The Sense of an Elephant (20 page)

‘My son was as small as this.' She knelt down and picked up a snail shell. ‘I buried him under a tree. The next day I went back and the tree had lost all its leaves.' The witch slipped off one shoulder strap and then another. The fog entered the ivy and the dress fell.

The lawyer gave out the room assignments. Fernando protested when he found out that he would be sleeping with his mother. Asked to stay with Pietro, pulling him into a hug. The strange boy cooled down as soon as he saw one of the bartenders at the Grand Hotel, raven-haired and with braids pinned up on the crown of her head. She greeted him. ‘Would you like something to drink, sir?' He sat down at the bar. ‘Is your name Alice?'

The doctor collected his keys and went straight upstairs with his daughter to room 316. When they entered Sara shrank down in amazement. There were beautiful flowers on the bedside table and star-shaped chocolates on the bed, a bowl of fruit wrapped in a red ribbon, golden chairs and the sea just out of the window. She explored the room on legs like pogo sticks, disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared on the balcony, a friendly little phantom bursting out of her skin.

To the concierge went the lawyer in 318. And the latter immediately set things straight. ‘Now don't get any ideas. I'm no easy conquest.' Poppi opened one of his suitcases. ‘It took my Daniele two days.' Winked and collapsed into an armchair. ‘And a lifetime wasn't enough for him to leave me. These days love affairs are dropping like flies, just look at Luca and Madame.'

‘The doctor knew about her and the other man.'

‘Good God, even Fernando and his cactus knew. Luca suffers from vertigo but he's someone who jumps. And then he's always known what his wife is like.'

‘What is she like?'

‘Viola? Beauty, she's got. A brain and a sense of irony, ditto. Sensuality, she's got in spades, but reliability? That depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On her desire to reproduce, my friend. And on what there is on the horizon. Faster flies, more stable ones.'

‘She's different than she appears. She's just fragile.'

‘She's - different - than - she - appears - she's - just - fragile.' He snorted. ‘You could write for the theatre, Pietro. Or become
a priest. Think about it …' He rested his feet on the table. ‘The woman could be exactly what she appears.'

The mirror on the wall reflected the two four-poster beds and the bouquet of hydrangeas on the coffee table. It reflected the concierge, his chin bowed low on his breast. ‘Tell me what you know about the two of them.'

Poppi examined the bowl of fruit served with best wishes from the Grand Hotel. ‘A woman would kill to be a mother.' He hesitated over an apple. ‘They tried to have one for years. I heard the desperation every month when they came up empty.'

‘What do you know?'

‘For me the child will always be Luca's daughter and no one else's. The bond is what counts, not the testicles.' He selected a cluster of grapes and lowered it into his mouth.

Pietro looked outside. The sea was a sheet of steel under the last rays of the sun. ‘Tell me what you know …' – he turned – ‘what you know about me.'

Poppi put down the cluster of grapes, went to the sliding glass door and opened it. ‘That you're a very absent-minded concierge who doesn't like cats, but a more than observant man.'

‘What else?' He followed him onto the balcony.

‘I'm a poof, Pietro. And hysterical. I'm alone and speak with a forked tongue. But there's one thing, my friend, that I'll never do: reveal the secrets of a lifetime.'

‘Celeste.'

‘Celeste asked me to send you a letter and to keep you in consideration if you applied. Full stop. Celeste told me that
you were a man to depend on, a man with tap-dancing in his past.' He smoothed his eyebrows with his thumb. ‘The rest I understood on my own. You, Pietro, know what it means to live on the memory of the one you love.'

‘At a certain point that comes to an end as well.'

The lights went on along the promenade. From the beach, a group of old men and women pointed offshore to a cruise liner lit up from bow to stern. The fog descended again and voices in the group said it was the
Rex
, the
Rex
. The lawyer went back in and rummaged in one of his bags, fished out a suit wrapped in cellophane. ‘For you, Pietro. You're too
charmant
not to merit a bit of blue.' Poppi removed his turtleneck, his shoes and trousers. Beat his fists against his ribs. ‘This is the flesh that separates me from my Daniele?'

The concierge looked closely at the bones pushing through the skin. ‘All you have to do is wait.'

