Three-Card Monte (2 page)

“You speak Italian?” said one of the two graduate students, asking a clearly pointless question out of pure politeness.

“My wife is Italian,” Snijders replied with great practicality to what he supposed—correctly—was the genuine question, that is, “Why do you speak Italian?” That was something about the Italians that never failed to intrigue him: they rarely asked direct questions. The young man found it strange that a Dutchman should speak Italian, but would have considered it impolite to ask him straight out, “Why do you speak Italian?” He himself wouldn't have worried about it—when it came to politeness, Snijders never worried too much—but they did. Strange. He focused on one of the young men, who was now giving him logistical instructions.

“The hotel is a quarter of an hour from here by taxi. We'll call you one immediately.”

“No, thanks. There's no need.”

“Do you have someone waiting for you?” one of the three asked.

“I was thinking I'd walk to the hotel.”

The three looked at each other. From the expressions on their faces, it was obvious they didn't think they'd heard correctly.

“Look, Professor,” said one of the three, emphasizing the word Professor, maybe to remind him that intellectuals were usually expected to be somewhat below par physically, “the hotel is six miles from here.”

“I know,” Snijders said, still smiling. “I've been sitting for three hours. I'd like to stretch my legs.”

“Are you sure? It's six miles. It'll take two hours.”

“I'm in no hurry.”

T
he scene might make you think of a religious ritual. Which is strange, because it takes place amid the tables outside a bar.

The priest is a tall man in his thirties with a large hooked nose and a vaguely Middle Eastern air. He moves with hieratic calm between the tamarisks and the tables, his pace solemn and methodical. In his arms, he is carrying, as if it were a baby, a small laptop, which he consults with an air that wavers constantly between the pleased and the dismayed as he explores the jungle of chairs and umbrellas. He must know the place well, since he moves without looking up from the screen, but still manages to avoid upsetting the various pieces of furniture. Sometimes, at what may be thought particularly significant stations of the liturgy, he begins to make strange, vaguely cruciform signs with the computer, while his lips move in mute prayer. From a distance, only disconnected fragments of the prayer can be heard, things like, “Dammit, there was a signal only a few seconds ago.”

Instead of the pious ladies who usually crowd places of worship, there is a pretty redhead in a white T-shirt with the words
Bar Lume
on it. The rest of her attire goes unnoticed, but the T-shirt remains engraved on the mind. All right, not only the T-shirt. The girl is watching the supposed priest with little faith and a great deal of anxiety, and making little crosses on a sheet of paper on which the outside of the bar has been sketchily drawn.

Not far from the priest, four strange choirboys are following his every move with a placid, relaxed air. Strange, firstly, thanks to their age, given that choirboys are usually between ten and fifteen years old, whereas the characters in question hover around their seventies. Strange, too, thanks to their language, because even though it is normal for choirboys to talk during mass, if they used the vocabulary of the old man in the beret and pullover they'd be disqualified for life. From time to time, the priest turns and glares at them, but like real choirboys they take hardly any notice of him and continue talking.

“What did you say this new bunch of crap is called?”

“Wi-fi.”

“What?”

“Wi-fi, Ampelio. It means without wires. It's a way to connect to the web.”

The person talking is Aldo, a handsome-looking widower in his seventies. Aldo is the only representative of the quartet of mature lads not to have yielded to the blandishments of a pension: for several years he's owned and run a restaurant called the Boccaccio. The Boccaccio boasts brusque but polite service, an extensive cellar that ranges from France to New Zealand, and an exceptional cook, Otello Brondi, familiarly known as Tavolone because of the size of his hands.

A lover of baroque music, classical literature, and women who are still breathing, Aldo is currently one of the three or four people alive able to express himself in grammatically correct Italian, absolutely devoid of Anglicisms and decidedly refined.

Something of which his direct interlocutor is proudly incapable. This person's name is Ampelio, he is eighty-three years old and is the grandfather of the barman. He has had a happy past as a stationmaster, labor organizer, and amateur cyclist, and now has a serene present of afternoons and evening, spent in the company of his elderly friends at his grandson's bar. His grandson being the man wandering about with a laptop in his hands.

