The Parrots (7 page)

“What’s there to understand about a tumour?”

“There won’t be any more prizes for me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“This year is the last.”

“Maybe they can operate.”

“They already have.”

“But with chemo today—”

“Two months, three maximum. They’ve told me it’s incurable.”

The Master put the fingerprint-smeared scan back in the pocket of his wallet, rested his chin on his chest and started crying.

“Come on, don’t get too down.”

The President stood up and put a hand on his shoulder, more for good luck than out of compassion, as we do when we catch ourselves touching coffins at a wake.

“If there’s anything I can do… I know everyone in Rome, if you need a bed in a clinic.”

“No, no, forget about clinics. But there is something you could do for me.”

“…?”

“Listen, I deserve it.”

“No, not that. You can’t ask me that.”

“Oh, yes, I can. If there’s one person in this country who deserves to win this Prize it’s me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was with the avant-garde when everyone was with tradition, I came back to tradition when everyone was with the avant-garde. I’ve always turned my back on the big publishers, even though they all wanted me!”

“Don’t raise your voice!”

“I’m in all the anthologies, the critics have written pages and pages about me, I was a finalist for the
Non expedit
internazionale prize…”

“I told you not to raise your voice!”

“Third place in the Marchesa Maironi Memorial, an onyx vase for my last collection… a silver arrow for best Latin composition…”

“Calm down!”

“I’ve deserved goblets, plaques, cheques, reissues…”

“You should be grateful you’re a finalist, considering what an awful book you wrote.”

“How dare you?
My last book is a masterpiece!
Do you even read the books or do you just give them prizes? Did you read last year’s winner? You handed over the prize in your fat hands, did you actually read it?”

“Get out!”

The sun had gone down but the light still hung over the city like a promise of eternal life. The Writer rode up to the gate of the
residential neighbourhood where he lived. The interior of the porter’s lodge was soiled by the purple light from the TV set. The porter took his gaze away from the set, saw The Writer, pressed a button to open the automatic gate, gave him a distracted wave and went back to his programme.

Although it was late, and although he was devoured with anguish at having left his mobile at home, The Writer, like a repentant peeping Tom drawn back to his old vice despite himself, could not help stopping outside the window of the lodge. The porter did not notice his presence: he was too absorbed in the TV programme. He was watching a Lombrosian quiz in which contestants had to guess people’s professions from their physical appearance and from a few clues supplied by the presenter. As the director lingered over some of the faces—the audience, the presenter, the contestant, the person with the mystery profession—they all struck The Writer as anonymous faces, as neutral as bars of soap, ordinary people he might have met in the underground or the supermarket. But The Writer did not take the underground or shop in supermarkets, which was why those faces seemed to him somehow exotic, wild and curious: were they the faces of his readers?

The superimposed captions suggested a few possible
professions
to match to the person:
“Owns a news stand”
, said the first caption,
“Works as a train guard”
the second,
“Manufactures souvenirs”
the third, and so on…
“Makes sanitary towels”, “Teaches in primary
school”, “Sells coffins”, “Was voted the handsomest father in Italy”…

And what if it were him on that quiz? What would the
contestants
say about him? The thought took shape and became a vision. He saw himself on that shabby little stage, blinded by light, surrounded by a curtain of applause, while the presenter flashed his teeth at the audience and introduced the day’s contestant. And the contestant was his porter.

His porter, yes, the smallest, least useful element of the
neighbourhood
where he resided, the last link in the chain, who lived
on tips and gossip, always the bearer of unpleasant news or inappropriate comments, a basic existence spent in the unhealthy, confined atmosphere of the porter’s lodge, saturated with cigarette smoke and cathode rays, a Soyuz drifting in the sidereal space of ignorance—yes, could his porter, who had never read a book of his (could anyone actually live without his books?), or anybody else’s (of course they could!), but had become servile only after seeing him on TV, have guessed The Writer’s profession just from his appearance?

“Invented an espresso coffee dispenser”
, said one of the captions superimposed over the image of The Writer, who, as expected, was making an effort to maintain a detached and inscrutable expression.
“Has been studying the Inuit people for years”
, the captions continued,
“Has patented a genetically modified maize”
,
“Trains
fighting dogs”
,
“Sells underwear in the United Arab Emirates”, “Writes novels” …

What did he look like? In other words, what did other people think he looked like? If the porter asked him to show him his hands—which the contestants were allowed to do—he would immediately rule out the option
“Trains fighting dogs”
. His stern, charismatic look might have supported the idea, but it was difficult to believe that a trainer of fighting dogs had never met a dog which, not wanting to be trained, had left teeth marks on the trainer’s hands.

Logic would also lead one to rule out the Inuit expert. The icy wind and harsh temperatures of those inhospitable regions would certainly have left their mark on the virile but still-boyish features of The Writer: people who have lived for a long time in the cold usually have luxuriant eyebrows, thick beards, broken capillaries and scratched skin, and such was not the case with him. His discreet but sensual gaze might have been suited to the underwear salesman, but such people don’t usually look too virile and move in a guarded way, in order not to alarm male buyers or
embarrass women, and that certainly didn’t apply to him… You could say anything you liked about him, but not that he didn’t look virile… The Writer smiled to himself, surprised by that flippant thought. There remained the man who had patented genetically modified maize, the inventor of the espresso coffee dispenser and… The porter was staring at him.

The Writer smiled reassuringly and raised his eyes to heaven, pretending to be making an effort to remember something. Then he clicked his fingers, pretending to have suddenly remembered what he had just pretended to have forgotten, smiled at the bewildered astronaut through the porthole of his space capsule and headed for the avenue where his house was situated.

