Scent of a Woman

7

It was Sunday. I wasn’t surprised at his decision to put off our departure until the following day. As he coughed, leaning over the sink, I read the newspaper out loud. First the important headlines, the horoscope, last of all the classified ads in the health and beauty section which listed the addresses and phone numbers of prostitutes. At certain exaggerated adjectives, allusions to lavish attention, luxury and confidentiality, the welcome to buzz the intercom any time from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., he would straighten up from the sink racked by wheezing laughter, immediately stifled by renewed coughing.

He stepped out a moment, half hidden by a large towel, to tell me, ‘Don’t worry. I don’t feel venereal today. You won’t be forced to associate with risqué company.’

He was extraordinarily modest. He would withdraw to the bathroom even just to put on or take off his shirt. He always deftly managed to conceal his left arm when it wasn’t covered up. And his tie: he could knot it in three moves.

‘Don’t you want me to read you anything else? Politics?’

‘What does politics have to do with me? Does it guarantee me the end of the world? No. So that’s enough.’

From the bathroom he dictated the morning’s plans: first a barber, then a walk to the zoo, finally an outdoor restaurant.

‘Provided we don’t come across a sung mass. Don’t you love them? To me they seem perfect. Even without being able to understand the words.’

I had slept too much. The hot, still air kept me from shaking off that heavy feeling. The acidic wine we’d been drinking in a tavern until late the night before was turning my stomach sour.

Outside, the angle of the sun was brutal. The stones reflected too much light. The ornamental work on a house throbbed painfully in my eyes. The desire for Rome, the sense of opulence enjoyed the night before, had been spoiled, turned to toxic fatigue in my body.

‘C’mon, walk. Good God! Let’s go, buddy. Stand up straight. You feel like a limp rag,’ he prodded me.

The avenue stretched straight ahead of us glazed by the sun, with tall, slender trees along the sidewalks. It was deserted, just a few clusters of young people scattered in front of a café, their mocking voices raucous. The houses followed in a row, all the same, their windows shuttered. The bamboo cane clanged blithely against the shutters over and over again.

‘And I complain about Rome. Bastard that I am. Nothing but jealousy. It’s open to you, Rome is. Feel it? Barbarian or not. What a day. Good for the soul,’ he said impulsively.

He settled down in front of the lion cage. Gentle gusts of wind raised clouds of dust from the paths. Beyond some shrubs, the outlines of taller cages could be seen. From a pine tree came the shrill screeching of birds.

He took a deep whiff.

‘What’s he doing. Sleeping?’

‘Every now and then he opens one eye,’ I told him.

‘He doesn’t stink,’ he said resentfully, ‘and what I really like about animals is their gamy odour.’

He nudged me with his elbow, handed me the cane.

‘Try to stir him up. Get him angry. Christ, let’s hear you!’ he commanded, irritated.

I held out the cane, shook it a few inches from the bars. The lion opened its jaws wearily without even breathing. His upper lip fell back slowly, docilely over his canines. He lowered his head again, winking.

‘He won’t budge,’ I said.

‘Goddamn world. I bet they stuff them with pills in this place. They must even kill off their fleas with flea-powder,’ he said angrily, stamping his foot. ‘That’s why he’s just lying there like a prick.’

There wasn’t a soul along the path. The squeals of children reached us from afar mingled with the barking of seals. A yellow balloon rose up above the treeline, floating in the sunlight. I stood, flung my arms wide, let out a cry. The lion, bored, slowly looked away.

‘What time do they feed him?’

‘It says 11.30.’

‘Too late. I want to hear him now. Right away!’ he objected.

I kicked at the wooden railing that separated us from the bars; I tried to lean closer. The lion shifted his haunches with deliberate voluptuousness, his head motionless, his gaze lost in space.

‘Big?’

‘Big, yeah. Male. With a dark mane. From Kenya. His name is Sam.’

‘Fuck,’ he muttered.

At a corner of the railing were two signs with descriptions and warnings.

‘I’ll give you a good whipping, Sam,’ he threatened through clenched teeth.

He leaned forward just a little, his right hand firmly on the railing, brandishing his wooden glove.

The lion shifted his gaze from his distant target, and stared at him with a first quick gasp. From the depths of his lungs he drew a viscid breath that gradually grew into panting, his black eyes flashing.

In a bound the lion was against the bars, his mane bristling. He roared, bits of straw hanging from his pale belly, his claws slashing the air ferociously, only to end up grating on the iron.

