She runs inside the salon, slams the door shut and leans back against it, panting for breath. Which possibility is worse, that the skeleton is not real, or that it is? Nothing more happens. There is no sound. It is a very long time before she can force herself to open the door, eyes tightly closed. When she opens them, the portego, the landing, the stairs and the hallway below are all empty.
Ada retrieves the errant apple, picks up the bags and carries them through the lounge to the kitchen. There is just enough light seeping in through the shutters to see her way. In the distance she can hear the shouts of the men working on the Pagan house. She leaves the shopping on the kitchen table and returns to the salon, reaching for the light switch. There is a searing flash and the skeleton stands before her, inside the room now, its claw-like paw outstretched towards her, the skull hidously grinning.
A hand grasps her shoulder. She whirls round. Facing her, at waist level, is a child with long blonde hair and a smooth, round alabaster face of utter purity and stillness, the very image of Rosetta. Moaning, weeping, Ada blunders across the room, bumping heavily into the skeletal form, scrabbling at the telephone.
The long convoy of carriages eased to a halt at the platform and the whirring of the locomotive died away. The driver clambered down from his cab and headed for the canteen, passing the rows of darkened trains drawn up at the other platforms in readiness for the early morning departures, still several hours away.
For a moment it seemed as though the train which had just arrived was also empty. Then a door opened, halfway along. A man stepped down to the platform and stood sniffing the air. He was tall and rather gaunt, with a pale, grave face dominated by an angular nose. He wore a long overcoat and a homburg hat, from beneath which emerged tufts of dark hair streaked here and there with silver.
The line of sleeping cars jolted slightly as a locomotive was coupled to the other end, ready to pull the train back across the long bridge to the mainland to continue its journey to Trieste. Reaching up to the floor of the carriage, the man lifted down a battered leather suitcase, slammed the door shut and set off along the platform. The station was deserted, the cafe and newsagent’s closed. The man walked through the harsh glare of the foyer and out on to the broad steps where he paused again, scenting the air. Then, as though satisfied, he started down the steps and turned left.
At the foot of the Scalzi bridge two youths were unloading bundles of newspapers and magazines from a motorboat and stacking them beside a shuttered kiosk. The man spoke to them in dialect. One of the lads flourished a knife with which he slit open a pack of papers like gutting a fish. Money changed hands. The man turned away, scanning the headlines: MESTRE SMOG ALARM and GREEN LIGHT FOR THE LAGOON METRO.
He turned left again, off the broad thoroughfare and away from the shuttered shops, into an alley barely wide enough for him to carry the suitcase comfortably. His footsteps resounded like blows. A solitary cat fled at his approach, a half-eaten fish head hanging from its mouth. High in one wall, a single bleary window betrayed the presence of an insomniac or early riser. As the man passed under the lamp jutting out at first-floor level on its wrought-iron bracket, his shadow caught him up and sped ahead, looming ever larger across the rectangular paving stones. At the next corner he turned right, into another alley which gradually widened to form a wedge of open space with a rusty iron-capped well-head at its centre. Here, for the first time, his brisk steps faltered as the pavement went soggy beneath his feet, as though reverting to the marshy field it had once been. Memories crowded in on him like a gang of importunate child beggars.
The houses were built on three storeys: a ground-floor cellar with rectangular grilled openings, then the broad span of the main living area with its elegantly arched windows grouped in pairs, and finally the shallow square-windowed strip of bedrooms just below the roof. The uniformity of the facades was complicated by a horizontal and vertical grid of electric and phone cables, water and gas pipes, by metal strengthening bolts, exhaust vents, guttering, washing-lines, lamp standards and flowerpot holders. Some properties were smartly painted, ochre or russet, while elsewhere the plaster was flaking off like sunburned skin.
The man stopped in front of the most decrepit-looking house of all, facing the well. At ground level the plaster facing had virtually disappeared, revealing the pattern of red brickwork beneath. The shutters closing the first-floor windows were worn down to the bare wood, the scrolled and fluted stone sill was stained with brown streaks from the low metal railing. The doorframe was of the same white Istrian stone, with the number of the house stencilled on it in red paint in an oval frame. Beside the door was a bell-push shaped like an inverted breast. Above, a bowed strip of brass read ZEN.
