He awoke with a start, at first not realizing where he was. Although, even before he had stretched out his hand behind his head for the light cord, he was becoming minimally aware of his surroundings. So he’d been asleep. Asleep and dreaming. And the wake-up call? How come no one had bothered? It seemed as though hours had passed since he fell asleep. Perhaps it was already two or three in the morning.
Having switched on the light, he turned on his side to reach for his watch on the shelf of the bedside cupboard and glanced at it. Five forty-five. He rapidly understood, while at the same time registering a sudden wave of anxiety, that he’d only slept for around an hour. Tomorrow was far, far away. Between now and then gaped the immense, almost unbridgeable gulf of an entire night, one of the longest nights of the year.
After ten minutes or so he went down the stairs into the ever-stronger reek of rancid food.
Down in the entrance, Bellagamba, as ever behind the desk, was trying to fix a small radio. The sports news was on, the football scores. He came closer. Leaning over the apparatus, noisy with static, the old Fascist seemed unaware of his presence. He could see well enough that he’d arrived at the least opportune moment. But on the other hand he had to get going right now. And before leaving, he had to pay for his meal and the use of the room.
No chance. However much he insisted, the other man would have none of it. Evidently – he said, his voice raised over the noise of the radio – evidently Signor Avvocato is joking. That would be a fine thing! After all the game he’d given him. So, please, it would be doing him a favour not to talk about money any more. Otherwise, he’d be forced to return all the game, or else draw up a proper account. And then it would be clear which of them was the one in debt.
He turned off the radio.
‘More to the point, did you sleep well?’ he enquired.
‘Not badly.’
‘But only briefly! For how long? An hour and a half at most. You said you wanted to be called at six. I’d have preferred to leave you undisturbed for longer …’
He smiled, with a sly air.
‘I was even thinking of ringing your wife,’ he went on. ‘Just so that with this fog she shouldn’t be worried.’
He beat his forehead with his closed fist. ‘Now, I think of it. Someone telephoned from Cavaglieri the engineer’s house, and said that when you woke up, would you be so kind as to call?’
He narrowed his eyes, and asked:
‘Isn’t he your cousin, the engineer?’
‘But who was it on the telephone?’ he asked, without replying, and without managing to control his voice. ‘Was it the engineer himself?’
‘Definitely not. I don’t think it was his wife either.’
It must have been the housemaid, he thought, the old woman who’d answered this morning.
He stretched his hand out over the desk.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘It’s time I left. And thanks.’
‘If you’d like,’ Bellagamba replied, shaking the hand he’d proffered with evident reluctance, ‘you can even call from here.’
So saying, he extracted the telephone from under the desk.
‘No, but thanks all the same,’ he said, shaking his head with an attempt at a smile.
He covered the back of the other’s hand with the palm of his left hand and then, turning his back, made for the exit.
As soon as he was outside, however, he came to halt, in two minds as to whether to go by foot to Caffè Fetman or to take the car instead. He quickly decided on the latter. A brief walk could only do him good, he told himself, crossing the street, what with that grey, coated tongue he’d recently observed in the bathroom mirror. But it was also the case that, if he walked, he would then have to return and so perhaps bump into Bellagamba again. He could imagine the scene. He, re-entering the square, and there, waiting for him and appearing just on cue behind the steamed-up glass of the entrance to the Bosco Elìceo, the bony face of Bellagamba, carried away with his usual mania of spying, nosing about and digging things up …
Once he’d started up the car, backed out and begun moving at a walking pace towards the square – the fog still so thick it stopped him shifting even into second gear – he felt himself completely invigorated. Just as well. If the Cavaglieri family hadn’t got in touch, he doubted he’d ever have had the will to phone them. Without anything else as an excuse to stay in Codigoro, all that would have been left would be to set off on his way back to Ferrara. And, by now, he’d already be en route, threading his way through the dense fog, always in first gear, with his eyes narrowed, for mile after mile.
He was imagining the Cavaglieri house: warm, brightly lit, and with the six girls and boys, from the oldest to the youngest, making a noisy ring around their mother and father, already middle-aged, and yet somehow still youthful, still going strong. He couldn’t work out why the prospect of dropping into the midst of all that inevitable din and confusion should attract rather than repel him, should, so surprisingly, fill him with hope and desire. Who knows, he embroidered the scene a little more, perhaps later, after the cup of tea and the home-made ciambella cake and the glass of sweet Albana (to be slowly sipped with the cake), they would all have pressed him to stay for supper and then, later still, at the end of the meal and the games of tombola that would follow it, to stay the night as well, among the whole family, like an old bachelor uncle who’d become curmudgeonly and taciturn from being so long alone, in an improvised bed – perhaps in the bedroom of the youngest – Tonino or was it Tanino? – or in that of the next youngest, Andrea, the one he’d spoken to on the phone at such length and with whom, therefore, things would have been easier, much easier than with any of the other children – to chat in the dark till his eyelids grew heavy. Perhaps, indeed, it would all fall out like this, he told himself. He really hoped so.
He entered the square obliquely and, to steer his way through the fog, he never lost sight of either the small, dark pinnacle of the monument for the Fallen or, barely visible from where he was, the enormous I.N.A. building with its façade full of windows without shutters from which issued a vivid white light, more that of a city than a small town. Finally he arrived right in front of the Caffè Fetman. He was by now so eager to phone that, having switched off the engine and got out of the car, he forgot to lock the door, as was his habit. He only realized this later, when, stepping up on to the pavement, he was about to enter the cafe. He turned round and glanced at the Aprilia. No, he decided, it wasn’t worth the trouble. To phone and so on wouldn’t take him more than a couple of minutes at most. And in that time, given how deserted the whole place was – the town’s inhabitants were all imprisoned in their houses and the others, the visitors, had already left, were already far down the road that would take them home – no one would dream of stealing anything.
He entered.
The smoke, the steam, the noisy crowd – many of the Bosco Elìceo’s customers had relocated there to argue about the scores and the league tables on display on a wall – and the sardonic grin with which the same grimy forty-year-old he’d encountered this morning greeted him from behind the desk; all this in other circumstances would have provoked in him his usual feeling of recoil compounded with a disgust at any physical contact, an annoyance at the din, and a fear of any unpleasant encounters. But in his present state of mind he paid no heed to any of that. He asked for a telephone token. He ordered a Fernet amaro. And, meaning to drink it after his phone call, he moved decisively towards the telephone booth at the end of the big room.
He turned on the light. Forgetting to close the door, he dialled the number, twelve.
Almost immediately a woman’s voice answered: ‘Yes.’