The Purple Room (9 page)

“It’s a blue Fiat 500,” she says. “It must be here somewhere.”

We can’t find it. We wander through the maze of cars for a while before
Silvia finally recognizes it.

“There it is! That one.”

Two women are getting out of a nearby car and coming toward us. Even
though it’s dark, I recognize one of them by her athletic figure. It’s
Antonella. I wonder if she left the dating agency and is back to her old method
of picking up guys in clubs. For her sake, I hope so. Her new way of choosing
men like a soccer coach—
this one
yes, that one no
—was pretty intimidating.

I’m considering going and apologizing for that phone call when she
recognizes me, too.

“Look, Miriam!” she says to her friend. “That’s the guy I was telling
you about.”

Silvia is next to me, waiting to get into the car. Antonella looks her
up and down, then turns to me with a vicious smile.

“So I was wrong, then. You’re not an impotent fag. You’re an impotent
manwhore.”

She looks back at Silvia.

“If you’ve been going out for a while, then you should know that this
bastard cheated on you. We slept together last week. If, on the other hand, he
picked you up tonight, I should warn you that he’s a lot of work. You’ll have
to go down on him for half an hour before you can really get started. And I’d
advise kicking him out the second you’re done. Otherwise tomorrow you’ll find
yourself waking up next to a worm.”

Silvia glances at me, wide-eyed, scared, confused.

“Get in,” I say, opening the door for her.

“You don’t think I’m going to let you get off that easy, do you?”
Antonella takes a step toward me.

“Come on, forget it,” says Miriam, taking hold of her arm.

“Fuck that!” She wriggles free. “I’m not letting this go.”

It occurs to me that Antonella and I have something in common: failed
marriages. Two, in her case. We’re both veterans of ruthless wars, atrocities
committed on both sides. Now, suddenly, facing her rage, I feel like I’m
fighting with my wife again. Here we are, back in the trenches. I wonder if
Antonella feels the same way. If she’s reliving all the worst moments of her
past marriages. The outbursts of anger, the furious shouting, the verbal
violence. The physical violence.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” I try. “I don’t know if Luisa explained
it to you, but I only said that stupid thing because—”

“Luisa said you were sick and a lot of other bullshit. It’s pretty clear
how sick you are!”

She glares at Silvia through the car window and adds, “You really will
fuck anything with legs, won’t you?”

“Watch it, that’s my sister.”

“Your
sister
?” she says
scornfully. “You’re not a man, you’re a gutless liar. A sewer rat. A
disgusting, fucking rat. You know what you deserve?”

Her handbag slams into my temple. It doesn’t hurt much. It must be
mostly empty. Two or three more hits follow, equally painless. I figure I might
as well let her keep hitting me with her bag until she runs out of steam, but
then a punch lands on my ear.
That
hurts. I shield myself with my arms and take it, hoping that someone will come
to my rescue. Miriam tries to drag her away, but Antonella keeps punching me.

The horn makes us all jump.

Silvia is throwing her weight into it, pressing down on the wheel with
both hands. The sound is deafening. I take advantage of the confusion and
scramble into the car with her. I lock the doors. Antonella takes off a shoe
and pounds it on the windshield.

“Coward! Get out of the car!” she screams.

“Let’s go!” begs Silvia.

I manage to get the key into the ignition. I rev the motor and turn on
the headlights. Antonella plants herself in my way, hands on the hood.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Move!” I shout from inside the car.

“You want to run me over? Go ahead! You limp dick! Do it!”

I take my foot off the clutch. The car lunges forward.

“He’s trying to kill me!” shrieks Antonella, backing away. “The bastard
wants to run me over!”

She slides her shoe back on and takes off through the parking lot. I
didn’t think that would be so easy.

“Now we can go,” I say to Silvia.

I pull out and head for the exit.

We’re almost at the gate when I see Antonella again. She’s digging
through the trunk of her car. She pulls out a heavy metal object. A pedal-club
lock with steel clamps.

“What’s she doing?”

Antonella starts running toward us, holding the pedal-club over her
shoulder like a baseball bat.

“Watch out!” yells Silvia.

