The Break Read online

  “Oh, yes, the billiard parlour,” Duilio said, nodding and trying for a moment to throw Sofia a slight smile.

  Sofia also tried to give a little smile, then for a while all three were silent, Dino and Sofia wiping their plates with hunks of bread and Duilio sipping at his wine.

  “What’s the matter, Duilio?” Dino asked. “Would you prefer it if we were alone?”

  Duilio glanced at Sofia and thought for a moment that it might not be a bad idea, then realised that it didn’t really matter. “I’m quitting, son,” he said.

  Dino and Sofia raised their eyes from their plates and looked at Duilio in surprise, then Dino nodded, which seemed the most natural thing to do.

  As Sofia put the plates in the kitchen sink, she glanced back at the two men. For a moment, a strange mixture of anger and sadness welled up inside her, and she would have given part of herself to help those two men who were trying to come to terms with something that was greater than them. Then she told herself that perhaps it was the baby, and she stopped thinking about it.

  “I’ve been laying stones for forty years,” Duilio said, “first with your poor dad, now with you. You know that. I should have retired before now, but working on the streets kept me company. Not like this, though. I can’t bear to see that black stuff covering everything. I don’t want anything to do with that shit.” He looked up for a moment at Sofia and raised one hand a little. “Sorry, Sofia.”

  “That’s all right,” Sofia said from the kitchenette, giving a slight smile. Dino, still looking at Duilio, ate a piece of bread and sipped his wine.

  “I went to see Giani,” Duilio went on, looking at Dino again, then down at the table. “I asked him how much they owed me if I quit. He told me to wait a minute and went to have a quick word with his secretary, then he came back inside holding a little piece of paper with something scribbled on it. He told me they were rough figures, that it would take a while to make exact accounts and anyway it wasn’t up to them. But he gave me an idea. It wasn’t such a small amount, son. Not huge, but not that small either. I can get by easily enough. Plus, I’ve put a bit aside, and who knows, maybe with the severance pay and the money I can get if I sell my place here in town, I can buy something out of town, in the country. Rita would be happy. Maybe I could get hold of a bit of land and turn it into a vegetable garden. Rita might like a few animals, too. I didn’t think I’d ever leave town, I prefer stone to earth. But now … ”

  He tailed off, his words hanging in mid-air like little balls that he couldn’t get hold of again.

  “Yes I know,” Dino said rolling a piece of soft bread into a ball.

  The two men sat in silence for a while, while behind them Sofia dried the dishes. Dino threw his head back slightly.

  “Do you need a hand?” he asked.

  Sofia glanced at him and finished drying the bowl. “I’ve almost finished,” she said.

  For a few more seconds, Dino sat half-turned towards Sofia, then he turned and looked down at the table again, then up at Duilio.

  “Saeed’s going, too,” he said.

  “Yes, I know,” Duilio said.

  “He’s going back to bricklaying.”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “He’s doing the right thing.”

  “Yes, he’s doing the right thing,” Duilio said, taking another sip of wine.

  A few days earlier, Saeed had gone up to Dino as they were working and asked him if they could talk for a moment. He had told him that some time earlier he had met his old foreman, who had recently started his own construction company and needed a bricklayer.

  “I say no at first. Tell him I got good job with good people. But now … I want to work with stone and earth, not sticky black stuff like devil’s sick.”

  Dino had put one hand over the other and looked into Saeed’s sad eyes. “You’re doing the right thing, Saeed. Don’t worry.”

  Then they had gone back to work, and every stone had seemed to weigh a few more kilos than usual.

  “I’m sorry,” Duilio said, and took a last sip from his glass.

  Dino looked up at that old man he had seen laying stones for as long as he could remember. He stared at him for a while, trying to hold back the memories. “What for?” he said. “You’re doing the right thing, Duilio. I’d do the same if I could. It’s just that I don’t know anything else. Plus, there’s the baby on the way. What can I do?”

  “I know, son,” Duilio said. “Don’t worry. Things will work out, you’ll see.” With a bit of difficulty, he rose from the chair.

