Scent of a Woman

8

I saw them at the back of the terrace in the marble-veined evening sky. They were speaking almost listlessly, with long intervals of silence and not a shadow of a smile, he, upright as a post as usual, the other, his back already curved, though he was tall and stocky, straining to hold himself erect. They seemed out of place against the vibrant stripes of a large umbrella.

‘I’ll say goodnight. It’s late for me. Do you need anything? By now you know where everything is, you’ve seen everything. Make yourself at home. See you tomorrow,’ the soldier said from the door. He had the narrow face of a weasel, with unexpected flickers of cunning, and smooth hands. He had first said he was a student, then a records clerk, but his tone was that of someone afraid of saying the wrong thing.

I remained alone in that enormous room crammed with portraits. A last glimmer of light shone on the face of a woman surrounded by an oval antique frame; the pale flower pinned between her throat and shoulder stood out starkly. Groupings of photographs edged with silver lay on a desk, small tables, mantelpieces, a piano.

In the afternoon the soldier had shown me around the house, a maze of hallways, cubbyholes, rooms one inside the other. From almost every window you could see views of the city plunging down to the sea, precipitous and unruly, like a chaotic crèche.

I would be sleeping in the room of a maid who had left on vacation just that morning. The drawers and closet in the room had been emptied or locked, the walls were bare with damp, branched shadows. There were no sheets under the bed cover.

‘Good thinking, that too. Four men in the house, or at least you three if I really don’t matter and no one counts me, and what does he come up with? He sends the only useful person, the only woman, on a trip. Who hadn’t even asked to go. The proverb is right: the brains of those whom God hath marked work differently. See what you can do. Mind you, I’ve already decided: I’m eating at the barracks. Beds, brooms, dustmops – as far as I’m concerned, they can wait until Christmas. I’m not an orderly. You neither. If they have an itch, let them scratch it,’ the soldier had promptly told me.

‘What’s the name of your guy?’

‘Vincenzo V. But just call him Lieutenant. That’s enough for him. He retired as a captain, but he insists on still being called Lieutenant. Naturally: those brains I just mentioned. Still, a person with heart, a whining bore but good-hearted. Believe me: I’ve been here six months now. And thank the Almighty God, at least he has both his hands. How does your guy manage to shave? Do you see to it?’

I saw them on the terrace, still standing side by side, their cigarettes lit. They had ironically felt each other’s stomach and abdomen but with quick, almost disgusted touches, neither one laughing. They weren’t talking any more.

I had managed to rest a few hours. My exhaustion and all its various toxins had vanished, but I still felt gripped by a strange, indecipherably hostile force, like a cobweb, or better yet perhaps, a soap bubble that had enclosed me: rising higher and higher, uncontrollable, swaying, it was carrying me away, every aspect of the world increasingly diminished, cold and distant.

I too went out on the terrace, taking care to retreat to the corner farthest away from those two.

The city was already all lit up, a dense undulating jungle of lights and lamps, multicoloured patches that ran up and down the gulf’s coastline in a blur of loops and scallops, swirls and eddies, beneath a sky streaked with purple. At the point where the purple darkened, a cloud was slowly forming the head, then the shoulder, and finally the prodigious hand of a giant. The last curls of his hair still caught the sun from below the horizon. Rising towards him from that jungle was the thick growl of an immeasurable beast, stretched out, sleepless, humming from millions of pores, orifices, scales, wrinkles, recesses of its skin exposed to summer’s inert vapours.

My prison felt tighter and more oppressive, and I immediately felt an urge to dive in – not walk, but actually plunge in among those lights, that breath, and disappear there.

They moved and crossed the terrace in silence, shoulder to shoulder, the white cane and the bamboo staff swaying in sync.

The lieutenant had a deep thick voice given to sudden dubious languor; his guest’s words abruptly interrupted what he was saying. Three, four times they retraced those few feet in a straight line, the host’s bald head gleaming like an eggshell. They didn’t appear to be friends; they never displayed a sincere gesture of affection, of understanding.

The lieutenant said softly: ‘I have the courage. But I’m so afraid.’

His response was laughter that stung like a whip.

Prudently I returned to the living room, preferring not to listen to their talk.

Through the windows, in the room’s darkness, I could still see the sea, black and obscure, surrounding two large vessels whose masts were illuminated like perfect triangles.

Finally I decided to move, to at least try to find the light switches.

After supper the girls arrived. Two were daughters of the owner of the nearby restaurant where we had eaten, and two were their friends. They were very young. The one with glasses laughed and was more active than the others. They immediately moved about the house as if they knew it by heart, finding glasses, bottles, ice, some feather pillows in a closet.

