The Night of the Moths Page 6

  We walked a few steps away.

  “I talked to him,” he said.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That if he tries it again, I’ll break his legs. And he knows I mean it.”

  “Did you tell Dad?”

  “No, forget that. I’ll take care of it. It’s better that way.”

  “Okay but . . .”

  “Ali, the Half-Wit is a doofus, he may jack off but he’s never touched anyone. Dad keeps him on for that reason. You’re thinking of all those movies about maniacs, the monster who lives in the little cabin in the woods and all that. I told him to leave you alone. If he comes around again, tell me and I’ll deal with him.” He glanced over at Enrico. “And the architect? What’s he up to?”

  “Talking about Roma.”

  “Maggica Roma, huh?”

  Then he made that tough-guy gesture that he liked so much. He kissed the tip of his index finger and placed it on my cheek.

  He was leaving when I heard a noise. I leaned around the corner of the bar, toward the back of the place, where the entrance to the outdoor toilets was. A door had slammed. I wondered who it was, if whoever it was had heard what my brother said to me. I didn’t want others to know about that thing. I looked around, trying to figure it out. But I gave up, because I really couldn’t afford to think about anything else. I had to talk to Enrico, tell him what had happened.

  I made a move to go back to him, but another voice stopped me.

  “Are you coming tonight?” Maurizio was there, glass in hand.

  “Yeah, we’ll be there.”

  “Listen . . .”

  “Don’t say anything.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do it.”

  “We made a decision.”

  “And you think it’s the right one?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “I don’t.” Maurizio was agitated.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I want to talk about it.”

  “We’ve already talked about it.”

  “Alice, you can’t just do whatever the hell you want.”

  “That’s enough now, we’re here in front of everybody.”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Your daughters are over there, for Christ’s sake.”

  Betti had gone into the bar, to her daughters. For a moment I had the impression that she had turned toward us. Just then Betti’s mother, Steely Gloria, pulled up in her red Alfa Romeo, one of the few things she had saved from her husband, Alfredo, who’d died of a heart attack when he wasn’t yet fifty. Maurizio said that had been the only way the man could spare himself a life spent with that woman. He didn’t exactly have a good relationship with his mother-in-law. On one occasion, Gloria had even offered him money to go away and leave her daughter alone. Maurizio had told me about it one night when we were together. One of those nights when I was everything to him, when he would have done anything for me, when he couldn’t take the life he had any longer.

  The girls jumped at the beep of the horn. Chiara ran to her grandmother’s car. Margherita grabbed the backpack and followed her sister at a more listless pace. Betti stood there watching them as they climbed into the Alfa.

  “If you tell him, all hell will break loose,” Maurizio said.

  “We should have thought of that sooner.”

  Ten

  Maurizio leaves the cardboard box on the table. He says Betti would be pleased to see her old friend again. He invites Enrico to come to dinner at their house and suggests that it would be best if they were able to keep certain ghosts at bay. Enrico accepts, and soon after he finds himself alone in the house that was never big enough for him to hide from the memories it held.

  He sits at the table, the box in front of him.

  After what had happened that night, the officer had asked him to stay at the house for a few days, to be available. The police arrived in the evening.

  Marshal Torrese said that for the purposes of the investigation, he would have to check the car Alice had been in before she was killed. He had a ruthless look, which turned to satisfaction, when he found the bag of marijuana that Enrico had left in the Beetle’s glove compartment after the party at his friends’ home. They took him down to the police station and left him in a room. No window. A table and two chairs. Enrico sat on one and, after a few hours, the marshal entered and sat down on the other one.

  “For heaven’s sake, Sarti, personal use, no problem at all,” Torrese began. “But I have to ask. First of all, whether you possess any more, if you maybe planned to sell it here in town, because you wouldn’t be the first, if you follow me, to come and have a nice little vacation with some weed so you could score some extra money. And here’s where it becomes all the more complicated, my dear young man, because there are two homicides involved. Don’t get me wrong, maybe it has nothing to do with them. But if I were you, I would start talking. Tell me where you bought the stuff, for instance. Because I’ll let you in on a little secret, Marshal Torrese is an old hand at this job. He’s dealt with quite a few little clowns who tried to bullshit him. And when Marshal Torrese’s nose itches, there’s always some reason for it. It’s experience, my dear young man. Hell, maybe you’d been smoking, you argued with your girlfriend because she didn’t approve, she got out of the car, you chased after her, you fought, and, just like that, without even intending to but only because you were high, you did something you didn’t even mean to do.”

  Enrico did not say a word. He was waiting for the officer to whom he had repeated his request for a lawyer.

  “And don’t be an asshole, because I have a cell waiting with three Moroccans who can’t stand pretty boys who kill women.”

  Torrese stood up and straightened his uniform. He smoothed down his hair, sculpted into something slick and shiny. He walked around behind Enrico. The pain was sudden. Enrico saw the trail of blood on the desk as soon as he opened his eyes. Torrese had grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head on the table.

