The Break Read online

  Cirillo had looked at Dino for another second, then had turned back to his ball and had started again moving the cue back and forth.

  “Go home, son,” he had said. “It’s late.”

  Dino had stood there looking at Cirillo, who was sliding that cue with an arm that seemed to have a separate existence, and from somewhere deep inside his head he had heard a voice screaming at him to leave.

  “Please,” he had said.

  This time, nobody had laughed, and everyone had looked, first at that insolent boy who wasn’t funny any more, then at Cirillo, who had lowered his head a few centimetres and turned it slightly to one side, then had moved his eyes back to the boy.

  “I’m shooting,” Cirillo had said, with almost skittish annoyance.

  “I know,” Dino had said. “I’m sorry. But I absolutely want you to teach me how to play billiards.”

  “I don’t give lessons,” Cirillo had said, still bent over the cue, and for a moment he had felt a bit stupid, and didn’t know if it was because of the position he was speaking from or because he couldn’t somehow bring himself to kick the boy out. Sometimes, when you’re a king, you forget what it’s like to be out on the streets, you get used to the words and daily rituals of the court surrounding you, so that when a boy gets through the walls and approaches you with the most banal of questions, you don’t know what to do and what to say. But if you aren’t stupid, a part of you admires that boy, even if it’s only because he managed to get to you.

  “I know,” Dino had said. “I don’t want lessons. I want you to teach me how to play.”

  For a moment, Cirillo had wondered if it was right for the boy to be so familiar with him, but he had preferred not to think about it. He had stood up from the table, had turned to the boy in the funny jacket and looked him up and down for a few seconds.

  “Let’s do something,” Cirillo had said, with a self-satisfied little-smile, like a monarch who, passing a beggar, throws him some of his food, while those around him applaud proudly. “Come back when you can make a break shot, aiming straight ahead of you, and manage to get the ball to come back to exactly the same spot it started from, neither a millimetre more nor a millimetre less, no further to the right, no further to the left.”

  The boy had looked Cirillo straight in the eyes. “All right,” he had said. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Cirillo had whispered, still with that half-smile of ironic annoyance. Then he had leant across the table again and shot a ball that hit three sides of the table, his opponent’s ball and the red ball, which in turn hit the pins and ended in the cover, scoring four points.

  Dino had stopped playing with his friends. Every day they would see him by himself at a table, shooting one break shot after another, just that, never anything else. Sometimes he would curse, and every evening, when he put the cue back in one of the racks and set off for home with his hands in his pockets, he would shake his head disconsolately. Until, one evening, half-an-hour after he had arrived, one of his friends saw him there with his hands propped on the side of the table staring at the ball with a self-satisfied smile. Dino had put the cue down, turned and very calmly crossed the whole room, as if all at once it was half his, all the way to Cirillo’s enchanted castle, just as Cirillo was leaning across the table, ready to shoot.

  “I did it,” Dino had said, very pleased with himself, as soon as he came level.

  This time, Cirillo was on the other side of the table, and in order to see where that voice had come from he simply had to raise his head a little. He had stopped moving his cue and stared at Dino.

  “Shit, son,” he had said. “Do you always have to bother me when I’m shooting?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dino had said. “But I did it.”

  Cirillo had thrown him another brief, slightly annoyed glance, then looked down again at his cue, moved it back and forth two or three times then slid it forward gently until it kissed the ball, which first hit the cushion with a muffled sound that was little more than a breath, then knocked the opponent’s ball straight through the middle of the castle, toppling only the red one.

  “Every time?” Cirillo had asked, even before straightening up after the shot, with the confident bearing of someone who is about to land the decisive blow.

  Dino had looked Cirillo straight in the eyes for a few seconds. All the confidence that had transported him like a leaf across the room had suddenly abandoned him, and for some reason his legs had seemed harder and heavier than usual.

  “No,” Dino had said. “Only once.”

  A hollow-cheeked man sitting not far from them with an unfiltered cigarette in his hand had started to laugh, smoke blowing out between his teeth, but Cirillo had glared at him and made him stop.

  “Come back when you can do it every time,” Cirillo had said.

  Dino and Cirillo had looked at each other for a moment longer, as stiff as marble statues, across the only battlefield they knew.

  “All right,” Dino had said in a thin voice, then he had lowered his head and left the field with head bowed.

  Cirillo had watched him walk to the far end of the room and disappear up the stairs with his hands stuck as always in his pockets.

  “It’s my turn, can I?” Cirillo had heard a voice say to his right. On the other side of the table, Torello, who wore glasses and always looked as if he was retarded, was waving his cue.

  “Yes, go on,” Cirillo had said, and with a little sigh had put his hand down on the table and resumed the game.