I slam my foot on the gas and swerve. The tires skid on the gravel.
Antonella hurls the club at us and it hits the windshield, shattering it. Glass
shards fly everywhere. They’re in my mouth, in my hair.

I stop the car and look in the rearview mirror. Antonella is standing
there with her hands on her hips. She’s waiting for me to get out.

“I should call the police.”

“No,” says Silvia. “Let’s just go, please. I don’t care about the
windshield.”

“She’s insane. We have to do something.”

“Please. I just want to go home.”

“Fine.”

I chuck the pedal-club out of the side window and take off, skidding on
the gravel.

10

We drive in silence through the night. The hot and humid summer air
blows through the shattered windshield. Bugs and mosquitos keep flying into my
face.

Silvia stares straight
ahead, eyes wide. She’s still shaking with fear. She’s probably asking herself
how she ended up in this mess. Antonella and I must seem like monsters to her.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can explain if you want.”

“I’d rather not know,” Silvia cuts me off.

She’s right. We should forget about it. Still, I am sorry it had to go
this way. I would have liked to make the most of the evening. It’s been
mortifying, but it’s still a beautiful early summer night.

Resigned, I hug the white line on the road, focusing on the
intersections and overpasses we speed by on our way back to the city. A huge
moth comes through the windshield. It flutters around my head and flits up
against the roof of the car. I try to flick it away with my hand.

“Stop!” says Silvia. She turns on the inside light and waits for the
moth to settle on it. She examines it, then exclaims,

“It’s an
Amata phegea
!”

She tells me everything about the moth, which she refers to as a
lepidopteran
.

“See? It has unusual coloring—blue and yellow—to warn
predators that it’s toxic.”

I ask her a few questions about her work, and suddenly she gets
talkative. She explains how male scorpion flies attract mates by giving a gift
of prey to the females. She tells me that dragonflies reproduce in flight, and
that the shape of their joined bodies looks like a heart. Silvia immerses
herself in the details of insects’ sex lives without any embarrassment. She’s
lost all her shyness, and she seems like a totally different person.

I ask her about ants. I’ve been fighting them for sixteen years now, so
I figure I should learn something about them. Silvia explains how the hierarchy
of an anthill works, how the queen lives at the top, followed by the males and
then the workers at the very bottom.

“Before she begins mating, the queen has two large pairs of wings, which
drop after the nuptial flight.” She actually says that:
nuptial flight
. It’s a beautiful expression. “It’s been determined
that the combined biomass of all the ants in the world surpasses that of human
beings. Did you know that?”

No, I didn’t know all the ants weighed more than all of us. Good thing I
stopped trying to kill them off.

She’s still talking about ants when we get to her apartment complex. I
park and pull out a few bills from my wallet.

“Get the windshield fixed in the morning. Let me know if it costs more
than this.”

“Thanks for driving me home,” she says.

“Thank you for the entomology lesson.”

“I talked your ear off, didn’t I?”

“I enjoyed it,” I say. Without thinking, I add, “Maybe we can do it
again sometime.”

We sit for a moment, just looking at each other. I consider kissing her.

“My boyfriend’s name is Federico,” says Silvia, as if she can read my
mind. “We haven’t been together very long and I don’t want people to know about
him yet. Petra thinks I’m single; that’s why she invited me tonight. I’m only
telling you this because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. You’re a nice
person, Sergio, really. I just can’t. You understand?”

I nod. There’s nothing more to say. We get out of the car and shake
hands awkwardly.

“Well, goodbye.” Silvia walks away as she says it.

Goodbye, Silvia the entomologist. I’ll remember you.

I walk to the taxi stand. There’s hardly anybody around at this time of
night. I give the driver my mom’s address.

After he drops me off, I see a city bus driving back to the depot at the
end of its shift. I think of my father. He was a bus driver in Milan, but his
real passion was art. Volume by volume, he collected a set of encyclopedias
called
The Old Masters
. I remember
him in his armchair before work, perusing the Caravaggio volume with his
uniform on and his hat on his lap. I think he dreamed of being a painter when
he was little, but he never had the courage to try. One night I found him in
the kitchen painting with my watercolors. When I asked him what he was
painting, he said, “nothing,” and hid it from me. I found it crumpled in the
trash the next morning. It was an attempt at a portrait of a woman—maybe
my mom—but it was so childish it looked like a six-year-old had done it.

