Livia had wanted to talk that morning. Her in-laws wanted to visit again on Sunday afternoon, there was progress she said, real progress this time, and if her father-in-law was as rude to Niccolò as he had been on the previous night, she wanted him to say something. Niccolò could not remember what the man had said. The man wore glasses with thick black rims and thicker lenses so that his eyes appeared glassy and wet, he was short, and his teeth were yellow from smoking. Niccolò could not see why Livia was so intimidated by him.
At four o’clock Niccolò was called to his supervisor’s office.
The supervisor’s office was in the central administration building, a set of concrete oblongs abutted one to another; the windows zipped in a long black line across the entire complex. The dye-production plants were glass boxes with slanted glass roofs, surrounded by concrete offices. It was only his second time in the office, the first when he picked up his employment papers and the Chief of Security who had seen him came out to shake his hand, and from that one gesture Niccolò had always thought well of the man.
Niccolò had seen the chief a number of times, talking at meetings and holding discussions. The man habitually spoke in an unbroken monotone so that he could not be interrupted.
Now, on his second visit, Niccolò walked quickly wondering what this could be; the reviews were completed for the year, and in his report he had done neither well nor badly, which his manager assured him was a good sign given the length of his employment.
As soon as he entered the office Niccolò could see that his guesses were entirely wrong. Three senior officials stood about a desk: his manager, the section manager, and a police officer. The police officer asked directly for the notebook, and Niccolò, in honesty, said that there was no book. After speaking with Federico he had set the book on top of the stove and burned it.
The three men appeared surprised. The officer invited Niccolò to sit down.
‘You’ve destroyed evidence? Do you understand what you are saying, what you are admitting to?’
Niccolò shook his head. He locked eyes with the police officer. Pinpoints of light vibrated on the tabletop, the floor, the tawny walls and doorway shifted in relation to each other. The pure complexity of the moment he found himself in. Unlike other absences this one shuddered down on him, and Niccolò fell heavily, his cheek on the floor, his shoulder hammering his chin as he quickly seeped away. Light first, voices after; the officer calling for attention.
FRIDAY: DAY Q
In the late morning Niccolò returned to the abandoned paint factory with the police, and it was a shock to leave the confines of the cell and return to Ercolano.
That morning two magistrates had come to question him. They wanted to hear again about the factory in Ercolano.
Was there anything Niccolò wanted to add to the list of evidence he had thrown into the tank?
Niccolò shook his head. It was hard to be exact, he had thought through the night, trying to remember, but nothing else had occurred to him. Cats, he said. Mostly cats.
Was there anything particular about the factory, anything he could describe?
Niccolò apologized. No. Nothing occurred to him.
The chief magistrate said that it was of no issue if he could not remember, and Niccolò said that he was thinking, but it was difficult to describe an empty room. He had only ever gone into the first room. He didn’t much like the building, and didn’t feel safe going in there, as there was only one entrance and no windows.
The men waited in silence.
Could he describe the factory?
Niccolò nodded, and looked to the chief magistrate as he answered. There was only one that you could get inside, because the commune had recently sealed the others. And this factory was on the opposite side of the road to the wasteland and the market gardens. A path ran down from the wasteland across the estate and eventually brought you to the road and the factory. The other factories, as he had said, were fenced off.
Could he remember what was inside the room?
Again, he shook his head. There was nothing in the room. Nothing at all, and he hadn’t looked into any of the other rooms. As he’d said it was entirely empty except for a tank, in the first room. A tank set into the floor. Is that what they wanted to know?
There was nothing else to remember about the place? The tank. What shape was it? Was it square or round?
The hole into it was round, but the tank itself might be square. The water was about three metres down from the hole. It probably wasn’t that deep. It was filthy, the water was black and it stank.
The magistrate asked if Niccolò could draw a map, and could he show where the building was in relation to where he lived. Niccolò said that he could, it would not be as hard as trying to describe the place. Even though he’d seen it a good number of times, he couldn’t remember anything distinctive. There was graffiti. Writing on the walls.
As the magistrates left, Niccolò rose in his seat, and raising his voice a little, began to repeat what he had said. It was easy to know which building it was because all of the other buildings had been sealed by the commune. Some of them had been bricked up, but for one reason or another they hadn’t sealed this one. He didn’t know why. The others were all secured, and there was no way into them.
Leaving the room the chief magistrate quietly thanked him, and Niccolò thought that there was sadness in his voice.
* * *
The officers’ heads jolted in unison as the squad car came steadily down the grey pumice track, silhouettes in their flat caps. Dust rose behind them in a long and low plume, obscuring the steep rise to the mountain and the two cars behind them.
The three police cars drew up beside the building. Two policemen waited on the opposite side of the road, between them stood an old man whose trousers were tucked into his socks. Further up against the wall leaned a bicycle. Niccolò recognized the old man as Italo, one of the market gardeners. He didn’t know his last name, but knew that the old man was difficult and disliked. It was the only reason that he knew the man. Italo grew dahlias in an allotment opposite the factory, and earlier that morning he had cycled by the building and heard boys inside throwing stones. There was something about their haste, the way they ran away from the factory and their pause on the hill that made him curious about what they were doing. Inside the warehouse he found cushions from a couch, and a split bag of lime, the room was empty. The boys had taken the dumpster from his land two weeks ago, he complained, a theft he had reported to the police. They had slashed the plastic in his hothouses and cut the irrigation pipes, but it was neither the theft nor the vandalism that justified his call to the police, it was the stench from the factory.
In one day the smell had become much worse, the boys had disturbed something, and as the police stepped out of their car they paused, recognizing the smell, and unwilling to go closer to the building they decided to wait. The investigating magistrate joined the police and the old man, and discussed what they were to do.
Niccolò sat alone in the car. He could see into the factory through the doorway, and he watched the two policemen approach the tank, hands covering their mouths. Standing at the entrance another officer threw a small stone. The stone hit the metal plate with a round boom, and a black storm of flies rose in a malignant buzz.
The three policemen backed out of the room and agreed that, clearly, something wasn’t right, and this was perhaps a matter they weren’t adequately prepared to handle. The magistrate shouted across the road to the men that nothing was to be disturbed. They were to wait.