‘To die?' The lawyer headed to the bathroom. ‘I've always been bored waiting.' He opened the door. ‘Do you know the poet Prévert? A smooth-tongued fellow with a brain:
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle, les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
. Dead leaves are collected by the shovelful, memories and regrets as well.' As he shut himself inside: ‘I'm buried in them up to my neck.'

The fog entered 318 and Pietro saw no longer. He rested a hand on his ribs, tapped.

Celeste held the snail in one palm with the dress at her ankles and caressed Pietro's hands that only knew how to pray.
Helped him to remove his sweater, his shirt. The light from the lighthouse returned and she saw the bruises on his ribs.

Pietro searched his pockets, pulled out a stone rosary and fastened it to his wrist, a strangling snake. ‘I don't know how to swim very well.' Stepped out of his trousers.

‘It's because you carry weights around.' She fingered the rosary and finished undressing him, drew him out from beneath the ivy.

They ran naked as far as the water's edge then scrambled up on the rocks flanking the jetty. Pietro held a hand over his sex and looked at the witch's ballerina ankles.

They leapt. The water swirled and swallowed her, swirled and swallowed him. Enveloped feet, legs, necks. Celeste held the snail on the surface of the water. ‘Forgive me, my child.' Released the snail and followed it beneath the water. Pietro turned in every direction, felt the witch moving below. He waited, and as he did so unfastened the rosary.

Pietro put on the lawyer's gift and saw that it fit him perfectly. Poppi sang in the shower the Loredana Bertè song he'd played them in the van. The concierge was in blue for the first time in his life. In the mirror he saw how he now matched Mastroianni in both the lines in his forehead and the tailor-made jacket. Pietro buttoned up the jacket and took Anita's jar out of the backpack. Took the recorder as well and put it in his pocket.
My name is Andrea Testi. I am thirty-four years old and I know how to dribble.
He left suite 318 and the Grand Hotel. The promenade was awash in fog. The electric signs for the various beaches were smoking. He could see the pale yellow
of the street lamps and the red tail lamp of a bicycle that passed near him. Pietro had not been on the jetty since a night thirty-five years ago. He followed the promenade past the Dolphinarium with its shuttered ticket office, past the anchor monument. On the other side of the port, the dance floor had become a harbour for luxury vessels. The only music came from the low crashing of the waves. He rested on the wall that ran along the first stretch of the quay with the fishing boats, separating it from the sand. On the other side was an inlet. He climbed down and approached this narrow arm of the sea. Knelt and removed the lid from the jar, filled it with handfuls of frigid sand, filled it as Anita had asked him, a little at a time. Closed the jar and warmed it between his hands, protected. Held it like that as he turned around, passed the anchor again on his way to the end of the jetty.

Then and there he raised his eyes. The water was swelling. It swelled and he went to meet it. Climbed up onto the first rock, onto the second. Climbed down onto the third, and the water submerged the blue trousers up to his ankles. He stamped his feet once. The fog covered him and in the whiteness he began with the heel, continued with the toe.

Pietro returned along with the breeze that dissolved the fog and collected the leaves. That strewed dead dry leaves over the beach and the gardens of the Grand Hotel. Inside the main hall two musicians in livery were at the double bass and the violin. A pianist played with his hair dishevelled by the draught coming in at the door. The hall was crowded. Pietro saw them at the first table. Paola held a glass of wine in her hand, her gaze on her son seated at the bar. Fernando was dressed up. Every so often he would lean over on the bar stool and adjust his jacket without ever taking his eyes off the bartender.

‘The best always arrive first – fashions have changed.' The lawyer came to meet him in a dinner jacket, bowed and noticed Pietro's trousers, wet to the ankles, and the jar of sand. ‘One day you'll have to tell me what you do in your spare time.' Then he whispered in his ear: ‘Ask Paola to dance. She's been dying for it all evening.' He led him to the table, in the middle of which stood a card with the crest of the Grand Hotel and the words ‘Reserved for Deluxe Vans'. Luca sat apart from the others and dandled his daughter on his knees. Sara noticed the concierge and held up the plastic dolphin that Fernando had given her after his trip in the dinghy. The entire time, Luca did not turn his head.

