Translated by Anne Milano Appel
Springtime in Rome, a dawn populated with chattering birds. An impalpable veil of smog that slowly dissipates, as though steadily absorbed by the great sponge of the sun in its methodical climb toward the vault of the sky. White wisps of clouds scattered here and there in the blue that watches over the peaceful city and its outlying areas, still sunk in a stubborn Sunday morning slumber, broken by the din of garbage trucks, the rumble of a bus. “The 105 or the 81,” Quirino murmurs, rinsing the coffee cup under the faucet and placing it on the drain board. He fills a glass, takes some big sips. “Ah, the taste of Rome’s cool waters!” With a mechanical gesture he tightens the tie of his light woolen blue-and-white striped robe and gazes at the beautiful, mutilated structure of the Colosseum, licked by the first rays of the sun: the “big windows,” as he calls them, that run along the circular walls. “Solid,” he murmurs, satisfied, the tip of his index finger following the play of depressions and reliefs carved out of the fake marble with industrial precision, imitating with the touch of a master the irregularities of the stone worn away by time. “Centuries,” Quirino murmurs, drawing himself up and resting the palm of his hand on the edge of the credenza. He slips his bare feet into his slippers, and goes over to the window that looks out on the street, a modest strip closed to cars and flanked by low houses: The cables of television antennae hang down along the façades from the rooftops like improbable, permanent festoons, working their way somehow or other into window frames or cracks in the walls below the sills. “Television … everyone has a television…” He lowers his eyes to the street littered with beer bottles and small shapeless piles of trash. A cat emerges silently from an empty dumpster still sunk in shadow, and quietly licks a paw.
The stillness is broken only by the monotonous swishing of a street sweeper’s broom. The cat turns to watch the almost phosphorescent green plastic bristles, then resumes licking, indifferent to the other paw. It starts suddenly when it sees the broom rise—“Drunken kids!”—and angrily thump the dumpster’s grimy metal, barely missing its tail. “Drunken kids,” the street sweeper mutters again, wiping his forehead with his arm, his hands stuffed into enormous work gloves.
Quirino leans out, nods to him. “Got a bee up your butt tonight?” he says, relishing those first words of conversation. “Nice morning,” he adds, throwing his arms wide in a gesture that embraces heaven and earth.
“Nice morning, nice morning…” the other man repeats, shaking his head and crouching down on the sidewalk to retrieve a bottle stuck between the wheels of the dumpster. He raises it toward the window, dangling it between the black fingers of his bulky gloves. “They’ve trashed the neighborhood, those sons of bitches,” he says, waving the bottle in the air and tossing it in the bag. “You should see the garbage in front of that shitty store, where those deadbeat godless immigrants make money selling beer to young kids until 3 in the morning … A bottle factory? A piss factory!” he adds. He shrugs helplessly, looks around. “Filth everywhere … on the ground, on the walls…” He points to the layers of mimeographed posters pasted on the façades. “A person has his own problems, no place to live … rents here being what they are now … and there, they go and put stuff all over the walls … What a life it would be without rent … What a life it would be without rent…” he reads, stressing each word. “On all the walls … Some like it hot, some like it cold. And they think they’re fascists … social fascists … and there, they go and print these and stick them on the walls! And they still have revolution in their heads … And they go printing that crap about their laboratories for revolution … and there … they go and stick their proletarian solidarity on the walls. Those spoiled brats! To them, going to live in Pigneto seems revolutionary … with money, of course! Not to mention those other … beauties … Chinese, Bengalis, Pakistanis, Indians, Senegalese. Only they know what the hell they are … They come to our country to bust our balls … with their posters … because, what do I know, they have their holidays and they want to celebrate them however and wherever they say. They have houses like this … and they want them like that … Do we have houses like that? Oh, do we? Eight hundred euros a month, yours truly, in Torpignattara…” He holds three black fingers up against the sky. “Eight hundred!” he repeats. “So much for rent control…”
Quirino, with a sudden feeling of embarrassment, puts on a contrite expression. “That’s how it is,” he says, “with these new euros…”
“That’s how it is? The hell it is! Yesterday … yesterday, at the corner of Tor Pignattara, right next to my house … flyers everywhere. And why? Because these kids, immigrant sons of bitches, want to play cricket on Sunday … at Villa de Santis, in the park … and our kids follow right along, now they, too, want to play crick-e-crock … And what does it mean, huh, do you know what We want to play crick-e-crock means?”
