He waited a long time before deciding to open the clasp.
* * *
There needed to be a certain kind of hush before it would happen. A kind of white noise filling the background and him focusing down, concentrating on the one thing — and then without any kind of prelude or announcement he would disappear inside himself. Just vanish.
There were triggers. Flickering or flashing lights, almost any tight pattern; reading — the simple action of casually passing his eye along a line of printed words was often enough to snag him. A length of sunlight slatted through a blind, or light cutting into a room catching dust and vibrating, and he would lose focus and become fixed in a kind of endlessness, a loop. In such moments the world flew away from him, a kind of flutter, and gone. Words within a moment of being spoken became lost. His sister would coo to him, singsong, ‘Hey, hey, Niccolò? Where are you?’ sometimes kindly, sometimes impatient, as if there was a destination, a place he retreated to, but these events were nothing but absence, the moment of leaving knitted to the moment of returning, and while they were brief, he had no notion of their length. These weren’t jumps forward, sudden segues, but steps out, lapses. He’d worked in security for two years, or nine, depending on how good his memory was that morning.
Bent over the brown hump of clothes with a breeze running through the grass, Niccolò couldn’t be sure how much time had slipped by, if those were the same dusty clouds burning off in a late-afternoon sun, the same flies rising, so dizzy and fired they batted into each other and into his face. His thighs ached and he settled onto his knees. He couldn’t figure out how long he’d waited, just as he couldn’t be sure, exactly, what he was doing. His hand settled on the clothes and information began to return: the sack, the slingshot, the heat, the ants, the flies, the clothes, the field, the reason for walking through the field, the time of day, the scents of scorched earth and something less pleasant. He couldn’t stand cats, never could, he remembered now.
The material, crusted with dirt, unfolded to a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and a fat wad of rags. The T-shirt slit with two parallel cuts at the navel — one long, one short — and slashed on either side at the lower stomach and just below the armpits. Ants ran up his hands and he shook them off. Done with the clothes, Niccolò carefully opened the shoulder-bag. He pinched the clips to release the buckles then cautiously opened the flap. A natural thing to do. You find something so you check inside just to see who it might belong to, naturally.
Niccolò returned to the estate with the contents of the bag tucked inside his sack and then he decided to contact the police.
* * *
Within an hour of Niccolò’s discovery the police had cordoned off a small area of the field, and the clothes — a pair of corduroy shorts, boxer shorts, a T-shirt with a five-point star design — were photographed on site and carefully packaged. A preliminary search was made of the area but nothing of interest was immediately discovered.
Against all logic the evening wind brought heat. Reporters began to assemble at the perimeter of the wasteland. People hurried from the estate toward him to be stopped by the police. A slight haze wrapped about the figures. Still dressed in his uniform, Niccolò stood beside the police vehicles and folded his arms high over his chest so that the company insignia could not be seen; but the police had gathered the information they needed and asked him, not unkindly, to return home with the assurance that they knew what they were doing now, and thank you. You’ve done a good job. You’ve done all you can. We know where you are if we need you. Certain they would want to speak with him further, Niccolò took a new position outside the taped perimeter. With the sun low over the bay, light began to strafe between the buildings and their shadows reached almost to his feet — for one moment every detail held his attention. The gathering crowd, the police unpacking their equipment, the waiting huddle of reporters, the sun and the shadows and a light wind raising dust between the buildings, grey in the street and white in the sky.
* * *
Niccolò returned to his apartment and waited for the police to seek him out. Even without him the event drew interest. More people idled in the street than usual, and they stood in small groups, the men with their shirts open or rolled over their stomachs, an expectation that a body might be discovered. He practised his explanation about how he’d come across the clothes so that he would not sound confused. On the table he laid out two books on forensic science, course textbooks bought secondhand at Porta Alba. He waited, but the police did not come.
Frustrated, Niccolò returned to the balcony and waited for his sister, mindful of the street outside and the television inside playing an American detective show, dubbed well enough for the mouths to almost match the sounds. Away on the wasteland, under bright arc lights, the police walked in a line across the scrub. A second team combed the edge of the floodlit field, and he felt a slight anxiety and exhilaration as the line progressed through the field — but none of them, not one, looked like they would come to speak to him any time soon. Inside the apartment the sack with the contents from the shoulder-bag lay on the floor. If he wanted, he could simply walk out there and tell them what else he’d found, then they might speak to him, only he wasn’t even sure what he’d taken and he knew that this might not be a sensible idea.
When he decided the police weren’t coming, he put everything back in the sack, and tucked the sack where Livia wouldn’t move it. He looked through drawers, and found in the kitchen where Livia had stacked photographs of his wife and daughter, removed them from their frames, although he could not see why. Tomorrow he’d take the sack to the paint factory, sort through what he’d found and dump what he didn’t want to keep.
Niccolò stood on the balcony with his hands on his hips. He could feel the attention of his neighbours, and knew that he was being watched with small quantities of something that resembled respect. Police vehicles remained parked alongside the wasteland, and the press and crews assembled a temporary camp at the head of the field. The bright lights, the gathering crowd gave the evening the appearance of a festival. Two police teams worked their way toward the shoreline, one passing through the abandoned paintworks, the other passing through the rows of greenhouses, uncertainty in their staggered movement. Niccolò watched the white vehicles crawl along the road while the men walked ahead.
* * *
When Livia came home, he insisted that she watch the news with him. Niccolò described his discovery and his discussion with the police, and just as he began to work himself up a little (they told me to come back. I waited, I was here. I did exactly what they asked) a report from the Rione Ini estate came live on the television. It was a jolt at first to recognize the estate and they both pointed at the screen with surprise. The item was presented once in the main news and again on the summary fifteen minutes after, and later still on the local bulletin. Each time the segment appeared it came as a small shock, and he watched the wasteland on both the television and in reflection in the glass in the balcony door, satisfied that he, Niccolò Scafuti, security guard for Persano-Mecuri Ercolano, was the root cause of this. As soon as the clip was over, Niccolò scanned through the stations to see what coverage they were giving the event. He described the discovery to his sister again to fix the moment he came across the clothes.
Livia sat with him, occasionally dozing, legs stretched across the floor, her back to the wall, because these days this was the only way to remain comfortable. It was sad about the clothes, she said. It was the saddest thing.