‘Update on our doctor …' The lawyer drained a flute of
champagne. ‘Instead of Madame, Riccardo called him, but he wouldn't answer. Shall we dance?'

‘No.'

‘Come.' He took the jar from his hands and set it on the table, dragged the concierge onto the dance floor, held him as if to begin a waltz. Pietro tried to move away but soon gave up and allowed himself to be led. Poppi waltzed him once around the floor, then nodded to Paola.

She rose to her feet, her long dress trailing along the ground and barely covering her withered breasts. She came closer, a mass of curls atop her head, came closer still. Pietro found her in his arms in place of the lawyer. Paola clutched him with cold hands, the odour of face powder rising from her wizened face, yanked him into a turn. ‘It's very easy, follow me.' She led him according to the notes played by the dishevelled pianist. ‘Follow me.' Pietro followed her, watching past the curls as Fernando got down from his bar stool and went over to a vase of flowers at reception. Paola laid her cheek against the concierge's, breathed in deeply and said, ‘See how easy it is, it's all a question of mutual understanding.' Fernando lifted a rose from the vase at reception and returned to the bar while his mother whispered in Pietro's ear, ‘And there's no shortage of understanding between us.' Paola caressed the back of his neck. Her son attempted to do the same to the raven-haired bartender but she stepped aside with a smile. Paola smiled as well, ‘I feel so safe here with you,' extended her lips to his neck. Fernando climbed over the bar, ‘I want to marry you, Alice,' and the bartender backed away. The boy pushed his glasses up and held out the rose: ‘You're
my sweetheart.' A waiter stepped between them and pushed Fernando back. The boy persisted, crying, ‘Alice, Alice,' as the mother was saying to Pietro, ‘It's beautiful to grow old together, Pietro. There are so many things that we can do, you and I.' Fernando faced up to the waiter and swung the rose at him, slipped away and went after the girl. Caused her to fall, tumbling as well in the process and upturning a shelf of bottles onto himself. The concierge turned toward the bar. Everyone turned toward the bar except for Luca, who passed Sara to the lawyer and rushed up the stairs.

The pianist paused, smoothed back his ruffled hair and told the other musicians that they must distract the guests. He began to play but no one was distracted from the strange boy being subdued by two waiters.

Pietro left the dance floor when Fernando was already back on his feet and being attended to by Paola. He reached the stairs and climbed to their floor. The windows on the corridor were all wide open. Sand floated in on the wind. Luca was at the far end on the phone, saying, ‘Everything's fine, Sara's fine. What did you want to tell me today? Tell me now, tell me for God's sake. I said, tell me. What does it matter, tomorrow or now?' He leaned out over the windowsill and the wind ruffled his hair. ‘Tell me,' he shouted into the phone. ‘I don't want to be told in person, I want to be told now, hello? Viola? Hello, hello?' He brought the mobile away from his ear, looked at it, dropped it to the carpet and noticed the concierge. Ran a hand over his hair and covered his face. ‘Would I look out of that window to fall in love again?' he asked in a thread of a voice.

‘You would.'

‘For my daughter?'

‘For what you've become.'

Luca picked up the mobile and slid it over the sill to him. ‘A doctor who competes for souls with God? What else?'

Pietro drew out the old man's recorder and handed it to him. ‘A father.'

The rosary sank down and settled into the sand. Celeste was also swimming along the bottom. Pietro felt her near his legs, twitched. She stroked his feet and came up. She placed her hands on his scarred ribs and said, ‘What we're doing is just a form of prayer.' She wrapped her legs around him. ‘Our prayer.'

Pietro stopped twitching and looked at her. Witches have Milanese accents and frightened eyes that are more beautiful still. He stared at the sky, then filled his hands with what they had never before touched, sought her glorious breasts, her thighs, her legs and worked back up.

Celeste stopped his hands at her stomach. Their prayer began when he entered her.

The doctor returned to the main hall of the Grand Hotel. Pietro stood at the window. The cruise liner illuminated a slice of sea. At the end of the jetty the lighthouse was dark. The only light remaining was the glow of a restaurant on stilts.

‘Luca told me you were here.'

Pietro turned around. Paola advanced awkwardly in her high heels, faltered. Her cheeks were plastered with make-up and her lips dry at the corners.