The Sense of an Elephant (7 page)

The doctor held his mobile and Snow White's message in one hand.

‘I'm going to make a phone call, Pietro. Can you keep an eye on him?'

The concierge walked over to the child.

Lorenzo had sat the elephant down beside him and was looking at the lake. He inserted a hand into the bag. When he drew it out he held a handful of dry bread. He tossed it toward the shore, ‘Ducks, ducks.'

Pietro looked for them. They swam at the left side of the lake, massed against the wall of bamboo stalks that surrounded a small inlet. The doctor emerged from behind them, his head and the mobile at his ear visible.

Lorenzo tossed more bread.

The ducks didn't come.

Pietro walked away. Came to the wall of bamboo, pulled up a small one and stirred the water. The ducks didn't move. He stirred some more,
C'mon, c'mon, to hell with you
. He leaned out further,
C'mon
. He flung the bamboo into the water and the ducks fluttered.
C'mon, damn you
. The flock broke up and some began to swim in the child's direction. Three of them, followed by some scruffy ducklings. Pietro remained in a low crouch. The doctor's voice was clear: ‘I understand, I'm
sorry … I'm sorry … not at home. I was clear. I'm not coming, let me be.'

On the other side Lorenzo had stood up on the wall and was launching arcs of bread confetti. He stretched toward the approaching birds. His face was nothing but eyes.

Pietro returned to the little boy and picked him up. A tiny pile of bones with fitful breath, he hardly weighed a thing. Pietro closed a hand over one of the child's hands. There was a scratch on the tiny thumb. He caressed it.

‘Are you cold?'

Lorenzo shook his head, and continued to stare at the ducks fighting over the bread.

‘Mama.'

Pietro continued to caress the small cut. Pinched the boy's nose and his hands became wet. Lifted them up, saw blood mixed with traces of the paint from the Bianchi. He bent over the child: two dark rivulets of blood issued from his nostrils. He called and gestured to the doctor to come right away, flailed his arms, called him again.

Martini hurried over. He pulled out a handkerchief and cleaned the boy's nose and mouth. ‘Let's go back inside now, little man.'

‘Mama.'

The doctor bent down and pulled him up. The quack-quack of the ducks rose from the water.

‘That's right, he was my father's son.' The witch detached herself from the young priest and did up the last button of
his nightshirt, crossed her legs. ‘Papa always took advantage of me. Can God keep this secret?'

‘God keeps all the secrets of the world.'

‘He's got to tell them to somebody, if not …' the witch leapt up and tiptoed towards the far end of the church, came to the altar ‘… if not, he'll explode.'

The young priest walked towards the far end of the church as well, entered the sacristy. He soon returned with a wafer and half a glass of red wine.

The witch took the wafer and held it up against the light, ate the wafer and it stuck to her palate.

He gave her the wine.

‘Herein lie the secrets of the world.'

The witch drank.

‘So that's why it tastes like vinegar.'

Pietro sat down in the waiting room. The doctor soon emerged from Lorenzo's room, without his white coat and carrying a document case under his arm. Spoke intensely with another doctor and walked over to the concierge.

‘I'm done. I'll give you a lift.'

‘How is the boy?'

‘Exhausted.' He shook his head. ‘It's my fault. I wanted to take him to the lake before his mother came to pick him up. She's decided to have him cared for at home.'

Dr Martini descended the stairs. Pietro struggled to keep up. Then they froze in their tracks. The old man in the petrol-pump attendant's jacket and cap stood in the middle of the path. In the same place Pietro had seen him the previous evening, with the same ravaged face. He extended a hand. ‘Doctor, I wanted …' He went up close. ‘I wanted … please …'

Martini walked right past him.

The old man addressed Pietro. ‘Tell him to listen to me, please, tell him …'

The concierge stared at him for a time, then followed the doctor down the underground-parking ramp to a dusty car, the rear windows covered with butterfly-shaped curtains.

Martini got in.