Quirino shrugs.
“Not soccer,” the street sweeper continues, carried away by the heat of his words, “everybody knows what soccer is … No! And where do they want to play that crazy game? In Pigneto! In our neighborhood!” He shakes his head again, ripping some shredded paper off a wall. He looks around gloomily. “They can all go to hell, a person has his own problems…”
“His own problems,” Quirino echoes him, watching the man drag the garbage bag and the broom toward the end of the street. Then he sighs. He stays there a few moments longer to watch Sor Pietro come back up the pedestrian strip, dragged along by his mastiff, a coal-gray hulk that devours the street in great strides. He watches the man dig in his heels, tug on the leash—“Tito, heel!”—take off a loafer with a threatening gesture. The man argues with the animal, his small body shaking, his eyeglasses crooked on his nose. The mastiff lowers its head and, docile now, lets itself be pet; it slows its gait, now and then turns to its master, who adjusts his eyeglasses and nods blissfully.
“To each his own problems…” Quirino murmurs with a half-smile, closing the shutters and moving toward the little cage. “Good morning, Cesarì.” He takes out the drinking tray. “Some fresh water, hmm, Cesarì?” He goes to the sink. “A little lettuce … a slice of apple…” He sticks his hand in the cage, arranges everything on the tray. Then he holds out a finger. “Like a ray of sunshine, my little canary!” He begins petting the soft yellow feathers, feels the beak delicately nip his finger. “Hmm, Cesarì…” He slides his hand out slowly, watches the bird cock his head and look back at him. “Good boy, Cesarì!” he exclaims, observing the white cage with the small trapeze hanging in the center. “Go and play, Cesarì, Papa has things to do now.”
He looks up over his reading glasses when he hears a knock at the door. He lays the pen down on the notebook. He glances at the wristwatch that his father gave him more than fifty years ago. “So early…” he murmurs, surprised, pressing his hands down on the tabletop and rising. “Is that you, Massimì?” he says, standing on tiptoe and squinting at the landing through the peephole. He sees the curly, grayish fuzz that crowns the small, turtle-like head of Signora Lavinia. “What’s happened?” He opens the door, peers down at the woman’s pinched face.
“May I come in?” she stammers, through lips that are even paler and thinner than usual, her pupils glistening beneath her long, dark lashes.
Quirino pulls the edges of his robe tightly together. For a moment he remains motionless, half-framed by the partly open door.
“Something has happened,” Signora Lavinia whispers, her voice almost hoarse from sobbing. “Something … terrible,” she says.
Quirino runs a hand through the steely gray hair that gives him a fierce, youthful look that he has been proud of since he passed the “critical threshold,” as he says, alluding to his accumulation of years. “Come in then.” He shoves his hands into his wide, roomy pockets. “Shall I make some coffee?”
Signora Lavinia brings a hand to her chest, struggling against the tremors that shake her body. “No, thank you. My heart…”
Quirino takes off his glasses, presses two fingers against his eyelids. “Ah, the heart … the heart … When it goes, there’s trouble…” Then: “Well, Signora Lavinia?” He gestures for her to sit down. He settles himself in his place, on the other side of the table, facing her, his hands on the notebook.
Signora Lavinia’s eyes, now even brighter, look at him imploringly.
“We’ll talk about this later, when the time is right,” Quirino reassures her, closing the notebook.
Signora Lavinia lowers her head, presses her palm against her forehead. “What happened is that … my Valentina…” She bursts out in a deep sob that cuts off her breath.
“She was old, poor thing…” Quirino says.
