Translated by Ann Goldstein
It was Christmas Eve, in the vast concourse of Stazione Termini. Marshal Bovio, his mood grim, his hands deep in the pockets of his big regulation overcoat, swam against the current of a desolate river of men and women. Small groups of pinched dark faces; lost gazes and a few laughs—too loud—to summon up cheer; the faces of vagrants, of old women bent over shopping carts, pushing their little piles of possessions. Unmindful—or unconscious—of everything around them. Normal faces, having ended up there by mistake, on Christmas Eve, in the cold of the station rather than the warmth of their own houses.
The marshal leaned against the locked door of the information office, looked at his watch—7:30—and took out an MS from the crumpled, half-empty pack, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
Many years earlier, he recalled, he had been on duty on Christmas Eve when a traveler was knifed to death, near the track where the last local for Nettuno departed.
The whole night had been spent interrogating the derelicts who lived in the station because they had nowhere else to go.
The murderer had been an illegal taxi driver, a slightly disfigured little man whose name the marshal couldn’t remember.
The man’s face, however, he remembered clearly—a sick-looking face, the jaw shaken by a silent weeping, an animal sob after the last smack. The first gray light of Christmas Day was mixed with the yellow streetlights and the bitter odor of humanity, of fear of officialdom after a night of interrogation. Robbery and homicide for the disfigured taxi driver. Life in prison. Bovio had heard nothing more of him after the trial.
He inhaled the last drag of his cigarette, smoked down to the filter, and let it fall to the ground.
At home they must all be gathered by now for the big dinner—a southern family, traditions still strong—and for the exchange of gifts, after the flavors of Christmas, fragrance of homemade sweets, brilliant colors, and comforting warmth.
The newspaper seller near the information booth was preparing to close. He chaotically piled up newspapers and magazines inside the kiosk with the unconscious speed of one who fears being excluded from something.
An old woman with a cart approached the newsstand. A vagrant, with those dirty bags, those ragged sacks stuffed full of things. But there was something that set her apart—a strange dignity, perhaps—from the desperate, the destitute who wandered like melancholy phantoms through the station and around the idle trains. She wore a thick sweater and a man’s jacket; underneath was a long bright-colored skirt, cheerful; her hair was gathered under a carefully knotted kerchief. She began to attentively examine the magazines that the newspaper seller had not yet put away. She delicately leafed through one, as if she were looking for an article, or something.
Then she turned to the proprietor. She had a thousand lire in her hand.
“L’Unità,” she said.
The newspaper seller looked up and hesitated a moment before answering.
“L’Unità costs two thousand lire today. It’s Sunday, it has the supplement.” He seemed to be apologizing.
The old woman withdrew the money hand with the banknote but remained in front of the newsstand. She was still there, unmoving, when Bovio’s large hand reached out of his dark overcoat and placed a thousand lire in hers.
She looked up slowly, up to the marshal’s face. “What a kind person.” Her voice was thin but firm. “I hope that you may be granted everything you wish for.”
Then she turned, passed the two thousand lire to the newspaper seller, took her paper with the supplement, and moved along with her cart.
He stood looking at her. He was slightly ashamed of that blessing, so disproportionate with respect to his own instinctive gesture, which now seemed to him petty. He watched her move into the distance, into a remote corner of the immense concourse.
He took ten thousand lire from his wallet, clutched it in his hand, and slipped the hand in his pocket. He would catch up with the old woman, give her that money, and then hurry away, before anyone could see him.
So he began walking, feeling strangely embarrassed.
The old woman, meanwhile, had taken out a small broom and had begun to sweep her corner. All around, against the walls, under a scaffolding in front of the billboards that displayed the timetables, the homeless were preparing for Christmas.
Some were already asleep, rolled up in newspaper sheets, sheltered in cardboard huts, having closed their eyes knowing nothing of tomorrow. Others, awake, scanned the void or tended to themselves like tired old cats. One had his pants rolled up; his calves were covered with scabs that he picked at conscientiously, one by one, concentrating, his eyes, like a stray dog’s, red with some awful disease.
Now the marshal was just a few meters from the old woman. She had her back to him and continued to sweep. Serene, with the air of one who is placidly seeing to her own domestic affairs. Bovio was about to call out to her, when he felt a pang of nostalgia and the blurred memory of some distant Christmas. Corridors, lights, and lost rooms. Voices of excited children, yearnings from the vortex of the past.
Absurdly, he realized that it was not his memory.
Just as absurdly, he thought that he must return it to the old woman.
He took a few more steps, almost staggering, with a buzzing in his head and the hand in his pocket contracted around the ten thousand lire.
“Marshal.”
The voice of the young police officer was like a rock smashing a window. The marshal turned suddenly, with a guilty expression, it seemed to him. He quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket as if hiding evidence; he began walking away in a hurry.
“What is it?” The voice sounded too high, and fake.
He didn’t turn back.