One day I asked him, “How many kilometers have you driven in your bus?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Definitely enough to go around the world.”
Then he gave me a strange smile and added, “But I’ve never been anywhere.”

The next morning, he went to the depot to start his shift. He greeted
his colleagues, put on his hat and jacket, got into the bus and closed the
doors.

The bus didn’t move. It just sat there in the parking lot.

The other drivers were confused. When they went to see what was going
on, they saw that Luigi Monti—Gigi—had collapsed over the steering
wheel, his cap lying on the floor and his foot still on the clutch.

“Sergio! My goodness… What’s wrong?” my mother says over the intercom.
It’s two o’clock in the morning.

“Everything’s fine, Mom. Let me in and I’ll explain.”

I take the elevator to the second floor. My mom is waiting for me on the
landing, wearing that bathrobe she’s had since I was little. It’s worn so thin
you can see her nightgown under it.

“Did you run out of gas or something?”

“I had dinner out with Roberto. I didn’t want to make him drive me all
the way back home. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m getting used to you showing up unannounced.”

She leads me into the study and gets out a pillow, a pillow case, and
sheets. She makes up the bed. From the closet she pulls out a pair of light
blue pajamas, complete with a little pocket on the shirt.

“These were your dad’s.”

When she leaves, I strip down and stare at the pajamas folded on the
bed. I never wear pajamas to sleep, especially not old ones like these. I pick
them up and put them on anyway. The clean material feels good on my skin, and
the smell of mothballs is strangely comforting. I turn off the light and crawl
into bed.

Through the window, I can hear the rumble of a night bus hurrying to the
depot.

11

I spent Sunday
with my mom. In the morning I cleaned the dishwasher filters and adjusted the
tuning on her television set. Then I took her out to eat at the usual
trattoria
. The owners are more or less
her age, Mario and Flavia. We heard them arguing in the kitchen, then they took
turns coming over to the table to complain about each other. They’ve been doing
it for fifty years.

During lunch
my mom told me about the news stories that have made an impression on her
lately. Husband and wife stab each other to death and are found by their
daughter in a state of decomposition. Grandson takes grandmother for a walk in
her wheelchair and she falls off the sidewalk just as a van is passing; her
head is neatly sheared off. Stuff like that.

“These sorts
of things happen more often in the summer,” she declared, “because of the
heat.”

After we drank
our coffee, she went out to smoke while I paid the bill.

“Will you come
to the mountains with me in August?” she asked me on the way home. She’s
reserved a room in a guest-house in Abruzzo with her neighbor Lina. “It’s
beautiful up there, and cool too.”

“I’ll think
about it,” I said, even though I have no intention of going. I can’t go away. I
have to stay home and wait. I’ll wait all summer if I have to.

I’ll wait for you.

On Monday
morning I took the bus home. From the stop in town I had to walk up the hill to
my house. The sun was beating down and I tried to stay in the shade of the
trees. After two kilometers I came to a curve where I stopped to rest. I could
see the side of the hill that had burned in the fire. Next to it were the
buildings under construction. Seen from there, it looked like Nino was
right––that they had set fire to the hill on purpose, just so that
they could keep on building.

I arrived at
the top soaked in sweat. I look into Nino’s yard but I didn’t see anyone. Only
the dog came to say hello. It licked the hand I pushed through the bars of the
gate. They’d put a collar on it, with a tag shaped like a bone. It said, “Lucky.”
It’s the right name.

Now I’m back
here, sitting in the garden drinking an ice-cold beer. I turn on the phone I
left at home on Saturday evening. There are three messages. One is from
Roberto. “How did it go with the entomologist? Let me know.”

The second one
is from Luisa, from the dating agency. “If you change your mind Sergio, I’m
always here. Remember that love never dies. There’s one of our members,
Fabiana, forty-seven, widow, loves horses…” I delete it. The third one is from
Michela. All it says is, “Check your email.”

The mailman
comes by, thrusting envelops into my box. I get up to check: bank statement,
flyers, the bill from the dating agency. I take the letters down into the
bunker and turn on the computer. While I’m downloading my messages, I open my
bank statement. A few years ago I opened an equity fund. I did it for Michela,
in case one day she needed money to go to university or buy a car. The fund is
always losing money, but at the bank they keep telling me to have faith.

