Джанрико Карофильо - Rome Noir

Then I also wondered if anything would have been different if I hadn’t told her and Yichang my dream. And I almost reached the conclusion that certain things would have happened anyway. I say almost because when Yin took the pin with the bills and stuck it in the pillow, I understood that she was about to do something different from what I thought. She didn’t intend to emasculate me. I saw her sit on my stomach. Then she raised the pillow over her head and stared for a moment at a precise point between my eyes. Everything lasted less than a second, and maybe that’s why I didn’t see any film go by. I thought only that it’s really astonishing how a person can be capable of not thinking things through.

Translated by Ann Goldstein

Ostia

I’m not dressed properly. I realize it from the way the other passengers are staring at me.

They’re right. The train headed to Ostia-Lido is gritty, dust-coated, and none of them would dare set foot in it wearing a white linen suit. Here in Rome, dirt has a fascination with soft colors, insisting on the palest tints, and enjoys removing from them every trace of whiteness. My suit will soon be covered by a thin patina of grime, but that doesn’t matter now. I no longer distinguish colors or the faces of the people around me. I no longer hear their voices, I have no desire to listen to their words, what they say, what they think.

English , that man in shorts and flip-flops said when he saw me arrive. And the fat woman next to him nodded her head yes.

English. Of course, that explains everything. My clothes, my composure, even the indifference I show toward the curious gazes of the other travelers. For them, my detachment is not the result of a natural disgust for a rude, vulgar segment of humanity. No, if I’m like this it’s because I’m English. If I act like this, it’s because I was born in a place where to sit silently reading a book is not yet considered a crime. Criminal, if anything, is the insistence with which a girl keeps asking me question after question, in an absurd mixture of English and Italian. She thinks I’m a tourist, she thinks I’m here just to dive into the dirty waters of Rome. And she won’t stop talking to me about the Colosseum, about the marvels of the city, about places that in her view I really cannot do without seeing. Stupid girl. If she only knew how much beauty I’ve seen, and how much pain I’ve felt in the face of its enchantment. But she’s incapable of understanding. She’s young, but already she has the obtuse gaze of an old woman. And, just like an old woman, every so often she loses the thread of the conversation, wanders, and no longer knows what she’s saying.

“You know Pasolini was murdered at Ostia?” she asks. Then, without waiting for an answer, she adds, “Of course, he was asking for it...” Then, as if unconsciously, I got up and left the compartment, overwhelmed by the brutality of that statement, but far more disturbed by the rapidity with which the recollection of a long-ago crime had brought back to mind other crimes, other horrors.

There’s nothing odd about it. The history of Rome was written in blood. Every street, every building of this city conceals within its walls the sighs of executioners and their victims. And if everyone on this train stopped talking, even just for an instant, those moans would be heard here too, on this dirty train. But for now the noise is louder. It covers up the voices. It suffocates the cries. Just as you did, my dear Charlotte. Only you had the power to banish evil thoughts. You did it for almost thirty years. Thirty winters and thirty summers together, the last right here in Rome, visiting museums, walking on the beaches at Ostia, like a happy young married couple. That summer, you smiled, Charlotte. The way the child smiled who came and sat beside me. You, too, looked at me and smiled like that, while Alzheimer’s was already eating away your brain. A simple, pure smile, and yet so distant, letting me understand that I was losing you. And you were losing the power to keep those voices at bay. Soon, my love, your smile would no longer rein in desire, the call of the young bodies that crowded the beaches of Ostia that summer. Male bodies. Bodies of tall, tanned youths. Memories of a past that you, my sweet wife, had been able to erase, giving me the illusion that nothing had ever happened. Yet it took so little to make my confidence crumble. A look, a few words were enough. It was enough that he told me his name.

Mario. Yes, his name was Mario, I haven’t forgotten it. And Mario is the name I’ve given my shameful act. Mario is the name I’ve assigned to my lies.

I just bought him a drink, Charlotte . There’s nothing wrong with having a soft drink together, a Coke. And yet in the depths of my heart I already knew that the years of peace you had given me were about to end.

You had changed me, Charlotte. You had transformed me into an adult who lived in a world of adults, a world where there was no room for young men with crew cuts and tanned skin.

Thank you, sir , the boy had said, taking big gulps of his Coke. He must have been barely fifteen, but already the expression of a scoundrel was painted on his face. Of a little adult. The bartender at that kiosk on the beach, Antonio, or whatever the hell his name was, seemed to confirm my impression.

“This kid here is a rogue,” he said in a friendly fashion. “He always finds a way of getting something from the customers.” At those words, I was tempted to withdraw, to make a prudent retreat, as if I feared that a stranger could read my mind and discern my guilty thoughts. Because, Charlotte, I had done something ugly. I had looked at that boy a moment too long. And in that moment all my desire returned from where I had buried it, leaving me like that, like a Lazarus come back to life, wandering alone on the beach, anxious to see that boy again, to hold him in my arms.

Charlotte, I don’t understand why you had to die first. I surely deserved such an end more than you. But destiny tricked us both, and now I’m certain that you’re looking down at me. So go on looking. Look at me, on this train again, when I had sworn to myself that I would never return to Rome, that I would never walk the white beaches of Ostia. And yet now I’m here, and now not even you can slow my descent into the Underworld. If I could, I would have done it two years ago. And even then you didn’t stop me. You, Charlotte, you let the darkness enter my life like an unwanted guest. You opened the door to the night that made me a murderer. You gave it the keys to my house, my life. A curse, Charlotte. Why did you do this to me? Why did you let me believe that you could give me peace, when in reality you granted me only a truce. If you had told me the truth, I would not have done what I did. I would not have waited for Mario at sunset, with the excuse of buying him another Coke; I would not have followed him home, just to know where he lived; I would not have bought him that ball just to see him happy. I swear, Charlotte. If I had known I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t have done any of the things I did in the days of our last summer together.

I wouldn’t have told Mario that I would take him to a nice place for a pizza that night, a place here in Rome that only I knew, and that he was not to say a word to anyone. It’s a secret, Mario. Don’t tell anyone; otherwise, no pizza.

My God, why did a scoundrel like him pay any attention to me? Why on that particular night were you sicker than usual, did you seem scarcely aware of me?

There are many questions that I can’t answer, and even today, Charlotte, I wonder why I didn’t take Mario to have a pizza for real . It would have been so simple to get to central Rome, I had even rented a car. But at the last minute I changed my mind. I changed course, and brought Mario to the Idroscalo, the old seaplane station. I stopped the car and sat peering at the darkness all around.