“I guess I'd do the same thing.” Saudade finishes his cup of vanilla and strawberry ice cream and throws the empty cup and the little spoon to the ground with a distracted expression. “If my husband was a fat retard that couldn't find his cock and spent all his time reading comic books.”
Manta is still trying to find clues as to how Wolverine ended up in a high-security government prison when Saudade snatches the comic from his hands. Manta looks up, surprised. Saudade grabs the recent issues of all the collections on the rack of Marvel comic books and puts them all on the store counter along with a fifty-euro note. The Chinese woman picks up the bill with a look of disgust. Saudade takes the change and the comic books and leaves the store.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Manta feels that flush coming to his face, the one that always comes to his face moments before the desire to break someone's nose springs to his mind. “I thought we'd already discussed you treating my things with respect. And my feelings about my things.”
Saudade heads off down the Roman street jammed with people under the midmorning summer sun. Manta manages to follow him by searching out the powder blue and white colors of Saudade's Umbro sweat suit. Occasionally bumping into groups of tourists equipped with sophisticated filming devices and provoking irritated reactions in several languages. The desire to break someone's nose begins to spring to his mind. Aníbal Manta knows perfectly well, since it is one of the main themes of his therapy, that the violence that he employs against others during his fits of rage is actually violence against himself. It's the same idea of oneself-as-one's-worst-enemy that characterizes many of Marvel's tormented superheroes, except that his personal case seems to lack all epic or admirable connotations.
Twenty minutes later, they both stop in front of the building where Raymond Panakian's apartment is located, according to the written instructions inside the brown envelope that Bocanegra gave them. Saudade examines the marble façade with its delicate restored detailing, which depicts nymphs in nightgowns and little overweight angels.
“He's a piece of shit filthy rich guy,” he says, and digs some ice cream remains out of his teeth with his finger. “I love sticking it to fancy pants shit for brains rich guys.”
Saudade and Manta go up the marble steps that lead to Raymond Panakian's apartment and stop in front of his door. Saudade unlocks the holster he wears hidden beneath his Umbro sweat suit. He closes his hand around the butt of the pistol and rings the bell. The Umbro sweat suit that Saudade wears is the official sweat suit of his favorite soccer club. A minute passes. Saudade and Manta look at each other. Someone is playing a classical melody on a piano in one of the neighboring apartments. Manta takes a set of picklocks out of his pocket and tries several of them in the lock before getting it open. The piano melody advances cheerfully toward an allegro loaded with arpeggios. They both enter and close the door carefully behind them.
“Mr. Fancy Pants?” asks Saudade, addressing the empty apartment. “Where are you, Mr. Filthy Rich Shit for Brains?”
“I told you what my therapist said,” says Manta. “About how the things you say make me feel. And be careful. Don't make so much noise.”
They both sit in facing armchairs in the living room. Saudade opens a Spider-Man comic book and begins flipping through it distractedly. A clock taller than Aníbal Manta himself fills the room with its rhythmic and vaguely soporific sound. Manta rubs his temples with his fingers and tries to remind himself of the idea that violence toward others is a mask covering violence toward oneself. He tries to remind himself about breaking the link between his emotional stress and his fits of rage and his therapist's oft-expressed conviction that he has the power and the tools to break it.
“What are all these posters?” Saudade points with his head at the wall behind Manta.
Manta turns and looks at the framed posters that cover the walls and which, in spite of being in Italian, are vaguely familiar. One of the posters seems to be a numbered list of twelve maxims.
“They're Alcoholics Anonymous posters,” says Manta after a moment. “This guy used to drink everything, even mouthwash, till somebody stuck him in one of those hospitals and they turned him around.”
Saudade nods with a neutral expression and returns to his reading. Half an hour passes. Manta reflects on the fact that his therapist often asks him to imagine his power to break said link as a symbolic equivalent to the superpowers of the Marvel superheroes he admires. The truth is that Manta isn't at all amused by his therapist bringing up his fondness for superhero comics. The truth is that he's unable to avoid perceiving a certain condescending and slightly mocking tone in the allusions his therapist makes to Marvel comics. Now Manta grabs a comic from the pile of superhero comics on the small table and tries to concentrate on reading. Saudade has started talking about the shame and disgust inherent in working with a fat piece of shit that reads comics.
“If you don't like soccer you can try tennis,” Saudade is saying as he flips through an Incredible Hulk comic. Manta can't help but notice that as Saudade turns the pages he is horribly wrinkling and folding the cover. “I know a place my boss used to play when I was a cop. It would definitely do you good to run a little. It's obvious you have to do something. You can't walk around looking like that. Chicks don't like it.” He closes the comic book and rolls it up to point it at Manta in a way that no comic book lover would ever roll up anything remotely resembling a comic book. “You think some chick wants to have a fat guy sweating all over her ass? Or wants to wait a half hour for some fat guy to find his cock under his beer belly? If I were you I'd sign up at a gym today. You can come to my gym if you want, but don't tell anyone that you know me. I don't want people to think that I have greasy friends like you. You'll see. Your wife'll quit screwing the neighbors when you lose forty-five pounds. There's nothing wrong with being big. The ladies like big guys, but not fat guys.” He shrugs his shoulders and carelessly tosses the comic onto the other comics piled up on the small table. “I go every week for a massage. In the same place my wife goes. The chick is crazy about me. The massage chick, not my wife.”
The reason why Aníbal Manta has never joined a gym, in spite of having considered the idea on several occasions when he was younger and having even gotten as far as the door of a gym, is his fear of being taunted and jeered at by all the slim and attractive gym clients. In therapeutic terms, the daily taunts and disdain seem to weigh on him much more than his potbelly. The piano in an apartment nearby is playing a melody that is powerfully reminiscent of the music in those scenes in horror films when something terrible is about to happen. Manta wipes the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. He would like to find some nonviolent, and therefore not therapeutically negative, way to tell Saudade to shut his fucking mouth for once and fucking all.
“Like this guy,” Saudade is saying, as he points to a character in an Italian Fantastic Four issue. “Why the fuck is he blue? What a load of crap. Have you ever seen a blue guy walking down the street? And this other guy.” He snorts and points at another character in a different panel. “This guy is made of bricks. And he's wearing underwear. Hey.” He examines the panel carefully and lets out a chuckle. “This brick guy looks like you. Did you see?”
Aníbal Manta is well aware, as is anyone in his line of work, that the only really effective forms of personal attack are not heralded by any type of previous warning or maneuver that can give any sort of clue about the attacker's intentions. Which is why the sequence of events that happens next in the living room full of Alcoholics Anonymous posters in Raymond Panakian's apartment in downtown Rome is the following: 1. Aníbal Manta gets up from his armchair and leans over the small table covered with comic books; 2. Aníbal Manta punches Saudade, breaking his nose; 3. Saudade stares at Manta with that expression of perplexity typical of someone who has just had their nose broken so fast that they had no time to do anything; and 4. A stream of blood comes out of Saudade's broken nose. They are both still there, standing in front of each other, Manta stroking his knuckles and Saudade looking at his powder blue and white sweat suit soaked in blood, when the door of the apartment opens and Raymond Panakian appears in the threshold. With his glasses and his turtleneck sweater. With his angular face that looks like a chess player from the Eastern Bloc who's just fled his country to take refuge in the capitalist world.