Signora Lavinia shakes her head forcefully. “They killed her, Sor Quirì,” she says, gulping a mouthful of air and then getting swept up in a vortex of words. “This morning I woke up and she wasn’t there. She must have gone to take her usual little walk, I told myself. Still … I had a kind of premonition … a foreboding, Sor Quirì … I don’t know. So then I went down and started calling her. Here, there. And … do you know, I found her under the little bridge, in the gravel on the railroad tracks.”
“She was hit by a train?” Quirino asks with a sorrowful expression. “If you knew how many cats I saw end up like that when I worked for the railroad … Poor things…” He reaches a hand out to Signora Lavinia, who shakes her head again, holding back her sobs as best she can. “Killed, Sor Quirì. Killed by someone. Her head bashed in by a rock, or a club … I don’t know … With all these terrible people running around … I don’t know, Sor Quirì … Now what am I going to do?” She twists her handkerchief into a knot around her fingers. “Ten years … we ate together, slept together … everything, Sor Quirì. Now what will I do without those beautiful eyes of hers … a companion, Sor Quirì.”
Quirino swallows a sour globule of saliva, glances toward the cage. He brightens when he sees Cesarì swinging slowly on the trapeze. “What can you do, Signora Lavinia…?” he murmurs. “Get yourself another one, another cat. What can we do against the blows of fate…?” He shrugs.
“Fate…” Signora Lavinia repeats bitterly. “So those people can kill another one.”
“Those people who, Signora Lavinia?”
“Those people, them … One of those newcomers in the neighborhood, I’m sure of it, they have no respect. What do they care about my little cat, about an old woman … There’s no respect for anything anymore, Sor Quirì.”
“What do you mean, Signora Lavinia? It was an accident. Surely. An unfortunate accident … Now go downstairs, go home, make yourself a nice hot cup of chamomile … And later, when you feel up to it … when you feel up to it”—he taps two fingers on the cover of the notebook, looks at his manicured nails—“we’ll talk. All right?” he says, composing his face in a stern, paternal expression.
Signora Lavinia starts. She nods. “Yes, I know that the outstanding amount is considerable … but my pension check still hasn’t come and so … I don’t have the money, Sor Quirì…” She holds out the palms of her bare hands.
Quirino puts his index finger to his lips, as if to say, Hush. “Some other time, some other time,” he whispers, getting up and walking her slowly to the door. “Tomorrow…”
Signora Lavinia looks at him despondently. “Tomorrow?” she stammers.
“Or the day after…” Quirino says obligingly. “That way we’ll deal with the rent issue and the loan issue in a single stroke, otherwise the interest…” He slowly raises his hand, levels it in front of her eyes in midair. “The day after tomorrow,” he repeats, meeting Signora Lavinia’s forlorn gaze.
“The day after tomorrow, all right,” she murmurs. Then she plunges back into her own thoughts: “They killed her,” she begins to mumble, holding onto the banister and slowly moving down the stairs.
In the sunlight filtering through the skylight, the down on her head shines like an evanescent halo, as Quirino says: “Animals … there’s no doubt about it, they’re better than people.”
“What’s the deal with arriving here at this hour? So late!” Quirino says, looking his son straight in the eye.
“A problem.”
“On a Sunday? The Lord’s day and … your father’s?”
“On a Sunday, on a Sunday…” Massimiliano says, irritated. “A problem on a Sunday. That can happen, can’t it?”
“All the time, Massimì? Every Sunday?” Quirino says, putting on his glasses.
“The kid threw up all night, his mother wanted to take him to the hospital this morning … a lot of talk … Let’s go, let’s not go … let’s see if he gets better…”
Quirino sits down at the table, opens the notebook. “And how is he now?” he asks, running a hand over the rough stubble on his chin, as if to say: More of your usual nonsense.
“He’s better,” his son says abruptly, sitting down in front of him and crossing his hands.
“And the new notebook? Did you get it?” Quirino asks, taking the key out of the pocket of his robe and inserting it in the lock of the drawer beneath the tabletop.
“I bought it, I bought it…” Massimiliano opens a plastic folder, pulls out an ordinary gray account book.
“What’s that? Quirino asks, startled.
“What we need,” Massimiliano says, adopting a professional tone.