‘Friendly. You see?’ He calmed down immediately, nodding happily at the groans that now rumbled forth, muffled by the animal’s agitated pacing.

‘Smell that? You can even smell his odour now.’ He sniffed.

The lion circled around two or three times, panting, before curling up again in the most remote corner of the cage, his teeth still bared.

‘Let’s go,’ he took my arm again. ‘Of course the gorillas are more easily riled. There’s nothing like the gorillas.’

‘Spaghetti for you. Then stuffed octopus. For me, meat. Meat soaks up the whisky,’ he decided.

‘I’ve never eaten octopus,’ I objected.

‘All the more reason. Hungry?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The restaurant was nestled in a corner of the piazza behind a low green hedge. A very fat, sweaty waiter stepped among the empty tables, moving sparingly. Heat hung in the centre of the piazza; red dots flashed before my eyes.

‘And afterwards? What would you like to do?’

‘Anything is fine with me,’ I replied.

‘Want to go off on your own? See a movie?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Bravo, Ciccio. A born tedious bore. Never an idea. Can’t ever make up your mind, huh? C’mon. It’s Sunday. Show some spirit or this time I’ll punish you.’

I started when he banged his glass down, making the table shake.

I saw him tense up, his whole face alert and rigid. He gestured with his right hand, but only after a long moment was I too able to perceive the distant tapping.

Across the empty square an old blind man with a white cane appeared, his torso upright but his legs a little wobbly. He wore a straw hat and a garland of coloured tickets that hung from his neck down to his waist. Under his arm was a folded chair. He crept forward through the empty expanse of white stone like a fly in an overturned glass.

‘Do you see him?’ he asked coldly.

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what? Explain. What is he doing?’

I described the man to him. Meanwhile the old man had reached a corner and was gingerly feeling around. Two or three times he tapped his cane on the sidewalk ahead of him, but very lightly, soundlessly. He stood still, then began turning halfway around, his face and eyeglasses turned up towards the sun, his shabby hat not even shading his forehead.

‘Dressed decently?’ he asked.

‘Fairly.’

‘Now what is he doing? Is he moving? Is he leaving? Say something, damn it. Don’t sit there in a daze.’

‘He’s sitting down. He unfolded his chair. Now he’s sitting there. He’s lighting a cigarette.’

‘Jesus F. Christ.’

The waiter was watching us. He made a move as if to come over and say something, then decided not to.

‘Go on,’ he said tensely, still cursing, as he pulled out some folded notes, ‘buy those lottery tickets from him. Every last one. Hurry up. Make him go away.’

‘What should I say to him?’ I asked, mystified.

‘Take them and pay him. Got it? And for God’s sake open that mouth of yours and speak. Are you asleep on your feet?’

I got up heavily and to my surprise saw the waiter join me halfway across the piazza. We crossed that wasteland with our heads lowered, he grumbling a few foolish words about the heat, and that deserted Sunday hour.

He explained it all to the blind man, while I waited a few steps away with the bills in my hand. The old man’s face was white as a candle, his lips ready to pull back in a broad toothless smile. The waiter helped him fold his chair back up and relieved him of the garland of tickets. Sticking the money in his pocket, he directed him along the wall, all the time teasing him gently about that shameful surfeit of good luck. The blind man laughed, bewildered. After a few yards he stopped, his face turned towards the sun and the piazza, the greenery of the little restaurant opposite, to raise his hat in a slow ceremonious salute.

We returned to the table in silence.

‘You did a good thing, sir. A virtuous deed,’ the waiter said. ‘That man is unfortunate in more ways than one, if I may say so. When he goes home without any money, his wife beats him as well.’

‘You don’t say!’ He laughed happily.

‘A monster of a woman,’ the waiter added, wiping his sweat with a napkin. ‘She takes care of him, dresses him, but if he doesn’t earn anything during the day, she beats the daylights out of him. They live right behind here. We know them well.’

‘And him. Does he ever fight back? Just takes it and says thank you ma’am?’

‘He fights back all right. Poor man. With a bottle.’ The waiter laughed softly. ‘Capable of downing seven or eight litres a day. He’s certainly not going home now, you know. If he gets back too early, she sends him out again with more tickets. It’s greed that devours her: because they aren’t really poor. So he goes to the church. To nap where it’s nice and cool. He’s shrewd. He comes back here in the evening after supper.’

