The Night of the Moths Read online

  I took the list and the keys for the Pandino, and stopped to smoke a cigarette before heading out. If I smoked in the car, it would leave a smell and then they’d get on my back about that. Smoking was another one of those things that Sandro could do, but if I did it, it was suddenly wrong.

  So I was smoking when I saw something move behind a bush. I hid the cigarette in the palm of my hand and peered through the leaves. Strange noises. It sounded like a dog panting hotly. I thought it was Drago, Sandro’s old German shepherd. I moved aside a branch. And that’s when I saw him.

  Hidden behind the foliage of the bush was the Half-Wit, who was jerking off as he spied on me. Disgusting. He stared at me with those pale-gray eyes, not even pausing. No way. His mouth was open and a trickle of drool dribbled down onto his shirt. I took a step back. I dropped the cigarette and jumped into the car. I turned the key nervously, and floored the gas pedal while the car was still in neutral. The gear was always a little stiff and the clutch sometimes didn’t work well. Anyway, when you hurry things always go wrong. But, as soon as I was able to put it in first, I sped away, keeping an eye on the branch of the bush that kept swinging back and forth in the rearview mirror.

  It wasn’t the first time it had happened. It wasn’t the first time I’d caught the Half-Wit with his pants down and his dick in his hand. If I’d told my father, he would have slaughtered him. And I didn’t like my father when he became a raging beast. Like when he lit into the foreign workers at the construction site because they screwed something up. But I’d have to tell Sandro. Because the Half-Wit was starting to scare me.

  Six

  “I’m sorry about the wait, Mr. Sarti. It’s just that strep is making the rounds this year at my son’s nursery school.” Her name is Carmen, the girl at the agency whom Enrico had spoken to on the phone when he’d called to explain his situation. People’s faces never correspond to the image you have of them when you hear their voice first. Carmen’s voice is high-pitched, a thin, nasally, unpleasant sound that Enrico had associated with an appearance decidedly different from the woman now before him. Dark complexion, black hair, impenetrable eyes. A slightly sweet and invasive perfume saturates the air inside the agency.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he tells her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Being late, don’t worry about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Carmen takes a green slip of paper out of the top drawer of the desk, scans it for the codes. She enters them into the computer, tapping the keys with long nails polished a very dark red, the same shade that glosses her lips.

  “So then, let’s see,” she says, scrolling through the information that the computer has brought up. “From what I can see, since we’ve been managing it, the property has always been rented. It seems it’s done well, are you sure you want to sell? Have you considered the fact that in this location a house like yours is always a good investment?”

  “I’m moving to a new house, in Rome, and I want to do it all without taking out loans. Then, if I have anything left in my pocket, so much the better. I’m getting married.”

  “Oh really? Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you have no plans to come back on vacation?”

  “We haven’t come here for quite a while. My parents always preferred the mountains, my sister lives abroad, and I . . .” I? I what? You see, I used to go with a girl who was killed in this town, but how could you possibly not know that? I thought that as soon as you saw my name, you’d jump out of your chair. Because you know what people say? That it was my fault, that I let Alice go home alone. And I spent the next ten years trying to convince myself that people were wrong, without ever really succeeding. Believe me, coming back here wouldn’t be my first choice for a vacation.

  “I think we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Anyway, the house is in perfect condition, so there won’t be any difficulties. It might have been a problem for a lower-end property, but those interested in properties of a certain type are definitely not affected by the housing crisis.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “I’ve prepared a prospectus for you, with an estimate and some documents to sign to get the whole thing started. In the meantime, I’ll take care of the rest. Can you come back next week to finish up?”

  “Next week?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Would Monday work for you?”

  “I was hoping to finish up today.”

  “There’s no way I can do it today, sorry,” Carmen says, as if it were embarrassingly obvious.

  “Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

  “It’s just that I didn’t think it would take so long.”

  “We’re part of a network of agencies, Mr. Sarti. The steps are a bit more complicated, but it guarantees a better job and a more rapid conclusion of the matter. Look, if you come back Monday morning, before lunch, I’ll have everything ready for you. That way you’ll sign and we’ll be done. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you the keys, maybe you’d like to go see if there’s anything you want to take with you, or if there’s anything that needs repairing, just anything you’d like included in the paperwork. You could spend one last weekend there, especially since the house isn’t rented at the moment.”

  Carmen retrieves a bunch of keys from a drawer and sets them on the desk in front of him. Enrico recognizes it immediately. The gold key ring with the spring catch is his mother’s. Each time he took that set of keys when he left Rome, he already felt better, as though he were escaping.

  “It goes without saying that if between now and Monday you were to have second thoughts, there’s still time to stop everything without a charge. Later, precisely because of the network, closing the file might incur some agency fees.”

