The Silence of the Wave (4 page)

“Yes?” he said, leaning on the banister and looking up.

“You look better with your hair and beard short. You did the right thing getting a haircut. Have a good evening.”

The door closed before Roberto could think of an answer.

The morning after my encounter with Ginevra, I greeted her when I entered the classroom and tried to smile, which isn’t something I usually find easy to do. She was surprised for a moment, but then she returned the greeting and even the smile, and I felt my legs go weak.

During the lessons, which I followed even less than usual, I wondered if by any chance she’d met me in a dream too. Maybe we’d both had the same dream, or maybe that park really exists and it’s a place where people meet at night and become friends and things actually happen.

On second thought, I realized it was an absurd idea but at that moment, daydreaming in class, and especially after Ginevra had greeted me and smiled, everything seemed natural, everything seemed possible.

* * *

After a few nights of vague, meaningless dreams, I went back to the park. It happened a different way this time.
I was under the blankets, after reading
The Neverending Story
for ten minutes. I’d switched the light off and closed my eyes for a few seconds when I saw Scott come in through the door and sit down at the foot of my bed.

I have to confess this apparition scared me a bit, partly because Scott wasn’t saying anything. He just sat there, looking at me, and I even wondered if it was really him or another dog that looked like him. I felt almost paralyzed: I’d have liked to get up or say something but couldn’t. I don’t know how long it lasted, but after a while Scott went to the window.

Let’s go, chief
.

What happened immediately afterward I can’t remember, but I assume I followed Scott, maybe by passing through the window.

What I do remember is that I found myself in the park again, walking with him by my side. Obviously in the dream I remembered what had happened and how we’d left my room, because I didn’t ask him any questions about that.

“Scott, you remember the girl we met last time?”

Of course, chief. Very pretty, I’d say
.

I was pleased that Scott had noticed, that in some way he was giving me his approval.

“Yes, she’s the prettiest girl in my class. What can I do to meet her again? I mean, around here?”

Don’t worry, chief. We met her once, we’ll meet her again
.

At that moment I smelled sweets in the air. Just
like another aroma, from many years ago. Maybe I was three, four at the most. We were all together, Mom, Dad, and me. I have very few memories of all three of us together. We were in a street somewhere, I’m not sure where. The aroma came from a street vendor, who had a handcart or a van, I can’t remember which. What I do remember is that soon afterward I was holding a hot waffle with cream and caramel, the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Before having these dreams I’d never realized that I miss my father.

The door opened and there she was.

“Did you take your car to a garage?” he said, making an effort to smile. He was out of practice.

“Oh, it’s you. Yes, of course, I took it straight away and had to change the battery. I’m not sure whether I thanked you last Monday for your kindness. I can be quite distracted. Did I say thank you?”

“Yes, of course you said thank you.”

“Well, at least that’s something. I’m an expert at looking stupid.”

“I think I was the one who made myself look stupid the other day.”

“Why?”

“The way I blurted out that I remembered that commercial about … you know. Maybe you didn’t like being recognized for that and—”

“No, no, I used to like doing commercials.”

She spoke quickly, but without swallowing her
words. As if some underlying nervousness wouldn’t allow her to go at a calmer rhythm, but years of practice stopped her mangling the words.

“Why do you say ‘used to’? Don’t you do them anymore?”

She shrugged, as if the subject was of little importance.

“I have to run,” she said, after a glance at her watch. Roberto held back the impulse to tell her that he could walk her to her car in case it didn’t start again.

“Then maybe we’ll see each other again here.”

She looked at him, uncertain how to classify that remark. “Maybe,” she said at last, giving a slight smile and another shrug of the shoulders.

Then she started walking in the direction of her car and Roberto climbed the stairs. Only when he was outside the door of the office did he realize he had taken the stairs two steps at a time.

That hadn’t happened in quite a while.

Roberto looked around. Louis Armstrong was still in his place, and on the other wall was a painting of a small fishing port, with boats drying in the low sun and a few figures. It was a painting that communicated a sense of peace: it’s silent, Roberto told himself.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry.”

“You were looking around.”

“Yes, and I was thinking that for months I didn’t even notice what there was in this room. Before, whenever I entered a place, I’d immediately register everything: the wider picture and the details. It was like I was photographing everything in my mind: once I’d been in a place I was able to describe it, down to the smallest detail. Whereas if in the past few weeks someone had asked me to describe your office, all I’d have been able to say was that there was a desk, two or three chairs, a small couch, and a few bookshelves on the walls.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m starting to notice what’s around me. Outside and even inside. For example, up until last time I hadn’t noticed that poster. Unless you only just put it up. But it was there before, wasn’t it?”

The doctor looked at the image of Louis Armstrong and smiled.

“Yes, it was. It’s been there for a couple of years. Do you like it?”

“Yes … the words are … I don’t know about jazz, I don’t know all that much about it, but I think it’s true in lots of cases: there are things you’ll never understand if you need to have them explained.”

For a few seconds, silence fell. Roberto was aware of a clock ticking loudly. He searched for it with his eyes but couldn’t locate it.

“Shall we resume wherever we finished last time?” the doctor asked.

Roberto nodded, as if he had been called to order. He wondered if the doctor really didn’t remember at what point they had broken off the previous Thursday or—more likely—if he was just trying to test his level of concentration.

“Yes. From then on most of my work took place at night, in discos and clubs. Apart from my first informants—and only very few of them—nobody knew I was a carabiniere. For the people who hung around those places, I was one of the many characters who spent their nights in clubs either killing time, picking up
girls, or conducting various kinds of shady business.”

“Forgive me if this question is a stupid one, but did you consider the time you spent in those places work time?”

