A Walk in the Dark (4 page)

Put like that, it sounds romantic. But the villa was half in ruins, the garden looked like the garden of the House of Usher, and every night girls from Eastern Europe congregated a few yards from the gate, in various stages of undress depending on the season. Their clients’ cars stopped practically in front of Rita and Nicola’s house. There was a constant stream of them until well into the night. Every now and again, the police or the carabinieri turned up, hauled in the clients and the girls, sent some of the girls back to their countries, and for a few days the traffic stopped. Then, within a week, it all started again, just like before.

The countryside behind the villa was populated by packs of wild dogs and scattered with ruins used as storage for stolen goods. I could say that with some certainty, seeing as how one of the fences who used these ruins was a client of mine who’d once been arrested while unloading a truck full of stolen hi-fis into one of them.

None of this seemed to be a problem for Rita and Nicola. They paid an absurdly low rent for a thousand
square feet, which they’d never have been able to afford in the centre of town. The house was full of the strangest things. And, when there was a party, the strangest people.

Rita was a painter and taught at the Academy of Fine Arts. Nicola had a New Age bookshop, specializing in oriental and esoteric philosophies and practices.

One of the rooms in the villa had mats on the floor and mirrors on the walls. This was where they held seminars on transcendental meditation, tai chi chuan and shiatsu, and study sessions on
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
, Chinese astrology, and so on.

Nicola was a kind of Buddha of Suburbia, like the Hanif Kureishi character. Only he didn’t operate in Seventies London, but in Bari in the early twenty-first century. Between Iapigia and Torre a Mare, to be precise.

 

 

As I was getting ready to go out, cleaning my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, I thought I saw something under my eyes. Like a slight shadow, or a slight swelling. I rinsed the brush, put it away, and had a closer look. There were indeed two very slight swellings, between the eyes and the cheekbones.

Bags under my eyes, I thought: those words exactly. Oh, shit.

I stayed at the mirror and, a bit hesitantly, moved the index finger of my right hand closer to one of those . . . things. There it was. I could touch it, as well as see it.

With my finger, I tried pulling down the skin. It didn’t seem like mine. It wasn’t elastic, but had the slack texture of a slightly worn fabric. At least that’s what I thought at that moment.

Then I started to study my face closely in the mirror.
I noticed I had lines at the corners of my mouth, near the eyes, and especially on my forehead. Long, deep lines, like trenches. How long had I had them? How come I had never noticed them before?

I pinched my skin, in different parts of my face, to see how long it took to fall back into place. As I did this experiment, I remembered when I was a child and my great-grandmother used to hold me on her knees and I’d pinch her cheeks. I’d pull them down and then watch as the skin fell back into place.
Very
slowly.

That reminded me of my great-grandmother’s neck, all lines and creases. So I checked my own neck. Which of course was the kind of neck you’d expect to see on a forty-year-old man in good health and reasonable physical condition. My great-grandmother, as I didn’t stop to think at the time, had been at least eighty-five, if not older.

I was about to start an anxious search for other marks of time – which had obviously passed without my realizing it – when the doorbell rang. I looked at my watch and realized, in this order (a) that Margherita was ready, was knocking at my door, and was probably thinking I was ready too, (b) that I wasn’t ready at all, and (c) that maybe I was starting to lose it.

I went and opened the door, didn’t mention point (c) to Margherita (and to avoid her noticing it for herself, I also avoided asking her if she thought I had lines or bags under my eyes), finished getting ready in a hurry, and a quarter of an hour later we were in the street. For the rest of the evening, I stopped worrying about time passing and its dermatological ramifications.

 

 

You could hear music even before you got inside
the villa. Wind and string instruments, remote, mystical sounds, a few strokes of the gong. The best of Vietnamese New Wave, someone explained to me some time later. The kind of music I love so much I can even listen to it for five minutes at a stretch.

The house was full of incense smoke, and people. Some of them were almost normal.