  “Hey, boyo, not slumping, are we? Easy now, don’t tell me you’re already done? Look, the night is long, so you’d better get over it, otherwise you can get hurt in here.” Torrese came within a millimeter of his face. His breath was a fetid whiff of garlic and meat being fully digested. “You get me, pretty boy? You might get hurt in here.”

  The memory provokes a sense of vertigo. Enrico gets up and goes to look for something to drink. Some cold water. He puts a glass under the faucet. He drinks avidly, splashing his shirt. He’d barely made it out of that room, out of that night.

  He’d really ticked Torrese off for some reason. But the judge closed the investigation quickly, and the marshal had to have him taken back home. Enrico stayed just long enough to throw whatever he found at hand in a suitcase. He’d been in shock and had moved like an automaton. He grabbed the computer and a collection of things that made no sense, half a bottle of milk, his toothbrush. The cell phone was charging. There were missed calls and messages that he didn’t want to read. He left it there. He took the car keys and drove off. Along the way, he stopped at an emergency turnout, and there he finally gave in to the despair he was entitled to. He remained alone for hours. He’d seen how they looked at him. And he needed to convince himself that it had not been his fault.

  No one looked after the beach house after that. Then one day Enrico had called the agency and asked Maurizio to go check on the place and empty the pool.

  “There are some things of yours. What should I do with them?”

  “Hang on to them, one of these days I’ll come and get them.”

  That day had never come. Instead he received a proposal to rent the house: Maurizio would see to it himself. A few documents by registered mail, and that was it.

  The box, on the table.

  Enrico goes over, sits down again. He inhales. Exhales.

  Opens it.

  A couple of tees, a few shirts, and some
jeans. A bathing suit and a pair of flip-flops for the beach. More clothes, a couple of books, some CDs. And the phone he had left there. The small display, the push buttons. An object from the past. An intersection of time that creates an opening. And now even the conviction that selling the house can serve to close that chapter forever begins to falter under the weight of that small object and everything it holds, saved in its internal memory.

  Something about it knocks the breath out of him, just thinking about it.

  There are messages from Alice. Her texts. Since that night, he has never come so close to her. And now he feels that he can’t avoid it. Because his return, all of it, seems to converge at this point.

  He has to get through here, to leave it behind forever.

  The phone is still attached to the charger cable. He plugs the adapter into the outlet and looks out the window while he waits for the display to light up. From here you can’t see the street. That night, however, the blue flashing lights appeared through the trees.

  He’d been lying on the couch. He hadn’t felt like going to sleep. Alice was supposed to be there with him. Or so he had thought, that night when they would have had the whole house to themselves.

  “That’s it? Tonight the house is free?” she’d said to him in the car. “We’ll go to your house and make love because your parents aren’t there? The beach house! You think things never change, Enrico, or you pretend they haven’t. That’s your problem.”

  Enrico had been trying to make sense of those words as he lay on the couch staring at the shadows of the trees on the ceiling, stock-still in the absence of any wind. The sound of a car along the road. Another car. Yet another. The bluish flashes. At first it was just a feeling. Alice had climbed out of the old Beetle and returned home on foot. Blue lights. Cars going by at a time of night when no one ever passes. Just a feeling. Enrico got up and went to the window. The cell phone rang. Maurizio.

  “Are you both at your house?” The use of that plural, the feeling takes on a form.

  “I’m by myself.”

  “Alice isn’t with you?”

  “No, she was walking home.”

  “Did you hear from her?”

  “No.”

  “I think something’s happened, Erri. There are patrol cars and an ambulance.”

  “I’ll try to call her and let you know.”

  But Alice’s phone was off.

  Enrico left the house. The Beetle. The gate. He retraced the route, cell phone in hand, sending a text.

  Call me back.

  Continuing to call, sending texts.

  Call me back, it’s important.

  Calling again, sending texts, calling.

  At first, just a feeling. Then the feeling is transformed, takes on the weight of anguish. It becomes a short circuit of images, of words, of a hypnotic repetition of them . . . You’ll see, it must be a coincidence . . . Don’t even think about it . . . It’s just a suggestion.

  Suggestion.

  There were people going into the woods. Enrico wanted to roll down the window and ask someone what was going on. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Suggestion.

  The patrol cars and the ambulance were stopped along the road, next to the woods. Enrico got out of the car and approached them. Everything is okay.

  It was the eyes.

  The look of a couple of people whom Enrico knew.

  The way they looked at him.

  It was like falling headlong, into those eyes.

  A sound rouses him. He returns to the present. The beach house is a place of ghosts. Something is fluttering over the bookcase. He goes over, tries to push it, and manages to shift it. A big moth flies away from the top shelf, toward the window. It alights on the glass. Now it’s a large dark triangle, drawn by the tenuous light of dusk that comes from outside. It had happened once before, long ago. At that same spot. He, who had never gotten along well with insects, had taken a rolled-up newspaper and had gone over to whack it.

  “You know what they say about moths?” Alice was there, next to him.

  “You have a story for everything?”