“Me, I don’t need that thing! For me … this one here … is all I need.” He bangs the notebook down in front of his son’s eyes, points to the gilded face of Botticelli’s Venus printed on the cover. “I have my method, do you understand? My own way!”
Massimiliano gives him a dirty look, puts the account book back in the folder, and closes it angrily, with an abrupt snap. “A fine way…” he hisses between his teeth. Then: “Let’s see, come on, it’s getting late.” He leans across the table.
“All right then, let’s begin with the two small buildings. This one here should be nearly in order.” He takes a stack of bills from the drawer. He counts them, moistening his fingertips with saliva from time to time. “Punctual, these ‘out of town students,’” he says, stressing the words.
Massimiliano runs the bills through his hands, quickly glancing at them. He confirms. He watches his father record the figures carefully in the notebook. “And the ones from the catacombs?”
“Those… they asked me for a little more time,” Quirino says, concealing his annoyance.
“A little more time … after being a week late?” Massimiliano exclaims, fidgeting in his chair. “So, even with ten of them, those deadbeat immigrants can’t manage to scrape together the pittance that they owe! And if they can’t even pay for that rathole … why are they complaining, huh? Now they’ve even started kicking up a fuss at the Local Rights Department because There’s mold on the walls, they say! Because the electrical system is not up to code! What do they expect, those deadbeats!”
Quirino looks at him bewildered. “And what does this Rights Department do?”
“What does it do, what does it do…? It’s a pain in the ass! But they can stuff it, those jerks, because it’s not like they have proof that they’re paying us! It’s not like anyone sees the money they hand over, right? Who’s ever seen that money? Are there checks? Money orders? No!”
“So then?”
“So then, if they continue to give us a hard time, we’ll evict them for arrears, and they’re gone! Problem solved.” He slaps down the palm of his hand as if crushing an insect. “What shit…”
Quirino runs his fingers through his hair. “A person does all he can to try to please them … turning a blind eye … putting ten people in a house … ten … and just look at what they do—”
“Case closed, I told you,” Massimiliano cuts him off. “Let’s continue.”
“Fine, let’s continue … So then”—he clears his throat. “So then, the other small building … in order, let’s say.”
“And the girl? The ‘artist’?” Massimiliano urges him on with sarcasm.
“The girl on the top floor … she’ll pay in a few days, she says. Because it’s a little expensive for her…”
“And we have a painter in our building who wants to be an alternative artist!” Massimiliano retorts. “And the Chinese?”
Quirino takes the money out of the drawer. “On time.” He puts the bills on the table. “Decent people, who work … and pay the rent.”
“Decent people, fine people,” Massimiliano mimics his father, shaking his head. “Do you know how many clothing stores they supply, those people? Do you know?”
Quirino shrugs.
“Of course they pay … that pathetic amount we charge.”
“A storeroom, Massimì. How much should we make them pay for a storeroom?”
“And how much do you think they pay those poor devils who work for them day and night like chickens? Nothing! So let’s take it out of their hide, why not?”
Quirino doesn’t answer, he counts the hundred-euro bills, enters the amount in the notebook. “There, done,” he murmurs. “And then,” he adds quickly, almost taking the words out of his son’s mouth, “and then … there’s the whole thorny matter of this building here.” He taps his finger on the tabletop.
Massimiliano twists his lips into a grimace that distorts his handsome, carefully shaved face. He suppresses a sudden fit of anger.
“Where sometimes they pay, sometimes they don’t pay…” Quirino continues. “Their pensions aren’t enough … Sor Quirì, another day or two … And a little loan here, a little loan there … and the interest is too high … What can I do about it, Massimì, if the bank doesn’t want to lend them money?”
“What can you do? Throw them out, once and for all, that’s what you should do!” his son snarls.
“What, I should start throwing people out on the street now? All these old people whom I’ve known a lifetime, Massimì? I have to keep duplicate keys to their apartments, in case they leave theirs inside, they’re so forgetful … What can I do? I raise the interest on the loans … What more can I do? … And then they come crying to me over a dead cat and whatnot … and what am I supposed to do? We’ll talk about it later, I tell them.”