‘And drinks!’ He was having a good time.

‘When he gets here he’s already loaded. His wife doesn’t deny him his wine,’ the waiter continued. ‘The wine is how she keeps him on a leash. Anyway: a good deed, what you did. Given what the world throws at us nowadays.’

He sized us up with a long look, clearly meant to make out the possible degree of our kinship.

‘I’ll bet one of these days they’ll find her strangled to death,’ he said.

‘The wife? You think so?’ the waiter mused.

‘We’re evil. We blind guys.’

The other protested with a calm smile.

‘Don’t say that, sir. We all know that it’s the hand of God. And why evil? It’s ignorant people who are evil. Would you like a nice cup of coffee, afterwards? Top quality, as it should be? I’ll bring it myself.’

‘Stick those tickets somewhere. Under the tablecloth, maybe.’ He then muttered half-heartedly, already bored. ‘What a drag. Being kind is so tedious. Stifling.’

The afternoon seemed to go on and on.

He didn’t want to go back to the hotel. We strolled through the desolate streets, angling here and there in search of some meagre shade along the walls. Every so often an unexpected glimpse of a familiar Rome would recreate a flight of steps, then another narrow street vanishing into the distance and the high overhead greenery of terraces suspended from the sky by a thread, but I had to move on quickly, his firm arm hanging on mine, the blistering Sunday ready to swallow me up in new avenues, boulevards, enormous traffic circles flattened and scorched by the sun.

Later he decided to sit down at a café near a fountain, the roar of the water violent and monotonous. At a table nearby some guys were gesturing and shouting loudly in a heated discussion over football. Players’ names and insults clashed fiercely in the air, then dissolved in pauses of oppressive silence. The shapes of motorcycles parked along the sidewalks glinted. The umbrellas cast skimpy circles of shade. The surface of the table felt fiery under my fingertips.

He went on at length about the water, about how noisy it was but as though out of habit, without any real enthusiasm; each sentence immediately obliterated by the next.

I looked at that fountain, its copious chalky whorls, the streams that plunged down raising bits of greenish foam. It did not give off any coolness: my jacket and shirt were stuck to my back, my shoes had a film of dust. But strangely enough he hadn’t yet complained about the heat.

Around us, closed shops, faded nameplates on the walls. Someone peered out through the crack of a shutter. A man on a bicycle approached very slowly, got off, and with weary gestures carelessly threaded a chain between the spokes of the wheel before disappearing into a doorway.

‘So: do you have at least one friend? Or not? Someone, anyone? Something to talk about? Were you born in a cabbage patch? You never say anything about yourself,’ he suddenly protested.

‘How do you always manage to guess?’ I asked, amazed. ‘The very instant I was telling myself: say something.’

He nodded, but without any self-satisfaction.

‘One of my virtues,’ he went on. ‘For example, with me: are you a friend? Be sincere, otherwise it’s pointless.’

‘Yes. I think so. Why?’

‘Whys and wherefores.’ He shook himself irritably. ‘Why all these whys. Be direct. In short: do you feel like a friend? Do you feel that I’m a friend? Or would you rather be sitting with those others back there, talking about Boniperti and Rivera? Go on, tell me: it would only be natural.’

‘Of course not.’ I laughed nervously.

‘Do you feel different from those guys?’

‘A little. Not better. Just different.’

‘Exactly. Aside from football, do you feel comfortable with yours truly? Yes or no?’

‘Sure I do. Really.’

‘Bah!’ he made a face. ‘Let’s hope so. Look, friendship is a serious commitment.’

I swallowed my usual ‘why?’ What came out was: ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that sooner or later, or maybe even never you understand, I could ask you to do me a big favour. Big but possible. Nothing impossible.’ The voice was only a little sad.

‘That’s fine, sir.’

‘That’s fine, sir.’ He mimicked me, the tension in his face finally relaxing. ‘Of course I don’t demand oaths. Your word is enough for me. Fair?’

‘Fair.’

‘I must say you’re not totally mute. A syllable or two does slip out occasionally.’ He laughed.

I was embarrassed. ‘But I have so many things to say, in my head. They just won’t come out.’

‘Poor youth!’ He sighed, though distractedly. Then: ‘Let’s get out of here. Did you notice? A speck of ice in the whisky. Just one. That’s always the way in these tight-fisted joints. Let’s go back to last night’s bar.’

He was already on his feet. His scrawny sunlit figure cast a lengthy shadow into the street.

