She watches again.
A different view taken from the Duomo steps so that the field of people is specked with a pulsing light, the candles too many to account for, star points, a map of light, and she can see the disturbance, how the light appears to grow dense, block together as the three bodies push through, a small hole behind them which soon, water-like, refills itself. The buildings opposite glow with ominous long, hollow windows.
Again. Another view. Closer.
The crowd barely move, the threesome press directly toward the camera, shoulders first. No one steps aside to allow them through so they have to shove and lumber past the person taking the shot. The camera jolts, is held up to show a brighter set of lights, the film set beside the Duomo and the scaffold holding floodlights which turn night into day. Something about the crowd reminds her of an execution, a public trial. She’s old enough to remember Tiananmen Square.
Monica watches because she has promised to do this, and tries to concentrate on the men, the boxers, the brothers, as they bump deliberately, shoulders set to knock people out the way, some small cries of protest. But every time she can’t help but focus on the boy, it is impossible not to watch him, and she can’t imagine how this could happen — an abduction during a silent protest, one body selected and removed.
She has to understand how this could happen. How someone could be picked out when surely all attention would be on him, everyone would notice him. She cannot help but watch the boy. The boy appears drunk, ill, out of it. The men have purpose, threat in their speed, which dares to be challenged — and this, the greatest shock of all, almost unaccountable, is their pure nerve to show themselves, join the very crowd protesting their actions two years earlier. Everybody is here because of these two brothers.
The news today is worse, if this is even possible. There is footage from the police, not from the demonstration but images taken a week before of a man waiting in a small street. This image is almost black and white, and at one point, showed slowly, the man appears to leave a message, make a series of gestures, his hand up, a signal she cannot read. The same baseball cap, the same jacket. A one point a group of people come out from under the camera, and there, among them, the boy from the piazza. Yee Jan Lee.
Monica sits and watches, unsure of the limits of her body. She can’t feel her fingers, or sense anything other than her breath and chest, aware that it hurts to watch, but now, exhausted, she feels like she is starting to disappear. There is nothing about the brothers that she recognizes. Although they must have been there, two years ago, on the platform, in the station. They had to have been close, she must have walked right by them, there is no possible way she could not have passed them. She has taken the very same walk many times in the intervening years and looked at every detail and wondered, in a space so small, how could she not have seen them?
* * *
On his first visit the man made it from the door to the rack of magazines. On the second he managed a further two metres to the desk before changing his mind. On his third visit, which comes minutes after the second (they have all occurred in the space of one morning), Elisa, who always keeps an eye out for the weird ones, announces as the man steps in from the street that this is a travel agency for the purpose of booking flights and holidays. OK?
‘You come here when you want to go somewhere.’ She slides a brochure across her desk. ‘If you want anything that isn’t travel-related then you’re in the wrong place.’
Monica, being less confrontational, asks the man if she can help, and the man asks if there are any brochures for America or England. Monica points to the rack at the brochures facing out with pictures of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, searching herself, and then and along a lower shelf, aha, Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York, and there it is, London. ‘Where are you thinking in England,’ she asks, and realizes she can’t think of anywhere other than London. London, England, even though she has relatives who live in Manchester. She can’t remember booking anyone a trip to anywhere other than America, North and South, in a long time. She tries to chat but it isn’t easy this morning: to be honest everyone figures out their own arrangements these days (she’s talking nonsense because she just can’t focus). Everyone has a computer. She makes a grimace and the man smiles. After the smile he steps forward as if they are a little more intimate.
‘London? OK? That’s what you wanted?’
He gives a dismissive blink, a slight head shake, and asks if she speaks English. Monica answers in English.
‘I do. A little.’
‘You are Monica Cristobari?’
And here she realizes her mistake. There is no holiday. There are no plans. The man, like many others, has sought her out and now he will tell her why, they always do.
‘Did you recognize them? The brothers? Did you remember them?’
Monica raises her hand to her head, unconscious of the movement. Elisa flies at the man as he speaks.
‘My name is Doctor Arturo Lanzetti. I live at via Capasso 29. I have seen them before. I recognize them.’ The man, walking backwards now, is repelled from the shop by Elisa with a loud Out, out, out. Monica, stunned, moves as if she is swimming. Before Elisa has the man expelled, the door closed, the lock secured, the bolt drawn, Monica has her jacket over her arm and speaks as if this is rational — she thinks she should be getting home if that’s all right. And Elisa guides her to the back of the shop, insists that she sits down, swears at the man, tells Monica she should wait a moment, let him leave and she will call her a taxi.
‘You shouldn’t have come in today.’
Elisa returns to the window to check the street, but can’t see the man because the market is busy. Monica shakes her head. ‘It isn’t going to stop, is it? It’s never going to stop.’
The man stands on the opposite kerb until Elisa makes a show of calling the police, her phone held up dramatically, to demonstrate her intention. Once the police do arrive, purely coincidentally, the man disappears.
Elisa turns the blinds to direct the light from the street and close the view. A distraction? Is that what they need right now? Some noise? A distraction? The radio?