“I’ll tell you what to do!” Massimiliano barks. “Sell, that’s what you should do.” He bangs his palm on the tabletop an inch from his father.
Quirino looks at him stubbornly. “Sell…” he says ironically.
“Sell, that’s right. To my real estate friend, who tells me every day, Whatever you want, Massimo, for that building there on the pedestrian strip. Name your price and I’ll pay it on the spot.”
Quirino throws up his arm. “Your friend the real estate agent…” He gives his son a scornful glance that makes him draw his head back between his shoulder blades. Then he points a finger right between his eyes. “Get it through your head.” He shakes his finger. “Quirino buys, he doesn’t sell. A little at a time … A loan here, a loan there … That’s how you get ahead: a little at a time.” He lowers his hand, begins stroking the open page of the notebook with his fingertip. “Was Rome built in a day? A little at a time, that’s how the urbs was built! Was it those real estate agents of yours who think they’re God—did they build Rome?”
Massimiliano offers a doglike expression. “What does Rome have to do with it?” Then he raises his voice. “Everything’s changing fast,” he exclaims, snapping his fingers. “The people, the money that’s circulating … And if we don’t jump at the chance we’ll lose our ass, get it, with all these whining beggars. We have to be shrewd, Dad! Shrewd!” he repeats, almost shouting. “And then”—his eyes travel over the room—“if you, too, were to go, to—”
“To…” Quirino interrupts, flaying him with his eyes. “Where is it that your father should go?”
“Away from here … if you were to leave here,” Massimiliano says hastily, changing his tone, “to a nice apartment, I mean … You can afford it.”
Quirino drops the pen on the notebook. He sets his eyeglasses on the table. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” he says, pronouncing the words one by one. Massimiliano frowns, not understanding. “And I,” Quirino continues, “we … are not God, who can create the world in seven days. We have to take our time … without biting off more than we can chew … in our own way … in our own house,” he adds.
Massimiliano shoves his chair back abruptly. “Then go on … go on letting these good-for-nothings take you for a ride.”
He sneers as he heads for the door, followed by Quirino’s voice: “The notebook, don’t forget!” Quirino then puts everything back in the drawer, turns the key in the lock, slips it carefully into his pocket. He gets up. He goes over to Cesarino’s little white cage. He watches for a while. He removes a golden feather stuck between the bars, blows it away. “Beauty is important, Cesarì,” he says, as if to justify himself. “Money and beauty … and some manners, as well…” He lets the bird peck his finger. “With good manners, everything is possible.” He smiles faintly.
“Killed!”
Signora Iolanda spreads her arms wide as she wanders desperately around the small courtyard that opens up beyond the entrance to the building. “They’ve killed them…” she whispers, turning her eyes toward her husband, who watches helplessly as she bends down, her breasts hanging like swollen pouches on her belly, brings her fingers to her mouth, then places them on the small bodies lying on the ground. “They’ve killed them,” she repeats, racing around like a madwoman in the courtyard’s faint light. She turns suddenly, frightened, when she hears a key fumbling in the door. She clings to her husband, who presses her head to his chest.
“It’s probably one of the tenants coming home,” he stammers, also turning toward the entrance in a rigid, unnatural movement.
Sor Quirino closes the door behind him. He leans the umbrella against the wall. He straightens his light overcoat that has been pulled to one side. “Some spring,” he mutters. “Who can figure out this crazy weather anymore…” Then he falls silent. He squints in an attempt to bring into focus the two shadows framed in the space beside the open glass door leading to the courtyard. He picks up the umbrella and takes a few steps. “Who’s there?” he calls out to bolster his courage, then breathes a sigh of relief. “Signora Iolanda…” he says, as the woman comes toward him, unspeaking, gesturing for him to follow.
He walks the few meters that separate him from the courtyard and turns a questioning glance toward Sor Antonio, the greengrocer, who mutters, “An atrocity,” pointing mechanically at the ground.
