The Sense of an Elephant Read online

  Pietro stepped up onto the rim of the mosaic-tiled basin and checked the ivy in the vicinity of the plastic halo. The snails were gone. He looked down. They had fallen near the plants that the residents had entrusted to him. He gathered up the snails and deposited them beneath a lemon tree and a flowering cactus.

  ‘My gardenia is all dried up, I can feel it.’

  Pietro turned around.

  Viola Martini was at the entrance to the courtyard, toying with a lock of honey-blonde hair and awaiting the verdict on tiptoe. ‘It’s dried up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the concierge, attempting to smile. ‘Give it a few more weeks and it will pull through.’

  ‘You’re a miracle worker, you are.’ She bit her lip and came forward. ‘How is it going, Pietro?’ She winked at him and he smelled the scent of vanilla that lingered on the stairs each night.

  Dr Martini stood further back, their daughter in his arms. Set her down and the child skipped over to the gardenia. Poking from her pocket was a pencil that was a magic wand. She drew it out like a small sword and touched Pietro on the head.

  ‘What have you turned me into?’ asked the concierge.

  Sara scrunched up her coal-black eyes and slipped her head among the leaves of the gardenia, disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the plant. Laughed from her gap-toothed mouth and stared at the snail in the pot. Touched the magic wand to its horns and the snail retreated. The child’s face darkened.

  ‘He’s gone back into his shell to have a snack, honey,’ said Dr Martini as he picked her up. Blew gently against her neck as his phone began to ring. Checked the display and immediately passed the girl to her mother. ‘Hello, I’ll call you back in five minutes.’ Listened a moment. ‘I said I’ll call back in five minutes.’ Hung up.

  ‘Who was it?’ asked Viola.

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘You’re going in tonight as well?’

  The plants covered Pietro. Through the leaves the doctor’s face was a sliver of sparse beard chewing gum. ‘I’m not going, don’t worry.’ Then he turned to the concierge. ‘Is there any post?’

  Pietro went into the lodge as mother and daughter started up the stairs, leafed through the envelopes. ‘There’s a package and a registered letter. I’ll need your signature.’

  The doctor scribbled his name. ‘My daughter adores you.’ Held the gum between his teeth for a moment before returning to chewing. ‘If you have this effect on all children, come and see me in the ward.’ Screwed up his face in a grimace, the same as in the photograph on the Vespa. Drummed his fingers between an ashtray and the radio that the concierge had brought with him from the coast. Turned it on. His mobile phone rang again and he turned up the radio. The phone persisted and he picked it up. Before responding he stuck the chewing gum in the ashtray. ‘Hello.’ The doctor left the lodge. ‘We agreed that I would call back.’ He paused. ‘Tonight I can’t.’

  The concierge turned off the radio. The doctor said, ‘No, tonight I can’t. I’m on tomorrow night at the hospital. I’ll come over before, around seven. Yes, tomorrow. Don’t call any more, it’s risky. It’s risky, I said.’ The doctor was an attenuated shadow on the wall of the entrance hall. He put away his phone and rested a moment with a hand over his eyes. ‘See you, Pietro. I’m going.’

  ‘Have a good evening.’ The concierge waited for him to go up. Then went to the ashtray. It’s risky, I said. Snatched up the doctor’s chewing gum and went into the bedroom. In the suitcase there was also an old matchbox. He stuck the gum inside, beside another, rock-hard piece of gum.

  4

  Pietro had learned that they were looking for a concierge in Milan from the letter with the Emilio Salgari stamp. The postman delivered it one ordinary afternoon to his old address, an eighteenth-century church fronting on a piazza in Rimini. He put it into the hands of the servant, a wisp of a woman with shifty eyes and bow legs.

  ‘I’ll make sure he gets it,’ she said. ‘Don Pietro hasn’t lived here for a year.’ And she walked over to the old priest’s new house.

  ‘Padre.’ She knocked three times. ‘Padre.’

  Pietro opened the door. ‘I’m no longer Padre.’ He returned to the living room.

  ‘You are for me.’ She pulled her shawl close and followed him in, leaving the letter on a folding bed in the living room.

