Cabaret (2 page)

Over by the fruit stalls a fat man in orange overalls poked with a hairless brush among the debris of deformed bananas and dead figs disguised as squashed dormice. Broken water-melons splayed their guts in the gutters, and bruised nectarines and punctured pomegranates swam among them. The stench of fermenting fruit was thick and heady, and I thought I stood a good chance of finding Pierino here.

“Have you seen a blue parrot?” I asked the road sweeper.

“I see nothing,” he replied with a menacing movement of his stumpy brush.

I ran along scanning every window ledge and waterspout and fountain, every column, statue, lamppost, railing, parked car, and
motorino
. I called to Pierino softly, coaxingly. I scooped up palmfuls of the fruity goo to tempt him. I became covered in a sticky, stinking mess. I tensed my ears for the sound of his voice. Like this, straining my senses, I examined every street and alleyway in the district. Sometimes, I felt sure I was being watched, but whenever I looked round, I couldn’t see a soul. In fact, the streets were strangely deserted, and that was a bad sign.

Hours passed and I hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of Pierino. I was exhausted and began to feel hopeless. He could be anywhere by now. Dejected, I headed back toward the apartment. It was getting late and in the half-light it was difficult to see anything. I would look again tomorrow, although I prayed Pierino would, by then, have found his own way home.

I did wonder what would be waiting for me this time as I entered my building. My first choice would have been that it had all been a dream: I would find Pierino in his cage, the apartment neat and tidy, and, I suppose, Alberto demanding his
pollo
.

“Pierino?” I called hesitantly from the door. There was no answer. “Alberto?” Again nothing. I prowled through the rooms, terrified of what might be lying in wait for me. I knew what went on.Why, every day at work we dealt with the brutality of the city’s gangsters: severed heads, limbs, private parts. Although I’m not squeamish, I shuddered at the thought. Alberto’s parts were unattractive enough while still attached to his body. Then I noticed something strange. On the pillows of the bed there lay a red rose. It hadn’t been there before, I was sure. I fingered its velvet petals and put it to my nose: its perfume was so intense it was overwhelming. This was weird: but it was better than finding a horse’s head, or indeed, Alberto’s.

D
espite my exhaustion, I began to set things straight. It was better to be occupied than to sit brooding. The apartment seemed so empty without my precious Pierino. Sadly I put the half-pecked figs and plums back in the bottom of his cage for when he came home. I didn’t allow myself to think he might not return. Tomorrow I would make posters and stick them up all over. I would offer a reward. That way the entire population of the city would be out looking for him.

I found the telephone hiding under a pile of puppets, and decided to call Fiamma with the news.The Secret Service operator answered, and I gave the various passwords to connect me to her home number. Finally she answered with the coded phrase:

“It’s the eggplant that tempts me.”

“Pierino’s gone,” I said.

“He’ll come back,” she said, although I could tell from the tone of her voice she didn’t care.

Then I told her the shocking business about Alberto.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard in ages,” she said; then I heard her clamp the phone to her chest as she shouted to Polibio, “Great news, that
puzzone
Freda married has been dis-patched.” Then I heard Polibio cheering, corks popping, and glasses clinking.

“Forget that little creep, Freda,” she continued; “don’t give him another thought. Find someone else, and don’t make the same mistake again.”

“Yeah, forget him,” drawled the voice of the Secret Service detail who was listening in.

“The guy was a dork,” chipped in the operator.

I hung up. Then I called Signora Dorotea, and Uncle Birillo. He was still at his office even though it was late on Saturday night.Their reactions were the same as Fiamma’s. It was as though they were all reading from the same script.They all assured me that Pierino would come back, and could not repress their joy that Alberto had gone.

After I replaced the receiver, immediately it rang again, making me jump. Suppose it was the abductors? Should I answer it? Or let it ring? I looked around the room, but there was no help to be had.The lemons restored to their fruit bowl kept their views to themselves. The mirror reflected an out-ward scene of calm that belied the whirl of thoughts passing through my head.

Shrilly, the phone rang on. Whoever it was was certainly persistent.

“Answer that phone,” screamed Signor Tontini from his window beneath mine. “Answer that phone, I say.” He seemed on the verge of an apoplectic fit. His doctors had warned him, but it was no use: rage was all that was keeping him alive.

