You need to look out for the cold. Because, over time, the cold will seep into your bones and insinuate itself into your soul.
And when it insinuates itself into souls, it changes them; it dries up the source of a smile, it fills with ice the gaps that once made it possible to stroll along the brink of sentiments and emotion, enchanting you with the sight of the panorama.
Look out for the cold.
Giorgio Pisanelli set out once again on foot for the park outside the National Library.
Once again, he was running late. The news of the arrest of Renato Forgione had thrown not only the police station into a state of frantic disarray, but the entire city. There’d been a cavalcade of reporters and television news crews in Pizzofalcone, eager to dig into every nook and cranny of an investigation that promised to be sensational, in the best possible way, luckily: the police had broken the case of the two murdered siblings in less than five days. And just think, it had been none other than the Bastards who had pulled off that coup.
In spite of that, the deputy captain felt weighed down by an enormous burden. His chat with Leonardo had undermined all his certainties: What if the monk was right? What if actually this whole idea of a murderer of the desperate, the lonely, and the depressed was just something he needed for himself? A fantasy built especially to avoid drifting helplessly downstream?
Once he reached the deserted, frost-ridden flower beds, as he watched his breath steam before him, Pisanelli saw himself for what he really was: an old, sick man, close to the end. A man toying with his own madness, someone who spent his evenings talking with his dead wife. Dead. Carmen was dead, and he was refusing to accept that simple reality.
Maybe he himself ought to step aside from life.
He looked around. Agnese wasn’t there.
Are you dead, too, Agnese? he wondered. And he asked the question aloud, in the lunar landscape of the park, empty of the shouts of children, the stern voices of mothers, and the melodious notes of birdsong. Of spring, which might never return.
He let himself collapse on the bench, indifferent to the freezing cold that stabbed into him through his clothing. He was tired. The idea of giving up, of yielding once and for all to the silence, didn’t frighten him; if anything, it comforted him. He decided that it might perhaps be time to shuffle offstage, because the emptiness of the performance he was staging day after day now struck him as unbearable.
A little bird hopped toward his feet. Lazily, poking through the icy fog that veiled his heart, he greeted the bird and, through it, his poor friend, who might perhaps be dangling now from a knotted sheet, or lying in her bed, stuffed with pills, no longer breathing. I’m sorry, Agnese. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t manage to save you. And I can’t even manage to save myself.
He lay down. The cold was terrible. Even the pale afternoon sun had abandoned that patch of park in defeat. He shut his eyes.
Ciao, Leonardo, old friend of mine. At this time of day you must be preparing for your spiritual exercises. Don’t feel guilty about not being there when I left this world.
Ciao, Carmen, my darling love. How I wish I could believe that we’re going to see each other soon, and then spend the rest of eternity together. How I wish it were true, so that I’d be about to caress your sweet face once again.
Ciao, Agnese. I hope you can find peace. And I hope I can find it, too.
“Ciao, Giorgio.”
The synchronicity between his last thought and the arrival of that voice had been so perfect that he didn’t even start at the sound. Pisanelli felt a hand gently touching him, and he sat up.
“Thanks for holding a place for me. I hope that Raimondo didn’t think that his Mamma had forgotten about him. You see him? He was waiting for me.”
Agnese sat down and started scattering breadcrumbs for the sparrow, which set to pecking happily.
“You know, I’d dozed off. And in my dream he was saying to me: Come on, Mamma, don’t you see how late it is? Giorgio must be getting worried. I jumped out of bed and I hurried over. How are you?”
Pisanelli looked at her for an instant. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and said: “Fine, Agnese. I’m fine.”
Beware of the cold, because the cold can change you.
The cold is capable of whispering horrible stories in your ear, sad stories that will turn your mood gray.
You see the cold out your window, as it extends fingers of fog and ice throughout the night, slowly and inexorably invading the streets and your thoughts.
There is no army that can withstand the invasion of the cold. It arrives like a death sentence, and there is nothing you can do.
You can only wait, and pray to survive a little longer.
Without letting the cold change you too much.
Ottavia stuck her head into Palma’s office to bid him goodnight. The commissario was standing by the window, with his back turned. His arms were crossed and his back was bowed.
“Everything all right, boss?” the woman asked softly.