‘He's a poor devil who doesn't know how to pass the time.' As he set off he noticed that on the dirty windscreen someone
had written with a finger,
Wash me, please
. He pointed to the glass. ‘It's Riccardo, he lets me know when I've exceeded the limits of decency.' He drove with the document case on his knees. In the back were Sara's car seat and a stuffed animal, facing away, with the words
Hello Kitty
on one sleeve, wrapped in a checked blanket.

‘Have you known him long?'

‘Riccardo? Yes, for a long time.' Martini drove two blocks before opening his mouth again. ‘On the first day of school I found myself seated next to this curly-headed kid. “Pleased to meet you my name is Riccardo but you have to call me by my last name Lisi,” he says to me. A real scrapper. They separated us after fifteen minutes because we wouldn't shut up. Same in middle school. Same in upper school.' He smiled and now his eyes were visible. They gleamed. ‘At university it was medicine for both of us, and every lesson a cock-up. He stuck to me like a limpet.'

The concierge rested his hands one in the other, paint from the Bianchi still stuck to one thumb.

Martini slowed down.

‘I was the only one he had left. He lost his parents when he was a boy. Now it's me, Viola, and Sara.'

In the middle of the boulevard a line of cars was forming. Just ahead a van was parking and blocking two lanes. They turned down a side street, circled the block and returned to the boulevard, entering ahead of the van. The doctor slipped his arms out of his coat, leaving it on his shoulders.

‘I forgot to thank you. For the elephant.'

‘I didn't know what to get for him.'

The doctor settled back on the seat.

‘Lorenzo is partial to elephants.' He nodded. ‘So am I. Ever since I read that they take care of the herd without regard to kinship.' He was driving slowly now. ‘All for all. A kind of doctor of the savannah.'

‘All for all.'

The doctor slowed down again, arrived first at a traffic light and looked lost in thought. Then said, ‘I should try again.'

‘What's that, Doctor?'

‘Do you have something to do right now, Pietro?

‘No.'

Dr Martini veered in the direction opposite to home. The checked blanket slipped off the back seat and he reached back to pick it up.

‘My mother made it for Sara. She was very handy with knitting needles.'

He put the checked blanket on the seat and added the document case. Skirted a piazza with a war memorial and continued along the road that led to the airport. Not much later he turned into a residential street, stopped before an art-nouveau villa with two olive trees in the front garden and putti decorating the balconies.

‘This is Lorenzo's house, I won't be a minute.' Then he stared at the steering wheel without moving. ‘Pietro …' he said, ‘don't you miss your job as a priest?'

‘One can tire of a job.'

The doctor got out and walked toward the villa. Pressed
the intercom button, pressed again and on the lower balcony appeared the woman Pietro had seen in the picture on Lorenzo's night table. Beautiful like she was in the photograph, with a powdered face and bright red lipstick, she tossed her cigarette and went back inside. She soon emerged into the front garden in bare feet. Remained on her side of the gate.

The concierge stretched out a hand to the stuffed animal, then to the blanket. The wool didn't itch. He created a nest from small bits of fluff while continuing to watch the beautiful woman facing the doctor. She held her small, porcelain-like hands to her chest. Began to scratch the back of one hand as the doctor spoke, switched to the other hand and dug more intensely, bowed her doll's head. Pietro brought the blanket to his nose: the past smelled of nothing. Replaced it carefully on the seat and picked up the document case, unzipped it. Inside were a piece of paper with the hospital logo showing the weekly shifts, a packet of sugarless chewing gum, two fountain pens and four keys on a cord. Also two smaller, identical keys. He held these in his palm, thought about the only locked drawer in the doctor's study. Put everything back and looked at the beautiful woman again. She was speaking vehemently and her porcelain hands had become livid. She hid them behind her back and the doctor returned to the car.

‘Stubborn woman. She's really set on bringing him home.' Dr Martini started the car and released the hand brake, thumped a hand against the steering wheel and set off. Passed a car and turned onto the boulevard they had come from, abruptly pulled his foot off the accelerator. ‘The person who
gave you the note today …' He stared at Pietro. ‘Did anyone else in the building see her?'

‘I was the only one there.'