‘You liked that bar too.’ He started walking, grabbing my arm. ‘All in all you’re a well-bred gentleman. Boy-oh-boy, are you! Why hide it? Your father: what’s he like? And you really don’t have a girlfriend? Tell me.’

The lights began to dim one after the other until the packed room went dark. A waiter moved about with a flashlight, casting exploratory white circles around us. Then even the flashlight went out.

There was a sharp smell of disinfectant in the stuffy place; I had my back against a rigid wall of wood and velvet. I felt his elbow nudge me.

‘Now what?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing yet,’ I replied.

‘Are you having a good time?’

‘Actually not really, sir.’

The glowing ash of two cigarettes rose and fell. I heard them laughing softly beside me, him and the girl with the rustling outfit. She had sat down at our table, her eyes knowing, her throat, shoulders and breasts like cream. We were drinking champagne, dubious glances thrown at us from remote corners. The total blackness all around us now provided a minimum of respite to ease my embarrassment. An isolated round of clapping broke the silence at the bar behind us. I had watched two strippers and a magician’s act, describing them to him in a whisper. The magician was an old man with a wrinkled face and painted smile who had finished his routine by balancing at least twelve quivering doves on his shoulders, hat and hands. The stripteasers had hurried through their numbers with quick, grudging moves. Only afterwards, when they left the bar and formed a wide semicircle to study us, did the creamy creature come to sit at our table, laughing and winking, chattering in broken Italian.

The clapping resumed, loud and overly enthusiastic. In the darkness I was aware of the velvety slide of the curtain.

A burst of piano music quickly rang out and at the back of that dark funnel-like space three phosphorescent little skeletons began to dance. Even the outlines of the top hats on their skulls glowed brightly. Disjointed shinbones, kneecaps and shoulders danced happily in sync to the rhythm of an old fox-trot that became more and more frenzied. Lightly they followed one another’s lead, barely touching, their steps crossing, the skulls rigid to provide balance. Suddenly the piano betrayed them by switching to a tango: the skeletons frantically and chaotically bumped into one another, vertebra entangled within vertebra, their top hats about to fall off. A last angry comic scuffle disentangled them in the proper arrangement, order was restored and their new steps were smoother, pelvises gently swaying in slow measured undulations, top hats in cadence. Then the music stopped: the illuminated stage broke the spell and a young man with Indian features wearing a black coverall stood behind the three limp puppets. Responding with a shy smile to the scant applause, he bowed slightly and ran off.

‘The only Italian she knows is swear words. As usual.’ He laughed, leaning back against the wall. ‘Good-looking, right? A heifer from up north. Listen. Give her a try. She won’t bite. Go on. Stuff you won’t find on the Monte di Pietà.’

He weighed her breasts lightly in his hand, delighting in fake sighs, the girl’s eyes quick to scrutinize mine before laughing and shaking him off.

‘I am very hungry, no? Fillet? Yes, the fillet. Please,’ she said wiggling around.

She laughed without showing her teeth, that childish voice of hers far too affected.

‘I would have bet on bandolero steaks, the ones marinated in rum or bourbon.’ He continued to be amused, his fingers nervously tapping the table.

The waiter arrived with the fillet and more champagne, while on stage a black woman with an oiled body undulated among flaming torches. From the top of each torch black paraffin smoke curled upwards.

We had already deposited our bags in the luggage room at the station. We were to leave for Naples early the next morning.

‘This one here doesn’t get off until four a.m.,’ he said.

‘So what good is she? If we have to leave.’

‘She’ll come to the station with us. That’s what. Finally somebody to see us off,’ was his ready response.

As soon as the lights dimmed, the girl moved closer to him, whispering in his ear. But maybe they weren’t words, just delicate breaths, and he basked motionless in that fragrant surge.

‘Here they’ll rob us. Like fools,’ I had said to him from the beginning.

‘So what? It’s fine just the same. Believe me. Or maybe you’re embarrassed.’

‘What does embarrassment have to do with it? I just think it’s dumb,’ I said angrily, an impassive waiter close by.

‘So then, what else should I deny myself, in your opinion?’ he retorted mildly. ‘As for the money, you’re right. Another minute of this life and I’ll end up right in the poorhouse. But we’ll think about that later on. Okay with you?’

I had taken his arm, avoiding the attentions of the waiter. We had descended into that darkness, the sounds of the music suddenly louder.

