Rome Noir

Don’t Talk to the Passenger by Diego De Silva

Translation by Anne Milano Appel

Fiumicino

I get off the plane in enviable physical shape, proud of feeling and above all looking like I’m in sync with the wealth-producing world around me, not at all nostalgic, stylishly dressed, immune to politics, to freedom of the press and freedom of expression in general, to culture, to global warming, to Muslim terrorism, crime reports, the Democratic party, model towns of quiet living where low-level clerks massacre their neighbors and families for no reason, to rampant pedophilia, the never truly ascertained extinction of the first republic, to world championships, soccer bribe scandals, paparazzi who blackmail public figures, to the uncertainty of work, to Family Day, to Rights for Cohabiting Couples and the Catholic Church’s meddling in the political life of the country and the private lives of individuals. I am a man of my time, having achieved a truce with the world. Not that it took that much, a wink was enough to send the signal: You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. We’re all adults, after all.

In the shuttle that brings us to the terminal, I look around (no one escapes the gaze of others in the airport shuttle: find me another public place where strangers pay so much attention to one another) and declare myself the most attractive man on this flight that just landed in Rome. For a moment I fear competition from a couple of young studs who are flaunting their gym-buffed physiques in tight T-shirts, but seeing that an attractive piece of tail with a child is looking at me and not them, my concern quickly eases.

We arrived right on time, which reassures me about the little game I intend to play before putting myself in circulation. As usual when I come to Rome, I group my engagements. Not that any one of them preoccupies me very much, but it’s the sum of them that adds up, as the well-known joke says — and though it doesn’t make me laugh, I find myself citing it often, a little like a bad tune that sticks in your head the more you try to forget it.

I retrieve my suitcase from the carousel (a job I detest, but since the antiterrorism measures have been in force, they make a lot of fuss, even for us) and before the shooting range I go and have a caffè macchiato, because I find the combination of foamy milk and espresso intoxicating. The cashier, a skinny brunette with delicate features, looks at me in an explicitly inviting way when she gives me my change. At first I think it would be fun to tell her that I’d be delighted to pick her up if she tells me what time she gets off, and then not show up, but her soft little face inspires such tenderness that I choose to spare her the humiliation.

When I finish the coffee I go to the men’s room to complete the job, using for the occasion one of the business cards that I got printed on recycled paper, because it rolls up better. I lay the line I do not have out on the sink counter, prompting the silent disapproval of a family man washing his hands a couple of sinks down. I thin it out with a credit card, I snort noisily with my right nostril, tap my nose with my forefinger, throw my head back, stick my left pinkie in the nostril, then rub the fingertip over the upper gum arch, run my tongue over it, and swallow. The man continues staring at me, mesmerized. He has probably seen that there was nothing on the sink’s marble, but ingenuous as he appears, he must be wondering if maybe they’ve invented some new type of invisible cocaine in the years since he gave up social activity. I can barely keep from laughing in his face. He dries his hands and moves away disgusted. I find myself irresistible, I congratulate myself at length, and finally I go take a leak. While I’m at it, I stop to read the little notes stuck to the outside walls of the urinals, handwritten by a semi-literate homosexual. I find them ridiculous and depressing. I give a little shake, I go wash my hands, I hold them under the jet of hot air from the dryer on the wall, curse the photoelectric cell that doesn’t work, use the other dryer, get bored, finish up, open the suitcase, check that it isn’t missing anything. At first I find myself thinking that I wouldn’t mind strolling around the airport with the handle sticking out of my jacket pocket to cause a little outburst of panic and then apologize to the colleagues who would surround me with their weapons drawn (“Hey, guys, I don’t know what to say, I’m really embarrassed, hasn’t this ever happened to you? After you wash your hands, don’t you sometimes just stick it in your pocket without thinking?”; “Never happened to me” — some idiot itching for a fight would surely respond — “you risk getting yourself killed, doing something stupid like that”; to which I would reply: “It depends on how stupid the one who shoots you is”); but I’m forced to reject the idea because I don’t have much time, so I put it back in the holster, wet the palm of my right hand again, smooth my hair back, and finally get out of there.

A black attendant with a cart greets me in English, for some reason. I reply, Bonjour, do a little airport shopping not geared toward buying, reach the exit, head over to the taxis. I locate the first free one, signal to the driver, he nods, I open the back door and am about to get in.

— Excuse me.

— What?

— Your suitcase, please.

I look down at my suitcase.

— What about it? I ask, confused.

— Do you mind if I put it in the trunk?

I shrug.

— No, I guess not, I reply, still not understanding.

— Okay, the guy says.

He gets out of the car. I look him over. Tall, bald, barely fifty, a little overweight, strong jaw, well-shaped goatee, fake Ray-Bans, open-necked shirt, NN jeans, street-market ankle boots. He is chewing gum, a habit that has always annoyed me.

I hand him the suitcase, he sets it in the trunk, motions for me to get in, gets back in the car, says good day, I reply good day, tell him my destination, and eventually we start off.

At first I think I will keep my mouth shut, convinced as I am that speaking to taxi drivers means allowing them to talk your head off until the time they let you out, but then I cannot suppress my curiosity.

— How come you asked me if you could put the suitcase in the trunk?

He rolls his eyes (I can see him in the rearview mirror) as if to say: I knew you’d ask that.

— It’s a precautionary regulation, he says defensively; it’s not as if he invented the rule.

— Precaution against what?

— Accidents.

This I didn’t know.

We take the ring road.

— And how long has it been in effect, this regulation?

— For me, since the day a model almost broke her neck in my taxi.

It’s beginning to get on my nerves, this explanation in bits and pieces.

— See, he continues, she had a big portfolio, you know those ones you put drawings in, like the kind architects use? She probably kept photographs of herself in it. Such a knockout, I can’t even tell ya. So, she puts it there on the ledge, in back. She says: They won’t run into us, will they? Such a looker, I still remember her. Well, to cut a long story short, the model gets the portfolio right in the back of the neck. Her eyes pop out of her head. Such a blow, I thought for sure she was dead.

— Wasn’t she wearing a seat belt?

— The model, yes. The portfolio, no.

— Oh, I mutter. His eyes search for me in his small mirror, probably expecting me to laugh (I think he had some wisecrack ready); but since I do not give him the satisfaction, he goes on.

— Well, now I have to deal with a lawsuit, get it?

Who knows if it’s true.

— It’s not your fault they ran into you, I comment.

— Sure. Go tell it to the model’s lawyer.

Now there’s the kind of answer that makes me see red. A person tells you something distressing, you make a suitable observation showing that you’re on his side, and he answers you as if you were wasting his time. You’re the one who told me all your business, imbecile, what did you expect me to say, It’s your fault, the lawyer was right, let’s hope you lose the case?

— Do you have the number? I ask, irritated.

— What number?

— The lawyer’s. Give it to me, that way I’ll call him and tell him.

He peers at me in the little mirror.

— Oh! he says. I guess he didn’t find my joke amusing.

Score one for me.

He’s stopped talking. Wonderful.

— Excuse me, he then says, as if he is reading my mind.

— Hmm?

— You have to put the seat belt on.

I saw a film, as a boy, where Renato Pozzetto played the part of a poor devil who establishes a fetishistic relationship with a taxi. Like before going to bed he checks the car’s water, oil, brakes, and tire pressure, polishes it, caresses it, falls asleep beside it, and when he goes on duty he subjects the passengers to a series of behavioral rules that border on the abusive (obviously, during the course of the film, the taxi falls apart). The fool behind the wheel of this taxi is unfortunately making me think of that character. Among the things I despise are nasty resemblances. I don’t yet know how, but this involuntary superimposition will end up on my driver’s account.

— The seat belt? I say.

— Yes, of course, this Font of Knowledge replies self-importantly, it’s compulsory.

I lean forward so that he can see I’m raking him with my eyes, observing a not so insignificant detail: He isn’t wearing one either.

— In case they try to hijack us, the jerk says, we have to be able to get out of the car quickly.

The response of a true bumpkin, more tactless than rude, one that would give me permission to become indignant and burst out with a who-do-you-think-you-are-and-who-do-you-think-you’re-talking-to, but at this point I get the urge to have a little fun, so I remain solemnly silent.

After a while he looks at me once again in the little mirror, ascertaining that I have not put the seat belt on.

— It’s become very dangerous work, this job of ours...

The idiot trails off, probably realizing what an ass he’s made of himself.

— Now, see, since they came up with this disgraceful “pardon,” we taxi drivers have become mobile ATMs for illegal immigrants.

I don’t say a word, letting him go on destroying himself with his own words.

— Just think, he resumes heavily after a painful silence, in the span of a week, a couple of Albanians took out seven, that’s seven drivers. A knife to your throat, and you’re done for. One of us reacted. Not that he wanted to be a hero, it’s just that it came to him instinctively. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed.

I continue to hold my tongue.

— And to think that these sonsofbitches had their eye on us for two months. The police had reports and more reports, descriptions, all the clues you want. Nearly every day a driver would go to the police station to report another one. I ask you, what does it take to catch them, a couple of shitty Albanians? You think they arrested them? Not a chance! It’s not their problem. We’re the ones out on the street, at the mercy of everything and everybody, what the hell do they care? At the end of the month they collect their paycheck. To cut a long story short: The police are asleep, the judges are busy appearing on TV, let’s not even talk about the politicians. So in the end we gotta organize things ourselves, right?

