Reticence

I

There was a dead cat in the harbor that morning, a black cat floating slowly on the surface of the water alongside a small boat. It was straight and stiff, and a decomposed fish head hung from its mouth out of which protruded a broken strand of fishing line two or three inches in length. At the time I’d simply imagined the fish head was all that remained of a piece of bait. The cat must have leaned out over the water to catch hold of the fish, and once he’d caught it the hook had become snagged in his mouth, he’d lost his balance and fallen in. The water in the port was very dark where I was, but from time to time I could make out a school of fish swimming silently down below, wrasse or mullet, while down at the bottom among the seaweed and stones swarming myriads of fry went at the gutted corpse of a decomposed moray eel. Before moving on I lingered for a moment on the jetty looking at the dead cat, which continued to drift slowly back and forth in the harbor, first to the left then to the right, following the imperceptible flux and reflux of the current on the surface of the water.

I’d arrived at Sasuelo at the end of October. It was autumn already and the tourist season was drawing to a close. A taxi had dropped me off with my bags and suitcases one morning on the village square. The driver helped me unfasten my son’s stroller from the roof rack on top of the car, an old 504 Diesel that he’d left running and whose motor continued to purr leisurely on the square. Then he’d pointed me in the direction of the only hotel in the vicinity, which I knew because I’d stayed there once already. I left my bags and suitcases near a bench and headed off toward the hotel with my son, who I’d sat in his stroller in front of me and who was oblivious to everything, absorbed as he was in the contemplation of his stuffed seal. This he examined from all sides, turning it over and over in his hands while burping unflappably from time to time with a royal disposition. A little flower-lined staircase led up to the hotel entrance with a double glass door, and I took the stroller in my arms and mounted the short flight of steps. No sooner had I pushed open the door than I found myself in the presence of the owner, who was squatting on the tiling with a cloth in his hands and now lifted his head suspiciously at the stroller I was still holding in my arms. Not knowing quite where to place it, as the floor seemed so clean and lovingly maintained, I held onto it and asked him if it would be possible to have a room for a couple of nights, three or four nights or perhaps more, until the end of the week, I wasn’t quite sure myself.

During my first few days in Sasuelo I spent my time taking long walks, sometimes along the narrow streets that led up to the neighboring villages, sometimes exploring the wild beach that stretched out for a mile or so behind the village. The sound of the wind and the waves blended in my mind as I walked slowly along the shore. It was an immense, deserted beach, continuously swept by swirling winds. I stopped and sat down on the sand from time to time and, while all around me filaments of dried seaweed blew toward the dunes, I absently collected a stone or two and threw them lazily into the sea. My son watched me with a biscuit in his hand, strapped firmly in his stroller by a little harness. Occasionally he leaned forward and tried to grab something or other that had washed up onto the beach, and as time went on I handed him everything he desired, beached pieces of driftwood shaped like strange talismans, pebbles, and twigs (as well as an old plastic sandal, whose sandy sole he kissed while letting out little squeals of joy).

Back at the hotel I spent hours lying on the metal bed in the center of the room. I did nothing and wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. The walls around me were humid and dirty, covered with old orange wallpaper that matched the dark flowers on the bedspread and curtains. I’d installed my son’s travel cot beside me in the room, a small and rather practical little folding bed fitted together with different-colored metal tubes to form a rectangular frame, a sort of little Centre Georges Pompidou erected beside my bags and suitcases in the dim light of the room. Sometimes, as my son slept peacefully with one little arm folded like a shield across his chest and his treasured plastic sandal placed carefully beside him in the cot, I got up and walked around the room in my socks. I went over to the window and lifted the curtain to look out onto the road, a deserted swath of road running along a weed-covered lot at the back of which, beside a desiccated fig tree bending under the weight of its dead branches, a solitary donkey grazed on fennel sprouts among various bits of refuse, old planks, abandoned tires, and an upturned rowboat that rotted where it lay.

To a certain extent if I’d come to Sasuelo it was to see the Biaggis. Until now, however, held back by a mysterious apprehension, I’d always put off the moment of going to visit them and steered clear of the area around their house when I went for walks in the village. Even on the day of my arrival, when I was still planning on going over to their place as soon as I’d got settled into the hotel, I’d stayed in my room all afternoon. Two days had now gone by since then and I was starting to wonder at the fact that I hadn’t yet bumped into them in the village, even if I’d been careful to avoid their house every time I went out. One evening, however, after lingering in the hotel dining room after dinner, I finally decided to drop in on them, very briefly I thought, just to say hello.

The Biaggis’ house was situated somewhat outside the village on the road leading up to the next hamlet. It was protected from the outside by a rather high stone wall, which was covered by a tangle of withered ivy that spread out from a thick network of gnarled gray roots and meandered along the rock. A few big trees, pines and palms, were planted here and there in the garden and could be made out through the gate leading into the property. Night had fallen now and the contours of the villa were visible in the shadows behind the bars of the gate. The house had gone up recently, it was long and low, fronted by a tiled terrace where a few pieces of white iron garden furniture had been left outside beside an enigmatic, dilapidated garden umbrella that lay half open on the ground. An old gray Mercedes was parked on the little gravel driveway leading over to the garage, and I noticed that the front fender was dented. I’d never seen the car before, and was just wondering what it was doing there when I heard a sound coming from behind the house, from behind the garage to be exact, like a falling rake immediately followed by hurried steps. I listened attentively but everything was silent around me. There wasn’t a sound in the night, and all of the shutters in the Biaggis’ villa were closed — as were the metal blinds over the bay window and the pale wooden shutters of the rooms on the first floor.

