At the End of a Dull Day (3 page)

“I'll be back tomorrow night. Like I said, we need to talk.”

“Did something happen?”

He flashed a bitter grimace disguised as a smile: “Something always happens.”

On his way out he stopped to say hello to Martina and to be introduced to Professor Salvini, whose center-left sympathies were well known. Brianese was polite but brisk. After all, he was certainly more interested in the time he was about to spend with the whore who was waiting for him than the time he might waste on some guy who would never vote for him.

My wife came over to me a few minutes later while I was adding up a check at the cash register. She showed me a CD. “I want to play this for Gemma.”

For a few seconds I paid close attention to the music issuing from the speakers. It was an instrumental version of Lucio Battisti's
Il mio canto libero
.

“It's nothing weird, is it?” I asked in a low voice. “Like political protest songwriters or jazz laments or ethnic wailing?”

She smiled. “Don't worry. It's a French group, I won't chase your customers away.”

I reached out my hand and looked at her. She didn't have a single honey-blonde hair out of place, her makeup was perfect, her string of pearls, her blouse amply filled by her breasts, just lightly retouched by the plastic surgeon. The scars were still evident and I loved to run my tongue around their outlines. Martina was beautiful, serious, practically perfect. I took a quick look at the clock on the wall. That evening I felt like hurrying home early to be with her.

As I suspected, the music of the French group wasn't suited to La Nena's style and clientele. It was an unholy marriage of
chanson française
, old-time swing, and world music. Martina was adorable but she really didn't know shit about music. By the third track, when the biggest producer of poultry manure in the province gestured for me to change the music, I hit the off switch and replaced the CD with the latest release by Giusy Ferreri.

At eleven o'clock on the dot my wife stood up, shook hands with Salvini, and came over with Gemma to say goodnight.

“Don't be late,” she whispered in my ear.

“We're changing the dinner menu tomorrow night and I have to talk to the cook, but I'll do my best to make it quick.”

Gemma helped her into her floor-length down coat.

“Do you feel like taking a walk?”

“Yes,” I said, answering for her. “Martina has a couple of glasses of Amarone she needs to metabolize.”

The head physician signaled for the check. I brought it over to him in person, along with a snifter of cognac from my personal stock.

He shoved his nose into the snifter. “What a bouquet! I really shouldn't drink any more this evening, but there are delights that you can't turn down.”

He sampled it like a connoisseur. “Excellent!”

I smiled and turned to go.

“Maybe this will help me to make a decision that I can't put off any longer.”

“Have you decided to stay on as head physician?”

He shook his head. “I'm just filling in until the Freemasons and the Communion and Liberation Party can come to an agreement. No, the decision has to do with a little patient of mine . . . ”

“This cognac is infallible,” I said brusquely, cutting the conversation short. His confidence had made me uncomfrotable.

My tone wasn't lost on Salvini. He shot me a sidelong glance and set his snifter down on the table. “I'll pay with a credit card. Please add a 10 percent tip for the waiters,” he announced with some considerable resentment.

I had just lost a customer. That wasn't so bad. Clearly he'd failed to understand that the services I offered didn't include friendly pats on the back.

 

The apartment, dimly lit by the diffuse lights scattered here and there between the entrance and the hallway, was shrouded in silence. It seemed as if there was nobody there but I knew exactly where Martina was. I stepped into the walk-in closet, took off my shoes, and put them with the other shoes set aside for cleaning. My wife would take care of them. Everything that concerned me personally was her responsibility. I would never have allowed our housekeeper to touch my things. Then my jacket, tie, and trousers wound up hanging on a clothes valet that, considering how much it cost me, deserved a place in our living room. Underwear and socks went into the laundry hamper. I walked naked into the bedroom and sat down in an armchair positioned so as to give me a complete view of the bathroom, which was lit up brightly. It looked like a film set. Martina was nude too, standing next to the bathroom sink. From a glass shelf she picked up various jars and bottles of creams and ointments, opened them, and set them down in a precise order. She stuck her fingers into the first jar and then rubbed them over her face with slow circular movements. More cream went onto her neck and her hands never stopped moving, slowly descending until they reached her feet. She put the jars back onto the shelf. Then, with a graceful motion, she lifted her left leg and braced her foot on the edge of the sink. Her middle finger traced the outlines of her public hair, which her beautician had razored into the shape of the initial of my first name. Then her finger was swallowed up by her labia majora as she searched for her clitoris. I waited until her eyelids fluttered shut and she started breathing in short labored pants.

“That's enough.”

Martina kept touching herself. “Oh, please, I'm almost there.”

“I said that's enough.”

She moved her hand away. “But why?”

“That CD was a piece of shit. You disrespected me.”

She was about to come back at me with an answer of some kind, but then she changed her mind. She shut the door with one foot, slamming it ever so slightly.

I put on my silk pajamas and slipped into bed. A few minutes later Martina got in beside me. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug.

“Good night, my love.”

 

I woke up perfectly rested. My wife, as usual, was already up. I couldn't stand the idea of waking up with a disheveled woman sleeping beside me, with puffy eyes and morning breath, shuffling around the house in her slippers. Martina was in the kitchen, in her morning outfit: skirt, blouse, ballet flats, a hint of makeup, one or two pieces of jewelry.

Breakfast was ready.

“I wanted to apologize for last night,” she said in a small voice. “I'd listened to the CD in the car and thought it was pretty.”

I took her face in my hands. “Let's forget it ever happened,” I announced before planting a kiss on her lips.

As she was pouring my coffee I walked over to the refrigerator and pulled a sheet of paper off a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

“This morning you have an hour of pilates and your massage. After lunch you're having your teeth cleaned. And that's all?” I asked in surprise.

“Going to the dentist wears me out, you know that. Afterwards I'd prefer to stay in and just watch some television.”

