The checked Moon

himself protagonist validated the thesis of the professor about cannibalism as a cure for the curse of the full moon.

  Biop, a student of English literature at the Sorbonne, invited to his apartment Doriane Thomas, a classmate, for a revision in view of an examination. While she was repeating some verses, Biop rose from his chair, took an iron bar from his cabinet and repeatedly hit his friend's head until he was sure to have killed her. After having stripped her, he removed several parts of her body, including her right breast, a stretch of her lower right limb and part of the left buttock, for a total of three pounds of meat. He laid the amputated parts on the stomach of the corpse and devoured them within the hour. What many newspapers omitted were the numerous testimonies of Bernard Biop’s neighbours, and in particular the one provided by Alexianne Morel, who lived next door. The woman said she had heard many times howls come from the apartment of Biop, always at night. She had called them chilling, especially considering that the young man had no dog.

  At the time of his arrest, Bernard admitted that he would never have eaten the body of Doriane if they had not been alike. No one understood the meaning of Biop’s sentence, but for Seda those words corroborated his studies; that afternoon, in Paris, a werewolf had stopped his curse by eating the flesh of another werewolf.

  Without realizing it, Alida had started breathing heavily, resulting in little gasps that had attracted the attention of a woman sitting at the same table. She closed the book and looked through the window.

  The girls were gone and, seeing the spout of the fountain, she regretted not having bought a bottle of water from the bar at the entrance. She badly needed it.

  The woman had stopped staring and gone back to taking notes.

  Trying to dispel the mist on her next moves, Alida acted on instinct and turned for the second time the tome in front of her.

  Seda seemed to have changed expression; his eyes were more winking and his smile seemed to encourage her.

  To do what?

  For over twenty-five years she had believed she would never meet a being with her same blood.

  Now she knew two. And they were both underground.

  July 19 – 15:24

  "Do you remember the murder of Laparo?"

  "Yes, I was in prison when it happened."

  "The man who was killed was my husband."

  Riccardo did not say a word. It seemed to him that the world had stopped.

  Just out of the library Alida had made two phone calls.

  The first to her house, but nobody had answered. The second to the house of Raffaella, where Riccardo had answered immediately. He had told her that, after reading the note, he had taken a shower and left.

  Alida had an urgent need to see him and talk to him in person.

  "I have a meeting for a job in Piazza Verbano in a couple of hours," he informed her, "we might meet there."

  "What job? Riccardo, you said that..."

  "It's not what you think. It's a job like any other, I'll explain later. So, you know how to get there?"

  "Yes, I'm pretty close too."

  "Wait at the bar next to the pharmacy. I’ll be there-in twenty minutes."

  Alida arrived first and sat outside. When the waiter came, she said she was waiting for someone.

  "I didn’t tell you right away for fear that you would not want to see me anymore. We had been married for ten years. The night when he was killed he was with a younger girl. She died, too Thrown off a cliff."

  Riccardo took off his sunglasses and looked at her straight in the eyes.

  "Why did you decide to tell me now?"

  "Maybe because of what happened tonight."

  The waiter returned with his block for orders.

  "What are you having?" Riccardo asked, pushing back his chair from the table to cross his legs. Alida remembered his large blue eyes well, but not enough to avoid being astonished for how bright they were.

  Like those of a wolf?

  "Alida, do we order?"

  She absently leafed through the menu. "An orange juice" she said to the waiter.

  "Me too," Riccardo ordered "with two drops of vodka." Then he lit a cigarette, waiting for Alida to explain the reason for their meeting. She did not waste time. She was so direct that Riccardo, caught off-guard, had to ask her to repeat.

  "You heard me, don’t make me tell it again. I'm already making an incredible effort to talk about things I don’t even want to think about. You must have done some weird stuff to end up in prison anyway."

  "I don’t think this is the place for such talk," Riccardo said, looking around. He drew a breath of smoke and blew out a long trail that remained motionless for a few seconds, waiting to scrounge a ride from a gust of wind.

  "We're talking about it right here and now." The determination of Alida shook him up.

  "Very well, as you will," Riccardo gave up, "the answer is no, I never dug up a body. How did you even think about it?"

