A Private Venus

2

You didn’t need to be a mind reader to understand who she had found: Signor A.

‘But didn’t Davide take you home?’ he asked. At eleven o’clock Davide had indeed taken her home, not driving away until he had seen her go inside the building and close the street door behind her. Where had she found Signor A? On the landing outside her apartment?

‘Yes,’ his Livia said in her beautiful, limpid voice, ‘but then I had to go out again almost immediately.’

‘Why?’

‘Dad wasn’t feeling well, he had a terrible toothache and there was nothing in the apartment to ease the pain, so I had to go out to the pharmacy.’

‘I see.’

‘There weren’t any taxis, at that hour they’re all parked outside the cinemas. I walked to the Piazza Oberdan, where there’s an all-night pharmacy.’

‘That’s quite a distance from your apartment.’

‘I had no choice. There was only one other customer in the pharmacy, a man. When I saw him, it struck me he was exactly the kind of man we were looking for. I bought a tube of painkillers and left.’

Livia Ussaro even did overtime. She had worked until eleven with Davide, then had seen an interesting man, and had carried on working.

‘He followed me.’ She had done nothing to make him follow her, she had been only the innocent prey, she had given him the impression that she was what he was looking for.

‘Tell me everything.’

‘Outside the pharmacy, I stopped at the curb to let the cars pass. Then he said that everyone was getting headaches in this heat.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I didn’t reply, just smiled a little, but as if I was annoyed.’

Perfect. Then his Livia Ussaro had crossed the Corso Buenos Aires to where the taxi stand was. Obviously, the stand was empty, you never see a taxi stand with lots of taxis, except when you don’t need them. Signor A had tactfully followed her, without saying another word, as if he wasn’t following her, as if he had also had to cross the street, but when he had seen her stop at the taxi stand, he must have thought he was a lucky man.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait,’ he had said.

Another smile from her, without words, but less annoyed, more words from Signor A, and finally she had followed him, accepting the lift he had so politely offered her, and had got into Signor A’s dark blue Flaminia.

‘The number, Livia.’ The licence number. Even if it had been a twenty-figure number, she was sure to remember it, without needing to write it down.

‘Duca, maybe I’m stupid, but I didn’t catch it.’ She sounded as if she wanted to cry.

She hadn’t caught the licence number, his ace of spies had failed in the simplest of operations. ‘How can that be?’ ‘Duca, cars have number plates on the front and the back, but when you get in, you get in from the side, where there are no number plates,’ she excused herself timidly, without hope, as if knowing she had already been condemned. ‘All the time I was with him, I tried to find an opportunity to look at the number, but it wasn’t possible, he kept me inside the car, I couldn’t get out and look at the number plate without making him suspicious, I couldn’t, I really couldn’t.’

He wasn’t going to let her off that easily. ‘But when he left you and drove off, you could have seen the number plate at the back as the car was leaving.’

‘No, I couldn’t do that either. He insisted on driving me all the way back to the front door of my building, and he waited until I’d gone inside, I don’t know if he did it only out of gallantry, but I had to close the door behind me after going in, I opened it again as soon as I heard him leave, but the car was already some distance away and the street isn’t very well lit.’

It happens. The great chef calmly cooks venison all’imperiale with California oranges soaked in rum, and then messes up a scrambled egg.

‘So what do you know about him?’ he asked, almost roughly.

‘The photographs.’

Signor A had taken his Livia towards the Parco Lambro, not precisely into the park, which at that hour would have been a little dangerous, but into a quiet avenue next to it, and besides, for what he had to do, he could have parked in the Piazza del Duomo at midday, because he hadn’t done anything except talk, although it was quite an erotic conversation. He had asked her a lot of questions, but discreet ones: how old was she, what region was she from, did she have a boyfriend? He’d been pleased to hear that she was a schoolteacher, even though she wasn’t teaching at the moment, he said that culture in a woman was the thing that excited him the most. He had indulged in a few weary caresses, then had confessed sincerely that at his age, inevitably, things changed in your body, things you couldn’t do much about. Of course if he was twenty, he had said with a smile, everything would have been different, but now he only came alive when he saw photographs of beautiful women, obviously with not too many clothes on, in fact, with no clothes at all, she had to understand his plight, a photographic nude had more effect on him than a real nude, especially if he had met the girl in the photograph and talked to her a bit, nude photographs in the specialised magazines left him indifferent, because he had never met the women in them; he would have liked, for example, to have a nice series of photographs of her, now that he had spoken to her and seen what a nice, attractive person she was. Of course, she didn’t have any photographs like that, but this was a small inconvenience which could immediately be remedied. He had a friend, a completely trustworthy friend and an expert photographer, that she could go and see. As an expression of his gratitude, he would be happy if she would accept fifty thousand lire, and last but not least he had reassured her that nobody would ever know about it, she would pose with her face in shadow, and anyway it was in his interest to keep this weakness of his a secret. Livia had told him she didn’t like the idea, she didn’t even like what she was doing with him now, and she didn’t want to do it any more even though her financial situation was difficult. Signor A had praised her for this stand of hers and had even expressed the fervent hope that she would find a good job and then a nice young man and get married, but a few photographs wouldn’t make any difference, would they?