They followed one another back and forth between the kitchen and the living room with loud cries.

‘Ines Candida Michelina Sara. You’re driving me crazy,’ the lieutenant complained from the depths of his armchair. ‘Where are you running to? Why are you fussing around? Here, all of you come here right now. Sit down.’

He, already shielded behind his whisky, was silent, as if oblivious to it all.

‘You too. Say something. They waited so long for you, poor girls,’ the lieutenant prodded.

‘Women. By now they’re grown women. A far cry from the little girls of four years ago. I can barely stand them,’ he grumbled.

‘Fausto,’ the other gave a long sigh, ‘we might come to an end, but not the world.’

The bespectacled Ines appeared, manoeuvring a fan with its long electrical cord.

‘How about a little air? It’s stifling in here. Come on, don’t start drinking like sponges right away, otherwise we’ll leave. Would you like another cup of coffee? Is the breeze too strong?’

She lowered her voice then and moved to the two armchairs, where she said quickly, giggling, ‘Did you notice, Fausto? Sara is still in love with you. Really head over heels, poor girl. Like when she had braids, remember? She even bought a new perfume today. French. Say something to her, Fausto, make us laugh.’

‘Ines, you gossipy mischief-maker, you. A fine friend you are. Be quiet for once. And call the others. What are they doing over there?’ the lieutenant objected listlessly.

‘They’re embarrassed!’ Ines laughed again before running off, leaving the fan on the floor.

‘Well. They must still be virgins?’ he said lazily.

‘Captain, have you lost your mind?’ the lieutenant said in alarm, shocked. ‘How can you talk that way. Four fine young women worthy of respect. I’m even Candida’s godfather…’

He gave up with a hopeless wave of his hand.

‘Curiosity. Just talk.’ He yawned. ‘What do you expect me to think? They’re women, so talking is useless. You have to touch them.’

‘Fausto,’ his friend scolded him again, ‘don’t you remember four years ago? When they accompanied us to cafés, to the park, and we bought them ice-cream cones?’

‘Baloney.’ He was quickly silenced.

They came back in together, their eyes focused on me, as if weighing my possible though not yet established complicity. They sat in a row on the sofa in front of the two men, nudging each other, making faces and smiling, their giggles quickly muffled by their hands across their mouths.

‘Be good now,’ the lieutenant warned.

He didn’t have many scars on his face, just a reddened zigzagging slash behind his right ear. His dark glasses made his large head, that fleshy nose, seem even heavier. His chin wobbled at the slightest word or collapsed in a trace of a double chin.

‘Any ideas, girls? Let’s not stay up too late though,’ he asked around mildly.

‘A game. Yes, a game!’ Ines cried immediately.

She had taken off her glasses. They all seemed indifferent to the soft, warm cushions, to the dozens of eyes looking down on them from the whiskered men along the walls, from those garlanded matrons and dames in their frames, with their prodigious chests, painted mouths, tight curls at their temples.

I saw Sara reach out her fingers to touch his right hand as it gripped the glass.

‘Do you have a headache? Do you need anything? Some ice?’ she asked, her wide eyes enormous in her small, pale, too round face.

Her girlfriends on the couch silently made fun of her, mimicking her with puckered lips, their eyes half closed.

‘No, no,’ he replied, abruptly moving his hand away, the mechanical twitch of an annoyed smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

‘A game, a game!’ the others now shouted, though studying their friend with avid suspicion.

‘No screaming. Mother of God, please, my head. A game, as many games as you want, but quietly. Otherwise that’s the end of it. There’s a play on the radio tonight. Be good or I’ll go to my room,’ the lieutenant implored them, his limp hands moving around in space.

‘What game do you want to play, Fausto? You decide,’ Sara asked softly, leaning over intently.

He laughed, his shoulders immediately assailed by a shudder: ‘The only one there is, by God. Blind man’s bluff.’

We had moved out to the terrace for ice cream, the night air hot and humid.

The pistachio-hazelnut cream had melted in the refrigerator; we drank that sluggish glop from glasses after dousing it with whisky.

‘Remember how often you used to dream? Do you still dream?’ Sara’s voice was cautious but determined. ‘Once you told me that you had heard an animal under the bed. Running. Small. Orange-coloured. Some kind of rabbit you thought. Or maybe an armadillo.’

‘Armadillo. What the hell is that,’ he retorted tonelessly, ‘I don’t remember a thing.’

‘But Sara does.’ Michelina’s voice was sweetly ironic as she paused a moment with the tray of empty glasses. She was tiny, quick to show her teeth, and she had chubby knees. ‘Sara is like a bad conscience. She remembers everything; she never rests.’