“You mean it's like the Internet?”

“It
is
the Internet, but without wires. If you have a portable computer, you come to the bar and connect directly without needing any wires.”

“Right, I've got it. You arrive at the bar and instead of talking to Ugo and Gino you connect to the Internet and see what's happening in Australia. While you're looking at what's happening in Australia, a few feet away Ugo and Gino are talking about how well your girlfriend fucks. Do me a favor . . . ”

“Ampelio, don't talk crap. The Internet is a means to an end. It all depends on how you use it. You have access to billions of pieces of information. You know everything about everybody, things that are true and even things that are false. All at incredible speed and without leaving your own home.”

“You're right, Aldo,” Del Tacca says. “You know everything about everybody as soon as it happens, even when nothing happens. And without leaving home. It's just like your wife, Ampelio, but at least you can turn it off.”

The third man who has spoken is known to the inhabitants of Pineta simply as “Del Tacca from the Town Hall.” This is so as not to confuse him with “Del Tacca from the New Harbor,” who lives next to the new harbor, “Del Tacca from the Streetcar,” who used to be a ticket collector on the streetcar, and “Del Tacca from the Service Station on the Avenue,” about whose activities it seems best to keep silent, let's just say he isn't a pump attendant. Del Tacca from the Town Hall is a short, fat man, almost broader than he is tall, who at first sight may seem a little aloof, but who in fact is as unpleasant as a piece of shit under your shoe. A virtue developed, along with his large proportion of adipose tissue, in the course of his years of so-called work at the town hall in Pineta: years of compulsory breakfasts, lost files, and semi-clandestine games of
tressette
while a line of people waits at a counter displaying a sign that says, “I'll be right back.”

In the meantime, the priest has closed the computer screen and sat down at the attractive girl's table. The girl's name is Tiziana and she's been working at the Bar Lume for two or three years as a maid of all work. The aforementioned Bar Lume is owned by Massimo, who corresponds physically to both the priest and Ampelio's grandson. In other words, the man who has sat down is called Massimo, and he's the barman.

Massimo lights a cigarette, looks at the sheet of paper Tiziana hands him, and frowns.

“That's all.” It isn't a question, it's a statement. Rather a disconsolate one.

“Yes. That's all.” Tiziana doesn't add anything else. She would like to speak because she is a lively, good-natured girl, as well as an intelligent person. Being intelligent, she soon grasped the fact that her employer particularly hates pointless questions and, although with a certain effort, she avoids asking them.

“So, let's go over this. The four tables near the tamarisks don't have any signal at all.”

“Yes. I mean no, they don't.”

“The three near the pillar, a weak signal.”

“That's right.”

“And the table under the elms, a full signal.”

“That's right. So . . . ”

So we're screwed, Massimo thinks. Shit, it isn't possible. It's a conspiracy. I equip the bar with Internet, I spend a small fortune on it, I lose what remains of my mind installing it, setting it up correctly and everything, and in the end what happens? It doesn't work. Worse still, it works in fits and starts. The signal's useless. It wavers, it fades, it spits. But in one spot, dammit, there's a signal. A strong, clear, firm signal. At one table. The table under the elm. The table where my grandfather and those other worshipers of Gerovital have been spending all afternoon every afternoon, from April to October, ever since I opened. I'm sorry, but to hell with them. I need that table.

It's afternoon, and the bar, together with most of the town, is indulging in the long postprandial nap that precedes aperitif time. The only people outside are two girls sitting next to the tamarisks over a laptop and two coffee shakeratos, and the four standard-bearers for the elderly, proudly enthroned on the chairs around the table under the elm. After taking the old-timers' orders, Tiziana comes back into the bar.

“Massimo?”

“All present and correct.”

“So, two espressos, one regular for your grandpa and one with a shot of Sassolino for Aldo. An Averna with ice for Pilade and a chinotto for Rimediotti.”

