The Sense of an Elephant (3 page)

The two men moved away from the SUV and Pietro noticed that the door had a scratch and two large dents.

‘We've already met.' The radiographer wore an open raincoat. Extended his hand toward the concierge. ‘We ran into each other on the day you first arrived. Three bags and that Bianchi, wasn't it?' Pointed at it and brushed the hair away from his face. His eyes were grey.

‘That's right, Dr Lisi.'

‘Riccardo.
Dr Lisi
makes me feel old. Do you have a lock for it?'

‘It's broken.'

‘They pinch Bianchis in Milan. May I?' He grabbed the bicycle, climbed on and leaned over the handlebars as if he were hurtling down a hill. ‘They don't make 'em like this any more. I've got one myself, but it's made of tissue paper.'

‘Do you ride it?'

‘I used to, with that wimp Martini. Then he defected and I get bored riding on my own.'

‘You two could go riding together.' The lawyer opened his arms wide.

‘Resolved.' Riccardo gave the bicycle back to Pietro. ‘You've got to be patient, though. I don't have the legs I once did.' He started up the stairs.

He had left behind the scent of aftershave, sickly sweet, which mixed with the smog.

‘I've seen him around a lot lately,' said Pietro.

‘You see him around a lot lately, right.' Poppi raised his eyebrows. ‘Let's say that he's one of the family. He was at university with Dr Martini and now they work in the same hospital. The little girl calls him “Uncle”.' He looked Pietro up and down. ‘I admit the white shirt does wonders for you,
Pietro.' He adjusted the concierge's tie and opened the door to the building. ‘Who's the lucky woman tonight?'

Pietro started off.

‘Don't be coy. What's her name?'

‘Anita.'

‘I was thinking Mary Magdalene. Good for you, kibitzer. God will be jealous tonight.'

The concierge stood stiffly on the threshold of the flat. Anita said, ‘You have the same face as when you first arrived in Milan.' She pulled him inside. ‘C'mon, tell me. Are you worried about something?'

Pietro leaned against the new refrigerator. Its door was already covered with recipes. She caressed the two creases around his mouth. ‘If these wrinkles …' Moved on to the furrows on his forehead. ‘And these …' Finished with the groove in his chin. ‘And this as well … have shown up, something has happened.' Helped him out of his jacket, then checked on a pot heating on the stove. ‘Knowing you this long has got to mean something.'

Pietro turned to the window. It looked over a communal balcony into the tenement's courtyard. A string of petunias hung down from the balustrade. He managed to make out the Bianchi. ‘Sorry I'm late.' He sat down, and only now did he notice that Anita was different.

‘You're worried,' she said.

Her lips were shiny and she wore pearls at her earlobes. Her hair was freshly dyed a shade approaching auburn. Her dress hugged wide hips partially concealed by a hanging scarf.

‘You're beautiful,' Pietro replied. And he gazed at the old photograph on the wall of her on the Rimini breakwater. She held her hat to keep it from blowing away and she was happy.

She lowered her eyes. ‘I went by your building this morning.' Used a wooden spoon to scoop up a bit of
ragù
from the pot. The sauce was simmering over a low flame. She cooled it down with a long breath before placing it in her mouth. ‘The condominium is very distinguished, but I didn't see the doctor.'

‘He had already left at that hour.'

‘I saw a blonde woman and a little girl.'

‘His wife and daughter.'

‘If they're any guide, the doctor is one handsome man.' She caressed his ringless fingers. ‘Have you spoken to him?'

Pietro sprang to his feet. On the sideboard stood a glass amphora. Anita had filled it with coloured buttons and decks of cards. He pulled out the
briscola
cards. They were worn at the edges, the images faded. He began to shuffle them. ‘Today I used my set of keys to go into his flat.'

‘When?'

‘This afternoon.'

She pushed aside plate and silverware. ‘Goodness, and then?'

‘I saw a photograph.' Pietro shuffled the cards and spoke softly. ‘He liked Vespas when he was little. After that I had to leave.'