He had insisted, subtly, and in the end he had given her the address of his friend the photographer, even adding an extra twenty thousand lire.

‘Tell me the address,’ Duca asked his Livia Ussaro impatiently. He had signalled to Davide, who he could see through the open door of the kitchen, to come and write.

‘Publicity Photographic,’ Livia said.

‘Publicity Photographic,’ he repeated and Davide wrote it down.

‘Ulisse Apartments, beyond the Via Egidio Folli and beyond the tollbooth,’ Livia said.

‘Ulisse Apartments, beyond the Via Egidio Folli and beyond the toll booth,’ he repeated and Davide wrote it down. ‘And when do you have to go?’

‘He told me to be there between two and three in the afternoon, because after that his friend has some work to do outside the studio.’

It was a well-chosen time, Milan would be asleep at home, Milan overwhelmed by the heat but unable to sleep in the streets, on the trams, in offices, in factories: it was a more solitary and discreet time than any hour of the night.

‘And now the description,’ Duca said, signalling to Davide again to make sure he wrote everything down. ‘Height?’

‘At least one metre seventy-five, he’s taller than me and I’m one metre seventy,’ she said, adding innocently, ‘in high heels.’

‘Height one metre seventy-five. Build?’

‘Thin, his jacket hung on him.’

‘Complexion?’

‘A bit olive. He has a moustache, very thin, grey, almost white.’

‘Hair?’

‘Also grey, almost white, with a receding hairline, but he still has a lot of hair and he wears it quite long and well combed.’

‘Eyes?’

Livia hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the colour.’

‘Nose?’

‘A bit aquiline, but only a bit.’

It wasn’t much, but he’d pass this information on to Mascaranti, who would have an identikit made by the police draughtsmen. His hope lay in the photographer: if they managed to get him he would give them the name of his accomplices, including Signor A. They had a better chance to catch him now.

‘Livia.’

‘Yes.’

‘Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Stay at home until I tell you otherwise.’

‘Yes.’

‘Never answer the phone personally. If they call, get a member of your family to answer, and have them say you’re not there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Never open the door yourself, send someone, and if they ask for you, same answer, you’re not there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Obviously nobody will come tonight, but from tomorrow morning at six, I’ll phone you every hour to make sure nothing has happened.’

‘What could happen?’

‘I don’t think anything will, but after what happened last year they may have become more cautious. They may be watching you to see if you have contacts with anyone.’ That wasn’t the only thing, but he didn’t tell her the rest. ‘Now go to bed, Livia. And thank you.’

‘I’m so glad I succeeded,’ she said, her girlish voice triumphant.

Only when he put down the receiver did he notice that Lorenza was standing in the square, bare, yet intimate hall, her eyes cloudy with fear.

‘Go to bed, don’t worry.’

‘Who was it?’ She couldn’t help worrying, she knew everything, Duca had told her everything, and it was a horrible business.

‘Livia. We found the man.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

He became nervous because he felt sorry, eaten up with remorse, because she was right: it was stupid, criminal, that instead of looking for a good job he should get involved in this disgusting affair. ‘Maybe I’ll go out, maybe I’ll stay here, but there’s one thing I’d like, which is for you to go to bed without worrying about me.’

Lorenza turned red, because of that tone, and because Davide was there, listening, she looked at him, she seemed to be about to say something, but she was dominated by her big brother, and she went back to her room.

‘A guide to Milan,’ he said to Davide. They went into the living room, which was a little larger than the hall, and where among the other so-called furniture in the so-called Rational style-chosen by his father, who had thought he would like it-there was a small bookcase with books and old magazines, the beginnings of a library that had remained unfinished when he had gone into prison, three years earlier. There was also dust, because Sara didn’t give her mother much time to see to the house, and there was also a guide to Milan, a little book with a nice map, a bit out of date, but it might still be useful. They went back in the kitchen, laid the map out on the table, looked at the list of streets: Via Egidio Folli, at the very edge of the city, just behind the Parco Lambro, the street then joined the main road that led to Melzo and Pioltello. ‘They’ve become very cautious,’ he said.

