I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) Page 18

  I take a look at the perpetrator of this scandalous occupation of public property. He is tall, unmistakably reckless, with the physical arrogance of someone who chooses to appear dan­gerous and most likely is. His mouth is half-open, and even though half his face is concealed by a pair of sunglasses absolutely outsized in relation to the oval of the underlying face, he wears an idiotic expression, the kind of expression people put on just to annoy anyone looking at them. He’s wearing a fishnet T-shirt and a pair of multi-lacerated jeans whose crotch, even in that languid position, sags practically to his knees. He has the bulked-up arms of a body-builder and tattoos that are even more despicable than, to use a debatable term, the clothing that he’s wearing. His cell phone probably cost, at a glance, 400 euros or so.

  But the most depressing aspect of this act of open contempt for pedestrians is the fact that nobody says a thing. People snort in annoyance, and they might even curse through clenched teeth, but they navigate around this abusive squatter and move on, leaving the affront to public utility behind them. The consequence of this forced detour is that the aspiring Camorrista has pissed on the territory, marking it as his own.

  All this is an official communiqué, a memorandum, sent periodically to remind that you are living under a state of siege.

  I can’t take any more marketing campaigns hatched by disorganized crime, by dogs off their leashes who engage in criminal narcissism and gratuitous murder as a form of self-promotion and propaganda (because that’s what they are, the purse snatchings that end in violence, the robberies that are preceded by murders, the pedestrians beaten bloody for no discernible profit, the faces slapped by motor scooters passing at speed, or even just the simple exhibitions of rudeness and annoyance like this one: they’re commercials. Display ads. Press releases).

  The point is that you can refuse to accept certain provocations. It’s just that you pay for that kind of refusal with your self-respect. And here’s the problem with paying in self-respect: it seems like you’re not spending much, but then you find yourself throttled by the interest.

  And so, what’s new, you say, Well, this time, I’m not paying. I’m not going to play along with this ring around the motor scooter. Fuck ’em. And I don’t even give it a lot of thought: when it’s my turn, instead of going around him, I stop.

  After a few seconds the hooligan registers the fact that I’m motionless. He looks up from his cell phone and focuses on me from behind his super-boorish black sunglasses.

  “Something you need?” he asks.

  I think of Alf, of what must go through his mind at times like these, of his complete lack of fear, and I screw up my courage.

  “Yeah, the sidewalk,” I answer him, expecting at the very least a head-butt in the face in response.

  Instead he snaps his cell phone shut, removes his sunglasses, puts them on the handlebars of his scooter, tilts his head to one side, bugs out his eyes, opens his lips, sticks out half an inch of tongue, and starts drooling intentionally, getting his T-shirt all wet. The most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Why doesn’t he just drop dead?

  “You really are a piece of shit, you know that?” I say, unable to control my words.

  The thug’s eyes realign and focus on me with all the cunning of a reptile. A grimacing sneer is stamped on his lips. He immediately suspends his pantomime of an epileptic fit, he wipes his mouth clean with the back of his wrist, and he prepares for the massacre.

  I can’t hear or see a thing. All around me, everything is silent and motionless. I squint my eyes to see as little as possible, sort of like when you’re about to have a car crash and your instincts automatically censor the horror that’s about to arrive.

  How much time goes by, an instant or two? It feels like ten thousand instants. But the strange thing is that none of what I’m expecting happens. Because the arm of a third party intervenes between us, and a fist flashes down like a cleaver onto the hooligan’s shoulder, knocking him back into a seated position with an impact so powerful that the motor scooter almost drops off its kickstand.

  “Aaah,” moans the unfortunate thug, and he touches his shoulder with genuine compassion.

  At that point, I start to focus again.

  Where did this savior, maybe 5’3” tall, short and stout, thick tar-black hair, square jaw, marginal forehead, disproportionately short legs, K-Way jacket, and running pants, come from? And how on earth, with the body type that he has, does he manage to hit as hard as he does? From the way the miserable hooligan’s arm is dangling, I’d have to guess he fractured his shoulder.

  I step forward impulsively, in a completely reckless manner, to take part in some way in the events that I’ve caused; but as I’m on the verge of stepping into the combat zone my defender halts me with a wave of his left hand, as if to say: “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

  The stunning detail is that in order to show me this act of courtesy, he actually turns in my direction, completely ignoring his adversary, who in fact immediately takes advantage of the opportunity to land a straight punch with his good arm, striking him on the right cheek with a sound that comes out, roughly, chock.

  Whereupon we all three go to our corners and take a pause.

  I expect at this point that my volunteer gorilla is going to fall to his knees and then pass out, leaving me to the tender mercies of the thug, who will take advantage of the opportunity to take his revenge on me, giving me change back from my dollar, as we used to say when we were kids. Instead, the gorilla looks down at the ground, adjusts his jaw with one hand, and then turns toward his unfortunate assailant.