Anita slipped the cards out of his hand and had him cut the deck. Then turned them over two by two: the three of cups and the six of coins, the king and the ace of cups. ‘The
cards say you'll go back. Back to his flat. Because he'll need you.'

Pietro looked over her shoulder. The ace of cups had been the first card dealt. He put an arm around Anita like he had done after climbing down from the Rimini–Milan train, the day when they first saw each other again after ten years. She'd brought him home with her, to a comfortable two-room flat in a big ugly building north of the city. And he had slept there ever since: the four nights before becoming a concierge and virtually every night following.

Anita blew gently in his ear, loosened his tie.

He turned his head, buried his nose in her hair.

He woke with a start.

Anita, beside him, said, ‘You had a nightmare, come here.'

Pietro caressed her head. ‘I have to go.'

He went to the kitchen and drank from a glass with a hand-painted lizard on it. The green ran outside the lines of the pointed tail. He dressed and before leaving noticed that she was up, wearing a light dressing gown and gazing at him.

‘He'll need you,' she said to him again.

Pietro crossed the room to embrace her, then left.

The night had swallowed Milan, swallowed him as well as the Bianchi carried him home. Traces of the nightmare stayed with him during the entire return trip. It was always the same. A ship and the salty air, with no sea beneath the ship, just emptiness. And his fall from the bows, down, down, until he woke. He banished it by pedalling, pedalling without stopping all the way to the condominium. Such was his frenzy that he struggled to insert the keys into the building door. Left the Bianchi against the downpipe at the entrance to the courtyard, calming down once he was there, his gaze directed at the doctor's windows. They were dark. In one he could make out the ceiling beams and a chandelier with many arms. The beams and the chandelier were enough for him.
You will need me
. A darkened window was enough. He returned towards the concierge's lodge and just before entering noticed something on the ground, a leather bracelet. Picked it up. It was frayed at the
edges and smooth on top. On the underside a date had been etched:
14-9-2008
. He placed it in the drawer of his night table.

Then the concierge took off his suit, hung the shirt and jacket in the wardrobe, chose a red tracksuit as pyjamas. Instead of the bed he would make do with a blanket and a mothball-smelling pillow inherited from the previous concierge. Picked up too a crossword puzzle and a pen, then removed his socks and went into the empty room. There was a musty odour that rose from the filthy floor. Three of the walls had been recently painted white, the fourth left half plastered, sign that the work had been interrupted. He opened the porthole window that looked into the courtyard and turned on the lamp. What remained of memory? Pietro stood frozen, staring at the suitcase. Only things. He bent down to open a box, removed a note and read it against the light. The writing in pencil had faded but he could nevertheless make it out:
I killed my son
. With note in hand he stood and rocked back onto his heels, shifted onto his toes and sketched a graceful tap dance. Stopped. What remained of memory? He brought a hand under the lamp. Against the half-plastered wall he projected the shadows of his fingers, held them together and then spread them open, closed, open again. They became a dog without a tail. He had learned how to make the shadows as a young man. Now they were lopsided and a few were always missing something. He moved his index finger and thumb. The dog opened his jaw. To the animal he confided: ‘Tomorrow night at seven, I'll follow him.'

*

The eyes of the witch sparkled through the confessional grille. She murmured in a Milanese accent, ‘Where'd it go, Father, the cat's soul? And mine, where'll it go? I have to get married soon. How can I do it with my soul so troubled, how?'

‘Do you pray?'

‘I write to him, to God.'

They were silent. He heard her moving behind the grille. She drew something from her handbag, tore off a strip of paper and pulled out a pencil she had been using to keep her hair in place. Wrote on the paper and pushed it through.

The words written on the paper were:
I have another sin to confess, God, but I can't say it to you, only write it.

He handed the paper back to her. ‘Do it.'

And she wrote it with gaunt
i
s and
l
s and a portly
o
:
I killed my son
.

Pietro slept poorly owing to the hard floor and the odour of mothballs that stung his nose. He woke at first light.

