A Walk in the Dark Page 10

  All I did was look her in the eyes with a slightly comical expression, as if to say, We could dispense with all this point-scoring. Or else, I’m not the kind of person who says something just to be kind.

  Incredibly, it worked. Her features relaxed a little, and for the first time her face lost a little of its hardness. It was transformed. Pretty, I couldn’t help thinking, and immediately felt ashamed and repressed the thought. Unusual as she was, Claudia was still a nun, and I’d been taught by nuns all through elementary school. Some ideas, associations, patterns of behaviour, are very hard to abandon if you were taught by nuns at elementary school. You just don’t say, you don’t even think, that a nun is pretty.

  Claudia resumed her story without making any other comments. I stopped thinking about nuns, both in general and in particular, and my stupid taboos.

  “Anyway, this doctor was dispirited, because he wasn’t making any progress in his quest. One winter’s day, he was sitting by a window. Outside, it had been snowing for hours. He was looking out, deep in thought. The whole landscape had turned white, with all the snow. The meadows, the rocks, the houses, were covered in snow. The trees too. The branches of the trees were heavy with snow, and at a certain point the doctor saw the branch of a cheery tree bend under the weight of the snow and break. Then the same thing happened with a big oak. There’d never been a snowfall like that before.”

  There’s no doubt about it: I have a childish turn of mind. I like being told stories, if the storyteller is good. Claudia was good, and I wanted to know how her story was going to end.

  “In the grounds, not far from the window, there was a pond with weeping willows all around it. The snow was falling on the branches of the willows too, but no sooner did it start to accumulate than the branches bent and the snow fell to the ground. The branches of the willows didn’t break. When he saw that, the doctor felt a sudden sense of elation and realized he’d reached the end of his quest. The secret of combat was non-resistance. Whoever is yielding overcomes all tests. Whoever is hard, rigid, is sooner or later defeated, and broken. Sooner or later he’ll meet someone stronger. Ju-jitsu means: the art of yielding. The secret was in yielding. Wing tsun works on more or less the same lines.”

  It struck me that if the secret was in yielding, Claudia didn’t seem to have mastered it at all. To be honest, she didn’t give the impression of being a yielding person.

  She’d read my thoughts. Or more likely she was simply continuing the speech she had in her head. “Obviously you have to understand what yielding means. It means resisting up to a point, and then knowing exactly when to yield and divert your opponent’s strength, which in the end will rebound against him. The secret is in knowing how to find the point of balance between resistance and yielding, yielding and resistance, weakness and strength. That’s where the principle of victory lies. To do exactly the opposite of what the opponent expects, which to you comes naturally or spontaneously. Whatever those two words mean.”

  Yes, I thought. That’s true for other things too. To do exactly the opposite of what the opponent expects, which to you comes naturally or spontaneously. Whatever those two words mean.

  I remembered a book I’d read a few months earlier. “It’s a nice story. It reminds me of what Sun Tzu says in his book on Chinese military strategy.”

  She looked somewhat surprised. What did I know about Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategy, that kind of thing?

  “The Art of War.”

  “That’s the one. He says strategy is the art of paradox.”

  “Exactly. You’ve read his book?”

  No, I have a manual full of useful quotations for every occasion. I took that one from the chapter entitled “How to Impress Nuns Who Are Martial Arts Masters”.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  What a strange question. Why? Why do you read a book? How should I know? Because I felt like it. Because I came across it when I had nothing else to read, or to do. Because the cover intrigued me, or the title. Or a few consecutive words on a page opened at random.

  Why do you read a book?

  “I don’t know. I mean, there’s no reason. I saw it in a bookshop, I bought it and I read it. The thing that struck me the most was this question of paradox, even though I wasn’t sure I understood it when I read it. Now it seems clearer to me.”

  Claudia looked me straight in the face for a few more moments. She seemed to be changing her mind about the category she’d put me in, whatever that was.