  Then everything happens in a sequence straight out of Italy’s Most Horrible Home Videos. The dwarf—and I now notice what remarkably long arms he has—grabs the hooligan by the hair at the back of his head. The thug doesn’t even try to put up resistance, as if he were curious about the treatment he’s about to receive. The little powerhouse jerks the thug’s head toward him with one sharp pull, preparing himself for the toss.

  The sound of his nasal septum stamping violently down on the scooter’s handlebars comes just a second later.

  Oooomammamia, says a fishwife, grabbing my jacket and hiding behind me.

  An unnatural silence descends over the street.

  The thug emerges from his encounter with the handlebars looking like a Futurist version of himself. Disfigured and with one arm dangling, he starts his motor scooter and putts off, sobbing.

  Whereupon, like a videotape when you take it off pause, reality begins to flow normally again. Traffic begins flowing, people get moving, the knot of rubberneckers begins their post-game commentary. You can already hear the voice of the impromptu editorialist, pleased at the thoroughness of the beating.

  I’m standing there, semi-traumatized.

  The cave-dweller turns and looks at me.

  “That’s all taken care of,” he says.

  I nod, automatically, since it strikes me as in poor taste to express my gratitude.

  “Are you hurt at all?” the beast asks me.

  “Me?” I reply. It sounds like a joke to me.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “No, not at all.”

  He moves toward me and wraps his left arm around my waist, inviting me to come with him.

  “Come on, let’s get something to drink, you’re pale as a sheet.”

  I comply. The audience parts to make way for us. We walk past a first bar, and then a second, whereupon I start to wonder if I understood his invitation. We cross one street, then another, and then my unexpected bodyguard ushers me into the place that he evidently prefers.

  “This is very kind of you,” I say, accepting his offer to let me go in first.

  He sketches out a courteous bow with his head.

  “The least I could do.”

  The least I could do? I think to myself.

  At that very moment, I recognize the voice.

  The bar we’ve just walked into is called the Love Café, and it stinks like a h
eap of carrion, wafting odors of late-night casino, narcotics dealership, and marshaling yard for prostitutes. It has, I don’t know, four picture windows overlooking the street, each of which is surmounted by a sign touting the varied attractions of the place: “Pastry Shop,” “Gastro-Pub,” “Coffee & Wine Bar,” “Snacks & Foods,” “Smith & Wesson” (just kidding), and other modern-day novelties. I’ve walked by it more than once, but I never dreamed it was like this inside. That is, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this impression, but it’s an unmistakable impression: there are places that, even if you see that they’ve spent lots of money fixing them up, and used top-notch materials and hired professional designers, still the minute you walk in you catch a whiff of organized crime. Like you’d be willing to bet a large sum of money that if you started banging away at any given wall with a pickaxe, before long a human leg would flop out.

  I swear there are times when I have to if wonder if there is a specific curriculum for a degree in the architecture of the Camorra. If not, then I don’t know how to explain this recurrent style in the buildings occupied by the Camorristi. In fact, I almost have the impression I could identify it from the materials, the architectural style in question. Most of all, it’s the marble that transmits this horrendous sensation. And also the Venetian-style fauxing of the walls.

  Among other things, if you ask me, the Camorra has a distinct preference for fuchsia. I wonder if it’s the wives, or even more likely, the daughters of the Camorristi who impose this touch of class on the family places of business. Now, I don’t want anyone to take me for a racist when it comes to fuchsia. But, when I walk into a restaurant or café or bar and I see a fuchsia wall with Venetian-style fauxing, I can’t wait to get out of there, truth be told.

  Among other things, these bars all seem to have names that drip with such a pornographic sentimentalism that you can spot the chip on the owners’ shoulder from two hundred feet away: Love Café (in fact), the Inamorata Bar, Guys & Dolls, Walking on Air, Love a Little . . . (with the ellipsis), Let’s Got Lost, The Last Kiss (okay, I invented most of these, but it was just to convey the style of the latter-day Camoralist).

  So anyway, this is where I am right now.

  The interior room we’re ensconced in now is enormous, with mood lighting, and is practically empty, aside from a leather jacket draped over the back of a chair at the far end of the room, not far from certain horrible draperies that conceal the entrance, I imagine, to the restrooms.

  Fuchsia continues to dominate in all directions, depressing me, and on the facing wall—overlooking our little café table with its floral ceramic surface and its wrought-iron base—is a gigantic liquid-crystal television screen transmitting images of a twenty-year-old woman in a workout costume, telling the television camera how unhappy and miserable she was until she discovered Ab Swing. Just talking about the days when she still wore size 18 pants makes her voice break (the show is dubbed, by the way).

  While waiting for the cavern-dweller, who has gone to the counter to place his order in the meanwhile, I listen to her talk, and as I notice that the television shopping channel is somehow (I can’t say exactly why) perfectly in tune with the surrounding environment, I suddenly feel a frantic need to run away, and I look in all directions for an emergency exit, which a place like this must certainly have.

  The troglodyte makes his return, this time in the company of a young waitress with an irritated look on her face, probably Polish by nationality. He pulls out a chair and takes a seat at the café table.

  “What’ll you have, Counselor?” he asks, with the tone of a part-owner of the bar.