I stood there on the side of the road looking at the house for another moment, and was just about to go back to the hotel when I noticed a mailbox on the gate, hanging in the darkness at about chest height, fixed loosely to one of the bars with a twisted bit of wire. Even though it looked old and rusty the box was locked, and resisted when I tried to lift the little metal lid. I didn’t force it and, slipping my fingers into the crack, I had no difficulty removing the six letters inside. I examined them absently for a moment and saw that they were all very recent — the last one dating from October twenty-fourth — before putting two letters that looked like junk mail back into the box and keeping the others, which I slipped into my pocket. Of course, among the four I’d immediately recognized my own letter, which I’d posted from Paris a couple of days earlier. I could perfectly well have left it in the box, but perhaps there was no reason — no longer in any case — to leave a letter there announcing my presence in Sasuelo.

The next morning at around ten a taxi came to pick me up at the hotel. We’d left the village and had been driving for some time along a rainy road that led uphill among the trees. My son sat beside me in the back, his legs spread on the seat and his two feet clad in little leather boots that stuck straight up in the air. One of his hands was lying on my leg, and with the other he clutched his stuffed seal against his anorak. A transparent plastic nipple in his mouth, he looked at me with a terribly serious, thoughtful air. The driver hadn’t said a word since we’d left the hotel. A corn-paper cigarette was wedged between his lips, which he couldn’t remove from his mouth moreover because he had to keep both hands on the wheel to negotiate the numerous curves, to the point where not surprisingly his face became slightly flushed and a wisp of smoke played around his ears. For my part I drowsed on the back seat, looking vaguely at the smoke that wafted hesitantly over the driver’s temples and formed an immaterial halo about his head, which it soon enshrouded in a splendid evanescent ring. I’d gotten his telephone number that morning and called him shortly before ten o’clock to take me to the little neighboring port of Santagralo, where I wanted to do some shopping.

Santagralo wasn’t very busy in the winter but fifty or so pleasure craft were anchored there permanently and, aside from a few shops specializing in marine supplies, there was a post office and a bank, a supermarket and a couple of restaurants. I was planning to stay and have lunch at noon, so when the driver left me on the main square I arranged for him to come and pick me up again thereafter. The sky was still very menacing above the village, and I headed off toward the supermarket with my son ahead of me in his stroller, very upright in his seat and looking intensely in front of him, an immobile little figurehead at the front of our convoy, who deliberately dropped his seal onto the sidewalk from time to time and watched me pick it up with a blend of total indifference and guarded curiosity. You watch it, I said. In the supermarket, as I pushed his stroller between the shelves making a quick note of what I had to buy, he took to thrusting his arm out suddenly to try to get hold of whatever he could, so that I was obliged to maneuver the stroller skillfully back and forth to keep him out of reach of everything he tried to snatch from the shelves. Somewhat put out by my stops and starts, he needed a bit of time to right himself each time I swerved, which didn’t stop him from sticking out his arm again as soon as he could and trying to grab something else that was shelved at just his height. Finally, wanting to do my shopping in peace, I asked an elderly woman waiting at the checkout if she wouldn’t mind taking care of him for a few seconds, the time it would take for me to go get one or two things. The woman was more than happy to accept and, as I crouched down at my son’s feet to explain that he had to stay with the woman for a moment and that he should give her a little kiss on the cheek, my son looked very sad in his stroller all of a sudden. But she’s a very nice woman, I said to him. What’s your name, Madam? Marie-Ange, said the woman, who’d come nearer and bent down toward my son. She’s very nice, Marie-Ange, I said to my son, you don’t want to give her a little kiss? Look, like this, I said (and I kissed the woman, who seemed somewhat taken aback, on the cheek).

Leaving the supermarket I walked back to the center of the village and sat down at a café terrace on the main street. There were just a few tables outside, round white plastic tables that had been out in the rain that morning, with a few raindrops still clinging to the seats. I’d lit a cigarette and looked out at the port on the other side of the street, where dozens of sailboats rocked softly in the wind to a continual clinking of booms and stays. Most of the masts were stripped of their sails. Naked and metallic, they rose very high in the sky, with a couple of wisps of cloth fixed here and there to the tops of the spars, little flags or white handkerchiefs, which fluttered in the wind and beat against the yardarms. A large fishing boat was being repaired in front of the port authority a little way off, heaved up onto chocks in the middle of the careenage, and two men stood there talking about the hull by the looks of it, while a third, sitting at the wheel of his car with the door open, watched them talking, intervening from time to time to shoot down any suggestions they made with a sort of resigned fatalism that his companions accepted good-naturedly, as if the man in the car was the skipper and his boat was in fact a lost cause. The rest of the village was very calm, and I drank my aperitif on the terrace while looking over at my son from time to time, who was sitting beside me in his stroller, his eyes fixed on the large horizon. Occasionally a car passed, crossing the village without stopping, and my son watched it with interest, a cookie in his hand, tilting his head forward to watch it drive off without taking his eyes off it for a second.