  Then she curled her lips, for a fraction of a second. Her idea of a smile. The first. She lifted her hand to say goodbye: a somewhat clumsy gesture, but a friendly one. Then, without saying anything else, she turned and walked towards the changing rooms. Without waiting for my answer.

  So I left the gym and looked at my watch. I wasn’t going to get a taxi, and I wasn’t even going back to the office.

  It was almost ten, and it was time to go home.

  I set off with my head down. Walking quickly towards the centre of town, past closed shops, past clubs and pubs, with everything I had seen and heard jumbled in my head.

  22

  Many years ago, in Old Bari, just opposite the moat of Castello Svevo, there used to be a pizzeria. Very small, just one room, with a counter, an oven and a cash desk.

  Nino’s, it was called. There were no tables – where would they have put them? They made only two kinds of pizza: Margherita, and Romana with anchovies. The pizza maker was a short, thin man about fifty, with a hollow face and feverish eyes that didn’t look at anyone. With a baker’s shovel, he’d place the hot pizzas on a tiny marble work top, where a fat young man, with a pockmarked, hostile face, would wrap them one by one and hand them over to us with a curt manner. As if he wanted to get rid of us as quickly as possible because he obviously didn’t like us. He didn’t like anyone.

  There were four of us, four friends, and we went and ate the pizzas with our hands, on the low moat wall. The best pizzas in Bari, we would say, burning our tongues and palates, trying to avoid the white-hot mozzarella ending up on our clothes.

  I don’t know if they really were the best pizzas in Bari. Maybe they were only normal pizzas, nothing different, but we’d feel very Bohemian venturing at night into the old town, which at that time was a dangerous, forbidden place. Maybe they were only normal pizzas, but we were twenty years old and we’d sit on the wall and eat them, and drink Peroni beer from big bottles, and then light our cigarettes. We’d stay there, talking, smoking, drinking beer, until late, endured by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, until the inhabitants of the neighbourhood went to sleep and the pizzeria closed.

  I don’t remember what we talked about. The things young men of twenty usually talk about, I suppose. Girls, politics, sport, books we were reading – or that we’d like to write – how we’d change things, how we’d leave a mark, if we didn’t burn ourselves out, like so many others had done.

  Some nights in late spring, when it was very late, we’d walk back across the old town, which was completely deserted by now and dense with strong smells, dirty, disturbing and beautiful.

  The air throbbed with our infinite possibilities, on those spring nights. It throbbed in our eyes that were a little blurred from the beer, in our taut, tanned skins, in our young muscles.

  In our raging desire to have it all.

  Emilio Ranieri had killed himself on Tuesday. The stupidest day.

  That evening, he’d driven out to the perimeter wall of the airport, where many years earlier we used to go at night to watch as the last flight from Rome landed. He’d attached a rubber tube to his car exhaust and put the other end in the passenger compartment. Then he’d closed all the windows, started the engine and waited.

  The airport police had found him the following morning. There was no note in the car, or at home. Nothing.

  I heard the news in the afternoon, while I was in the office. I carried on working as if nothing had happened, until it was time to close. When I wa
s alone I phoned Margherita.

  There was no need to tell her I wasn’t coming home that evening.

  I went for a walk around the city, in search of memories, in search of a meaning, whatever. Which of course wasn’t there.

  I walked around the places we’d known. I walked to the seafront, near the monumental entrance to the Fiera del Levante. I walked around the Teatro Petruzzelli, which wasn’t a theatre any more, but only an empty red shell in the middle of the city. I sat down on a car opposite where the Jolly, a tiny, legendary third-run cinema, had once been. Now there’s only a dirty, closed shutter. I noticed the occasional sad Christmas decoration, blinking intermittently, nervously, on the balconies and in the shops. It was less than two weeks to Christmas.

  At a certain point, I even thought of taking my car and driving out to the perimeter wall of the airport.