He stops a moment to catch his breath. Naturally, so much crap all at once requires a surplus of oxygen. It’s exciting, though, sitting there listening to him try to provoke me.

From his tone, when he picks up again, I figure my silence is beginning to make him nervous.

— But things didn’t go so good for one of them. He ran into me.

I knew it. Go for it, Rambo.

— When he got in, I knew right away what his intentions were. He had me drive around a bit, Go this way, go that way, he couldn’t make up his mind. I was already losing my patience. At a certain point he goes: Listen, can you take me to Saxa Rubra for five euros? The meter was already showing twelve euros. So I says to him: What the hell, are you kiddin’ me? And he goes: I don’t really give a fuck, you’re the one who’s going to give me money. And I find the knife in front of my eyes.

But... I think.

— Well, I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. I floored the accelerator so hard I still don’t know why we didn’t roll over. Then I jammed on the brakes and made that shitty Albanian go smashing against the window. I got out in a hurry, and grabbed him by the hair: Out, you bastard! And I beat the living daylights out of him, Christ did I give it to him. Lucky for him a police car came by, or else he’d have been pushin’ up daisies instead of sittin’ behind bars. But I left my marks on him, ya know.

I wonder how he can go on talking, given the fact that I haven’t deigned to say a word since he began his pathetic story.

— You can’t work anymore. Believe me, it’s become a jungle. If the police won’t protect us, then they should just say so. No problem, we’ll take care of it. At night, instead of staying home, we team up and do justice on our own. After all, we know who the crooks are and where they live, we don’t need no warrant.

I’m about to say something, but he keeps going.

— Me, when they tell me to believe in the law, I say: Excuse me, what law? Because I know only one law: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The one that’s written in the courts, the one that’s supposed to be equal for everybody, not even young kids believe in it anymore.

At this point I interrupt.

— Listen, speaking frankly: Have you made any raids yet?

— Any raids?

— Right. Any... punitive expeditions, let’s say.

— What d’you think, huh? the idiot replies.

— Come on, are you serious?

— What, you think I’m jokin’?

— How many are you?

— About twenty, give or take.

— How does it work? How are you set up?

— Helmets, chains, iron bars. Sometimes I even use a corkscrew. And then we go lookin’ for ’em one by one. After a while you get a taste for it, ya know?

— Oh, sure.

— Yeah. It’s a little like hunting.

He chuckles.

I don’t.

— How come you’re interested? he asks me, bewildered by my icy silence.

I let a few seconds go by before answering him.

— Well, it’s nice to know there’s someone who can help you in your work.

— Come again?

I shove the badge in front of his eyes. His jaw drops. He turns pale. He actually pivots around to look at me. We swerve (a pickup truck blares its horn), then the imbecile regains control of the car.

— Watch the road. You’re a cab driver, don’t you know that’s how accidents happen?

— Look, I’m sorry, I was only kiddin’, I swear.

— Imagine that. He was only kiddin’.

— I’ll swear on whatever you want. On my kids. May I drop dead right here in front of you if it isn’t true.

— So then what you told me was a bunch of crap.

— Yeah, yeah. All of it.

— Why should I believe you if up till now all you’ve told me is a bunch of baloney?

He falls silent, terrorized by his future.

I take out the gun. I smooth the barrel with the tip of my forefinger. He spots it out of the corner of his eye and begins to sweat. At a rough guess, I’d say that his saliva flow rate has gone from one to thirty.

— What are you doing, drooling? I say.

— Please, officer, I’m sorry. Look, I’ll get down on my knees if you want. Should I come back there with you? Huh?

— Don’t try it or I’ll shoot you right here.

I mean his right side, into which I’ve just stuck the gun.

He doesn’t breathe. He’s sweating like a pig now.

— Jesus, look at you pissing your pants, aren’t you ashamed?

— Okay, I’m an idiot, a moron, a real shithead, my whole life I’ve been talking bullshit, God Almighty should strike me dead for all the crap that comes out of my mouth.

— There’s no need to trouble God Almighty, I’ll take care of it.

— Excuse me? What did you say?

— You heard me.

— You wouldn’t really shoot me for the few lies I told, would you?

— Why not?

— Listen, let’s be reasonable. I haven’t done a thing. I’m a decent working man. There are a ton of unpunished criminals out there, who act like swine whenever it suits them, and you take it out on me for some stupid boasting?

I shove the gun back in his side.

— What now, back to badmouthing others? So then it’s not true that you were telling lies.

— No, no, I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t mean to say that... oh, sweet Jesus.

We remain silent for a while. The imbecile is probably afraid of making the situation worse if he opens his mouth.

— What’s your name? I ask him at a certain point.

— Mar... Marcello.

— Well then, Mar-Marcello, you’re not actually all wrong, since it wouldn’t be very sensible on my part to shoot you. First, because shooting idiots serves no purpose, meaning it’s like shooting mice, and we know that shooting mice doesn’t solve any problem; second, because it would be crazy to risk a charge of willful homicide to knock off a moron who talks just for the sake of talking.

— Right. Exactly, the idiot says, relieved. The return of hope must have reactivated his blood circulation, since he seems to have regained some color. So I quickly move to throw him back off guard.

— Unfortunately, however, it’s turned out badly for you, I add, you know why?

— No, why?

— Because I hear voices.

— What?

— Naturally, I’m a schizophrenic.

— Excuse me, what does that mean?

— You don’t know what a schizophrenic is?

— No.

— Ignorant too, besides being a jerk.

He wipes his dripping forehead with his hand. When he puts his palm back on the steering wheel, it leaves greasy marks.

— Well, let’s simply say that I have a sick mind.

— Oh, holy Virgin, the imbecile says, as hope once more abandons him.

— So, I continue, if the voices I hear give me an order, I have to obey, you see how it works?

He thinks it over a bit, the poor devil.

— And you... can’t you talk to them, to these voices?

— Talk to the voices? That’s a good one.

— Why? Can’t you try?

— No, of course you can’t talk to the voices.

— I see a lot of people in the streets talking to themselves.

— Those people are not schizophrenics. And even if I could, what am I supposed to say to the voices?

— What you told me before about how it isn’t worth it to shoot me. I mean, there’s no reason to shoot morons.

— In other words, you want me to put in a good word for you.

— Right.

I consider this. And I think that I can indeed pretend to give him a shred of hope.

— So you think that if I tell them, I can convince them?

— Yes! Yes! Definitely! In fact, I’m sure you can!

— Could be. Maybe you’re right. Wait, I’ll give it a try.

I wrinkle my forehead, squeeze the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, forcing myself to appear as absorbed as possible. Out of the corner of my eye I see the imbecile watching me in the little mirror, full of expectation. I let the operation go on until I see the sign for the exit Campo Nomadi, a local gypsy camp.

What fucking luck, I think.

I come out of my trance. I open my eyes.

— I’m really very sorry, Marcè, I tell him with a heavy voice, but your request was turned down.

— What do you mean, turned down? Why was it turned down?

— I don’t know why. It’s a surprise that they even answered me. That’s never happened before. In a certain sense I’m grateful to you, I didn’t know I could do it.

He turns around. He looks at me, desperate. We’re about to swerve again.

— Do you mind watching the road, dickhead? I scold him, even raising my voice a little, I must admit.

— Sorry.

— Don’t worry about it. Drive, go on.

— Please, officer, don’t hurt me, I got a family.

I put a hand on his shoulder.

— No way, Marcè. I have to shoot you in the ear, they tell me.

He instinctively covers the part in question with his right hand, and begins crying like a baby.

— Hey, look, I can shoot you in the ear even through your hand, you know. It doesn’t change much.

But I don’t know if he even hears me, he’s so disconsolate.

— Take this exit, go on, I tell him, indicating the gypsy camp, I’ll shoot you there.

He obeys, with a kind of resignation to the awful day he’s having.

I tell him to drive to a particularly squalid area with some really ugly trailers.

— Get out, go ahead.

He complies. He is still crying, though less than before.

From their ratholes on wheels, a couple of gypsies are watching us like hyenas hoping for prey.

I get out too. I make him walk two or three yards from the car, then I tell him to turn around. Though it is a rotten thing to do, I let a few seconds go by.

I take his place behind the wheel. I close the car door.

The sound makes him turn around.

— Hey, Marcè, I say loudly, do you have your wallet?

He pats his back pockets.

— Y-yeah, he answers automatically.

— Did you hear that? I shout in the direction of the gypsies, who have just stepped out of their shitty vans. — He has his wallet on him, this guy!

Marcello looks at me in shock. He probably hasn’t understood a damn thing, demented as he is from everything that’s happening to him.

I start the car.

I pass alongside him.

He looks at me, incapable of any reaction.

— And now they’re your problem, I say, tossing my head back toward the gypsies who are beginning to approach.

Then I drive off.

In the rearview mirror, I see the hyenas starting to circle.

The two have already become four.

Roman Holidays by Enrico Franceschini

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Villa Borghese

Settled at a table in a café, I check my watch: It’s still early for our appointment, but I’m already anticipating her arrival. I like to stretch out the tension, up until the moment I see her, suddenly, in the crowd, head high, with that unmistakable gait, which distinguishes her, and, I would say, elevates her above all others. Today, however, I know in advance how I’m going to spend the time that separates me from the first glance, the first furtive kiss, the first thrilling moment of the day we’ll spend together. I’ve brought a notebook with me, here to the café, a small book with a black binding, held shut by an elastic band: a handsome object with uncut pages, whose first lines I am filling with an old pen. Now I’ve taken a break, ordered a beer, lit a cigarette. What could be better, on a warm spring afternoon, than to sit in a café in the heart of Rome, have a sip of cold beer, take a drag on a cigarette, and prepare to write about the woman you love, knowing that in a couple of hours you’ll see her?