I’d taken the four letters I’d removed from the Biaggis’ mailbox the night before out of my pocket and I looked at them while wondering what on earth could have induced me to take them. Because even if I might have thought for a moment that I’d give them to the Biaggis in person, returning them now struck me as highly difficult without also giving them an explanation. And what explanation could I give? Then should I act as if nothing had happened and go back to their place one evening to put them back in the mailbox? I didn’t know. In any case I was thinking it wasn’t such a bad thing that the Biaggis hadn’t received the letter I’d sent them from Paris a few days before, even though all it contained was a few words saying I was thinking of spending a couple of days in Sasuelo. But if they had received it I’d no longer have the liberty to postpone the moment I went to visit them, and I wasn’t at all sure now that I wanted the Biaggis to know I was in Sasuelo. Already on the first day, after remaining undecided all afternoon in my hotel room, I’d realized it was more complicated than I’d thought it was going to be to make up my mind to go see them. To a certain extent of course that was why I’d come to Sasuelo, but ever since I’d felt this initial reticence at going to see them I could very well imagine that my trip to Sasuelo, although initially meant as an occasion to see the Biaggis, would in fact end without my having resolved to contact them — now all the more so, no doubt, since I’d taken the liberty of collecting the letters from their mailbox.

At noon I went for lunch at Chez Georges, one of the few restaurants in the port that stayed open all year round. The walls were hung with old maps in decorative frames and the red and white tablecloths matched the napkins and curtains. Perfecting the punctilious harmony of the decor in a sort of delicious search for elegance in the tiniest of details, the same wooden ringlets served both as napkin and curtain rings. I’d taken my son out of his stroller and sat him beside me on a chair, with his little feet hanging in the void and his chin at table-height. He’d managed to kick off one of his boots and his foot, clad in a light blue sock, imperceptibly beat out the measure of some mysterious tempo. I’d been served my appetizer and my son watched me eat in silence, well behaved if somewhat perplexed on his chair, playing with a few pieces of bread I’d given him to keep him busy. Among the other guests at the restaurant I recognized the man who’d been sitting at the wheel of his car that morning in front of the port authority as soon as he came in. I didn’t know if he’d managed to solve his problem but he’d just sat down at a table right in front of me together with three blonde women who must have had the same hairdresser. All three were very becoming and had clearly known each other for a while. Now they smiled and held each other’s forearms on the table to a tinkling of bracelets, getting the owner to explain the menu to them, who they also seemed to have known for ages, calling him by his first name. And in fact Georges was also what they called the man from the car, who, sitting impassively on his chair behind his tinted glasses, chimed into the conversation now and then to steadfastly refute every suggestion made to him concerning the choice of entrée. He was dressed in an elegant gray suit and matching vest that compressed his paunch somewhat and, one thumb negligently tucked under the garment to relieve the pressure, he studied the menu while chewing away on a cigar. Oddly enough, as the owner waited beside him for him to make up his mind, he put the menu back down and leaned over mischievously to drum his fingers briefly on the table in the direction of my son. Encouraged by his example and no doubt not wanting to be outdone, the owner and the three women also looked over at our table and started making cooing noises, to which, my mouth full and somewhat caught off guard, I responded with an uneasy smile while wiping my mouth with my napkin, whereas my son, unperturbed by the two Georges, started exerting his charm on the blondes with astonishing cheek, considering his age.

After lunch I went for a walk in the port while waiting for the taxi to come pick me up in Santagralo at around three thirty. I’d sat down on a steel block at the end of the jetty, and I stayed there beside my son’s stroller watching a fisherman standing in his boat preparing trolling lines. A purplish octopus lay in a lump at his feet, which he picked up from time to time like an old rag to cut off a snippet with a little knife, holding the blade between his teeth while he bated the hook. Each line had around twenty or so hooks, and each time he cut off a new hunk of bait he dropped the octopus carelessly back onto the deck of the boat with a squishy plop before immediately thrusting the new fragment of flesh onto the barb of one of the free hooks, and in this way he worked his way along with a series of firm and precise gestures. I’d gotten up to go over to the side of the dock and stood across from him watching him work. He’d almost finished now, three of his lines were ready, looking like long garlands of little pink and white octopus bits strung together carefully on the deck of the boat. You’re going out fishing now? I asked him. He didn’t answer right away, finished baiting one of his hooks. Tomorrow, he finally said without looking at me, and that was the end of our conversation, which had in fact pretty much exhausted the topic: he was going out fishing tomorrow, if I really wanted to know (and fortified with this information I went back to the square to wait for the taxi).

The weather in the village was very gray and a fine rain had started to fall, a regular, unpleasant drizzle that hung in the atmosphere and permeated my clothes with humidity. My son had gone to sleep in his stroller, his little blue anorak tucked snugly around his chest and the plastic bag with the groceries I’d bought that morning hanging disconsolately from one of the handles. The bag was already covered with a thin film of rain, a few droplets trickled here and there down the creased white plastic, while inside it a bottle of water and a few cartons of milk were barely visible and had already started to stretch the fragile surfaces of the bag. All of the stores in the village were now closed, and the square — consisting of a sort of expanse of dirt and gravel shaded no doubt on very sunny days by several trees planted nearby — was deserted. There was a little fountain in the middle of the square into which the rain fell with the faintest of splashes, beside which stood three abandoned, dilapidated benches. They must have been green in their day but they were now almost grayish, all peeled and empty except for the middle one, where a solitary old man was sitting who I hadn’t immediately noticed under his cap. I saw the taxi enter the village and drive down the main street from a long way off, and as it pulled up I picked up my son and held him in my arms to open the door while the driver put the stroller in the trunk. My son was still sleeping when the taxi left the village (he was asleep in my arms, I could feel the warmth of his little body against my chest).

