Salvatore Pagano smiled hopefully.
Towards evening, Vincenzo Donadio, sitting at the table, wiped away the sweat with a big blue handkerchief folded in the palm of his hand. Every now and again he snorted, then took another sip of Gragnano. He couldn’t help thinking that that double-breasted Minotaur whom the boy called Mistestiv was a real devil, but a lot of good that did him. And it showed that he was right. In less than half a day, however, all the villains on the street had come out like mushrooms, and the whole district had been turned upside down. It had been satisfying to see that ignorant wretch Peppino the Creep crying, asking forgiveness and swearing on the life of his mother who had thrown him out all that time ago. But there was no sign of the set. Peppino had pointed the finger at another villain who was a friend of his, Nené, and another one who didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. Mistestiv the American had terrorised them, but nothing came out of it. Shitting themselves with fear, they had already flogged it at a filling station somewhere near San Giovanni a Teduccio. To Latina, Formia, Frosinone, possibly Rome or even further afield. The lorry drivers went to all those places, sometimes beyond. Nothing. Goodbye to the television. There was no point beating yourself up. Things happened as they had to and that was that. Because then, Don Vincenzo reflected, if they found it, what would happen? No, because he had bought it, second-hand. But hang on a minute. Another sip of wine. He thought he could still hear the voice of Mistestiv before he drove off in that luxury American car, saying to the boy, ‘Get in, you piece of shit!’
He really should mind his own business.
Chapter 10
Bologna, San Luca, 9 May
Was she sure? No, but it didn’t matter. It was over between them. They had always known. Perhaps that was what had made it so beautiful. They had savoured every minute snatched from normal life, to be what they were supposed to be: the Filuzzi King and Signora Montroni. The princess and the dancer. Now the moment had come to admit it. To stop the race.
She saw Pierre waiting for her at the funicular railway stop.
Angela waited for everyone to get off. Then she stepped out.
Pierre understood immediately. From her face. From her posture. He didn’t even try to hug her.
He said, ‘They told me about your brother. I’m sorry.’
His voice was embarrassed.
She stood a little way apart and lowered her eyes. ‘He’s better now. How was Yugoslavia? Did you see your father?’
‘Yes.’
They stood there in silence. They both knew, but couldn’t bring themselves to speak.
Finally Pierre said in a thin voice, ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’
Angela nodded, her face hard.
‘You can’t live on fairy tales, Pierre.’
‘Not even if they make you happy?’
She tried to find the right words.
‘We were happy, that’s true. But there are other things in life.’
‘Your husband, your brother. Is that what you mean? You’ve told me so often —’
‘It’s not just that.’
A leaf carried on the wind caught in her hair, and Pierre couldn’t help taking it out. Her hair was soft.
‘What is it, then?’
‘You’re twenty-two, and you don’t like what you’ve got, it isn’t enough. You went to Yugoslavia, you’ve had your adventure, you’ve seen your father again. That won’t be enough either. You’re like a child, Pierre. You’ve got to find the right way. I’ve already found mine.’
Pierre wanted to reply, but Angela went on. ‘Maybe fate forced it on me, but you also have to know when to grit your teeth. I’m not a little girl any more, I’m almost thirty. I was poor, and now I want for nothing. My brother was finished, good as dead. Now he had people to look after him. Find your way, Pierre. I wish you all the luck in the world. Let’s leave it there.’
He didn’t know what to say. It had to happen sooner or later. His journey and her brother’s relapse must have unleashed something within her. Perhaps he should have flown into a desperate rage, and instead he just managed to feel stunned, submerged by those words, by that calm. He would suffer like a dog, afterwards. He would beat his head against the wall. But not now, not here.
His vision clouded over. He felt her kiss on his cheek, and when he managed to focus his eyes again Angela was already moving away.
There, it was over. A clean blow. Like a swig of grappa on an empty stomach.
Bologna slumbered at the foot of the hills.
He tried to take a step forwards; where was he to go, he couldn’t stand this place any more, this view, he would hate it for ever. He couldn’t move. He sat down and put his head between his knees. His head filled only with a succession of curses.
Chapter 11
Rome, 9 May
The television didn’t work even if you slapped it, but now he didn’t give a damn.
Now. At first he had been annoyed. He had immediately called Frosinone to tell them that either they were to give him back his money, all of it, or they were to find a way of fixing the television.
As predicted, they had let themselves off the hook. It wasn’t the fault of the television, which was American and first-rate, checked by the only person in the whole of Naples who knew anything about it, and it was ok, as though it was fresh out of the factory.
Bollocks.
But wait a second, did he have an aerial? Did he have a subscription? Then of course he couldn’t see anything. You couldn’t pick up images just like that, and until half-past five in the afternoon there was nothing, there weren’t even any programmes. Before saying that the TV didn’t work, he would have to be sure, check that the aerial was properly connected, that the subscription was in order, that his district was covered by the signal and the broadcasts had already begun. Just wait for a month, and meanwhile the opportunity, that prodigious American-brand television, with a naturally luminous seventeen-inch screen, would have passed. He’d be better off keeping it, listen to the advice he was being given, and if at the end the set proved to be defective, they would give him back all his money with interest.
‘Interest, yes, but sparing myself any further bother would be quite enough,’ Carmine had thought.
As he hung up, the idea flashed through his mind.
Whether the television worked or not, it was no longer a problem.
*
He went to wait for her at the school gates. Cleaned and polished as though for an evening in a nightclub. Halfway through each cigarette his comb passed carefully over his temples, which gleamed with brilliantine. He would offer her a lift on his scooter and set the plan in motion.
He glanced around, to be sure that that poor character Nosé was nowhere around. He wasn’t. He would think about him later on.
Giuseppe Orlandi, known as Nosé, was a piece of crap, a porter in an apartment block in Garbatella, always badly dressed, battered hat in the winter, patched cloth shoes in the summer. He didn’t have a penny, he didn’t wash much, and yet Marisa thought very highly of him because he was an ‘existentialist’, he spent hours at the little table in the Bar Le Rose pretending to meditate and read. In fact the level of the wine bottle went down before your eyes, while the book, always the same one, never seemed to come to an end. It was called La Nosé by Jonpolsart, as he put it, but the cover said Nausea, and that was probably what it provoked.
Marisa’s parents were nice people, sure, her father never let the women in his life go short of anything, and her mother was a great housewife. They knew Carmine, and they were nice to him. But they also knew that stupid Nosé, and although they knew he was penniless, they let their daughter go out with him a lot, much more than with Carmine. Her mother thought he was a ‘harmless’ boy, while her father suspected he had tons of money stashed away somewhere. The fact was that going out with Carmine, getting on to his 1100, having your ticket to the ballroom bought for you, were proper things for a signorina, a gold-digging slut excited by the size of a man’s wallet. Forbidden. And she would be thinking of wallets when it was time for marriage. Having an ice-cream with Nosé and his lousy friends, going to the Villa Borghese to look at the stars, going up to his place to give him back the latest book by the latest wanker, that was all fine, as long as she tidied up her lipstick before she came home and never tried to suggest that pauper as a future son-in-law. That guy Carmine, on the other hand, so fashionable.