My name is Jack Galiardo, I’m fifty years old, I’m an American citizen of Italian ancestry: My grandparents emigrated to New York in the early part of the twentieth century — they came from the countryside right around here. I’m a lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, and I have a professional bias toward writing: When I accept a new case, after studying the details I need to slowly construct the line of reasoning that I’ll use to defend my client, and the only way to do so effectively is to take notes, otherwise I can’t think. Cogito, ergo sum. Paraphrasing Descartes, I could say: I write, therefore I think. It’s valid here, too, at the café table, although the case I have to think about now is my own.

Two years ago, I was sitting on a plane next to a woman, an Italian. I was going to Rome to meet a witness who might be useful in a trial. She was returning to Italy from a short working trip to the United States. The flights from America to Europe generally arrive at dawn, so the majority of the passengers try to sleep; but that night the two of us weren’t tired and we got to know each other. I had recently begun to study Italian, drawn by a sudden curiosity about the land of my forebears, which had never much interested me as a boy; so the conversation unfolded mainly in her language. After a couple of drinks and the initial chitchat, I revealed something about myself: that I had been married and divorced twice, had two children already in college, two houses, one in New York and one in Florida, two cars. “Two of everything,” she commented, laughing. Then she told me that she was a journalist, that she was married, and that her husband was also a lawyer, in Rome; unlike me, he was not a criminal lawyer but, rather, worked in commercial law. They had three children, two boys and a girl, the last still small. Giulia — that was the name of my traveling companion — must have been forty, but she looked at least ten years younger. I soon discovered that she loved to talk: She did almost all the talking, jumping from one subject to another, telling endless anecdotes, little stories, situations — quite entertaining, I think. I can’t be sure, because after a while I had trouble following her, given my limited knowledge of Italian. But the sound of what she said, the tone of her voice, the rippling laughs with which she punctuated her speech fascinated me. I would have liked her never to stop.

The truth is that she could also have stayed silent: The effect on me would probably have been the same. I was in love with Giulia from the moment I saw her. I’ve never believed in the classic thunderbolt. I’ve had a certain number of women, some of whom — including the two I married — I liked a lot at first, but I’ve never really lost my head. I suppose that as a boy I must have had, like everyone else, a crush on the cutest girl in the class, but as soon as I reached the age of discretion I left romanticism behind; love songs, for one thing, have always seemed to me banal, foolish, excessive. I found all those sighs, that agitation, vaguely comical; they seemed a pose, an attitude, rather than expressions of true feeling. With Giulia, however, it was like plunging into a state of adolescent regression. To please her, win her, possess her suddenly became my only purpose in life. Every other concern or consideration disappeared. I had to make an effort, that night on the plane, not to make myself look ridiculous by kneeling at her feet and declaring my love, then and there, in front of stewardesses and passengers.

When we landed, I asked for her phone number, and proposed that we see each other the next time I came to Rome. My stay this time would actually be very short: I had to leave within twenty-four hours so that I wouldn’t miss a court hearing in New York. “I’d love to,” she said simply. And we parted.

Phrases that are repeated an infinite number of times, in an infinity of casual encounters, in the course of a life. We might never have seen each other again. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Giulia, and after just a few days I called her from New York. “Ciao, it’s Jack Galiardo... I’d like to see you again,” I recall myself saying, emotionally. I got immediately to the point: “I could come to Rome next week, if you have time.”

She had a moment of hesitation. “You’d come to Rome just for me?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She paused again, then said, “All right.”

Our first meeting was at Villa Borghese. Sitting on a bench, I made the declaration of love I would have liked to make on the plane. In a mixture of English and Italian, I described my image of her: alone, in a state of crisis with her husband, desperate for affection, for a man who desired her as no woman had ever been desired. And that man was me. Slightly put off, she said that I had misunderstood: She had agreed to see me, but that didn’t mean that her marriage was in trouble. I apologized. I added, however, that this suited me as well. That is, I was still happy to be there, on that bench, near her, even if she wasn’t having trouble with her husband and I was, at most, just slightly likable. It wasn’t a strategy to induce her to yield. I really felt that way: I felt that my love was so great that it was enough, at least at the beginning, for both of us. We got up from the bench and walked in silence for a little while, barely brushing against one another. In the square overlooking Piazza del Popolo she let me kiss her. We had lunch on the terrace of the Hassler. We continued to kiss, and then to touch, on the sofa of a deserted drawing room in the hotel, after lunch. We took a room there at the Hassler, although I was staying in another hotel. We made love until late afternoon. Then we descended to Piazza di Spagna, where she hastily said goodbye and got in a taxi. Walking as if in a trance, intoxicated with happiness, not knowing where I was or where I was going, I got a message on my cell phone: I already miss you. At that moment I knew: I had been knocked down. And I’ve never gotten up.

Rome, from then on, became the fixed destination of my vacations. As soon as I have a few days, I get on a plane and fly to Italy. Every so often, it happens that I can stay for a week, and then I manage to see Giulia two or three times. More often, they are whirlwind holidays: I leave at night from New York, arrive in Rome early the next morning, stay a day and a night, leave the following morning: a weekend in all, including the nine hours in the plane to get there and the same coming back. But it almost never happens that my Roman weekend coincides with an actual weekend. In fact, on Saturday and Sunday she has to be home, except for one weekend a month, when it’s her turn in the office, and so she’s just as busy. On some pretext, she can take a day off during the week as compensation, and devote it to me. Usually we see each other a couple of times a month. It works like this. I arrive and take a double room at a luxury hotel: the Hassler on Trinità dei Monti, the Hotel de Russie on Via del Babuino, the Plaza on Via del Corso, the Raphael near the Pantheon, the Excelsior on Via Veneto: These are my favorites. I earn a good living, enough to afford them, and besides, I love five-star hotels: They’re the only luxury I indulge in. But in this case I choose them for other reasons. They’re in the center, first of all, and Giulia lives in a residential neighborhood in the south of Rome, so it’s less likely that she’ll meet someone she knows. Furthermore, in these hotels the doormen are worldly, used to looking the other way in exchange for a generous tip, if in the late morning a woman accompanies a guest to his room without presenting her documents, as is usually required in Italy. Thus I spare her the embarrassment of disclosing her identity, of leaving traces. Finally, since we spend most of our time together in the room, I like it to be large, comfortable, elegant. I always wait for her in a café near the chosen hotel. When I see her coming, I get up and pay the bill, and she follows me, like a stranger, brushing my hand, pausing to give me a kiss in the doorway of a building, then immediately starting to walk again. Arriving at the hotel, we begin kissing in the elevator, start again as soon as I’ve closed the door of the room, and almost never stop. We take off our clothes quickly, we fall into bed, we make love — in every possible way — until evening. Maybe we fill the bathtub and spend awhile there. Sometimes we have room service: When the waiter comes in with the table, she goes into the bathroom, even though it’s obvious, from what we order, from the unmade bed, and from the Do not disturb sign hanging on the door, that there are two people in the room. Sometimes, at night, we have dinner in a tourist trattoria in the neighborhood between the Pantheon and Piazza del Popolo. Rome is full of these trattorias; they are places where no Roman would ever eat and so there, too, the risk of running into someone who might recognize her is not so high. It’s a system that guarantees eating badly, or at least not especially well, but it’s not the food that interests me. For Giulia and me, it’s enough to sit together in a dark corner, our knees touching, hands seeking each other under the table, letting ourselves be dazed by wine, only to hurry back to the room as soon as we’ve finished eating.

There have been exceptions to the rule of these encounters in the two years since we’ve been seeing each other. Once we went together to the Sistine Chapel, she hidden under a scarf and a pair of big dark sunglasses — well camouflaged among the legions of foreign tourists. Another time we took a car and went to Fregene, out of season, to stroll on the beach. It was sunny, we tumbled among the dunes. We also went to the movies one afternoon, not for the film but for the excitement of finding ourselves in the dark, in a half-empty theater, doing everything that is forbidden. Occasionally, I climb up behind her on her motor scooter and she drives me around, with no set destination: Since we’re wearing helmets we’re both unrecognizable. And since so many Romans travel around the city the same way — two wheels are the only alternative to the slow pace of cars and the inevitable traffic jams, Giulia explained. Protected by the mask of the helmet, holding onto her, I traverse the Eternal City like an invisible man to whom all is granted.

But it is in bed that we spend most of our time together. Partly we stay in these hotel rooms because ours is an illicit, clandestine love, which can’t be lived in front of others. The main reason, though, is that we like it. However nice it is to eat together, walk together, go somewhere together, nothing seems better to us than staying in bed together. I’ve never felt anything like that. I’ve had other women who excited me, but I’ve never spent eight, ten, fifteen hours in bed with one of them — at a certain point, desire always ran out. With Giulia it’s different: It never ends. Even if I’m tired after we’ve made love for a long time, an electric current impels me to caress her butt, lick the inside of her thighs, kiss her mouth, trace the line of her teeth with a finger, bite her ear, and on and on, without stopping. I can never have enough of her. It’s like a universal truth that was suddenly revealed to me: For the first time it seems obvious, as it never had before, that things should always be this way between a man and woman who are in love. That or nothing. No half-measures. The idea that a couple can lie together, I don’t mean for ten minutes but for an hour or two, and that each prefers to read a book, watch television, sleep — that is, do something else — now seems inconceivable, sad, wrong. If two people are in love, if they want each other, love should be the way the two of us live it: uncontainable. Morbid. A disease. Now I believe that the moment this passes and excitement turns into routine, love starts to end. Rather, it’s already over.

