The City and the House (19 page)

Alberico called me. We took my car and went to the General Hospital, to the emergency. Gianni stayed in the flat with the baby.

Nadia was already dead. Her clothes were in a corner on the floor, her jeans, her underclothes, a sweatshirt stained with blood.
Pepsicola
was written across the sweatshirt, just where the bullet hole was. Her sweatshirts always had something written on them.

Alberico wanted to pick up the clothes. But a sister told him that he must not touch them because the police would need them. She told him to go home and bring some other clothes. She asked him if he were her brother or husband or her companion or what. Her companion he answered.

I went to the house to get some other clothes. Gianni and I started looking for something suitable. But there wasn't much to choose from. Her clothes were all just rags. I finally found a blouse and a long skirt.

Alberico was questioned by the police. Adelmo was questioned too, at great length, and they kept him in. But the parking-lot attendant said he wasn't one of those who were doing the beating up. Adelmo came out yesterday.

This morning the police came to search the apartment. They turned everything upside down but they didn't find anything. Afterwards Alberico and I and Zezé, the woman who comes to do the cleaning, had to put everything back again.

Over these past few days I have been with Alberico a lot. I asked him if he knew who the two on the scooter and the others in the Fiat 500 were. He told me he didn't know anything about it, and I believe him. Salvatore was very close, and he never told anyone anything about himself. Sometimes he spent the night away from the house. Sometimes he used to disappear for a week and not say a word to anyone. When he came back he didn't say where he'd been, but he'd have a bag full of eggs and sausages and perhaps he'd been to his mother's, in Frosinone. We realized we were talking about Salvatore in the past tense, as if he too were dead, or had disappeared for good.

Roberta telephoned Nadia's parents. Her father arrived with a cousin. The mother hadn't come because she has a heart disease.

Nadia's name was Nadia Alba Desiderata Astarita. Her father's name is Altiero Astarita. He is a little old man with a small bristly grey beard. There was a mass said in the chapel at the hospital. All Alberico's friends were there. Zezé was there and also Ignazio Fegiz with Ippo. Nadia was taken back to Catania, where there is a family tomb.

Altiero Astarita told Roberta that he would begin civil proceedings against persons unknown.

He kept telling Roberta that he would come and take the child. Alberico told Roberta that he didn't want to give her to him. She was legally his child, and he could decide what to do about her.

Alberico couldn't sleep at night and I stayed with him till late. He kept thinking the same thing, that if he had also gone to the cinema that night, if he had been there in piazza Tuscolo, Nadia would not be dead. He would have held her back, away from all the fighting. He could have left the baby at home with Gianni, or taken her along with them as they had done so many times when they had all wanted to go to the cinema.

Alberico says that now, without Nadia and without Salvatore, the house seems empty. Though it's not empty, there's still the usual coming and going. Alberico has packed all of Nadia's clothes into two parcels and is sending them to Sicily. But they were just rags. The baby found one of her hats - a hard round hat made of straw - and she puts it on her head and wanders through the rooms with this hat on that comes down as far as her mouth. Zezé and Gianni are arguing about her magazines, she had thousands of them.

Giuseppe, I've heard that you had half a mind to come over, and now is the right moment, so come. Alberico is going through a difficult time, and there is the risk that they will try and take the child away from him; perhaps you could be of some help to him, I don't know.

Egisto

Rome, 2nd August

Dear Giuseppe,

I'll continue from where I left off in the letter I wrote to you ten days ago. I haven't had any reply. I know that you have phoned Roberta for news.

Nadia's father, Altiero Astarita, came back here, talked to Alberico for a whole afternoon, collected the child and took her off to Sicily. I was there when he talked to Alberico, because Alberico wanted me to be present.

