Involuntary Witness

husband is, if possible, worse than you are. And your friends are, if possible, worse than him. One time they even suggested I join the Rotary Club. I want to tell you that I’m a Communist. That at so many dinners for so many years you were entertaining a Communist. Got that?”

These and other things I would have liked to say. But obviously I replied with nauseating courtesy. Yes, I was alone; no, I had no girlfriend; yes, I really meant it; no, I had not seen Sara for quite a while. Ah, she was here at the sea on her own, was she? Were she and Mario having problems? Who wouldn’t have troubles with Mario. With her too, come to that. We ought to get together one of these evenings. Her and me? Certainly, why not? Did I have her mobile number? Yes. I’m pretty certain. Ah, but I couldn’t because she had a new one. Then she’d have to give it me. So, I’d call her? She could count on it? Of course she could. Of course, of course. Ciao, see you soon, kiss, Opium, kiss again and Grand Finale with a wink.

I took a dip to see how the water was and to wash off the Opium. The water was really cold. After all, we were only in mid-June and the weather had never got really hot. I swam a few strokes, felt that for my first bathe of the season that might be enough, and decided to take a stroll along the beach, by the water’s edge.

The beachball players were there, but not so many of them as in July and August. I would have liked to kill them but, seeing that it was early in the season, I was willing to concede them a quick death. In July or August I would have wished them a long and painful one.

I detest beachball players, but as I walked – doing my best to get in the path of the ball as often as possible – I saw a species of creature I detest even more than beachball players. The beach-haunting pipe smoker.

I’m not exactly mad about pipe smokers anyway. I get a bit prickly when I see someone smoking a pipe in the street. I get really prickly when I see someone – as I did that afternoon – smoking a pipe on the beach, looking around him with the hauteur of a Sherlock Holmes. In bathing trunks.

As I was turning over these ideas about pipe smokers and beachball players, it occurred to me that I must really be a lot better if I had regained a little of my healthy intolerance.

At that moment there entered my field of vision a young black man with goods of all sorts hung on a kind of flexible rod balanced on one shoulder and in a large, tattered bag hanging half open. He was wearing a colourful ankle-length kaftan and a little drum-shaped hat. I stopped with my feet in the water for several seconds before I realized why I was looking at him.

When it had dawned on me, without having any particular aim in view, I decided to pay some attention to the way he worked and moved around the beach. Naturally I had no precise idea in mind. It occurred to me for a moment to ask him if he knew Abdou. But I dropped that and confined myself to watching him.

He seemed perfectly at home as he moved among the deckchairs and the towels stretched out on the sand. At almost regular intervals he gave a wave to one of the women on the beach, and they waved back. One of them called to him from a distance, but I didn’t grasp the name. He turned and went up to her, smiling, dumped his stuff on the sand, shook hands and began talking. Obviously I couldn’t hear what he said, but it was clear from his gestures that he was describing his wares. He stayed there more than five minutes, and in the end the woman bought a handbag. He resumed his round and I continued to follow him. With my eyes at first, but then on foot, keeping about twenty paces behind him. The scene I had witnessed was repeated several times in the course of half an hour. For no particular reason I decided to pass close by him, to get a look at him and then go away, because I’d had enough of spying on him. And just when I was close, walking beside him near enough to touch, I heard a shrilling sound inside his bag. He stopped and drew out an old Motorola mobile with the volume evidently turned full up.

He said pronto like the blacks in third-rate movies, that is brondo. Exactly like that. I thought that if he’d been Chinese he’d have said plonto. It wasn’t a very brilliant thought, but it was precisely what passed through my mind at that moment.

The conversation was short and took place in Italian. That is, Italian of a sort.

Yes, he was working. On the beach, friend. Quite much people. Yes, friend, at Monopoli, beaches of Capitolo. He could come tomorrow, tomorrow morning. All right, friend. Ciao.

He switched off the phone and resumed his round. I stayed where I had knelt on the sand to listen to the call. An idea had just occurred to me.

And I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

27

“Don’t you see, Guido, this is the best time of our lives. We can do whatever we like.”

“Excuse me, but in what sense?”

“Sod it, Guido, you of all people. Since you’ve been alone you’ll have gone from one screw to another with no problems. And you ask me in what sense.”

“Ah, from one screw to another,” I said noncommittally.

“Come off it, Guido, what the fuck’s got into you? We haven’t met for a year, maybe more, and you tell me nothing.”

I was walking rather slowly towards the law courts, carrying two heavy briefcases containing the material I needed for the hearing. My friend Alberto had some trouble in keeping up with me, on account of being overweight and his sedentary life. We had met in the street, after more than a year. He had just turned forty, with two children and a wife who had grown fat and bad-tempered.

He owned a law firm – inherited from his father – that worked for banks and insurance companies and made a load of money. His favourite topic was screwing. To judge from his talk, he was a real specialist.

As a boy he had been a great charmer. One of those who is funny by nature, who always swore blue murder and made everybody laugh. But everybody. Because the way he did it, you just couldn’t help laughing. He was someone who ought to have done a different job, maybe then he would have been happy, or something like it. Instead he had become a lawyer. Over the years the comic side of him had disappeared, along with his hair and everything else worth while. Alberto still swore but – I thought that morning – it had been a long time since he had made anyone laugh. He was a desperate man, even if he didn’t know it.

“There’s nothing to tell you, Alberto. I’m not going out with anyone.”

“What, now that you’re alone and can do what the fuck you like?”

“Yes. Life’s an odd thing, isn’t it?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone queer, eh?” And off he went, telling me about someone I ought to have known, or at least remembered. I didn’t remember him, but I didn’t tell Alberto. This fellow I didn’t remember – a certain Marco – was married and even had a son. At a certain point his wife had noticed a thing or two and become convinced that he had someone else. She had put a private eye on to him, and this operative had done a good job. He had discovered the intrigue and all about it. There was just one little problem. The fellow didn’t have a girlfriend, he had a boyfriend. A butcher by trade.

“Don’t you see, Guido, fuck it. His wife thought he was a dirty old man who was screwing some young chick and instead he was getting himself buggered by a butcher. Get that, Guido. A butcher. Perhaps he brought him horsemeat sausages for a snack… Don’t tell me you’ve gone queer and get yourself buggered by, well, let’s say a grocer?”

I assured him I had not gone queer and tried not to get buggered by anyone, within the bounds of possibility.

We reached the entrance to the law courts. Time for goodbye and each to his own work. We absolutely must meet one evening along with the rest of the gang. He said some names that faintly rang a bell. For a pizza or perhaps a good game of poker. Of course, a real reunion. Yes, we’ll call each other this week or next at the outside. Ciao, Guido, fucking hell it’s done me good to see you. Ciao, Alberto. Me too.

He disappeared towards the lift up to the fifth floor, where the civil courtrooms were. I stood there watching him, thinking that in some far distant place lost in the mists of time we two had been friends. Really friends.

The very thought was beyond belief.

Farewell, Alberto, I wanted to say. And I did say it, quietly, but audibly enough for anyone who happened to be