A Little Lumpen Novelita

VIII

For a few days I lived on tiptoe, I think. I went back and forth from work to home trying not to call attention to myself, and at night I watched some TV, not much, since I was gradually losing interest in the shows I used to see.

Sometimes the house was empty when I got home. Then I would eat in the kitchen, sitting on a white stool, staring at the white-tiled wall, counting the tiles from top to bottom, then counting the rows, then losing my place and starting over. I can say without irony that I was bored.

Sometimes I went into my parents’ old bedroom. It still looked the same, and if by some miracle the ghosts (or zombies) of my parents had come through the door, they wouldn’t have found a thing out of place.

But a few items provided evidence to the contrary.

There was a suitcase half-hidden behind a chair, and the frame of a backpack just visible on top of the wardrobe. The suitcase was well made, of leather, and inside it were clean clothes that might have belonged to either the Bolognan or the Libyan. In the backpack were dirty clothes, just a small bundle, because if there was one thing that could be said about my brother’s friends, it was that they had an undeniable predilection for cleaning. I couldn’t find a single personal item among their belongings. Not a letter or an address book or a photocopy of their Social Security papers. I guessed that they always carried their important documents around with them. Or they didn’t have any. Or they didn’t exist.

Around this time I remember a conversation with one of my friends at work. She was the same age as me, but she had a boyfriend, and one evening before we closed up the salon she started to talk about her future. For a second I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Are you serious? Are you making this up?”

She was serious, but when she saw how upset I was she stopped talking and went over to the other end of the room, where she said something to a stylist who was taking a break, sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunset. There was an expression of deep melancholy on the stylist’s face. But the look on the other girl’s face was malevolent, I thought. I was breathing hard, as if I’d run from one point to another in record time, and though the other girl laughed a few times, as if she couldn’t believe her own words, she seemed afraid. The stylist listened without getting up from her chair. It was as if the girl’s words were sliding off her face, a hard face without a hint of indulgence. That’s what I remember. And I remember the sunset, a sunset of rose and ocher that crept all the way to the back of the salon, but never touched me.

That night I didn’t cry on the way home, which was something I’d been doing for a while. It was as if when I left work I walked straight into a wind tunnel that made me cry for no reason. A tunnel that at first seemed to have only a physical effect, bringing on tears and nothing else, but rather than getting used to it, over the last few days I had been struck by a feeling of enormous sadness, a sadness that I could only handle by crying.

But that day, as if I glimpsed that my life was about to take a sharp turn, I didn’t cry. I put on my sunglasses, left the salon, stepped into the tunnel, and didn’t cry. Not a single tear.

My brother and the two men who lived in our house were waiting for me. I saw them from outside. The three of them were standing in the window, like fish in a fishbowl, watching the street. It took them a while to spot me there on the sidewalk, watching them.

I climbed slowly up the stairs. I closed the door and paused in the hallway. All of a sudden there they were, talking. I listened. What else could I do? Though I’ve forgotten what they said. They had a plan. That much I do remember. A hazy plan on which each of them, my brother included, had gambled his future, and to which each had added his bit, his personal touch, his vision of fate and the turns of fate.

I remember I listened to them and then I pushed past them into the living room and sat down, tired of taking in so much information at once. They followed me and were silent, expectant.

I said:

“Don’t stop, it’s a good idea, keep talking.”

Maybe I didn’t say it was a good idea. Maybe I said that I wanted to hear them out. (I thought we were all going to end up in jail, but I didn’t tell them that — I’m not a killjoy.)

They smiled and obeyed. My brother seemed the most enthusiastic, as if it had been his idea, though I knew it hadn’t. The Libyan seemed the most skeptical. But the three of them were committed to the plan and they clung to it like shipwrecked sailors, laying it all out for me and presenting it in the best possible light. It was something that would require only the tiniest sacrifice, a plan in which cleverness was key. It was the perfect coup, a scheme that would open the doors of a new life to us, that would get us a house on the beach, or a restaurant in Tangiers, or a gym up north.

When they were done talking I said that it sounded good to me. Then I got up and went to bed and fell asleep without eating dinner.

At five in the morning I woke up. I turned on the light, I leafed through old magazines, and for a while I mulled over what they had explained. So this is the life of crime, I thought without fear.

The next morning I didn’t go to work, I got up early, went out, bought bread, and called in sick from a payphone. I don’t know whether they believed me or not. I didn’t care.

At midday, the Libyan and the Bolognan brought me to Maciste’s house. That wasn’t his name, but it was what everyone called him. To some he was Maciste, to others Mr. Maciste or Mr. Bruno, to others Mr. Universe. It depended. Most didn’t call him anything because Maciste never left the house and no one knew him and many of those who had known him, personally or by name, had forgotten him.

The house was on Via Germanico. It was a two-story house, with a small, overgrown garden in front, flanked by two six- or seven-story buildings. There was a tall metal gate. The shutters were closed, as if no one lived there. The paint on the façade was peeling in places, which made the place look even more neglected, if possible. And yet as we walked up to the door, we didn’t see mail on the ground or trash in the garden, which meant that someone did come occasionally to clean. Sometimes Maciste made an appearance at a gym on Via Palladio, according to the Bolognan, and sometimes someone was sent from the gym to fix a piece of Maciste’s exercise equipment.

“In there,” said the Bolognan as we were leaving, “he has a huge private gym set up just for him. Once I came with another guy to fix a weight rack and we got to be friendly. I came back twice, but I couldn’t get past the door. Maciste doesn’t trust anybody.”

Then, as we talked that afternoon about what we would do, they told me that for a while, probably before my brother and I were born, Maciste had been a movie star and his movies were seen all over the world. Then he’d had the accident and retired, and after that he’d gradually been forgotten.

But Maciste wasn’t the kind of person who’s easy to forget. I, for one, know I’ll never forget him. No matter what happens, I’ll never forget him.