Eventually, however, a worm began digging a hole in my obsession with Giulia, very tiny at first, then larger and larger: the thought of her husband. I’m a free man, without ties; I could be with her, if we wanted, all the time. And I would like it to be all the time. But Giulia isn’t free; she’s a married woman. For months, after that first meeting at Villa Borghese when I said that I saw in her a neglected and unhappy wife, we never returned to my mistake. Besides, it seemed to me that the facts expressed our wish to be together. Mistake or not, I thought I had understood everything: Giulia and her husband were the typical couple who married very young, but after twenty years things had cooled. As an explanation it suited me. I had no doubts, residual questions, uncertainties. But the worm, quietly, slowly, continued to dig. The hole got bigger. And I fell into it. I had to admit to myself that the classic roles of the triangle were reversed: I, the lover, was jealous of the husband. Of course, every so often Giulia mentioned his egotism, the fact that he never listened to her or that he dumped on her shoulders as wife and working mother all the responsibilities for the house and the children. But she said it as a simple fact, without much complaint, without expecting to change him or the situation. Of him she never spoke with malice, never.

Now Giulia had someone to listen to her: me. As in our first conversation flying over the Atlantic, it was always she who did more of the talking, telling me an infinity of stories great and small, about the articles she commissioned or wrote for the paper, about the minor incidents of life in the office, petty feuds, jealousies, injustices, the confidences of friends, the problems or successes she had with her children, the things she bought for the house, the vegetables she got at the market, the delicious meals she cooked. There — that’s where my uneasiness made itself felt for the first time, I remember clearly, at the table. One of those evenings when Giulia couldn’t stay with me, but had to hurry home at dinnertime — breathless, in her constant struggle with time — as if she were coming from the newspaper. Suddenly, as I was eating dinner alone in a squalid pizzeria, I saw her at the stove, preparing food for her family, and then at the table, laughing with her children, telling her husband something, receiving compliments from them all for the wonderful meal she had made. I felt a pang of jealousy. From that day, I began to desire Giulia not only in bed. I began to want to share with her the little rituals of daily life: dinner with friends, an outing with the children, a vacation, shopping at the supermarket. I thought how, in all those situations, it was the husband who got to be close to her, who enjoyed her presence continuously: not me. And I wondered how she really was with that man. I wondered if, and when, and how, they made love: odd, I had never thought about this before. Giulia talked so much, she told me so many things, but about him, and what she really felt, she said little. Was it reserve, a need to protect the privacy of her marital relations? Or perhaps only timidity, a difficulty in opening up? I then realized that she had rarely said to me, “I love you,” “I adore you,” phrases typical of lovers. It seemed to me that I could see love in the way she looked at me, but she measured her words, as if she distrusted them. She was much freer with text messages. She wrote: What are you doing to me? I’m yours more and more, I miss you, I want you, I think of you, dream of you, you’re inside me, part of my life. And yet when, having received the message, I called her, I had the sensation that it was a different person who had sent it, that she was retreating, that she no longer wanted to talk about it. And the worm, planted inside me, kept on working. I would have liked to ask her: You, what do you really feel? What is the difference between me and your husband? Would you leave him if I asked you to? How would you react if I asked you, for example, to marry me? Would you run away with me to New York? Or, if I moved to Rome, would we live together? But I couldn’t: It was stronger than me: I couldn’t. These were the sort of questions that, the other way around, women had always asked me, in the various relationships I’d had. Relationships without love. Relationships in which I listened to those plaintive questions — What about you, what do you feel? Do you love me? Do you care for me, think of me? — with an increasing sensation of nausea. With the wish to silence their mouths, flee, never see them again.

The Italians take long summer vacations: usually an entire month. During the second vacation after we met, which Giulia spent at the beach with her whole family, we talked very little on the phone. It was complicated, her husband or children were always around. When finally we saw each other again, during a hot September in Rome, Giulia was more stupendous than ever: tanned, polished by the sun, slightly rounder, from days of repose and, I imagined — in vexation — from the food she had lovingly prepared over the four weeks. We made love furiously. Then I pounded her with questions. All the questions that the worm had burrowed into my body. Giulia didn’t expect it. She was stunned, almost frightened. Then she answered. She said that her husband wasn’t perfect, that their relations in twenty years of marriage had obviously changed, but that he was a good father whom the children adored, a good man, intelligent; certainly he neglected her somewhat, but not out of meanness or insensitivity — he just was like that. Once she had thought of leaving him, of divorcing, she admitted, without specifying if it had been after we met or before, but she had abandoned the idea: It wouldn’t be easy, it would have been too painful for too many people, the children would never forgive her. Then, speaking of the two of us, she asked me point-blank if I would really be willing to leave my law office in New York. She knew that I loved my work. Before I could answer, she said that she loved hers as well. She said she needed me, that she was happy when she had me near her and heard me on the phone, that she didn’t want to lose me — but life was a magical accord made up of many things: love, work, children, the city where she was born and raised, family ties. And she didn’t want to lose any of them. Then she went silent, exhausted by all these explanations that she evidently wasn’t used to.

Was it really like that, as she had said? I didn’t know. But instead of making me angry, instead of her seeming egotistical or evasive, that speech made me feel a tenderness toward her. “When your children are grown up, will it be less painful?” I asked, laughing. “When you’re old. When you’re eighty. When you’re ninety and I’m a hundred. Then I’ll carry you off. Then we’ll run away to the south in a convertible. Then you’ll be mine and only mine.”

She laughed too, relieved. “Idiot.” Her voice trembled. We embraced. We made love again. We didn’t talk about it anymore. The worm, for that day, vanished.

She hadn’t answered all my questions, but she had said something. And I myself had always theorized, when women assailed me with questions, that words count for little in a relationship; what counts are actions. Promises, explanations, confidences mean nothing; in fact, they’re a sure way to begin poisoning a relationship. Giulia was the proof of it. I thought of her as of a splendid jungle animal, guided by instinct. There were many components to her life, and the part that I played was crucial, but it didn’t exclude or cancel out the others. That was it. In meeting, we had received from destiny a talisman of happiness — and only we could damage it, destroy it, lose it. Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted to change places with her husband. How many times, proclaiming that love should always be like this, crushing, enveloping, like a dream or a drug, did I reflect that if I lived with Giulia I wouldn’t rush to leave a bouquet of flowers in her office with an anonymous note; coming home from work, I wouldn’t fling myself at her, since we would have fought because one of us had forgotten to buy toothpaste; we wouldn’t exchange phone calls punctuated by sighs, or erotic text messages. So it was better this way. The question of jealousy seemed to me closed.

Some time afterward, however, I had the temptation to do something. I was spending a week in Rome, rather than the usual two days, and, not being able, naturally, to spend it with Giulia, I found myself with a lot of free time. Some I spent walking in “our” neighborhood, up and down Via del Corso, wandering between the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, sitting first in one café and then another, letting myself be pulled along by the river of foreign tourists until I lost any sense of where I was. Even today, after two years of Roman vacations, I get lost in the center of the city as soon as I leave the perpendicular line of the Corso. For someone accustomed to the perfect symmetry of Manhattan, the twisting streets of the Italian capital seem a labyrinth of squares and narrow alleys, all the same: a fountain, a column, a flaking wall, a café, a market stall, a wild dog, a motorcycle, a beggar, a group of American or Japanese tourists, another fountain... And in appearing to me indecipherable, impenetrable, Rome reminds me of Giulia: mysterious, seductive, majestic, happy, talkative, endowed with an ancient wisdom, breathtakingly beautiful, capable of making you lose your head and then demolishing everything with that laugh of hers...

But I’ve lost the thread, I was saying something else: that at a certain point I had the temptation to do something. I wanted to see her husband. I knew his surname. I knew he was a lawyer. A couple of phone calls were sufficient and I knew what day he would appear in court. I went with my heart beating madly. What impression would he make? What if he was hideous, the man for whom Giulia lovingly made dinner every night? Or what if, on the other hand, he was incredibly handsome? When I finally saw him, and heard him speak in front of the judge, I realized that he was neither. He was a normal man, with the face of a decent, respectable person. Against every expectation, I found him congenial. Yes, jealousy really seemed to have passed. To ask her and myself too many questions would only ruin everything. I became even more careful than before not to compromise the secrecy of our love. Giulia was no longer alone in protecting her marriage. Now I, too, wanted to help her.

