Three-Card Monte (5 page)

“Here they come. Get up, take those things out of your ears and give me a hand.”

“No trick for Massimo?”

“No. I'll do it later, if you're good. Right now, the barbarians are arriving.”

Sure enough, the glass doors that gave onto the terrace had opened, and from the conference hall the scholars were scattering into the open air, following different trajectories. Some lingered to talk with colleagues about proteins, while others headed resolutely toward the table laden with carbohydrates. Still others, having taken laptops from their bags, looked for a quiet corner in which there was a good enough wi-fi signal to check their mail and see if, in their absence, the world was still turning. Some did it earlier, some later, but all of them somehow found a way to come to the tables and fill their plates as they were entitled to do, while Massimo and Aldo poured, served, and waited.

“It seems you're not the only one with nimble hands in this place,” Massimo said after a while.

“What?”

“Those German guys just in front of us, the one with the white shirt and the one with the crew cut. I heard them say a computer was stolen this morning during the break.”

“Ah. Honest people, these scientists.”

“Not necessarily. It could have been anyone. Maybe someone from the hotel.”

“You're right,” Aldo replied. “It could have been anyone. Even your friend.”

“My friend?”

“Yes, the one who hates old people,” Aldo said with a wink.

Massimo followed the direction of his gaze. Not far from them, A. C. J. Snijders was conversing calmly with a group of young people and sipping a glass of mineral water.

“It seems to me the feeling is mutual,” Massimo said, watching with growing frustration as the canapés on the trays gradually but inexorably disappeared. The creamed cod in particular, which aroused all Massimo's gluttony and had been making his mouth water ever since they had laid the tables, seemed one of the most frequently requested, and there was little hope now that a few small pieces might escape the attention of the delegates.

“Come on, now,” Aldo said after handing a napkin to a middle-aged Frenchwoman who had spilled her coffee all over her clothes. “Apart from anything else, you need a little self-respect. Do you really think it's right for a university professor to go around the world like that? He looks as if he's just been released from prison.”

“The way someone dresses is irrelevant,” Massimo said, shooting another glance at Snijders, who did actually give the impression not so much that he had dressed of his own free will as that he had been assaulted by his own clothes. “It's the brain that counts. And besides, as long as you don't harm anybody, I don't mind if you go around with your ass covered in blue paint.”

“Don't say that too loudly. Somebody might take you seriously. Actually, I don't see that tall Japanese fellow.”

“Right. I don't think he was feeling well.”

“What?”

“Some of the guys who were standing here before mentioned the fact that someone called Asahara hurt himself just after lunch. He slipped on a rug in his room and hit his head on a chest of drawers. I'm sure the old Japanese man the guy today was talking about was called Asahara. Anyway, slipping on a rug seems to me the kind of thing he'd do. That's why I think it must be him. Nothing serious, apparently. He just hurt himself and they took him to Emergency to give him some stitches.”

“Poor man. I'm sorry,” Aldo said in a tone of voice that made it clear he didn't give a damn about the Asaharas of this world.

“Me too,” Massimo replied sincerely, watching resignedly as a female hand reached out across the tray and grabbed the last creamed cod canapé. He followed the hand on its journey toward its owner's mouth, and was repaid by the fact that the mouth in question belonged to a really pretty girl. Not just pretty, beautiful. Blonde hair, narrow blue eyes, arched eyebrows. Elegant, but not off-puttingly so. She probably also had a beautiful smile: Massimo could only hypothesize this given that the blonde had just swallowed the canapé and was chewing energetically, but a girl like that must have a beautiful smile. She was the kind of girl you wanted to tell the story of your life to.

Little by little, without any signal or announcement, the delegates started to move toward the conference hall. As they went back in, Massimo followed the blonde with his eyes for a few seconds, trying to see from her badge what her name was and where she came from. But to no avail. Paradoxically, he did not linger over the rest of her person. Someone with a face as beautiful as that could be as flat as a plank as far as Massimo was concerned.