Altiero Astarita said that he would leave for Sicily immediately with the baby, and he begged Alberico not to oppose him, otherwise he would refer the case to the courts. And then a long drawn-out legal dispute would be initiated and this would be sad and humiliating for everyone. The child would do well in Sicily. He and his wife live in the country, in a village called Acquedolci near Catania. They have a big house there and many hectares of land laid out as orchards. The child would have fresh air, fresh fruit, fresh eggs and she would grow up healthy. If Alberico wished to see her he could come and stay at their house in Acquedolci for a while and he would be made extremely welcome. He and his wife knew that he was not the child's real father and that he had given her his name because of a generous and noble impulse, which they greatly appreciated. They were also ready to give him some money to compensate him for all the expenses he had incurred. Alberico stayed silent. He was sitting at the table, doodling on a sheet of paper.

Altiero Astarita turned towards me and continued talking. Here in Rome, he said, the child was not doing well. The apartment was not a suitable place for a child. It was quite chaotic. It was in fact, to be quite clear about it, a real shambles. The courts would never consent to allow the child to remain here, in such a shambles. Then Alberico screwed up the sheet of paper he had been scribbling on; he stood up and said he had had enough. He was tired. He didn't want money, it wasn't of any use to him, and if he started to talk about money again he would grab him by the jacket and throw him downstairs. Altiero Astarita said he could not put up with such language. Alberico said he couldn't put up with his face. If he would please leave immediately. Please. Altiero Astarita left.

He came back the next morning and he had two suitcases and his cousin with him. He also had a strapping girl of about fourteen with him; she was slow and sullen, the daughter of a labourer in Acquedolci, and she had been brought along to look after the child on the way back. I was on the floor below, because Zezé had phoned me when she saw them arriving. Altiero Astarita told me that their train left at midday. He preferred trains to aeroplanes. He told me that he was pleased to see me because I seemed to him to be the one person in all that shambles who had his head screwed on properly.

Alberico was in his room typing. Renato and Gianni were with him. He said to me that if that bearded little shit wanted to take the child, let him take her. He didn't want to fight about it. And besides, perhaps it was true that the child would be better off in Sicily than with him. Happier, perhaps. He didn't want to see the child again and he would never go to Sicily to see her, never. He didn't want to see her whilst they were taking her'away. He didn't want to say goodbye to her. He had always hated goodbyes, he hated them.

Altiero Astarita ordered the cousin and the labourer's daughter to put the child's clothes and toys in a suitcase. The child didn't have many clothes, and she didn't have any toys, or rather she had just one, a three-foot-high inflatable penguin that squawked when you squeezed its belly - Salvatore had won it on a shooting-range. Usually the child didn't even look at it, but that morning she did nothing but squeeze its belly and listen to it squawk. The labourer's daughter wanted to deflate it and put it in the suitcase, but the child wouldn't let her touch it. Altiero Astarita was in a hurry, but there were various hold-ups, jumpers that had been washed and were not dry, the penguin, the child who didn't want to be washed, the labourer's daughter who went around looking for a plaster because she had a blister on her foot. Alberico never left his room. They finally called a taxi and left, the child crying in the cousin's arms, the labourer's daughter carrying the two half-empty suitcases, Altiero Astarita in an irritable state. The penguin was left in the hall, half-deflated, and later Gianni took it away.

Salvatore was discovered in Frosinone, in his mother's house. They kept him in jail for two days, then they let him out. Adelmo went to his house. He said he was sitting in the kitchen near the window, with a bandage round one hand, and that he didn't say a word. His hand had been wounded with a penknife that evening, and it didn't get better because it was infected. Adelmo stayed there for a while but was unable to get a single syllable out of him. His mother said that he was always like that now, silent, motionless, with those staring eyes. His mother is an elementary school teacher.

Yours

Egisto

Princeton, 15th August

Dear Alberico,

I have heard what has happened from Roberta and from Egisto. Egisto especially has given me a very detailed account. Roberta often phones me, and she says she often goes to your flat to see you. She says that you have stopped going to Dr Lanzara's. I'm sorry about this because I think you should be going there, as you are passing through such a difficult and sad time.

