Of course she believed it. She believed it so completely that she repeated the special offers of my telephone service provider. There is no cousin to pick up, but in about fifteen minutes we’ll go to the track where the regional train passes, and a slight push will be enough, you might even slip by yourself but I’ll help you, happily, you’ll end up under the train, and they’ll find your foul body mangled and almost unrecognizable. Almost. I’ve managed to stick a couple of Grandfather’s coins in your purse and a card from the restaurant he always went to — it will be easy to connect you to him. I’ll be set, and so will you, basically, you poor derelict, you’ll have stopped suffering. You’ll die knowing you’ve done the world, and especially me, a favor by getting rid of that old man. He terrorized my parents for a lifetime with his despotic claims, he made my father a worm, with no balls and no will power, my mother an unstable neurotic who kept herself going with drugs and clinics, he sent my brother off to the United States. He allowed me, it’s true, a comfortable life, but it was always as if he were giving me a handout, as if I should be content like a dog that picks at a bone with a piece of rubbery meat attached; that’s how I felt, that old man was throwing me crumbs the way you throw birdseed to the pigeons, he thought he could humiliate me with impunity, at his pleasure, with that sadistic, distant little smile. Now he’s lying in the enormous living room of his gloomy but (it’s true) very beautiful villa, all those super-sophisticated alarm systems were of no use to him, I’ve always known the maid’s day off, she’s been with him for decades, more a slave than a housekeeper. I showed up at the gate timidly, saying I was with a friend, half a bottle of sleeping pills in his usual glass of port (incredible how alcohol enhances the effect of benzodiazepine), and everything unfolded naturally, without a hitch. He’s lying beside the desk in the big living room, I don’t know anymore how many floors or how many rooms the villa has, set in its vast park, cared for by a crowd of gardeners, I’ve never been interested, maybe that will go to my mother, but I know for certain that all the real estate, the stocks, and the money in the bank go to me (my brother’s had a trust fund for years). Mama can keep the villa, she and I never see each other, I can’t stand her crises and her sense of victimhood, and I could never live in the same place where he lived, ate, burped, peed, and where now he lies with bits of brain matter scattered over the expensive carpet. Drowned in a pool of red blood. Oh, no, really, I couldn’t.
“Excuse me, have you looked at your watch?”
I was lost in my thoughts. Grazia wipes her mouth and points to my wrist. She’s right, it’s time.
“Gracious, it’s late. Shall we go to the track?”
She nods, sways as she gets up, perfect, she’s tipsy, swaying, and more ravaged-looking than usual. The waitress must have finished her shift because, with my fifty-euro bill, I pay another girl, one I hadn’t noticed, and she doesn’t seem to really notice us either; luckily I put on this scarf. I take the change and head to the exit, I check the track on the board, she’s dawdling, I take her arm, we can’t be late, and in fact we aren’t late, the timing is absolutely perfect, she holds on and smiles at me, she stinks of poverty and empty hopes, and I can’t wait to be free of her.
“I told you my daughter must be fourteen by now? It’s true I don’t have a maternal instinct, but sometimes I wonder how she is, if she resembles me, what sort of life she has, maybe she even has a boyfriend, what do you think? Oh shit, I’m boring, eh, always talking, I don’t shut up for a moment, you’ve offered me a chance to change my life and I’m annoying you, wait, I’m going to trip, don’t hurry so much, please, not so fast. I thought your cousin always goes in first class, here I am, I’m coming, how beautiful Tiburtina is in the evening, it looks like it’s wrapped in velvet. Look, the train’s coming. Which car is your cousin usually in?”
I ignore her, I have to concentrate. The spot is perfect, I feel a drop of sweat beading my forehead, but I have taken a tranquilizer, I’ve got to maintain perfect self-control, I can’t make a mistake now, or it would all be in vain. She’s looking at the train, her back’s to me, she keeps asking about my cousin, I have to shut her up, it’s time, just a little push, I reach out my arm...
“Don’t move, stand still!”
They twist my arms behind me, they’re hurting me, the train’s coming, my heart is pounding, but what the fuck is happening? My plan, my project?
“What’s happening, sister, the police, but what in the world? Tell me...”
There are four of them, they’ve put handcuffs on me, they lead me out of the Tiburtina station, pushing me, separating me from her. Grazia disappears from view, I stagger, I feel lost, then I recover and confront them: I try to say that they don’t know who they’re dealing with, they cannot even REMOTELY imagine who they’re dealing with, that I belong to one of the most important families in the city. They aren’t listening to me, it’s disgraceful, the whole station seems to be blocked off, everyone’s looking at me, I’m a freak to all these derelicts, an amusing sideshow. An itching sensation spreads along my back. I was supposed to carry out an act that would allow me grandeur for the rest of my days, and I’m reduced to an ordinary criminal, even that despicable Bulgarian whore looks at me and laughs, she roars with laughter, showing broken yellow teeth, Grazia was right, she was really right about the Bulgarians, about the Romanians, about this woman who took advantage of her good faith and robbed her, oh, she was right, because Grazia is my friend, no, she’s not human waste, I never thought so, I had respect for her, you shit whore, you hurt her, I’m yelling that she hurt my friend and shouldn’t have, then I spit on her, and I don’t care if the cop on my right gives me a painful slap, my family’s lawyer will take care of her, a prince among lawyers, who will come and get me out of this mess, the spit hits her in the face, when I see Grazia I’ll tell her, I want her to be proud of me; the truth is, I’ve never had a friend like her, not even in high school. Okay, I wanted to push her under the train, help her slip, drunk as she was, but I would have done it unhappily, the circumstances were beyond my control. I’m almost glad it didn’t happen, I miss her company, let’s hope that they don’t put me in isolation, that they let me stay with her. I’m not very talkative myself but I really like listening to her, and she’s never quiet, I unfortunately have this voice that talks to me inside and a different voice that comes out of my mouth and says almost nothing, so I’m confused, but she, Grazia, she’s tough, someone who knows her business, she even got Biagio to give her some shoes, thanks to a simple handjob, a hundred points to my friend. I could never make grandfather understand how much I needed the increase in my monthly check, a bonus and that apartment, I could never explain to him that he HAD to get it for me, otherwise he was going to shatter my life, shatter everything I had, I insisted, I talked, I insisted; instead, life is so simple, a handjob at the right moment is all you need, all you need is knowing what to use when you have to do something, and when you have to do it you do it, she taught me all that, I MUST see her again, hear her talk...
“You’re in trouble, signora, serious trouble.”
Night descends over the tracks at Tiburtina and if you watched carefully you would see that it really looks like velvet.
We’re in an anonymous room at the central police headquarters in Rome. A policewoman is talking to a woman who, it seems, is forty-two years old and is wearing a scarf, along with high-heeled sandals, a low-cut sweater of a light color, under which can be seen a pale bra, and a peasant skirt. Concealed behind a tinted window, several people observe the scene: the lawyer for the woman, whose name is Selvaggia Torri Livergnani; the vice-commissioner; one of the policemen who found the body of the grandfather, the well-known Count Edoardo Torri Livergnani; one of the policewomen who made the arrest; and a psychiatrist called in by the lawyer. The vice-commissioner speaks first: