Читать книгу Puppies - Maurizio De giovanni - Страница 9

By now his day had turned into something like the score of a single sad song.

At the end of every shift he went out to buy something to cook for dinner and then headed home. He didn’t want to give in to the temptation to eat standing up, chowing down panini that reeked of plastic or stale old fried foods: it would only have worsened the sense of hanging by a thread that already pervaded his life to such an extreme degree. Plus, cooking distracted him, it was a manual activity that demanded focus, and so for a while he could stop thinking.

After eating dinner and clearing up, he’d sit on the sofa and watch TV. He’d painstakingly search for a program that had some chance of interesting him, however minimal.

At first, he’d enjoyed going to the movies, imagining somehow that the presence of other people, the darkened theater, and the big screen would force him to concentrate more completely: actually, though, it was just worse. No, he had to try to stay home, to make sure that his home remained just that: a genuine home. In the long run, going out every night would only turn those rooms into an icy inferno, much more so than they already were. So, no movie theaters. And no restaurants or fast food places, except when they were absolutely indispensable.

Sitting in front of the TV set, he always just fell asleep. Whether it was a soccer match or one of those pointless political talk shows, he soon surrendered to the exhaustion of the long day. Everything bored him to a terrible degree. He couldn’t even take interest when the subject had to do with the work he did: sometimes, deep inside, he laughed mockingly at the psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, or magistrates who claimed to be able to reconstruct the mechanics of a murder or the deformations of a criminal mind, as if they always followed the same patterns: clear paths, which could be charted as if on a road map.

Bullshit, he thought to himself. Complete bullshit. Every murder has a story all its own, and every damned criminal has his own twisted mental meanders. That is, provided he has them at all because, as likely as not, behind a murdered man, there’s nothing but a red film that drops over someone’s eyes. A sudden rage that arms your fist. That and nothing else.

Rage was Warrant Officer Francesco Romano’s main problem. He was now a duty officer on the staff of the Pizzofalcone police station. It was a problem that dated back quite some time, a problem that he’d always managed to conceal behind a reclusive but apparently relaxed personality, seemingly well balanced and untroubled.

Rage.

It was rage that, one cursed unfortunate morning, had driven him to take a damned drug pusher by the neck. The man had spoken to him with insolent familiarity, and it was that very thing—he’d realized, looking back—that had pushed him over the edge. Addressing him in the familiar tone of Italian grammar. Calling him “tu”. The way you’d speak to a waiter in a café who’d knocked over your coffee. Or a newsstand vendor who handed you a paper you hadn’t asked for. “Hey, you.” Ehi, tu.

As he struggled to wrench free, he’d even given one of his partners a black eye, as the officer tried to help subdue the suspect. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was certainly the last: the opportunity his superior officers had been waiting for to ship him off in a hurry to some other precinct, to unload him elsewhere.

Rage.

A red film descending over his eyes, an explosion rising out of his belly and bursting into his brain, casting a shadow over all reason. Blinding rage, deafening rage. The rage that takes possession of your arms, your hands. Rage.

Romano thought that, all things considered, a man ought to be forgiven for a moment of rage. If he’s honest, thoughtful, purehearted, if he’s a good policeman, if he works conscientiously, with dedication, if he’s someone who would never do anything wrong or bad, if he’s someone who’s proof against corruption or bribery or any other skim-offs that might help make up for the miserable pittance of a salary. If you can say that a man is good and reliable, shouldn’t there be an allowance for a moment’s bewilderment?

And what if he’s a good husband?

Because Romano’s real problem—the thought he couldn’t get out of his mind for so much as an instant, day or night, waking or sleeping—was Giorgia.

Giorgia who had abandoned him, leaving behind a tearful, pointless letter on the dining room table. Giorgia who had overlooked the years they’d spent together, first as boyfriend and girlfriend, and then as man and wife, and had gone back to live with those two asshole parents of hers. Giorgia who wouldn’t even answer the phone anymore when he called her.

Giorgia, who had had her lawyer send him a demand for divorce.

