The Crocodile (3 page)

For the past few days now, though, he was finally working for real. He’d pull up outside the rich kids’ school, up in the nice part of town, and sit there on his scooter, off to one side. When school let out, he’d mingle with the students, and someone would approach him with a folded bill in their hand; they’d shake hands, and he’d palm him a baggie. Just another kid surrounded by kids like him. Dressed like them, with a scooter just like theirs. It was easy, so easy.

And Mirko had received, directly from Antonio’s hands, two fifty-euro bills. “But you need to be careful,” Antonio had told him.

Mirko looks at himself in the mirror again, suddenly slightly worried: this Mohawk isn’t too showy, is it? It’s not like someone’s going to recognize him, is it? Some sharp-eyed high school teacher who doesn’t know enough to mind his own fucking business?

Then he thinks it over and remembers that some of those idiots who were so eager to give him their money have hair exactly like his, and that calms him down.

For no good reason, his thoughts go to the blonde. He’d noticed her immediately, among all the other airheads, outside the school. Mamma mia, she was a real beauty! She looked like an angel, and when she laid her eyes on him he felt even punier than when Antonio first called him over. And she had smiled at him—at him, of all people. She must have taken him for someone else, but for whatever reason, she’d smiled at him.

Mirko takes a look around. Of course, if the blonde saw where he lives, what a shitty home he has, he could imagine how she’d laugh. But that doesn’t mean she necessarily has to know, does it?

He touches the pocket where he keeps the hundred euros. He doesn’t want to break the notes, but he has to buy gas for his scooter. Maybe it’s time to take a stroll through Mamma’s handbag.

He smiles into the mirror, cigarette in his mouth, one eye half-closed. Mamma. Who always tells him that “it’s you and me alone against the world.” Who gives him everything she has, and has done so as long as he can remember. Mamma, who works and does nothing else, who hasn’t even ever had a man. Who’s never gone out to the movies, never eaten in a restaurant. But who keeps that hovel clean and sweet-smelling, for her boy.

I’m not a boy anymore, Mamma. Let me do what I need to, and I’ll take care of you now. I’ll bring money home, Mamma. And I’ll take you out to dinner and a movie every night from now on.

I wonder if the blonde likes guys with Mohawks, he thinks as he looks at himself in the mirror. Anyway, who cares what she likes?

Letizia’s trattoria had become fashionable. People came from Vomero, Posillipo, and Chiaia to eat there, leaving their cars in parking garages on the edge of the quarter, where they’d be safe from the rapacious eyes of car thieves.

One day, a newspaper had published a highly flattering review by a food writer, and everything changed. Letizia often wondered when it was that the man had come in, just one more anonymous diner, and taken his seat at the red-and-white checked table, sampling the “sublime red-onion tomato sauce” and the “fantastic ragout meat loaf, a sensory delight,” as he had described his meal. Actually, she was glad that she hadn’t known at the time; she was proud of the fact that the reviewer hadn’t been given any special treatment.

Since the man was an authority in his field, famous for his all-guns-blazing takedowns of pretentious high-end restaurants, the favorable review spelled the beginning of an unstoppable rise in the tiny trattoria’s popularity. The phone rang nonstop and reservations poured in. Letizia could perfectly well have raised prices sharply, expanded the dining room to the disadvantage of the kitchen or the wine cellar, made more tables available to her ravenous clientele, and even hired a couple of waiters; but it would no longer be her trattoria if she had.

She liked taking orders herself, moving around in the dining room, chatting with the diners. She felt that a little personal interaction, without presuming on her customers’ good nature, helped her to understand what people preferred so that she could encourage them with some advice or a suggestion. Dining is meant to involve conversation: if you don’t want to talk, go stand at the counter in a panino place.

Letizia herself, as the reviewer had written, was one of the reasons it was worth climbing the dark, damp alley: “a dark good-looking woman, all smiles and personality, with a ready wit and a contagious laugh.” What the man couldn’t have known was that behind that laughter was an iron personality, forged by profound sorrow and a great deal of hard work.

