Short Story (Eng): The Strangers (from A Mystic Vision and Other Stories)

He had woken up with a thick mouth, a thick and bitter lump of scaly pulp. The call had arrived at 8.38, he remembered it well. A female voice, which he later recognized as his sister's, clinked without emotion: "He died this morning... Please, think about the rest..."

And Claudio had got up, because Claudio was the older brother and he was the one who had to think (he always had to think) about the most serious tasks.

His father was dead, all three brothers were expecting it; his mother, who had got another boyfriend ten years younger than her, had been expecting it. The death of Giacomo Dante had long been, by now, only a practice to be closed quickly, without ifs and buts... to finally turn the page and go further.

Claudio shaved, without too much haste, looked at himself in the mirror and saw all his thirty-seven years sounded sarcastically shining in the reflection, while on him he felt thirty, at most thirty (he could not consider himself so old, in a country where everyone is eternally young!).

He returned half-naked to his room, took one last look at the eighteen-year-old girl he had picked up at the nightclub the night before, and who was still asleep: the long thigh crossed over the blanket, the blond hair still smelled of peach in the air.

Claudio smiled, then the usual pang took him at his side: a sense of nausea.

He went out without saying a word.

*

The priest's practice lasted five minutes.

"A sober and fast thing, Don Mimmo... you know it better than me..."

The pastor nodded, counting the bills in the palm of his hand. The two shook hands, in the churchyard, and the young (no longer very young) Claudio left. The sky was crystal blue, and two swallows began to make spring in the freshness of a by now surrendered winter.

Exactly fourteen minutes later Claudio entered the funeral home of his friend Giuseppe Lattanzio. This was already in black suit for some other funeral, and as soon as he saw him, his smile lit up with a bright white. He squeezed his hand with a tenacious grip. Then he kissed him on the cheek, like you do with old friends.

"My friend, I got to know... I'm so sorry, he was really a good man!... Tell me immediately all I can do for you!"

Claudio looked at him, with an affable smile, holding back the feeling of disgust that again rose up in his esophagus. Still that sense of nausea.

"I must consult with my brothers, but one thing: closed coffin. I don't want my mother to see... She has already suffered enough..."

"Agree!" – said the undertaker – "And you already know what wood they want to use?"

Claudio puffed out his nostrils.

"The cheapest, Giuseppe!... You know we weren't in very good relations..."

The Lattanzio became sad. It is not known whether for the bad relations between Claudio and the father, or for the choice of the cheapest wood.

"All right, Claudio!... As you wish, there’s no problem!..." – and went off into the back room, beating his palms over his hips.

*

The next morning, in the garden of the cemetery of San Eustachio, a pit welcomed the emaciated coffin, slowly lowered by two skeletal individuals dressed in a blue ordinance uniform; the parish priest, yawed in a purplish toga, looked into the semi-sleepy void; Claudio embraced his mother, slightly weeping, with little conviction, while her companion looked at them suspiciously from under his dark glasses. Roberto, the younger brother, and Giulia, the sister, stood on the other side of the pit with eyes scattered and fixed at times, now on the coffin, now on the white crosses all around.

The silence of the interminable seconds was broken only by the croaking of some passing crows.

After countless eternities, from behind a tree, a bespectacled little man appeared, with a goatee, about fifty, all dressed in black. He made a sign to Claudio from afar, in a choreographic way that had taken a certain time; Claudio answered, rotating his index finger and signaling that they would do everything later.

When they met again after two hours in the office of the notary Giannoccaro, the clothes were full of humidity, Roberto's breath smelled heavily of beer, his mother smiled with a moved smile, her boyfriend embraced her with still dark glasses on his face and Giulia smiled, trying to imitate her mother.

"I only need your signatures... Besides, you already know everything, don't you?"

To the rhetorical question, Roberto came forward on impulse, took the pen and scribbled his name with enthusiasm on paper. Claudio looked at him, thinking: "I hope you won't make a show here, in front of everyone..."

And it occurred to him when at the age of eight, in front of him, who was twelve, with his face full of swellings and bruises, his little brother went into the living room before his father.

"What happened?"

"They beat me, even today!... And this time they were many, dad..."

The father had placed the newspaper on the arm of the sofa, and smilingly had said to him: "I have already gone to talk to the professors, little... if now I go to talk to those bullies or their parents, they will take you for a coward and you will lose their respect forever... This time you have to take care of yourself, go and show them who you are!"

And smiling, as if it was a game, he crossed his legs and resumed reading his newspaper.

For what Claudio could remember, Roberto had returned to the bullies, to make them pay it... but what had to be a revenge, had proved to be punctually a defeat.

Not only had they beaten him again, but by then he had become the official laughingstock of the school. Probably, his descent had begun from there, ended gloriously in the last years of desperate alcoholism.