The man took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock. The door creaked open. The passage inside was musty and cold. The light flickered yellowly to life, revealing a cramped vista of crumbling plaster, dull composite tiles, a set of stairs. Taking several rapid breaths, the man closed the door behind him and started up the steps. They twisted round to the left, doubling back on themselves to end at a small landing. A further flight continued up to the bedrooms. The man set down his suitcase and stood there gazing at the door, slightly ajar, in front of him. Then he abruptly pushed it open and barged in.
Emptied of its furnishings, the room looked spacious and serene, yet how much smaller than he remembered it! Whenever he had returned in his imagination — even a moment before, dithering on the landing — it had seemed a cavernous, epic space. He almost laughed, now, to see how insignificant it really was. But he did not laugh, for something in him died at that moment, and he knew that he had lost another and perhaps the most important of the few remaining threads which bound him to his childhood.
In the kitchen, a note had been left on the draining-board: Dear Aurelio, I’ve done the best I can, the old place looks a bit shabby, what can you expect, at least it’s clean and I’ve made the bed in your old room, we’ll expect you for lunch, it’ll be like the old days! Rosalba. The man laid down the scrap of lined paper gently, as though it might break, and returned to the living room, where he set about opening windows, unbolting the heavy wooden shutters, pressing them back to lie flat against the wall and folding down the metal clips which held them in place. The cold night air flowed into the room, scouring out the lingering odours of absence and neglect. Leaving the windows open, the man returned to the door, picked up his suitcase and went upstairs.
On this floor, more of the original furniture remained, making the low-ceilinged bedroom feel cramped and stuffy. The mirror-fronted wardrobe which stretched the length of one wall created an illusory sense of spaciousness belied by the stale, confined air. The man laid his suitcase down on the bed and turned to survey himself in the wall of mirrors. His double looked back at him with a drawn, wary look and the air of someone stranded against his will in a remote and inhospitable hotel. Nothing suggested that of all rooms in the world this was the most familiar to him.
He opened this window too, breathing in the crisp, salty air. In the canal below, the murky water shifted and stirred. All else was still. The city might have been deserted. To someone accustomed to life in Rome, where the reverberant hum of traffic on the hollow tufo is a constant presence, night and day, such absolute, unqualified silence was troubling, as though some vital life function had ceased. The man turned back into the room, sat down on the bed and took his shoes off. Then, overcome by weariness, he lay down and closed his eyes against the sickly yellow light emitted by the lamp, a complex extravanganza of tinted Murano glass, all curlicues and convolutions…
A splashing roused him. He felt chilled to the bone, stiff, exhausted, confused. It took him a long time to realize where he was, and when he did the news was comfortless. It had all been a terrible mistake. He should never have come.
The noise which had awakened him was still there, steady, regular, reverberating in the confined space between the houses. He got up off the bed, swung his bare feet down to the chilly tiles the colour and sheen of parmesan and padded over to the window. There was still no sign of the dawn. The man glanced at his watch. It was just after five.
Further down the canal, by the bridge, a streetlamp partly illuminated a segment of the water. There was something moving there, a boat of some kind. As the man watched, it entered the patch of lighted water and was revealed in silhouette: a small dinghy being paddled by two bulky, shapeless figures. The craft rounded the corner and disappeared. Silence fell once more. Rubbing his eyes, Aurelio Zen closed the window and went back to bed.
When he awoke again the room was filled with an astringent brilliance which made him blink, an abrasive slapping of wavelets and the edgy scent which had surprised him the moment he stepped out of the train. He had forgotten even the most obvious things about the place, like the pervasive risky odour of the sea.
Since his mother had come to live with him in Rome, Zen had returned only rarely to his native city, brief fleeting visits to ensure that the house was still standing, or to wrestle some necessary piece of paper away from