Quirino apprehensively lowers his eyes. “Poor things…” he whispers. He gets down on his knees with some difficulty, reaches a hand out toward the bloodied neck of a tiny kitten, curled up in the doorway, then spots another ragged heap behind the cistern, then another, and another … He turns his head, incredulous. He gives a start when he sees the red drip, drip, drip slowly staining the ground behind the cleaning bucket, where the body of the mother cat hangs, upside down and gutted. “Poor thing…”
“And there were two more,” Signora Iolanda whispers, “that … I can’t find anywhere.” She starts searching again, desperate.
Quirino pulls himself back up, holding onto the handle of his umbrella. “Who was it?” he asks, just to say something.
Sor Antonio widens his arms. “Who could it have been? Someone—”
“The person who … who also stoned Signora Lavinia’s cat, who scalded Sor Giacomo’s dog with hot water in the middle of the street the other morning,” Signora Iolanda breaks in, still wandering around the courtyard. “That poor dog, he was just going around doing his business, not bothering anybody. Who would Sor Giacomo’s dog bother, right, Sor Quirino? Who could he bother…? The drunks who live it up until the early-morning hours? Who? Who were these kittens bothering? So clean, their mother licked them every morning … and how they meowed in their tiny voices when I came down to give them their food. And someone … someone … without a heart … Who knows where the other two have ended up … They must have eaten the other two … I’ll bet you anything, they ate them … those Chinese people!” Signora Iolanda finally bursts out. “Those … those…” She covers her face with her hands.
“What do you mean, Signora Iolanda?” Quirino exclaims, looking for some sign of agreement on the stony face of Sor Antonio, who, lowering his eyes, mutters, “They must have eaten them.”
“What do you mean, eaten them?” Quirino asks, pointing to the mangled bodies of the cats in the courtyard. “What about these? Did someone eat these?” His hand moves to his neck, he opens the top button of his shirt, takes a deep breath. “Those sons of bitches,” he cries out suddenly, starting up the stairs, climbing faster and faster as a thought begins gnawing at his brain; he stumbles, and his hand trembles as he fumbles with the lock, and “Cesarì!” comes out in a stifled scream that dies in his throat when he sees the little bird curled up quietly on his perch, his head tucked under the beautiful feathers that slowly rise, swelling in rhythm with his breath.
There is a dazed silence in the lobby. “Like during the war, when we were all quiet, mute, so we wouldn’t get bombed,” Sor Giacomo whispers, wringing his hands.
“Under siege,” Signora Iolanda echoes him, following Quirino’s restless steps, as he paces up and down in silence, waiting for everyone to sit down on the chairs, which have been arranged in a circle.
Signora Iolanda looks up at the ceiling, stares at the naked bulb of the lamp hanging overhead. She shudders. She twists in her seat. “Who could have told Tito, poor thing, that it would end like this?” Sor Pietro looks at her, beside himself. “In his sleep,” he adds. “In his own house … in our house…” His head sags, he cleans his glasses and places them on his sweaty nose. “A good dog, a decent soul … big … I taught him everything … hanged by the neck from the television cable, with his teeth out … such a decent dog.” His eyes hidden behind the glasses turn toward Quirino, who continues to pace, trying to come up with an idea, something appropriate to say, fingering the drawer key in his pocket as if it were an amulet. He clutches it in his fingers. He hears an agitated whispering in the corner. “Let’s begin the meeting,” he says uncertainly, but giving his voice an authoritative pitch. All the residents start, as if those were the first words of God on earth. They instinctively turn their heads toward the front door, to make sure that it is firmly shut.
Quirino watches the two Zorzi brothers, who are huddled together. “Do you have something to say?” he asks, trying to maintain his tone.
The two exchange a few nervous glances. Then: “Yes,” says Sor Paolo, raising his hand to ask for the floor. “I do.” But he is silent when he sees all those eyes turn toward him expectantly.
“The fact is,” Sor Geno intervenes, with a nod of agreement toward his brother, “the fact is that we two … we don’t have animals at home and … who are they going to take it out on, those people, if they get it into their heads to break a window, a door, whatever … in our house…”
“We’re the only ones they can take it out on,” Sor Paolo concludes, his bald cranium sinking between his shoulders, while Sor Antonio says, “Because the point is, Sor Quirino, that now they’re even entering our homes, you see? Entering our homes…”
“To terrorize us,” Signora Iolanda chimes in.