The sky over the road was very dark as we left the village. It was just a bit before four in the afternoon but the light was already so gray that it seemed like night had already fallen. The driver had to turn on the headlights as well as the windshield wipers, which rubbed across the glass with a soft squeaking sound. Here and there a fine blanket of fog clung to the wet branches of the trees, and the humidity that reigned on the side of the road even seemed to have spread inside the car, because I was starting to feel pricks of rheumatism in my calves and feet. On the way back the road climbed and climbed under the rain, until about halfway when all of a sudden the view cleared at a bend and Sasuelo appeared down below in the mist, less than three miles as the crow flies, bordered by a uniformly gray sea. The small island across from the village was also visible, whose oblong contours and rocky slopes stood out on the other side of Sasuelo Bay. We still had to go back down the other side of the hill to reach the village, and now you could see the entire route at a glance, snaking its way down toward the sea. The taxi almost came to a standstill at the hairpin curve at the top of the descent into Sasuelo, and we crept past an abandoned church that was practically in ruins before picking up speed on the other side. The road was narrower now, and continued downward in a series of twists and turns between two rows of dense, rain-soaked undergrowth. I looked absently out the window, noticing from time to time the familiar form of some mushroom or other growing beside the embankment amid rotting leaves, a young parasol mushroom or death cap, which disappeared immediately from my line of vision as soon as I’d caught sight of it, leaving no more than a fleeting image in my mind while the taxi had already put over one hundred yards between me and the mushroom that had so intrigued me for a fraction of a second. There was now another car behind us that had also turned on its headlights in the thin mist that clung to the road, and at the last turnoff to Sasuelo I noticed that it turned as well, continuing to follow us from a distance under the rain. I turned around for a moment to look at it through the steamed-up rear window of the taxi and, as we slowed to enter Sasuelo, I saw that it was the old gray Mercedes with a dented fender I’d seen the night before on the Biaggis’ property.

The next morning I left the hotel before dawn as the village was still steeped in bluish darkness. A very white pre-morning moon was etched in the sky above the regular lines of telephone wires. All of the houses were still quiet, and when I entered the deserted square I immediately saw that the old gray Mercedes was parked there in the dim light. I approached it without a sound, walking around it to take a quick look inside. The seats were very battered, practically demolished. The leather was completely worn through in places, and there was a three or four inch gash in the middle of the driver’s seat revealing a sort of yellowish synthetic foam. A crumpled jacket lay on the back seat amid a clutter of old newspapers and fishing gear, rods and lines, weights, bags of fishhooks, and old plastic bottles. It had rained a lot the night before, and nearby on the ground a large puddle of still water dimly reflected the trees and rooftops of the neighboring houses in the darkness. A light gust of wind occasionally sent a ripple over the surface of the water, blurring the reflections for a moment. Then, slowly, the image recomposed on the surface, trembling for another few seconds before stabilizing, and I saw that the center of the puddle mirrored the silvery shape of the old gray Mercedes, around which, however, by I don’t know what play of perspectives or blind spots, there was no trace of me at all.

I walked slowly away from the square leaving the puddle behind me in the darkness, and headed over to the port where several boats rocked imperceptibly in their moorings with a muted lapping sound. I’d sat down on the jetty near a heap of tangled fishing nets still speckled with bits of decomposed fish, and I remained sitting there in the dim light with my coat wrapped tightly around me watching the day break over Sasuelo Bay. The sea was still very dark, with hardly a ripple right out to the horizon, and, as the sun rose behind the mountain, slowly lighting up the far side, which was now topped by a distant halo of light, the boats swaying softly in the port started to take on hints of russet and orange, while the contours of the surrounding docks, fishing nets, rocks, trees, and flowers slowly shook off the bluish imprint of the night.

It was that morning, not long before the sun went up, that I discovered the dead cat in the harbor. At first, from a distance, I’d taken the black form floating between the boats for a plastic bag, or perhaps an old blanket rolled up in a ball, and, intrigued by this object on the surface of the water, I’d gotten up and gone over to the edge of the pier. The body was floating in the feeble light less than ten feet from the jetty, its ears and part of its back just above the waterline. The way it was floating it was impossible to see its face, and it was only when the current caused its body to pivot slightly that I saw it had a fish head in its mouth, from which a broken bit of fishing line protruded a couple of inches. And it was precisely this piece of line that made me think later in the evening — at the time I’d just looked at it without giving it too much thought — that the cat had been murdered.

How else to explain the fragment of fishing line in its mouth? How could such a tough and resistant bit of line be cut by the animal itself? And how, supposing it had indeed managed to cut the line, to explain the presence of a trolling line just a few feet from the side of the pier when it should have been out at sea anywhere from thirty to sixty feet underwater? Why, above all, was the end of the line cut so cleanly, as if with a knife, if it’s not because once the cat had been caught in the trap that Biaggi had set the night before — because Biaggi was in the village, I was now sure of it — he had slowly wound in the line as the cat struggled in the water with the fishhook in its mouth, reeling it up to the dock like a large fish, slackening when he felt too much resistance and quickly winding in each time the cat stopped struggling for a moment, and that, picking it up out of the water while it was still alive and struggling with all its might, he’d cut the line cleanly with a little knife and let the cat fall back into the water with a brutal splash that gradually subsided as the few last wavelets perished against its flanks?