Finally I picked up the receiver.Then I almost dropped it; I was so nervous. At first there was just the grainy sound of a bad line, typical in the city at that time. I held my breath.

What would be their demands? Would I hear Alberto being tortured? Hear his screams as he was having his bits chopped off? My hand trembled as I held the phone to my ear. Then there came the sound of music. An old show tune Mamma used to sing. He was being tortured in time to music. It was grotesque.

“Tell me, tell me, tell me you love me.”
I was on the verge of hanging up. I couldn’t bear it. Then a voice came on the line. Between bursts of the music I could hear it saying:

“Yeah, put the Palumbo twins on again…. I don’t care, they’ll have to go on again…. Fuck the wig; if it’s gone she’ll have to go on without it…. Just get them on the stage, Lui, now…”

None of it made any sense, yet there was something about the desperate, incoherent voice I recognized. I was shocked, then, to hear the voice address me by name.

“Freda, you there?”

It didn’t wait for me to reply, but continued immediately:

“Where the fuck is Alberto? He hasn’t shown up tonight.

The punters are getting restless. Gloria Fantorelli has been on three times. They’re throwing the food. The regular chef was shot on his way in.We’re doing our best here—no, they can’t have their money back—I’m having to put the twins on again.

Tell him to get his butt down here now, or it’s the end of the line for him and the dummy, you hear me, Freda?” Of course, it was Dario Mormile, the impresario of the Berenice club where Alberto performed on a Saturday night. He didn’t even bother to listen to the whole of my explanation before there was a crunch and the line went dead.

I put the phone back on its cradle. It had been a false alarm. But my heart was still beating irregularly. I almost rang Detective Balbini but decided against it. He confused me, and besides I had nothing new to say. Instead, I put the raspberries into a bowl, went into the bathroom, and ran a hot, deep, bubbly bath. I peeled off my fruit-stained clothes and stepped into the tub, balancing the raspberries on my knees. I scooped up a handful and pressed them into my mouth with dripping fingers. They were sublime. The juice dripped down my chin and dropped into the water creating pink curlicues.

The hot water seeped into every space in my body, and soothed me. I hoped the steam would smooth out my crumpled thoughts like creases in linen, but it didn’t: I remained totally bewildered.The only thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want Alberto back.

T
hat night I slept better than I had in the three years since our marriage. I left off the impervious nightgown I wore to repel Alberto’s halfhearted advances and lay naked in the center of the bed with all the pillows beneath me, stretching out my fingers and toes to the farthest corners, where the sheets were deliciously cold. Usually I was left with a narrow strip along the edge: all that was left unoccupied by Alberto.

I didn’t miss the voices either—the voices of Alberto’s act.They had always played a part in our relationship. Soon after our disastrous wedding night, through these voices, I was to learn of his affairs.

A soft female voice would come from the pillow right beside me.

“Alberto,” she would croon. “Do that again. Once more, I implore you.” Then she would laugh a low, sultry laugh.

Soon Alberto would call out in a mushy voice, one that was his own:

“Oh, Amaltea.”

Or:

“Oh, Genoveffa.”

What these women saw in him, I’ll never know.

In the night, that big, empty night, although I was asleep, I was conscious of the heat intensifying. I kicked off the covers to expose my naked form to the cool air. The slightest feathers of the breath of air too frail to be called a breeze came through the open windows and caressed me. In the heat, the perfume of the mysterious rose throbbed and drenched the air with its scent. I bathed in it, and as I bathed, I dreamed.

In the confused perspective of the dream, Detective Balbini had come into the bedroom. It didn’t seem strange to me that he should be there. Indeed, it was almost as though I was expecting him. His scent vied with that of the uncanny rose, and made me lurch in the pit of my stomach. I had always been particularly sensitive to odors; why then, I had often asked myself, had I married Alberto, who carried about him the whiff of something unpleasant, something incompletely masked by an astringent brand of disinfectant he kept locked in the bathroom cabinet? The Detective smelled of passion, of yeast, sun-ripened skin, an animal scent that spoke to the empty space inside my body. I was drowning in it.

