Resold for the simple fact that he didn’t match the Swedish furniture in the new sitting room, and passed from hand to hand, he had ended up on a ship along with some Italian immigrants on their way home for the holidays. Bartered within only a few days for a Paperino motorcycle, he had arrived at the military base on Christmas Eve. He had not moved again since then. No one had even bothered to plug him in.
The faint light of a bicycle flashed across McGuffin’s empty screen. A young boy, certainly not a soldier, was cycling along slowly beneath the streetlamps, looking furtively around. This was not a normal bike: above its front wheel, on the carrier, there was a big, wide, wooden platform.
The light grew fainter and then went out. Through the spyglass in the door, McGuffin could just make out a pair of arms and a handlebar. He picked up a strange electricity in the air. He felt something stirring inside, even though he was not plugged in. The boy. The bike. The platform. A life of flight from that dark place where everyone seemed to have forgotten him. But how could he attract the boy’s attention? Deluxe model he might have been, but he hadn’t been designed to switch on all by himself. And anyway his plug was lying on the floor, he could not be dragged from his lethargy.
The spyglass in the door widened with a squeak, and the boy’s face peeped in.
‘Take me with you! Carry me off!’ McGuffin longed to yell.
But the boy appeared to need no incentive.
Chapter 4
Bologna, 7 January
The mirror was too small for Pierre to see all of himself in it at once. But his movements were automatic by now: he could tie the knot in his tie with his eyes closed, get his trouser turn-ups right to the centimetre, check that the back vent of his jacket was properly creased and his buttons polished.
He pulled tight on the laces of his good shoes, because he didn’t like having to stop in the middle of dancing to tie them again. When that happened he felt ludicrous and vulnerable.
That Wednesday, as usual, Sticleina was the first to turn up. He stopped in the doorway for a moment, studied the bar intensely, took a long and thoughtful breath of smoke, and then threw the cigarette end away, shutting the door behind him, a moment before Garibaldi exploded, ‘Shut that door behind you, it’s letting the cold in!’
Capponi looked darkly at his brother’s friend, as he set up the espresso machine to make him his usual caffè corretto.
‘Where are you off to this evening?’ asked La Gaggia from the table next to the stove.
‘The Pratello, I’d say.’
‘I see, and is there grazing to be had on that dancefloor?’
Sticleina replied with mock regret. ‘Yes, but the guys from the Pratello won’t let you near their women. It would be more accurate to say that we go there to hear the Bonora Trio.’
‘Bring one of those girls back here for me some time, will you? I’m sure I could still cut a fine figure.’
‘A fine figure of shit,’ observed Walterún, trumping his trick.
Pierre contemplated himself for a long time: he studied his dark eyes, his mother’s eyes, like the ones in the photograph in which she was dressed as a bride, the one that stood on the chest of drawers; the arch of his eyebrows, the straight nose, the thin cheeks. He slipped the photograph of Cary Grant from the top of the dressing table and wedged it between the wall and the mirror. He took a step back and tried to assume the same indescribable expression.
A gust of chilly air ran through the bar, and the crash of the door signalled the arrival of Gigi, the umarein ed gamma, the ‘rubber man’ in Bolognese dialect, who pirouetted his way to the bar, where he lay horizontally on top of Sticleina, arms held above his head.
‘Oi, Capponi, bring me a bitters,’ he said, as the applause faded away.
‘So,’ said Sticleina, showing himself off to the new arrival, ‘don’t you notice anything special?’
Gigi frowned and studied his friend more closely. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said, stretching out his finger to touch the coat. ‘Did you get it as an Epiphany present?’
‘It’s camel, bought in Milan. In instalments, of course.’
‘Yeah, yeah, lucky you, still living with your folks, means you’re never short of a few things.’
Sticleina brought a cigarette to his lips and held out the pack to Gigi. He thoughtfully took a drag and blew the smoke out fast, with some difficulty.
‘I’m not sure I’m going to be living at home for long.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My dad wants me to get married. He says you can’t drag a girl along behind you for ever.’
‘Hm, and what does your mother have to say on the matter?’
‘She says I should finish my training as a nurse. That I’ll have no prospects otherwise, and a woman needs security more than anything.’
Gigi took advantage of the mirror behind the bar, the one inscribed with the word ‘Martini’, to check that his brilliantined hair was nice and smooth along the temples, slick and gleaming all the way to the little curls at the back of his neck.
‘The older generation are always saying things are easier for us, but I think things are pretty complicated all the same. If you’re with a girl, eventually you’ve got to marry her. If you want to marry her, you’ve got to have a decent wage, and then you have to wait to get married. What are you supposed to do?’
Cary Grant’s faint smile was formal and elegant, and natural at the same time. His smile was a contradiction. Pierre tried to imitate it, but for that very reason he couldn’t. He was better at Cary’s walk, and had almost perfected his way of keeping his hands in his pockets.
Brando arrived as the church clock chimes were coming to an end.
‘So, aren’t you ready yet?’
‘Pierre’s the one who’s dawdling.’
‘Get a move on, Pierre, you’re handsome enough already.’
He pulled down his jacket so that it fell perfectly on his shoulders, and made sure that the white cuffs of his shirt protruded a centimetre and no more, otherwise he’d look like a peasant.
Already striking a pose, he came out from behind the bar and found them standing in front of him, side by side like the three musketeers. Because that was how he saw them, just like in Dumas’s noveclass="underline" Athos, Porthos and Aramis. And he was D’Artagnan, the boaster, the best one.
‘Shall we go?’
‘What cheek! You’re the only one we’re waiting for!’ exploded Brando.
Gigi blew a raspberry at him. ‘Yeah, come on, it’s getting late.’
Pierre’s eyes met those of his brother Nicola, hard as nails as ever, and as always when he went dancing. He saw him turn red and holding in his rage. That look granted him no more than a few minutes of independence, just long enough to say goodbye to everyone, and he had every intention of squeezing every last second out of it. He came out from behind the bar and walked slowly across the floor, elegant and loose-limbed. He stopped at the cardsharps’ table. ‘See you, Bottone, I’m off. Don’t win too much.’