She never talked about her husband, who had died many years ago; some said in a car crash, others said after a brief illness. She hadn’t had children and no one knew of any subsequent relationships, even though a great many men had been attracted by her lovely smile and generous bosom. She had her trattoria to run and at this point in her life—well past forty—she wanted no distractions.

Just before the article and the sudden rush for reservations that followed, she had noticed one regular customer. He always sat at the corner table, the one that was least visible, the table no one else wanted because it was right under the television set and close to the front door. He never took off his overcoat, he never had anything to read, he never had company for dinner. He always asked for the special, which he ate quickly; but then he’d linger, drinking wine, downing one glass after another, methodically, without enjoyment, as if he were taking medicine. Letizia watched him curiously, sympathetically. He had an odd face. It looked as if it had been carved out of hardwood, high cheekbones, black almond-shaped eyes. In her mind, she called him “the Chinese.” She wished she could talk to him. Her sociable nature made her want to break the silence that isolated him from the rest of the world like a transparent veil, but she sensed that the equilibrium between them was fragile and that, after a few one-syllable replies, he might very well stop coming to eat there.

She’d impulsively started reserving the table for him. Even when there was a line outside, with customers standing out on the sidewalk in the pouring rain, patiently waiting their turn under their umbrellas, the corner table sat empty, awaiting its silent occupant. And sure enough, he would show up, hair rumpled, overcoat creased, and take a seat under the television. For Letizia it had become something to look forward to, so much so that for him the prices, which had remained the same even though the trattoria was increasingly popular, were actually slightly discounted.

One night the Chinese fell asleep, shoulders against the wall, wineglass in hand. There was a dolorous expression on his face as he chased after some terrible, unimaginable dream. Two couples, sitting at the next table, started elbowing each other and snickering. One of the girls intentionally dropped a fork to see him wake up with a jerk. But he went on sleeping his sleep of despair. Letizia felt a stab of sympathy in her heart and went over, sitting down at his table to protect his rest. Without opening his eyes, he murmured, “Forgive me, I have a headache. I’ll get up in a minute and free up the table for you.”

“Don’t worry, you can stay as long as you like. I’ll bring you a couple of aspirin. You’ll see, you’ll feel better right away.”

Without opening his eyes, he smiled a crooked smile and said, “The headache I have isn’t something you can cure with aspirin. But thanks all the same. Maybe another glass of wine, and the bill.”

From that night on, whenever the trattoria was almost empty, Letizia developed the habit of sitting at the corner table to eat her dinner, instead of eating in the kitchen.

One word after another, night after night, “the Chinese” turned into Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono, known to the friends and family he no longer had as Peppuccio, from Montallegro, a village in the province of Agrigento; and his sad story emerged in the images glimpsed at the bottom of glasses full of red wine, including his ruined marriage and his daughter’s voice, the sound of which he was starting to forget.

Night after night, Letizia had become a door through which Lojacono spied on a city that was very different from the way he’d first imagined it: mistrustful, damp, and dark, increasingly hidden and far less decipherable than he had thought. Everyone eager to avoid trouble of any kind, everyone keeping their nose out of other people’s business, ready to take to their heels. A city that ran through your fingers, turning to liquid, or suddenly evaporating.

Even though Lojacono himself came from a place whose ways were, at best, difficult to fathom, he wondered exactly where the delicate balance point lay between this city and those entrusted with its governance. He saw his fellow policemen venture out and return, conclude complex operations and undertake others, with no clear objective, while all around them illicit trafficking bubbled along like a stewpot, endlessly. Shaking his head, he told Letizia that it was like a system, a net that had no visible means of support. It wasn’t clear how the thing stood up.

Letizia smiled and gave a shrug. She replied that perhaps everyone was just doing their best, against impossible odds, to remain standing. And maybe that was all that kept the city upright, because deep down the place was empty, both physically and morally.

When she said that, he smiled that odd smile of his, that smile she liked so well, and raised a glass to that dark city and to her own luminous laughter.

The old man walks along, hugging the wall.
His feet drag a little, his worn-out shoes grazing the wet and uneven paving stones. He’s cautious, eyes on the ground to make sure he doesn’t trip and fall. Every so often he reaches a hand into his pocket, pulls a tissue out, and dries his left eye, dabbing under the lens of his glasses.

