Richard House - The Kills

In Yee Jan’s story the wolf made a habit of coming into the city: she hid in the underground caverns that ran under the old town, or sometimes those catacombs dug into the rock at Fontanella. She didn’t live here, no, instead she wandered in now and again, found her way from the mountains by tracking the scent of the city through waterways and irrigation ditches, all the way through those drab flat fields. She came in winter, in February with the denser snow, when the waterways were frozen, and when the meaty stink of the city clung to the earth and spread out for miles, scratch that, kilometres. She came here to give birth. This wolf, magnificent, canny, even wise, and had enough smarts to know when and how to hide herself and her pups in a city of nearly three million people — four point six if you include the entire metropolitan area — and she knew how to disappear, how to find food, taking cats, small dogs, maybe once or twice some impolite fat child (and so many of them good and porky). The people who spotted her (an old woman outside the Duomo, a trader on via Tribunali, the street walkers at piazza Garibaldi, a team of street cleaners on via Toledo / Roma, whatever you will) were luckier than they knew, because the wolf took a particular interest in the people who spied her — call it providence. If the wolf passed by you, if she saw you, if, for some small reason she paid you a little attention, allowed you to see her, you couldn’t come to harm, for a day, for a week, it just depended.

Yee Jan’s Italian wasn’t great, that’s for sure, but he could manage well enough to tell a plain story simply. A city. A wolf. The lucky few who stumbled across her. And he could tell these ideas as unadorned facts which provided a handsome certainty. Everybody knows it’s not the embellishment that makes the story: it’s the cold hard presence of possibility. This is why people play the lottery — because winning is always possible. Improbable. Really-fucking-remotely unlikely. But possible.

Yee Jan pouted at the mirror. A finger at the corner of his mouth. He held up the mascara brush but decided against it. The thing about make-up is making sure there’s just enough, too much is a problem, but finding that distinctive point where you both are and aren’t familiar is all about precision. More often than not it’s the mascara and lipstick combination that tips the balance. These military wives could do with some lessons. Seriously. Why would you leave the house looking like a monkey had a party on your face?

* * *

By the time he found the film crew they had progressed from the portside to where the road curled about the bay, right beside Castel dell’Ovo. A line of silver-white screens bounced light from the sea to form a bright path across the road. As far as Yee Jan could make out, the shot involved a woman scurrying along the promenade and a man following after. Time after time the woman walked in a quick romp, skirt tight between her legs, hand up to her shoulder to keep her bag in place. The man came after in a long stride, close enough, smoking, sunglasses and a pinched face. People only walked like this in movies. When they stopped both the man and the woman wiped their faces with towels in a gesture that reminded Yee Jan more of tennis than filmmaking. Tedious wasn’t the word. The woman walked, the man followed. Walked. Followed. Their movements matched by a camera running alongside, then everything stopped, tracked back to the start, and after long and digressive preparations (make-up, discussions, cables hauled back, the camera itself in one instance appeared to be dismantled, while screens were adjusted to accommodate for the changing pitch of sunlight, and plenty of pointing, everybody pointing) they began again. Tired of watching Yee Jan sat and finished a slice of pizza which he picked into pieces, this at least couldn’t be faulted, mozzarella so fresh it sat in a light sap, only just set. He took a photo of himself with the slice held up to his mouth and didn’t mind that people were watching. After eating he wanted to smoke, Bacall-style. It’s the head that moves, never the hand.

THURSDAY

Before the class could properly settle the secretary knocked on the door and asked the tutor if Yee Jan and Keiko could please come outside. As soon as they came out the secretary asked if they could sit in the hallway for a moment.

‘What do you think this is about?’ Keiko whispered to Yee Jan in English.

‘Fashion police.’ Yee Jan whispered back. ‘You’re wearing two kinds of stripes.’

Keiko gave a complicit shrug and said she didn’t think she’d done anything wrong. Not anything she could remember.

‘You think we’re in trouble? It feels like high school. Maybe it has something to do with money?’

Yee Jan thought it strange that they would be called out of class and then asked to wait. He was, after all, paying for the lesson he was missing. He listened to the tutor’s voice through the door and the measured laughter of their fellow students, all a bit predictable. People didn’t like Lara as much as they liked the other tutors, but he had to admit she got the job done. Yee Jan splayed his hands and inspected his nails. Today he wore mascara but no foundation.

When the office door opened, a student from Elementario Uno came out, book in hand, and returned to her class.

‘It looks like they’re speaking to the Asian students.’

Yee Jan strained forward. Printed on the back of the student’s T-shirt a picture of a smiling cat, the face not entirely unlike her own, broad, almost round. He had to admit she was pretty. Inside the office sat two police officers. ‘Why are the police here? Are we supposed to have our passports?’

Keiko took out her passport from a small wallet hung about her neck.

‘You’re such a victim,’ Yee Jan said. His statement of the week, which he applied with sincerity, insincerity, irony, love, or anger to any situation. Such a victim. ‘I told you about those stripes, didn’t I?’

As they both leaned forward the office door was carefully drawn shut.

After a few moments the secretary came out of the office and in a low voice she asked if Keiko would come with her — then seeing Yee Jan’s bag, she stopped cold. The secretary curled her hair behind her ear then pointed at Yee Jan’s bag. ‘Questa è la vostra borsa?’

‘Sorry? Am I going?’

‘Your bag,’ Keiko interrupted. ‘She’s asking about your bag.’

‘This is my bag.’ Yee Jan held up the bag so the secretary could see, then pronounced emphatically. ‘Mine.’ It was one thing learning Italian, quite another using that knowledge out of class.

The secretary looked seriously at the bag. Maybe the job didn’t pay that much. Maybe secretaries across the city had to snatch and grab whenever they could.

‘It’s from Macy’s.’ Yee Jan pointed in the direction he thought was west. ‘I know. Ironic. It looks like Ferragamo. You’ll have to go to New York yourself.’

Used to Yee Jan’s oblique ways the secretary straightened up then returned to the office.

Keiko looked at Yee Jan’s bag. ‘I don’t think this has anything to do with visas or money. I think it’s something to do with the bag?’

‘ My bag, victim. My bag. I paid for it.’

* * *

The news that a man had followed him was nothing extraordinary. This is Italy, Yee Jan told himself. As far as he could tell everyone seemed to be watching everyone else, and apart from an obvious, often hostile, curiosity, Italian men liked to make their likes and attractions clear. It wasn’t much of a surprise that someone would take it further. Only this wasn’t a simple harassing call, a bothersome stare, a whistle or a gesture. This wasn’t a joking profession of love, a cock-grabbing insult, or a scout for a sexual service. This was a grown man waiting outside the school for him on three, certainly, possibly even five consecutive evenings.