**

Claudio looked at him, as if in the tic of the beating eyelid, he could see the slow escalation of hell that had involved him: state employment, robbery, dismissal, divorce, alcoholism... And he couldn't say anything, he couldn't see any solution or response to that cluster of misconceived genes.

Because he was convinced: he was made well, Claudio; while Roberto was just a crock of misconceived genes!

The line of signatories continued with Giulia, then with her mother, Debora, her curly hair in the wind, a girlish smile, a late beauty and rudely ostentatious.

Claudio realized that, as she advanced towards the Doctor's table, her boyfriend had promptly removed his hand from the back pocket of her leather trousers. Claudio saw the young man's fingertips clinging to her flesh and releasing the buttock, still tonic and shapely, in an elastic jolt. He wondered for a moment if this was really his mother. Then he got distracted and tried not to notice again.

They signed, and the notary smiled: afterwards a great shaking of hands and smiles, and hand-painted looks.

When the four separated on the threshold, Claudio looked at his family as if they were transparent.

How long have they not seen each other? How long had none of them dared call? Perhaps they were just waiting for the old man's death, to finally forget about their mutual existence? And now, perhaps, it was a good opportunity: they really would never see each other again.

Yet Claudio – looking at his sister, Roberto, his mother, always clinging to her toy...

He realized that, for him, they were only strangers: skeletons, ghosts, parvenue – in a world, his, which clearly did not concern them. Or did not concern them anymore…

For a long, probably long time.

Yet something still held him, obstinately, attached to them: the affection of Memory.

Only a childhood flash, right at the moment of the posting: Giulia caressing him and giving him a lollipop, in the toy room… her mother's last caress or kiss, at a fair, in front of a tobacco shop... and Roberto, on the slides of beach holidays, with his perpetually offended, pissed-off look, right from the photos of when he was little… the eternal misunderstood!

And now, watching them go by, on the same street, from behind, he realized how – if they had died at that moment, if a car had run over them right on that sidewalk – he, in the end, wouldn't have given a shit of them!

He wouldn’t have given a shit about the spinster Giulia, the warder employed, recommended by her father... she wouldn’t have given a damn about her mother, an eternal teenager in search of emotions, always looking for confirmations, to the point of ridicule, to repair an early and wrong marriage, and the birth of three children, always precocious and always early and wrong.

And, after all, he would not have given a shit about Roberto... even if a little pain caused him, whenever he met him, more and more aged and stuffed, more and more dull, always worse.

And yet, even there, the fate of Roberto... was good for him.

"He deserved it!..." – he repeated himself often.

As if that mantra somehow justified the feeling of satisfaction that invaded him when he saw his brother in difficulty and he, on the other hand, unanimously recognized as a 'successful man'.

He looked for it. And he smiled when he thought it. After all he had won, Claudio…

And he had to be happy with it.

He had won, against all those strangers.

***

He was thinking of this while, with his hands on the wheel, he was about to start driving home. When the phone in the passenger seat vibrated like a rumble. It was a message: "I confirm you, they arrived this Wednesday... If you want, we will do it."

He didn't want to reply via message, so he tried calling his interlocutor: "Hey, can you hear me? Do you have the gadgets I asked you for? And the bibs?... OK, I'll join you right away!"

And the car scoured, as it had done so often on the asphalt and on the pavement of the center.

The fresh air of the early afternoon erupted to water his face with imperceptible droplets. There was almost no traffic and the speed could have been more than sustained. Claudio was driving, trembling and with a mad grin.

"Where does all this excitement come from?" – he wondered, for a moment.

It was he who now considered himself distant from everything, cold, glacial.

The car accelerated, splashing in a puddle. An old woman with a dog looked at him in fear, like a fawn, while the car darted past her.

"Timone street n.6…" – the address was well remembered.

As soon as he arrived in the rich residential neighborhood, he slowed his pace: he admired for a while the elegant streets furnished with saplings on the sidewalks, and put his arm out as a signal. He remained in the second row for a few seconds. The flashing of a white convertible arrived on time.

Why was he doing it? Was he really convinced he was going to screw everything up for that? Or had he just been convinced that the mockery he had planned with his friend was worth playing as a farewell?

He did not know.

Giorgio was a private investigator, but one of those disreputable, those who, with a small tip, takes nothing to put a box of cocaine in your pocket, at the request of an unscrupulous extortionist.

He stepped out of the car with the cigarette in his mouth and smiled blissfully, with the grin that occupied his whole face under the brand new Ray Bans. He took a pair of black bibs pressed into the driver's seat, and slammed them against his friend.

They entered by pushing aside the half-open gate of a large condominium building, surrounded by freshly shaped bushes. In the elevator they both looked at each other in the mirror.

"There is no one on the fifth floor. Only my friend's agency and the terrace. Let's get dressed here and put this in your pants..."

He handed him a semi-automatic Beretta.

