Джанрико Карофильо - Rome Noir

Yin told me I don’t know what nonsense about her family in Cambodia; in other words, she really needed money. She wanted actual money, not numbers written in a stupid notebook, and she wanted it right away. Suddenly I saw her for what she was, a whore from the Forbidden City. Maybe she loved me, in the animal-like way that binds those girls to their source of income. Nonetheless, she was a scorpion, as Yichang put it.

I began to fear for my lower regions and I explained the problem to Yichang. I said that if it had been for myself I would never have asked. And, in fact, for myself I asked nothing. Only a couple of thousand euros for Yin. A laughable sum compared with what he owed me.

“Laughable, you say. Once I asked you for only half that, you remember?”

“I know, I behaved very badly. But so much time has passed. Let’s not dig it up again, please. Now it’s different.”

“You’re right, it’s different. Now I’m the one who finds myself a little short. Actually, I’m very short.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.”

“You mean you won’t give me the two thousand euros?”

“I can’t even give you a cent.”

“But what do I tell Yin?”

“Tell her you love her.”

“Do you take me for a fool? What’s a whore going to do with my love?”

“Until today I never heard you speak of Yin in those terms.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m afraid there is no other possibility.” With that, Yichang said goodbye, leaving me alone with my problems.

Overnight I had become broke again. There were a lot of Chinese people I owed money to, who had given me credit because Yichang guaranteed me. I understood that from now on everything would be different.

But the more immediate problem was represented by Yin. At least, so I saw it at the moment. Maybe I was getting too paranoid, but that girl’s long silences suddenly seemed to me threatening.

I explained that Yichang was a little short.

“You not have money you?”

I tightened my lips and shook my head. I told her I was sorry.

It was a bad moment but things settled down. I told her that I loved her and that I would stay with her.

“Me big problem now.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You take care me?”

“Of course, Yin.”

She peered at me without saying anything. I knew the meaning of that look. I stuck a hand in my pocket and gave her everything I had.

“Only this? You not take care me if you only this.”

I said again that I was sorry and that I loved her.

She stared into space for a very long time. I saw that her lips were trembling.

“You not good with me. You very bad,” she said finally, her eyes bright. Then she got up and left. I didn’t try to stop her.

I wish this ugly story had ended there. For a while I thought it had. Yin didn’t appear. I stopped going to the Forbidden City and had lost sight of Yichang. I no longer drank, I no longer smoked marijuana. I had even found a job. Not much, but little by little I was able to pay my debts and get back on my feet. I had put the pin with the bills on the night table so that I could look at it before going to sleep and meditate on my past errors. I would become a new person, this was my intention.

Maybe I would even have succeeded if Yin hadn’t knocked at my door one day. She said she wanted to talk to me. I let her in. She came straight into the bedroom, sat down on the bed, and, with her head bent, waited for me to join her.

I sat down beside her. “A lot of time has passed,” I said.

She nodded in her usual way. It wasn’t so long, really. Only a couple of months. But my style of life was so changed that to see Yin again was like diving into a distant past.

“You’re well?”

She nodded again.

“I’ve thought about you a lot.” I don’t know why I said it. Yes, the memory of her occasionally surfaced but only as one of the many things that had happened, one of my many mistakes. It wasn’t true that I had thought of her a lot. Not in that sense, at least.

She said nothing.

I felt embarrassed at having lied to her, and since the silence that fell after my words was unbearable, I asked what she had come to talk about.

She let some more moments pass, as if she had to gather her thoughts, then she raised her head and, looking me in the eyes, said, “Me like you. Think only this very long time.”

We made love as in the old days. The next day neither of us said anything, but to me it was clear that we were together again. Yin moved in with me. Or, rather, that day she stayed in my suite at the Hotel Excelsior and never left.

At sunset I headed off to work and when I came back at dawn I found her where I had left her, lying on the bed. She got up only to take a shower or get something to eat from the refrigerator. She never opened her mouth, just as in the old days.

I didn’t think of asking her what had impelled her to return to me, nor did I ask if she had resolved her problems or how. It was enough to find her there, ready and available only for me. Of course, I wondered what was the sense of a relationship like that. Because the fact is that I no longer loved her as I believed I once had. Yin was now like a bed dog. A kind of domestic animal, something comfortable to have in the house. Maybe my feelings were not very uplifting, but I decided not to beat my brains out. If it was all right for her, why should I have to make a lot of trouble for myself?

The end of this bad story came when I had stopped thinking about it. About the past, I mean. It happened sometimes that I remembered my nights at the Forbidden City, the girls who danced on the stage and the things that were said about them. But it happened less and less frequently, and anyway it was something so distant that it felt alien. It was as if neither Yin nor I had ever been the person of that time.

I began to think of us as a real, if somewhat peculiar, couple. I even considered asking Yin if she would like to have a child. This, because she seemed more and more affectionate. Not that she did anything apart from being silent and lying on the bed. I don’t know, it was something in her habits, in the way she made love. She seemed — how to put it? — really in love.

I felt serene. Until one day I found her sitting cross-legged on the bed waiting for me to come home from work. On the night table, beside the old pin with the bills, there was a bottle of red wine with two glasses. She poured the wine and offered me a glass.

Nothing like that had ever happened. Her proposing a toast, that is. So I asked her if there was something I didn’t know that we had to celebrate.

She shook her head smiling. And then: “You know everything. Me like you.” She touched my glass with hers and drank.

“I love you,” I said. I don’t know if it was true. I was happy that she had made the gesture, and was happy that she was there for me every day, on my bed, waiting for my return. If this can be called love, then I loved her.

I drank the wine, and was about to kiss her, but she moved her face. She grabbed me by the hair and pushed me down, on her breast. I began to kiss her there, then on the neck and behind the ear. I tried again to bring my lips to hers, and again she moved. Suddenly, in a flash, I understood. And in understanding I lost consciousness, with an acid taste in my mouth that wasn’t wine.

I came to as in the dream, paralyzed. And what else can I say? It’s not true that before you die you see your life go by in an instant. This didn’t happen to me, at least. In that final moment, I thought only of how blind and stupid a human being can be. I’m referring to all the things I hadn’t realized in those months. For example, the way I began to win again after telling Yichang that I was in no position to pay my debts.