HE HEARS FOOTSTEPS AND HOLDS his breath. They come closer. Vincenzo Perugia listens, trying to decipher them. It sounds like only one person, and the footsteps are not very firm, as if whoever was out there was dragging his feet; it could be someone old. The footsteps keep approaching; the more he thinks the closer they get and they are now very close. Perugia remembers the guard’s yellow badge and thinks that nothing in this life is free. And that he knew he should never have gotten mixed up in—another step.
Perugia thinks back to the time he saw a shooting star. He hears the footsteps and is amazed at the number of things you can think about in such a short space of time. Perugia would have been about fourteen or fifteen when he saw the star—who knows? Every year was the same in his village. Perugia was still living there. His father used to take him along every day to work in the fields. The girls used to tease him because of his voice, and that night in summer he saw the shooting star.
The next day, he told his grandmother, his father’s mother, who was still alive then, and she asked him if he’d made his wishes. She was already scrawny by then, but she spoke the way she had when she was still large—arrogant, always talking.
“So, Piccolino, what did you wish for?” she asked him.
“Wish?” he replied, and the grandmother let loose a huge bray of laughter.
“How can you be so dumb you don’t know that when you see a shooting star you’re supposed to make three wishes?”
His grandmother laughed and laughed, smacking her thighs with her hands. She was sitting on a little straw chair in front of the house, underneath the vine, and she slapped her hands down on her thighs.
“How did you get to be so stupid?” she says to him, and she tells him she can’t believe that a grandson of hers would have missed his big chance by not knowing that.
“You don’t see a shooting star every day, Piccolino, not even every year; you just never know, maybe once in your life, and you missed your chance, Vincenzo. How can you be so dumb?”
So dumb, he remembers. The footsteps keep getting closer. So dumb—the chance of his life, he thinks, like always. So dumb, so lost, and now here, shut up in this dark room with footsteps coming closer and closer. So dumb, always so dumb, the noise of the footsteps, now here, lost, dark—he holds his breath.
The footsteps move away, get fainter, and for a few minutes—no one can tell how many—-no one moves or makes a sound.
“That was very close,” says Perugia, when he finally dares to speak.
“I thought the guards didn’t come at night,” says Michele Lancelotti reproachfully.
“They’re not supposed to. Maybe they do now. Don’t worry, they’re gone. They won’t come back.”
“How do you know they won’t come back?”
“I don’t know. I think—yeah, I’m sure.”
“They better not,” says Vincenzo Lancelotti, and Perugia hates him. Who does he think he is, these idiots can’t even tie their own shoes. He only got them because he had no choice, they’re the only ones he knew he could handle. Anyone else would have asked too many questions and wanted too much money and might even have bossed him around. Not the Lancelotti brothers. He had worked with them before on a couple of building sites and jobs, and while they might complain some, in the end they always did what they were told. They knew their place.
It’s hot. A few weeks earlier, in the Bistro Berthe, Perugia had asked the Signore if he could do the job alone; he didn’t like the idea of having to take on two more, or having to share the money with them. The Signore had smiled and asked—perfectly friendly—if he didn’t think he needed any help, and Perugia had replied no, that he could do this on his own and that those two would just be a burden. The Signore had said that there was no chance, that he gave the orders, and that Perugia was to do as he was told. Perugia had looked away and agreed, but now he was having his doubts.
“Try to get some sleep; it’s going to be a long night.”
“Sleep? Here? You’re nuts, Vincenzo, you can’t sleep in here! How could anyone sleep in here?”
You can tell that the Lancelottis are from the south—they can’t say anything without a torrent of words coming out, he thinks, and half closes his eyes. The room smells of oils, clay, turpentine—it’s a storeroom where painters who come to the museum to copy its paintings can keep their materials, and it’s crammed and dirty. He opens his eyes; he is not going to be able to sleep either, it’s too uncomfortable. His eyes are now used to the darkness, and next to the door he sees two brooms with their handles crossed. He knows this means something bad but he doesn’t remember what. If only his grandmother were here she would tell him. He snorts. The world is full of signs he doesn’t understand—if only he’d taken the time to learn them. If only he’d paid attention! His hands are sweating. His hands never sweat, he thinks, it must be the heat. He wipes them on his pants but they keep sweating. It’s as hot as an oven in the room and his legs are stiff. He’d pay money to be able to stretch them but there isn’t any room. Michele Lancelotti keeps fidgeting, driving him crazy.
“Vincenzo.”
“What?”
“You said everything was going to be easy.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Yeah, you’ll see. Or are you scared?”
“Scared? Me?”
There are still hours to go, many hours. Perugia lights a match and looks at his watch: nine fifteen. It should just be getting dark outside, and they have to wait until just after dawn.
“Vincenzo.”
“Now what?”
“Nothing,” says Michele. The other one, Vincenzo—why the hell did he have to be Vincenzo, too, thinks Perugia, like him? At one point it had brought them closer, but now it annoys him. He didn’t think Vincenzos were like that. Vincenzo Lancelotti’s thoughts are on a point too far in the future.
“What do you think they’ll do when they figure out it’s gone?”
Perugia doesn’t answer. The Signore said it was going to be a huge scandal, and he thinks so, too. When he worked at the museum he noticed how everyone treated that painting with more respect than the others—they looked after it better, they’d handle it differently. To him, it doesn’t look all that different from a lot of the other paintings, but for some reason he doesn’t understand, he knows that it is. One time in the bistro he had spoken up and asked, “Signore, can you please tell me why that painting is so important?” But the Signore had just looked at him the way his grandmother used to, with that look of disdain he knows so well, and said nothing.
But Perugia knows he’s not stupid. It’s everyone else who’s going to be stupid, he thinks. He and his friends are going to be the ones who steal this painting that’s so important—he and his two friends—he, the stupid one. Let’s see all their faces when they find out! Tomorrow, when they figure out it’s not there anymore. Tomorrow, when we’ll have it. After we’re out of this hole.