  I didn’t do it. Fear of ghosts, maybe. Or maybe just fear that the police would find me, maybe take me to the station and ask me what I was doing there, if I had anything to do with Emilio Ranieri’s suicide, that kind of thing. I didn’t go because I didn’t want to get into trouble. Because I was a coward.

  I ended up, late at night, sitting on the wall of the moat in front of the castle, opposite where Nino’s pizzeria had been.

  It’s an area that’s never been invaded by the developing nightlife of the last few years. A few hundred yards away there’s an invisible border. On the other side, the pubs, the pizzerias, the piano bars, the vegetarian restaurants, the fake traditional taverns, and a constant stream of people all through the night. On this side, around the castle, Old Bari. Just a couple of old beer shops, a woman who roasts meat on an unlicensed stove in the street in summer, another who sells fried slices of polenta. Boys playing football in the street. Previous offenders, being kept under observation, in small groups near the drawbridge. Or rather, what used to be a drawbridge, but is just a small stone bridge now. Police arriving every now and again and taking away those they have under observation, to “take a statement”, as they put it. The ones under observation are forbidden to meet among themselves, or generally to meet up with previous offenders. If they do that, they’re committing an offence. But they do it all the same. The other previous offenders are their friends. Who else are they supposed to meet and chat to? Their favourite spot is the castle bridge. Everyone knows it, and obviously the police know it too – the police station is a few hundred yards away – and they go there when they need to improve their statistics and make it look as if they’re dealing with complaints.

  The people involved in the nightlife of Bari don’t go near the castle, don’t even go anywhere close to it. At this time of night, when the people of the area have gone to sleep, it’s deserted there. Just as it was many years ago.

  I sat down on the low wall without knowing why I’d come here. Without knowing why I’d been wandering around. Without knowing anything. Looking into space, unable to bring any specific memory into focus. Words, a voice, anything perceived by the senses at any moment of the distant past. In which we had lived before setting out into the dark, unknown future.

  “Avvocato, is everything all right? Got a problem?”

  I jumped, like when you’re just about to fall asleep and somebody shakes you.

  It was a dealer I’d defended a few years earlier: I couldn’t remember his name. He had a face like a tortoise, good-natured and at the same time absent.

  “An old friend of mine killed himself, and I’m feeling sad. Very sad.”

  He didn’t say anything – just nodded slightly – and after thinking about it for a few moments sat down on the wall next to me. We both sat there in silence. The last noises faded away in the alleys of the old town. I felt a strange sense of calm.

  After a few minutes Tortoise Face stood up and, still without saying anything, gave me his hand. It seemed natural to me to get to my feet, as a mark of respect.

  His hand was small, his grip delicate but not weak.

  He walked off in the direction of the cathedral. I set off in the other direction, through the deserted streets, listening to the noise of my steps on the old, shiny stones.

  23

  After that night, I didn’t think any more about Emilio. The days passed, smooth and silent. Without rhythm, without colour. Without anything.

  A few days before Christmas, Claudia phoned me. A strange call. She wished me a happy Christmas, I returned the greeting, and then we both fell silent. A silence heavy with embarrassment. I had the impression she’d called me for a specific reason, to tell me something specific, not just to wish me a happy Christmas, and then had changed her mind while the phone was ringing.

  The silence continued, and I had the strange sensation of being suspended somewhere, or over something. Then we hung up, and I still hadn’t understood.

  I don’t think she’d understood either.

  On 23 December a card arrived at the office, from Senegal. Nothing on it except the words: For Christmas and the New Year. No signature.

  It was Abdou Thiam, my Senegalese client – a street peddler in Italy, an elementary school teacher in Senegal – who had been tried the year before on a charge of kidnapping and murdering a nine-year-old boy. After being acquitted, he had returned to his country and every now and again sent me cards, with just a few words on them, or sometimes nothing at all. Always without a signature and without his address.