  Dino nodded to himself, staring at his two hands as they played with the soft piece of bread.

  “I’m off,” Duilio said, again holding the hat with both hands. “It’s getting late.”

  Dino looked up at Duilio, as if surprised, and after a moment got to his feet. Duilio waved goodbye to Sofia, then let Dino walk him to the door. They hugged, then Duilio looked Dino straight in the eyes and smiled slightly and gave him a pat on the cheek.

  “Cheer up, son,” Duilio said. “And try to stay well.”

  “Yes, you too,” Dino said, and watched as Duilio put his hat back on with both hands and walked away, his back stooped, down the dimly lit corridor.

  Chapter Eleven

  THAT VILE BEAST APPEARED at the end of the street, puffing and shaking. A gigantic mouth full of black steaming sludge gaped open, as if stupefied, with pieces of tar dripping from it like some demonic slime. As the beast advanced, it was as if someone was twisting its guts with a pair of pliers, making it creak and groan with pain, forcing it to squeeze out into the sky that smoke as dense and black as effluent from the sewers. As it came closer, it gradually slowed down and sank into itself, hissing and blowing white steam from its ears. It gave a final belch, and a lump of black sludge rolled down one side of its foaming mouth and settled on the rest of the steaming heap.

  Dino and Blondie were standing side by side, wearing those embarrassing blue uniforms which made them look like puppets. Next to them stood a man as broad as a chest of drawers, with a rust-red beard and hair and two swollen hands that looked harder than anvils, also wearing that ungainly blue uniform. He had a flat nose that looked as if someone had squashed it, and his eyes were slightly narrow, as if someone was pulling them from the sides.

  “That’s Molly,” the red-haired man said, his mouth turning up slightly in a smile.

  Blondie turned and looked for a moment at the red-haired man with barely concealed disgust, then spat on the ground and again looked straight ahead. “Shit,” he said.

  The vile beast gave one last jolt, shaking itself thoroughly, then all at once went to sleep, and all that was left in the air was the smoke from its slime and the harsh, nauseating miasma that hit you in the nose and turned your stomach.

  From the back of the beast, a thin, curly-haired man emerged and slowly walked down a little flight of steps to street level.

  “That’s Carlo,” the red-haired man said, watching as the other man reached the ground and started towards them. “He’s in charge of Molly.”

  The thin, curly-haired man gave the beast a last satisfied look as he passed it, and even moved his hand over it. “Well?” he said, almost yelling, as he approached, looking back contentedly at the beast. “How do you like my baby?”

  Dino and Blondie looked again at that foul monster and that fetid mouth and that steaming black sludge and those lumps of tar.

  “Well … ” Dino said.

  Blondie looked at Carlo as if he wanted to punch him, but said nothing.

  “Hi, I’m Carlo,” Carlo said when he was level with them, smiling and holding out his hand.

  “I’m Dino,” Dino said.

  Blondie held out his hand, but only that—he didn’t say a word.

  Carlo looked up at the sky. A few snow-white clouds were peeping out from behind the roofs, making the sky bluer than usual. “Lovely day,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and breathing in great mouthfuls of air. “Smell that ai
r,” he said.

  Dino and Blondie exchanged surprised glances, wondering if he was pulling their legs.

  “Well, now,” Carlo said, turning back to look at them. “They say you’ve never laid asphalt before. Is that right?”

  Dino and Blondie nodded without saying a word.

  “It’s a walk in the park, you’ll see. Molly tips the asphalt onto the road. We just have to spread it as smoothly as we can, then we go over it a few times with the roller and it’s all done. A bit different from those bloody stones, isn’t it?” He gave Dino a pat on the shoulder and winked.

  Dino looked at his shoulder as if something had got stuck to it, then looked at Carlo and put a hand in front of Blondie, who had already sprung forward like an animal.

  “Hey,” Carlo said, taking a step back, still smiling. “Me and you best friends. OK?”

  The red-haired man took a step back from Dino and Blondie. “What’s the matter?” he asked, looking gravely at Blondie, who couldn’t somehow get his jaw to slacken.