In fact the first idea I’d had that morning when I discovered the dead cat in the port was that the decomposed fish head hanging from its mouth was all that remained of a bit of trolling-line bait that had floated back into the water near the jetty, and that the cat had accidentally fallen in while trying to get hold of it. At first glance, in fact, nothing pointed to it not being an accident, and if several things started troubling me afterward, nothing had struck me outright at the time. I’d never seen the cat before, or perhaps once, although there were probably no witnesses. It had been prowling around the port at nightfall and had run off as soon as I’d tried to approach it. That was the previous evening, when I was alone on the jetty, lying with my head over the water and locked in combat with a crab that had taken refuge in a crevice of the wall. I had a piece of cloth in my hand to protect my fingers from its claws, and in the other I was holding a little knife I’d found not far off on the jetty, and was pressing the flat side of the blade against the crab’s shell to try and dislodge it. This had been going on for some time and I would certainly have won out if I hadn’t been distracted by the sound of furtive steps beside me causing me to raise my head, the little knife clutched in my right hand. The cat was staring at me intently, barely ten feet away, its luminescent green eyes sparkling in the night.

That evening — I’d been in Sasuelo for four days now and still hadn’t made up my mind to go see the Biaggis — I went down to dinner in the hotel dining room after putting my son to bed. The owner served in the evening and his wife stayed in the kitchen, sometimes popping her head in the door to see what was happening in the dining room. There were just three or four guests staying in the hotel, perhaps there were others but I’d hardly seen a soul because my son kept very regular hours. In general I fed him in my room after having set him up on the bed with a bib around his neck, and, as his little eyes avidly took in the contents of the plate, I fed him spoonfuls of nondescript puree from little prepared jars I had reheated in the kitchen. The first time I’d come down with my jars the owner’s wife had given me what I have to say was a rather cold welcome (all the more so as I’d brought down a bit of dirty laundry, two or three of my son’s footed pajamas), but she’d gotten used to it by now, each day adding something of her own to my son’s meal, a freshly thawed filet of fish for example, or a wrinkled old apple that she cut up into harmonious quarters and placed delicately on the side of the plate. My son was now asleep, he’d slept through the night ever since we’d arrived in Sasuelo, and I lingered in the television lounge that evening after dinner. The television had been off for a long time and I was the only one in the room. I smoked a cigarette on the little sofa looking out the window from time to time onto the deserted terrace that stretched out in the night. I still had the four letters I’d taken from the Biaggis’ mailbox and I wondered what I should do with them, because I could resolve neither to open them nor to destroy them — at the very most to destroy the one announcing my arrival in Sasuelo. Because I no longer wanted anyone to know that I was there.

All of the lights were off in the hotel when I left the lounge to go back to my room, and I noticed as I walked down the hall on the ground floor that the door to the owners’ room was open. The light was on and I stopped for a moment to take a quick look inside. It was a very simple little room, silent and deserted, looking out onto the road. The curtains had been drawn and a pair of stockings hung over the back of a chair. From where I was I could just see that the large oak bed was still made up and a carefully folded negligee lay on the pillow. There was no one in the room, and I assumed the owners must have been getting ready for bed in the little washroom down the hall. I met no one on my way upstairs, and was just about to enter my room when I noticed a little stairway at the end of the hall that had escaped my attention until then. I didn’t know if there were any more rooms on the top floor but it seemed to me I could hear a noise coming from above, like the very muffled sound of a typewriter or perhaps a bird outside the hotel, a woodpecker tapping away in the night at the trunk of a tree. I climbed a few steps and peered up to see what was above, an attic perhaps or more rooms, but all of the lights were out and I couldn’t hear a thing so I didn’t insist and went back to my room.

I’d opened the window wide in my room and stood looking out at the road that wound through the darkness toward the edge of the village. Nothing moved anywhere, and I stayed there at the window slowly breathing in the fresh night air perfumed with the scent of moist herbs. The port wasn’t visible from my window but I could hear the lapping of the sea close at hand, whose feeble murmur blended with the silence and gradually eased my senses and my mind. My son was asleep behind me, I could hear his regular breathing from the travel cot. I didn’t think about a thing, simply breathing in the fresh air of the night and looking up at the very dark sky stretching out in front of me with several long black clouds sliding slowly across the halo of the moon. Finally I closed the shutters and went to lie down on the bed, where I remained for a long time with my eyes open in the darkness, unable to fall asleep.

When I went down to the port the next morning I noticed that the old gray Mercedes that had been parked on the square was no longer there. I couldn’t say exactly how long it had been gone because in my memory it had been parked there all the previous day. I could even remember having seen it when I left the hotel the night before. The sky was still covered that morning, several large and menacing clouds hung darkly over the village. The cat’s body was still in the harbor, floating in the gray water ten or so feet from the jetty. It must have bobbed back and forth like that all night in the same small perimeter, bumping limply against the hull of one vessel and drifting between others without ever making its way out to sea. Its prolonged stay in the water didn’t seem to have altered its state much, there was still no trace of decomposition or any visible lesions on its body, apart from about an inch-long gash on its right ear — the fur had probably been ripped open by crabs — exposing a small pale surface that looked like it had been emptied of blood. But what really struck me on closer inspection was that the fish head and the fragment of fishing line that had hung from its mouth the night before were now gone — as if someone had come down to the port to remove them during the night.

The following night at around two or three in the morning I left my room without a sound to go down to the port. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, as I knew from previous experience that the front door of the hotel was locked during the night, I started down the hall toward the reception area when suddenly, seeing a crack of light under the owners’ door, I stopped and pressed myself against the wall. Had they heard me coming down? Had they only just switched on the light? I stood like that for a moment flattened against the wall, and, still not hearing any noise from behind their door, I started down the hall once again and went into the dining room. There wasn’t a sound, the tables had been set for breakfast and the tablecloths shone weakly in the moonlight. On each table, beside the silhouettes of white cups upturned in their saucers, were little wicker baskets filled with small packets of butter and jam. I crossed the room without a sound and headed over to the sliding window. Looking for a moment over the deserted, shadowy terrace, I slid the window open very slowly and slipped outside.