  “Thank you,” Enrico says, staring at the keys and trying to understand why it’s so difficult to pick them up. “But I really don’t think that will happen.”

  “I just want to make you aware.”

  “Isn’t there someone who can take care of this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The house, going there to see that everything is in order. Basically you people have been taking care of it.”

  “Yes, but as I said, at this time it’s not rented, and today is Friday.”

  “Today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, and yesterday was Thursday . . . When should I have come?”

  Carmen smiles, embarrassed.

  “There are set times that . . .”

  “Excuse me, but I was hoping to return to Rome.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The bunch of keys, there on the desk.

  Betti and Chiara leave the house. It’s raining. Betti takes the one umbrella left by the doorway and opens it, and they huddle under it as they run to the car.

  They jump in quickly.

  “What shitty weather.”

  “Chiara, darling, would you at least try not to talk like a sailor?”

  “Why does everyone have it in for longshoremen?”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “I don’t think longshoremen are a particularly foul-mouthed category.”

  “All right, Chiara, then try not to be foul-mouthed, please. I wish you’d see that . . .”

  “Mom, that guy is signaling you.”

  Betti looks out the window. A worker with an orange vest is waving his arms in the air. Betti stops and rolls down the window.

  “Not that way, lady, unless you want to go skating.”

  “Sorry, what are you saying?”

  “Didn’t you see the sign?”

  Betti looks back. In fact, there is a small sign placed on the ground, not far from the gate of their house.

  “And you think that sign is visible enough in this weather?”

  “That’s what they gave us, lady.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “The usual problem from that oil refinery.”

  “Oil agai
n?”

  “Liters of it, ma’am, and no sign of stopping. With all this rain, things seem to be getting even worse.”

  “But it’s the third time this month. Can’t they come up with a solution?”

  “Sure, there’s a solution. All it takes is for someone to buy the site, with the entire reserve, and drain it. It’s sometimes done when they tear down a gas station or something like that.”

  “Damn it.”

  It takes Betti a few tries to make a U-turn. The guy with the orange vest helps her maneuver, giving her instructions.

  “You’ll see, with that sign on the ground like that, sooner or later someone will end up having an accident,” Betti calls out the window, heading the opposite way.

  The bunch of keys is now resting on the passenger seat.

  Enrico is driving slowly down Via delle Ortiche, where the house is. He has the earbuds in again and his phone lying beside the keys.

  “What sense would a hotel make? I’ll go directly to the house, that way I can check things out, see if there’s anything I want to keep. If it turns out I can’t stand staying here, I’ll come back to Rome, don’t worry.”

  “Your voice is panicky. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” The plan clearly doesn’t appeal to Giulia.

  The car slows down. Enrico pulls over to the side of the road, beyond which the pine woods extend to the beach. He lowers the rain-slicked window and stares straight ahead. His eyes are nearly squinting in the colorless light that has suddenly become so bright.

  The gate of the house is in front of him. Wooden planks alternating with iron bars don’t allow you to see beyond it. An engraved snake encircles the keyhole. From the car you can scarcely make it out, but he knows what it is. His mother wanted it there. An ancient Egyptian symbol of protection.

  That’s the place. The precise spot where he would stop the car each time, step out, and insert the key into the snake’s mouth. At that moment, every time, there was already the scent of vacation, of that world that was about to open up.

  The key ring now holds a remote-control device as well. Something new: an added convenience for renters who don’t have time to waste on old locks and superstition.

  He presses the button and the gate opens onto the tree-lined lane.

  The Daffy Duck clock is really horrible, Chiara thinks as she squeezes the cream out of the half-eaten croissant, practically sucking it out. With a finger she draws a smile in the foam of her cappuccino.

  Carletto’s daughter is behind the counter reading a newspaper. Her name is Caterina, and she finished high school last year. Chiara had smoked in the bathroom with her a few times. Caterina had told her about a friend of hers who lives in New York and who had asked her to come stay with her for a while, so they could make the rounds of clubs where they have live music. Jazz or something like that. Now, seeing her behind the counter with an apron on, right under the horrible Daffy Duck clock, it’s sad.

  “What are you thinking about?” asks Betti. Her mother is holding a cup of wild-berry tea, letting the steam waft up into her nostrils.

  “I’m thinking I’d like to be someplace else,” Chiara says, observing her smile.

  “Where?”

  “In London, with Margherita.”

  “We’ve discussed that.”

  “So? She was sixteen when she left, the same age I am now. She’s working now and could put me up.”

  “But you have to finish school.”

  “I could finish it the way she did.”

  “Margherita can’t support you for two years and we can’t afford it.”

  “Money.”

  “You say that as if it were a dumb reason.”

  “If you only listened to him, and asked Grandma . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know.”

  “So, were you eavesdropping on us this morning?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard not to.”

  Chiara raises her eyes from her cappuccino and looks straight at her mother.

