This crash course on prostitution continued for a while, until they were interrupted by little Sara crying in the next room.
‘It’s nearly one,’ he said to Davide, ‘at one she drinks two hundred grams of milk with her eyes closed, almost without waking up, has a pee at the same time, and then she’s out like a light until tomorrow morning at six or seven. I’ve always thought that kind of vegetable life is the most civilised. I think civilisation ends, at least for the human race, as soon as brain activity starts.’
This second crash course, on social metaphysics, was also interrupted: by the ringing of the telephone.
He stood up, anxiously. He often sensed things before they happened, oh yes, he was a magician. He smiled at Davide and went into the hall. There was a tranquil smell of wax and gas.
‘Hello?’
He heard Livia’s voice. ‘I’ve found him.’
2
You didn’t need to be a mind reader to understand who she had found: Signor A.
‘But didn’t Davide take you home?’ he asked. At eleven o’clock Davide had indeed taken her home, not driving away until he had seen her go inside the building and close the street door behind her. Where had she found Signor A? On the landing outside her apartment?
‘Yes,’ his Livia said in her beautiful, limpid voice, ‘but then I had to go out again almost immediately.’
‘Why?’
‘Dad wasn’t feeling well, he had a terrible toothache and there was nothing in the apartment to ease the pain, so I had to go out to the pharmacy.’
‘I see.’
‘There weren’t any taxis, at that hour they’re all parked outside the cinemas. I walked to the Piazza Oberdan, where there’s an all-night pharmacy.’
‘That’s quite a distance from your apartment.’
‘I had no choice. There was only one other customer in the pharmacy, a man. When I saw him, it struck me he was exactly the kind of man we were looking for. I bought a tube of painkillers and left.’
Livia Ussaro even did overtime. She had worked until eleven with Davide, then had seen an interesting man, and had carried on working.
‘He followed me.’ She had done nothing to make him follow her, she had been only the innocent prey, she had given him the impression that she was what he was looking for.
‘Tell me everything.’
‘Outside the pharmacy, I stopped at the curb to let the cars pass. Then he said that everyone was getting headaches in this heat.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I didn’t reply, just smiled a little, but as if I was annoyed.’
Perfect. Then his Livia Ussaro had crossed the Corso Buenos Aires to where the taxi stand was. Obviously, the stand was empty, you never see a taxi stand with lots of taxis, except when you don’t need them. Signor A had tactfully followed her, without saying another word, as if he wasn’t following her, as if he had also had to cross the street, but when he had seen her stop at the taxi stand, he must have thought he was a lucky man.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait,’ he had said.
Another smile from her, without words, but less annoyed, more words from Signor A, and finally she had followed him, accepting the lift he had so politely offered her, and had got into Signor A’s dark blue Flaminia.
‘The number, Livia.’ The licence number. Even if it had been a twenty-figure number, she was sure to remember it, without needing to write it down.
‘Duca, maybe I’m stupid, but I didn’t catch it.’ She sounded as if she wanted to cry.
She hadn’t caught the licence number, his ace of spies had failed in the simplest of operations. ‘How can that be?’ ‘Duca, cars have number plates on the front and the back, but when you get in, you get in from the side, where there are no number plates,’ she excused herself timidly, without hope, as if knowing she had already been condemned. ‘All the time I was with him, I tried to find an opportunity to look at the number, but it wasn’t possible, he kept me inside the car, I couldn’t get out and look at the number plate without making him suspicious, I couldn’t, I really couldn’t.’
He wasn’t going to let her off that easily. ‘But when he left you and drove off, you could have seen the number plate at the back as the car was leaving.’
‘No, I couldn’t do that either. He insisted on driving me all the way back to the front door of my building, and he waited until I’d gone inside, I don’t know if he did it only out of gallantry, but I had to close the door behind me after going in, I opened it again as soon as I heard him leave, but the car was already some distance away and the street isn’t very well lit.’
It happens. The great chef calmly cooks venison all’imperiale with California oranges soaked in rum, and then messes up a scrambled egg.
‘So what do you know about him?’ he asked, almost roughly.
‘The photographs.’
Signor A had taken his Livia towards the Parco Lambro, not precisely into the park, which at that hour would have been a little dangerous, but into a quiet avenue next to it, and besides, for what he had to do, he could have parked in the Piazza del Duomo at midday, because he hadn’t done anything except talk, although it was quite an erotic conversation. He had asked her a lot of questions, but discreet ones: how old was she, what region was she from, did she have a boyfriend? He’d been pleased to hear that she was a schoolteacher, even though she wasn’t teaching at the moment, he said that culture in a woman was the thing that excited him the most. He had indulged in a few weary caresses, then had confessed sincerely that at his age, inevitably, things changed in your body, things you couldn’t do much about. Of course if he was twenty, he had said with a smile, everything would have been different, but now he only came alive when he saw photographs of beautiful women, obviously with not too many clothes on, in fact, with no clothes at all, she had to understand his plight, a photographic nude had more effect on him than a real nude, especially if he had met the girl in the photograph and talked to her a bit, nude photographs in the specialised magazines left him indifferent, because he had never met the women in them; he would have liked, for example, to have a nice series of photographs of her, now that he had spoken to her and seen what a nice, attractive person she was. Of course, she didn’t have any photographs like that, but this was a small inconvenience which could immediately be remedied. He had a friend, a completely trustworthy friend and an expert photographer, that she could go and see. As an expression of his gratitude, he would be happy if she would accept fifty thousand lire, and last but not least he had reassured her that nobody would ever know about it, she would pose with her face in shadow, and anyway it was in his interest to keep this weakness of his a secret. Livia had told him she didn’t like the idea, she didn’t even like what she was doing with him now, and she didn’t want to do it any more even though her financial situation was difficult. Signor A had praised her for this stand of hers and had even expressed the fervent hope that she would find a good job and then a nice young man and get married, but a few photographs wouldn’t make any difference, would they?