It wasn’t the first time I’d left the hotel in this way and, turning around once more to make sure no one had seen me, I left the terrace by climbing over the little chain-link gate that led out onto the road. The moon was almost full in the sky, veiled in part by long wisps of black cloud that slid across its halo like lacerated strips of cloth. The wind blew in swirling gusts causing the treetops to bend and sway, and I crossed the main square diagonally while pulling my coat around me. A telephone booth stood in the darkness, weakly lit by the moon, and a white minivan I’d never seen before was parked a little way off in front of an abandoned house. There wasn’t a sound in the village, except for the regular gusts of wind sweeping through the leaves, and I headed toward the port, walking for thirty or so feet along the solid mound of dried seaweed on the edge of the main basin. I could see the port in front of me now, lit by the long beam of light from the lighthouse on Sasuelo Island that appeared fleetingly in the night and swept over the jetty for an instant before disappearing immediately beyond the horizon. I advanced silently along the dock with my hands dug deep in my pockets and looked at the dead cat floating in the darkness a couple of yards from the jetty. The beam from the lighthouse returned intermittently and lit up the cat’s body, and each time it came back the animal’s horribly contorted face appeared suddenly in the beam, transfixed for a moment under my eyes in a flash of light. I couldn’t remember ever having seen the mouth of a cat so wide open, and it intrigued me all the more because if, as I thought, someone had come to the port the night before to pull the fragment of fishing line from its mouth, he would have had to cross over to the animal in a boat and, coming up alongside it under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, he must have leaned over carefully to grab the cat’s body — its heavy, wet body that clung slightly to his hands — and pulled on the line protruding from its mouth with a sharp tug, so that now the cat’s mouth would have to show further traces of mutilation, it seemed to me, because as it came unstuck the hook must have torn its lips and palate. And just as I was leaning over the water to verify this hypothesis, my passport and the four letters I’d taken from the Biaggis’ mailbox a few days earlier all slipped from my coat pocket and fell into the water.

I immediately thrust out my arm to snatch them from the water, but I only managed to get hold of my passport and three letters, the last letter already carried out of reach by the current and swept slowly into the black water of the port. I looked around in all directions for a stick, but all I found was a little fishing net which despite my efforts was too short to reach the letter. Finally I gave up and remained for a long moment on the jetty watching the letter drift over the water, now bumping up against the cat’s flank and slowly coming to a standstill, an immobile white envelope floating in the night beside the cat’s body, on which a name and address written in black ink were softly illuminated by the moon, Paul Biaggi, Villa des Pins, Sasuelo.

Back at the hotel I climbed over the little chain-link gate and slipped noiselessly across the terrace. I’d been careful to leave the sliding window partway open behind me, and was getting ready to reenter the hotel through the dining room when I saw that someone had closed the window behind me while I was out. I tried to slide it from the outside by pushing with my hands against the glass, but it refused to budge and I was suddenly afraid, wondering for an instant if the person who’d closed the window hadn’t known I was outside, or if it was someone from outside the hotel who’d closed it deliberately to stop me from getting back in, someone consequently who was now in the village, who’d been watching me while I was at the port and who was perhaps still watching me that very moment, someone who probably left his house every night and who’d perhaps caught sight of me walking along the jetty one of the previous nights under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, and who, tonight as well, had waited for me to slip outside before closing the sliding window behind me to make sure I couldn’t get back in, and who was there right now, just a few yards away, immobile in the night behind the trunk of one of the trees on the terrace. Biaggi, that someone was Biaggi.

There wasn’t a sound on the terrace and long shadows stretched across the irregular flagstones, eerie shadows of leaves and branches swaying slowly in the wind. I didn’t move and tried to get my bearings in the half-light but I couldn’t see a thing, just the very dark, immobile forms of the tree trunks. Slowly I advanced toward the trees, walking straight ahead in the night. My shoes didn’t make a sound on the ground, and I descended the few steps that led down to the lower part of the terrace bordered by a little grove of tamaris. The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees all around and I walked on in the night, my eyes fixed on a low rock wall that was being built a little farther down the terrace. A small pile of bricks lay there in the darkness, and various mason’s tools had been left beside two large empty cement bags illuminated on the ground by a ray of moonlight. I walked silently up to the little pile of bricks and bent down to take a trowel from an old iron pail. Then, retracing my steps with the trowel in my hand, I crouched down at the foot of the window and, after taking another quick look over the deserted terrace, I tried to unblock the door by squeezing the blade of the trowel into the small opening between the window and the groove. I didn’t manage to, and left the terrace without turning around, walking slowly down the road. I didn’t know were I was going and walked aimlessly, the collar of my coat raised to protect me from the wind. Finally I passed the battered little sign marking the end of the village, and the road became even darker in front of me, rising up toward the next hamlet along the craggy contours of the cliff. Waves crashed in surges against the savage rocks below, and I continued to walk along the cliff watching the long beam from the lighthouse on Sasuelo Island appear from time to time and sweep over the surface of the water before disappearing over the horizon. I walked on and in a few more minutes I saw the wall of the Biaggis’ house appear before me in the night.