At that moment the barrel seemed like a bazooka to him. Claudio felt a strange smell, and he put the sight to his nose: the pistol had just been fired. In the mirror now stood two figures with their faces hidden by a balaclava, police bibs, black gloves and handguns. The red light marked the number 5, the bell on the top floor trilled and the doors opened.

"I do everything... Angela has left us all open. We don't have to do anything but enter the number 18. I break in and set the scene, then I leave you time to close... All right?"

Claudio nodded, more confused and excited than sure of the answer. They opened the first door. In front of them a long corridor.

****

Giorgio walked briskly, Claudio followed him; but the dim corridor with its pink walls seemed to never end. Only the soft light of the windows of the open rooms released white triangles of light in their trajectory. Yet the corridor really never seemed to end.

"Without emotion!" – whispered Giorgio, reiterating what, since Claudio had known him, had been his motto.

"Without emotion, without emotion!..." – the hooded executioner kept muttering, with the other behind who hysterically began to echo him.

When they arrived at the infamous door number 18, Giorgio put his hand on the handle, and muttered: "Are you ready ?!"

The other nodded, like a schoolboy.

The door opened and in front of them appeared a bed, red, with two naked bodies lying on their back, belly in the air. The two chuckled, smoking long cigarettes that carried gray filaments toward the ceiling of the same color: they looked like puppets. They didn't jump immediately.

Claudio recognized first her black pubic hair, then her face: it was his wife, and he had been used to it for years now. The curly blond boy jumped on his elbows, his eyes wide open. Giorgio smiled under the balaclava and immediately pointed the gun at him.

"How many seconds do you want before you die?"

He was in front of Claudio, and partly blocked his view. "It seems that here we had somebody who had a lot of fun!"

And he took out the usual bag of cocaine, which he really cared about. He brandished it like a toy, and shook it like an hourglass. The narrative line devised was very simple.

"Our dear colleague Verdi will rest in peace... knowing that we have now taken the leaders!"

To remain vague, shocking propositions, essential plot: it had always worked, in twenty years of brilliant career.

"So, boss, what do we do with it?"

The woman had a panic attack for a moment, got up on the back of the bed and began to squeeze the pillow, panting and shaking her head.

She trembled. Tr-tr-trembled, like Claudio, could see and repeat himself in the brain. She tr-trembled, my poor Lilly!

Too bad she decided to throw everything in the toilet like this, for this young man!... It almost reminds me of that bitch of my mother!... But now we're here, the story is over and I have to pull this trigger. That black hair and that pussy so often smelled by me... The forest near home, the images of childhood... Do you remember when we met, Lilly? In front of that kindergarten... Everything before us gave us innocence... Yet, how we stopped loving each other so quickly, isn’t so, Lilly?!... In our cave of indifference… We used each other like two animals. And then, when it didn't work anymore, we only started... to tolerate each other... indifferent, like all the others!... Like the whole world around us, like all these strangers...

I betrayed you a hundred, a thousand, maybe a million times... You did the same. But with this ignoble drug dealer, this ferret of our knowledge... No!... You shouldn't have!... That's why now I'm going to be seraphic and detached, cold, glacial... And I'll forcefully penetrate you, for the last time... my sweet Lilly!

"Are you really sure, boss?"

Giorgio seemed worried.

Now Claudio had put himself in front of him, back to him, and was pointing the gun, trembling and muttering something incomprehensible; he pointed the barrel of the gun to her mouth, and she looked at him, as if to understand. She opened her eyes for a moment, as if she had actually understood…

Tears of tears began to flow.

"Let's get it over with!" – shouted Claudio, while now the boy, too, grabbed his pillow and shook his head like a young lady.

"Goodbye, beautiful!" – finally the executioner did.

One click, one move, the cold on the head.

Claudio bent down, looked into her eyes, and went:

"Peek-a-booo!..."

****

A loud laugh echoed in the room.

And everything stopped in a shadow of sarcasm.

Claudio got out of the door, moving his hands in the air, as if he was dancing.

Silence spread sovereign. The two lovers, now become the mirror of the other, looked at each other in shock, while a scornful air began to make the white curtains flutter on their faces. Giorgio glanced over his shoulder to see where the madman had gone... then, laughing too, he attacked: "You were lucky, beautiful... Today he’s in a good mood!"

And before he slammed the door behind him, he didn't forget the procedure: "Of course, you are free now... For the rest we will let you know!... Wait for our instructions... But remember: one word of what happened outside this room and... Capùt!"

The hand was cut to the throat.

The door was slammed theatrically.

Once in the car the two friends didn't talk much.

*****

The evening had slipped away like any evening, any Wednesday, of any spring, and the moon had appeared, full (as never before), to smile at the work completed.

They put it all right, and Claudio was left in the street, at the bus station, in front of his cottage. As if nothing had happened.

Before leaving Giorgio, leaning his elbows on the door, Claudio felt compelled to give him an explanation.

"Life goes on, my friend... 

And all these people...

            They have no importance to me!... "