In the wardrobe, he found an old T-shirt to sleep in. He slid under the blankets and for a few seconds lay there, looking at his room, thinking of all the times he had looked at it from the same angle and how different it seemed now.
He reached out his arm towards the bedside table, picked up the telephone and tried to call his agent. Still off the hook. Maybe it was just as well, he thought: if it was on and she had answered, she might have bawled him out for calling her at this hour, and Nico didn’t really want that.
He put the phone down and dialled another number.
“Hello?”
“So, wanker, how’s it going?”
“Hi, dumbo. Fine, and you?”
It was like music, hearing a sane, normal, calm voice that didn’t change and didn’t make animal noises.
“Oh, not bad. Same old same old.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’ll tell you later. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, no plans for the moment.”
“How about having a bite to eat?”
“Where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about Vinaino’s?”
“Vinaino’s, great. Shall I meet you there?”
“Fine. One o’clock?”
“One o’clock.”
“Bye, arsehole.”
“Bye, dumbo.”
Nico put down the phone and put it back on the bedside table, then had second thoughts, picked it up again and dialled another number.
The phone rang at the other end, and for a moment Nico hoped that no one would answer.
“Hello?”
“Hi, darling.”
“Hi.”
Giada sounded tired and a bit depressed, and for a moment, improbably, Nico felt a slight sense of guilt.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Quite well. And you?”
Nico stretched out a bit more in bed. “I’m not sure. Fine, I think. It’s been a long day.”
“Yes, I know. For me, too.”
Nico wondered if there was some subtext in those words, then decided he didn’t care. “We should play a game of squash.”
“Squash?”
“Yes, you know, that game where you bang a ball like crazy against a wall?”
“I know what squash is, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know, they say you sweat a lot.”
“Have you ever played it?”
“No.”
“So how do you know what it’s like?”
“I don’t know, it’s always struck me as one of those cool things you do in the evening to wind down. One of those stupid things actually, because when you think about it, banging a ball against a wall is a pretty strange way to wind down.”
Giada gave a half-laugh. “Silly,” she said.
It was nice to hear her say that, Nico thought. It had been a while since that had last happened.
“How’s your friend?” Giada asked.
Nico thought about it for a moment. “You have an amazing voice.”
“What?”
“You have an amazing voice.”
“Oh,” Giada said. “Have you only just realised?”
“No, I mean tonight. You have an amazing voice tonight.”
“Why, how is it usually?”
“No, usually it’s very nice, but tonight … Anyway.”
Silence. Nico felt like sighing, but decided not to.
“But what about your friend?”
“Well,” Nico said, “my friend is acting like a monkey.”
“You mean, really?”
“Yes, really. He grunts and slaps his own head just like a monkey. It’s quite impressive.”
“My God.”
“But he doesn’t seem that bad.”
Giada said nothing for a moment and Nico tried to imagine what position she was in.
“Oh, well,” Giada said.
Another silence. It was if both of them wanted to say something, but were too tired.
“Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, sure.”
“Sleep well.”
“You, too.”
MARCO WAS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who for some reason reach a point in their lives when they seem to realise something other people haven’t, and are constantly demonstrating the fact with a serenity they can’t conceal. After finishing school, he had tried university for a while, then had decided it wasn’t for him and had started doing all kinds of little jobs to make a living and save enough money for a plane ticket. His first destination had been South America. He had left one Thursday morning and had not returned for months.
That was how he lived: wandering from job to job, from country to country, finding what work he could and putting aside a few lire. Whenever he grew tired of it, he would start to get restless again, the way people who travel a lot tend to do. Then something had changed. Overnight, he had reappeared in town, and Nico had immediately realised that he was different from the other times. He had started working in a restaurant and after less than a year had become manager of a grocery store.
His life had suddenly become all about salami and bread and cold cuts for lunch and white shirts and jokes with the ladies who came there every day to do their shopping. Nico had often wondered what had happened, where Marco had found that thing which had stopped his heart beating too fast and given him the calm and serenity of someone who has realised something that other people haven’t. Nico had wondered where he had found that thing; if it was somewhere in the South Seas, or in the mountains of New Zealand, or if quite simply he had found it in the ham he cut day after day. Nico had even promised himself that he would ask him one day where he had found that thing. But then it always turned out that he never did anything, it always turned out that even just the idea of asking the question made him feel stupid.
When Marco arrived, Nico was sitting on a moped reading the last pages of the newspaper. He had got up late, and after chatting a bit with his parents had come down into town and slowly made his way to Vinaino’s, where he had arranged to meet Marco, stopping first at a news-stand, then at a café, where he had had a nice breakfast sitting out in the sun.
“Hey,” Marco said.
Nico put down the newspaper and looked at his friend, raising his eyebrows. “Hey,” he said.