I’d stopped in front of the entrance to the property and looked at the villa through the black bars of the gate. The wind seemed to have died down now and the terrace in front of me was deserted. I’d immediately spotted the old gray Mercedes on the little gravel path leading to the garage, and there was no more doubt in my mind that Biaggi was in the village, because the car had been parked there the first time I’d come and I’d also seen it on the village square the morning I discovered the dead cat in the port. Now here it was again, parked beside a tree in the darkness of the driveway, and Biaggi was hiding in all likelihood, how else to explain the fact that I hadn’t run into him in the village since I’d arrived? Before moving on I slipped my hand mechanically into the mailbox and discovered that it was empty. I was standing in front of the gate, apparently alone on the road, and was just wondering if someone could have followed me at a distance from the hotel when I saw a set of car lights coming down the road toward the Biaggis’ house. I took a quick look around for a place to hide and, pushing on the gate, I noticed that the chain that kept it closed was simply wound around the bars and that a slight push had been enough to open it somewhat. Hurriedly I unwound the chain and entered the property. The car slowed down a bit as it approached the house, and I squatted on the gravel not moving a muscle. I heard the sound of its motor coming nearer, and after a moment two yellow headlights suddenly loomed in front of me in the darkness, lighting up the garden for an instant while the car, a light-colored Volkswagen, drove past the gate without stopping. Blinded by the lights, I didn’t manage to see who was inside, and I remained for a moment crouching in the shadows, listening to the sound of the Volkswagen as it drove off, heading — it seemed to me but I couldn’t be sure — down toward the port.

It was only then, once silence had returned to the garden, that I remembered that the first time I’d taken the mail from the Biaggis’ mailbox I’d left two letters inside, junk mail or bank statements no doubt. Now, however, those two letters were gone. I walked through the garden over to the house and looked at the umbrella lying on the terrace with its pole still inserted in a concrete base. I wondered how the wind could have knocked over such a heavy garden umbrella while nothing else seemed to have moved on the terrace, neither the earthenware jars on either side of the bay window, nor the garden furniture arranged in the darkness a little farther off. There wasn’t a sound in the garden, and the grounds around the villa were strewn with dead leaves. Looking up at the façade I noticed that one of the shutters on the second floor wasn’t quite closed, and that there was a thin gap between the window and the wall. The hook of the shutter was unclasped and hung against the wall. And Biaggi was hidden there in the shadows, it seemed to me, watching every move I made from the upstairs window.

After remaining undecided on the terrace for quite some time, practically immobile and with my eyes fixed on the shutter, I slowly approached one of the earthenware jars whose silhouette stood out in the shadows. Sticking my hand inside it I felt around for the keys to the garage, remembering that that was where the Biaggis left them when they went away. And in fact I did find them there under a rock, two small metal keys which I took out of a little plastic bag. I’d made up my mind to enter the Biaggis’ house, no more afraid of coming face to face with Biaggi than I already was, knowing he could be watching my every move. I approached the garage door and, taking a last glance at the deserted garden stretching out in the darkness, I inserted the smallest key into the keyhole, lifted the garage door very softly, and slipped silently into the house.

The garage walls were hardly visible in the dark, and a small boat lay overturned on the ground. Various objects were stored along the walls, fishing rods and jerry cans containing oil and gas, and two thick wooden oars lay side by side on the floor. Slowly I advanced through a little metal door and down two steps into a very dark, low-ceilinged cellar, where the dim contours of an almost empty wine rack appeared beside a large shelf filled with cleaning products. My eyes were starting to grow accustomed to the darkness, and I left the cellar and moved on toward the kitchen. Everything was silent there, perfectly neat and tidy, there was no trace of dishes beside the sink and a pile of ironed dishtowels lay beside the stove. Silently I progressed through the ground floor of the house. The shutters were closed all around me and from inside the villa they looked very black behind the bare windowpanes. When I arrived at the little entranceway at the front door I hesitated for a moment at the bottom of the stairs. There still wasn’t a sound in the house, and just across from me, beside a coatrack on which hung the disquieting forms of an overcoat and two raincoats, was a large wooden mirror whose surface was so dark that although I was less than a couple of yards away I couldn’t see the slightest trace of my reflection, just the dense, utter darkness of the deserted entrance.

After hesitating for a moment I went into the living room and, passing in front of the large stone fireplace that loomed in the darkness behind the leather sofa, I crossed the room noiselessly and pushed open the door to Biaggi’s study. That was where he normally worked, but I saw right away that his typewriter wasn’t on his desk. Some papers and a few small objects lay on the mantelpiece, a stapler, an ashtray, two or three rolls of film, and as I moved further into the room I noticed two letters on the desk. Picking them up I saw it was the two letters I’d left in the mailbox a few days earlier. I couldn’t be entirely sure because I hadn’t looked at them closely enough the first time I’d had them in my hands, but they were certainly the same kind of letters, two long rectangular envelopes with transparent windows for the name and address, both addressed to Biaggi, Paul Biaggi. And it was then that I thought I heard a sound in the house, an imperceptible creaking coming from upstairs. I listened attentively but couldn’t hear a thing, neither upstairs nor anywhere else, just the regular distant hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. I immediately left the study and went back to the front entrance, flattening myself against the wall. The staircase rose in front of me in the darkness, and I could just make out the corridor at the top of the stairs where Biaggi was standing immobile, perhaps, observing me from the shadows of the hallway on the second floor.