‘Don’t be catty.’ The lieutenant sighed from afar. He was stretched out in a wicker lounge chair, having relinquished any desire to control the evening.

‘Ciccio!’ The gloved left hand went up.

‘Right here.’

‘Good, don’t go anywhere,’ he said wearily.

Sara looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, with a faint sad smile, her hands clasped under her chin. Her nails were well trimmed, but she had gnarly fingers that she continually tried to hide.

‘Why don’t you take off your jacket? With this heat,’ she spoke to him softly, ‘don’t you want to be more comfortable?’

‘How silly you are,’ he replied.

‘Next year I’ll be at university,’ she tried again.

‘And your sister?’

‘Oh, Candida will do just fine as a cashier at the restaurant with my mother. She’s good-natured. A girl who will soon marry, poor thing.’

‘Why poor thing?’ He laughed.

‘Because she’s a worthless creature, “made out of nothing”, God help her.’ Sara’s reply showed some irritation at the hopeless bother of that conversation. ‘Whether she marries a head cook or maybe even a grand pasha, it’s all the same. It all goes back to that.’

‘And you’re not like that. Right?’

‘Me? No. Of course not!’ She was suddenly animated, her hands clenched. ‘Fausto, you haven’t even asked me what I’m going to be studying at university.’

‘I bet you’ll tell me just the same.’

‘Rude and impolite.’ She laughed, though nervously. ‘Well: medicine. Happy?’

‘Should I be? If I should be, I am.’

‘I’m intelligent. Really. Everyone says so. I’m not like the others. As for why I chose medicine, you should know, you of all people.’ She was twisting her fingers, her big bright eyes intent.

The girls had gathered around the fan in the living room; they took turns gently offering the back of their necks to the cool breeze, chattering away.

‘Empty glass, Sara.’ He sent her off, then immediately snapped his fingers and said to me, ‘Ciccio, ten minutes by the clock. Then drag me off to sleep. No matter what.’

‘Couldn’t I sit over there? Just for a moment at least. You understand, sir.’

‘Don’t you dare move.’

She had returned with three glasses. She too took a sip, cautiously, unable to suppress a grimace.

‘You’re the most elegant man I know. A milord!’ she burst out suddenly. ‘I swear, Fausto, there is no one more elegant and fascinating than you.’

‘By God!’ He gave in with a helpless smile. He raised his glass.

‘Oh yes. Toast, toast!’ Sara was excited.

From the fan the girls leaned forward watching closely, though they didn’t have the nerve to move.

‘What shall we toast to?’ Sara asked anxiously.

‘You choose. I assure you, it’s for the best.’

‘To nothing. Nada. Al rien ne va plus. To this life, daughter of the great Buonadonna whom we know…’ The besotted, tipsy voice of the lieutenant faded away, lost down there in his corner.

‘On the contrary, I’ll toast to you. To you and to my hopes. What do you say?’ Sara flushed, lightly touching his knee with her fingertips.

‘Amen,’ he concluded, draining his glass.

‘It’s time to go, sir,’ I tried.

‘Fausto, now I have to tell you. Listen to me. Now…’ the girl continued, trembling a little. Her voice promptly cracked.

‘No, keep quiet. Understand? Shut up. For the love of God.’ He twisted his head away abruptly.

Those shining eyes closed a moment, then reappeared even more submissive, tired.

‘At least tell me why you came,’ she tried in a whisper. ‘No one thought you would again. Not even Vincenzo. I knew he phoned you, that you spoke together, but that’s different from…’

‘Poor lieutenant.’ He smiled. ‘Once upon a time he still laughed. Now he no longer even laughs. Just puffs and snorts.’

‘Why did you come? Just like that? For no reason?’

‘Stop it, Sara. Your sister, your friends: they’ll criticize you. Make fun of you.’

‘Who’s criticizing? Who? Who’s making fun? If you only knew how afraid they are of me. And they should be!’ She got angry, her face reddening. ‘Go on, please, at least tell me this: why you’ve come.’

‘Not without a reason. Since you’re so curious. No: not without a reason. But that’s enough now. No more questions, young lady.’ He put an end to it by getting up, searching for my arm.

On the phone Candida calmly reassured their mother. They would leave soon, it wasn’t even midnight. The ice cream was really a disaster.

A flurry of cheerful greetings went around again.

At a very late hour, from my bed, I heard stifled sobs that drew out into weeping which lasted a long time before growing gradually more quiet and stopping. Then steps moving away from the bathroom in the hallway.

Undoubtedly the lieutenant.