“So?” Marco asked.
“So what?”
“Are we going to stand here all day like idiots, looking into each other’s eyes?”
Nico looked at him a moment longer, then he smiled and got off the moped. “Let’s go,” he said.
They walked along the street for about fifty metres until they got to a small restaurant with a wooden façade and four tables outside on the pavement, on a platform.
A distinguished-looking lady who looked a bit out of place there greeted them as if she had known them for ages and seated them at one of the outdoor tables. They sat down opposite each other and ordered a bottle of wine.
“House wine will be fine,” Marco said.
Nico passed his hand over his face. “How are things?” he asked.
“Oh, not bad. Usual stuff.”
Nico gave a half-laugh. “And Anna?”
“Fine. She’s at home with the kid. She wanted to come and say hello to you, but she was dead tired.”
“Why?”
“We were up late last night.”
“Doing what?”
“That’s our business. And you?”
“No, I wasn’t up late last night. I had dinner with my parents and talked a load of crap. When I arrived, my father was naked in the living room. What do you think that means?”
“How you mean, ‘naked in the living room’?”
“I don’t know. When my mum opened the door, I saw him zoom upstairs stark naked.”
“Your dad.”
“I swear.”
“I thought he even wore a tie to take a shower.”
Nico gave anoth
er half-laugh. “Apparently not.”
“And what the hell was he doing walking naked around the house?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Who knows, maybe your folks were …”
“All right, I get the picture, let’s drop it.”
Marco gave a half-laugh. “Poor guys, though.”
“Why?”
“They can’t even do what they want to in their own house without some pain in the arse turning up.”
“Yes, like their son.”
“For instance.”
“It’s funny, though.”
“What is?”
“I always wondered how they’ve managed to stay together all these years.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Now it doesn’t seem so strange any more.”
“Just because you saw your dad run upstairs naked?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Nico took a piece of bread and put it in his mouth and looked Marco in the eyes, trying to sort out what he wanted to say.
“It’s as if I’d realised that my father was actually quite a different person, someone who runs around the house naked for instance. That means by now he could be anyone, even the kind of person who’d manage to stay with my mother for thirty-five years.”
Marco looked at Nico for a couple of seconds with raised eyebrows. “Go to hell,” he said.
Nico smiled and turned to the lady, who had approached their table with a notepad in her hand. They both ordered roast loin of pork with potatoes, then sat sipping their wine.
Nico played with the breadcrumbs for a moment. “Piero has started acting like a monkey,” he said.
Marco was silent and still behind his big sunglasses.
“I’m telling the truth,” Nico said.
“What do you mean, ‘like a monkey’?”
“This summer he was with his sister and apparently one day he just bent double and started acting like a monkey. At first they all laughed, but then he wouldn’t stop. That’s why I’m here. Maria called me yesterday and asked me if I could come and visit him, to see if he was getting any better.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I saw him yesterday afternoon.”
“And how is he?” Marco asked, taking off his sunglasses.
“Impressive. He’s just like a monkey. He grunts and slaps his head and crouches on the floor playing with pistachio shells.”
“Pistachio shells?”
“Yes, he piles them up and makes shapes. I joined in for a while.”
“You and Piero played with pistachio shells?” Marco’s face twisted in what looked like a grimace of pain.
Nico nodded. “Yes.”
Marco looked at him for a couple of seconds. “Are you sure you’re not bullshitting me?”
“I’ve never been more serious,” Nico said, and started playing with the breadcrumbs again. “The strange thing is, when Maria called me I assumed it wasn’t true. Or rather, not that it wasn’t true: as if it was something amusing; something weird and cool to talk about. But when I went in that room and saw him …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He really seemed like a monkey.”
“But what the hell does it mean?”
“I don’t know what it means, Marco. I haven’t the faintest idea. I only know it was quite a blow.”
After lunch Marco offered to take Nico to Piero’s house. They climbed up into the hills in the old blue Fiat 500 that had once been his mother’s.
“Sure you don’t want to come in?” Nico asked when they were outside Piero’s gate, just before getting out of the car.
“I don’t think so,” Marco said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
Nico nodded.
“Say hello to them for me,” Marco said.
“Sure,” Nico said.
“And don’t worry.”
“OK.”
Nico shook Marco’s hand, got out of the car, watched his friend drive away, then walked to the gate.
He put his hands on the grey, slightly blistered paint. Once that gate had been green, then it had been brown, and finally grey like now. Nico remembered the few times over the years when he had seen the gate all orange, covered in anti-rust paint. That was something that had always made him feel good. It was as if that orange paint gave objects a kind of grandeur. Ever since he was a child, he had told himself that he, too, would like to paint something orange one day.