Margherita disappeared almost immediately into the crowd and the fog. Soon after, I glimpsed her chatting to a tall, thin, bearded guy, about fifty. He was dressed in an impeccable two-button Prince of Wales suit and looked quite surreal in the middle of this gathering. I knew hardly anybody and didn’t much feel like talking to the few people I did know. So, almost immediately, I applied myself to the food, which was copiously laid out on a long table.

There was something like a kind of goulash, but it wasn’t Hungarian, it was Indonesian, and it was called beef
rendang
. Then there was something that looked like paella, but wasn’t Spanish but Indonesian too, called
nasi goreng
. And then there was something that looked like an innocuous Italian mixed salad. It wasn’t Italian – it too was Indonesian – and it certainly wasn’t innocuous. When I tasted it, I felt as if I’d put an oxyacetylene torch in my mouth. I don’t remember the exact name in Indonesian, but the translation was something like this: green salad with
very
spicy sauce.

But I ate everything, including mango crepes in coconut sauce and a banana and cinnamon dessert. Both of these were Vietnamese, I think, but they were good.

I went for a little walk around the house. I exchanged pointless chatter with various weird people. Every now and again I saw Margherita, still chatting to the bearded guy. I was starting to get a bit pissed off, and I looked around to see if I could cadge a cigarette off someone.
Then I remembered I’d quit, and besides, no one was smoking. Smoking isn’t very New Age.

I was sitting on a sofa, drinking my third or maybe fourth glass of organically grown red wine. It tasted a bit like old Folonari, but I wasn’t much in the mood for being fussy.

A girl sat down next to me, dressed in Cultural Revolution style. Sky-blue canvas trousers and a jacket/ shirt of the same material, with a Korean-type collar.

She was very pretty, a bit plump, nose pierced with a small diamond, long black hair, blue eyes. There was something vaguely dreamy about her, I thought – or vaguely stupid. She started talking without any preamble.

“I don’t think much of this Vietnamese music.”

So you’re not as stupid as you look, I thought. I’m glad. I don’t think much of it either, to me it sounds like a serenade for nail and blackboard. I was about to say something like that, when she went on:

“I like Tibetan music a lot. I think it’s more suitable for real meditation.”

Oh, right. Tibetan music. Perfect.

“Have you ever listened to Tibetan music?”

She wasn’t looking at me. She was sitting calmly, almost on the edge of the sofa, looking in front of her. Straight in front of her at some vague spot, like a crazy woman. As I was about to reply, I realized I was assuming the same position.

“Tibetan music? I’m not really sure. Maybe . . .”

“You should. It’s the best thing for unblocking the chakras and letting the energy flow. I have the sense, sitting next to you, that you have an intense aura, a great deal of potential energy, but you’re not able to let it flow.”

I drank a little more of the organic Folonari and
decided to let my potential energy flow. It seemed to me, then and there, that she’d asked for it.

“It’s strange. They told me something similar, though not in quite the same words, when I started getting interested in Druid astrology.”

She turned to me, and from her eyes it was clear I’d really grabbed her attention. “Druid astrology?”

“Yes, it’s a system of astrology based on esoteric principles, developed by the high priests of Stonehenge.”

“Oh, yes, Stonehenge. That’s that ancient city in Scotland, with those strange stone buildings.”

Dummy. Stonehenge wasn’t in Scotland, but in England, and as everyone knows, it isn’t a city.

I didn’t say that. I complimented her on the fact that she’d heard of Stonehenge, we introduced ourselves – her name was Silvia – and then I explained the principles of druid astrology. A discipline invented by me, in her honour, that night. I told her about the astrological rituals performed on the nights of the summer solstice, the astral intersections, the sidereal affinities. Whatever all that might mean.

Silvia was really interested now. It was rare, she said, to find a man so passionate, so knowledgeable, so sensitive.

As she said the word
sensitive
, she gave me a deep, meaningful look. I went to get a fresh supply of organic wine.

“You drink wine?” she said, with a slight touch of disapproval. New Age girls drink carrot juice and nettle tea. By now I was feeling decidedly merry.