I would never have imagined, as I was thinking along these lines in the courtroom, just a short distance from her husband, in what way I was to find myself helping her. Three months ago, while Giulia was following me along the route from a café near the Pantheon to the entrance of the Raphael, a storm broke. Umbrellas opened, tourists fled, streets emptied. I turned to look at her: With her rain-wet face she was beautiful, terribly desirable. I committed an imprudence: I pushed her into a doorway and kissed her for a long time, as if in a trance, slipping my hands under her skirt, where, I knew — she had promised me — she wasn’t wearing panties. When we came out again into the street, embracing and running in the rain, someone saw us without our noticing. A man. A journalist. A colleague of Giulia’s, who had worked for years at the same newspaper, and who had tried in vain, for years, to get her into bed. He followed us to the entrance of the Raphael. Maybe he waited for us there, maybe he simply gave the doorman a tip, more generous than mine, or maybe he even had an informant. The fact is that the next day, when they were both at the office, he sent Giulia a message and began to blackmail her. Either she slept with him or he would tell her husband everything. “You’re scum,” Giulia said to him when they met in a corridor at the office. “Yes,” the man answered, and I imagined him drooling. Let me make it clear: Everyone — at the newspaper and outside it — courted Giulia. I would like to explain the reason for this fascination. She’s beautiful, of course, but it’s not only that. It’s that Giulia has a particular sensuality which certain women are granted, and by virtue of which she emanates an eroticism without realizing it, without even trying. She has the air of a woman who is ready to flirt with anyone, whereas in reality she doesn’t think about it at all. The result is irresistible. Men fall at her feet. I know because, with that innocent laugh, she told me herself. But when one of them, like the colleague in question, insists, and the pursuit becomes annoying, she won’t play, she coldly cuts it off. That man, therefore, detested her. He was like a hungry beast who follows his prey for months, years, and knows he will never be able to savage it. Giulia in spike heels. Giulia wearing boots. Giulia in shorts. Giulia with her navel showing. He was going mad. And when he saw her with me, he thought that he had finally found his chance to capture that prey. “I’m not in a hurry,” he told her, excited.

As I feared, Giulia changed. We didn’t see each other for three weeks. Whereas before we talked on the phone practically every day, in that period even phone calls became rare, brief, monosyllabic. Giulia felt stalked, pursued, spied on. She was afraid to see me. To provide the blackmailer with further proof. To be accused by her husband, lose the love of her children. Finally we met, but we were together only for a few hours, in a car with tinted windows that I had rented, and for the first time I saw her cry. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to lose me, but even more she didn’t want to lose her family. She didn’t want to break the magical, fragile accord that held her life in balance. I dropped her at her scooter, saying, “I’m going to the airport, I’ll call you tomorrow from New York,” and I left in a screech of tires. But I didn’t go to the airport.

I took a room at the Excelsior, I telephoned New York, putting off all my appointments indefinitely, and stayed in Rome. Without even needing to think about it, I had found the solution, the only one possible. I knew the name of the journalist who was blackmailing her. I easily found a photograph and information about him on Google. His father, a businessman, had died some years earlier, leaving a substantial inheritance. He didn’t have money problems, or real career aspirations. He wasn’t a famous reporter, having been stuck at a desk all his life. Every so often he was interviewed on television about the activities of the secret services: from there, I imagined, came his propensity for blackmail. I discovered where he lived with his wife and two children — on the Lungotevere, a few hundred meters from the Pantheon — and that was how he had happened to see us on that cursed afternoon. Giulia had told me what sort of man he was. He didn’t get along with his wife, treated her badly, seemed to enjoy making fun of her in public, as if to demonstrate his superiority. The poor woman, at dinners of colleagues that Giulia had sometimes attended with her husband, took it and took it, then every so often they had a tremendous quarrel. One Saturday, I posted myself near the man’s house and saw the whole family go out together, father, mother, children. They went shopping in a small supermarket in the neighborhood. I didn’t at all like the way he behaved with her, not bothering to help her carry the heaviest bags, and, with the children, grumbling with irritation at their innocent whims. In my rented car with the tinted windows, I waited near his house another couple of evenings. He would come home on his motorino, as so many do here in Rome, a little after midnight — always at the same time. A time when the Lungotevere is deserted.

I have to digress here, in order to make what happened next understandable. I was the first in my family of Italian-American immigrants to get a college degree. My family would not have had the money, or the patience or the desire, to send me to college. When I finished high school, I enlisted in the Army. I went to the military academy, became an officer, and, with the rank of lieutenant, served in the Special Forces, the Green Berets. Besides teaching me to kill, the Army paid for the college education that my family could never have afforded. After I got my law degree, I waited a short time, then I resigned and returned to civilian life. Of my years in uniform, what remains is a medal for valor — I prefer not to speak of how and where I got it — and the techniques of hand-to-hand combat. My specialty was the knife.

It was simple to get one. In Rome you can find knives of all sizes in hunting and fishing stores. I chose the one suitable for my needs: a short but sharp blade. The following evening, I waited as usual near the house. When he got off his scooter I came alongside him in the car, asking through the window, in my halting Italian, where was the closest hospital, and waving a huge map of Rome. I coughed, I stuttered, I looked like someone who was about to have a heart attack. He was obviously annoyed, but he opened the car door and leaned in to show me on the map. Under the map I held the knife. With a quick movement, from right to left, I cut his throat and pulled him in toward me. He fell without a cry. I had covered the seat with plastic, and I used a towel to stanch the blood. I closed the door and drove off. I parked a kilometer farther on, along the Tiber, near a bridge. Not a soul in sight. I took his wallet and watch. The body made a thud, and was immediately swallowed up by the water. I threw the knife and the wallet, emptied of money, into the river, much farther on, from two different bridges. I cleaned the car, took it to a garage, slept in the hotel. The next morning I got on a plane and returned to New York, but not before changing my victim’s euros to dollars and destroying the watch.

Giulia, whom I hadn’t heard from since the day of our last, brief encounter, called me three days later. She didn’t want to tell me anything on the telephone. Only that she needed to see me urgently. I took the first plane. We met in one of our usual cafés. She followed me to one of our usual hotels. In the room, she told me everything: the mysterious disappearance of her colleague the blackmailer, the corpse retrieved from the river, the lack of a motive, the police groping for clues, the hypothesis of murder committed during a robbery by some tramp, drug addict, or radical — the only types who hung around under the bridges and along the banks of the Tiber late at night. No one had seen anything. The crime seemed destined to remain unsolved. Without another word we undressed, we made love, then we lay there, silent, close. Until, as if overcome by a profound weariness, we fell asleep. And when we woke, it was as if everything could resume exactly as before.

Like every Italian-American, I’d had a Catholic education. As an adult, I stopped going to church and confessing for Holy Communion, but I remember perfectly well that a man can sin and be forgiven. God has mercy for everything, even a mortal sin. It’s necessary, however, for the sinner to repent. And I didn’t repent. For some time I deluded myself: It was true, I had cancelled out a human life, but that man was a pig, an unworthy being, garbage. I took a husband from a woman who didn’t love him, a father from children who deserved better, I said to myself. But the illusion didn’t last. I had become a lawyer because the concept of justice fascinated me, the attempt by men to come as close as possible to the truth. And the truth, bare and crude, is that I killed a man, I executed him without a trial. And I did it all alone: I was prosecutor, judge, executioner. A monstrosity.

And still I do not repent. I am aware of my sin, and yet I do not repent. I say further: I would do it again. I’ve had many women in my life, many have loved me, but I never really loved any of them in return. As a young man, seducing women was a mark of distinction, a badge attesting to virility and courage. I was attracted to the two I married, but never really in love. With some others it was a fleeting infatuation. For the most part, not even that. Only now that my hair is turning gray do I truly love; for the first time in my life. And I don’t intend to stop. If the seal of our love is secrecy, if the precondition is to maintain a magic circle that includes her husband and children, I will be vigilant so that the circle doesn’t break. If one day someone else discovers us, I’ll get another knife. I will protect my love, however I can, as long as I can.

As a member of the legal profession, I know that the perfect crime doesn’t exist. Sooner or later almost all murderers are discovered. That’s why I’m writing these lines, this memoir. To set down in black-and-white that Giulia had nothing to do with it. Giulia didn’t ask me to do anything. Giulia would never have approved of what I did. She would probably leave me if she knew. But meanwhile, until then, until my crime is eventually discovered, Giulia is mine. Two days a month, twelve hours a day, in a certain sense always, Giulia is mine. My Roman holidays continue, they might continue like this for my whole life, I’d put my signature on it. Like the signature and date I now place at the end of this document: Jack Galiardo, Rome, March 21, first day of spring, sitting in a café between the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.

I check the time: My love is late today, ten minutes already. Could something have happened? If so, why didn’t she call me? I pay the bill. Light another cigarette. I smoke it with rapid, deep inhalations, eagerly scrutinizing the faces in the crowd, in search of hers. I take the last swallow of beer. I push the chair back, I get up. There she is.

Tiburtina Noir Blues by Francesca Mazzucato

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Tiburtina Station

A second-class station, a station to put up with, then cast off. So it seems to some: sticky with worn-out expectations, sickening with the sharp odors of sweat, unwashed skin, and rotting food. For me it was vital, I feel bound to this piece of the city, this place of shipwrecked souls, with its sudden drafts, perennial construction sites, gritty, dirty stone walls. You hear the echo of the street outside, only one sound lost among the many in this tangled skein of balustrades, platforms, asphalt, iron, stairs, sad shops, and tracks that end who knows where.

“Look at this crowd, what a mess, this station is a bordello, makes you sick, yes, let’s go sit down, let’s move away, there are Poles, Bulgarians, and Romanians lined up outside waiting for some bus or other, going back to their countries whose capital cities aren’t worth shit, cities that no one remembers, with names too crowded with consonants, they’re going home or to some other country for their deals, and I could say a few things about those deals, things you wouldn’t believe. Deals and relatives go together for the drifters of Tiburtina, but basically the whole world is home, don’t they say? Come on, sister, it’s what they say, it’s pure popular wisdom, pay attention to me, I’m well acquainted with them, these Bulgarians and Romanians, these human rejects running away from everything, who make sweet eyes at you, then become predators — they have a brutality inside, a brutality that they spew in your face, you can’t imagine the violence they inflict, I know it, I bear the marks, but you can’t imagine, sister.”