  “I’ll take an espresso and a glass of mineral water.”

  “Mineral water how?” asks the waitress.

  I don’t bother to answer, because I find her tone to be rather irritating.

  And she snorts in annoyance.

  “Bubbly or still?” the cavern-dweller prompts helpfully.

  “It makes no difference to me,” I say. And I glare at the rude waitress, who misses it, turns on her heels, and heads back to the front room.

  “Aren’t you having anything?” I ask my host.

  “She already knows,” he replies, tilting his head toward the oafish waitress.

  We sit in silence for a while, pretending to watch the television shopping channel, which continues with a series of testimonials by miraculously fit young women who give all credit to the Ab Swing crunch. By the time the second woman breaks into an emotional lament, I can’t take it anymore and I come to the point.

  “Listen, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Were you following me?”

  No answer.

  “You were following me,” I state.

  He looks at me, doing his best to refrain from making a comment that he’d prefer to spare me. A demonstration of delicacy that I would never have expected from a plantigrade of his kind, truth be told.

  “It’s a good thing I was following you, Counselor. Otherwise they’d be trying to put you back together right now.”

  For a split second I see myself, stretched out on a filthy gurney in an emergency room, half-conscious, while a couple of rough male nurses slap me in an attempt to bring me around, shouting into my face, demanding that I tell them my name.

  “That may be,” I admit, sensing the advent of a light facial sunburn, “but I don’t remember asking for a police escort.”

  The cavern-dweller raises both hands. It’s a gesture that makes me think of the tossing of the bone in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  “Not a problem,” he says.

  And I translate: “This one’s on the house.”

  “I have to say I enjoyed it,” he adds.

  “In what sense?” I ask.

  “In the sense that you weren’t afraid of that runt.”

  “No, in fact I wasn’t,” I confirm, with a lavish dose of vanity.

  The bad-mannered waitress returns with our beverages; she sets her tray down on the café table, offering an involuntary glance down her shirt front to the cavern-dweller (who I notice, to my astonishment, is no lecher), turns on her heel, and leaves.

  I lift my left hand in the direction of her receding back, as if to say: “What, are you just going to leave the tray here?” but I immediately realize that I’m the only one who’s noticed the oafishness of the service, because the cavern-dweller happily picks up his drink (one of those eighties-style cappuccino drinks), toasts me with a hoist in my direction, and takes a generous gulp, frothing his mustache with a coating of cream and some undefinable granulated substance.

  “Do you think she attended hospitality school?” I ask, indicating the yokel-ette with a jerk of my head.

  He turns to look in the direction I indicated, and stops to think about my observation. He thinks for a good long while. In any case, when he answers, he doesn’t smile.

  “Don’t think that, she’s always like that when new people come in.”

  “I imagine that’s why the place is empty.”

  The guy keeps his cool. I can’t tell if he’s just not interested in the things I say, or if he doesn’t understand them.

  “Anyway, I haven’t introduced myself, sorry,” he says suddenly, remembering, “Tricarico. Amodio.”

  I wonder which is the first name and which is the last.

  He puts down his drink and holds out his hand.

  I shake his hand.

  “I guess there’s no need for me to tell you mine, right?”

  He smiles. That one he understood.

  I take a sip of water, pour some sugar into my espresso, stir it with the demitasse spoon.

  “So what’s that you’re drinking?” I ask.

  He replies, enthusiastically.

  “This? It’s a Bailès on the rocks. It’s made with vodka, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, ice, and of course, Bailès. But why are you laughing?”

  I almost choke on my espresso.

  Invent s
omething, and don’t waste any time doing it.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, I was just thinking about how the waitress left without taking the tray with her,” I improvise, as I contract my lip muscles in a spasm and do my best not to choke.

  He lowers his gaze to take in the tray and he sits there, contemplating it, wondering what’s funny about the tray. Then he evidently gets tired of that, and shrugs.

  I exhale a deep inner sigh, relieved to have dodged that bullet.

  We go back to watching the Ab Swing show, and after a while I decide it’s time to get up and get out of this local edition of “Candid Camera.”

  “Listen, I want to thank you, really very much. It was so kind of you to beat that guy up for me; I enjoyed the coffee too, but now I have to go.”

  I start to get to my feet.

  “So, you’re really not interested,” whatshisname, Tricarico, catches me off guard.

  I stand there, bowed over the café table, or actually over the tray, as if I’d just thrown my back out. I utter the next sentence in a tone of self-justification that I don’t know where it comes from.

  “No, look, don’t take it personally, but I just can’t do it.”

  He looks into the middle distance and shakes his head.

  “That’s too bad. That’s really just too bad.”

  “And why is it too bad, if I may ask?” I say, even more of an idiot than before.

  “It could have been a nice opportunity for you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He gazes at me compassionately.

  “It’s not like you’ve got much work.”

  I flush red.

  “And what do you know about how much work I have?”

  He waves his left hand, as if to brush away an annoying fly.

  “No, that’s okay, let’s forget about it, if you’re not interested there’s no point talking about it.”