“Understood. But the whole afternoon strikes me as excessive. Get a nice hour's run in between six and seven o'clock, okay?”

“It's cold out,” she whined.

“Christ, Martina, do we have to argue about every last detail of our life together?”

“I'm sorry, you're right.”

She handed me the demitasse cup. I drank slowly, sipping the coffee and savoring it to the last drop. Then I took the tablets of vitamin supplements and laid them out on the table alongside her glass of orange juice. With her customary gesture, she reached out, picked them up, and popped them into her mouth. Essential trace elements, antioxidants, tonics . . . the finest products on the market in terms of slowing or warding off the aging process and keeping body and mind in tip-top shape. I purchased them over the Internet after selecting them personally. Every Sunday I read the special supplement of a major national daily newspaper in search of articles with useful information for my beloved Martina.

She spread jam on the melba toast and started talking. Breakfast was the one time of the day when I listened to anything she wanted to tell me. It was important for her. She constantly needed attention and advice.

Nicoletta warned me before I married her: “This one still hasn't figured out who you really are. If you want to hold onto her, you'd better make sure she never does.”

“Any advice?”

“Pretend to listen to her, to be deeply absorbed in all her problems. She's the classic woman who needs to have a give-and-take dialogue with her man.”

“What about you?” I asked with a smile.

“I'm smarter than that, handsome. In my first year of high school I figured out what a waste of time that is.”

I took her advice, and it worked. Every morning Martina entertained me for a solid half hour with her bullshit. She talked about her family, Gemma, other girlfriends that meant less to her, acquaintances, anecdotes, gossip, various purchases, and finally, the two of us. The endless source of anxiety in that period was her father's illness. Another old guy enlisted by cruel fate in the Alzheimer's battalion. She wanted to spend more time with her mother and her sisters, and she was afraid of what they thought of her. From the very beginning I'd made it perfectly clear that children and in-laws were not subjects I cared to engage in. I wasn't born to dandle infants on my knee or to spend Sundays, Easters, and Christmases seated at long, noisy tables full of in-laws. I'd turned my back on my own family years ago and I didn't miss them in the slightest.

“I know you too well,” I told her that morning. “You'd become sad and unsightly, because grief gives you wrinkles and creases; that's what the surgeon told you when he did your eyelid surgery. And you'd be ruining your life for nothing, because there's nothing that you can do. Your father's done for. And there are already lots of people taking care of him.”

She grabbed my hand. “I'm begging you. Three times a week. I need to be close to my mama and to Paola and Romina.”

“You've already got so many things scheduled . . . ”

“I'll take care of everything. I swear it.”

I lifted her hands to my lips and kissed them. “You're a good girl,” I whispered in admiration. “I'm proud of you.”

“Does that mean you'll let me?”

“As long as it doesn't affect our life together and, in any case, as long as you understand clearly that this is a major concession and I'll expect you to make one in return.”

She threw her arms around my neck, deeply moved. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

 

At the end of a dull day, the lawyer and, incidentally, parliamentarian of the Italian republic Sante Brianese came back to La Nena at aperitif time to talk to me, as promised. After the standard salutations, and after downing a couple of glasses of bubbly, he waved me over.

“We'd better talk in the back room . . . is it clean?”

“Of course. I had it swept this morning.”

“Good. Bring the bottle and a tray of hors d'oeuvres.” The fad of bugging offices was a new one in the city. Bugs had been found in the offices of businessmen vying for contracts of various kinds, and the thing that had aroused the greatest alarm in certain circles was the fact that it probably hadn't been the police or investigating magistrates who had placed the bugs. A number of rumors were circulating about the likely provenance of these listening devices. Since Brianese was exposed to considerable risk and had a fair number of enemies, he'd hired a technician who worked in the sector to sweep the back room and other “sensitive” places in the bar.

Of course I'd had the rooms shielded against electronic eavesdroppers. There were idiots who complained that in the back room “I can't get a cell phone signal,” but somehow they figured that no one would ever think to eavesdrop on them or wiretap them, and so I had to take care of things properly, if only to protect myself.

Along with the bottle of wine I brought a tray of local cold cuts and salamis and pickled vegetables. When he wasn't being forced to masquerade as the successful professional he'd become, and therefore an innovative and discerning gourmet, Brianese went back to being the son of the peasant farmer who broken his back to send him to the university.

He twisted and turned, talking with his mouth full of food about the responsibilities of “leaders.” “This is a country where one minute the people adore you and the next minute they'll line you up against a wall in Piazzale Loreto and shoot you, or throw coins at you as you leave your hotel.”

I speared an artichoke preserved in oil and a slice of salami with a toothpick and laid them down on a thin slice of bread.

“You're worrying me, Counselor. You're dragging this thing out a little too long for it not to be something serious.”

He heaved a deep sigh and went straight to the point. “The whole Dubai business went belly-up. They screwed us with a Ponzi scheme.”

I've never been a financial genius so I've always entrusted my money to Brianese and his expert advisers, but I wasn't a big enough fool to be taken in by that old trick. Like every other investor, large and small, on the planet, I'd followed the Madoff case with interest and I knew perfectly well that there were successors to Charles Ponzi around every corner, looking for idiots to fleece. They promise high returns on small investments but it's nothing more than a financial pyramid scheme. The few at the top of the pyramid rake in the cash invested by the many at the base, and on it would go until the hordes of chickens rushing in for the plucking begin to thin out.

“Even the English advisers who recommended that we get into the deal were screwed,” he went on. “They flew out to Dubai but, instead of construction sites for luxury hotel and office towers, they just found a lot of old ditches. Those fucking Bedouins didn't even bother to pretend to build anything. Our friends tried to kick up a fuss but the authorities just loaded them onto the first plane out.”