‘Why?’ Davide asked.

‘They’re not confident enough these days to set up their studio in the middle of town. They’ve moved out of the centre, just like the big companies. At the first sign of anything going wrong, they can jump in their car and they’re already on the main road.’

‘What do we do now?

‘I’m thinking about that.’ But it wasn’t true, in broad terms he had already made up his mind, he was only pretending to think in order to convince himself that he wasn’t working from a whim. It was all a lie.

If he had been an honest citizen, at this point he should have phoned Carrua, given him the information about the photographer, and let him deal with it. But he couldn’t be an honest citizen, his criminal record showed that.

‘How strange,’ he said, ‘if Livia Ussaro’s father hadn’t had a toothache, Livia wouldn’t have gone out to the pharmacy and maybe we’d never have found anything with our system.’

‘We have to do something,’ Davide said: he was an impatient man and didn’t realise he was basically saying the same thing for the second time.

‘Of course,’ Duca replied. ‘Can you ride a bicycle?’

‘I think so.’

‘All right, now let’s see what time the sun rises.’ He had a diary, a very wonderful one, there were many wonderful things in it, including the fact that this week the sun rose at 5:32. ‘That means that by five there’s already a bit of light, so you have to leave here at 4:30.’

‘And where do I have to go?’ Davide asked.

‘To the end of the Via Egidio Folli, to see where these Ulisse Apartments are, what they are, how far they are. If I went there by car I’d arouse suspicion.

‘And the bicycle?’

‘The caretaker’s son has one. I’ll wake the caretaker and ask him to let me borrow it, he’ll be a bit surprised, but he likes me, I really don’t know why.’ It was the dead of night, and there was complete silence in the kitchen, as if everyone was asleep, and even the things in it seemed to be asleep-the empty beer bottles, the whisky bottle about to become empty, Sara’s dummies and feeding bottles on a towel on the draining board by the sink-though he was sure Lorenza wasn’t asleep. But even Lorenza couldn’t understand.

‘And afterwards?’ Davide asked.

‘You see, Davide,’ he said, ‘if they’ve become so cautious, we have to be cautious, too. Let me explain what we’re going to do tomorrow. Just before two o’clock, Livia will call a taxi and go to this Publicity Photographic place. We’ll follow her. But let’s suppose that someone else, very cautiously, is also following Livia, to make sure that Livia doesn’t have any friends with her, like us. If that’s the case, this person will notice that we’re following Livia, and then we won’t get anywhere. Are you with me?’

‘Of course,’ Davide told him with his eyes.

‘So we have to follow Livia, but indirectly. In other words, we’ll go ahead of her, we’ll set off a hundred metres in front of her and keep the same distance. But even then, only up to a certain point. Imagine the formation: first us, in the Giulietta, then the taxi with Livia and then, possibly, this person following Livia. While we’re in the city, in the traffic, we can maintain this formation because the man won’t notice that we’re with Livia, given that we’re in front of her, but by the time we get to the end of the Via Egidio Folli, we’ll be on a road in the open country or almost,’ he pointed at all the green on the map, ‘and we’ll probably be the only cars around at that hour. Then he may suspect, because we’ll be all too visible. In addition, when we’ve got to these Ulisse Apartments, we’ll have to park the car, if we park it right in front, we’re rather naïve as pursuers. So you understand what you have to do there on the bicycle.’

He was starting to understand.

‘You do a reconnaissance. After seeing exactly where the Ulisse Apartments are, you have to find two things for me: a place where we can hide the car as close as possible to the building and to the main road, but without it being visible from the building itself. And the other thing is a secondary street which is near the building but isn’t the Via Folli. Or at least you have to be able to tell me if there’s neither a spot to park nor a secondary road.’

Silence. They hadn’t heard the whoosh of car tyres for about ten minutes. It was almost two in the morning, they still had many hours to wait, and they were not the kind of men to sleep on the night before a battle.

‘My father liked playing solitaire,’ he said to Davide. ‘He must have left a few packs of cards here. Do you know how to play scopa?’

‘Yes.’ Scopa wasn’t much fun with only two players, but they had to do something.

3

Livia emerged from the front door of her building and got into the taxi. It was just after 1:30, the traffic was starting to thin out: many people preferred to eat at that hour. ‘Via Egidio Folli,’ she said to the driver.

In the mirror she saw the driver giving the usual disgusted grimace: whatever address you give a taxi driver, he’ll think it’s a stupid destination. Why does anyone need to go to the Via Egidio Folli in their lives? Or to the Via Borgogna, for that matter? And maybe he was right.