He watched the delegates enter the conference hall, and through the glass door saw one of the organizers take the microphone, grim-faced, and say a few words. As he spoke, the delegates started looking at one another incredulously.

“Massimo, wake up. We have to clear all this.”

Massimo turned. Aldo had rolled up his shirtsleeves above his elbows (oh, yes, you talk about style and then you roll up your sleeves) and had started to gather the remains of napkins, cocktail sticks, and so on from the table.

“I'm sorry. I was distracted for a moment. I don't know what's going on in there.”

“Where?”

“In the conference hall. Something must have happened.”

Sure enough, many people had stood up and started talking among themselves, while the speaker had left the microphone on the table and joined one of the groups. Automatically, Aldo buttoned up the cuffs of his shirt and headed toward the hall. Just imagine if he minded his own business for once, Massimo thought, and started to tidy up, beginning by piling up the trays.

After about a minute, Aldo came back. He again unbuttoned his cuffs and looked at Massimo like someone who has something to say. Massimo looked at him and put the trays to one side.

“What happened?” he asked without further ado, given that it was obvious that something had happened.

“If I understood correctly . . . ” Aldo began, and stopped.

“If you understood correctly?”

“That Japanese man, Asahara. Seems like he's dead.”

T
he alarm clock. Is that the alarm clock? Shit. Come on, let's get up. But why is it so dark outside? Is it the weather? Oh, my God, look how it's raining. It's pouring down. Great! All right, a quick coffee and then I'm off.

 

Standing by the window in the living room of his apartment, with a cup of coffee in his hand, Massimo watched the rain descending, like big ropes of water beating down on the street. He had woken up in a good mood, amid the last traces of a dream in which he was flying, and whenever Massimo dreamed about flying he always woke up well disposed toward the world. The sight of the rain had not dispelled his good mood. On the contrary, that heavy but thunderless downpour galvanized him and made him feel alive. That had happened even when he was little, and he had to go to school in the deluge: it was always a special morning, and as he walked to school, savoring in advance the comfort of the warm, dry classroom, he would feel like some kind of heroic traveler lost in the storm.

Having arrived at the bar, he took off his oilskin and his rain pants, put them in a plastic bag, and left it in the storeroom, then began the ritual round of Things to Do. Every morning, in fact, when he got to the bar, Massimo always did exactly the same things in exactly the same order.
Est modus in rebus
.

First, he switched on the coffee machine, which started up with its usual gurgling hiss, breaking the absolute silence that reigned in the bar. Then he switched on the oven, the ice cream cabinet, and the dishwasher, after which he arranged the tables and chairs inside the bar, while the outside furniture, as always when it rained, was put in the storeroom as a punishment. Only then did he switch on the lights: that way he was always confronted with a bar that already looked bright and in working order. Last but not least, having taken the
Gazzetta
dello Sport
from the letter box—the news vendor brought it at 6:30 every morning—he sat down at a table with a glass of iced tea and immersed himself in the paper. This was by far the best moment of his day. On his own, without a thought in his head, and at peace with himself and with the world.

Beata solitudo, sola beatitudo.

At that moment, the telephone rang.

Massimo looked toward the back of the bar, where the evil device was located.

The telephone's only response was to continue ringing with cruel indifference, its sound similar to the noise made when you let down a bucket into a well, and the chain grates against the pulley, and the bucket goes lower and lower, just like Massimo's mood.

You couldn't ignore the telephone. Massimo had never been able to. Massimo could ignore people, deadlines, politeness, bureaucracy (when it didn't concern the bar), and many other things he considered unworthy of his attention, but when the telephone rang, he had to answer it. Reluctantly, walking deliberately slowly, because maybe that way whoever the son of a bitch was would be convinced that there was nobody there and put the receiver down, which would mean it wasn't anything important anyway. Or maybe it was Tiziana phoning to say she was sick and couldn't come in to work, and that would bring Massimo's mood down even more.

He got to the phone and lifted the receiver. “Good morning, Bar Lume.”

A voice with a Venetian accent said, “Is that the Bar Lume?”