  “It’s something that has to do with the cult of the dead.” Alice restrained the hand that held the rolled-up newspaper and moved close to the insect. “They say that a moth brings with it the spirit of a departed person who at night comes back to see us. That’s why they occasionally enter houses. According to ancient folk beliefs, it’s a soul that can’t find peace and is looking for someone to say a prayer for it.”

  “I should say a prayer?”

  “It depends.” Alice caught the creature in her hand, just barely closing her fingers over its wings. “Some people make the sign of the cross, others spin around three times clockwise. If you know a magic formula, you can recite that.” She walked over to the open window from which the moth had entered. “Or you can simply help it find its way home,” she said, opening her fingers and lightly blowing on the insect, who eventually flew off toward the trees.

  Now, however, Alice is gone. There is only Enrico’s bad rapport with insects. Especially the kind that fly. He tries to do the same thing, more or less. Pulling his sweater up to cover his neck, an instinctive gesture dictated by the fear that something might slip in there, he approaches slowly, slides the window up, and leaves it wide open.

  “That’s the way out, but don’t expect me to carry you there.”

  As he backs away from the moth, he sees that his old cell phone on the table has lit up. It’s the signal he’s been waiting for. It’s now charged and turned on. What he’s about to do will not be painless, but it can’t be avoided. He picks up the phone, opens the message app, and sets the time machine in motion. He scrolls through, looking for one in particular that he remembers.

  In no time, half an hour has gone by.

  The last message he received from her. August 8, ten years ago. It’s as if those words obliterated time. He’s gripped by emotion. Something is knotted up inside his stomach, looking for a way out but can’t find it. It’s as if she were there. As if that message had just arrived, and the sender’s name—Alice—weren’t just the contents of a digital memory.

  Then there are the others. The ones Enrico has never read.

  The way has been cleared: he keeps going.

  Messages that came in the days that followed. Friends who were looking for him. Friends who were wondering why. Friends who offered their time, their support, their encouragement. Messages received during the time the phone was still on, plugged in.

  And then it happens.

  Scrolling through those messages, finding names and numbers, which can be associated with faces, voices, Enrico finds something that should not be there. An inconsistency.

  An error.

  There is a message. The date is two weeks after Alice’s death. And that’s why it’s completely absurd that the sender’s name should be hers. Alice’s.

  I looked for you at the funeral, but you weren’t there.

  Time ruptures. Breathing stops. Day and night turn inside out.

  Enrico tries to find the error. It’s like a game. The picture is perfect, but a detail is wrong. Or rather, two.

  His finger moves, an involuntary spasm, and he discovers another message.

  The sender’s name is still the same.

  Alice.

  I thought you wanted to know, and instead you chose to forget.

  The phone slips out of his hand. Falls on the table. The sound is dull, it’s plastic. Enrico slumps down on the chair. He picks up the phone again. Reads it once more. Puts it down again. Gets up again.

  He looks out the window. The old trees, their leaves dry.

  His head is spinning.

  A joke. A bad joke.

  Who?

  Who had sent those messages?

  He’s dizzy. He leans against the back of the sofa. What was there to know? What should he have known? He feels his stomach exploding, the vomit rising in his throat, acidic. The bathroo
m door slams against the radiator as Enrico hunches over the toilet bowl.

  Everything’s all right. There must be an explanation. Calm down.

  He rinses his face at the sink. Dries it with the towel. He turns on the light above the mirror. The pale face of someone who has just seen a ghost stares back. Or maybe he’s the ghost? He goes back to the living room. A gust of cold air hits him. The window is still open.

  The moth is gone.

  Eleven

  Mom seems agitated, Grandma, that friend of theirs is coming to dinner tonight.

  Do you remember him?

  A little, more like what I’ve heard.

  But what is he doing there?

  Mom says he came to sell the house because he doesn’t want to go back there.

  For her, it must be quite emotional, they were very close, almost like brother and sister.

  She told me about it. Do you want me to say hello to her for you?

  Never mind, don’t tell anyone that we talk.

  I’m going now, so I can help Mom get things ready.

  Later you’ll tell me all about it, okay?

  Okay. Ciao, Grandma.

  Chiara presses the “Off” button and slips the iPhone in the pocket of her jeans. She removes the earbuds. She isn’t allowed to wear them at the table anyway. And tonight, in any case, she wants to listen.

  She heard the doorbell ring and knows that the guest has arrived. She pulls a sweater on over her T-shirt and heads for the stairs. She leans over a little to see below. She hears her parents’ voices and a voice she doesn’t recognize. They say hello, the normal things that people say on such occasions: Time doesn’t seem to have passed for you and yet damn! How many years has it been? and Let’s make sure it’s not that long next time. But it’s clear that if that guy came all the way here to get rid of the house, he has no intention of coming back.

  Chiara takes a few steps down the stairs—and sits down. She likes to observe people without being seen. Her father and Enrico are in the living room, her mother went to the kitchen to get the prosecco from the fridge and the tray with the vegetable canapés she prepared.