  There was no return address, just his name and the address of the church in anonymous cursive script. There was this stamp and the rice paper that shed invisible specks. Pietro opened it along the short side. Inside were a photograph and a sheet of paper folded in thirds. He pulled out the paper and began to read. Immediately stopped.

  ‘Everything OK?’ The servant had shuffled closer to him. ‘Everything OK? Is it the woman?’

  Pietro closed his eyes.

  *

  He had read it that evening, and again at night. Two times in all. The photograph, on the other hand, he never stopped looking at. He had followed the instructions: call some lawyer by the name of Poppi and set up an interview for the concierge job. He met him the next week in Milan, in this elegant but not pretentious condominium, and following their conversation returned to Rimini.

  Three days later, sitting on a rock in the sea, he found out he would become a concierge.

  The lawyer was the one to call him with the news. When Poppi heard the seagulls in the background he said, ‘Pietro, you’ve got to be crazy to come to Milan to look after a condominium.’ He revealed that in the interview Pietro’s conservative haircut and a certain propensity for silence had been decisive. His past employment as a priest had elicited the agreement of all the residents except him. But majority ruled. Would he accept the job?

  Pietro accepted, and before finishing they agreed when he would start.

  Then the lawyer cleared his throat, ‘Just out of curiosity, why did you divorce God?’

  ‘He wasn’t so easy to get along with.’

  ‘You and I are going to be great friends. See you in four days.’

  Pietro put away his phone and pulled out the letter on rice paper, squeezed it till he crumpled Salgari. Then passed by the church that had been his for a lifetime. In the piazza at the front, two old men greeted him. He continued without turning toward the walls that he had traded in for a tiny dump on the outskirts of the city. Three rooms in all, an equal number of pieces of luggage. The same ones that he would bring with him to Milan: two duffel bags and the suitcase with the boxes.

  On the evening of his departure he abandoned the rest: shelves full of books and a drawer of Benedictine knick-knacks. With one bag on his back and the other in one hand, he laid the suitcase across the handlebars of the Bianchi and headed to the station. The train was on time. He bought his ticket and made a phone call.

  ‘I’m coming tonight, Anita. They’ve hired me. Sorry about the last minute.’

  5

  In the notebook where he set down things not to forget, he wrote, Dr Martini, at around seven tomorrow, then the hospital: risky. He quickly closed it and went to the telephone on the shelf in the lodge, dialled the only number he knew by heart.

  ‘Anita, I’m running late.’

  He hung up and returned to the flat. One of the bags was on the kitchen table. He dumped out what had been left inside. At the bottom were crosswords and balled-up vests. He threw everything into the wardrobe, empty at the bottom except for two woollen jumpers and some worn shoes, and removed from a hanger the only outfit hanging there, a black suit and white shirt. The jacket had mother-of-pearl buttons and the trousers were cuffless. He kept his good shoes under the bed in a plastic bag. Pulled them out now and rummaged through a dresser drawer. The skinny tie was stuffed against the box of earplugs. He smoothed it between his palms. Dressed hurriedly and wheeled out the Bianchi. As he emerged from the condominium he found a petrol-blue SUV parked up on the pavement.

  ‘Oh, good evening, Pietro.’ Poppi the lawyer was leaning against the vehicle door. A thin man stood beside him.
‘May I introduce you to Dr Riccardo Lisi? Radiographer and a good friend of the Martinis.’

  The two men moved away from the SUV and Pietro noticed that the door had a scratch and two large dents.

  ‘We’ve already met.’ The radiographer wore an open raincoat. Extended his hand toward the concierge. ‘We ran into each other on the day you first arrived. Three bags and that Bianchi, wasn’t it?’ Pointed at it and brushed the hair away from his face. His eyes were grey.

  ‘That’s right, Dr Lisi.’

  ‘Riccardo. Dr Lisi makes me feel old. Do you have a lock for it?’

  ‘It’s broken.’

  ‘They pinch Bianchis in Milan. May I?’ He grabbed the bicycle, climbed on and leaned over the handlebars as if he were hurtling down a hill. ‘They don’t make ’em like this any more. I’ve got one myself, but it’s made of tissue paper.’

  ‘Do you ride it?’

  ‘I used to, with that wimp Martini. Then he defected and I get bored riding on my own.’