“At first there wasn’t a clear distinction. Then my superiors realized that my going to those places and rubbing shoulders with those kinds of people was generating leads for them. I was picking up items of news, telephone numbers, car registration numbers, addresses. I was talking to lots of people, and all the information I collected was leading to investigations, with surveillance, stakeouts, wiretaps, and all the rest. When the news was about the arrival of a consignment or the presence of narcotics in a particular place, we’d go straight in: raids, arrests, confiscations. Gradually my superiors started giving me more and more freedom, until I stopped keeping to strict office hours.”

“Did you limit yourself to collecting the information or did you also take part in the arrests and everything else?”

“At the beginning, yes, when it was possible. Sometimes someone would tell me there were drugs in such-and-such an apartment, or at the back of such-and-such a shop. The place didn’t belong to the person who had spoken to me, and when you do that kind of work, taking part in the raid and the arrests is important. It’s a major part of the … How can I put this?”

“The job satisfaction?”

“Yes, that’s it. The satisfaction. We’ve already talked about how arrests made me feel. But the deeper I got inside certain circles, the less advisable it was for me to be seen with my colleagues. In other words, as time passed, my work became more and more about being with dealers, pimps, and traffickers, and less and less about listening to phone calls or conducting searches, confiscations, and arrests.”

“Did you immediately feel at ease in that situation?”

“That’s a good question. Yes, I was at ease, and I think I liked it, but it’s something I find hard to remember.”

“Was it
enjoyable
?”

“Enjoyable?”

Enjoyable.

Had he enjoyed that period? Yes, probably, even though he would never have admitted it. But, whether or not it was correct to talk about
enjoyment
, he had liked that irregular life, where he was allowed to break almost all the rules of his normal work and the normal life of a normal carabiniere.

The doctor broke into his thoughts.

“Does the word bother you?”

“Maybe a little, yes. I’m not sure why, but it does bother me.”

“Never mind. Carry on.”

And maybe you could tell me why it bothers me. I mean, I think it does, but you could explain why, you could try not always leaving things hanging, that way I’d have a clearer idea of what’s happening inside me.
He tapped his temple, as if to underline the meaning of a sentence he hadn’t uttered out loud.

“As I was saying, I was inside that world now, and I’d built up quite a reputation as a criminal.”

“Why?”

“Whenever the subject came up of what we all did for a living, I’d say I was in the import-export business. Without saying what exactly I imported and exported. Sometimes, though, I’d go into a bit more detail. Without ever being explicit, I’d mention South America, Colombia, Venezuela. The luxurious life I led when I was abroad, the important friends I had, things like that. Plus, I often turned up at these places in expensive cars that my colleagues and I were lent by car dealer friends of ours. And that naturally impressed people. Then there were the languages. Did I tell you that apart from English I also speak Spanish?”

“No. How did you come to learn it?”

“It’s normal in California, especially close to the border with Mexico. And Spanish was the language of my father’s family. His parents—my grandparents—were Mexican. They were the ones who emigrated to the United States.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Your surname is Hispanic.”

“One evening, one night rather, I was in one of these clubs, sitting at the counter with a girl, a prostitute who hooked her clients by asking them to buy her a drink. She was one of the people I’d gotten friendly with and we were having a drink—it was a slow evening for
her—when this guy arrived who looked like he’d come straight out of a gangster film.”

“In what way?”

“Dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie, thick sideburns, a gold cigarette lighter that weighed half a kilo, a gold watch that weighed a kilo. He looked like a caricature. He had these two gorillas with him who were obviously his bodyguards. They were caricatures too. Anyway, he said he wanted to talk to me. Alone. The girl—Agnese her name was, I remember it well—knew the score, and even before he’d gotten the words out, she’d already vanished. So this guy and I sat down at a table in a booth—the two gorillas kept their distance—and he ordered a bottle of champagne that cost three hundred thousand lire, just to impress me. A real clown.”

“What did he want from you?”

“He asked me how come I spoke Spanish so well. Someone had heard me talking to a Venezuelan girl who worked in the club and had mentioned it to him. I made a vague reference to South America and the business I did there, which required a knowledge of Spanish. He gave me a crafty look, as if I’d said exactly what he was expecting to hear. He was congratulating himself on his own intuition. ‘And what kind of business do you do in South America?’ he asked, but as if he already knew the answer. ‘Business where the first rule is to know how to mind your own business,’ I replied, smiling and looking him straight in the eyes.”

* * *

“Keep your shirt on,” the guy had said. He hadn’t intended any disrespect, he only wanted to see if there was any possibility of their working together. It came out that the guy earned his living running a stable of girls, lending money, and occasionally handling small consignments of cocaine, intended for the same clientele as his girls. Now he’d been presented with an opportunity to take a qualitative leap. Someone had suggested he get involved with bringing in a major shipment of Colombian cocaine. He had immediately accepted and then immediately realized that this thing was much bigger than him, and the people involved much more dangerous than those he usually dealt with, and he had started to get really scared. Beating up some poor bastard who didn’t pay interest on his loan when it was due fell within his area of expertise. Handling his girls, gently when it was possible, violently when it was necessary, also fell within his area of expertise. They were things he knew how to do well, because he was a professional.

But when it came to the big time—and the thing he was getting himself involved in really was big time, as Roberto realized very quickly—he didn’t know the score. Even though he didn’t want to let the opportunity escape.

He had looked around, he had racked his brains,
and in the end had remembered that determined-looking young man who was out and about almost every night, who seemed to know everyone, and who gave the impression he knew how to get by in certain situations.

“What exactly do you want from me?” Roberto had asked him to gain time. He was trying to get the situation into focus, feeling all the while like someone who goes fishing for sea bass and hooks a twenty-kilo tuna—and decides to reel it in. He really wants to reel it in, but he’s afraid of breaking the line, so he proceeds cautiously. Very cautiously.