lips and palate. And just as I was leaning over the water to verify this hypothesis, my passport and the four letters I’d taken from the Biaggis’ mailbox a few days earlier all slipped from my coat pocket and fell into the water.
I immediately thrust out my arm to snatch them from the water, but I only managed to get hold of my passport and three letters, the last letter already carried out of reach by the current and swept slowly into the black water of the port. I looked around in all directions for a stick, but all I found was a little fishing net which despite my efforts was too short to reach the letter. Finally I gave up and remained for a long moment on the jetty watching the letter drift over the water, now bumping up against the cat’s flank and slowly coming to a standstill, an immobile white envelope floating in the night beside the cat’s body, on which a name and address written in black ink were softly illuminated by the moon, Paul Biaggi, Villa des Pins, Sasuelo.
Back at the hotel I climbed over the little chain-link gate and slipped noiselessly across the terrace. I’d been careful to leave the sliding window partway open behind me, and was getting ready to reenter the hotel through the dining room when I saw that someone had closed the window behind me while I was out. I tried to slide it from the outside by pushing with my hands against the glass, but it refused to budge and I was suddenly afraid, wondering for an instant if the person who’d closed the window hadn’t known I was outside, or if it was someone from outside the hotel who’d closed it deliberately to stop me from getting back in, someone consequently who was now in the village, who’d been watching me while I was at the port and who was perhaps still watching me that very moment, someone who probably left his house every night and who’d perhaps caught sight of me walking along the jetty one of the previous nights under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, and who, tonight as well, had waited for me to slip outside before closing the sliding window behind me to make sure I couldn’t get back in, and who was there right now, just a few yards away, immobile in the night behind the trunk of one of the trees on the terrace. Biaggi, that someone was Biaggi.
There wasn’t a sound on the terrace and long shadows stretched across the irregular flagstones, eerie shadows of leaves and branches swaying slowly in the wind. I didn’t move and tried to get my bearings in the half-light but I couldn’t see a thing, just the very dark, immobile forms of the tree trunks. Slowly I advanced toward the trees, walking straight ahead in the night. My shoes didn’t make a sound on the ground, and I descended the few steps that led down to the lower part of the terrace bordered by a little grove of tamaris. The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees all around and I walked on in the night, my eyes fixed on a low rock wall that was being built a little farther down the terrace. A small pile of bricks lay there in the darkness, and various mason’s tools had been left beside two large empty cement bags illuminated on the ground by a ray of moonlight. I walked silently up to the little pile of bricks and bent down to take a trowel from an old iron pail. Then, retracing my steps with the trowel in my hand, I crouched down at the foot of the window and, after taking another quick look over the deserted terrace, I tried to unblock the door by squeezing the blade of the trowel into the small opening between the window and the groove. I didn’t manage to, and left the terrace without turning around, walking slowly down the road. I didn’t know were I was going and walked aimlessly, the collar of my coat raised to protect me from the wind. Finally I passed the battered little sign marking the end of the village, and the road became even darker in front of me, rising up toward the next hamlet along the craggy contours of the cliff. Waves crashed in surges against the savage rocks below, and I continued to walk along the cliff watching the long beam from the lighthouse on Sasuelo Island appear from time to time and sweep over the surface of the water before disappearing over the horizon. I walked on and in a few more minutes I saw the wall of the Biaggis’ house appear before me in the night.