Meanwhile the boy with the guru on his magazine gets up dreamily and pays his bill. Going out he doesn’t deign to give anyone in the room a single glance, as if he had too much on his mind. The two big blonde women are repairing their make-up and two cigarettes with traces of lipstick on the filters burn in their ashtray. They leave chuckling, but no one shows any special interest in Spino, nor in the paper he’s reading. He raises his eyes from the paper and his gaze meets that of the spry old man. There follows a long and intense exchange of glances and Spino feels a light coating of sweat on the palms of his hands. He folds his paper and puts his pack of cigarettes on top, waiting for the first move. Perhaps he should do something, he thinks, but he’s not sure what. Meanwhile the girl has finished clearing the tables and has started spreading damp sawdust on the floor, sweeping it along the tiles with a broom taller than herself. Signora Egle is going through the day’s takings behind the counter. The room is quiet now, the air thick with breath, with cigarettes, with burnt wood. Then the spry little old man smiles: it’s a trite, mechanical smile, accompanied by the slightest jerk of the head and then another gesture that tells all. Spino sees the misunderstanding he’s been encouraging, immediately turns red with embarrassment, then senses, rising within him, a blind anger and intolerance towards this place, towards his own stupidity. He makes a sign to the girl and asks for his bill. She approaches wearily, drying her hands on her apron. She adds up his bill on a paper napkin; her hands are red and swollen with a coating of sawdust sticking to their backs, they might be two chops sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Then, giving him an insolent look, she mutters in a toneless voice: “You’re losing your hair. Reading after eating makes you lose your hair.” Spino looks at her astonished, as though not believing his ears. It can’t be her, he thinks, it can’t be. And he almost has to hold himself back from attacking this little monster who goes on giving him her arrogant stare. But she, still in that detached, professional tone, is telling him about a herbalist who sells things for hair, on Vico Spazzavento.
17
Vico Spazzavento — Windswept Lane — is the perfect name for this blind alley squeezed between walls covered with scars. The wind forms a whirling eddy right where a blade of sunshine, slipping into the narrow street between flapping washing seen high above against a corridor of sky, lights up a little heap of swirling detritus. A wreath of dry flowers, newspapers, a nylon stocking.
The shop is in a basement with a swing door. It looks like a coal cellar, and in fact on the floor there are some sacks of coal, although the sign on the doorpost says: “spices, paints.” On the counter is a pile of newspapers used to wrap up goods sold. A little old man dozing on a small wicker-covered chair near the coal got to his feet. Spino was first to say hello. The old man mumbled a good evening. He propped himself up against the counter with a lazy and seemingly absent expression.
“Someone told me you sold hair lotions here,” Spino said.
The old man answered knowledgeably. He leant over the counter a little to look at Spino’s hair, listed various products with curious names: Zolfex, Catramina. Then some plants and roots: sage, nettle, rhubarb, red cedar. He thinks red cedar is what he needs, that’s his guess at first glance, though one ought to do some tests on the hair.
Spino answered that maybe red cedar would be okay, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what properties red cedar has.
The old man looked at him doubtfully. He had metal-framed glasses and a two-day growth of beard. He didn’t say anything. Spino tried not to let his nerves get the better of him. Calmly, he explained that he hadn’t checked out his hair type, it was just brittle. In any case, he doesn’t want a commercial product, he wants a special lotion. He stressed the word special, something that only the shopkeeper knows the formula for. He has come on the advice of people he trusts. It’s strange they haven’t mentioned it to him.
The old man pushed aside a curtain, said to wait and disappeared. For a second Spino caught a glimpse of a poky little room with a gas-ring and a light bulb switched on, but he didn’t see anybody. The old man started to speak, a few yards from Spino, in a whisper. A woman’s voice answered, perhaps an old woman. Then they fell silent. Then they began to speak again, their voices very low. It was impossible to catch what they were saying. Then came a squeak as of a drawer being opened, and finally silence again.
The minutes passed slowly. Not a sound came from beyond the curtain now, as if the two had gone out by another door to leave him waiting there like an idiot. Spino coughed loudly, he made a noise with a chair, at which the old man reappeared at the curtain with a look of reproach. “Be patient,” he said, “another few minutes.”
He came out round the counter and went to close and bolt the swing door that opened onto the street. He moved somewhat cautiously, looked at his customer, lit a small cigar, and returned to the back room. The voices began to whisper again, more urgently than before. The shop was almost dark. The daylight coming in through the small barred window had grown dimmer. The sacks of coal along the walls looked like human bodies abandoned in sleep. Spino couldn’t help thinking that the dead man might also have come to this shop once and like him have waited in the half-dark; perhaps the old man knew him well, knew who he was, his reasons, his motives.
Finally the little man came back all smiles. In his hand he had a small brown bottle of the kind they use in pharmacies to sell iodine. He wrapped it up carefully in a sheet of newspaper and pushed it across the counter without a word. Spino looked at it now, paused, smiled perhaps. “Hope you’re not making a mistake,” he said. “It’s important.”
The old man released the bolt on the door, went back to sit on his seat and started on the accounts he had previously broken off. He made a show of pretending not to have heard. “Off you go now,” he said. “The instructions are on the label.”
Spino slipped the little bottle into his pocket and left. When he said goodbye, the old man answered that he had put some sage in the lotion too, to give it some fragrance. And Spino had the impression he was still smiling. There was no one on Vico Spazzavento. He felt as though time hadn’t passed, as though everything had happened too quickly, like some event that took place long ago and is revisited in the memory in a flash.