“Oh, yes. Red wine is a Druid drink. It’s a ritual medium, useful for inducing Dionysian states.” I wasn’t lying. I was simply saying that wine is useful for getting drunk. Which is what I was doing now. Then it occurred to me to tell her about a remarkable method
of divination. Again, of my own invention. It was the reading of the elbow, as practised by the ancient, mystical Chaldean people. As it happened, it was something I knew as much about as I did about the Stonehenge horoscope.

So I explained how, according to ancient Chaldean wisdom, it was possible to read the trajectories of a person’s crossed destinies in his or her left elbow. To me, the whole thing was totally meaningless, but she didn’t notice.

In fact, she asked me if we could try an elbow reading. I said yes, that was fine. I knocked back the last gulp of wine from the half-empty glass and told her to uncover her left arm.

As I was pinching the skin of her elbow – an essential practice for discovering the trajectories of crossed destinies – I noticed Margherita. Standing in front of the sofa. Right on top of me.

“There you are.”

“Yes, here I am. Actually, I’ve been here for a few minutes. But you were quite busy, if I can put it like that. Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

I made the introductions, thinking as I did so that suddenly I wasn’t having fun any more. Margherita said
Pleased to meet you
– she never says
Pleased to meet you
– with the friendly expression of a hammerhead shark. Silvia said
hi
, with the intense expression of a stone bass.

Then I said maybe it was time to go. Margherita said yes, maybe it was.

So I said goodbye to my new friend Silvia, who seemed rather disoriented.

We said goodbye to a few other people and ten minutes later we were in the car, with the sea racing by on our right and the outlines of the apartment blocks on the sea road a few miles in front of us. To be honest, I
have to admit that the sea, the apartment blocks and all the rest weren’t in perfect focus, but somehow I managed to hold the wheel.

“Did you have fun with that girl?”

I tried to look at her without taking my eyes off the road. Not an easy task.

“I was just playing a game, you know. I was telling her about Druid astrology.”

“And elbow readings.”

“Oh, you heard.”

“Yes, I heard. And saw.”

“Well, I was only passing the time, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Anyway, you didn’t seem exactly bored, with that Rasputin in the two-button Prince of Wales suit. Who was he, the secretary of the Philosophers’ Association?”

Pause.

“You’re great.”

“Really?”

“Really. As great as a stiff neck.” She paused a moment. “Or better still, toothache.”

“Toothache seems more appropriate.”

“Yes.” She was trying very hard not to laugh. “The things you think of. Reading elbows. You’re crazy.”

“I think of all sorts of things. Right now, for instance, I’m thinking some things. About you.”

“Oh yes? Things that might interest a girl?”

“Yes, yes, I think so.”

She paused a moment. I was trying to keep my eyes on the road, which was becoming ever more elusive amid the fumes of organic wine. But I knew exactly the expression Margherita had on her face at that moment.

“All right, then, Druid astrologer, elbow reader, drive on. Let’s go home.”

On Monday morning, I went to the Public Prosecutor’s department.

I entered the courthouse through the entrance reserved for magistrates, staff and lawyers. A young carabiniere I’d never seen before asked me for my papers. I said I was a lawyer and he asked again for my papers. Of course I didn’t have my pass with me, so the young carabiniere told me to go out and come back in through the public entrance. The one equipped with a metal detector, in case I had a submachine gun under my jacket.

Or an axe. They’d installed metal detectors after a madman had entered the court with an axe stuffed down his trousers. Nobody had checked him, and once inside he’d started to smash things up. When he was finally cornered and disarmed by the carabinieri, he said he’d come to
talk
to the judge who’d found against him in an inheritance case. That must have been his idea of an appeal.

I was just about to turn round and do as the carabiniere had said, when I was spotted by a marshal who was on duty in court every day and knew me. He told the young man I was indeed a lawyer and he could let me pass.

The entrance hall was packed: women, young men, carabinieri, prison warders and lawyers, most of them provincial. It was the first day of the trial of a group of drug dealers from Altamura. The background noise
was the kind you hear in a theatre before the show starts. The background smell was the kind you often smell in railway stations, or on crowded buses. Or in the entrance halls of law courts.