The driver continued along the Via Plinio, crossed the Via Eustachi, the Viale Abruzzi, turned into the Via Nöe and reached the Via Pacini. At this point Livia admired Davide’s driving skills, with which, of course, she was already familiar: the Giulietta with Davide and Signor Lamberti on board was ahead, always within sight, but never right in front of the taxi. Following a car by keeping ahead of it was a delicate operation in city traffic and Davide was performing perfectly.

Despite the heat and the nervous tension which flustered her a little, Livia noticed another thing: her taxi was being followed. There was no skill in this discovery: she had noticed the car immediately in the Via Plinio because it had left at the same time as her taxi, and because it was a lovely car, a Mercedes 230, of a colour she liked, a bronze which verged on greyish brown, like caffè latte. She had seen it again in the Via Nöe, then in the Piazzale Pola and now in the Via Pacini. The little mirror she had in her hand as she painted her lips every now and again told her how faithfully the Mercedes was following her taxi and also how unconcerned its driver seemed about being spotted.

The oral instruction manual she had been given by Signor Lamberti had covered that eventuality: ‘If you notice you’re being followed, ask the taxi driver to pull up at a news stand and buy a paper.’ This simple operation would tell Signor Lamberti that she had a friend behind her.

‘Could you stop at the next news stand, please?’ she said to the driver who, resigned by now, made no grimace, but stopped the car in front of the news stand at the corner of the Via Teodosio. Livia got out and was pleased to see the Mercedes stop a little further on. She was much less pleased to see the Giulietta disappear quickly at the end of the Via Teodosio. She knew Signor Lamberti and Davide were still protecting her, but no longer seeing their car unsettled her. She bought a fashion magazine and immediately got back in the car.

In the Via Porpora, the driver asked, ‘What number in the Via Folli?’

‘At the end, just after the tollbooth.’

The driver shook his head. ‘Then you’ll have to pay my return fare.’

‘Of course, don’t worry.’ Without ever turning her head to look back, using only her little mirror, she could still see the Mercedes perfectly well, it was just behind them now, gleaming in the sun, bronze, slender, and malign.

‘The Via Folli ends here, we’re in the countryside,’ the driver said. ‘Where is it I have to go?’ The stupidity of passengers had made him brutish: they never even knew where they wanted to go.

‘A bit further on, there’s a large building on the left.’ The road was running between cultivated fields and for a long stretch there were no houses of any kind: the illusion of being in open country was almost perfect.

‘That one there?’ the driver asked with a martyred air.

They could see it already. Signor Lamberti had described the street and the Ulisse Apartments to her over the phone, just as Davide had described them to him after going there by bicycle.

‘Yes, that’s the one.’ She glanced in the little mirror, she could still see the Mercedes behind her. She wasn’t afraid any more, she knew Signor Lamberti and Davide were close, closer than ever. Next to the sky-grey building which rose in the middle of the cultivated fields, all by itself, because of some clever bit of property speculation, there was an old farmhouse, more than a hundred metres from the main road, peeping out from a small wood, and that was where the Giulietta was, amid the greenery, in the open air but invisible, and that was where her friends were, also in the open air in the scorching heat of the hour, equipped with a modest but useful little telescope with which they could enjoy a view of the whole Ulisse building, with all its twelve floors and a little of the countryside around, so green and sunny, and yet so disturbing.

‘This one?’ the driver said as he stopped, even though there couldn’t be any doubt: it was the only building amid all the fields, a twelve-storey sky-grey tower, gigantic and futuristic, vaguely reminiscent, in its isolation, of those monumental Aztec temples that emerge here and there in the wilderness. It was a building intended for human habitation, but nobody, or almost nobody, was living in it yet, even though all the apartments were already sold: people need to invest their money, they don’t want to keep their money in the mattress like their grandparents, so it was complete, finished, equipped with every facility. Around it there was a large concrete parking area, with white lines to demarcate the parking spaces, only the cars were missing.

‘Yes, this one,’ Livia said. She got out and gave him a five-thousand-lire note, she took the change, leaving him a lot of coins, all the while looking around without turning her head, but the Mercedes had stopped a long way back, almost at the bend. It was a perverse kind of discretion.

The Ulisse Apartments did not have a caretaker. There was a large directory with buttons to press, and behind each transparent square was the name of the occupant. Livia pressed the one that had the words Publicity Photographic on it and almost immediately she heard the Entryphone crackle.

‘Come right up, second floor,’ a colourless voice said, and the crackling stopped. The glass gate opened with a click and at that moment Livia Ussaro felt like a fox putting its paw in a trap.