He replied without turning around.
“Ah, Ottavia. Yes, have a good evening.”
His chilly tone hit her like a rough shove.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “We broke the case, didn’t we?”
Palma turned and gave her a tight smile. His face was tired, marked by deep circles under his eyes.
“Certainly, of course. You were outstanding. And you in particular, standing up to the onslaught of the journalists and maintaining total confidence, letting nothing slip. I saw the news reports here, on the office television set. They’re so good at trading in mere conjecture.”
Ottavia was worried.
“Boss, what’s the matter? You don’t look happy to me. We’ve caught the murderer, everyone’s talking about us: now there’s no way anyone will call for the precinct to be shuttered. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”
The commissario sprawled in his chair.
“Yes. It’s exactly what we wanted. But I wasn’t up to the task. And I just can’t figure out why not.”
“What are you talking about? You were in charge of us, you were in constant contact with police headquarters, clearing the way so that we could do our work and come to the right solution. Without you, sir, this place would no longer even exist.”
“No, Ottavia. You’re very kind, but that’s not the way it is. In order to score a point in this depressing rivalry that I’ve let myself be drawn into, I would have sent an innocent man to jail. A father, ravaged by remorse, a man who had already paid dearly, all too dearly, for a moment of blind rage. Just to win the match, just to keep the police station open, I would have taken a cheap shot, indifferent to the repercussions.”
“But you really believed that Varricchio was guilty. We all did.”
“Lojacono didn’t, and he was right. I’d forgotten the reason I chose this profession in the first place: to find the truth. Maybe I’m not suited for the position I occupy. Maybe I should step aside.”
Ottavia felt her heart tug. She walked around the desk and stepped close to him.
“Don’t you say such a thing, not even in jest. Without you, we would be nothing, don’t you understand that? We need a guide, a reference point, because we can’t do it on our own. It’s no accident that no one else wanted us. Only thanks to you have we rediscovered the strength that we thought we’d lost forever.”
Palma looked up. They were extremely close.
“Maybe someone else could handle it better. Someone else wouldn’t have forgotten that we have to be certain before we—”
Ottavia put her hand over his mouth.
“Hush now, hush. That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense. I told you that we need you. That I need you.”
Palma’s eyes welled up with tears. Slowly, he lifted his arm from the desk and caressed Ottavia’s hand.
She sensed his smile as it spread under the skin. Almost without realizing she was doing it, she started running the tips of her fingers over his face.
Then she turned and hurried away.
It’s dangerous, the cold.
After you get over the first, stinging sensation, your flesh gets used to it and it all seems to be finished, but it’s not.
The cold is a treacherous, sneaky enemy, it knows how to stage a torpor that seems like nothing more than ordinary somnolence, but is actually a bellwether of death.
The cold is treacherous, it knows how to work its way into the chinks of your armor, and once it’s penetrated it’s hard to get rid of it.
The cold knows how to kill with the weapon of silence.
Lojacono turned the key in the lock, heaved a sigh, and entered the apartment. Marinella was sitting at the dining room table, waiting for him.
As soon as she saw him, the young woman burst into tears.
“Papà, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
He stood there, motionless, like a statue made of ice.
“Believe me, Papà. It was just a childish escapade, I wanted . . . you know, all my classmates go out with boys. He . . . he’s a good person, he lives here in this building. I met him on the stairs. He’s a university student.”
Lojacono said nothing. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
“It’s not Letizia’s fault, I pushed her into it. She’s so sweet and kind, she cares for me, like a mother. I just wanted it so much, I begged her, and in the end we agreed that I’d be back before the restaurant’s closing time.”
Silence. A cold silence.
“Papà, I’m begging you, answer me! I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear to you. We went to the movies, we ate a hot dog, we laughed and we talked. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Little by little, the tears streaked her cheeks, as her sobs shattered her phrases.
“Papà, I’m begging you, don’t send me away. I’m happy here. Don’t send me back to Mamma. I want to live here with you. I’ll never lie to you again, I swear it, just don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me alone again. Please.”
Lojacono’s expression never altered. He headed off to his own bedroom. At the door, without turning around, he said: “It’s been a long day. I’m hungry. Make dinner, please.”
The cold, be careful, you might not even feel it.
