Michael Dibdin - And then you die

'Do you want my advice, Gilberto?' he asked, pushing his plate away and lighting a cigarette.

'Not particularly. What do you know about it? You've never even been married.'

‘no’

'Yes I have! Damn it, you were my best man.' Nieddu made a gesture as if swatting at a fly he couldn't be bothered to kill.

'Oh, Luisella. That doesn't count'

'Oh no?' Zen felt suddenly angry. 'And why not, might I ask? Because she didn't have perfect skin like your immortal beloved Rosa? Or because I wasn't unfaithful to her for years on end with every woman who came within reach?'

Nieddu shook his head calmly.

'No, it’s because you didn't have kids.'

'It isn't a real marriage if you don't have children? That s absurd!'

'No, if s not. But you wouldn't know about that. Or about anything else concerning my situation. So you can keep your fucking advice to yourself, thank you very much.'

By now, Zen felt furious. He stood up, grabbed his coat, paid for his half of the meal and walked out. He had reached the corner of the main street when he heard a voice calling his name, and turned to see Gilberto Nieddu rushing after him, with one of the waiters from the restaurant in close pursuit.

'Aurelio! Stop!'

Zen stopped.

'Don't you dare talk like that to me, Gilberto,' he said frigidly. 'I don't give a damn about you or your problems. It serves you right.'

He turned away, only to be pulled back by Nieddu.

'No, no! It’s not about that! I haven't got any money to pay for dinner. Can you lend me some?'

By now the waiter had caught them up, and was staring from one to the other with an anxious expression. Zen suddenly burst into laughter. He gave the waiter the same amount as he had already paid inside, plus a small tip for his exertions. When that transaction had been taken care of, he turned to his friend again, all anger now gone.

'Go, Gilberto,' he said. 'Go to Sassari. Go to the house. Don't phone, don't write, don't tell her you're coming. Just go.'

Nieddu looked suddenly shifty.

'Well, I don't know about that. Maybe later, if she's lucky. Once she starts to see reason. Let a little time pass, eh? Let her suffer a bit, realize what she's lost. Then I might go.'

'By then Rosa will have become accustomed to the situation, maybe even started to persuade herself that she enjoys it. And in a month the children will have started at a new school and will have a new circle of friends. Go now. Go tonight, if there's a flight. And if there isn't, hire a plane. You've got the money. Take a cab to the house and tell her that you've got a jet waiting at the airport to take the family home again.'

'It wouldn't be a jet. More likely a turboprop.'

'It doesn't matter what kind of aircraft it is, Gilberto!'

'But what about the brother?'

Zen looked at him solemnly.

'You really are a loser, aren't you?' he said.

'I make five times what you do, Zen, and pay a quarter as much tax!' Nieddu retorted violently.

'So what? If you don't get over to Sardinia right now and bring back your wife and the mother of your children, then as far as I'm concerned you're a loser.'

He handed Nieddu a couple of thousand-lire coins.

'This'll get you home on the metropolitana. Call me when you have good news.'

When Aurelio Zen reached the address he still thought of as home, he had a very strange feeling: it was as if he were entering it for the first time. The spacious gloom of the entrance hall, the antique elevator in its wrought-iron cage, the neighbour's caged bird which mimicked the squeaky hinges of the front door to Zen's apartment; all these details, for years so worn with use as to have become transparent, now asserted themselves as fresh perceptions, potentially significant information about a territory never encountered before.

The lights still didn't work. By touch and instinct, aided at moments by the flame from his cigarette lighter, he found his way to the kitchen and then the cupboard where they had always kept a stock of candles for use during the power cuts which had at one time been a frequent occurrence. He bundled six of them together, tied them up with a length of twine chosen from the many odd pieces that Maria Grazia stored in a drawer because 'You never know when it might come in handy', then lit the wicks and made his way back to the living room, where he placed the bunch of candles on the table. The flames spluttered and wavered and then grew tall and steady, making the walls and ceiling glow in a way that reminded Zen irresistibly of the camera ardente at the funeral home where he had gone to view his mother's body.

"They don't put the body in the box,' said a voice in his head, 'they wrap the box around the body.'

No, that wasn't right. He'd been misled by the previous association with his mother's funeral. The word had been bottles, not body. 'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.' In some hospital, during one of the few lucid memories he had of that whole period. A young doctor was preparing to give him an injection of liquid drawn from one of a set of glass phials packed into a cardboard box on the trolley beside him. Zen had remarked, in an attempt at humour, that it must be hard work fitting all those tiny bottles into such a tight space. And the doctor had explained, adding that his brother worked in packaging and never tired of telling him that wraparound was the wave of the future.

But why had that voice come back to him now? He had often noticed that if he found himself humming some tune, there was usually a connection between the words, or title, or general context and associations of the music, and something that had been preoccupying him without his conscious awareness of it. The same must be the case here, he thought, but what possible connection could there be? Bottles, boxes, packaging, wraparound… None of these had any evident relevance. Nor did threats to his life and the resulting injuries, not to mention doctors or hospitals. He was finished with all that.

He moved his luggage into the bedroom where he used to sleep. Maria Grazia had stripped the bed before leaving. He didn't feel up to remaking it, so he fetched a pillow and some blankets from the linen cupboard in the hall, blew out the candles in the living room and groped his way back to the bedroom. The air was filled with the unctuous smoke of the candles, which made him realize that there had been a previous and not dissimilar odour in the apartment which he only now identified as the sweet-and-sour fetor of his mother's dying flesh. The thought made him close and lock the bedroom door behind him. A few minutes later he was lying fully clothed on his bed, wrapped up in his coat and the blankets. A few minutes after that he was asleep.

He awoke a moment later, or so it seemed. It was an instant and complete awakening with no memory of dreams, no drowsiness, and no evident cause. The room was silent and dark, apart from a faint glimmer coming up through the shutters from the street below. He lay on his back, staring up at the lamp hanging like a predatory bat from the ceiling. He had always loathed that lamp, he realized. Then he thought: Now that mamma's dead, I can get rid of it.

A sound broke the silence. It was difficult to say what might have caused it, but the source seemed clear. He lay quite still, listening intently. Eventually there was another sound, equally generic and almost inaudible, but it too had been located just outside the room, behind the locked door leading to the rest of the apartment. But that was absurd. Clearly there was no one out there. How could there be?

The silence then remained unbroken for so long that he almost convinced himself that he had imagined the earlier noises. Then he heard a distinct metallic scraping that he recognized instantly. Someone was turning the handle to his bedroom door.