I watched the movements of the bald salesman through the reflections on the glass. No wonder I’d felt so good, no wonder I’d thought of the word “peaceful” that morning when I began following Elisabetta. It was because I was going back to what I did in the old days, and it never matters whether the old days were good or bad. “And yet remembering gladdens you, as does the fresh return of the time of your unhappiness” (Witold Witkiewicz).
I got the first phone call from my brother after that trip to the city, and on the following nights I couldn’t stand being home when it got late — I needed to do something. Elisabetta Renal was still ignoring me, as if nothing had happened, and I was gripped by an urge to find out everything about her life. Each night I would stand guard in front of the abandoned factory, which seemed more and more — especially in the dark — like the giant skull of a beast that had been dead for millions of years, thrust into view now by the erosion of the land around it. Regularly at around eleven (“in the middle of the night,” as Rossi had said), the Ka would appear at the fork and turn left. For a few nights she drove around without stopping, as Rossi had said, and her meandering seemed to trace a series of spirals around the villa, as if she were trying to say that she wanted to get away, or that getting away was impossible.
One night she stopped in front of a club that has had three different names over the past three years: Blue Nightclub, The Flower Piano Bar, and Blue Dahlia — A Members-Only Club. The name was written with a complicated twist of blue neon tubing molded into softly looping script. She waited until a metallic gray Audi A8 drove up and two men got out. She went into the club with them. I had brought along a thermos full of coffee, and I immediately poured myself a cup, turned on the interior light, and began reading the newspaper I’d bought that morning with the idea of whiling away the time during my long wait.
I was parked in front of the window of a furniture store, reading about hails of bombs, rivers of fire, ten thousand refugees, ethnic cleansing, and atrocities; about age-old vendettas, innocent women and children, outdated maps, and Chinese embassies targeted by mistake. Every now and then I looked up at the living room displayed behind the plate-glass window: a sofa and two armchairs upholstered in zebra-striped Ultrasuede, a colonial-style rattan chaise longue, a fake kilim rug, twin towers of metal for storing CDs and videos; the TV was on and running the late news, the glass-fronted bookcase was bare, the shelves enlivened by vases of fake flowers; there was no one in the living room, naturally, but the couple of times that I raised my eyes to look, the emptiness seemed absurd and incongruous. I thought maybe they could have found someone willing to spend the night in that living room. I imagined myself sitting there comfortably, nestled in an armchair, chatting with another stand-in; but I would have preferred the sofa to be tiger-striped, to please the kids (Carlo could bring them to visit me there).
And as if by magic, as if they’d survived the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade, ten Chinese men filed silently past the illuminated living room display; their hands were thrust into their pockets, and looped around their wrists were plastic bags holding soda cans and sandwiches. It was an important coincidence — or maybe not, maybe it was a normal event. But it wasn’t totally normaclass="underline" ten minutes later another ten Chinese came by, just like the others, with the same weary and determined expressions. I tried to follow a news item about Mallory’s corpse, which had been found on Mount Everest, and to spin a fantasy about the rock-hard cadaver marooned up there, in a snowy armchair, looking peacefully down on the world. But I was too distracted. And when the third platoon of Chinese went by, I gave up on the newspaper, got out of the E270, and followed them.
Strange sidewalks spring up wherever a stretch of no-man’s-land suddenly tries to redeem itself and turn user-friendly, like certain computer systems. The sidewalks flank the buildings and run along the streets and generally make a show of being functional, but they really can’t hope to, because they’re useless. No one walks on them: around here a car can always drive up to within five yards of its destination, and there’s always ample parking.
But here were people using the sidewalks: the Chinese (though they were using them at night). Where were they going? Parked in front of the Shoe Warehouse, a hundred yards beyond the Blue Dahlia, three Nissan vans were waiting to take them to work somewhere. The condensed vapor on the vans’ windows shone beneath the streetlights, and the pale faces behind the clouded windows looked like hooded paper masks against the headrests. I thought I would return to the Blue Dahlia the back way, passing behind the stage set of shops and clubs facing the main road. But it was too dark, and the terrain was strewn with garbage and pieces of rotted wood and rusty metal, so as soon as I could I slipped between two buildings to get back to the light. And halfway up the shadowy alley I tripped over a leg; I didn’t understand what it was until the two guys began talking, asking me for 10,000 lire for a sandwich. I couldn’t see their faces, which merged into the wall behind them, but they both had their legs spread across the concrete, as if they were stretching. I didn’t answer; rage welling up inside, I ran off, heading into the Blue Dahlia to hide.
It was half past midnight, and just inside the red door Elisabetta Renal was retrieving her rainproof cape from the coat check, watched by the two men she’d come in with. A sort of maître d’ came toward me from the back of the bar; Elisabetta turned around, saw me, and came over to me before he did. She was agitated in her normal way, and her eyes were red, but she was cordial, even though she didn’t introduce me to her friends; one was taller than I am, with gray hair and a receding hairline; he had an imposing aquiline nose that didn’t ruin his looks, and very pale white-blue eyes that balanced out his face; he wore a dark gray suit, a dark blue tie, and a striped shirt (I couldn’t see his shoes). The other guy was short, lean, and older, and had bovine eyes and a boxer’s squashed nose; he too was impeccably dressed, in a light-colored suit and a regimental stripe tie, but he stood apart, behind the first man. We lingered inside the entrance for three or four minutes while the maître d’, smiling professionally, waited for the situation in front of his coat check station to develop one way or another (was I a chauffeur coming to pick up one of his clients?), and while Receding Hairline scrutinized me. He didn’t understand who I was or what I was doing there. Elisabetta said: “So you’re a night owl too,” and we joked a bit about insomnia and driving around at night to get rid of it. I promised her that I would be at work the next day at seven as usual, and she laid a hand on my arm, saying with a laugh that she wouldn’t notice if I was late. We both gave very convincing performances.
“You’ve got to be the most efficient and early-to-work garden designer in the whole country. Did I ever tell you that we consulted with a colleague of yours a few years back?”