A selfie of
Michela appears on my screen. She’s posing like a French film star, with a
beret on her head, sun glasses, and a ballpoint pen in the corner of her mouth,
like a cigarette. Daniel is hugging her from behind, burying his face in her
hair. Under the photo it says: “
Paris,
j’arrive!!!
” In the background you can see a tennis racket hanging on the
wall. It must be Daniel’s room. Maybe I should tell Alessandra that our
daughter spends her afternoons at a boy’s house, and that she isn’t exactly
going to Paris to learn French. Although, now that I think about it, I guess
she’ll probably learn French anyway.

I print out
the photo of Michela and Daniel, write the date on the back and put it away in
my files. Another thread to tie onto the other memories. Then I check my credit
card statement. I haven’t bought much in the last two months, so one item
immediately strikes me as odd. “Park Hotel, Rome.” I don’t remember spending
money in a hotel. Not in Rome, anyway.

I look at the
date. The 22
^nd
of April. Four days before the accident.

I start
sweating again. Weak knees, stomach cramps and all the other symptoms hit me
all of a sudden. The Park Hotel. It’s a common enough name for a hotel, but it
reminds me of something specific. I remember a yellow sign on top of a
building. A long, busy road. Via Salaria. Near the exit from the ring road
there’s a hotel with that name. I pass it every day when I drive home from
work, but I’m sure I’ve never stopped there.

At least, I
don’t
think
I ever have.

Driving into
Rome you hardly notice the lit up sign. It’s no great loss. The yellow neon is
faded and a couple of letters are dark. The façade of the hotel is gray and the
window frames are aluminum. The ramp from the ring road rises directly in front
of the bedroom windows. The parking lot is deserted apart from one battered old
scooter. The flowers in the cement flowerpots by the entrance are dead and the
restaurant connected to the hotel is closed for renovation. From what I can see
of the inside, I don’t think it’ll be reopening anytime soon.

I go into the
reception. I’m surprised that the air-conditioning works. Behind the counter,
there’s a skinny kid with his tie loosened. As I walk up he hides the joint
he’s smoking.

“I need some
information,” I tell him. “I got a room here a couple of months ago. Do you remember
me?”

“No,” the kid
says.

“It was the
end of April. Are you sure you don’t remember?”

“I’ve only
been here a week.”

“Well, can I
check the register to see if my name’s there?”

The kid eyes
me suspiciously.

“Why? What do
you want to know?”

“My company has
to refund me the cost of the room. I’ve lost the receipt and I don’t remember
exactly what day it was.”

“Hold on a
sec.”

He bends down
beneath the counter and pulls out a daily planner with a fake leather cover.

“What’s your
name?”

“Sergio
Monti.”

“When did you
say you were here?”

“The end of
April. Must have been around the twenty-second.”

The boy turns
the pages over backwards. Very slowly. A couple of minutes later we’re still in
May.

“Do you need a
hand?” I ask.

“Are you in a
hurry?”

“No, but...”

“If your
name’s here, I’ll find it. No need to get all worked up.”

He carries on
with his backwards search until he gets to the month of April.

“Here it is,
April twenty-second. Monti, Sergio. Room 106. Check in: eleven-thirty p.m..
Check out: midnight. Payment: Visa. All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want
another receipt?”

“No, I don’t
need one. Could I see the room instead?”

“106?”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna
rent the room?”

“No, just see
it.”

“Why you wanna
see it?”

“Because I’d
like to.”

“If you’ve
already been here, you know what it looks like. Why do you need to see it
again?”

“Ok,” I say.
I’m almost out of patience. “I’ll take it. Give me room 106.”

I toss some
money onto the open planner. The kid takes it and slips it into his pocket.
Then he closes the book and puts it back under the counter. He grabs the key to
106.

“Follow me.”

We take the
elevator up one floor and turn left down a hallway. The kid leads the way,
walking in slow motion. I have to watch out not to step on his heels. I keep
looking around. The carpet is blue and covered with cigarette burns. The walls
are bare and faded under the fluorescent ceiling lights. The numbers on the
room doors are in raised black plastic. 102, 103, 104, 105. Nothing I see looks
familiar. It’s like I’ve never been here before.