The sprinklers hummed obediently, lights indicated the way like those leading to the emergency exit on a plane, bicycles stood side by side in the rack, everything seemed to be in exactly the same pointless order in which he had left it when he had gone out to meet The Old Flame. Even the SUV with the smoked windows and hundreds of horsepower sleeping beneath the bonnet was neatly parked in the space allowed in the condominium’s rules: a car and two scooters, or else a car and a motorbike, or an SUV and a Fiat 500, like The Second Wife’s… except that it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there? No, it wasn’t there. Although it should have been there at this hour, the Fiat 500 wasn’t there.

As the sky grew dark and the light faded, wiping out the infinite illusion of day, The Writer was overcome with remorse, which had diabolically waited right until those last few metres separating him from his house door to punch him in the back. He put on speed, guided by the age-old certainty that drives heroes on their way home, which was that something pernicious had happened in his absence.

In the last metres that separated him from the front door he thought again about the empty rooms of the Renaissance villa, smelling of wood, where he had wiped out his own traces, shaking
off the guide, the visiting party of tourists and—above all—The Old Flame.

As he searched the pockets of his raincoat for the keys, which were cold to the touch, he thought again about the peasant he had found hoeing the vegetable garden, to whom he had given a handful of banknotes to get him back to terra firma.

As he found the keys, he heard the whirr of the little outboard motor and felt the precariousness of the plastic hull slicing through the low waters of the lake, saw again the logo of a firm making animal feed on the peak of the peasant’s cap, felt the wind striking his forehead and saw the island disappearing into the distance.

As he took out the keys, but illogically decided it was better to ring the bell, he saw himself sitting aggressively behind the wheel, pushing the engine of the hire car to its limits, leaving behind him—this time for ever—the blondness of The Old Flame, the dampness of the little island and the sadness of the lake.

The door opened. The Filipino (so he was there!) looked him up and down with a disapproving expression. The Writer entered, avoiding him, and hung his raincoat on the rack.

“The Signora?” he asked as he walked towards the dark kitchen across the living room, which was being guarded by The Ukrainian Nanny as she rocked the pushchair with one hand and with the other aimed the remote control at the TV set: the same quiz the porter had been watching was on here, too.

“Signora hospital,” The Filipino said before The Writer had time, in his neurotic inspection of the house, to enter the bedroom and bathroom in a futile search for The Second Wife.

The Writer stopped and turned abruptly. “Is she ill?”

“Mother ill.”

“Mother of Signora?” said The Writer, who regressed
linguistically
without even realizing it whenever he talked to The Filipino.

“No,
your
mother”—and this time The Filipino pointed his index finger unequivocally at The Writer.

It was then that The Writer remembered, painfully and intensely, for the second time, that he had not had his mobile with him since the morning.

He rushed into his study and found his smartphone exactly where he had left it (had he doubted it?). The display showed twenty-six missed calls and eight messages. Was this the revenge of the gods for having disconnected himself from the world for a few hours? At that moment, the phone vibrated (if you’re famous, or if you have something to hide, vibration is always preferable to ringing), walking a few centimetres across the desk as if it were a primitive life form, a ciliate or flagellate protozoan. The Writer pressed the
answer
button.

“Where on earth have you been?”

It wasn’t The Second Wife at the other end, but The President of The Academy in person.

“They’ve been looking for you all day, your press officer has been getting hysterical, they’re all here waiting for you, you’re the only one missing!”

So he hadn’t only forgotten the phone, he had also forgotten the unmissable joint presentation with the other authors
organized
by The Academy, one of the crucial stages in the lead-up to The Ceremony.

“My mother hasn’t been well.”

“…”

“She’s in hospital.”

“Oh… I’m sorry… Would you like us to postpone?”

“No, no, send a taxi. I’ll be right there.”

If we bombard a very thin sheet of gold with alpha particles, 90 per cent of them will go right through the material without undergoing any deviation in their trajectory. Only 10 per cent will
turn back as if they have hit an obstacle. From this, Rutherford drew the conclusion that matter must be largely composed of a vacuum, a vacuum gathered around a heavy nucleus. The Master, who had been aroused from his afternoon nap by the sound of a car horn, would have drawn a different conclusion. This time, too, his slippers had let him down: instead of awaiting him at the foot of the bedside table, where he was convinced he had left them, they had wandered God knows where. The car horn was insistent, but who could it be? The Master got out of bed, barefoot, intending to go to the window and satisfy his curiosity.

Largely composed of a vacuum as it might have been, the black alabaster bishop hurt a lot as he stepped on it with his bare sole. Once he had handed the fugitive bishop back to the authority of the chessboard, there remained somewhere in the room, by default, two final dangerous objects: a white pawn, easier to spot because of the colour, and a black knight (when he found them, he’d be able to resume his long-distance game).

But to the intense pain spreading from his foot was added another sensory complication: the bishop was wet. And not only the bishop. The bedside rug was damp, too. There was a yellowish patch on the floor. How was it possible?

The Master’s measuring jug, empty and overturned,
demonstrated
that it was possible.

But there was no time to think, or to repair the damage, seeing that the car horn was still baying outside, and amid all that
untidiness
his slippers were at least as invisible as his last book in the shops. That was why The Master decided stoically to wade across the space that separated him from the window. And as barefoot as a worm, with his foot still hurting from its collision with the black bishop, putting only his heels down, he waded through that lake of urine and looked out.

The Director of The Small Publishing Company had got out
of his clapped-out old van and was waiting outside the closed gate of Prince—’s estate.

“Aren’t you dressed yet?”

“What time is it? I didn’t hear the alarm.”

“Come on, we’ll be late!”

“I’ll be right down!” said The Master, who had completely lost track of time. And he disappeared inside the window as if he were the mechanical device of a cuckoo clock.

“When are you going to make up your mind to put in an automatic gate?” cried The Director of The Small Publishing Company.