  “It’s all right,” Dino said to the red-haired man, but without taking his hand off Blondie’s chest. “It’s been a long few days.” He turned, looked Blondie straight in the eyes and forced him to calm down.

  “It’s nice to know I’ll be working with good people,” Carlo said, rubbing his hands. “All right,” he went on as he turned and went back towards the beast. “Go and get the shovels from behind Molly. As soon as the roller gets here we’ll start.”

  Blondie and the red-haired man looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds, then both spat on the ground and walked with Dino towards the beast.

  As it turned out, the red-haired man wasn’t such a bad guy. He called himself Johnny. Apparently a friend of his had started calling him that one day because, he said, he looked like a foreign biker, and the name had stuck.

  “Nothing wrong with it,” Johnny had said, tearing off a large piece from his roll.

  “No,” Dino had said, with a half-laugh. “Nothing wrong with it.”

  Blondie had not said anything, although his jaw had been almost completely relaxed for a few days now.

  Dino’s days were enlivened by Johnny’s curses and Carlo’s jokes, then in the evening after work, as usual, he went to the billiard parlour to lose his game with Cirillo, who would watch him with a slightly puzzled look on his face, from the other side of the table.

  Later, after dinner, Dino would stretch out on the sofa or the bed with Sofia. It was nice to see his wife’s belly grow like a dome from day to day. He had learnt to love that hemisphere of flesh, like a hill where, or so it seemed to him, all the roads he couldn’t find any more in his dreams somehow met.

  All in all, things seemed almost normal, and those curses, those jokes, those games and above all that dome on Sofia’s belly seemed almost to give a meaning to days spent endlessly spreading that putrid black sticky sludge that assaulted your nose.

  It’s a strange thing, but in the end man is a malleable animal, and somehow adapts, however reluctantly, to the roughest of surfaces, just as, day by day, that black cancer swallowed up the unknown order of the stones.

  At first, Dino had thought he would never get used to it. As that first small load of steaming black bitumen descended on his stones and swallowed them like death, it had seemed to him as if the world as he had known it until then had come to an end. At the very moment when that that black muck had touched the ground, a solid, stinking lump had come away from Dino’s throat and had slid slowly, with a lot of pain and retching, deep down into his stomach and had filled him with a nausea which he knew, even though he had only had the merest hint of it so far, would never go away again. And in that same moment, a crack had appeared, and something in the mechanism of his life had jammed. He was alive, he was surviving, but none of the things that had kept him going were working the way they had. There was no more air to breathe, there were no more dreams or systems of universes or roads with an incomprehensible order that led to fantastic or extraordinary places, there was only a uniform, all-pervading, necrotic expanse of black sludge which made everything disappear in the flash of an eye.

  And yet, like a steam engine with hidden pistons and pumps, Dino had, to his own surprise, managed to keep going despite everything.

  Chapter Twelve

  TALKING ABOUT IT LATER, some people were willing to swear they had actually heard the blast. Maybe because when these things happen everybody wants to grab a bit of the limelight, as if for a few moments they feel they somehow must play a role.

  Cirillo had had a few things to sort out with Sandro, and had told Dino to go to the table in the meantime and take out the cue, and he would be with him soon.

  “OK,” Dino had said. “I’d like to shoot a few balls for myself anyway.”