“Right. Make the coffees for me, Tiziana, please. I'll see to the rest.”

Massimo takes a wooden tray, puts it on the counter, bends under the counter, and takes out a little bottle of dark liquid. He looks at it lovingly for a moment, then grabs it and shakes it hard for about ten seconds.

He places it delicately on the tray with the bottle opener next to it, then pours a finger of amaro into a glass, adding to it for completeness's sake another half-finger of balsamic vinegar. Then he picks up a small ice cube directly with his fingers and drops it with a professional air in the glass. Finally, he conscientiously examines the two espressos that Tiziana has made and placed on the tray. He takes a neat sip of both, then in an authoritative manner tops up the contents of the cups with sparkling water taken directly from the refrigerator, and adds a squirt of lemon juice for Aldo, who does after all want it with a shot.

“Ready, you can take them.”

“Massimo, come on . . . ”

“What?”

“Don't play the fool, come on.”

“Never offend the boss. It's bad manners and not very clever. I could fire you, you know.”

“I didn't say you are a fool, I said you play the fool. I'm sorry, but those poor old guys . . . ”

“Poor old guys my ass. Did you or didn't you ask them if they could please change tables?”

“Yes, Massimo, but even you have to realize—”

“Not ‘even you.' Only you. Massimo has to understand. Massimo has to understand that these poor old guys are creatures of habit. Massimo has to understand that it's cool under the elm. Plus, I don't see why Massimo has to get so upset. The bar doesn't even belong to him. The old-timers have taken it over. He should just accept the fact.”

“Well, I'm not taking them these things.”

“No problem. Rimediotti's coming.”

Sure enough, one of the old men has entered the bar. An old man in slightly worse shape than the others. He is tall and emaciated, and is wearing a blue T-shirt with horizontal stripes and pale-colored pants, an ensemble that gives him an ambiguous air, halfway between a nursing home patient and an escaped convict.

Massimo has always heard him called “Rimediotti,” and only after many years did he discover that long, long ago he had been christened Gino. He's a quiet old man, with vaguely nostalgic ideas about the Fascist period, and a notable billiard player.

“Have you done them, Massimo? Can I take them?”

“Please, Rimediotti, go ahead.”

Rimediotti takes the tray and heads outside. Massimo hears the radio playing “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People, turns up the volume, and starts washing the glasses in time to the music. When he looks up, he sees through the window the four old-timers at the table gesticulating, apparently engaged in an unlikely dance to the rhythm of the gay-themed music echoing inside the bar. After a while, all four of them get resolutely to their feet, but instead of going “Why-Em-See-Eh” with their arms, as Massimo has been imagining, they troop into the bar, led by Ampelio.

They come in all talking, or rather yelling, at the same time. Through careful sifting of the acoustic signal, necessary to separate the voices of the old geezers from the cheerful howls coming from the radio, it becomes clear that Rimediotti is accusing Massimo of ruining his clothes, Aldo is accusing him of spoiling his digestion, and Ampelio is accusing him of having a whore for a mother. Only Del Tacca remains silent, and simply glares daggers at Massimo. Massimo feels compelled to ask him, “What about you, Pilade, don't you have anything to complain about?”

“Do you think that was amaro I was drinking?” Del Tacca replies, continuing to glare at him.

“You aren't normal!” cries Rimediotti, his comb-over slick with chinotto, as a result of the little bottle exploding, which makes him look even more of a disaster area. “You're a criminal! You're a moron, you are! That's what you are! An idiot! How is it possible?”

“I'm sorry, Rimediotti,” says Massimo, continuing to wash the glasses. “It happens sometimes, you know that. The bottle tops explode. I think it's because of the pressure of the carbon dioxide inside. Or rather, the difference in pressure between inside and outside. Among other things. I read somewhere that the difference in pressure is greater if you're sitting under an elm. In my opinion, if you'd been sitting next to the tamarisks, nothing would have happened. Can I get you something else?” Massimo asks in his diligent barman's tone.