On the second floor, a young man in a white smock admitted her without saying a word and pointed to an internal door, and she found herself in the usual square room you found in so many apartments. The shutters on the two windows were hermetically sealed, and so were the windows, but there was air conditioning, and it felt all right. You couldn’t say that the room was furnished. In a corner there were three standing lamps, off at the moment, in front of a much enlarged photograph of a high, decorative wave of the sea, presumably used as a background. In the opposite corner there was a big tripod with a kind of cigarette lighter on the top of it: Signor Lamberti had explained to her that this was the Minox. On a chair, the last and final piece of furniture in the room, there were some small-format magazines, and on top of them there was a chessboard, and on the chessboard a box with pieces, a black knight protruded from the box like a horse’s head from a stall in a stable.

The first thing the young man in the white smock said was, ‘You can get undressed in the bathroom, if you want.’

Although Livia was looking at him closely, she realised she wouldn’t be able to describe the man, or his voice: it struck her that it would be like trying to describe the contents of an empty box.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, but she didn’t move, she was clutching her handbag and fashion magazine to her dark red cotton dress.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘They told me I’d be paid,’ she said, politely but firmly.

‘Yes, of course, but let’s do the photographs first.’

‘I’m sorry, we can do the photographs afterwards.’ This was one of the instructions in Signor Lamberti’s oral manual. The aim of it was to remove any lingering suspicion, if there was any: a girl who wants the money first is someone who cares only about herself and isn’t playing a double game.

The young man in the white smock didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, simply left the room, and came back almost immediately with five ten-thousand-lire notes which he handed over to her in silence.

Livia took them and went into the bathroom. She undressed in a flash, without even closing the door. It was obvious the place had almost never been used, there were no toiletries, not even soap, just two brightly-coloured towels. As she left the bathroom she heard the young man swear, and from the way in which he uttered the swear word, a very vulgar one, she realised immediately, beyond any doubt, what he was: a homosexual, some ghastly new species. She thought that explained the colourlessness of his physical person, she thought it was like the monstrous colourlessness of the mutants described in science-fiction novels, exactly halfway through their mutation, when they still have the outer wrapping of humanity but their minds and nervous systems already belong to some ghastly new species.

‘What happened?’ she asked, conspiratorially, but politely.

‘It keeps flashing,’ the photographer said. In his hands he had one of the black leads from the lamps, it was broken and the plug was on the floor. ‘I have to fix it.’

He hadn’t looked at her even for a moment: she would have liked to know what a homosexual thinks about the female nude. She saw him go out, he was away for a few minutes, then he came back with some Scotch tape and a pair of scissors, and standing there he started adjusting the lead, which had come away from the plug just as he had been inserting it in the socket. Standing by the chair, she watched him in silence, then she remembered that the manual had ordered her to make conversation, a woman who doesn’t talk is a woman who arouses suspicion.

‘Do you play chess?’ she said.

‘By myself,’ he replied. The mere word chess must have opened the secret doors of what, reluctantly, referring to such an individual, had to be called his soul. ‘Almost nobody plays it these days.’

‘I study the championship games, or I play with my father.’ It was true, or almost, not that she spent her days playing chess, but that her father had taught her the game when she was a teenager, and chess was very congenial to her character. She saw the young man raise his head for a moment and look at her, not as a naked woman, but as an entity that understood chess. But he didn’t say anything. So she continued, because it’s useful to show your adversary that you share the same passions, ‘Just a few days ago I saw a beautiful three-knight game in Le Monde.’

‘It wasn’t three days ago, it was more than a month ago, it was the game where Neukirch from Leipzig played white and Zinn from Berlin black.’

‘Yes, that’s the one, my father takes Le Monde because there’s a chess section, and he keeps every issue, it may well have been a month ago, I played it last Monday or Tuesday.’

‘I also take Le Monde for the chess section.’ As he fixed the lead, he seemed to be pondering whether he should suggest to her that they play a game of chess.

‘Do you remember the endgame? Black has had to move his king, then white moves his knight, threatening the bishop, black is forced to protect himself with the rook, but then white pushes the pawn forward and there’s nothing more to be done, the next move is checkmate.’

‘Yes, I remember very well,’ and again he raised his head, a hint of joy in his eyes, almost that of the classical music lover who suddenly hears his favourite piece being played, and at the same time surprise that a woman should know so much about the magical world of chess. ‘But I don’t like knight games, they’re too restricting.’

‘Too cautious,’ she replied, ‘but they say it’s only on the surface, at a certain point there’s always a battle in the middle of the chessboard …’ she said a few more phrases to complete the idea, but she had to control herself because she felt like laughing: here they were, a naked woman in a room with a homosexual fixing a lead, and they were talking about chess.