For a while, he stood there, hanging on the bars of the gate, moving his hands over the little blisters in the paint. In places, rust was starting to show. He looked through the bars. The drive rose between the trees until it disappeared round the bend. Somewhere there, at the end of the drive, were Miriam and Maria and Piero and that mass of unspoken things that burnt like hot coals.
Nico turned and started to walk back down the road. He would pass the big bend and carry on down into town; he would walk along the avenues and through the centre; he would reach the station and get on the first train. Once he arrived, he might start walking again, down to the river and up again and all the way across the city, until he got home. In the evening he might cook himself a quick dish of pasta, take the phone off the hook and put on a good film, then go to bed and try not to think about anything.
PUSHKIN PRESS
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997. Having first rediscovered European classics of the twentieth century, Pushkin now publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books, and everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Pushkin Paper books, like this one, represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world. Pushkin publishes widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Hermann Hesse, as well as some of the most exciting contemporary and often prize-winning writers, including Pietro Grossi, Héctor Abad, Filippo Bologna and Andrés Neuman.
Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again.
*
HÉCTOR ABAD Recipes for Sad Women
OLIVIER ADAM Cliffs
FLAVIA ARZENI An Education in Happiness:
The Lessons of Hesse and Tagore
FRANÇOIS AUGIÉRAS A Journey to Mount Athos
Journey of the Dead
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
MARCEL AYMÉ Beautiful Image
The Man who Walked through Walls
SALIM BACHI The New Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor
The Silence of Mohammed
PHILIPPE BEAUSSANT Rendezvous in Venice
ANDREI BELY Petersburg
OLIVIER BERGGRUEN The Writing of Art
EDUARDO BERTI Agua
FILIPPO BOLOGNA How I Lost the War
MARELLA CARACCIOLO CHIA The Light in Between
VELIBOR COLIC The Uncannily Strange and Brief
Life of Amedeo Modigliani
LOUIS COUPERUS Ecstasy
Eline Vere
Inevitable
Psyche
The Hidden Force
RÉGIS DEBRAY Against Venice
CHARLES DICKENS Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi
ISAK DINESEN The Necklace and The Pearls
ALAIN ELKANN Envy
The French Father
NICOLAS FARGUES I Was behind You
CARLOS GAMERRO An Open Secret
JULIEN GRACQ A Dark Stranger
Chateau d’Argol
JULIAN GREEN The Other Sleep
BROTHERS GRIMM The Juniper Tree and Other Tales
PIETRO GROSSI Fists
The Break
EDUARDO HALFON The Polish Boxer
PETER HANDKE A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
HERMANN HESSE Hymn to Old Age
HUGO VON HOFFMANSTHAL Andreas
HENRY JAMES Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro
Letters to Isabella Stewart
Gardner
PETER STEPHAN JUNGK The Inheritance
ERLING KAGGE Philosophy for Polar Explorers
SØREN KIERKEGAARD Diary of a Seducer
PETR KRÁL In Search of the Essence of Place
Loving Venice
Working Knowledge
SIMON LIBERATI Anthology of Apparitions
OLIVER MATUSCHEK Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig
GUY DE MAUPASSANT The Necklace and The Pearls
JEAN-EUPHÈLE MILCÉ Alphabet of the Night
PAUL MORAND Hecate and Her Dogs
Tender Shoots
The Allure of Chanel
Venices
ANDRÉS NEUMAN Traveller of the Century
UMBERTO PASTI The Age of Flowers
EDGAR ALLAN POE The Journal of Julius Rodman
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN The Queen of Spades
RAYMOND RADIGUET Count d’Orgel
The Devil in the Flesh
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY Letter to a Hostage
GEORGE SAND Laura: A Journey into the Crystal
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER The Man Who Sees Ghosts
ARTHUR SCHNITZLER Casanova’s Return to Venice
Dying
Fräulein Else
ADOLF SCHRÖDER The Game of Cards
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Sonnets
JAN JACOB SLAUERHOFF The Forbidden Kingdom
SIMONA SPARACO About Time
ADALBERT STIFTER The Bachelors
Rock Crystal
ITALO SVEVO A Life
ANTAL SZERB Journey by Moonlight
Love in a Bottle
Oliver VII
The Pendragon Legend
The Queen’s Necklace
FRIEDRICH TORBERG Young Gerber
MARK TWAIN The Jumping Frog and Other Stories
LOUISE DE VILMORIN Madame de
ERNST WEISS Franziska
Jarmila
EDITH WHARTON Glimpses of the Moon
TONY WILD AND
DIANA DE GUNZBURG The Moonstone Legacy
FLORIAN ZELLER Artificial Snow
Julien Parme
Lovers or Something Like It
The Fascination of Evil
STEFAN ZWEIG Amok and Other Stories
Beware of Pity
Burning Secret
Casanova: A Study in Self-Portraiture
Confusion
Fear