  “All right, I’m sorry. Finish your breakfast and I’ll drive you to school.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Grandma anymore?”

  “Why do you all only bring up your grandmother when you’re talking about money?”

  “And you, what do you have against her? She’s your mother . . .”

  “Drop it, Chia.”

  “As usual.”

  “As usual what?”

  “As usual, when you don’t want to answer, you just claim you’re right without ever explaining anything.”

  “Your grandmother is not the person you think she is.” Betti sets her cup on the table. “Your father is convinced that if I asked her for it, she’d give me the money and that’s that. It’s not that simple. She’d use the money to interfere again, to criticize me, to impose her way of doing things, which . . .”

  “Which?”

  “Which is the wrong way.”

  Chiara pushes aside what’s left of her croissant to focus on her cappuccino. She takes a sip, then puts the cup down, wiping the milk mustache under her nose with a napkin. She takes a deep breath, then comes out with it.

  “I went to see her.”

  “What?”

  “This summer, with Valentina.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because you didn’t want me to.”

  “What a terrific reason, one that makes me so proud of you.”

  “So what’s new: you’re never proud of me.”

  “Sometimes you’re so stupid.”

  “Can we go now?”

  “No, we can’t go. Not until you tell me why you disobeyed me.”

  “I felt like going, okay? I don’t understand why I haven’t been able to see my grandmother, just because you argued with her. So, I took the train and went there with Valentina.”

  “Oh Lord.” Betti closes her eyes and buries her face in her hands.

  “Don’t you even want to know what she told me?” Chiara asks.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That you’re a good person and that I should listen to you.”

  “And?”

  “She had a bunch of stories about the family, about you when you were little. She said I look a lot like you.”

  “And?”

  “And she gave me four hundred euros.”

  “What?”

  “To pay for the ticket.”

  “She lives seventy kilometers from here. Did you go by helicopter?”

  “She’s never even been able to give me a little pocket money. Maybe it made her happy to give me the money.”

  “Of course, that way when you ran out you’d go back to see her.”

  “I didn’t go back.”

  “So what did you do with it?”

  “I spent it with Valentina, movies, the pizzeria, reloading my phone minutes that you never do for me.”

  “Did you buy drugs?”

  “What the fuck, Mom?”

  “Don’t use that language or you’ll get it, right here in front of everybody.”

  “In front of Caterina, you mean.”

  “In front of whomever. Answer me.”

  “No, I didn’t buy drugs.”

  “Cigarettes?”

  “Those aren’t drugs.”

  “You stink of cigarettes sometimes.”

  “Gibo smokes.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But he doesn’t do drugs.”

  “Oh sure, he’s naturally stoned.”

  “What have you got against him?”

  “I told you earlier what I have against him. And don’t change the subject, we’re not done with the fact that you went to see your grandmother.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell. I told you everything.”

  “How was she?” Betti loosens up a bit, but still remains on guard.

  “She’s aged, but she was fine.”

  Betti drops the spoon in the cup. She pinches the bridge of her nose with her
fingers, like when she has a migraine.

  “Excuse me, Chiara, I’m going to the ladies’ room for a minute.”

  She’s about to cry, Chiara knows it. She always cries, sooner or later. Chiara waits, finishing her cappuccino. She feels like lighting up one of the Marlboros she has in her backpack. Maybe later.

  Betti comes out of the bathroom and goes to pay. It’s strange to see her talking to Caterina. They seem to belong to two worlds, so far apart, and yet there they are, moored to a five-euro receipt.

  “Betti.” Carletto, the bar owner, emerges from the kitchen. “You know who was here this morning?”

  “Enrico is the guy whose girl was found dead, right?” Chiara asks.

  They’re back in the car. Betti is driving toward the school. The news that Carletto told her seems to have upset her even more than the news of Chiara visiting her grandmother.

  “Yes, do you remember him? We were very close, the two of us.”

  “Did you sleep with him, Mom?”

  “No, what are you talking about?”

  She even blushes.

  “He was the guy you’d describe as ‘my best friend,’ the one I told everything to.” She has tears in her eyes again. Hopeless.

  “So how come you never kept in touch?”

  “He went away, and he never came back.”

  “Because of what happened with that girl?”

  “You really don’t remember anything about that time?”

  “I remember some things,” Chiara says, looking out the window at the puddles that have formed along the street. “But nothing definite. Some faces, sure. Who knows if his face is among the ones I remember.”

  “He came back to sell the house, your father told me. Do you remember the one? We went to see it one day. The one on Via delle Ortiche, with the round swimming pool.”

  “Yeah, I know, that house is beautiful. I guess money isn’t a problem for Enrico.”

  “It never was for his family. Yet he drove here in that run-down Beetle of his. He wasn’t one to put on airs.”