‘Just a moment, please,’ the photographer said. He had finished fixing the lead, but then something else had happened: they had heard the dull sound of a bell. The man dropped the wire on the floor, left the room, closed the door and in the hall picked up the Entryphone and lifted it to his ear.

‘Open up,’ a voice said.

So he pressed the button that opened the front door downstairs and waited, after a minute the door opened and in the corridor he saw the man get out of the lift, in a very light hazel-coloured suit, a shade of hazel just a little lighter than his hair. He closed the door behind him.

‘How’s it going?’ the man asked. He, too, was young, but there was an air of suppressed violence about him that made him seem less youthful than the photographer.

‘I don’t like her,’ the first man said.

‘Why?’ The man spoke very quietly and very aggressively.

‘I don’t know, I just don’t like her.’

‘I never saw anyone. She came straight here without talking to anyone.’

‘I still don’t like her.’

‘There must be a reason.’

‘I don’t know. She wanted the money first.’ The photographer was whining a little now.

‘Strange, I wouldn’t have thought it. Sol said she was quite refined.’ He was starting to have his suspicions now, too.

‘Plus, she plays chess, like the one last year,’ the man said, confessing the real reason. The previous year, that damned brunette had tricked him to such an extent that they had had to move everyone out, all because of his weakness for chess. And now this one here was also an expert on chess, and had been about to charm him, she even remembered the Neukirch game, but at the same time she had made him suspicious, where did all these female chess champions come from, when most people today only knew how to do the football pools or collect the prize figurines in boxes of detergents and cheese?

‘I’ll take a look.’

When they entered the room, Livia was in the corner, where the big photograph of the sea wave was, as if she was looking at the floodlights, but it was only so that she could be closer to the door and hear what was happening in the hall, although she hadn’t been able to hear anything. She was pleased to see this other man, almost young, probably a little short-sighted. He was another of them, they would both be caught in the trap, but she pretended to be nervous. ‘I didn’t know there’d be anybody watching,’ she said, ‘I don’t want anyone here apart from the photographer.’

‘Of course, you’re right, I’m going now,’ the man said in a gentle voice, ‘but first I’d like to ask you a few questions.’ With his hand he swept away, not gently at all, everything that was on the chair, chessboard, chess pieces, magazines, and sat down.

‘You’re drunk, I’ve never seen you before and I have no desire to answer questions from a drunk.’

‘But you’re going to answer, because you’re a nice person. Luigi, get a chair for the young lady.’ He turned back to her as the other man went out. ‘I’ve been told some nice things about you, I hear you’re a graduate. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’ The most important instruction Signor Lamberti had given her was not to cause trouble, to make sure that everything happened simply and calmly. If she insisted on not wanting to answer, it would be dangerous.

‘A graduate in what?’

The photographer came back in with the chair, but she gestured, no, she would never put her private parts on anything belonging to these people, even though it wasn’t very pleasant standing there naked in front of the two of them. ‘History and philosophy.’

‘Do you teach?’

‘No, I’m just a graduate.’

‘And how do you live?’

‘I do translations.’

‘From what language?’

‘I prefer to translate from English, but I can also translate from German and French.’

‘Do these translations pay well?’

‘Not really.’

‘In other words, not enough to live on.’

‘No. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

A pallid smile from the man. ‘That’s true. What does your father do?’

The mention of her father, in this place, in this situation, so exposed to the fortunately not lustful looks of the two men, hurt her like a whiplash, but she restrained herself. It was obvious that they suspected her, and she had to convince them they were wrong. ‘He’s a watchmaker, he repairs watches, especially antique ones,’ she said calmly.

‘He must have spent a lot of money on you, you with a degree and all.’

‘I think he did.’

The man touched his right earlobe. ‘But what I don’t understand is how a person with your class would want to do something like this.’ He seemed to be just chatting, as if in a fashionable drawing-room, so that it didn’t seem like the brutal interrogation it was. ‘I mean, you come from an honest family, your father has made sacrifices to let you study, you’re cultured and have a good education, you know four languages, you translate books that are probably difficult, I’ve even heard you’re an expert chess player. Don’t you find it strange that, for a bit of money, a woman like you ends up streetwalking late at night in the Corso Buenos Aires?’

Perhaps the moment had come, as defenceless, exposed and dispirited as she was, to bring him up to date. ‘Maybe you never got beyond those girls in leather jackets standing by the jukebox, those scrubbers from 1960 with their long hair all straggly as if they’d drowned: according to you, they can streetwalk in the Corso Buenos Aires at night, but nobody else. I think you’re behind the times.’

Another vague smile from the man. ‘That may be, I’d never thought of graduates in history and philosophy doing it. And frankly, graduates in history and philosophy who supplement their incomes with this kind of work make me suspicious.’

