Lucio inserted a brief pause before uttering that last phrase, and he emphasized it ever so slightly with his voice. A self-deprecating irony is, I think, just one more of the screens he sets up between himself and a world that is invisible to him. Putting himself on an equal footing; making sure that he can’t be seen by a world he can’t see.
“Sure, let’s have that coffee. You’re such a pain in the ass.”
He hears my door click shut again and my footsteps coming across the landing. He swings his door open a little wider and steps back from the threshold to let me by.
“And you’re an ungrateful turd. I’m going to make you a shitty cup of coffee, just to teach you a lesson.”
We walk into his apartment. No concession has been made to the visual. The fabrics were all chosen for their tactile qualities and the colors are haphazard at best. Not the furniture. When we first met, a year ago, Lucio told me that he took that apartment because the layout was very similar to the place he used to live. The furniture was arranged exactly the way it was in the other place, and the routes through the apartment were memorized without difficulty.
Or almost.
As he likes to say, in his situation, there’s always an almost.
I go to the table next to the French doors. I look out the curtainless windows. The woman with the German shepherd is gone. There’s no one in the street.
We’re alone, outside and in.
Lucio moves as if he can see, in his little private domain, free of corners and sharp edges. He vanishes into the small galley kitchen, and I hear him clattering around, with the cabinet doors and the espresso pot. His words drift out to me as I take a seat.
“Here’s an easy one, since you haven’t slept all night.”
“Shoot.”
“Agriculture in remote Chinese dynasty. Three and four equals seven.”
It’s a cryptic clue. You’ve got to work from that definition to find two words that, when joined together, create a third word that is the sum of their letters. For this one, I don’t even have to think it over for a second.
“Agriculture in remote Chinese dynasty: Far Ming. Farming.”
This time, I’m the one who can hear the smile in his voice, even without seeing it.
“Well, that one really was too easy. Or else I have to say Bravo because it’s your name and because you deserve it.”
It’s a routine that we’ve developed over the months, the two of us. We invent and trade cryptic clues instead of confiding in each other. Someday, one of us will invent an especially intricate clue and the other one will guess it. Maybe that day we’ll be able to say that we’re friends. But for now, we’re just a couple of people well aware that we’re only sharing a couple of hours of prison yard time.
The coffee announces its arrival with the throaty gurgling sound of the espresso pot. Lucio emerges from his little kitchen carrying a pair of mismatched demitasse cups and a sugar bowl. I don’t help him because I know he wouldn’t want me to. All the confirmation I need is the fact that he’s never asked.
He sets them down on the table and vanishes again. When he comes back he’s carrying a two-cup espresso pot and a couple of demitasse spoons. He sets them on the table too, and then sits down across from me.
“All right, Hazel. Go ahead and pour the coffee.”
“Is that a cryptic clue?”
“No, it’s an order.”
This is the one concession that Lucio makes to his blindness. I’m no longer doing him a favor, I’m performing a task. I pour coffee into the two cups, then I add sugar. Two spoonfuls for him, half a spoonful for me. I set his cup in front of him, making sure he knows where it is from the sound. He extends his hand, grips the cup by the handle, and savors it unhurriedly, while I empty mine in two gulps, even though it’s scalding hot. That’s why Godie calls me Asbestos Mouth, for once without relying on the relentless fishtailing zigzags of his personal jargon.
I light a cigarette. Lucio smells the smoke. He turns his head to a point that my bad habit has identified for him.
“Marlboro?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I used to smoke. But I quit.”
He takes his last sip of coffee.
“You might not believe it, but there’s no pleasure in smoking a cigarette if you can’t see the smoke pouring out of your mouth. Evidently there’s a bigger aesthetic component to bad habits than you might think.”
Once again, his voice is veiled in a layer of irony.
“That could be a cure for smoking. Take someone and blindfold them until they lose the urge.”
He smiles.
“Or until they have to get plastic surgery to fix the nose they’ve scorched by trying to light cigarettes with their disposable lighter.”
His smile broadens at the idea. Then a mental connection makes him change the subject.
“Speaking of blindfolds, apparently on Sunday Lady Luck lifted the rag over her eyes and cast a glance in our direction.”
“How so?”
“Down at Michele’s bar, the one next to the church, somebody bought a lottery ticket that won 490 million lire.”
“Fuck. Nice win. Do they know who it was?”
Lucio moves confidently and well in all the public places he frequents. Because of his physical handicap and his personality, he manages to win people’s trust. And so they tell him things.
“Not for sure, but there are a few clues. There’s a guy, name of Remo Frontini, hard worker, decent fellow, lives over in the public housing project. I think he works in a factory. He’s got a boy, a kid about eight, and I give him guitar lessons for a pittance, because he has a gift and because music is a good way to keep him off the streets. You’ve probably seen him leaving my apartment, I’d imagine.”
In fact, I never have, but that hardly seems material to the purpose of the story. Lucio continues without waiting for an answer. He probably thinks the same thing.
“I have to say that what little he pays me comes in when it comes in, if you take my meaning.”
“That’s mighty good of you.”
“Yes, it is. But that’s not the point.”
