How is he?”
“Fine, I think. Now he’s sleeping.”
“Sleeping how?
“How else is he supposed to sleep? He’s just sleeping. He tosses and turns. He mutters, he cries. But he’s sleeping. Like always, ever since . . . like always.”
“It’s nice out here. Look at that moon. For the first time, you can see that spring is here.”
“I don’t understand you. Do you realize the situation we’re in? You’re thinking about the moon, about springtime. And meanwhile the world’s caving in on us.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Nothing’s happened at all. Everything is normal, perfectly normal. This is the only way he’ll be able to recover and go back to doing what he was doing before. And everything will go back to normal.”
”I wish I could be like you. I wish I could always think things were going to turn out for the best. But I don’t; I think that everything’s going to go to hell in a handbasket. The police . . .”
“Oh, don’t make me laugh, the police! The police don’t understand a thing, they’ve never solved a single case, and you think that this one time . . .”
“That one guy, I don’t like him. The commissario, the one with the weird eyes. You talk and he stares at you, hard, no expression. As if he was digging into your body.”
“I’m telling you again, they’ve never solved a case. If you don’t let yourself get rattled, if you stay cool, they can’t charge you with a thing. You have to be like a card player, you know? Like when you have a winning hand and you have to make sure no one knows.”
“Ha, ha . . . How funny you are. After all, you’re not the one who has to worry.”
“Ah, no? And why not? Aren’t we both in the same boat? If the boat goes down, we’re all going down with it, you know? It’s not like some of us will make it and some won’t.”
“The brigadier worries me too. He’s a sly old fox. One of those guys who pretends to be an idiot so they won’t draft him, but when the time comes . . .”
“Brigadier, Commissario, even if it was the Duce himself: if they don’t have anything, they don’t have anything. And they can’t charge you with nothing.”
“Maybe you’re right. The worst thing is the face, her face. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“So why, why did you insist on looking at her? Couldn’t you . . .”
“Sure, I could just as well have left her the way she was. But in the end, I don’t know . . . it just seemed like too much, to leave her like that. So I pulled away the pillow.”
“Pointless pity. For a whore, for an ordinary stupid whore who would have ruined your life and your future. A future that we earned, a future that we built, day by day.”
“But I see her again, and I’ll keep seeing her. Not that I’m repenting, obviously. We did what we had to do. But to see her like that, afterward . . . afterward, it was terrible.”
“Now it’s going to be a test of nerves, and you can’t afford to be weak. Neither you nor I can afford to be weak. We have to protect our future. That’s why we need to remain calm and unruffled. We can’t worry about anything or anybody, least of all the police, who couldn’t find a murderer if he bit them in the ass.”
“You think not? But, you know, the commissario . . .”
“I told you, nothing at all. Nothing to worry about. If anything, are we sure we haven’t made any mistakes? For instance, is there anyone who might have, I don’t know, seen something by any chance, or have . . .”
“No, I told you. I was very careful, no one could trace it back to me. Seen from outside, nothing outside of the ordinary happened that day. The clients were there and, you know, there’s a constant flow of people, young and old. There was music, everyone was thinking about . . . in short, everyone was minding their own business, that’s what the place was designed for.”
“Well then, like I’ve told you lots of times, we should just keep calm and collected and wait for time to pass and heal all wounds. And then, when everything is back where it should be, we can start looking forward again. And it will be as if that whore had never been born.”
“She’d said that she was going to give her answer on Easter Sunday. Just think, on Easter Sunday!”
“I’ll say it again: it’s going to be as if she’d never been born.”
“But she’ll go on existing, every time I try to go to sleep.”
“No. Because it was something we had to do. Now try to breathe. And look at what a beautiful moon there is tonight.”