I only saw Nadia once, that day in Florence. Roberta and Ignazio Fegiz were there, and the friend you had then, a German, I think he was called Rainer. I remember Nadia was short and seemed like a child. She was wearing blue overalls with braces. I remember, she had a tiny face and short fluffy hair à la Angela Davis. I think I wondered for a moment if she could be, or could become, your girlfriend. It was a stupid thought and I quickly erased it from my mind and inwardly asked your pardon. I've always found it difficult to accept the fact that you are not attracted to women, because people want their sons to be like themselves. But basically I have accepted this fact, in the same way that I have accepted other things about you and your life which were not easy for me to either understand or accept.

You used to tell me that Nadia was a stupid girl. Nevertheless you lived with her for a long time, and you must have felt, in some way or other, attached to her. It must be painful for you to have lost her, and to have lost her in such horrifying circumstances. But her death was a fine one - proud, brave and noble. She died saving someone else's life.

It must be extremely painful for you now that they have taken the child from you. But then I think it wouldn't have been easy for you to bring up a little child that had lost her mother.

I am coming, I am certainly coming, but not straightaway. Something has happened to me too, not a disaster perhaps but something that I find upsetting at the moment. My step-daughter Chantal has walked out of the house unexpectedly, and for some days we had no news, and then she wrote to us from New York. She has left her child Maggie here, and I look after her because Anne Marie has neither the time nor the patience to concern herself with her. Because of this I can't leave the house at the moment. Anne Marie is worried and upset. Chantal left late in the evening without saying anything; she took a little travelling bag with her creams and pyjamas in. We thought she was at the cinéma, then we found her note in the kitchen under the scales. She didn't give an address. She simply said that someone had mentioned a job to her in New York and that she had gone. She would come and collect the child later.

After some days we heard from a friend of hers that she was living in a commune and that she was working as a waitress in a restaurant. Here she was working in a tourist agency and she had an excellent job. She finally phoned us the day before yesterday. I answered the phone. But she said very little. She said she didn't want to see either me or her mother. She wanted to be left in peace. She laughed in a shrill, drawn-out, nervous way. Chantal has these sudden shrill bursts of laughter - there is nothing happy about them - that stay ringing in your ears for a long time.

I've finished up by talking about me, or rather about Chantal and the things that have been happening here. And really I just wanted to talk about you. I heard from Roberta that your film is doing well, and that lots of people go and see it. I'm pleased that it has been such a success for you.

With love from

your father

Rome, 3rd September

Dear father,

Thank you for your letter.

Yes, as Roberta told you, I've stopped the course of psychoanalysis. But I'm still friends with the Lanzaras and I see them now and again. They are nice people. I have an ice-cream with them sometimes in the evenings, at the Café Esperia, which I think you know well. It's the café on the corner of via Nazario Sauro and via Maroncelli. I don't know if you remember it. I don't know what you can remember and what you can't, you've been away for so long.

Dr Lanzara insists that I start the psychoanalysis again, but at the moment I don't want to. But I don't mind sitting with him in the Café Esperia. I have his bald, dry head in front of me, as smooth as an egg. I eat my ice-cream, watch the people going by and breathe in the fresh evening air. I feel fine, much better than in his consulting room. I like his head, it's familiar to me. In his consulting room I feel obliged to talk, but like this I can stay silent too.

The Lanzaras are selling their flat. They are thinking of going to live in England again, where they lived for years. I thought of buying it myself and I suggested it to them, but it seems that it's not right for a psychoanalyst to sell his house to one of his ex-patients. Why this shouldn't be right I don't begin to understand. However this is an obstacle that can be overcome. For example, you could buy it and give it to me. I would give you the money to do this. I am well-off at the moment because I have earned a lot from my film. This house would be, Roberta says, an excellent investment. She says that bricks and mortar never let you down. It's true that I would pay much more than double what you got for it. First, because the price of houses has gone up enormously, and second because the Lanzaras are good at business. Roberta says that you and I do not resemble each other in anything, but we do resemble each other in our readiness to be taken in by outright swindles. She used to say that I was sly about money but now she says the opposite. She says that now she understands, me better and she has realized that actually money means nothing to me. And in fact this is true.