  Chapter Three

  DINO HEAVED A DEEP SIGH, then touched the ball with the tip of his cue and moved it slightly to the left. The other ball was beyond the castle, towards the top left-hand corner. Dino moved for just a moment to the right, then to the middle, sizing up the distances, using the castle as a point of reference. He stroked the tip of the cue with the chalk, leant over with his bridge hand in front of the ball and the cue lying on top of it, moved the cue backwards and forwards, making sure to get the ball well to the left in order to give it the proper spin and finally released his elbow and the two fingers of his right hand that were holding the cue. The ball set off, rolling straight ahead as if it had never stopped or started anywhere but had always been moving. It hit the first cushion, thump, then the second, thump, and, because of the spin he had given it, rebounded directly into the other ball. Clack. The other ball immediately set off as if in a relay race and rolled straight and smooth towards the castle, hitting the central red pin and the white pin on the other side and stopping about ten centimetres beyond the castle. There is something majestic about a shot that goes exactly the way it is supposed to, something that breaks through the squalor of the world and for a moment makes you feel more refined.

  Holding the cue in his left hand, Dino leant across the table and set the fallen pins back up again, then he walked around to where the chalk was, picked it up and stroked the tip of the cue with it a few times, looking in silence at the balls and the table.

  A short distance away, three boys laughed among themselves as they put on their coats and drained the last drop of wine from their glasses.

  Dino again walked around the table, looking closely at the balls, and stopped next to the long side, the side where his own ball was. He lowered himself, placed the cue across his bridge hand, which was relatively close, and moved his body backwards and forwards a bit. As they were walking towards the far end of the room, the three boys in coats, still with amused half-smiles on their lips, stopped for a moment not far from Dino’s table. One of the three moved his head closer to the other two and whispered something, indicating Dino with his chin.

  The ball moved away from the cue as if of its own accord, rolled as far as the long cushion opposite, rebounded off it as if pushed by a sudden gust of wind, and hit the short side and then the other cue ball, which set off towards the third cushion, rebounded and moved very calmly, almost whistling, towards the castle. It passed straight through the middle, knocking out the cen
tral red pin and one white pin on the other side, and then immediately came to a stop.

  The three boys looked at each other for a moment, then went out, sniggering and again whispering something.

  Very slowly, Cirillo started to close up, cleaning and tidying the tables until everyone had gone and the only patch of light in the room came from his friend’s table. He had been watching Dino all evening, as he played one shot after another and knocked down the pins with the pensive calm of an angler fishing from a lake.

  In all the time he had been closing up, Cirillo had done his best not to disturb his friend, even doing a few things he had been putting off for several days to spin out the time. Now he walked slowly to Dino’s table and leant against one of the pillars that supported the room.

  Dino released the cue. The ball set off quite quickly, hit three cushions and then the other cue ball, sending it straight into the pins and stopping a few centimetres beyond the castle.

  Cirillo had often watched Dino playing alone. A year earlier, he had even stood there watching him for an entire evening, without Dino noticing. And every time he watched him play, he wondered if Dino would ever beat him. It was hard to say, but one thing was certain—if it did ever happen, it would be a great game. Thinking about it, Cirillo couldn’t really figure out why it was that Dino had never managed to beat him—he never missed a shot, always got in the cover. If you looked closely—not that he would ever admit it—Cirillo actually made a few more mistakes than Dino did. And yet, when they came to add up the points, Cirillo’s shots always scored more, and by the end of the game they weighed in the balance like blocks of granite.

  Dino hit another ball that rebounded off three cushions and sent the other cue ball straight into the castle.

  “Tell me one thing, Cirì,” Dino said when he had straightened up, although without taking his eyes off the table. He walked to the other side, lowered himself in front of the other ball and sent it rebounding off two cushions and knocking the other cue ball back into the castle. “How many stones do you think it takes to make a person?”

  Cirillo screwed up his eyes for a moment, then gave his friend a puzzled look. “What do you mean?” he said.

  Dino again stretched across the table and moved the cue backwards and forwards for a moment or two. “To make a person, a human being, how many stones would you say it takes?”

  The ball moved away from the cue with a little murmur. Thump, first cushion. Thump, second cushion. Clack, ball. Flop, pins. In the silence and emptiness of the room, it sounded like music.

  Dino and Cirillo had looked at each other for a few seconds.

  “I don’t know, son,” Cirillo had said. “But the road is long.”

  Chapter Four

  DINO STOPPED FOR A MOMENT in front of the crumbling facade of an old building, looked around him on the ground and picked up some pieces of a broken bottle. Then he looked up and threw a piece of glass at one of the blue shutters at the front of the building. The small piece of glass hit the wall next to the shutter and broke into pieces.

  “Rosa!” Dino whispered as loudly as he could, then fell silent and waited with the pieces of glass in his hand. A man passed him, dressed to the nines, and his footsteps echoed on the pavement like the ticking of a clock.