I went over to the stairway and started up. I walked up slowly, with one hand on the rail and both eyes focused straight ahead. When I got to the top I hesitated for a moment, then walked soundlessly down the hallway to the door of the first room, which I slowly opened. There was no one inside, and no one seemed to have slept there for a long time because the mattress was bare, with two large blankets folded on top. Leaving the room I saw that the door to the Biaggis’ bedroom was slightly ajar at the far end of the corridor. Had it already been open when I came up the stairs? Had someone just opened it? I was less than four yards from the door and didn’t move a muscle. Nothing could be heard from behind the door, and pushing it open silently I saw that the bedroom was perfectly empty in the darkness. The shutters weren’t entirely closed and a ray of moonlight entered the room through the small gap between the window and the wall. I walked over to the window, and the room was entirely silent all around me, dimly bathed in a soft glimmer of moonlight that enveloped the walls and reflected dully off the parquet floor. The bed was made and nothing so much as hinted that someone had been there recently, no clothes hung over the chairs, no newspapers lay on the bedside tables. There was no one upstairs, the Biaggis’ house was empty it seemed.

But then where was Biaggi that night, I wondered — because I was certain Biaggi was in the village that night — if he wasn’t at home? I’d left the house and returned to the hotel following the road along the cliff. The moon was now almost completely veiled in the sky, and standing on the road I looked at the hotel in front of me in the half-light. Its crude white plaster gave the stone a coarse, rough appearance. On the roof, beside the large television antenna that pointed over toward the communications tower on the mountain, the extinguished letters of the neon sign towered up vertically in the night, supported by a crisscrossed matrix of thin metal rods. Four identical shutters lined the façade, and above them two more shutters, square and much smaller, seemed not to belong to rooms but to a sort of alcove nestled under the rooftop. Then I remembered that the night before when I went up to my room after dinner I’d noticed a little stairway at the end of the hall, making me think that perhaps there were more rooms on the top floor, and that I’d been intrigued by a sound coming from upstairs, a monotone, metallic sound echoing strangely in the halls — as if someone were banging away at a typewriter in their room.

Because in fact Biaggi was at the hotel. If he was in Sasuelo that was the only place he could be. He must have taken a room a few days before my arrival with the intention of working there in complete isolation for a spell. Which meant not only did he know I was in Sasuelo, he’d also no doubt been keeping a close eye on me since my arrival, observing all of my comings and goings all the more easily as he himself was staying at the hotel. Because of course Biaggi knew what room I was in, and in fact it was he who’d been hiding from me these past days, only leaving his room when he was sure he wouldn’t run into me in the halls, while all the while I’d been certain I was hiding from him and taking the same sort of precautions to avoid going anywhere near his house when I left the hotel. And then it occurred to me that I was probably not the only one to leave the hotel during the night, that Biaggi also left the hotel once night had fallen, and that one of these last nights he must have seen me on the jetty at the port under the same moonlight as tonight, exactly the same, with the same black clouds sliding across the sky, and perhaps he’d even seen me the previous night, because I’d also been outside the night before. But if Biaggi was at the hotel, I said to myself, if Biaggi was at the hotel right now he must certainly have seen me leave tonight, and he was the one perhaps, yes now I was sure it was him, who’d closed the sliding window behind me to stop me from getting back in — and then my thoughts came back to my son in the hotel. The façade was perfectly silent, its plastered walls covered with a grayish efflorescence. All of the shutters were closed, with the exception of one room on the second floor. Was that my room? Hadn’t I closed the shutters before I’d gone out? The wind blew up in gusts and all of a sudden I felt very cold, as if the chill night air had enveloped me in an instant, because I was practically certain I’d closed the shutters before leaving. I was all alone in the night on the edge of the road, and I walked furtively along the façade until I got to the owners’ room where I started to rap against the dark and silent little shutter, softly at first, then louder, and, still getting no response, I finally called out. A long silence followed and then, as I was just about to call out once again, the shutter opened slowly and the owner’s silhouette appeared in the window, wearing an old undershirt and a wrinkled sweat jacket that hung limply over his chest. I could see his wife as well, lying in bed in her nightgown at the back of the room, and I didn’t know what to say. The owner looked at me in silence, one hand on the windowsill. Go around to the front and I’ll let you in, he finally said, and he slowly closed the shutter in front of me in the night.

I’d gone to wait for the owner at the top of the low flight of steps leading up to the entrance, and after a moment I saw him trudge down the hall to come open the door. His pajama pants hung down his thighs and his step was slow and cumbersome. He’d left the door of his room open behind him and switched on the yellowish night-light in the hall, which cast a pale shimmer of light onto the walls of the ground floor. He crouched down at the base of the glass door to unlock it and, opening one of the double doors to let me in, he told me that my son had been crying, that he’d heard him crying a little while ago. I looked at him without moving. And now, I asked in a low voice, he’s gone back to sleep? He didn’t answer right away, and I examined his face in the feeble light. I don’t know, he said, I didn’t go up, I thought you were with him. I started immediately up the stairs to my room and, as I arrived on the landing of the second floor, I heard a door close in the hotel and the light went out almost simultaneously in the hall. A time switch then kicked in and started reverberating in the darkness, and there was no sound in the hall apart from its regular mechanical buzz.

When I opened the door of my room I immediately saw my son lying in his travel cot in the dim light. The little blanket and sheets were all tangled and he was holding his stuffed seal against his chest. His breathing was slow and peaceful and his hairline was covered in a few tiny beads of sweat. I had an urge to take him in my arms, but I contented myself just to caress his forehead softly, standing beside him for another moment and watching him sleep. He must have had a little nightmare and woken up in the middle of the night, and now he was sleeping with his mouth open, my little guy, his face relaxed and his eyes shut. After covering his chest with his little blanket, I went over and lay down fully dressed on the bed. I stayed like that on my back and didn’t move, my eyes open in the darkness. There wasn’t a sound in the hotel, and I thought that the port must also be completely silent now, its smooth, quiet waters undulating peacefully in the half-light with the deceptive tranquility of dormant water.