Now his elbow nudged my ribs again.

‘Hey, Ciccio. Know what she’s thinking about? A handbag. She says it only costs a thousand Swiss francs. Some bargain. Watch out: you’re holding the money, that’s what I told her. It seems the handbag is sold in a shop right near her house. Of course you’ll miss the train. Right? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.’

The girl was watching me, a smile quick to appear and reappear on her face, her gleaming gaze intent. The waiter had brought a small plate with four apricot halves in syrup. She lifted one with a spoon and gently, bit by bit, slid her tongue slowly in and out of its depression, her eyes half closed, avoiding mine at first, then suddenly staring at me, at the effort I was making to meet her eyes. The champagne was going to my head; my eyelids felt heavy. By this time the girl had decided to swallow the apricots languidly, pouting.

After a while she went back to the bar. The show was over. Two or three couples danced, dragging themselves listlessly onto the stage, now transformed into a dance floor. A veiled light revolved, drawing and erasing pink and blue shadows. I saw them bring two coffees to the table. I drank with some effort. The air had become toxic. I thought I spotted the magician’s profile among the disorderly crowd at the bar. Older, his wrinkles powdered, perched on a stool, he was playing dice by himself, a big sandwich in his left hand. Even the black woman from the torch act sprang out of the darkness for a moment to have a drink, looked around, alone, disappeared before my eyes.

To hold out, I clung to his voice, breathing heavily as he told a story. He seemed to have sagged between the table and the wall, his left arm flung out in abandon, his right hand clutching a cigarette. In the changing flashes of light his face had lost any sense of definition.

‘… in this cave, holy God. Always in a cave. Who knows how they manage. To work. To live. Blind, yet they work, they reproduce. You see? Insects, I’m talking about. I’ve been talking to you for an hour, Ciccio. What’s up? Are you sleeping? Feel nauseous? Insects. How do I know? Once I called information, I swear. How could I make it up? I never learned to read with my fingers, not me. No rehabilitation, I told them right away. There’s nothing left to rehabilitate, nothing to learn, my dear medical professors with all those fucking degrees of yours. So then: the nice, kind voice of that girl on the phone. How she laughed! She always seemed cheerful. The patience she had. Naturally she must have been pretty ugly, to be that patient. Can you believe it? She read half the encyclopedia to me on the phone, explaining about blind insects who work and so on. In the dark. The mole cricket, for example. A carnivorous cricket that eats worms and digs tunnels. It lives at night. He and his missus are causing serious damage to the agricultural crops, you know? And then there are the worker termites. Less appealing though, since they’re asexual. Not only blind but asexual on top of it, thanks to mother nature’s just reward. They work, they build, they sweep, they gather food. They even cultivate edible mushrooms, I swear! Check it out if you don’t believe me. While their good queen oversees them, grows fat, eats mushrooms and produces forty thousand eggs a day. She doesn’t work there any more, that girl. The times I called her, afterwards. Damn her and her shitty kindness. Or maybe she got tired of it. Maybe she asked to be transferred to another office not to have to listen to me any more. I can understand it. What do you think?’

I don’t know how he managed to drag me over to the telephone. The magician was watching us as he kept moving the dice up and down a green-felt tray. His doves, I thought dully.

A sulky bartender dialled the number and indifferently handed over the receiver.

‘What do you mean, night? What night? It’s morning. Don’t you think it’s time you went to Mass? Confess your sins?’ he shouted raucously, irascibly, happily to his cousin the aunt. He held the receiver away from his ear to allow for the sighs and querulous cries of the frightened voice on the other end. ‘Of course I’m fine. Just dandy. You won’t be coming to my funeral. Nor will my cousin the priest. Saw him today. A tiresome bore, him too. Call the Baron for me. I know he’s sleeping in my bed. I want the Baron. Now. Hey, Baron, is that you? How are you? Speak up. Go on. One little purr. Come on, handsome. There’s my good fatty. Of course you know who I am, it’s me, come on now precious chubby boy. You’ll give me a nice purr now, won’t you? Come on, precious. Or I’ll cut off your whiskers, you know. Are you embarrassed because of my aunt? Tell me. Let me hear you. No? To hell with you too, then.’

He hung up, his hand trembling. The bartender had poured two small glasses of a dark liquor.

‘Courtesy of the management,’ he said grimly.

I didn’t even try to refuse. He drank, and immediately afterwards found my glass too by feeling around.