  "Well, you could just say that" Alida said. She had never thought that one day she could have been disappointed because a man did not dig holes to exhume corpses.

  "Let me finish," Riccardo said, bringing back the cigarette to his lips. "If you want to know if I ever managed to exhume one, that’s another matter."

  Alida's face lit up like a traffic light. "What’s the difference?"

  "I know someone who deals with such trades. Once I was caught in the middle, but not directly. I waited in the car."

  "Driver?"

  "Exactly."

  The waiter returned with the juices, put them on the table and gave the change to Riccardo, who had already put ten euro next to the ashtray.

  "Will you explain what is happening?" he asked when they were alone again.

  Alida, after a sip of juice, admitted, "I need to see my husband for the last time."

  "Christ... what are you saying..." Riccardo could not find other words. He drank half of the juice, glad he had asked to spike it.

  "Whatever you might have read in the newspapers, the truth about the murder has never been written."

  "And you think you know it?"

  "Yes"

  "Why?"

  "Because it concerned us, and nobody else."

  "Tell me."

  "I must first find a way to have his body in my hands."

  "It's crazy."

  "It's the only way to get rid of him."

  "What do you mean?"

  Alida took her time and answered Riccardo’s question asking him another one. "Do you believe in our future together?"

  Riccardo did not answer.

  "If I don’t do that for which I'm asking your help, it’s useless for us to keep seeing each other. It would amount to nothing, and not because I want to. I have to untie a knot I have been bringing along for a long time, and if I can’t, my life cannot evolve. There can be no happiness, nor you."

  Riccardo shook his head and looked at Alida, wondering what he liked most in that woman. Her resolve? The constant melancholy in her gaze?

  "Tell me something," he said, choking his cigarette in the ashtray. "The knot you’re talking about was already tying you back at the orphanage?"

  Alida's eyes grew bright.

  "Yes," she said.

  In his life, Riccardo had learned not to ask too many questions, and acted the same way that time also. One day a friend had told him, "Too many questions that most often are bothersome to answer. For this reason I almost always say yes, not because I agree, but so I no longer have to talk." It was his philosophy.

  "Okay, you seem determined. Let's cut to the chase." He rested his elbows on the table and put his face close to Alida’s.

  Another thing he had learned was that, before plunging headlong into such an undertaking, there were a few ways to tell if the person you're talking to is telling a load of bullshit. And the first was not getting carried away by emotions.

  "How much are you willing to pay?" he asked with decision.

  "I don’t know, I don’t know, you do the
price for me, it will be alright."

  "Me?" Riccardo laughed. Alida frowned.

  "Listen, I don’t really want to get back into trouble. I can give you a hand in organizing it, but I'm not even dirtying my finger."

  Alida looked down.

  "And I tell you already that you’re not going to spend less than ten thousand," Riccardo said, lighting another cigarette.

  "Ten thousand?" Alida repeated, staring at the glass. She did not seem worried by the figure.

  "Maybe even more."

  "Money is not a problem."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  Alida looked up.

  "I am speaking of the body."

  "At Verano, in the family chapel."

  Riccardo did not flinch. "When do you want to do that?"

  "Before the end of the month, do you think it’s possible?"

  "I have to talk to some people. If they still work as they used to, they will want an advance before the operation and the rest on the night they will act."

  "What people?"

  "What people are you expecting?"

  Alida corrected herself, "I meant, can we trust them?"

  "They trust people who make them happy. And it takes money to make them happy. Once you have paid them, you can rest assured that they will do whatever you want, faithful like dogs."

  Alida thought that her ex-husband, wolf for one half, was the proof that the saying should be banished forever from the man's mouth.

  Riccardo put the stub in the ashtray. "You know the scandal at the cemetery of Colturano when the remains of Paolo Di Piano where stolen?"

  "Shut up Riccardo, I knew you wouldn’t take me..."

  "I'm not kidding. How many bands of professionals you think are there in Italy dedicated to this area of crime?"

  "I have no idea. Honestly, I never considered the problem."

  "It would be strange otherwise. Anyway, less than twenty, it’s a tight network, everyone knows