Pietro had learned that they were looking for a concierge in Milan from the letter with the Emilio Salgari stamp. The postman delivered it one ordinary afternoon to his old address, an eighteenth-century church fronting on a piazza in Rimini. He put it into the hands of the servant, a wisp of a woman with shifty eyes and bow legs.
‘I’ll make sure he gets it,’ she said. ‘Don Pietro hasn’t lived here for a year.’ And she walked over to the old priest’s new house.
‘Padre.’ She knocked three times. ‘Padre.’
Pietro opened the door. ‘I’m no longer Padre.’ He returned to the living room.
‘You are for me.’ She pulled her shawl close and followed him in, leaving the letter on a folding bed in the living room.
There was no return address, just his name and the address of the church in anonymous cursive script. There was this stamp and the rice paper that shed invisible specks. Pietro opened it along the short side. Inside were a photograph and a sheet of paper folded in thirds. He pulled out the paper and began to read. Immediately stopped.
‘Everything OK?’ The servant had shuffled closer to him. ‘Everything OK? Is it the woman?’
Pietro closed his eyes.
*
He had read it that evening, and again at night. Two times in all. The photograph, on the other hand, he never stopped looking at. He had followed the instructions: call some lawyer by the name of Poppi and set up an interview for the concierge job. He met him the next week in Milan, in this elegant but not pretentious condominium, and following their conversation returned to Rimini.
Three days later, sitting on a rock in the sea, he found out he would become a concierge.
The lawyer was the one to call him with the news. When Poppi heard the seagulls in the background he said, ‘Pietro, you’ve got to be crazy to come to Milan to look after a condominium.’ He revealed that in the interview Pietro’s conservative haircut and a certain propensity for silence had been decisive. His past employment as a priest had elicited the agreement of all the residents except him. But majority ruled. Would he accept the job?
Pietro accepted, and before finishing they agreed when he would start.
Then the lawyer cleared his throat, ‘Just out of curiosity, why did you divorce God?’
‘He wasn’t so easy to get along with.’
‘You and I are going to be great friends. See you in four days.’
Pietro put away his phone and pulled out the letter on rice paper, squeezed it till he crumpled Salgari. Then passed by the church that had been his for a lifetime. In the piazza at the front, two old men greeted him. He continued without turning toward the walls that he had traded in for a tiny dump on the outskirts of the city. Three rooms in all, an equal number of pieces of luggage. The same ones that he would bring with him to Milan: two duffel bags and the suitcase with the boxes.
On the evening of his departure he abandoned the rest: shelves full of books and a drawer of Benedictine knick-knacks. With one bag on his back and the other in one hand, he laid the suitcase across the handlebars of the Bianchi and headed to the station. The train was on time. He bought his ticket and made a phone call.
‘I’m coming tonight, Anita. They’ve hired me. Sorry about the last minute.’