Three-Card Monte (3 page)

Massimo's proposal meets with a grim silence from the old-timers.

When two strong wills share a common objective, and neither of the two has any intention of retreating from his own position, a conflict is inevitable. Like two engine blocks, the adversaries approach each other without any concern for the consequences, and without any possibility of changing their minds. Whoever is toughest wins.

History is full of such episodes. Think, for example, of Caesar and Antony. Think of Churchill and Stalin. Think of Zidane and Materazzi.

Here, too, the Moment has arrived. We are heading for a collision. The air seems to freeze, as befits a duel, while the adversaries eye each other warily. Unfortunately, instead of the music of Morricone, which would suit it perfectly, the soundtrack to this confrontation consists of the inappropriately cheerful screeching of the Village People, who are still insisting that there is no way you can be unhappy if you're hanging out with the boys.

Heedless of this pleasant background, the duelists study each other threateningly.

Slowly but inevitably, the music fades.

The song is about to finish.

Very soon, the moment will come.

 

“Excuse me . . . ”

It's a timid, polite voice, barely audible. But it's more than enough to break the spell. The voice belongs to one of the two girls who were outside at the table next to the tamarisks. She has come into the bar and is looking at the group with a pair of very, very large blue eyes, like those you see in Japanese cartoons. Behind her, her friend also enters. She has the expression of an innocent child combined with cleavage that's decidedly maternal. Massimo looks at the first girl in a manner at once questioning and polite, while the old-timers unconditionally approve of her friend.

“I wanted to ask you a favor. I need to use the Internet, but it isn't working very well at our table. Umm . . . . I've seen that there's a good signal at the next table, so I wanted to ask if it's possible to change tables.”

This is followed by a moment of palpable embarrassment.

“Don't ask me, ask these gentlemen, it's their table,” Massimo says with ill-concealed perfidy, pointing at the old-timers.

Having, with mysterious feminine wisdom, identified Ampelio as their leader, the girl looks at him and smiles. “Would you mind changing?”

She underlines the question by opening and closing her big eyes persuasively. Ampelio mutters something in embarrassment, while Rimediotti says gallantly, “Good heavens, signorina, you don't even need to ask. Please, we'd love to.”

“If it's really no trouble . . . ”

“Oh, no,” Aldo assures her, “no trouble at all.”

“Really? Thank you.”

The girl thanks them again with a final big smile and goes out with her friend.

 

Silence follows this little scene. Total silence, given that Tiziana has switched off the radio. The old-timers, who were previously targeting Massimo and barking in unison like a pack of long-sighted wolves, are now each looking in a different direction and vaguely recalling a group of strangers waiting for the number 31 bus.

Massimo, on the other hand, takes a tray and quickly starts filling it. He leans under the counter to get a chinotto, saying as he does so, “Tiziana, one regular espresso and one with a shot of Sassolino. And then remind me that I have to go to the optician's.”

“All right. Do you have problems?”

“No, no. I'm just going to buy a pair of blue contact lenses. Maybe next time I ask for something, I'll flash my big blue eyes and somebody might actually listen to me.”

“Maybe you should also hire a nice pair of boobs,” Ampelio says in a surly tone. “You're already starting to talk as much crap as a woman.”

“What would you like, Pilade?” Massimo asks casually from under the counter. “An amaro?”

“The trouble is, Massimo,” Ampelio continues imperturbably, “that even with contact lenses, fake boobs and whatever, you were always ugly and you'll always be ugly.”

“I know,” Massimo says, reemerging from under the counter. “It runs in the family. We've been ugly for generations. With a few peaks, like Aunt Enza.”

Massimo and his grandfather look at each other, and both start to laugh.