His tone, however polite, was very threatening. Livia shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to do about that,’ she said. ‘If you’ve finished your interrogation, I’d like to do those photographs and leave.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Luigi, switch on the floodlights and start.’ He turned to her again. ‘Signorina, where did you put your handbag?’

‘Why?’

‘Because when I have my suspicions, I like to check.’

‘You can’t look in my handbag,’ she burst out, but only because she had to burst out, it was part of the play-acting.

‘Oh, but I think I can,’ he replied, getting to his feet. ‘Where’s that bag?’

‘It’s in the bathroom, go on, look in it, take the money if you want, I should have known I was dealing with crooks.’

‘Yes, you’re right, you should have told yourself we didn’t come from a church youth club. But if you pose for the photographs, I won’t take your money. Luigi, start,’ and he went into the bathroom. The red canvas handbag was in full sight on the little shelf over the washbasin, he took out the money, there was the fifty thousand she had been given by the man called Luigi, plus a couple of thousand-lire notes and about a dozen five-hundred-lire coins. There was the usual lipstick, the usual mirror, the usual key ring with just two keys, the driving licence, a tiny, spotless handkerchief, folded into a triangle, and finally there was a really tiny address book, a woman’s, filled neatly, in a microscopic but very clear handwriting. It was the only slightly battered object, the cover was a bit worn, it must be a few years old.

And nothing else. He put his head out of the door of the bathroom that gave on the room adapted as a studio. He could see the photographer moving around behind his Minox-‘Move, there, stop, six, move, there, stop, seven, move, there, stop, eight’-but he couldn’t see Livia. There was still time before they got to fifty photographs. He put everything back in the handbag, except the address book, and from his breast pocket he took out a pair of very normal glasses with tortoiseshell frames, which made him look like the model of a young cool jazz lover and started to read. At first he leafed through, just to get an idea of what kind of addresses the graduate kept, then he thought that he would proceed more methodically and started to read from the letter A. None of the names meant anything to him, but under E he found the addresses of three publishing houses, Editions This and Editions That, so the girl really did translate. Under the letter I he found the address of an Institute of Italian-English culture, under the letter M that of a neoanarchist movement which gave him pause for thought, was the girl an anarchist? Then at the letter R he found that name.

The photographer had been right to smell a rat. He went back in the room, sat down again, turning his back on Livia a little. They were on the thirty-ninth photograph, there were still a dozen to do, but he said to Luigi, ‘That’s enough now.’ And to her, ‘Come here, please, I have some more questions to ask you.’

‘I’d like to get dressed,’ she said. She was sure now that he had discovered something and that the battle was starting, she wasn’t afraid, she only wanted to know what he could possibly have discovered in the handbag. The answer wasn’t long in coming.

‘Come here now, you bitch, or I’ll break your legs, and tell me how you happen to know Alberta Radelli.’

So that was what he had discovered, but how could she have remembered that Alberta’s name was still in her old address book? Things were turning difficult now, and she liked difficulty. She immediately obeyed and went and sat down in front of him, with the photographer watching her from behind, but she obeyed with the air of someone who’s dealing with a madman.

‘She was a friend of mine.’

‘What do you mean, “was”? Did you quarrel?’ He was setting a trap, trying to get her to lie.

‘No, the poor girl died, she killed herself.’ She didn’t rise to the bait. All her intelligence was lit up like an electronic calculator, ready to fight the enemy’s wiles.

‘When?’

‘A year ago.’

‘How?’

‘She slit her wrists. It was in all the papers.’

‘Were you good friends?’

‘Quite good.’

‘Was she someone who went on the streets every now and again, like you?’

He thought he was being clever, in his way he was, he was just waiting for her to tell a lie, in order to jump on her. ‘Yes. Maybe that’s why we became friends.’

For a while the almost young man looked at her, he seemed more interested in her breasts then in her face, while he thought about his next move. Then he said to the photographer, ‘Give me a roll of film.’

Luigi had a box of them in the pocket of his smock and immediately gave him one.

‘Have you ever seen a roll of film like this?’ And he again looked her in the eyes, his own eyes half closed, as if to focus better.

‘Yes, it’s a Minox cartridge.’

‘And where have you seen one before?’

‘It was at university, a friend of mine had a Minox.’

‘Could other people have also showed you a roll like this?

‘I don’t remember. It’s possible, maybe a photographer.’

‘What about your friend Alberta? Didn’t she ever show you one of these cartridges?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?

‘Yes.’

‘And didn’t your friend ever tell you that she’d been asked to pose for photographs like the ones you’ve just been doing?’