  Cirillo had nodded, and Dino had walked as usual towards the far end of the room, calmly taken off his sweater, and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and as he was starting to bend his left wrist towards his elbow his eye had fallen on a small bitumen stain on the back of his thumb. He scratched it with the nail of his fourth finger and saw it clear slightly, then raised his hand to his nose and sniffed. For a moment, he was again overwhelmed by the smell that surrounded him all day, that hot sour smell of tar, which seemed to stick to him like flypaper. He had washed his hands five times after work, but those damned tar stains just wouldn’t go away. He finished rolling up his shirtsleeve and walked to the display case next to the table, opened it, took out the Arlecchino, took a piece of chalk from the edge of the table, rubbed it between his forefinger and his thumb and then gave a few little strokes to the tip of the cue. Then he turned towards the table—some of the pins were down, but Dino didn’t take any notice. He placed the point of the cue on the white ball, hit it, then picked it up with two fingers and dropped it into his T-shirt, which he was holding out with his other hand, cleaned it properly and put it back on the table. He lifted the cue and again placed the tip of it against the ball and pushed the ball until it was more or less in the middle of his part of the table. He then leant over the table, made a bridge with his fingers, placed the cue over it and, moving the wrist of his right hand slightly from side to side, calmly sized up the shot. Then he let his arm go and the cue hit the ball, which rolled calmly towards the opposite cushion, rebounded off it and came back to the spot from which it had started. Dino was still leaning over the green baize, as if he had not yet made the shot, and watched the ball closely as it returned to its position. Usually when he was in a good mood, this was the moment when he smiled. It always created a certain impression, seeing the ball come back to its original position, it was as if, all at once, things fitted into place, as if despite everything there was a free zone in which things found their true level. But that evening, he didn’t feel like smiling. In fact, when he saw the ball come back to its place, he felt a strange sense of unease which he couldn’t quite pin down.

  He did not move and for a few seconds looked at the ball sitting there, motionless, in front of the tip of his cue, then again started moving the wrist of his right hand and, as naturally as ever, let the cue go until it hit the ball, which as usual rolled towards the opposite cushion and came back to the point from which it had started. Again, Dino stood motionless, looking at the ball as it sat there, also motionless, a few centimetres from the tip of his cue, then as if something didn’t feel right he tilted his head slightly to one side and gave a little frown.

  It was at that moment that a cry echoed through the room. “They planted a bomb in the town hall!”

  Dino turned his head abruptly towards the entrance— Rafferto, whose father owned the cold-meat shop, was on the stairs, leaning down, probably holding himself on the banisters, with a kind of amused half-smile in his eyes.

  “They planted a what?” someone cried, running towards the exit.

  “A bomb!” Rafferto replied, already disappearing up the stairs.

  Dino and someone who was playing at the next table got to their feet and looke
d at each other, frowning slightly, then, without putting down their cues, started walking towards the back of the room.

  Four or five of them ended up standing out in the street, at the entrance to the billiard parlour. A few people were passing as if nothing had happened, while others were walking quickly or even running in the direction of the town hall. Dino and Cirillo looked at each other and frowned. For some reason, Dino thought that it was strange to be out here with his cue in his hand, as if they were inseparable.

  After a few minutes, Marcello, the shoemaker, went by in the opposite direction.

  “Hey!” Cirillo cried.

  “Hi,” Marcello said.

  “Well?”

  “You mean the town hall?”

  “Yes,” Cirillo said.

  Marcello shrugged and gave a little laugh. “Nothing much,” he said. “A couple of broken windows. We did more damage throwing stones when we were kids.”

  Cirillo and Dino both laughed.

  “But was it really a bomb?” Cirillo cried.

  Marcello, who had already moved on a bit, turned for a moment. “So they say,” he replied, walking backwards for a few steps. Then he raised his hand to wave goodbye and continued on his way.

  Dino and Cirillo also raised their arms, then looked at each other again and shrugged their shoulders as Marcello had done, and after a minute or two went back into the billiard parlour and carried on with their game.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT HAD NOW BEEN several months since Dino and Blondie had stopped laying stones in the ground and started swimming in those rivers of black sludge. Dino, Johnny and Blondie were sitting calmly at a table in a café with glasses in front of them, watching the people passing, with the top half of their uniforms tied around their waists and the vague impression of being on holiday.

  Blondie would never remember how they had ended up talking about that, nor perhaps, if he had thought about it, would Dino. It was one of those conversations you have as you watch people passing by, full of pauses and clichés, things that are said and then forgotten. But they would never forget the way Johnny laughed, especially Dino. That laugh seemed to come from another world, or directly from hell, and it hit that little café table like a rock. For a moment, it even seemed to Dino and Blondie that Johnny’s face had been twisted into the shape of some unknown animal’s.