They stopped at a stop sign. The doctor faced his side window as he spoke. ‘If she comes back, don't listen to her. Don't let her in. And the same goes for the old man that you saw earlier at the hospital. Understood?'

‘Understood.'

‘If they do show up again, please let me know.'

Pietro nodded, cleared his throat. ‘Do you have anything to do right now, Doctor?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Do you have anything to do right now?'

‘No.'

‘Will you come with me somewhere?'

Anita's shop was a cupboard ten feet square in the city centre. It was her, two lamps in the style of old English gas lights, two and a half rows of hand-sewn clothing. In Rimini people said that the T'massons' daughter, Anita, after her parents died, had made her fortune in Milan and never came back.
She's a seamstress for rich people now but she's still not married.

Dr Martini parked almost directly opposite.

‘What do you need to buy?'

‘A scarf.'

‘Let's get this scarf, then.'

Pietro had been at the shop in the four days prior to his becoming a concierge. He kept Anita company as she opened, leaving as soon as the first customer arrived. From the shop's neighbourhood, a sort of village restored by wealthy Milanese, he would push on as far as the Duomo, whose pallor and pigeons, if nothing else, recalled Rimini's cathedral, then stay to watch the people in the piazza and the lead sky that never turned blue. Only on the day before beginning the concierge job did he approach the condominium. He sat in the blue armchair at Alice's cafe and ordered a coffee, then waited. Caught a glimpse of the doctor almost immediately. Knew it was him from the photograph in the envelope with the Salgari stamp.

‘Good afternoon.' The concierge led the way into the shop.

Anita was at the counter, with four pins in her mouth and a nude mannequin to be re-dressed.

‘Look who's still alive after all …'

The doctor appeared behind Pietro.

She pulled the pins out of her mouth, smoothed down her jacket and came forward. A fabric flower was pinned to her lapel.

‘Good afternoon.'

‘May we take a look around?' Pietro removed his jacket.

‘Of course.'

Dr Martini set to browsing, went up to the skirts, to the hats, glanced at the necklaces hanging from glass bottles. They were made of bamboo coral and amethysts, of gemstones and freshwater pearls.

‘Please take them off the bottles if you like.'

The doctor lifted off the amethyst necklace and held it in his hand. The stone shone violet under the light. He replaced the necklace and walked over to where Pietro was searching through the shirts. He searched as well, chose one that was pastel red. It had a French collar and blue buttons except for the lowest one, which was grey.

‘Nice,' he said and held it up to his chest. ‘But I don't have the right character.'

Anita came over. ‘And what is the right character?'

‘Red requires a certain personality.'

She drew aside the changing-room curtain. ‘Let's see this personality.' She motioned for him to enter.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders and obeyed. ‘Perhaps she's sincere?'

‘Pitiless,' Pietro said.

He closed the curtain behind him.

On the counter stood a platter of macaroons protected by a glass dome. Pietro raised it and ate the coffee-flavoured one. Beside the platter he saw the deck of tarot cards buried under balls of wool. ‘How's it going with the shirt?'

‘It fits perfectly.' Luca emerged from the changing room. The red lent courage to his bewildered face. He smoothed his hair down.

‘Suits you to a T.' Anita threw open her heavy arms and turned to Pietro. ‘And what do you think?'

The concierge swallowed the macaroon. ‘To a T.'

‘Viola will think I'm mad.'

‘This Viola will think you're handsome.'

‘You don't know my wife.'

Anita plucked at the flower pinned to her jacket. ‘Blonde or brunette?'

‘Blonde.'

‘If you don't mind my asking … How did you meet her?'

The doctor smiled. ‘From a window.'

‘Our Juliet will go crazy for the shirt …' She fished out a pair of polka-dot gloves from a drawer. ‘And our Romeo here will seduce her for the second time with these …' She held out the gloves. ‘Polka dots will go perfectly with a wife like yours.'

‘And how do you know this?'

She pronounced the word with effort: ‘Instinct.'

The doctor returned to the fitting room. Pietro chose a scarf at random from a wicker basket. Anita went over and
wrapped it around his throat, whispering, ‘You look fine, fine, fine. Come and see me tonight.'