‘He won’t be back.’
Early afternoon, on a bright day, most days, the gold lettering on the opposite shop window shines across the floor, and slips slowly across the linoleum to the foot of Monica’s desk. Monica would slip off one shoe and slide her foot into the path. Today she stands at the edge, mind blanking on ideas on how she can excuse herself and leave.
Elisa bins the newspaper, unread. ‘I’m not in the mood for news.’ No interest today in reading about the film or the actors — which out of respect has stopped production, or at least filming in town.
‘It’s — honestly. I’m OK.’ Monica watches Elisa rearrange the drawstrings for the blinds: her blouse untucks from her skirt. ‘It’s just,’ she shakes her head, still can’t think of anything to say. ‘Rude. The point shouldn’t need making.’
This is how things are these days, the women agree, without any real thought, any conscience. Someone has an idea about something and they just go ahead and do exactly whatever they please.
Elisa always agrees with Monica, even when she disagrees, you’re right, she’ll say, then pick a word and stick with it. Most days Monica finds this funny, endearing even. Some days, though, it would be nice if this didn’t have to happen.
‘You’re right. There’s no respect for privacy. That’s really the problem. That’s honestly what this is about. If we’re being honest about this, they didn’t have to do it here at all. The film. And they’ve chosen the actual places. Honestly. The palazzo. Ercolano,’ she hesitates, manages not to say the station, the abduction and it is still only an abduction, because no body has been found, the boy, carted away from the piazza, has disappeared. ‘Can you imagine?’
Monica hums her disagreement. ‘Can we not do this today?’ Her computer fades into sleep mode. On screen a man swimming, a shot taken underwater looking up, spars of sunlight radiating about him.
* * *
That afternoon, while changing into her swimming costume, Monica feels a cold pulse pass across her lower back. She has stuck with her regular routine. Insisted upon it. She checks herself in the mirror and remembers a rash she discovered that morning. Not a rash, so much — nothing more in fact than a small area of dry skin, but it has now divided into two patches on either side of her spine. Monica prefers to keep out of the sun, and exercises in an enclosed pool. Her skin is snowy white. She seldom sits under direct sunlight.
Troubled by the rash she decides not to swim. There are chemicals in the water, she tells herself, which will aggravate the condition. Monica believes that this discomfort is caused by stress. It would be strange if it didn’t happen. It’s impossible to avoid the news about the film, or news about the boy, who was taken, they suggest, as a stand-in for the girl they didn’t take two years ago. A fascination now with Yee Jan Lee, a boy, who by rights should not have looked so pretty. It’s impossible to avoid the storm growing around the conviction of Marek Krawiec, who was right all along. It appears. An appeal is lodged. So who are these men, these brothers? And why would they come to the city to kill one boy then grab another? She isn’t sure she understands. Uneasy with her part in this, she finds herself featured in reports in the Cronache and the Corriere as ‘the witness’, or ‘the sole witness’ to the first killing, and while her name has not become generally known, it’s no secret that ‘the sole witness’ works for a travel agency located close by the Centro Direzionale. Her clients, her friends, her family all know the story and are all alarmed by the weekend’s developments. People being picked off the streets. Truth is she’s thoroughly sick of it.
By example: when Monica returns home her cousin Davide asks if it would make sense for her to take some kind of a holiday until everything blows over.
Monica, preparing the evening meal, her hands wet, pauses long enough to ask why she should have to stop her work and head off to some place — if it was even possible — where they hadn’t heard of this case?
‘Maybe China,’ she says, ‘or India? Or some place where people don’t read?’
Davide insists that he’s serious.
‘And I go, and then the film comes out and there’s a big fuss in the newspapers and all over the television. I leave again and then I come back. Then it’s released on DVD — there’s more fuss, I leave and I come back. And then it goes on cable, then RaiUno. And on and on.’ She draws her hands out of the bowl, wet ring-less fingers. ‘And then … perhaps someone will write a book about making a film about a story that is taken from this book which is taken from a real-life story that was copied from a story in a book. You know? Or maybe there will be a video game? Something they can play in the arcades? And then later they can remake the film, or make the film of the video game? Or maybe there will be some other imagined crime that these men can act on and make real?’
Davide visibly weakens under this reasoning — in his defence he’s trying to suggest something practical.
‘There isn’t any escape, Davide. There isn’t an ending. It doesn’t just stop because we are tired of it.’
* * *
Despite herself Monica is becoming increasingly preoccupied by the three minutes or less in which she witnessed the young man at the train station. And this is two years ago now, two whole years. The man had sorted through his bags with little hurry, unaware of the people about him, as if he had somewhere to go, somewhere to be. Two years ago she become frozen by the event, caught in endless possibilities, so that the event itself became completely unreal, a fiction. What if he had not paused? What if he had taken a moment longer? What if she had spoken to him? Would the sequence of events that brought him to the small basement room in a dirty palazzo on via Capasso have played out differently? To add to this she wrestles with the uncertainty of what has recently occurred. Like everyone else she entertains alternative possibilities: perhaps the boy isn’t dead, perhaps this is just like the book, an elaborate scam?
These ideas set fire to her skin. The rash won’t quieten.
She calls a specialist recommended by her sister-in-law and makes an appointment.
THURSDAY
Monica takes the morning off work and turns up early at the specialist’s office in Portici. The rash hasn’t improved. Dr Novi carefully checks her back and asks after her diet and sleeping pattern. He washes his hands after the inspection and says that this is minor, although he is certain that it must irritate her, it’s unlikely to be caused by the chlorinated water. More likely than not the condition is caused by stress (and this is something she didn’t know?), although it was always possible that they were using different chemicals, or more chemicals than they should. He cannot be certain. He will provide a prescription for a salve, and suggests that if she wishes to continue her exercise that she swims instead in salt water where she will benefit from both the ions and the iodine, but failing that, there’s a mineral pool in Lucrino, a small distance from the city. It is, he said, a far second best, because it might be better if she does not swim at all.
Monica sits on the doctor’s raised bed, dissatisfied with the examination. She’d mentioned swimming only because this was easier than explaining about the cause of her stress. She can’t be certain about his recommendation either. Can she or can’t she swim? It isn’t clear. Swimming offers her the one pure moment when she does not have to answer to her family, or to work. While she swims, in that brief thirty-five minutes each day, she is completely alone, and the isolation that the activity brings is a welcome and rare pleasure.