  ‘You two could go riding together.’ The lawyer opened his arms wide.

  ‘Resolved.’ Riccardo gave the bicycle back to Pietro. ‘You’ve got to be patient, though. I don’t have the legs I once did.’ He started up the stairs.

  He had left behind the scent of aftershave, sickly sweet, which mixed with the smog.

  ‘I’ve seen him around a lot lately,’ said Pietro.

  ‘You see him around a lot lately, right.’ Poppi raised his eyebrows. ‘Let’s say that he’s one of the family. He was at university with Dr Martini and now they work in the same hospital. The little girl calls him “Uncle”.’ He looked Pietro up and down. ‘I admit the white shirt does wonders for you, Pietro.’ He adjusted the concierge’s tie and opened the door to the building. ‘Who’s the lucky woman tonight?’

  Pietro started off.

  ‘Don’t be coy. What’s her name?’

  ‘Anita.’

  ‘I was thinking Mary Magdalene. Good for you, kibitzer. God will be jealous tonight.’

  The concierge stood stiffly on the threshold of the flat. Anita said, ‘You have the same face as when you first arrived in Milan.’ She pulled him inside. ‘C’mon, tell me. Are you worried about something?’

  Pietro leaned against the new refrigerator. Its door was already covered with recipes. She caressed the two creases around his mouth. ‘If these wrinkles …’ Moved on to the furrows on his forehead. ‘And these …’ Finished with the groove in his chin. ‘And this as well … have shown up, something has happened.’ Helped him out of his jacket, then checked on a pot heating on the stove. ‘Knowing you this long has got to mean something.’

  Pietro turned to the window. It looked over a communal balcony into the tenement’s courtyard. A string of petunias hung down from the balustrade. He managed to make out the Bianchi. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ He sat down, and only now did he notice that Anita was different.

  ‘You’re worried,’ she said.

  Her lips were shiny and she wore pearls at her earlobes. Her hair was freshly dyed a shade approaching auburn. Her dress hugged wide hips partially concealed by a hanging scarf.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Pietro replied. And he gazed at the old photograph on the wall of her on the Rimini breakwater. She held her hat to keep it from blowing away and she was happy.

  She lowered her eyes. ‘I went by your building this morning.’ Used a wooden spoon to scoop up a bit of ragù from the pot. The sauce was simmering over a low flame. She cooled it down with a long breath before placing it in her mouth. ‘The condominium is very distinguished, but I didn’t see the doctor.’

  ‘He had already left at that hour.’

  ‘I saw a blonde woman and a little girl.’

  ‘His wife and daughter.’

  ‘If they’re any guide, the doctor is one handsome man.’ She caressed his ringless fingers. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  Pietro sprang to his feet. On the sideboard stood a glass amphora. Anita had filled it with coloured buttons and decks of cards. He pulled out the briscola cards. They were worn at the edges, the images faded. He began to shuffle them. ‘Today I used my set of keys to go into his flat.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  She pushed aside plate and silverware. ‘Goodness, and then?’

  ‘I saw a photograph.’ Pietro shuffled the cards and spoke softly. ‘He liked Vespas when he was little. After that I had to leave.’

  Anita slipped the cards out of his hand and had him cut the deck. Then turned them over two by two: the three of cups and the six of coins, the king and the ace of cups. ‘The cards say you’ll go back. Back to his flat. Because he’ll need you.’

  Pietro looked over her shoulder. The ace of cups had been the first card dealt. He put an arm around Anita like he had done after climbing down from the Rimini–Milan train, the day when they first saw each other again after ten years. She’d brought him home with her, to a comfortable two-room flat in a big ugly building north of the city. And he had slept there ever since: the four nights before becoming a concierge and virtually every night following.

  Anita blew gently in his ear, loosened his tie.

  He turned his head, buried his nose in her hair.

  6

  He woke with a start.

  Anita, beside him, said, ‘You had a nightmare, come here.’

  Pietro caressed her head. ‘I have to go.’

  He went to the kitchen and drank from a glass with a hand-painted lizard on it. The green ran outside the lines of the pointed tail. He dressed and before leaving noticed that she was up, wearing a light dressing gown and gazing at him.