“106,” says
the kid when we get to the end of the hallway. I feel my heart pick up speed.
The kid has a hard time getting the key into the lock. I feel an urge to snatch
it out of his hand and do it myself. It takes him almost a minute to get the door
open.

“All yours,”
he says, stepping aside so I can go in.

The room’s
dark. All of a sudden I don’t want to go in there anymore. I just want to turn
around and leave.

“Don’t you
want to see it?”

“Can you turn
on the lights?”

He looks at me
like I’ve made some absurd request. He sighs, sticks his arm into the room and
flips a switch on the wall.

“Is that
good?”

 
I take a deep breath and go in.

It’s an
anonymous room. A double bed, two nightstands and a chest of drawers in a
corner. Cold and bare. The walls are white. Absolutely nothing is purple.

But I
recognize the window.

The aluminum
window frame, the grey curtains, the lowered rolling shutter––they’re
the same as the ones in the enlargement I’d left at the camera shop. Now I know
that two months ago I came to this rundown hotel and took a picture of the
window in room 106. But why? I grab the cord and start to roll up the shutter.

“We usually
tell guests they should leave that down,” the kid says.

Through the
glass you can see the concrete ramp leading up from the ring road. A car
flashes past with its brights on. They sweep across the walls like the beam
from a light-house. The aluminum fittings do nothing to muffle the roar of the
engine. I stand there staring at the dismal landscape with the feeling that
I’ve come to another dead end. Whatever I do, every time I think I’ve
discovered another fragment, something to help me remember, I end up with more
questions than before. My head starts to ache again, the veins in my temples
swelling until they feel like they’re about to burst. I lean my forehead
against the cool glass and close my eyes.

“You all
right?” the kid asks.

“It’s nothing.
It’ll pass.”

I stay like
that a little longer, then pull myself away.

“Sorry if I’ve
wasted your time.”

“Listen,” says
the kid, before I can leave the room, “why don’t you tell me what you’re
looking for?”

“A person,” I
answer, “who might not exist.”

The kid gives
me a serious stare.

“Can I trust
you?”

“I don’t know.
About what?”

“You’re not a
cop, are you?”

“No, but if I
were, I don’t think I’d tell you.”

The kid sticks
his hand into his pocket, pulls out the rest of the joint he put out before,
and lights it. He takes a few puffs, leaning on the door frame, staring at me.
While I’m waiting for him to tell me what he wants, I sit down on edge of the
bed and massage my temples. I wish I were back home, under the covers.

“No, you’re
not a cop,” he says after a while. He crushes the butt out with his shoe. He
sits down beside me and whispers in my ear.

“Maybe it’s a
fucking stupid thing to do, but I want to tell you anyway. There’s a girl who
always uses this room, for work. She uses it for half an hour, then leaves.
Maybe she’s the person you’re looking for.”

She’s standing
in an open lot off of Via Salaria, under a streetlight. She’s talking on the
phone and only lifts her eyes when she sees my headlights approaching. Long
blond hair. Skin-tight shorts and shiny black boots. Farther on, a group of
girls are chatting and making gestures to the passing cars, but the girl the
night porter described to me, the girl from room 106––it has to be
her.

I watch her
from inside the car. I try to find something familiar, but her face doesn’t
spark anything in my memory. It’s hard to believe I was with her in that hotel
room. In the past, when I’ve tried to go with a prostitute, I’ve never been
able to see it through to the end. An embarrassing waste of money and self-esteem.
Why would I have tried again last April?

I approach
with the car window down. I let her in.

“There’s a
hotel just ahead,” she says. “If not, in the car.”

“Can we talk
for a minute?”

“First the
money.”

I turn on the
inside light. When I hand her the money, I take a closer look at her. Pale
skin, high cheek bones, some pimples on her forehead. Pretty girl.

“What’s your
name?”

“Jenny.” It
seems less a reply than a conditioned reflex.

“Have you seen
me before, Jenny?”

“No.”

“Do you mind
looking me in the face?”

She turns and
looks at me with two pale eyes that give no sign of seeing anything. It’s like
she’s blind.