Giorgio Scerbanenco - A Private Venus

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

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

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

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

‘At the end, just after the tollbooth.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

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