“Of course, you’re thinking that Elisabetta has the right to do whatever she wants. But you’re wrong. A woman doesn’t outlive a husband like Alfredo Renal.”
I run my eyes along the edge of the table, and I count circles around the carafe where the ice cubes have all melted by now.
“Forget about her. Let me explain: I care about the foundation. And the foundation is held by Elisabetta and Rossi: two people who for very different reasons are both extremely fragile. Alberto, in particular, is on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”
I drop my gaze to my crossed legs.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you here any longer. The work on the garden is finished, isn’t it? More or less.”
I nod.
“I was sure you’d understand right away; you’re an intelligent man.”
Then I’m in the elevator with Hello the dog nipping at my ankles. I kick him out of the elevator. Mosca laughs. “Good, good, that’s the way: kick the past away, send it packing. Please do think about my hanging garden; I’ll keep bothering you until you design it for me. And keep in mind that I have lots of contacts.”
He stares at me. I stare at him.
“Compliments on your house,” I say. “It’s really phenomenal.”
As soon as I got into my car, I called Elisabetta; I was very agitated, and to avoid talking about the video while I was still working through my agitation, I told her that someday I’d tell her about my brother who died of an overdose.
“You’re upset — what happened?”
“Nothing, I’m just a little dejected. I miss you.”
“Are you in the city?”
“How can you tell?”
“I heard a tram going by.”
I hadn’t even noticed it passing. I wasn’t somebody who really noticed things happening around me.
“Is it hot?”
“Terribly.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes, talking makes it better.”
Talking never hurts. Talking hurts a lot.
I corrected myself. “Talking to you makes it better.”
“Why did you go to the city? Did you go to Mosca’s?”
“No, I had to meet the people from the bank.”
“But he called you; do you have an appointment to meet?”
“Yes, he called me …”
“And?”
“We’re getting together tomorrow or the next day — he still has to confirm it.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re still interested.”
“In Mosca?”
“In the hanging garden …”
“Yes, of course; it’s just a question of how much time I have … and how much I want it … I’m a bit tired.”
“What do you mean, you’re ‘a little dejected’? Why were you thinking about your brother?”
“I think about him. He comes to mind. I don’t know.”
And while I’m talking I imagine her sitting in the same perfectly square room where Giletti showed me what his laptop could do, and I imagine the words that Mosca must have used, months ago, to blackmail her. And her surprise and her fear when she saw my Mercedes appear in the video. And her searching for my address and phone number. And then our meeting, and her waiting for me to tell her what Conti meant to me. Her disappointment and her rage.
She promises to come back on Sunday: she’ll leave in the afternoon, as soon as Alberto goes to lie down, and she’ll stay till Monday morning.
Her promise keeps me going all the way home, and through the evening and the next day, and it makes me accept Witold’s invitation to lunch on Saturday, and makes me spend some time with Malik and his wife that evening. Malik tells me all the details about the little girl’s development, and he puts her in my arms, even though the baby objects. “How about Durga?” I ask; I didn’t see her because I came by the road. “I haven’t heard her barking recently.” Durga’s very angry, apparently. She met her husband, and she doesn’t like him. “Not a bit,” says Malik. And how about Kalki? “He’s a fake dog — he has no love in him,” says Malik. What happened, exactly? “What happened is that Durga got angry,” he repeats; Malik seems to want to leave things vague. But ultimately, he tells me: “He’s not the right one, and she knows it, and she goes for his throat.” She tried to kill him?! “Yes, if I don’t save him the husband is eaten,” he says, laughing. But isn’t Durga dangerous? Malik nods. “Durga is always dangerous.” I look at the portrait of Shiva gazing down on us from a wall calendar that hangs next to a portrait of the guru Nanak Dev Ji. I smile. Malik chuckles and says, “You’re happy because you’re envious of the fake dog.” Me, envious of Kalki? “You don’t want Durga to marry,” he says, and he laughs, proud of having something to make fun of me about. I laugh too.
At eleven the next morning I went out in my underwear to drink my coffee in the courtyard; I sat on the stone bench, closed my eyes, turned my face to the sun, and tried to calculate how many hours were left before Elisabetta might arrive. I pictured my nose as the point of a sundial, and my teeth as the notches measuring the hours; the math was easy, but I couldn’t do it because I was agitated. I started subtracting, but I couldn’t finish because I suddenly thought that I’d like to stage a little welcome ceremony: I could be waiting for the Ka in the courtyard, I could drag a couple of wicker chairs out from the house, I could prepare an aperitif and wear something elegant (would you like people to notice you?). When I opened my eyes, I saw a line of people coming around the bend in the road and toward my gate, and the absolute light of July, plus the reddish, incandescent halos in my vision — my eyes were still flooded with the yellows and oranges that the sun had splashed on my lids — made them seem like human torches marching up silently and desperately; I was gripped by panic and dashed into the house, where I locked the door tight and peered out through the shutters.
As they came closer, they fizzled out like embers, turning into simple black silhouettes. It was a strange group: three guys and two girls and three dogs, with small military rucksacks and clothes that were not quite clean but weren’t very dirty either — dark jeans and black T-shirts — and shaved heads; the dogs were short-haired mutts, black with a few white patches. It was as if they had purposely eliminated color from everything they had. They didn’t seem dangerous, but still I was irritated that they had seen me escape into the house. I slipped on a pair of shorts and went out.
They were standing in the middle of the courtyard. “Hello,” said the guy at the front of the line. “Can you give us some water?”
“Certainly.” I brought them three bottles of mineral water. First they drank straight from the bottles, and then they pulled two bowls out from their backpacks and gave the dogs a drink.
“Water from your hose would have been okay,” said one of the girls.
“At least for the dogs,” I said, making a little joke.
“We share everything with them, we don’t make any distinction. If you gave us champagne we would do the same thing.”
“Champagne I don’t have.” I was trying playfully to coax out a smile. But it didn’t work: they were restrained and serious.
I asked them where they came from. They had been protesting the war at an American military base, and now they were on their way back to the city. On foot? They traveled only on foot. How many miles did they cover each day? They didn’t keep count. And how many days had it taken them? They had stopped a few times along the road, wherever someone would put them up, and they had been traveling for three weeks, ever since the bombing ended.
I smiled and said that my brother was very happy the bombing had ended.
They gave me puzzled looks, and then they smiled; one of them chuckled and said, “But not you?”