I don’t even try. I’ve never tried to put myself in someone else’s place, to think like others, and, lucky for me, life has coddled and protected me, it’s spared me the violence you’re talking about, life singled me out from birth, granted me privilege, inserted me among the elite, if it hadn’t would I be here? She’s following me, her high-heeled sandals, really hideous, are noisy and they attract the glances of some Sinhalese. One sticks out his tongue with a lascivious gesture, disgusting, and it’s better if they don’t even notice us. We should hurry. I try to camouflage myself; in the meantime we get to the bar and sit down.

“Let’s have something to drink while we wait, all right?”

“Yes, perfect, I’m thirsty, order some wine, what was I telling you? Damn, there’s gum stuck to my heel, disgusting, I paid fifteen euros for these sandals, to you, a lady, it won’t seem much, for me it was quite a sum, usually I buy shoes at a stall, from Biagio, who charges three euros a pair, four at most, one time I gave him a handjob in his van and he gave me three pairs, can you imagine what a stroke of luck? A simple, quick handjob, just a matter of holding it, not even that bad; he has a hairy stomach but he doesn’t smell, or make you do something you don’t want to. I gave him this handjob and I was all set with shoes for quite a while. Eh... certain kinds of luck don’t happen often. What were we saying? Yes, about these people here, these Bulgarians and Romanians, who now, if I understand it, can come and go without even showing their documents, Madonna, what a shithole politics is. Let them stay in their countries instead. Maybe in those countries, maybe there are even some nice things, but a person with her back to the wall, like me, doesn’t have much time or desire to think about nice things, a person like me, sister, doesn’t have the desire to feel tolerant, trying to understand is hard work, it’s a luxury, a privilege for the rich. For someone who’s alone, drifting, without ties, someone who lost her mother as a child and ended up with a goddamn drunkard of a father, nice things are a cigarette smoked with pleasure or a man who fucks you tenderly, or something like our meeting, sister, I mean it, or maybe something like Biagio and the shoes, those are the nice things, but I’m used to seeing garbage all around me, and these people are garbage. Don’t make a face, I’m not mean, but it’s easier to think of an enemy, to enjoy someone who seems worse off than you at that moment when solitude seizes you by the throat, gnaws at your guts, devours your insides. It’s been years since I’ve tried to hold onto something, to make a regular life, but I always end up skidding off track, something doesn’t work, it slips and slides away, it doesn’t go right, then I have to vent, that’s natural, and I have to unburden my mind, my thoughts. If you don’t they’re in danger of becoming a burden, you have no idea how certain thoughts can harass you, scream in your head, so I start observing those people and doing like everyone else, thinking of them as the enemy, shitty foreigners who come to steal our jobs and our opportunities, that’s how I see them... Instead I should see them as a mirror reflecting my puffy face, the dark circles under my eyes, because — you wouldn’t believe it — but I know I’m not so different, it’s only that I don’t admit it and never will, that’s all. It’s a shortcut and I take it; I hear the newspaper lady who, after pushing away a fat gypsy with a child in her hand and one at her neck, mutters, Disgusting, and if I think the same thing while I drink a glass of wine sitting on this uncomfortable chair, shooing off flies and intrusive glances, if I think the same thing I can delude myself that I’m not the totally marginalized person that I am.”

She points, raising herself slightly from the chair; her body gives off a fetid odor. I look at them through the window, lined up on one of the platforms, in groups, holding tight to suitcases like the ones people used in the ’70s. Some women are leaning against the wall at one of the side entrances to Tiburtina.

“With those packages, those old suitcases piled on top of each other, those boxes tied with string, they make me sick, and the ragged children, little tramps ready to stick their hands in your pocket or your purse. You get to hate them, it’s not out of meanness, sister, you agree? You know, you know better than me that to say a thing is good or bad is difficult, sometimes certain situations impose choices that go back and forth between good and bad, and then what the fuck are good and bad? Sometimes there’s not a big difference, right?”

When she speaks like that she scares me, but I know it won’t last long, luckily; sometimes I listen, sometimes I pretend because her speech is more like a disconnected muttering, anyone would think she’s a poor lunatic with heels that are too high and a confused mind, she eats her words or they’re incomprehensible because of the spaces between her teeth and her pale, cracked lips. Every so often she spits and a tiny drop of saliva lands near my motionless, clasped hands, or on the table; she notices, and dries it with her sleeve, then continues her monologue, which is repetitive, like a litany or maybe a prayer, an invocation, a lamentation. Something indefinable and strange, I would like to shut her up but I can’t. The truth is, she doesn’t want to talk to me but to everyone and no one, and anyone who can pretend to pay attention will do. Outside, the platform areas are blue, a blue lacerated by the colors and noises of the city buses and the long-distance buses that sometimes sit for a while, sometimes arrive quickly, pick up passengers, and leave. Evening is coming, a pink and blue sunset, dotted with the lights of the streetlamps and some advertising billboards. I don’t know if she’s noticed. She asks if she can have another drink, I nod to the waitress, who wipes her hands on her apron, brings a carafe of wine with two glasses, and rolls her eyes as if to say, When are you leaving? But it’s just 7:00 and the bar closes at 9:00, so she has to be patient. I know perfectly well that she’s irritating, her body and her manner are irritating, especially when she raises her voice and speeds up the rhythm of the litany, speaking like a psycho and making the other (very few) customers in the bar turn. I’m sure, in fact, that the waitress is disgusted, and since I’m with her I have the same effect, because that waitress can’t understand what in the world I’m doing in the company of this woman. She shouldn’t speculate, or feel irritation, or ask us why we’re together, all she has to do is bring the wine. All she has to do is take the money and bring back a handful of coins in change. That’s all.

“It’s a while since I felt so relaxed. I’ve had so many bad times and never anyone to give me a hand. I’ve always had clowns instead of men around me, good-for-nothings with no balls who ruined my life, and now their ghosts chase me, their voices echo in that shithole where I live, have you ever seen ghosts? Have you ever been pursued by irritating voices? No, eh, no, right? You’re respectable, you’ve got money and an education, why would you ever be persecuted, you’re a person who’s got a nice life. I’m just unlucky, and, shit, now my nose is running, this damn allergy.”

She sneezes three or four times, opens her purse and rummages for something, with the back of her right hand she wipes her nose, with the left she’s still rummaging around, then, exasperated, she empties the purse on the table. The waitress turns for a second, hearing the sound of objects falling on Formica, but fortunately some customers come in. Two Tampaxes, a glass bead necklace, and two rings that seem like a child’s toys or old prizes from an Easter egg tossed out who knows when, a crumpled package of Winston blues, a red pen with a chewed cap, a felt-tip pen, a bunch of receipts, cards for masseuses, fortune tellers, and cleaning agencies, a wallet and plastic document holder, three matches, supermarket makeup, spilled and half-empty, and a tiny cracked mirror. I think of my expensive foundation in its precious case, tiny grains that make the skin opaque and smooth. I think of my wallet with all the slots for credit cards. I make a rapid mental comparison to reassure myself. I keep my hands away from all that stuff. Finally she finds the package of Kleenex and dumps everything else back into the purse that’s leaning against her feet. I feel a sensation of retching after seeing her worthless things, horror that stinks of rot and sweat, of age and negligence, the traces of her devastated life, the weave of small useless things that mark her desperation. I breathe in and out and it passes. I can’t let myself go, not now. I order another carafe of wine and two slices of pizza.

“Yes, good idea, I wanted to tell you I was hungry, you could have asked me before, when the allergy attacks I get all puffy, my eyes tear, I sneeze, I can’t taste flavors anymore, but now it’s better and I’m really hungry. What, are you eating too? You’re really eating too, keeping me company, you won’t leave me to eat alone like a dog, like the maid who eats in the kitchen? You’re not showing how you despise me, the way everyone always does?”

I nod.

“Good, pizza, then maybe a sandwich. Look there. You see that woman over there? She’s Bulgarian, from a town in the countryside, I don’t know the name. I met her here once, she’s a prostitute, and a client brought her back to the station, she’d been beaten, her face was swollen, she had a black eye, her head bleeding, she was staggering, it was also lovely, the tracks in the early morning, with all the wires, the gray sky, the trains standing there, and only a few souls waiting, it was lovely, and I must have been there watching and smoking a cigarette, waiting for the train to Termini to go home; but, not even thinking about it, I helped that Bulgarian shit whore who was screaming in pain, I got her a pizza, I helped clean her wounds, she told me she needed something strong to drink and I ordered a brandy for her. I paid, goes without saying. You should have seen her, she was indecent, in a miniskirt with orange sequins stuck to her thighs, no underpants, and black boots with very high heels, threatening, like her expression, well, I didn’t think about it, I took care of her and fed her and she, that shit whore who should go back to her disgusting country, she cheated me out of the little money I had when I went to the bathroom. Then they say... they say so many things, that you shouldn’t be a racist, that we need solidarity, but what solidarity are we talking about?”

