Giovanni Arpino: Scent of a Woman

‘What girls?’ I asked, surprised.

‘The usual. Never heard of them?’ he mocked, but good-naturedly. ‘There are droves of them at every large port. Dark-skinned too if you want. In short, those girls.’

‘I’d rather eat!’ I laughed.

He shrugged, annoyed.

‘I meant, while you’re walking. Or do you turn the other way when you see them? Born yesterday.’

‘All right, sir.’

‘Check out a few. You never know,’ he concluded drily. He snapped open his watch. ‘Be back here at two. No later.’

Outside I bent over against the wind, exhilarated to be alone and by the thought of the new suit. But as I neared the port, that freedom already seemed unexciting. I realized to my surprise that I would have preferred to see him eat in front of me, I imagined his gestures at the table, the inevitable insolence towards the waiter.

I had the sea to my right, obstructed by port machinery, and a scruffy wall on my left. Keeping close to the wall, I saw several eateries down some narrow steps. I stopped in front of baskets full of shellfish on display; further on a sluggish grey fish floated in two inches of water. A waiter quickly appeared and gave me the once-over, so I started walking again, turning around to glance down the length of the port: colours, prows, rows of smokestacks and cranes, even the wind seemed calculated to me, like a scene in a film. My eyes ached and even the distant din of noises and voices, perhaps from a market beyond the wall, hurt my head which was already pounding from the vermouth. At the next sign I decided to stop. The trattoria was deserted, and from the kitchen doorway the owner gave me an indifferent look.

I felt like I had been gone too long, caught up in a bubble that was not uplifting but oppressive, and I felt vaguely homesick for my city, whether home or the base.

A postcard for my mother, I thought.

I chose quickly from the menu – anything to hurry it up – then sat and waited, looking at the dessert trolley.

‘I assure you, sir. Not one grey hair. Allow me…’ the barber repeated quietly, leaning over. ‘Even here at the top, a critical point, everything looks fine.’

‘Good, good,’ he replied curtly.

The manicurist was already crouching wordlessly at his right, attending to his nails, filing them, and he, draped in a double sheet, leaned back and let himself be shaved.

I could see his face in the mirror, divided in half by his dark glasses. Little by little the shaving cream hid the scars and those dark pits, tiny, as though made by a gimlet. The barber moved around him with very special care; the girl too worked with concentration.

Until she drew back the nail file in alarm: ‘Oh I’m so sorry, sir,’ she said, pausing.

‘It’s nothing, dear. Nothing at all,’ he replied gently.

‘Did something happen?’ the barber asked with concern, gesturing at the girl angrily.

‘For heaven’s sake, no! Go on, dear. Continue. It’s fine,’ he said again.

The girl leaned over with a cotton ball, ever more solicitously.

The barber was having a hard time starting a conversation. Two or three times he threw me a look that I was careful not to meet. He was old and pale. In the back of that shop of his, a young errand boy, his hair slick with brilliantine, was reading the sports pages in a secluded corner.

‘How was she?’ he asked as soon as we left.

He had left a big tip; all three of them had rushed to open the door for us.

‘The manicurist? Skinny. Not bad looking, but tiny, not even ninety pounds,’ I explained.

‘If only I had known. I would have given her a kick. Ugly bitch,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I can’t stand the sound of the file to begin with. Imagine when it jabs you.’

We walked briskly though the street was uphill. The wind had died down, the lights opposite the first floors weren’t swaying any more. I felt sweaty and a little tired, and I was itching to go back to the hotel and try on the new suit.

Instead he said: ‘Feel how fresh the air is. How it should be. Wind – or better yet, rain. Then fresh air like this. That gets you going. Hurray.’

I could depend on his thirst though. The little pocket flask was most certainly no longer full, and in fact we soon sat down at a café. A rectangle of cleansed, luminous sky topped this new unfamiliar piazza; sunset was still a long way off. At one end, near a newspaper stand, a group of tram drivers milled around scoffing at one another in soft lilting voices. The dense maze of trams parked at the end of the line stood in full sunshine, the light splintered through plate-glass windows. It occurred to me: a newspaper, remember to get a newspaper to read in bed tonight. And for some reason the baseness of that thought mortified me.

‘I could go for something to eat. But no. Better not. Otherwise I’ll have no appetite tonight,’ he said, taking a deep breath after his whisky. ‘Speaking of which: the girls. Tell me about them.’

‘The ones at the port? I didn’t see many,’ I answered.

I tasted my ice cream, after he made me pour a good inch of liquor over it.

‘Snap to, Ciccio.’ His voice was calm, but with a restrained seething that was anything but reassuring. ‘Your predecessor, illiterate as he was, could find them even under rocks. That’s all he could talk about, unfortunately. How could you rely on him? He liked them all. You: loosen your tongue.’

I spoke, trying to remember, and here and there inventing things. I gathered that I would do well to go on talking about a certain woman dressed in orange in the doorway of a bar.

‘Was she tall? Very tall?’ he asked.

‘Tall, yeah. Like you. Very tall.’

‘Well go on, for Christ’s sake. Are we playing around here? Do I have to drag every word out like pulling teeth?’ He lost his patience. Two fingers had already made the glass clink on its plate for a second round. A waiter rushed over.

‘I told you everything, I’m sorry. It’s not as if I spoke to her,’ I said. ‘She was at the door of a bar. By herself. Tall. With black hair. Long, thick black hair.’

‘Her hair was black. But not her skin. Her skin wasn’t too dark, right? Pale skin: the best.’ He smiled into space.

‘Dark? I don’t think so. Pale. Yeah, definitely. Not thin though. All in all, a rather big woman.’ I was fed up.

‘Just what I wanted to hear!’ He laughed excitedly, tapping his foot. ‘A fine big woman. But young. That’s how I like them, Ciccio. Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow, what?’ I said.

‘Tomorrow we’ll go look for her. You’ll look for her for me. You must remember that bar, for God’s sake.’ He went on smiling, drumming under the table. ‘Wonderful.’

‘But I…’

‘But you, what?’

‘I wouldn’t know how.’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t know how. What the hell do you mean? How to talk to her? To that girl?’ He laughed, pleased with himself. ‘Don’t worry. You tell her the truth: no more, no less. She says ten. You come back with fifteen. What are you afraid of? Being taken for a pimp?’

‘A pimp? Well, that’s not what I meant. I don’t know, I guess,’ I replied clumsily.

‘Don’t act like an idiot all of a sudden.’ His tone changed, a faint trace of anxiety beneath the usual assurance. His hand moved as if to touch my arm, stopped. ‘What harm is there? I don’t want to force you. But where’s the harm? We go there, you talk to her, then you accompany me there, you wait for me and that’s the end of it. Not even an hour, you’ll see. Right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He wanted to have dinner before going back to the hotel. At the table, in a melancholy, deserted restaurant, he was soon full after some prosciutto and soup with an egg in it. He toyed with a few grapes without eating any of them. He hardly spoke, distracted, his cigarette smouldering in the ashtray. He had no interest whatever in what I chose, no questions.