The old man makes his way slowly. When he comes to a cross street he stops and looks first in one direction, then the other, waiting for howling scooters piled high with people, two or three on each, to zip by.

The old man walks along, hugging the wall, and no one sees him. He’s like a breath of wind, like a rat in the shadows. Who should bother to glance at him, no different from so many others like him, phantoms that populate the city of shadows?

Every so often the old man crosses paths with someone: a woman bent double with the burden of years, a black man with a shopping bag on his shoulder, a man whose face bears the marks of the blows fate has dealt him. He turns his gaze away and so do they, because death is ugly to look upon, as is death’s harbinger.

The old man walks along, hugging the wall, and no one sees him. He passes by the windows of the
bassi
, the miserable storefront hovel flats, but he doesn’t look inside, he doesn’t glance at the poverty. And the poverty doesn’t look up at him.

The old man walks and the street rises before him, but despite the climb his pace does not slacken. He knows that if he keeps moving constantly, no one will wonder who he is, the way they would if he were to stop and look up. No one sees those who walk in silence, head down, clearly beset by thoughts and problems; no one wants to run the risk of sharing thoughts and problems, even if it entails nothing more than exchanging a glance.

The old man walks, bending his back in an effort to look even older. Old age is a heavy burden, and no one wants that burden for themselves. Old age seems like a contagious disease; it prompts disgust, and so others shun it.

The old man knows how to pass unobserved. In fact, he’s invisible, hugging the wall, diligently yielding to others, careful not to become an obstacle to anything, to anyone. Only a sleeping dog raises its muzzle and twitches an ear at his passage, sensing the whiff of death that wafts around him; but the dog thinks it must be dreaming, and falls back into slumber.

The old man walks, searching for a specific address. He reaches it and comes to a halt. He looks for the darkest shadows, he studies a main street door. He sees a motor scooter, he compares the license plate with a number in his memory. He withdraws into a corner stinking of stale piss and braces himself to wait. Patiently.

The old man knows how to wait.

Giada is stretched out on the sofa in the living room, talking on the phone with Allegra, as usual. And as usual she still has her shoes on. She’d really catch it if her mother could see her; Mamma would start up with her litany. But Mamma’s not home, so who the hell cares?

“And what did you tell her?”

Allegra laughs. She’s sophisticated even when she laughs. That’s the way Allegra is, always perfectly poised, well mannered, meticulous; her delicate features, her neatly coiffed hair, well groomed and well dressed. But Giada knows her well, they’ve been friends forever; she knows what a sewer of filth that pouty pink mouth can turn into.

“You can probably guess. I told her that if she doesn’t watch out I’ll pop those fake overblown tits of hers, and that if she keeps playing the slut with Christian I’ll tell everyone I know that her mother caught syphilis from the Sri Lankan houseboy they hired.”

Giada lurches on the couch. “Have you lost your mind? Did her mother really . . . No way!”

“Of course not. But everyone would believe me; they all know that Marzia’s mother is a slut. And for that matter, like mother, like daughter. Better to be cautious, don’t you think?”

“Still, if you ask me, you took it too far. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea just to tell Christian that you didn’t like the way the girl was looking at him?”

Allegra snorts. “Oh, sure, and give him the satisfaction of thinking he’s so important? Darling, you really don’t have a clue how to deal with men. You’re fourteen—when are you going to come to your senses?”

Giada silently grimaces into the phone; her friend never misses a chance to lord it over her just because she’s a year older.

“I . . . I don’t feel ready, those hands on my body, those sticky mouths . . . Gross. And after all, you’re into enough filth for the two of us, so in statistical terms we’re right on schedule.”

Her friend snickers. “You don’t know what you’re missing, girl. There’s nothing like a good healthy fuck to get you over your hang-ups. You think too much, Gia. If I had your blonde hair and blue eyes, I’d be famous all over town. And you don’t even have a father or brothers to answer to: you’ve got a dream situation! By the way, did your dad ever send you your birthday present from the States?”