  Dino watched the man move along the street and disappear round the corner, then looked again at the shutter towards which he had thrown the piece of glass. He stood looking at it for a few seconds, then selected a slightly bigger piece, and after looking around—with the hint of a smile on his lips which took him back years—again threw it towards the building, harder this time, and this time the glass hit the slats of the shutter, making a bit of a noise.

  Dino gave a slight boyish laugh, dipped his head between his shoulders for a moment, then looked around again. Nobody was passing. There was a thin sliver of moon in the sky, occasionally obscured by clouds.

  “Rosa!” he whispered again as loudly as he could.

  After a few seconds, a sharp noise of creaking iron filled the silence of the street, and the shutters opened, but only a crack.

  “Who is it?” came a quiet voice from behind the shutters.

  “Rosa,” Dino said, “I need a rose.”

  “Piss off, you hooligans,” the voice said, and the shutters knocked loudly against each other, followed again by that sharp sound of creaking iron, more forceful this time.

  “No, Rosa, wait, it’s Dino.”

  “Dino who?” the voice behind the closed shutters said.

  “Dino Dino.”

  “The stone-layer?”

  “Yes, the stone-layer.”

  For a few seconds, silence filled the street again, to be broken once more by that sharp noise of creaking iron, and at last the shutters opened and the pale, lined face of an old woman appeared. The woman was barely tall enough to be seen above the windowsill, and her face, surrounded by a halo of unkempt white hair, was framed in the window like a picture that has been badly hung.

  “Aren’t you ashamed, still playing these stupid jokes at your age?” Rosa said in a low voice.

  When they were boys, after an evening spent in some bar or other, dreaming of women’s breasts and knocking back cheap wine, they would invariably stop in front of Rosa’s window on their way home, throw a few stones or pieces of broken glass or anything else they could find, and when she asked who it was they would all cry, as if it was a password, “Rosa, give us a rose!” and laugh like idiots. Sometimes they even sang a little chorus. It was like a perfect end to a drunken evening, that last idiotic joke which sent them to bed happy, and for some reason, if they didn’t do it, then the day after they would wake up even more hung-over.

  Every time, Rosa would cry “Piss off, you hooligans!” and slam the shutters shut. But the next time, she would still ask who it was.

  Oddly, Rosa had been old even then.

  “No, Rosa, I really do need a rose.”

  “Go home, Dino. And stop drinking, you’re too old for that.”

  “Rosa, I’m as sober as a judge.”

  “Goodnight, Dino.”

  “Rosa, wait, Sofia’s expecting a baby.”

  Rosa had already reached out an arm as thin as a stick towards the shutter. “Really?” she said, looking Dino right in the eyes.

  “Really. She told me this evening.”

  Rosa let go of the shutter and put her arm back behind the windowsill. “Poor woman,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘poor woman’?” Dino said, his smile a little strained for a moment.

  “Well,” Rosa said, “with a husband like you … ”

  “Go to hell, Rosa,” Dino said.

  Rosa’s head gave a little jump in the darkness of the window, and a stifled, barely perceptible giggle briefly filled the silence of the street.

  “Anyway,” Rosa said, “what are you doing walking the streets at this hour and in that condition if your wife is pregnant?”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Of course you’re not,” Rosa said. “Not that it makes any difference.”

  “I don’t know,” Dino said, playing with one of the pieces of glass he was still holding. “It’s just that she told me about the baby and I wasn’t expecting it … They told us we … Then we made other plans … I don’t know, Rosa, I went out to play billiards. And that’s why I’m taking her a rose.”

  Dino and Rosa looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds.

  “What an idiot,” Rosa said. “Wait there and don’t move.”

  For a moment Rosa’s thin little arm reappeared, and a moment later the shutters knocked together, followed immediately by the usual noise of creaking iron.

  Dino stood there, stiffly, a moment or two longer, staring at the wall of the building, then he turned and, still playing with the pieces of glass he had in his hand, went and sat down on the pavement on the other side of the street. It was strange that there was nobody passing tonight—usually groups of youths, or the odd nightbird, gav
e a dash of colour to the streets, but tonight a pall of inertia seemed to have fallen over everything. Maybe people had lost the habit.

  After a while, the rolling shutter of Rosa’s shop started to open, and beneath it two thin little legs appeared, then what looked like an old reddish dressing gown. The shutter rose just over a metre until Rosa’s head appeared. She peered out and looked straight at Dino.

  “Come on, then, delinquent,” Rosa said, motioning to him with a curt gesture of the arm and disappearing again into the darkness behind the shutter.

  Dino leapt to his feet and walked quickly across the road, looking around as if he was about to commit a robbery and someone had opened a back door for him.

  “You shouldn’t open the shutter by yourself,” Dino said when he was inside.