In the darkness, which was incomplete on account of the fullness of the moon outside, I saw his hungry eyes feed upon me. His Adam’s apple rode up and down his neck like the slider on a trombone as he swallowed hard several times. I saw him pass a hand slowly over his face stretching his features into a rubber mask. Then he ripped off his jacket like a life-saver and dived alongside me into the bed.There was a jolt as one of the legs of the divan punctured the floorboard beneath, but now was not the time to worry about it.To stifle the complaints from Signor Tontini, whose own bed lay immediately beneath, I threw myself on top of the Detective and kissed him roughly on the mouth. His hands reached around the back of my head and pulled me into him. His tongue filled my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I felt surges lurching through my body, bubbling up from deep down inside, shooting along my arms and legs. It was like that time I got an electric shock in the Laundromat. But better.

I couldn’t believe what was happening to my body, and I never wanted it to end. I sandwiched the Detective’s face between my hands and kissed on as though my life depended upon it.

Burning kisses I had read about in my library books.These were they.

I became aware of the Detective’s hands straying over my body.The pads of his fingers, the lightest trace of a fingermail, wrote their sensuous script upon me. They wrote of tantaliz-ing secrets, endless journeys, imagined places. His touch was alternately stroking, soft as a whisper, then probing and press-ing, urgent and vibrato, sliding home. I abandoned myself to him, escaping from myself, from the past, from everything real, and from the cursing of Signor Tontini, which was rising up in bubbles of invective and which my ardor was working valiantly to ignore.

I clawed at his shirt. Polyester. So durable. The bitter en-emy of lovers. But I wouldn’t let it defeat me. Summoning the strength stored by my years of starved passions, I tore it away by the collar and almost garroted him with his tie.The sleeves clung feebly to his arms, but his torso was bare. His chest was a Persian carpet of dark hairs, and I sank my breasts into its pile, making him moan and mew.

I had to remove his pants. The situation had become desperate. Their very existence now caused me a physical pain.

Both he and I struggled to loosen them.The belt was done up way too tight.We scrabbled and strained, wrenched and wrestled. Finally, just as we were losing hope, the belt buckle capitulated and I was able to tear down the pants, but of course, the Detective, in his haste, had left his shoes on, and they were now hopelessly stuck in his inside-out pants. I leapt from the mattress onto the floor. Through the chink of light coming through the broken board, I could discern the enraged and elasticized face of Signor Tontini, peering upward. Thankfully the darkness above prevented him from seeing me.

I turned my attention once more to the pants. I was conscious that unless they came off soon, the evening would be ruined. They had assumed too prominent a role already. Now that my blood was up, I thought I would have the strength to rip my way past the shoes. I dug my feet into the floor for added leverage.The Detective gripped the bedpost. And I began to pull. I pulled and pulled. The Detective gritted his teeth. Then with one final yank, which took more strength than I knew I had, they came free, but I ricocheted across the room, was flung against the closet, cracked my head against it, and woke up.

I was dazed, but not badly hurt.What a ridiculous fantasy!

I wanted to laugh. The Detective, of all people! I had always been prone to bizarre dreams, but this one won a prize.

Yet when I heard a voice emerging from the darkness, I felt a jolt like another electric shock. Was it Alberto and his menagerie of voices come back?

“Quickly, my angel, my darling,” said the voice, thick with desire, “hurry and get back into the bed.” Even in the beginning, on the cruise liner, Alberto had never spoken to me in a voice that made me wrinkle uncomfortably inside. What could be going on? Despite the blow to my head, I got up and lunged at the light switch. As the glare flooded the room and bit at my eyes, I honestly could not believe what I saw.Yes, it was Detective Balbini, in the flesh, actually in my bed, gaping and blinking in the cruel blaze of light, and wearing nothing but his shoes and knee-length nylon socks.

Was I going mad? Or was I still asleep and still dreaming?

“My sweetheart, why do you turn on the light? Is it not a little bright, this way? Still, whatever pleases you. Come here, I implore you, come back to the bed.” I watched, appalled, as he got up and started to come toward me, his arms wide. His thing was purple, and pointing straight at me. It reminded me of the one belonging to Ernesto Porcino that I had fondled clumsily back in the summer of 1971.