Giovanni Arpino - Scent of a Woman

‘No. Back there. He’s probably drinking.’

‘You fell for it,’ he rebuked me sadly. ‘You took him seriously. Me, as soon as I saw him, I said to myself: a Punchinello. A skinny, dried-up buffoon who swallowed his stick to stand up straight and—’

He broke off, pointed a thumb towards the path. I saw Sara silhouetted against the light. She was coming towards us, managing not to quicken her step. She seemed more refreshed, her eyes serene; maybe she had slept in the last half hour. Without a word she held out her hand to Miccichè, who had stood up again.

My brief flicker of happiness was quickly reduced to cinders in the depths of my heart.

‘Let him explain it to you. He knows everything,’ I said moving away. ‘I’m going back to him. Still there?’

‘The lieutenant won’t talk. He’ll never talk. Not even if they skinned him alive. That’s the truth. That’s the important thing you have to know,’ Miccichè mumbled again, looking at nothing and no one. ‘And given that, go ahead and fabricate your own scenario.’

‘So he isn’t dead and I seem to be alive,’ he pronounced as soon as I finished telling him.

He tried to smile, his lined face belying his actual age. He shrank back against the tree in the last remaining arc of shade, the bottle almost empty.

‘Poor Vincenzino. The failure. The absurdity…’ he went on, the fingernails of his right hand picking at the stubble on his cheek, his chin.

In the distance, the regular pounding of a hammer.

He then tried to move his left arm. The rigid glove dangled.

‘I’m coming unhinged.’

And he laughed, a single burst like a sob.

‘I feel filthy,’ he began complaining again. ‘How stupid, right? And yet if I were washed and my clothes pressed everything would seem different. Ah, that bar of ours in Rome. Remember? A match, Ciccio. Even the lighter doesn’t work any more. So much for our fine self-sufficiency.’

I went all around the tip of the cigarette, lighting it carefully.

‘The fog,’ he continued softly, ‘do you remember our fog? In Turin? And its scent, the finest in the world. The one in November is the best. I’m not drunk, Ciccio, don’t worry. But you, doesn’t this dry air bother you?’

I pictured my city, the viewer speckled like the film of an old movie, black and white, in grainy filaments, light drizzles. And I felt a great, slow desire to be reabsorbed in it, to wander about that screen without my true face any more.

An insect with transparent purplish wings was climbing along his jacket. I flicked it away with my fingernail.

‘Know what I am? The eleven of spades. My father was right. With each failure, or when money disappeared from the drawer of the pharmacy, he took it out on my mother: you drew the eleven of spades; now we have to put up with it.’

He smiled, blowing smoke.

‘But there is no eleven of spades,’ I objected.

‘Exactly. A card that isn’t in the deck. Not good for playing any game,’ he approved, the cigarette following the movement of his lips, his neck rigid in an effort of will.

Again he said, ‘Poor Vincenzino, if you had come to my house maybe now…’

I don’t want to listen to you any more, I thought.

I had an ache between the back of my neck and my shoulder, fatigue rankling in my body. There seemed to be no remedy.

‘What do you plan to do, sir?’

‘Sir. Lord. Heavenly Father. Great God in heaven, if only I were a little swallow,’ he mocked, but very weakly.

Then: ‘Don’t worry, my friend. Today, tonight, you’re leaving. And you won’t have any trouble. My word. If you still trust it.’

‘I wasn’t talking about me.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Good, me too. Incredible. I’m stinking filthy, a lost cause, if I fire a shot I miss that too, I land whoever may be around in trouble, yet I’m hungry. Simple, right?’

He laughed again, sprinkling cigarette ash on himself.

‘What do I plan to do, you ask? Surrender. And trust in the generosity of the enemy.’

‘Who is?’

‘Who is: you’ll see. Or actually, no. You won’t see a damn thing.’ He slumped back, bowing his head.

Sara was returning. Miccichè was already standing mistrustfully beside the car; when I motioned him to come over, he replied no with his head, his hand. He sat down next to a wheel without looking at us.

‘Fausto, I’m here. Have you heard? What if it’s a trap?’ the girl said.

‘Sara, Sara, why aren’t you like the other girls?’ He still tried to smile at her.

She shuffled her feet sombrely in the grass, her eyes downcast.

‘I’ll end up that way. Thanks to this, thanks to that, I too will end up like all the others. Some good it will do me, for my future,’ she responded.

‘You talk like you’re already widowed!’ He tried to laugh, but the effort was so pathetic that Sara just looked at him, without the heart to answer him back.

‘I could put the suitcase in the car,’ I said.

‘Hold it. First a swig. Let’s not abandon our routines so quickly,’ he said, retrieving the bottle. ‘And don’t slink off all the time, you.’

Sara’s hostile gaze was on me.

‘Fausto, it’s a trap. I can feel it,’ she started in again.

‘Okay, okay. I get it. All the better,’ he said, exasperated.

Miccichè was now studying us, his fingers gesturing questioningly, trying to hurry me up.

‘We have to go,’ he decided.

‘Where should I take you?’ the girl asked quietly.

He replied curtly, ‘The first carabiniere.’

‘Fausto…’

‘So be it. Not a word.’

Sara nodded, her hands upside-down in her lap, her ashen face expressionless.

‘I just meant, would you like to take a bath, freshen up a little?’ she said softly. ‘Shall I take you to my house? It would only take a minute, what’s one minute…’

‘And your mother?’ he said, surprised.

‘I don’t care. About anyone. Just let them try to stop me,’ she retorted harshly. ‘And keep in mind: I’m going with you, I’m taking you there. And if I have to keep quiet, I’ll keep quiet. But I’m staying with you till the end.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That I’m staying with you until the others kick me out, even forcibly. Not you.’

‘I won’t send you away again. Not me,’ he replied weakly. And turned his head.

I saw a shudder pass between Sara’s shoulders.

‘Swear,’ she whispered. Her hand which had already reached out shrank back, frightened, clasping the other hand.

‘Yes, yes. I swear. You heard me. But that’s enough now,’ he murmured, overcome.

I can’t help remembering.

It all happened as if seen through inverted binoculars: me perpetually, breathlessly in pursuit of faces, glimpses, shadows, fragments of images quickly lost, which only the mysterious powers of a dream could produce.

It all ended the exact same way.

Except it wasn’t a dream.

Today I remember Sara’s actions, sober, thought out. Unhurriedly, she cleaned him up with a wet handkerchief, from his temples to the corners of his mouth, his right hand one fingernail at a time. She straightened his collar, his tie.

He was docile, unaware.

And Miccichè, who kept saying, ‘Will they hurry up? Where the hell do they think they’re going? To the opera?’

Then they set out in the car, while I sat on the back seat of the motor scooter, clinging to Miccichè.

I can no longer describe the exhaustion I felt then. The body is blessed because it forgets. But I recall all too well my impervious mind, its desire to rush headlong into a whirlwind and run and run.

Passing them, driving side by side, having them pass us in turn, I never saw them exchange a word, she alert at the wheel, he reclining.