“Yes, it's still the Bar Lume. I haven't moved the phone in the last two seconds.”

“Pineta Police Station here. Are you Signor Massimo Viviani?”

The police station. What now?

“Yes, this is he.”

“Inspector Fusco would like to speak with you. Could you hold on a moment, please?”

“All right.”

Fusco. Oh, God. An unsound mind in an unhealthy body.

Inspector Vinicio Fusco aroused both irritation and a kind of compassion in Massimo. The mixture of arrogance, pretentiousness, stupidity and stubbornness, all compacted together with dubious taste into a block no more than five feet tall, that was Vinicio Fusco was something he found at once sad and tiresome. And, as always happens with people we don't like, even characteristics that in themselves were of no intrinsic significance, such as his height, became unforgivable defects, as well as excellent pretexts for taking the mickey out of the individual in question.

“Good morning, Signor Viviani,” came Fusco's voice.

“It was,” Massimo replied, thinking of the
Gazzetta
.

“I need to speak to you as soon as possible. Can you come to the station?”

“Not right now. I'm alone in the bar. I have to wait for Tiziana to get here.”

“Will she be much longer?”

“I don't think so. She should be here around seven.”

“Excellent. As soon as Signorina Guazzelli arrives, I'd like you to come to the station.”

“All right. Could you at least tell me—”

“I'll tell you everything at the station, don't worry,” Fusco said in a tone in which Massimo thought he heard a touch of sarcasm. “Good morning.”

Good morning my ass, Massimo thought, while the
Gazzetta
looked up at him with a disconsolate air. Now I have to get dressed again, plunge into the storm, and go to hear what that ballbreaker wants. What the hell, until Tiziana gets here, I can read the paper for a while.

Massimo sat down again comfortably, took a sip of tea, and opened the
Gazzetta
with renewed care. At that moment, the door opened and a strange creature came in, green in color, about six feet tall, pear-shaped, with two arms but no legs, and soaking wet.

“What a downpour!” the creature said. “Did you see it?”

Hearing the voice, Massimo realized that his childhood dream of meeting a Barbapapa for real was not about to come true, and that the organism that had just come in through the door was in fact Tiziana, wrapped in a huge raincoat that went all the way down to her feet and with a hood that hid her face. Disappointed, partly because now that Tiziana had arrived he would have to get up, Massimo closed the newspaper.

“I saw it and heard it,” he said, standing up, while Tiziana divested herself of her deep-sea diver's costume and stuffed it into a rucksack.

“Oh, my God! It's going to take me a moment to change. With this shroud on me, I've been sweating like a pig. Then I'll see to the croissants and things. You stay there and finish your paper, if you want.”

“If only!” Massimo said. “I have to go to the police station.”

“The police station?”

“Fusco phoned me about five minutes ago.”

“What does he want?”

“To break my balls, I guess. Apart from that I have no idea. He wouldn't tell me a thing.”

“Nice man.”

“As always.”

Massimo put his rainproof gear back on and looked outside. The police station was a few hundred yards away, if you took the shortcut through the pine grove, or just under two miles, if you went by car. All right, come on. Let's walk through the pine grove in the storm. Get going, Indiana Jones.

 

Massimo's reluctance to take his car was mainly due to the new system with which the traffic department of the municipality of Pineta had sought, it wasn't quite clear how, to improve the traffic of the town or, to use the words of the head of the department, the urban conglomeration.

Heedless of the presence of brains in their own craniums, the members of the department had planned and realized a series of insane changes, without any concern for the fact that a street network should be there to allow vehicles to travel, and not to serve the sick fantasies of self-styled Le Corbusiers with all the practical sense of guinea fowls. All this without taking into account the fact that the working of Pineta's street network was the least of the few problems affecting the town. Pardon, the urban conglomeration. For example, one of the fundamental improvements that had been made to the streets of Pineta had been the so-called “Provision of seven miles of bicycle lanes in the area adjacent and parallel to Viale dei Cardi and Via del Lungomare, and modification of the signage in accordance with the current European standards on urban routes intended for velocipedes.”