XXXIX. IN BOCCA AL LUPO

The mound of sugar in my cup steadily grew taller as I waited on Via Marmorata for Tatiana to arrive. Sooner or later, she’d have to come by, I knew that for a fact. Blonde and brown-haired women walked past, women with white and black and strangely dyed orange hairdos, and I thought about Tatiana, dimly imagined I saw her curls against the sunlight and thought about how Giulia Schucht could barely have been any more real to Gramsci, that female comrade sitting off in distant Russia, his wife who existed only in letters.

I nibbled a mignon pastry and drank my cappuccino while looking onto Piazza dell’Emporio where Tatiana would soon appear. Above me, on a flickering TV screen, two football teams faced off, behind the counter an old man was busy polishing glasses and the girl at the register leant her large but supple body against the clients while constantly ringing up more than was right. The team in the red jerseys won, the girl lasciviously and lazily busied herself around the till and, serving me a second cappuccino, the old man told me about his dying cat that he’d have to get rid of with a blow of a spade to the head, something he just could not bear to do. He sat in the chair next to mine and talked about all the weeks his cat had already been sick but never quite given up, all those weeks in which she’d got tangled up in life with her artistic power of resistance, though it wasn’t the best place for a body riddled with abscesses. Was I waiting for someone? ‘Of course you’re waiting for someone!’ he cried.

The slight reddish tinge to my cheeks must have had to do with the blazing afternoon sun. The old man winked at me with his wrinkled lids.

‘In bocca al lupo,’ he said, as if he understood something, and there was nothing for me to say in return but to wish his cat the best of luck as well.

When I walked outside, the street was still empty. Which meant that it was unquestionably filled with people running here and there or standing still, but so what, in reality this street simply existed so that Tatiana would be on her way to me. But she didn’t come, and all these people, these accessories, lost their point.

Giulia Schucht, I had to admit, had always replied to Gramsci, they’d written each other intimate letters which, despite the incomprehensible ways of the Italian postal service and the revolutionary course of Russian postal planes, had managed to make their way, they had promised each other that they were thinking of each other, that they would see each other again, a reunion which, thanks to a general strike, a secret meeting, yet another fascist blow, ended up being postponed again and again and again, and how dumb I was, I thought, standing there on Via Marmorata waiting, just like I always had, at all the important moments of my life I’d always been standing somewhere, wasting time, how naive I was to imagine that somewhere there was a Tatiana for me, just like Giulia Schucht had been there for Gramsci.

It was shortly before seven, my departure gate had closed an hour ago. Couples were walking down the street, arm in arm, students were huddling together in groups, passers-by greeted one another and then kept on going. The sun had just left my field of vision and was hanging behind the plane trees when I started to walk down the street towards Ostiense Station. I stopped at the traffic light by the old city gate while cars clattered past the pyramid which had taken up its position on the square, and behind it lay the cemetery with all its illustrious denizens, intellectuals, travellers, partisans and others who, hardly back from their wars and travels, had slowly killed their wives with their monosyllables.

I walked on through the streets, past Ostiense, beneath a railway line, behind which the buildings turned into shabby little boxes, then back to the old workers’ buildings, across a square full of young people leaning against their Vespas and drinking Campari out of little glass bottles. In front of an ice-cream stand, a young server swayed alone to the crackling of music from a radio. I stopped, looked at her and smiled.

‘Do you know what I just had to think about?’

‘Do you know that that doesn’t interest me whatsoever?’ she answered and disappeared into the shop.

Through the glass, I could see her cleaning the tubs of ice-cream with a rag. She had caramel-coloured skin, and, when she stretched her arm out to clean the furthest corner of the display case, a tendon stuck out on her thin neck. She briefly looked up and made a sign to me. I winked and she came back out.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘You seem, sorry for saying so, a bit confused.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said and laughed. ‘You have no idea how well I’m doing. I am always happy.’

‘You don’t look like it. Where do you need to go?’ She pointed to my bag. ‘Are you looking for a hotel?’

‘You coming with me?’

‘No way. But I can give you directions.’

Suddenly, I felt the whole day’s exhaustion come crashing down inside me, or maybe it was the combined exhaustion of my Roman holiday, or maybe even all the months I’d lain more than slept on the sofa in our living room.

‘You have to promise me you’ll follow.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said and with fluttering gestures explained to me how to get to a nearby hotel.

 

The corner building seemed abandoned, an envelope stood upright on top of the letterboxes, and yet walking past the door I heard a key turn in the lock. But no, I must have been mistaken, for the noise died out without the door moving. I was already about a hundred metres away when I turned and saw the metal door open inward and a man step onto the street. He looked to the right and to the left, his hand felt along the wall until it took hold of the letter. Then an ugly and muscular dog with two heads sprang out the door.

Bursting with strength, it surged forward on trembling legs. And although it seemed it would be impossible for him to restrain it, the man pulled at the lead and then pulled at the lead once more. To my surprise, the monster split into two: an English pit bull, and some kind of mixed breed whose parents must have been a mastiff and a boxer. The man shoved the letter under his arm and continued on his way so leisurely it was as if he was leading two trained dachshunds.

A threadbare carpet led to a reception counter behind which an old woman was asleep. The ceiling light flickered. Empty pistachio husks lay in a crystal bowl. Once I was standing directly in front of the woman, she was startled awake and looked at me from tiny, feverish eyes.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Are there still any rooms free this evening?’

She turned around and looked at a board where a few keys were dangling.

‘Just one. You’re in luck. It’s ninety for the night.’

She fished for the uppermost key ring and scraped together the money on the countertop; her fingers seemed as shabby as the place that had surrounded her for who knows how many years.

‘Follow me,’ she said and walked up a small staircase, which was more like an old servants’ entrance, and opened the door to a broom closet furnished with a bed and a stool.

‘Here you are!’

I pushed my suitcase into the cubbyhole and struggled to find room for myself. The old woman wobbled back down the stairs. I looked around, although there was hardly anything to look at. Outside the window, it had begun to rain.

Sitting on the bed I opened my suitcase and pulled out the notebook Brevi had given me as I was leaving. In the upper right-hand corner, someone had written Incompleto XXXIV in what seemed like a woman’s handwriting. I unfastened the cardboard covers and began to leaf through the empty pages.