The lie had to be ready instantaneously in order to seem convincing. ‘No.’

‘Let’s think about it: you and she are very good friends, you tell each other everything, even how much you earn from your streetwalking, and then she doesn’t tell you she posed for some artistic photographs, or that she’s about to. Strange.’

‘We were good friends but we didn’t see each other often, sometimes a month or two went by without our meeting.’ She was starting to feel cold, but only because of the air conditioning on her naked skin, not because of anything else.

For a while the man remained silent, with his head down, he was looking at her feet, counting the toes, almost as if he was anxious to know how many there were altogether, to help himself to think. Then, still with his head down, he said, ‘You’re not telling us the truth. I think you know something. Maybe you know a lot.’

‘But I don’t even know what it is you want from me, I only know I’ve ended up in a den of thieves. Let me get dressed and go, you can keep the money if you like, but I want to leave.’ She was playing her part almost perfectly.

‘Luigi,’ the man said, ‘bring me the cotton wool and the alcohol, and also the peroxide.’

‘I don’t know if I have any peroxide.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s just to stop the bleeding.’ The man took out his glasses and put them on. At last he looked at her. ‘If you tell me the whole truth, I won’t do anything to you.’ He also took out a penknife from one of his pockets, a modest, old-fashioned penknife, the kind that not even primary schoolchildren used any more.

‘You’re crazy! What do you want me to tell you? Try to touch me and you’ll see what I can do.’ She was playing the ingénue, maybe successfully.

‘I’m not curious to know what you can do, but try to tell the truth and you’ll see you won’t have to do anything.’

Luigi reappeared with some small bottles in his hand. ‘I found peroxide after all.’

The man took the bottles and put them on the floor by his feet. ‘You still have time to tell me everything you know.’

She had never studied acting, but she tried to do the best she could, to scream at the top of her voice, a scream was the natural reaction of a terrified woman who didn’t know anything. In reality, she knew everything the man wanted to know, and wasn’t terrified. Her contempt for the man was overwhelming: she would never lower herself to be afraid of a piece of dirt like him.

Or rather, she tried to scream, but before she could scream she found her mouth filled with cotton wool, then the photographer forced her to sit down and held her firmly to the chair from behind.

‘You still have time to tell the truth.’ The man had sat down on her knees to stop her from kicking. At last she understood what that short-sighted look meant: he was a sadist, in the most technical sense of the word. ‘I could hit you and knock you out, then while you’re out I could slash your wrists. That would be amusing for the police: Oh look, we keep finding women with their wrists slashed, what on earth does it mean?’ His voice had become soft and unctuous, but it didn’t scare her, only disgusted her. ‘But I need you alive, I need you to talk. I’m telling you for the last time, if you want to tell me the truth I’ll take the cotton wool out.’

She shrugged, and told him with her eyes that he was mad, that she had told him everything she knew.

‘Then I’ll start with an incision on your forehead, I’m generous and I’ll do it high up, that way you’ll easily be able to hide it with your hair.’ He rubbed her forehead with the alcohol, like an attentive nurse. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I only want to disfigure you, at least if you don’t talk.’

She almost didn’t feel the cut, nor did any blood run down her face, because he scrupulously dabbed the wound with the peroxide while the photographer left her head free for a moment.

‘If you have anything new to tell me, nod your head and I’ll take out the cotton wool, but if you’re going to tell me again that you don’t know anything, then forget it, I’ll only get angry.’

Maybe that noise was only in her mind, an auditory hallucination which she heard because of her hope that the noise was real, but she instinctively turned her head towards the door because she had heard the sound of the bell.

‘Did someone just ring?’ the man asked.

‘No,’ the photographer said. ‘She must be waiting for somebody, and she thought they rang.’

The man reflected, with the penknife in his hand, so close to her face that she could see it was a promotional object and read on the handle the name of a famous brand of liqueurs. ‘If she was expecting someone, they’d be here by now, so try to keep calm. This girl knows where the film from last year is, maybe she even has it, and she’ll tell us eventually.’ He rubbed her left cheek with the alcohol. ‘If you talk,’ he said to her, ‘you’ll avoid a cut on your cheek which no amount of plastic surgery will put right.’ He looked at her and waited, then made the incision, his eyes almost closed behind his glasses, staring at her cheek like a diligent schoolboy at the page of an exercise book on which he’s carefully writing a beautiful sentence. ‘Whatever you know, you can’t use it against us anyway. Tell your friends, if you have any, but if you talk I’ll stop here.’ He started dabbing the cut with the peroxide, but it wasn’t enough, rivulets of blood started falling onto her neck, her chest, all the way to her stomach. ‘Will you talk or shall I continue?’