But then where was Biaggi that night, I wondered — because I was certain Biaggi was in the village that night — if he wasn’t at home? I’d left the house and returned to the hotel following the road along the cliff. The moon was now almost completely veiled in the sky, and standing on the road I looked at the hotel in front of me in the half-light. Its crude white plaster gave the stone a coarse, rough appearance. On the roof, beside the large television antenna that pointed over toward the communications tower on the mountain, the extinguished letters of the neon sign towered up vertically in the night, supported by a crisscrossed matrix of thin metal rods. Four identical shutters lined the façade, and above them two more shutters, square and much smaller, seemed not to belong to rooms but to a sort of alcove nestled under the rooftop. Then I remembered that the night before when I went up to my room after dinner I’d noticed a little stairway at the end of the hall, making me think that perhaps there were more rooms on the top floor, and that I’d been intrigued by a sound coming from upstairs, a monotone, metallic sound echoing strangely in the halls — as if someone were banging away at a typewriter in their room.
Because in fact Biaggi was at the hotel. If he was in Sasuelo that was the only place he could be. He must have taken a room a few days before my arrival with the intention of working there in complete isolation for a spell. Which meant not only did he know I was in Sasuelo, he’d also no doubt been keeping a close eye on me since my arrival, observing all of my comings and goings all the more easily as he himself was staying at the hotel. Because of course Biaggi knew what room I was in, and in fact it was he who’d been hiding from me these past days, only leaving his room when he was sure he wouldn’t run into me in the halls, while all the while I’d been certain I was hiding from him and taking the same sort of precautions to avoid going anywhere near his house when I left the hotel. And then it occurred to me that I was probably not the only one to leave the hotel during the night, that Biaggi also left the hotel once night had fallen, and that one of these last nights he must have seen me on the jetty at the port under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, and perhaps he’d even seen me the previous night, because I’d also been outside the night before. But if Biaggi was at the hotel, I said to myself, if Biaggi was at the hotel right now he must certainly have seen me leave tonight, and he was the one perhaps, yes now I was sure it was him, who’d closed the sliding window behind me to stop me from getting back in — and then my thoughts came back to my son in the hotel. The façade was perfectly silent, its plastered walls covered with a grayish efflorescence. All of the shutters were closed, with the exception of one room on the second floor. Was that my room? Hadn’t I closed the shutters before I’d gone out? The wind blew up in gusts and all of a sudden I felt very cold, as if the chill night air had enveloped me in an instant, because I was practically certain I’d closed the shutters before leaving. I was all alone in the night on the edge of the road, and I walked furtively along the façade until I got to the owners’ room where I started to rap against the dark and silent little shutter, softly at first, then louder, and, still getting no response, I finally called out. A long silence followed and then, as I was just about to call out once again, the shutter opened slowly and the owner’s silhouette appeared in the window, wearing an old undershirt and a wrinkled sweat jacket that hung limply over his chest. I could see his wife as well, lying in bed in her nightgown at the back of the room, and I didn’t know what to say. The owner looked at me in silence, one hand on the windowsill. Go around to the front and I’ll let you in, he finally said, and he slowly closed the shutter in front of me in the night.
I’d gone to wait for the owner at the top of the low flight of steps leading up to the entrance, and after a moment I saw him trudge down the hall to come open the door. His pajama pants hung down his thighs and his step was slow and cumbersome. He’d left the door of his room open behind him and switched on the yellowish night-light in the hall, which cast a pale shimmer of light onto the walls of the ground floor. He crouched down at the base of the glass door to unlock it and, opening one of the double doors to let me in, he told me that my son had been crying, that he’d heard him crying a little while ago. I looked at him without moving. And now, I asked in a low voice, he’s gone back to sleep? He didn’t answer right away, and I examined his face in the feeble light. I don’t know, he said, I didn’t go up, I thought you were with him. I started immediately up the stairs to my room and, as I arrived on the landing of the second floor, I heard a door close in the hotel and the light went out almost simultaneously in the hall. A time switch then kicked in and started reverberating in the darkness, and there was no sound in the hall apart from its regular mechanical buzz.
When I opened the door of my room I immediately saw my son lying in his travel cot in the dim light. The little blanket and sheets were all tangled and he was holding his stuffed seal against his chest. His breathing was slow and peaceful and his hairline was covered in a few tiny beads of sweat. I had an urge to take him in my arms, but I contented myself just to caress his forehead softly, standing beside him for another moment and watching him sleep. He must have had a little nightmare and woken up in the middle of the night, and now he was sleeping with his mouth open, my little guy, his face relaxed and his eyes shut. After covering his chest with his little blanket, I went over and lay down fully dressed on the bed. I stayed like that on my back and didn’t move, my eyes open in the darkness. There wasn’t a sound in the hotel, and I thought that the port must also be completely silent now, its smooth, quiet waters undulating peacefully in the half-light with the deceptive tranquility of dormant water.
II
It was a little past nine thirty when I left my room the next morning. Apparently all of the guests had already left the hotel because the hallway was perfectly silent when I started up the little stairway leading to the top floor. It was a very narrow staircase that doubled back on itself and led up to a long, dark hallway covered with threadbare carpeting. Four doors led onto the hallway, the first of which was partway open revealing a sort of walk-in closet where several chairs were stored in the darkness beside an old mattress lying on the ground. The other doors, closed and silent, must have belonged to guestrooms because there were white plastic numbers glued to all three. So there were rooms on the top floor after all, numbers fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Still standing in the hallway I looked at the three closed doors thinking that Biaggi was staying in one of these rooms. Because Biaggi, now I was sure of it, must have come to stay at the hotel a couple of days before my arrival. In fact he’d always needed such isolation to work, and even if I couldn’t be sure he’d already taken a room in Sasuelo in the past, I did know he had a habit of working in hotel rooms in other cities for more or less prolonged periods of time. But above all, I thought, where had Biaggi been last night if not at the hotel? Because last night — this I knew for sure — Biaggi hadn’t been at home.