He breaks off for a minute—I imagine so he can rethink what he’s about to say and make sure of the conclusions he’s drawn.
“Yesterday he came by with his son and he was almost giddy—very talkative. Unusual thing for him; he doesn’t usually talk much. He assured me that before long he’d pay all his back fees, and that from now on he’d pay on time. He even asked me what the best make would be if he decided to buy his son a new guitar.”
After another brief pause, Lucio concludes this little personal investigation of his.
“Throw in the fact that Frontini frequents Michele’s bar and that every week he plays the Totocalcio soccer lottery, and the facts speak for themselves.”
I think it over. Maybe for just a second too long.
“When something changes your life, it’s always difficult to conceal it.”
Lucio lowers his head. The register of his voice drops by a tone or two.
“I don’t know why, but it strikes me that these words are more about you than our lucky lottery winner.”
I get to my feet and leave this statement hanging in the air before it can find the strength to turn into a full-fledged curiosity and therefore a question.
“Time to go, Lucio,” I sing out in playful English.
He understands and lightens up.
“Anybody who can turn his hand to farming after an all-nighter deserves the bed that awaits him.”
I head for the door.
“Thanks for the hospitality. You certainly are a man who keeps his promises.”
The question I’m expecting comes just as I’m pulling the door open to leave.
“Which is to say?”
“That was one shitty cup of coffee.”
I swing the door shut behind me on his laughter, cross the landing, and a second later I’m home, in a six-hundred-square-foo
t apartment that’s the mirror image of Lucio’s. Just a few short steps, but it’s another world. Here you see colors, posters on the walls, books on a bookshelf, green plants.
A television set.
I take off my jacket and toss it on the couch. I empty my pockets and lay their contents on top of the chest of drawers. Cigarettes, wallet, pager, the rumpled money I pried out of Daytona. A blinking red light on the phone tells me there are messages on my answering machine. I push PLAY, and as I unbutton my shirt I listen to the rushing hiss of the rewinding tape.
Then, the voices.
Beep. A euphoric voice.
“Ciao, Bravo, it’s Barbara. I’m on the French Riviera. The yacht is fantastic and this guy is so nice. He wants me to stay a couple more days, so I told him you could talk to him about terms. Thanks. Kisses, tall dark and handsome.”
Beep. A cracking, damaged voice.
“This is Lorella. I need to work. I really really do. I’m desperate. I just don’t know where to turn anymore. Please, call me.”
Beep. A voice hidden in tears.
“Bravo, it’s Laura. Something terrible has happened. I went out with Tulip. I couldn’t tell him no and he beat me up again. I’m afraid. One of these days that guy’s going to kill me. When you hear this message, call me. I don’t care what time it is. Talk to you soon.”
My shirt flies over to join my jacket on the couch. The cleaning woman can take care of putting them away. I move from the living room and head down the hallway to the doors of my bedroom and bathroom.
As I walk, I kick off my shoes and reflect.
Barbara is an incredible young woman. Infatuated with the big city, head over heels in love with the good life, and pragmatic in a way that’s typical of someone who got only one gift from destiny: a spectacular physical appearance. We understand each other because we’re very similar in certain ways. We have an agreement and we get along fine.
Lorella is a pretty girl. I gave her work for a while, until I found out that she was a drug addict. The people who call me, with the prices they pay, have a right to certain standards, and I can’t afford to send them women with holes in their arms, strung out on heroin. I didn’t even try to get her off drugs. I just dropped her, on the spot. I’ve watched girls like her slide downhill at alarming speed, and wind up behind Piazzale Lotto selling mouth, pussy, and asshole—a package deal for ten thousand lire. A waste of time, not worth the phone call.
The situation with Laura is quite another matter, far more delicate. She works as a fashion model, at a level that’s not stratospheric but regular and reliable, and she rounds out her paycheck with other, more discreet earnings, thanks to my management. One night we went out together to the Ascot, and that’s where Salvatore Menno, aka Tulip, first saw her. They call him Tulip because in the winter, at Piazzale Brescia, he has a flower stand; in the summer it becomes a watermelon kiosk. That’s just a cover for his operations. Actually, he’s a hoodlum, a thug and a gangster in the orbit of Tano Casale, a mid-level boss who went head-to-head with Turatello and Vallanzasca for control of Milan. That asshole paid for one night with her, and then he started demanding a relationship free of charge, and immediately after that, he expected her to be faithful to him. The next step was when he started beating her up. Laura is just a woman like any other, and I don’t care about her as a person. But she’s a spectacular earner, and I can’t afford to have her face covered with bruises.
I open the bathroom door and walk over to the toilet. I pass the mirror above the sink without glancing at myself. I undo my trousers and lower them, along with my underpants. I sit on the toilet and piss. For reasons entirely out of my control, in the past I’ve had to undergo surgical procedures that mean I can no longer pee standing up. Now I pee like a woman. Now I wipe myself with toilet paper after peeing, almost the same as a woman.
I’m thinking about how to solve the problem of Laura and Tulip without getting either one of us killed. As I’m brushing my teeth, an idea occurs to me. I’ll have to have a talk with Tano Casale and propose a trade.