  ‘He’ll need you,’ she said to him again.

  Pietro crossed the room to embrace her, then left.

  The night had swallowed Milan, swallowed him as well as the Bianchi carried him home. Traces of the nightmare stayed with him during the entire return trip. It was always the same. A ship and the salty air, with no sea beneath the ship, just emptiness. And his fall from the bows, down, down, until he woke. He banished it by pedalling, pedalling without stopping all the way to the condominium. Such was his frenzy that he struggled to insert the keys into the building door. Left the Bianchi against the downpipe at the entrance to the courtyard, calming down once he was there, his gaze directed at the doctor’s windows. They were dark. In one he could make out the ceiling beams and a chandelier with many arms. The beams and the chandelier were enough for him. You will need me. A darkened window was enough. He returned towards the concierge’s lodge and just before entering noticed something on the ground, a leather bracelet. Picked it up. It was frayed at the edges and smooth on top. On the underside a date had been etched: 14-9-2008. He placed it in the drawer of his night table.

  Then the concierge took off his suit, hung the shirt and jacket in the wardrobe, chose a red tracksuit as pyjamas. Instead of the bed he would make do with a blanket and a mothball-smelling pillow inherited from the previous concierge. Picked up too a crossword puzzle and a pen, then removed his socks and went into the empty room. There was a musty odour that rose from the filthy floor. Three of the walls had been recently painted white, the fourth left half plastered, sign that the work had been interrupted. He opened the porthole window that looked into the courtyard and turned on the lamp. What remained of memory? Pietro stood frozen, staring at the suitcase. Only things. He bent down to open a box, removed a note and read it against the light. The writing in pencil had faded but he could nevertheless make it out: I killed my son. With note in hand he stood and rocked back onto his heels, shifted onto his toes and sketched a graceful tap dance. Stopped. What remained of memory? He brought a hand under the lamp. Against the half-plastered wall he projected the shadows of his fingers, held them together and then spread them open, closed, open again. They became a dog without a tail. He had learned how to make the shadows as a young man. Now they were lopsided and a few were always missing something. He moved his index finger and thumb. The dog opened
his jaw. To the animal he confided: ‘Tomorrow night at seven, I’ll follow him.’

  *

  The eyes of the witch sparkled through the confessional grille. She murmured in a Milanese accent, ‘Where’d it go, Father, the cat’s soul? And mine, where’ll it go? I have to get married soon. How can I do it with my soul so troubled, how?’

  ‘Do you pray?’

  ‘I write to him, to God.’

  They were silent. He heard her moving behind the grille. She drew something from her handbag, tore off a strip of paper and pulled out a pencil she had been using to keep her hair in place. Wrote on the paper and pushed it through.

  The words written on the paper were: I have another sin to confess, God, but I can’t say it to you, only write it.

  He handed the paper back to her. ‘Do it.’

  And she wrote it with gaunt is and ls and a portly o: I killed my son.

  7

  Pietro slept poorly owing to the hard floor and the odour of mothballs that stung his nose. He woke at first light.

  The floor was frigid. He placed his feet on top of the socks there and reread the only crossword clue that he had been unable to solve, five across, three letters: ruminant with palmate antlers. He wrote elk and went into the bathroom to undress. Over the years his torso had shrunk. The hair remained dark on his slight paunch. He caressed it softly, the skin that of a newborn. Unscrewed the cap on the body wash for sensitive skin and turned on the shower, a square of floor separated by a plastic curtain. As soon as it became lukewarm he started on his legs. They were a runner’s legs. Disfiguring scars ran over his thighs and shins. He traced them with two fingers, down to his small feet, which he scrubbed. He had prominent veins and scars on his ankles as well. Poured out more body wash, soaped his face and felt the bubbles bursting on his nose. They didn’t smell like anything. He inhaled and his nostrils burned. Held one hand to his wrinkly member, grasped it and fingered the tip. Stopped and stared at that strip of flesh. Rinsed it with cold water and rinsed the cuts that crossed his chest from one side to another. His bones slid under the tortured skin that still hurt at times. He opened the plastic curtain and before stepping out looked at himself in the mirror behind the door. He was a man reddened by the hot water and by memory.