When Enza Viviani née Barontini, Ampelio's sister and Massimo's mother's aunt, came into the world, Signora Ofelia Viviani née Medori (Massimo's great-grandmother and Ampelio's mother, known to the whole family as “Ofelia of Windsor” because of the amount of gold and jewelry she would put on for solemn occasions) received visits from all the relatives and acquaintances, including Romualdo Griffa, Aldo's father and an old friend of the family. Romualdo, having bent over the crib and offered the infant a finger as big as a baguette, stood up again and thundered in a stentorian voice, “Dammit, Ofelia, congratulations. He really is a handsome boy.”

“Look, Romualdo, she's a girl.”

“Really?” Romualdo bent again over the crib, incredulous. “Dammit, poor little thing.”

 

Getting back to the present day, even the other customers laugh, which is surprising, given that they know the story because Ampelio must have told it fifty times. Tiziana, who doesn't know the story, smiles, because she has understood that the storm has passed. With the same smile, she goes to Rimediotti, who in spite of everything is still grumbling, while the chinotto drips relentlessly from his effervescent hair. Flattering him with the very same smile, she lowers his head slightly, and dries his tuft. The old man, who, due to the position of his head, suddenly finds himself faced directly with Tiziana's chest, thanks her and turns red.

In short, now the storm has given way to a sense of calm, the climate is one of fraternal camaraderie, and thanks to Massimo's memory Ampelio now feels inclined to rake over the past and to start telling the thousands of stories he has about the days when he and the other doughty pensioners were young, or even earlier. Since the only thing that could stop Ampelio when he has decided to tell a story that goes back to the times of his remote youth would be military intervention by NATO, and given that our elderly hero is a narrator of undisputed talent, even if with a somewhat limited repertoire, the remaining bystanders happily get ready to listen to him.

Del Tacca, with a glass entirely of amaro in front of him, listens to Ampelio without looking up and chuckles to himself. Rimediotti and Aldo listen standing up, nodding sagely whenever Ampelio introduces a character from the past, to show that they remember him and that he really was a fine man. Tiziana listens with great amusement to the tall stories of this ribald old man whose memory is scandalously immune from the effects of age and hardened arteries. Every now and again, she glares at Massimo, who is still pretending to be working as a barman, cutting, pouring, washing, and moving things about, in order not to give his grandfather satisfaction, even though, in reality, he too is listening.

After a while, Ampelio starts to talk about the time he and Aldo worked in Pisa and, as a joke, replaced the menus displayed outside the tourist restaurants near Piazza dei Miracoli with other homemade menus, which featured unlikely dishes such as carpaccio of camel's ass and hair soup. Massimo, who has heard the story umpteen times, takes a tray and goes outside to take the glasses emptied by the two girls who conquered the table under the elm.

He finds them in a state of great agitation.

The girl with the big eyes and her friend are clicking frantically and opening all the files on the desktop, in search of something they can't find. The girl with the big eyes has despair written all over her face and is about to have an attack of hysteria, while her friend sits huddled with a touching expression very similar to that of a lost puppy. Shyly she asks the other girl, “Are you sure it isn't there anymore?”

“Well, I can't find it. Look . . . How the hell . . . How is it possible . . . It was here! It was here! Oh, my God . . . ”

“If you'll allow me,” Massimo says, taking the laptop from the girl's hands and quickly placing it on one of the tables near the tamarisks. The two girls are looking at him with stunned expressions.

“Don't worry, there's no signal there. I couldn't help seeing the screen. Some of the files have been corrupted. Have you opened a window in a browser?”

“Y . . . yes,” replies the buxom friend, because the girl with the big eyes is still looking at Massimo as if he was a talking rabbit. “I opened a window because I wanted to show her a place in Barcelona, and after a while . . . I don't know, after a while . . . ”

“After a while, the window changed color and then froze.”

“That's exactly it. The window turned green and . . . ”

“Hmm. It's a virus that's been going around these last two or three days. It only works if the computer is online, that's why you don't have to worry now. Did you have any important documents?”

The girl with the big eyes nods, still in a semi-catatonic state. “My presentation.”

“What do you mean?”

“The presentation of my seminar. The papers that I was supposed to be doing the seminar with.”