‘Herbal,’ he decreed coughing.

‘An extract. Very digestive and stimulating, sir.’ The bartender wasn’t surprised.

The magician had turned away, I saw his curved back, the faded pattern on his jacket.

‘How about we wake up my cousin the priest? Just a thought. Maybe he needs us. We might manage to get him to come to Naples with us. Having a priest along could be useful.’

‘For heaven’s sake, sir,’ I replied, though I realized that I could not offer any opposing arguments.

‘He’s a good man, the little priest. He’s amusing.’ He began complaining in a fake voice. ‘You, Ciccio, on the other hand, are a nobody. A cipher. Why can’t you manage to keep me company?’

The bartender’s putty rubber face lost its frown in a faint smile of complicity.

‘You’re not a friend,’ he went on. ‘You don’t speak, you don’t sing, you don’t wag your tail. Where the hell are you from, madamina? Because you’re a little bit of a coquette, like a madamina. Or does that offend you?’

‘No, sir,’ I said patiently.

I kept my hands on the bar to steady myself; I felt the wood grow damp under my palms. The bartender poured a third glass of liquor. I ordered myself to say no with my head to display a modicum of authority on my part. The man nodded, took back the glass.

An insolent, early light hung over the houses when we went out. In three taxis two men slept sprawled out between the seat and the steering wheel; a third was reading the newspaper.

‘Rotten bitch. It wouldn’t have cost her anything to come with us,’ I heard him rattling on. ‘But she’s no admiral’s daughter. These goddamned whores always say they’re admirals’ daughters. Never understood why. You didn’t say a word to stop her, Ciccio. You’re too befuddled. Did you see her again afterwards?’

‘No.’

She was right there, walking along, not twenty yards from us, her tender bare flesh unharmed by the light of day. She climbed into a car, went past us, elbow raised to shade her eyes and forehead.

‘Incurable provincial captive that I am.’ He coughed. ‘If things go on this way I’ll be talking to myself any minute. The nut house. Trips, not on your life. I should have myself taken to the blessing of the animals. Ciccio, why don’t you shove me under a tram?’

He could hardly stand up, his shoulder leaning on mine, his knees caving in. Every now and then he tensed up to repress a shudder.

‘Naples and death,’ he began repeating, continuing on in the taxi, saying it over and over again non-stop and coughing as we hurtled through the deserted streets and piazzas to the station.

I fell into a kind of absurd calculation of the days already spent and those yet to come. The fizz from the champagne was bubbling in my stomach in troublesome eruptions. I gave up on the intricate cabbala concerning time and held my breath, suppressing hiccups.

A large fountain circled around us, its water steely-grey; he stuck his head out the window to drown in that air, that cool sound.

Then: ‘The Baron, too. Even him now. What would it have cost him to say something? He always talks to me on the phone. He gets angry, he gets offended, but then he always mutters something. This time, nothing. More spiteful than usual. You think it’s my fault, Ciccio? Am I really such a bitter pill? And to think I see myself, I consider myself a poor canary blinded so he can sing better.’

He laughed shrilly, only to have it turn into laboured gurgling. He bent over, pressing his stomach.

‘What was that last drink? Manure? Do your guts feel rotten too?’

Darkness obscured my eyes, ripped into my throat. I struggled not to come apart. I kept my eyes fixed on the door handle trying not to look elsewhere, not to close my eyes again.

The taxi driver braked rudely, dumping us off in front of the station without a word.

‘A shame to leave here. Too bad we can’t stay. But on to Nero’s!’ he cried, swaying along, his cane raised.

Only the patience of a porter extricated our bags from the luggage room. Overturned cups and saucers in the sink at the bar, the raucous thumps of voices from the loudspeakers drilled into my skull.

‘Istanbul. Calcutta is where we should go. Forget Naples. Only three hours’ sleep. What an eternal idiot I’m turning into. May God strike me dead.’ He went on protesting in the train, his lips livid. He had already swallowed the sleeping pill.

Huddled miserably in a corner, I tried to shield myself as much as possible with the edge of a curtain. I felt the light, now too strong, pressing and prying between my eyelids like an incandescent blade. Cries, shouts, noises tore brutally around us.

‘Relics of ourselves. That’s what we are, Naples and death,’ he continued muttering, a dark, swollen vein in the middle of his forehead. ‘Is anybody in here?’

‘No one, sir,’ I said.

The train began to move.