On the one hand, this thought worries me; on the other hand, it gives me a slight sense of relief. If I play my cards right and if that guy can be taken at his word the way I think he can, it could work out just fine. At last, an extra little crumb of good luck would really help me out.
I walk out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. When I wake up, I’ll have a lot of things to do. I finish undressing. I take a Valium and wash it down with a gulp of water from the bottle I always keep on my night table.
I stretch out, pull the covers up, turn out the light, and wait for my body and the sleeping pill to drag me down for a few hours into the darkness where Lucio spends all his time.
3
I open my eyes.
I switch on the light on my night table and look at the time. The angle of the hands on my clock tells me it’s five thirty. The sheets are almost as taut as if I hadn’t slept at all. I slept without dreaming, and waking up was a painless birth back into the world.
It’s strange how sometimes, when your mind is in cahoots with the dark, it’s capable of catalyzing ugly memories and turning them into nightmares.
The things I’ve carried with me over the years are archived in a part of my brain, hidden behind the conscious screen of acts and words. When I’m asleep, if those things come back to me, there’s no escaping them. I lie there, helpless, nailed to the spot, a prisoner of what my mind spits out. Today, however, the keeper of bad dreams seems to have forgotten that I exist, and I’ve emerged intact.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit up, just long enough to let my life swim back into coherence and my thoughts return to the present. I stand up and walk across the wall-to-wall carpeting and make my way to my galley kitchen where, unlike Lucio, I can see what’s in the cabinets. Strangely, I sometimes bump my head against them; Lucio never does.
From outside, the daylight of a late spring afternoon filters through the blinds.
My shirt and jacket aren’t lying on the couch anymore. The dirty plates and glasses are no longer in the kitchen sink. The ashtrays have been emptied and washed and are drying on the counter. Signora Argenti, my diminutive cleaning woman, came in to take care of the apartment and its occupant as I slept.
I rummage around in the kitchen assembling a loaded espresso pot. While I wait for the Moka Express and the gas burner to work their magic, I go over and turn on the radio. As if by tacit agreement with my neighbor, I also prefer it to television. With him, it’s because he can’t see it; with me, it’s because as often as not I prefer not to. The voice of the newscaster fills the room.
… referring to the Red Brigades’ communiqué number six, delivered two days ago to the newspaper La Repubblica, and announcing that after a lengthy interrogation the prisoner Aldo Moro has been sentenced to death, President Giovanni Leone urged, with words of …
I switch to another radio station. I’ll never know the words that followed. The voice is replaced by a piece of rock music that I can’t quite recognize but that I’m happy to take in place of the other. There are times when I can’t stand hearing about loneliness, and the story of that man is full of it. The photographs of his detention, his forlorn face, his death sentence, all make me think that, when you live with the suspicion that you’re surrounded by nothingness, there’s almost always something or someone ready and willing to convert that suspicion to certainty. I wonder if he thought the same thing while the vast world that he once had at his fingertips shrank to the few dozen square feet of a tiny cubicle.
I go back to the stove, where only the confidential burbling of an espresso pot awaits me, along with the occasional puff of steam, signifying nothing. I pour out the coffee and take a sip. The pager sitting on the hall chest emits a sound that we can quantify onomatopoeically as a beep. For my own convenience, I subscribe to a phone paging service. It’s a little expensive but it more than pays for itself. Every time the device emits its signal, it means tha
t the switchboard at the Eurocheck service to which I subscribe has taken a call for me.
I go over to the telephone and dial the number. The operator’s remote, slightly mechanical voice answers. Without saying hello I give him my identity.
“This is Bravo. Code 1182.”
“Good evening. You are requested to call this number: 02 67859. There’s no name with that.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The switchboard operator goes back to being hypothetical. I jot down the number on a pad of notepaper next to the machine. I don’t recognize it. I know by heart nearly all the numbers I need, but this one is completely foreign to me. The fact that the person didn’t leave his name is fairly normal. Not everyone is interested in scattering evidence in all directions when they’re procuring prostitutes. After a couple of rings, a male voice answers, not young, but clear and vigorous.
“Hello?”
“I was just told to call this number.”
“Is this Bravo?”
“Yes.”
“A friend we have in common told me about you.”
“Is he more your friend or my friend?”
“Well, he’s enough of a friend to ask you to provide him with the services of two girls at a time whenever he comes north from Rome. And enough of a friend to assure me of your discretion and the quality of your taste.”
I know the person he’s talking about. One of the wealthiest antiques dealers in the Italian capital, who has a passion for three-ways and for women who take money for sex. I have no idea who I’m talking to, but I doubt that he’d tell me over the telephone.
“What can I do for you?”
“It would be a pleasure to meet one of the girls you work with.”
“Just one?”
There’s a hint of amusement in his voice when he answers. And a light sigh of regret.
“Yes, I’m afraid. I can’t perform the way I did when I was younger.”
“Tonight?”
“No, tomorrow morning. I like a happy wake-up.”
“Any preferences?”
He decides to toss the dice and see what number comes up.