I order a bottle of water and another carafe of wine, still so long to wait, hours that pile up on one another, in the midst of this construction, it’s already started, that’s going to make this hideous station something difficult to imagine, for the future, glass everywhere. I let my mind wander, trying to picture commercial areas, a radical cleaning, police everywhere insuring the safety of middle-class people, luminous spaces for shopping — it will be beautiful someday. Now it’s depressing, the way her words are depressing, the way even her tone of voice is somehow depressing, a melancholy that enters the bones and chills you. Luckily I just need a little patience, just a little patience and this agony will be over.

“I come here the same hours she does, the Bulgarian whore, not that I do the same work, let me be clear, my dear — I’ve given it away for money only three times in my life and it was a question of real desperation, but I defy anyone to say that Maria Grazia is a whore, I defy anyone to even think it. I come from a town in the south, it’s true, my town is a dead town, all the young people have given up, thrown in the towel. My father’s still there, that slobbering drunk, and four of my six brothers and sisters, but I haven’t seen them for years, that’s my past, I fled as a child. I’ve had two husbands, three, no, five children, given up first to foster care, then adoption, eh, my dear, some people are born with the maternal instinct and some aren’t, and now I’m alone, I’m not hiding these things, but I don’t want anyone to associate me with those people there, those dirty tramps who come to steal bread from us Italians.”

I nod again, I don’t know why but I do. I have the illusion, agreeing with her, that time is passing more quickly. Time has a strange rhythm in this place, it’s like the flow of time in a hospital. The squalor is suffocating, choking, a squalor that, strangely, you soon get used to, it tames you, drugs you, bringing you back to an almost animal stage.

“This pizza is good” — chewing, she drips tomato on her shirt, she doesn’t notice, and I wipe it off with a napkin — “really, they warmed it up, hey, what are you doing? Oh, sorry, oh, oh, okay, no problem, sister, happens to me all the time. I spill things on myself, I know it’s because I’m greedy, I’m hungry, and I don’t always have something to eat, I’ve struggled sometimes to get a meal, my life is a mess, my mother died when I was eight, shit, order something else to eat, look at that slutty Bulgarian, her lipstick is smeared, it’s making me lose my appetite.”

She won’t lose her appetite; at my grandfather’s house she cleaned out the refrigerator after she killed him with that sort of modern statue that he bought at auction in London, the old fool. He was so pleased when he came back from that auction with those horrible, expensive pieces. He was especially proud of that statue — to me it was repulsive the moment I saw it, but I pretended to appreciate it with him. I make a great effort to maintain a certain style of life: I knew that the will was all in my favor, I knew roughly the amount, I mentally calculated what I would soon get my hands on, but I felt an uncontrollable rage for all that money thrown away on a stupid statue. Grazia grabbed it and bashed his head in. She could’ve used whatever she wanted, that wasn’t a problem, all she had to do was kill that disgusting old man who had stopped supporting me, and then plant her fingerprints everywhere. Besides, she didn’t like interference. She urged me not to get involved, and I didn’t, she said that she knew her business. I can’t say she was wrong.

“Look at the tracks when evening comes, this station seems different, there are souls walking on the platforms, dragging themselves, look at them, fragments that have survived, lives torn to pieces and then put back together, like mine, look at the scene, it’s changed suddenly, what a strange effect, the platform must be very slippery, an intercity train just came through, some others should be arriving soon and then your cousin’s.”

“More wine?”

“Sure, sister, let’s have more wine, basically you’re set and so am I. I should be fine, no? And there’s no risk, right? I’ll listen to you, I’ll lie low, hole up in my house and put those things in a safe place, and they’ll say it was a robbery by those disgusting Romanians... Those disgusting Romanians... People like when they make headlines in the TV news, the talk about the safety of the citizens in the balance, about the dangers of immigration. Aaah ahhaha! I mean, immigration is a horror and it’s dangerous too, and those people, look, right there” — she points like a lunatic at a group of women and children getting on a bus — “are criminals, but let’s say that in this case they’ve got nothing to do with it, but who cares, no? One more, one less... Heavens, I’m only forty-two, maybe with the jewelry, the gold coins I took — oh, your grandfather cared about them, they were carefully hidden — maybe with all those things I can reconstruct a scrap of a decent life for myself, get out of this wretched poverty.”

She’s wearing a low-cut gray sweater. Under it you can see a dirty, threadbare flesh-colored bra. A thickset man with a mustache enters the bar, in a horrible brown-checked shirt, a type of man you never see even by mistake in the places I usually frequent, art openings, sushi bars, exclusive parties — a man who must have short, dirty nails and bread crumbs in his mustache, I don’t see them but I’m sure they’re there — passes by, looks at her, ONLY at her, and this causes me, in spite of my horror at this man, a strange pang of jealousy; he stops a moment, casting his eyes on her décolleté, they linger there, bovine eyes the color of eggs fried too long, observing her abundant flesh; I can read in his expression a pleasant excitement, but how is it possible to be excited looking at this wreck? This human refuse that thinks about rebuilding a life when she’ll never have a life, when her life will be so brief she can’t imagine it. Here’s some more wine, she must be drunk, or at least tipsy.

“You want some, dear? It’s good, this wine, I like sparkling white wine, one of my two husbands — wait, ever since they beat me up outside Tiburtina, trying to steal a necklace, I’ve lost my memory. I was three months recovering, you know, I didn’t lose my memory completely, but I have trouble remembering — one, maybe it wasn’t even one of my husbands but a man I was with for a while, told me I didn’t know shit about wine and had a typical woman’s tastes, stupid tastes. Well, I don’t give a fuck and I’ve always, and only, drunk sparkling white wine like this — it’s very good. I was telling you. I could clean myself up, find a job, eh, what do you say, maybe with all those things it might be time for life to smile on me, to start going well, it never has, I’ve always been so unlucky. So unlucky.”

She’s crying. Well, it means she’s getting drunk. I don’t say anything; I’ve noticed that she doesn’t like to be touched, she hates caresses, sudden physical contact, she’s terrified when anyone — man or woman, doesn’t matter — she’s terrified when anyone touches her, she gets defensive, and it’s no good if she loses her total trust right now. Other people’s hands scare her, and it’s understandable, poor thing — if anything about her worthless life can ever be understood — she was badly beaten up years ago. Maybe even as a girl, she took a violent beating on the street, she mumbled something like this the day I met her. Then there were the husbands and various boyfriends, the violence that she doesn’t even count, but they worked her over, they reduced her brain to mush, her whole face is a scar, but all you want to do is hit her, she is so irritating, I’m sure that waitress would happily hit her, me too. And yet I needed a drifter with a residue of innocence. I came here many times, to the Tiburtina station, a neighborhood far away from the one where the “operation” was going to take place. I couldn’t find anyone for my purpose in the wealthy neighborhoods, those chic, fashionable neighborhoods that my family liked, where I grew up protected by a ring of private schools, by the sharp vigilance of governesses, restrained by the paralyzing block of solitude whose echo I heard, room after room, in that labyrinthine house where, as a child, I lost the map of doors, verandas, windows. I was looking for someone suitable to do the dirty work and I found the right person, I was really very clever about it, she was perfect, my grandfather’s house is full of her fingerprints, her traces, I wore gloves and didn’t touch anything. She didn’t ask me why, she didn’t even notice, she carried out my orders with her bare hands, like an idiot. At last I’ll be able to pay back the person who provides the coke, those types don’t have much patience — first they give you the top-quality stuff without a fuss, you spoil your lover, your friends, you all snort it with that marvelous Dolce & Gabbana exclusive designer straw that’s only sold abroad, and not everywhere (I found them in Ibiza during a quick trip for a party, and I bought ten to give to certain friends), they arrive punctually with the white powder, and your parties become the most sought after, your invitations the most in demand; the only thing is, then they present the bill, it’s okay to make them wait a little, then give them a down payment, a diamond necklace, another small down payment, and meanwhile they continue to supply you and your lovers and friends, and then the debt goes up, it rises, that old bastard couldn’t understand how much I NEEDED to have MORE money available, he took the liberty of prying into my finances to make a point about how my lifestyle seemed excessive to him. Come on, excessive? I have friends who go around with Arab millionaires, you have no idea the life they lead, I’m like a bum compared to them, I told him, but he wouldn’t listen, he muttered moralistic tirades about good sense, ethics, growing up, once he even talked to me about a JOB. I started laughing and walked out, but is this really funny? Anyway, now the problem is solved. Good, first the debts, then I’ll be able to buy that splendid apartment the filthy old man wouldn’t give me for Christmas; he wanted to enjoy his money, he wanted to spend his last years in peace, but how the fuck was I supposed to manage? As soon as I saw that apartment I let it be known among the “rich people” that they’d better keep their clutches off it, that it would be mine. Well, I can’t care too much about my reputation now. Even Sandro said he was going to leave. He’s used to spending time in the gym, snorting the high-quality stuff whenever he wants, free access to the joint account, restaurants every night, and I began to find myself in serious trouble — that stubborn old man, all his fault. Really, you could say he asked for it.

“I might try to see my children again, I know it’s not right to go and look for them when they’ve been adopted, it’s not right to disturb the equilibrium of young kids, but they might have the desire too, might like to know me, to understand that I wasn’t in any condition to take care of them when they were born, that I had big problems, and the new families might have a bit of compassion and decide at least to let me see them, to find out if they’re well. We’re waiting for your cousin, right? There’s not much time left, it’s rushing by. I understand, seeing what happened. On the telephone she believed it about the robbery, right?”

