“It’s a while since I felt so relaxed. I’ve had so many bad times and never anyone to give me a hand. I’ve always had clowns instead of men around me, good-for-nothings with no balls who ruined my life, and now their ghosts chase me, their voices echo in that shithole where I live, have you ever seen ghosts? Have you ever been pursued by irritating voices? No, eh, no, right? You’re respectable, you’ve got money and an education, why would you ever be persecuted, you’re a person who’s got a nice life. I’m just unlucky, and, shit, now my nose is running, this damn allergy.”
She sneezes three or four times, opens her purse and rummages for something, with the back of her right hand she wipes her nose, with the left she’s still rummaging around, then, exasperated, she empties the purse on the table. The waitress turns for a second, hearing the sound of objects falling on Formica, but fortunately some customers come in. Two Tampaxes, a glass bead necklace, and two rings that seem like a child’s toys or old prizes from an Easter egg tossed out who knows when, a crumpled package of Winston blues, a red pen with a chewed cap, a felt-tip pen, a bunch of receipts, cards for masseuses, fortune tellers, and cleaning agencies, a wallet and plastic document holder, three matches, supermarket makeup, spilled and half-empty, and a tiny cracked mirror. I think of my expensive foundation in its precious case, tiny grains that make the skin opaque and smooth. I think of my wallet with all the slots for credit cards. I make a rapid mental comparison to reassure myself. I keep my hands away from all that stuff. Finally she finds the package of Kleenex and dumps everything else back into the purse that’s leaning against her feet. I feel a sensation of retching after seeing her worthless things, horror that stinks of rot and sweat, of age and negligence, the traces of her devastated life, the weave of small useless things that mark her desperation. I breathe in and out and it passes. I can’t let myself go, not now. I order another carafe of wine and two slices of pizza.
“Yes, good idea, I wanted to tell you I was hungry, you could have asked me before, when the allergy attacks I get all puffy, my eyes tear, I sneeze, I can’t taste flavors anymore, but now it’s better and I’m really hungry. What, are you eating too? You’re really eating too, keeping me company, you won’t leave me to eat alone like a dog, like the maid who eats in the kitchen? You’re not showing how you despise me, the way everyone always does?”
I nod.
“Good, pizza, then maybe a sandwich. Look there. You see that woman over there? She’s Bulgarian, from a town in the countryside, I don’t know the name. I met her here once, she’s a prostitute, and a client brought her back to the station, she’d been beaten, her face was swollen, she had a black eye, her head bleeding, she was staggering, it was also lovely, the tracks in the early morning, with all the wires, the gray sky, the trains standing there, and only a few souls waiting, it was lovely, and I must have been there watching and smoking a cigarette, waiting for the train to Termini to go home; but, not even thinking about it, I helped that Bulgarian shit whore who was screaming in pain, I got her a pizza, I helped clean her wounds, she told me she needed something strong to drink and I ordered a brandy for her. I paid, goes without saying. You should have seen her, she was indecent, in a miniskirt with orange sequins stuck to her thighs, no underpants, and black boots with very high heels, threatening, like her expression, well, I didn’t think about it, I took care of her and fed her and she, that shit whore who should go back to her disgusting country, she cheated me out of the little money I had when I went to the bathroom. Then they say... they say so many things, that you shouldn’t be a racist, that we need solidarity, but what solidarity are we talking about?”
I order a bottle of water and another carafe of wine, still so long to wait, hours that pile up on one another, in the midst of this construction, it’s already started, that’s going to make this hideous station something difficult to imagine, for the future, glass everywhere. I let my mind wander, trying to picture commercial areas, a radical cleaning, police everywhere insuring the safety of middle-class people, luminous spaces for shopping — it will be beautiful someday. Now it’s depressing, the way her words are depressing, the way even her tone of voice is somehow depressing, a melancholy that enters the bones and chills you. Luckily I just need a little patience, just a little patience and this agony will be over.
“I come here the same hours she does, the Bulgarian whore, not that I do the same work, let me be clear, my dear — I’ve given it away for money only three times in my life and it was a question of real desperation, but I defy anyone to say that Maria Grazia is a whore, I defy anyone to even think it. I come from a town in the south, it’s true, my town is a dead town, all the young people have given up, thrown in the towel. My father’s still there, that slobbering drunk, and four of my six brothers and sisters, but I haven’t seen them for years, that’s my past, I fled as a child. I’ve had two husbands, three, no, five children, given up first to foster care, then adoption, eh, my dear, some people are born with the maternal instinct and some aren’t, and now I’m alone, I’m not hiding these things, but I don’t want anyone to associate me with those people there, those dirty tramps who come to steal bread from us Italians.”
I nod again, I don’t know why but I do. I have the illusion, agreeing with her, that time is passing more quickly. Time has a strange rhythm in this place, it’s like the flow of time in a hospital. The squalor is suffocating, choking, a squalor that, strangely, you soon get used to, it tames you, drugs you, bringing you back to an almost animal stage.
“This pizza is good” — chewing, she drips tomato on her shirt, she doesn’t notice, and I wipe it off with a napkin — “really, they warmed it up, hey, what are you doing? Oh, sorry, oh, oh, okay, no problem, sister, happens to me all the time. I spill things on myself, I know it’s because I’m greedy, I’m hungry, and I don’t always have something to eat, I’ve struggled sometimes to get a meal, my life is a mess, my mother died when I was eight, shit, order something else to eat, look at that slutty Bulgarian, her lipstick is smeared, it’s making me lose my appetite.”
She won’t lose her appetite; at my grandfather’s house she cleaned out the refrigerator after she killed him with that sort of modern statue that he bought at auction in London, the old fool. He was so pleased when he came back from that auction with those horrible, expensive pieces. He was especially proud of that statue — to me it was repulsive the moment I saw it, but I pretended to appreciate it with him. I make a great effort to maintain a certain style of life: I knew that the will was all in my favor, I knew roughly the amount, I mentally calculated what I would soon get my hands on, but I felt an uncontrollable rage for all that money thrown away on a stupid statue. Grazia grabbed it and bashed his head in. She could’ve used whatever she wanted, that wasn’t a problem, all she had to do was kill that disgusting old man who had stopped supporting me, and then plant her fingerprints everywhere. Besides, she didn’t like interference. She urged me not to get involved, and I didn’t, she said that she knew her business. I can’t say she was wrong.