“When we’re asleep, when a person … How does one defend oneself, Sor Quirì? How can a person defend herself alone,” Signora Lavinia wails.
“By talking to the district committee,” Sor Antonio speaks up. “That’s how we defend ourselves!”
Quirino gives him a dubious look. “And since when has there been such a committee?”
“The district committee,” Sor Geno says sarcastically. “That bunch, all they do is make up questionnaires ‘to survey people’s needs,’ they say … And what are the people’s needs, according to them?” He spreads his fingers and starts to count: “Bike and pedestrian paths, maintaining the green spaces, urban quality of life, chemical toilets … chemical toilets, for God’s sake! How much do you think people like us are worth in their eyes, huh? A bunch of penniless old people…” He feels his brother nudge him in the ribs and turns. “Am I wrong, Paole?” he mutters, his face livid.
“So what do they want, then? For us to go away? Is that what they want? To throw us out?” Sor Pietro says in a low voice. “To hang us all?”
“They want to eat our hearts,” Signora Lavinia breaks in, pressing her hands to her chest.
“All those drunken kids, those filthy immigrants, those Chinese, those junkies, those spoiled daddy’s boys, those building speculators who buy and sell and buy … and open new businesses … and we don’t have the slightest idea what they’re planning to do with this neighborhood of ours…” Signora Iolanda rants, to a murmur of agreement. She fidgets in her chair while her husband grabs her by the arm and casts a furtive look at the door.
“Calm down,” he says quietly. Then he turns firmly toward Quirino. “Let’s get back to the point. Who’s the one who has keys to our houses?” he hisses. “Who’s the one who can come and go as he pleases? Who’s the one who takes the bread out of our mouths…” He breaks off, stifling his rage and continuing to stare at Quirino, who turns pale.
“What are you trying to say, Sor Antonio?” Quirino murmurs, sneaking a glance at his watch and cursing his son, who still hasn’t shown up. Finally, trying to compose himself, he says: “If you want the keys, we can give them to you,” as if to evoke, with his words at least, the son who should already be there, at his side.
“Keys, what keys?” snaps Sor Pietro. “I … I’m going,” he says, leaving them all dumbfounded.
“Where are you going? To Stazione Termini?” Sor Geno asks with a flare of sarcasm.
“To join the beggars?” Sor Paolo is more precise, helping his brother out.
Signora Lavinia, looking around as if lost, moans: “Now what will we do? After forty years…”
“We’ll occupy a building,” Sor Antonio interjects. “We’ll certainly be better off than here, with all this moisture—”
“It’s eating us alive,” Signora Iolanda interrupts. “It’s eating us alive,” she repeats, glancing at Quirino, who leans against the wall.
“I’m eating you alive,” Quirino mumbles in bewilderment, clinging to the key to the drawer jammed in the bottom of his pocket. Then he bends down and opens the leather folder on his chair. Feeling the breath of all those angry dogs hot on his neck, he begins rummaging, dumps everything out, then lifts his head, his hair falling over his forehead. “They’re not here,” he whispers with a groan, “the keys … they’re not here.” A voice insinuates itself furtively amid the confusion of his thoughts, rivets him there in the middle of the lobby. Well? What do you think, Sor Quirì? Then the voice impels him up the stairs. He’s getting away now, Sor Quirì! One floor, then another. He’s going down, he’s going down … and he finally reaches his door.
Ready to drop, he rushes to the drawer and searches it frantically. “They’re not here,” he repeats, sunk in evening shadow, while the voice has now become a phrase stuck in the exact center of his brain: We have to be shrewd …
“That son of a bitch!” he hisses in a flash of lucidity, slamming his fist on the table. “He thinks he can throw people out just like that!”
He feels a sharp pain start along his arm and spread throughout his body, now trembling with rage. He takes a deep breath. He tries to calm down. “Cesarì, see what he did, that son of mine?” he groans, holding onto the credenza and making his way with unsteady steps toward the cage—“Cesarì … Cesarino … Cesa…”—which hangs there, shattered.