A phone rings in a nearby room. Faldini is brought up short, coming back to the present. He casts a worried glance towards the door and then to his accounts books. The morning is flying by say his eyes now, eyes in which Spino also catches an intimation of constraint and embarrassment. Well then, one last thing and he’ll be off. If he’d just like to take a look at this photograph. This man sitting under the porch here, could it be Cordoba? Does he recognize him? And the boy? The accountant holds the photo delicately between thumb and forefinger. He holds it at arm’s length, he’s farsighted. No, he says, it’s not Cordoba, although, odd, it does look very like him, maybe it’s his brother, though he doesn’t know if Cordoba had a brother. As for the boy, he never saw Carlito.
Faldini is toying nervously with his pencil now. He seems distracted. Yes, well, he wouldn’t like to have been misunderstood, you know, belongings, they’re always so slippery, these belongings of ours, they move about, they even get the better of your memory. How could he not have remembered? In any case, now he remembers perfectly. He gave that jacket to Cordoba. He gave it to him as a present one day. Cordoba was always badly dressed, and he was a decent person.
13
“They say I’m mad because I live alone with all these cats, but what do I care? You haven’t come about the gate have you? The front gate. I had to have it repainted because a city van scraped it right across trying to turn round. It happened a while ago, you should know better than me, shouldn’t you? Anyway, of course I remember Carlito. But I’m not sure if he’s the boy in your photograph. You see, the boy in the photo looks too blond to be him, but then you never can tell. The Carlito I had here was a cheerful boy. He loved all the little creatures you find in the earth: beetles, ants, fireflies, green-and-yellow caterpillars, the ones with the sticking-out eyes and the furry bits….”
The cat curled up in her lap shakes itself and with a jump bounds away. She gets up too. She still has some photographs, she never throws anything away, she likes to keep things. From a drawer she takes out some little boxes, ribbons, rosary beads, a mother-of-pearl album. She invites him to look through the album with her. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. There are yellowing photographs of surly men leaning on fake cardboard parapets with the name of the photographer stamped under their feet; and then an infantryman with an unhappy expression, this with a dedication written at an angle; then a view of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, an old woman sitting on a wicker armchair, a view of Florence with carriages in the streets, a church, a family portrait taken from too far away, a girl with white cheeks and hands pressed together, memento of a first communion. There are some empty pages, a dog with melancholy eyes, a house with wisteria and shutters under which a feminine hand has written, scent of a summer. On the last page a group of children have been arranged in pyramid shape in a little courtyard. The ones in front are crouching, then there’s a row standing, and finally another higher row — perhaps the photographer had them climb on a bench. He counts them. There are twenty-four. On their right, standing and with her hands held together, is Signorina Elvira as she was then, although she really hasn’t changed that much. The children have been arranged too far from the lens for their faces to be recognized with any confidence. The only one who might in some way resemble the face he is looking for is a little blond boy in the front row. His body has the same posture, chin propped up on one hand with the elbow resting on his knee. But definite identification is impossible.
And does Signorina Elvira remember the boy’s father? No, not the father. All she knows is that he was dead, the mother too, all the boy had was an uncle. But is he sure he was called Carlito? She seems to remember Carlino. Anyhow, it’s not important. He was a cheerful boy. He loved the little creatures you find in the earth: beetles, ants, fireflies, green-and-yellow caterpillars…
And so here he is again wandering about in search of nothing. The walls of these narrow streets seem to promise a reward he never manages to arrive at, as if they formed the board of a game of snakes and ladders, full of dead ends and trapdoors, on which he goes up and down, round and round, hoping that sooner or later the dice will take him to a square that will give the whole thing meaning. And meanwhile over there is the sea. He looks at it. Across its surface pass the shapes of ships, a few seagulls, clouds.
14
There are days when the jealous beauty of this city seems to unveil itself. On clear days, for example, windy days, when the breeze that announces the arrival of the south-westerly sweeps along the streets slapping like a taut sail. Then the houses and bell towers take on a brightness that is too real, the outlines too sharp; like a photograph with fierce contrasts, light and shade collide aggressively without blending together, forming a black-and-white check of splashes of shadow and dazzling light, of alleyways and small squares.
Once, if he had nothing else to do, he used to choose days like this to wander round the old dock area, and now, following the dead-end sidings the wagons use along the quay, heading back to town, he finds himself thinking of those days. He could catch the bus that goes to town through the tunnels of the beltway, but instead he chooses to walk across the docks, following the twists and turns of the wharves. He feels he wants to dawdle slowly through this grim landscape of railway lines that reminds him of his childhood, of diving from the landing stage with the tires along its sides, of those poor summers, the memory of which has remained etched inside him like a scar.
In the disused shipyard, where once they repaired steamships, he sees the hulk of a Swedish vessel lying on its side. It’s called the Ulla. Strangely, the yellow letters of the name somehow escaped the fire that devastated the boat leaving enormous brown stains on the paint. And he has the impression that this old monster on the brink of extinction has always been there in that corner of the dock. A little further on he found a battered phone booth. He thought of phoning Corrado to put him in the picture. Anyway it was only right to let him know, since to a certain extent he owed the meeting to his friend.
“Corrado,” he said, “it’s me. I managed to speak to him.”
“But where are you? Why did you disappear like that?”
“I didn’t disappear at all. I’m at the docks. Don’t worry.”
“Sara was after you. She left you a message here at the paper. She says they’re extending their vacation for three days, they’re going to Switzerland.”
A seagull, which had been wheeling about for some time, landed on the arm of a water pump right next to the phone booth and stood there quietly watching him while at the same time hunting through its feathers with its beak.
“There’s a seagull next to me, it’s right here next to the phone booth, it’s as if it knew me.”
“What are you talking about?… Listen, where did you find him, what did he tell you?”
“I can’t explain now. There’s a seagull here with its ears pricked, it must be a spy.”
“Don’t play the fool. Where are you, where did you find him?”
“I told you, I’m at the docks. We met at the Boat Club. There are boats for rent and we went out for a trip.”
Corrado’s voice dropped, perhaps someone had come into the office. “Don’t trust him,” he said. “Don’t trust him an inch.”