“That you're supposed to be doing a seminar with,” Massimo repeats, a tad pedantically.

“That I was supposed to be doing the seminar with,” the girl retorts, losing her temper. “That I was supposed to be doing the seminar with the day after tomorrow! And now what the hell—”

“Sorry if I'm asking pointless questions, but are you sure you haven't saved the seminar anywhere else?”

“No, why should I?”

“For many good reasons. What's just happened, for example.”

The girl glares at him. “I've always worked on that computer. How am I supposed to know that you connect to the Internet and then there are sons of bitches who play tricks on you like that?”

Massimo might object that viruses like this have been doing the rounds for several years, and that ignoring their existence, if you own a computer, is the attitude of a Neanderthal. But, as someone having lived, Massimo knows perfectly well that arguing logically about a thoughtless act committed by a hysterical woman with that very same woman won't get you anywhere. So he chooses to be decisive.

“I'm quite familiar with the operating system you use. I think I might be able to recover a recent version of the file. When did you create it?”

“Let's see . . . a week ago, more or less.”

“When was the last time you opened it?”

“It was open when this mess happened. Half an hour ago, I'd say. But look . . . ”

Too late. Massimo has sat down in front of the laptop, and now his fingers are dancing over the keyboard like little pink hammers in a strange, apparently senseless rhythm. The girl tries to say something, but Massimo silences her with a gesture of the hand while with the other he continues to beat out commands on the keyboard. Then he looks at Tiziana, who came out a few minutes ago and is now following the scene as a neutral observer.

“But . . . my computer . . . ”

“Don't worry. Massimo's a genius with these gadgets.”

“Yes, but—”

“In addition to anything else, he's a graduate. In mathematics. And one thing I can say is that I've known Massimo for a few years now, and although he has many faults, he never talks out of turn. If he's told you he can do it, he can.”

“Yes, but—”

“Tiziana,” Massimo says as his fingers continue to hammer the keys, “one of my many faults is that I find it hard to do things while people are standing over me. Can you all go inside, please?”

“But . . . ” says the girl with the big eyes, then looks at Massimo and sees that he has recovered the file with her presentation. She is about to smile but Massimo stops her.

“I haven't finished yet. I need time. Please go inside.”

Obediently, the girls follow Tiziana.

 

Half an hour later, the girl with the big eyes has calmed down. Her friend has stopped looking like an anxious puppy and is now wearing an expression of calm cheerfulness that suits her much better. In the meantime, the old-timers have come outside again, and, pretending that nothing has happened, have sat back down under the elm to play cards. The girls have stayed inside and are chatting about this and that with Tiziana when Massimo comes back into the bar with a satisfied smile. He hands the laptop to the girl.

“I think I've recovered everything. Please check.”

The girl takes the computer, puts it on the counter, and runs the presentation from beginning to end. Strange square-shaped molecules appear on the screen, complex graphs, absorption spectrums of ultraviolet rays. All with a notable attention to design.

“I can't believe it! It's all there!”

“Are you sure? Have you checked everything?”

“Yes, yes. I'm sure. You've saved my life.”

“Well, not your life exactly. But I have made your immediate future a little easier.”

“Really, I . . . I don't know how to thank you.”

Her friend speaks up. “I know a way.”

For a moment, Massimo imagines the girl with the big eyes and her friend dressed only in whipped cream calling him from the bed in his apartment. But from the tone in which the girl has spoken, it's clear that she and Massimo haven't been thinking of the same thing. The friend looks at the bar and continues: “This place is really cute. Especially outside. We could have a party here after the dinner on Thursday. We'd have to make it clear, of course,” she adds with a wink, “that whoever wants to come can come, but in a place like this and after dinner, well, obviously it should be just the young people. So, we come here, we socialize the way our director wants us to, and we get rid of all the senile old idiots. I don't know about you, but after a while I really can't stand all those old guys sitting at the table talking out of turn.”