Of course she believed it. She believed it so completely that she repeated the special offers of my telephone service provider. There is no cousin to pick up, but in about fifteen minutes we’ll go to the track where the regional train passes, and a slight push will be enough, you might even slip by yourself but I’ll help you, happily, you’ll end up under the train, and they’ll find your foul body mangled and almost unrecognizable. Almost. I’ve managed to stick a couple of Grandfather’s coins in your purse and a card from the restaurant he always went to — it will be easy to connect you to him. I’ll be set, and so will you, basically, you poor derelict, you’ll have stopped suffering. You’ll die knowing you’ve done the world, and especially me, a favor by getting rid of that old man. He terrorized my parents for a lifetime with his despotic claims, he made my father a worm, with no balls and no will power, my mother an unstable neurotic who kept herself going with drugs and clinics, he sent my brother off to the United States. He allowed me, it’s true, a comfortable life, but it was always as if he were giving me a handout, as if I should be content like a dog that picks at a bone with a piece of rubbery meat attached; that’s how I felt, that old man was throwing me crumbs the way you throw birdseed to the pigeons, he thought he could humiliate me with impunity, at his pleasure, with that sadistic, distant little smile. Now he’s lying in the enormous living room of his gloomy but (it’s true) very beautiful villa, all those super-sophisticated alarm systems were of no use to him, I’ve always known the maid’s day off, she’s been with him for decades, more a slave than a housekeeper. I showed up at the gate timidly, saying I was with a friend, half a bottle of sleeping pills in his usual glass of port (incredible how alcohol enhances the effect of benzodiazepine), and everything unfolded naturally, without a hitch. He’s lying beside the desk in the big living room, I don’t know anymore how many floors or how many rooms the villa has, set in its vast park, cared for by a crowd of gardeners, I’ve never been interested, maybe that will go to my mother, but I know for certain that all the real estate, the stocks, and the money in the bank go to me (my brother’s had a trust fund for years). Mama can keep the villa, she and I never see each other, I can’t stand her crises and her sense of victimhood, and I could never live in the same place where he lived, ate, burped, peed, and where now he lies with bits of brain matter scattered over the expensive carpet. Drowned in a pool of red blood. Oh, no, really, I couldn’t.

“Excuse me, have you looked at your watch?”

I was lost in my thoughts. Grazia wipes her mouth and points to my wrist. She’s right, it’s time.

“Gracious, it’s late. Shall we go to the track?”

She nods, sways as she gets up, perfect, she’s tipsy, swaying, and more ravaged-looking than usual. The waitress must have finished her shift because, with my fifty-euro bill, I pay another girl, one I hadn’t noticed, and she doesn’t seem to really notice us either; luckily I put on this scarf. I take the change and head to the exit, I check the track on the board, she’s dawdling, I take her arm, we can’t be late, and in fact we aren’t late, the timing is absolutely perfect, she holds on and smiles at me, she stinks of poverty and empty hopes, and I can’t wait to be free of her.

“I told you my daughter must be fourteen by now? It’s true I don’t have a maternal instinct, but sometimes I wonder how she is, if she resembles me, what sort of life she has, maybe she even has a boyfriend, what do you think? Oh shit, I’m boring, eh, always talking, I don’t shut up for a moment, you’ve offered me a chance to change my life and I’m annoying you, wait, I’m going to trip, don’t hurry so much, please, not so fast. I thought your cousin always goes in first class, here I am, I’m coming, how beautiful Tiburtina is in the evening, it looks like it’s wrapped in velvet. Look, the train’s coming. Which car is your cousin usually in?”

I ignore her, I have to concentrate. The spot is perfect, I feel a drop of sweat beading my forehead, but I have taken a tranquilizer, I’ve got to maintain perfect self-control, I can’t make a mistake now, or it would all be in vain. She’s looking at the train, her back’s to me, she keeps asking about my cousin, I have to shut her up, it’s time, just a little push, I reach out my arm...

“Don’t move, stand still!”

They twist my arms behind me, they’re hurting me, the train’s coming, my heart is pounding, but what the fuck is happening? My plan, my project?

“What’s happening, sister, the police, but what in the world? Tell me...”

There are four of them, they’ve put handcuffs on me, they lead me out of the Tiburtina station, pushing me, separating me from her. Grazia disappears from view, I stagger, I feel lost, then I recover and confront them: I try to say that they don’t know who they’re dealing with, they cannot even REMOTELY imagine who they’re dealing with, that I belong to one of the most important families in the city. They aren’t listening to me, it’s disgraceful, the whole station seems to be blocked off, everyone’s looking at me, I’m a freak to all these derelicts, an amusing sideshow. An itching sensation spreads along my back. I was supposed to carry out an act that would allow me grandeur for the rest of my days, and I’m reduced to an ordinary criminal, even that despicable Bulgarian whore looks at me and laughs, she roars with laughter, showing broken yellow teeth, Grazia was right, she was really right about the Bulgarians, about the Romanians, about this woman who took advantage of her good faith and robbed her, oh, she was right, because Grazia is my friend, no, she’s not human waste, I never thought so, I had respect for her, you shit whore, you hurt her, I’m yelling that she hurt my friend and shouldn’t have, then I spit on her, and I don’t care if the cop on my right gives me a painful slap, my family’s lawyer will take care of her, a prince among lawyers, who will come and get me out of this mess, the spit hits her in the face, when I see Grazia I’ll tell her, I want her to be proud of me; the truth is, I’ve never had a friend like her, not even in high school. Okay, I wanted to push her under the train, help her slip, drunk as she was, but I would have done it unhappily, the circumstances were beyond my control. I’m almost glad it didn’t happen, I miss her company, let’s hope that they don’t put me in isolation, that they let me stay with her. I’m not very talkative myself but I really like listening to her, and she’s never quiet, I unfortunately have this voice that talks to me inside and a different voice that comes out of my mouth and says almost nothing, so I’m confused, but she, Grazia, she’s tough, someone who knows her business, she even got Biagio to give her some shoes, thanks to a simple handjob, a hundred points to my friend. I could never make grandfather understand how much I needed the increase in my monthly check, a bonus and that apartment, I could never explain to him that he HAD to get it for me, otherwise he was going to shatter my life, shatter everything I had, I insisted, I talked, I insisted; instead, life is so simple, a handjob at the right moment is all you need, all you need is knowing what to use when you have to do something, and when you have to do it you do it, she taught me all that, I MUST see her again, hear her talk...

“You’re in trouble, signora, serious trouble.”

Night descends over the tracks at Tiburtina and if you watched carefully you would see that it really looks like velvet.

We’re in an anonymous room at the central police headquarters in Rome. A policewoman is talking to a woman who, it seems, is forty-two years old and is wearing a scarf, along with high-heeled sandals, a low-cut sweater of a light color, under which can be seen a pale bra, and a peasant skirt. Concealed behind a tinted window, several people observe the scene: the lawyer for the woman, whose name is Selvaggia Torri Livergnani; the vice-commissioner; one of the policemen who found the body of the grandfather, the well-known Count Edoardo Torri Livergnani; one of the policewomen who made the arrest; and a psychiatrist called in by the lawyer. The vice-commissioner speaks first:

“Sir, we found Count Livergnani lying on his back on the floor of the living room in his villa. The maid informed us, she’s still in a state of shock. We hurried to the place and found fingerprints all over the crime scene, obvious signs and clues leading to the granddaughter, without the shadow of a doubt. We wanted to be sure, and we located her as she was heading toward the Tiburtina station. We followed her; she sat by herself for more than an hour in the bar, talking to herself, a jumble of disconnected fragments that attracted the attention of one of the waitresses, whose signed statement I have here. Then we understood, with conclusive evidence, that Signora Torri Livergnani intended to throw herself under an arriving regional train that was headed to the Termini station. At that point we were obliged to proceed to the arrest. I hope you see, sir, of course we understand the family’s grief and would like to treat the case with maximum discretion.”

“I understand perfectly,” the lawyer says calmly. “But you see, and you can hear too, that she keeps asking about this imaginary friend Grazia, and when she’s alone she talks to her and she answers, addressing a ‘she’ who isn’t there, as if ‘she’ were the one who had actually committed the crime. What do you say, professor?”

“There will have to be an examination, but it strikes me as a clear case of split personality. If she’s faking, she’s a phenomenal actress — she should win an Oscar.”

“Yes,” the policewoman comments, speaking up, “she should win an Oscar if she’s faking it. While we were leaving the track at the Tiburtina station she spat in the face of a Bulgarian woman, saying it was for what she had done to Maria Grazia, but we found no trace of any Maria Grazia. In the car, as we were bringing her here, she kept asking about this Grazia. Then she became silent for a moment and in a strange voice said, ‘Don’t worry, sister, they won’t separate us.’

“Furthermore, I should add that Signora Torri Livergnani had camped out at the entrance to the Tiburtina station for several nights, and had already been removed once by the transit police, who also checked her documents. That’s it.”

“You can see that this is a very disturbed person, especially with the addition of these details.”

Most of them nod in agreement.

Behind the glass, the woman, left alone, smiles.

“Really, sister? You spat at that Bulgarian whore? I’m proud of you, you were great. Now it looks like we’re going to have some problems, eh, I understand, I’m not stupid, but I’m sure your powerful, wealthy family will get us out of this trouble as soon as possible, filthy rich people like you certainly don’t need a scandal. They’ll give us a hand, right?”

You can be sure of it, Grazia, you can be sure.

Words, Thoughts by Marcello Fois