The floor was frigid. He placed his feet on top of the socks there and reread the only crossword clue that he had been unable to solve, five across, three letters:
ruminant with palmate antlers
. He wrote
elk
and went into the bathroom to undress. Over the years his torso had shrunk. The hair remained dark on his slight paunch. He caressed it softly, the skin that of a newborn. Unscrewed the cap on the body wash for sensitive skin and turned on the shower, a square of floor separated by a plastic curtain. As soon as it became lukewarm he started on his legs. They were a runner's legs. Disfiguring scars ran over his thighs and shins. He traced them with two fingers, down to his small feet, which he scrubbed. He had prominent veins and scars on his ankles as well. Poured out more body wash, soaped his face and felt the bubbles bursting on his nose. They didn't smell like anything. He inhaled and his nostrils burned. Held one hand to his wrinkly member, grasped it and fingered the tip. Stopped and stared at that strip of flesh. Rinsed it with cold water and rinsed the cuts that crossed his chest from one side to another. His bones slid under the tortured skin that still hurt at times. He opened the plastic curtain and before stepping out looked at himself in the mirror behind the door. He was a man reddened by the hot water and by memory.

He did the rest in a hurry. Chose a shirt and trousers and an argyle jumper that he threw over his shoulders. He had bought them in Anita's shop the day before starting the job. He had chosen the colour, grey, she the style, and she had also made him buy an uncomfortable pair of brogues and two cardigans to alternate, because a proper concierge almost never dresses the same two days in a row. Anita had also added a tie and a bottle of cologne, which he had yet to open. Pietro pulled on the jumper, adjusted his shirt collar and went into the kitchen without stopping to look in the mirror. A colour other than black was enough to embarrass him.

Pietro had always eaten breakfast on his feet. He set up on top of the refrigerator, with exactly two pieces of Melba toast and three squares of dark chocolate. Ate slowly, eyes on the plants awaiting the morning light. ‘You tricked me,' he said to a recovering ficus that he had given up for lost. Placed it more squarely in the sun's path and went into the lodge. Checked the notebook with the list of things to remember. Dr Martini's daughter's birthday was just a week away. Nicolini the magician would be stopping by in the next few days to work out where to do the show. The concierge would first have to clean out the gutters and prune the hedge. He stood to open the lodge window's curtains, instead returned to the bedroom and took the keys to the Martinis'.

Pietro carried the keys in his pocket and occasionally felt to be sure they were still there. He had to wait until the building emptied. The first to leave was the lawyer. On pool days he
was always an early riser. Shortly after it was Paola's turn. She came up to the lodge.

‘My Fernando is ill and won't be going to work today.' The smell of hairspray struck him full in the face. ‘Would you mind looking in on him every so often?'

Pietro nodded. ‘I'll also drop off this cactus. It's better.'

‘I'll pay you back with dinner.' Paola put on her hat and went out as the voice of the doctor's daughter floated down the stairwell. Sara whimpered, cuddled up against her mother's chest, an invisible bundle with one eye open wide, the other closed. Waved the magic wand and stared at him.

Viola put her down. ‘She doesn't want to go to nursery school. What am I to do?' She buttoned up the girl's hooded top. ‘Have a good day, Pietro.' Smiled and went out with her daughter.

The postman came early. Pietro sped up operations by telling him he would distribute the post to the boxes himself. The postman handed over the lot and the concierge set to work. For Paola there was a fashion magazine with the newest collections and a current-affairs weekly that was mostly gossip. He had come across the previous issue in the wastepaper bin and read it during quiet times. He flipped through this one briefly then continued to pick through the pile. There were also three envelopes for Fernando's mother, two of them still addressed to her husband. He put them in her box. For the lawyer there was a newsletter from the Rotary club and a child sponsorship update. Remaining on the table was the post for the Martinis. Viola had received an invitation to an art opening.
He placed it in their box and turned to the doctor's post. There was an envelope from a medical conference and the
Corriere della Sera
, which he came to the lodge every morning to pick up. Pietro removed the plastic wrapper and refolded the newspaper carefully so that the corners were perfectly matched. He spied a front-page article about a Mafioso on the run being arrested, had begun to read it when the doctor came down. With a gym bag over his shoulder and a phone to his ear, the doctor signed to him that he would pick up the paper later. Pietro waited until he left, then checked the time.