Now, Romano asked himself, doesn’t a wife have a duty to understand her husband? Shouldn’t she be at his side at a difficult time like the one he was going through on the job? A wife ought to be on your team, against the world. But not Giorgia. Instead, she had chosen to walk off the field entirely and turn her back, without even bothering to go through the locker room on her way out.

That smack he’d given her had been nothing more than a moment’s passing folly. He’d listened to his heart as it lurched in his chest, he’d let his reason sink into darkness. He’d seen himself as small and fragile, he’d felt a moment’s pity for himself, he’d imagined that she, too, saw things in that light, that Giorgia was looking at him with pity, and then he’d been unable to restrain himself.

What kind of love could there be in a woman willing to erase it all in such a hurry? What kind of transport could she feel toward her husband?

Nothing. Nothing at all, a big fat zero. Francesco Romano—who was simply called Fra by the woman he had always thought loved him, and had been dubbed Hulk by that idiot colleague of his, Aragona—was actually nothing. Zip.

Still, he was convinced he could turn over a new leaf. In some sense, at least, that’s what he was trying to do.

Recently, he’d restrained himself, forbidden himself to call her on the phone. It hadn’t been easy: there were times when he’d sit for an hour at a time staring at his cell phone on the tabletop, his hands trembling. But he was a guy who knew how to impose self-discipline, if he could only manage to think clearly. Yes, he could turn over a new leaf, he felt sure of it.

The real point was to overcome the fear that there were simply no words written on the next page, the new leaf of the book of his life. That was what tormented his mind when, after starting awake in the middle of the night on the sofa, he’d get up, turn off the TV, and then go get into bed, where he’d struggle to get back to sleep.

As far back as he could remember, he’d always been with Giorgia. He’d never stepped out on her, never cheated on her, never lusted after other women. He’d had his opportunities, he was an attractive man, in his way, powerful and athletic, and he knew how to be kind and even amusing, when he wasn’t feeling upset, but deep down inside, he’d always been married to Giorgia, and he still was.

He knew that he really ought to reply to the demand for legal separation that her lawyer had sent him. Who knows who this lawyer even was: Law Office of Ettore Grassi, it said on the letterhead. Maybe he was his wife’s new boyfriend. Maybe she’d been able to turn over a new leaf, to turn the page and move on.

He just had no idea what to do. He wished he could ask someone for advice, some male friend, but everyone he knew had been a friend of Giorgia’s, and certainly they would all be on her side, because she was the extroverted one, the likable one. Come to think of it, they were all people that she’d introduced him to in the first place.

Talking about it at work was out of the question. At his old police precinct, there was no one left that he could call anything more than a chilly acquaintance, and the strange, absurd place where they’d parked him now seemed more like a menagerie of exotic animals than a proper police precinct.

Maybe the only one with whom he’d consider unbuttoning himself a little was that Sicilian, Lojacono. The lieutenant struck him as a serious guy, not the kind who’d go around gossiping. A hard worker, not a blowhard. But there was the fact that Romano had heard something about him: that back home, Lojacono had had problems—for alleged Mafia collusion, no less, which is why they’d shipped him off to the ghetto with the rest of them.

Romano held out almost until dawn, tossing and turning in his bed like an overcooked omelette, then he lurched out of bed, got washed, and threw his clothes on. He’d get to the office far too early, that was true, but anything would be better than lying there considering his own empty existence.

He took the long way, driving slowly down the half-empty streets and resisting the temptation to drive past the apartment building where his in-laws lived, even though the temptation to breathe the same air as Giorgia, if even only for a second, was overwhelming. Self-discipline, Warrant Officer Romano, self-discipline. He parked a short distance from the police station: getting in so early had its advantages. He strode the fifty yards that separated his car from the front door, inhaling the sparkling air of that budding April.

He shot a lazy glance at the refuse that spilled out over the edges of the garbage cans, wondering as he walked why on earth they collected the trash first thing in the morning, in the midst of rush hour traffic, instead of at night, the way they did in every other civilized country. Cartons, sheets of plastic wrap, half-open plastic shopping bags, wooden crates, a broken doll, and even the hulk of a motor scooter. Disgusting.

He’d just walked past the garbage cans when the broken doll started to cry.