He woke with a start.
Anita, beside him, said, ‘You had a nightmare, come here.’
Pietro caressed her head. ‘I have to go.’
He went to the kitchen and drank from a glass with a hand-painted lizard on it. The green ran outside the lines of the pointed tail. He dressed and before leaving noticed that she was up, wearing a light dressing gown and gazing at him.
‘He’ll need you,’ she said to him again.
Pietro crossed the room to embrace her, then left.
The night had swallowed Milan, swallowed him as well as the Bianchi carried him home. Traces of the nightmare stayed with him during the entire return trip. It was always the same. A ship and the salty air, with no sea beneath the ship, just emptiness. And his fall from the bows, down, down, until he woke. He banished it by pedalling, pedalling without stopping all the way to the condominium. Such was his frenzy that he struggled to insert the keys into the building door. Left the Bianchi against the downpipe at the entrance to the courtyard, calming down once he was there, his gaze directed at the doctor’s windows. They were dark. In one he could make out the ceiling beams and a chandelier with many arms. The beams and the chandelier were enough for him. You will need me. A darkened window was enough. He returned towards the concierge’s lodge and just before entering noticed something on the ground, a leather bracelet. Picked it up. It was frayed at the edges and smooth on top. On the underside a date had been etched: 14-9-2008. He placed it in the drawer of his night table.
Then the concierge took off his suit, hung the shirt and jacket in the wardrobe, chose a red tracksuit as pyjamas. Instead of the bed he would make do with a blanket and a mothball-smelling pillow inherited from the previous concierge. Picked up too a crossword puzzle and a pen, then removed his socks and went into the empty room. There was a musty odour that rose from the filthy floor. Three of the walls had been recently painted white, the fourth left half plastered, sign that the work had been interrupted. He opened the porthole window that looked into the courtyard and turned on the lamp. What remained of memory? Pietro stood frozen, staring at the suitcase. Only things. He bent down to open a box, removed a note and read it against the light. The writing in pencil had faded but he could nevertheless make it out: I killed my son. With note in hand he stood and rocked back onto his heels, shifted onto his toes and sketched a graceful tap dance. Stopped. What remained of memory? He brought a hand under the lamp. Against the half-plastered wall he projected the shadows of his fingers, held them together and then spread them open, closed, open again. They became a dog without a tail. He had learned how to make the shadows as a young man. Now they were lopsided and a few were always missing something. He moved his index finger and thumb. The dog opened his jaw. To the animal he confided: ‘Tomorrow night at seven, I’ll follow him.’
*
The eyes of the witch sparkled through the confessional grille. She murmured in a Milanese accent, ‘Where’d it go, Father, the cat’s soul? And mine, where’ll it go? I have to get married soon. How can I do it with my soul so troubled, how?’
‘Do you pray?’
‘I write to him, to God.’
They were silent. He heard her moving behind the grille. She drew something from her handbag, tore off a strip of paper and pulled out a pencil she had been using to keep her hair in place. Wrote on the paper and pushed it through.
The words written on the paper were: I have another sin to confess, God, but I can’t say it to you, only write it.
He handed the paper back to her. ‘Do it.’
And she wrote it with gaunt is and ls and a portly o: I killed my son.