Distracted by the humdrum events of your life, caught up in the pointless daily grind, you might not notice the cold.
We might not even stop to think, we miss the signals that come from outside.
We might continue gazing at our belly button as if it were the center of the solar system, all the while failing to notice that the cold is all around us.
That’s when the cold envelops us, catching us off-guard.
And that’s when the cold wins.
“Hello? Alex? Ciao, it’s me. Congratulations, you’re a superstar.”
“Oh, come on, what are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh yes you did. Everyone’s talking about it: Did you see what the Bastards managed to pull off? And it would seem that, if it hadn’t been for you, the two victims’ father—”
“Rosaria, the investigation wasn’t over, that’s all. Then the right evidence surfaced and we just drew the logical conclusions.”
“I love it when you act all modest. You’re even sexier. But I know exactly what’s there, behind all that delicious shyness.”
“Hey, cut that out! What if someone hears you?”
“So what? Are you ashamed of me?”
“No, I’m not ashamed. But you know as well as I do, we have to be careful, this isn’t a relaxed work environment.”
“I don’t give a damn about the work environment. I already told you, this isn’t just some ordinary thing. I’m not kidding around, Alex. And I want to see you again, right away.”
“Rosaria, I . . . today I can’t do it, I have to have dinner with my folks.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Please, let’s let a few days go by. If it were up to me, I’d already be there at your side, you know that, but . . . ”
“Do you mind if I ask what the problem is? If the two of us are happy together and if—”
“It’s not just that. I . . . my folks don’t know that . . . I mean to say, they don’t know about me. They don’t know that . . . ”
“Do you understand that this just doesn’t make sense? Do you really think this is possible? You’re the wonderful woman that I know and you hide behind a—”
“That’s not the way it is, you can’t talk about things you don’t understand. I . . . it isn’t easy. It’s not easy at all.”
“Okay. I get it. Well, I’m not interested in—”
“No, Rosaria, don’t be like that, please: it’s not that I feel—”
“I’m not interested in a woman who doesn’t have the strength to look at herself in the mirror: much less the strength to have a genuine love affair in defiance of all conventions. So just cling to your—”
“Rosaria, I’m begging you—”
“ . . . cling to your little life. If you make up your mind to be yourself one day, give me a call. Even though I can’t promise you that I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“I’m begging you, don’t do this. Please.”
. . .
“Please.”
Because the cold has this effect.
It’s only just arrived but it seems as if it’s always been here. That it’s never made way for sunlight, laughter, and the desire to be together.
The cold makes you want to shut yourself up indoors, never to see another soul.
Everything seems threatening in the cold. Everything seems terrible and dark.
The cold erases the future.
Francesco Romano was back in his car. Once again the cold was numbing his limbs, his nose, his ears.
Once again he was looking up at the windows of Giorgia’s mother’s apartment, unable to tear his eyes away.
He was turning an opened envelope over and over again in his hands, and inside that envelope was a sheet of paper. A single sheet of paper, and it wasn’t even fully covered with writing: a scant half page of type.
More powerful than an air conditioner, that half page of type. More powerful than an air conditioner running full blast. Chilling, freezing.
A light blinked on. Romano visualized the guest room in his mind, where right now Giorgia would surely be staying. Who knew what his wife was doing. His wife? Yes, his wife. She was still his wife.
He hefted the envelope, as if the bulk of that fraction of an ounce of paper somehow corresponded to the words written on it. Mamma mia, how light it was.
He shifted in the seat, to keep his muscles from going to sleep. You’ll have to come out at some point, he thought. You’ll have to come out, sooner or later.
And you’ll have to speak to me. You’ll have to confront me and tell me to my face what’s written on this piece of paper. And you’ll have to convince me that it’s true.
Because marriage is a serious matter, and you know that yourself. If someone agrees to live with someone, with no other commitment, they can leave whenever they like, and no one can say a thing. You don’t stand up and make any promises to anybody, when you’re just living together. You just set up housekeeping together, and that’s that; all you need is a suitcase, to put an end to things. Holy matrimony, on the other hand, is a binding together of two hearts before man and God. You can’t unravel that bond with a misguided backhand smack.
I don’t believe it, Giorgia. I don’t believe that you only want to see me again in front of a lawyer to hammer out the terms of our divorce.