  Abdou had narrowly escaped life imprisonment and these cards were his way of letting me know that he hadn’t forgotten what I’d done for him. I thought again for a few minutes about that trial and all the things that had happened just before and just after it. It had been less than two years before, but it felt as if a whole lifetime had gone by, and I told myself I had no desire to start thinking about the meaning of time and the nature of memory. So I put the card away in a drawer, with the others, and called Maria Teresa, in order to get through the remaining papers, leave, and let myself be sucked into, and overwhelmed by, the crowded, frantic streets.

  We had been invited by some friends of ours for Christmas Eve. Margherita said we should exchange presents before we went out, and so, at nine o’clock, there we were in her apartment, all dressed up, standing next to the little Christmas tree, which was decorated with giant fir cones and thin slices of dried citrus fruit. They were almost transparent and gave off coloured reflections. The apartment was full of nice, clean smells. Pine needles, scented candles, the chocolate and cinnamon dessert that Margherita had made for the party. The cheerful melody of “Bright Side of the Road” was coming from the stereo speakers.

  “Empty-handed, Guerrieri? You’re running a risk, you know. If you take another book or a CD from inside your jacket, or anything else that isn’t a real present, I swear I’ll leave you tonight and go and get hitched – so to speak – to a South American dance teacher.”

  “I see I got you all wrong. I thought you were a sensitive girl, not at all materialistic, interested in the arts, literature, music. And besides, I don’t see heaps of presents for me under the tree.”

  “Sit down and wait here,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen. She came back a minute later, pushing a huge package, irregular in shape, wrapped in electric blue paper with a red ribbon.

  “This is your present, but if I don’t see mine you can’t even go near it.”

  “But what about the sheer pleasure of giving, just to make another person happy, with no compensation apart from his gratitude and his smile? What about—”

  “No. I’m only interested in barter. Bring me my present.”

  I shook my head. All right, seeing as how you don’t understand the poetry of giving, I’ll go.

  I went to the door, stepped out on the landing, and came back holding by the handlebars a red, shiny and very beautiful electric bicycle.

  “Is this enough of a slap in the face?”

  Margherita stroked the bicycle for a long time, as if just seeing it wasn’t enough. Like one of those people who get to kn
ow things by touching them, not just by looking at them. Then she gave me a kiss and said I could open my present now.

  It was a rocking chair, part wood, part wicker. I’d always wanted one, ever since I was little, but I couldn’t recall ever telling her. I sat down in it, closed my eyes, and tried rocking.

  “Happy Christmas,” I said after a minute or two. In a low voice, still with my eyes closed, as if talking to myself in a kind of half sleep.

  “Happy Christmas,” she replied – also in a low voice – stroking my hair, my face, my eyes with her fingers.

  Part Two

  24

  Left, left, right, another left hook.

  Jab, jab, right uppercut, left hook.

  Left, right, left.

  Right.

  The end.

  I was lying on the sofa, watching a sports documentary about Cassius Clay/Mohammed Ali. To anyone who has any idea of what really happens in the ring, it’s an amazing thing to watch Mohammed Ali’s fights.

  For example, the way he moves his legs. To understand, you need to have been in the ring. Not many people know this, but the surface of a boxing ring is soft. It isn’t easy to skip around on it.

  It’s an amazing thing to watch the man – a man now afflicted with Parkinson’s – dancing like that. A 240-pound man dancing with the lightness of a butterfly. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, as he used to say.

  Punches hurt, and are usually pretty nasty. Which is why there’s something so incredible about that superhuman grace of his. It’s as if he’s overcome matter, overcome fear, as if he’s making a leap out of the dirt and the blood towards a kind of ideal of beauty.

  At the end of the documentary, images of the young Cassius Clay – beautiful and invincible – dancing lightly, almost weightlessly, during a training session were intercut with images of the old Mohammed Ali lighting the flame for the Atlanta Olympics. Shaking, concentrating extremely hard to avoid making any mistakes while performing such an easy action, his eyes staring into space.