I don’t want a divorce, understood? I don’t want that. I’m not ready to live without you.
He looked up at the window with the light burning behind it once again.
Sooner or later, you’ll have to come out. And talk to me. Without any fucking lawyer between us.
You’ll have to tell me, looking me right in the eye, that you no longer love me.
And yet, sooner or later, the cold ends.
Just when you least expect it, a morning dawns with a different gust of wind, a wind that smacks of the sea, for a change.
A special feel to the air, slipping under your skin, numbed by the cold, a strange lust for life. A feel that makes you think, after this long winter, that tomorrow may come after all, and that it may not be so bad.
The cold ends because that’s how the world works. There’s no real reason, but it ends.
And everything starts over again.
Aragona pretended to look out the plate-glass window that in the winter protected the roof garden of the Hotel Mediterraneo from the chilly north wind.
He’d spent a long time making his preparations. His expression was supposed to be the dreamy gaze of a man remembering extraordinary adventures, experienced in far-away lands, and who at the same time scans the horizon in search of new exploits and a brighter future. The gaze of someone who sees beyond the wall and beyond the present day, the gaze of someone who shoulders the responsibility for other people’s safety.
Unfortunately, no one was looking at that gaze.
The other tables were all occupied by businessmen just passing through or conference attendees busy reading reports and newspapers, and typing on their cell phones; but Aragona’s expression of a superhero wasn’t meant for them.
It had only one target.
Irina, the waitress he was in love with, pirouetted light-footed and discreet from one table to the next, serving the various distracted guests. Aragona wondered how it could be that they didn’t all get up en masse to give her a standing ovation when she emerged from the kitchen carrying a trayful of cappuccinos. She was beautiful, her blonde hair pulled up and gathered beneath her white cap, her eyes bright blue and sparkling, her body lithe and appealing, and her accent exotic and thrilling.
She had already approached him once, and he, his voice warm and overbrimming with ulterior meanings—he hoped that she would catch them, those ulterior meanings—had addressed her with his usual, loving phrase: a double-shot espresso, ristretto, in a large mug, thanks. He suspected that the young woman was merely pretending not to remember what he ordered every morning just to give herself the opportunity to listen to the words anew, those loving words of his, the way you do with your favorite song on a record. He, too, he had to admit, even though he had carefully tracked out of the corner of his eye her every step, acted as if he hadn’t even noticed her approaching, so that he could hear her ask, once again: Can I bring you something hot to drink, Signore?
Now he was waiting, scanning the horizon through his blue-tinted eyeglasses. It took the time that it had to take, he mused. A double-shot espresso, ristretto, in a large mug, after all, was no simple thing to make. The mug, for starters, had to be just the right temperature, and the espresso needed to be ristretto, of course, which means that it had to drawn in just the right amount and with just the right interval. But eventually Irina would return, and when she did, she would find him in that alluring posture, painstakingly perfected right down to the tiniest detail.
He heard the clinking of the cup and the woman’s sensual voice uttering the long-awaited words: “Here you are.”
He pretended to emerge from his important thoughts, gave her a distracted but enchanting half-smile, and replied as he always did: “Thanks.”
There, it was all over. Now he’d have to wait until tomorrow for another intense exchange with the woman who had taken possession of his heart. The day, he mused, was nothing more than this: an interlude between a “thanks” and a “here you are.”
Then the unbelievable came to pass. Irina stopped, turned around, and came back to his table just as he was shoving a cookie into his mouth. She was luminous as a summer day.
“I saw the gentleman on television, yes?” she asked.
She had seen him! She’d seen him smiling like a fool, behind Ottavia as she read the press release drawn up in coordination with police headquarters, along with old man Pisanelli, beaming with pride, and Hulk as he looked around grim-faced, and Alex, who seemed to want to stand off to one side, and the Chinaman, expressionless as always. She had noticed him!
“Mmmpfff,” he replied, spraying cookie crumbs into the air and all over the table.
Irina nodded, and moved on.
Aragona drank a sip of water, which allowed him to gag down the cookie and save his life.
Once he had resumed a normal rate of respiration, he turned his eyes, streaming with tears, to the horizon.
It turns out, he thought, that the weather was getting nicer after all.