way again to the table with the metal pane. His thighs hit the edge and he stopped. Shaking the matches mechanically, as if to make sure they were still there, he opened the box, took out a match and then clenched it with the tips of his fingers for an instant, motionlessly. When he struck it, the light of the match gave out a matte, smoky light.
In front of him lay a woman. Just as he had perceived, the woman was naked, stone-still, with her eyes closed, seemingly sleeping. Sal brought the match’s flame next to her motionless face: a white face, with beautiful, smooth skin, an angular nose and a rather small mouth. There was nothing special about the immobile face and, probably, if he had closed his eyes again now, it would have been impossible to recompose her countenance in his mind.
He looked around. In a corner, there was a pile of floor tiles, some wooden slats and, immediately next to them, a few cardboard boxes and a small chest with broken doors. Sal lit another match and headed to the chest. A petroleum lamp rested on top of the kind his parents had at home and which his father would use whenever there was a power failure. He lifted the part made of glass and lit the snuff; the light grew stronger and the room was enlivened by his shadow on the wall.
He turned his head to look at the table. The woman lying there had long, black hair, carefully combed over her shoulders in a sensible way that contrasted with her cold breasts and her uncovered genitals. He approached her again, put the lamp on the table and took a step back. It was only now that he noticed the walls were gleaming, as if covered by a curtain of water. He wanted to really get a feel of the skin that shimmered unobtrusively in the smoky light of the lamp – to wake up the sleeping woman and ask her what she was doing – but not before sniffing once again the fine, damp skin, not before caressing the stiff breasts that prodded the air.
‘Miss…’ he whispered in a hoarse voice.
She remained silent, unmoving.
Sal lowered his hand to her shoulder, covered in the black hair.
‘Miss!’
A bead of sweat stood hanging on the tips of his eyelashes, distorting his view of the woman into asymmetric shapes.
‘Are you feeling OK? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’
He placed his small, young hand upon her white, smooth-skinned, fine-fingered hand, with red-painted fingernails grown slightly to reveal a pinkish semicircle. Its touch gave Sal the creeps. The woman in front of him either couldn’t feel him or didn’t feel like answering or even opening her eyes. He leaned above her and put his ear to her tightly closed mouth. She wasn’t breathing; everything about her was still. He noticed on a finger of her right hand, hidden behind her body, a black stone, crossed by golden streaks that glittered in the lamp’s light. He lifted her hand and looked at the stone: it was a simple setting, in silver. The ring made him think of Emi – how boyish and hasty she was sometimes and how warm and full of love at other times. Girls lived in a different world altogether. And the lady on the table, with her ring, with her breasts prodding in the air, with her red, overgrown fingernails and the beautifully combed tresses on her shoulders, was, as likely as not, dead – or as dead as a woman as beautiful as she could be.
A cold draught crossed the room, as if all the windows had been opened at once. Sal let go of the woman’s hand and turned toward the door. Then he looked at the lamp, but the flame stood upright in the dark, still throwing its dim light into the room. His whole body was overrun by a wave of heat, accompanied by a pain that gripped his chest. He looked at her again and almost without realising it, he lay down on the table alongside her, draped his arms over her soft flesh, over her damp skin, placed his cheek on her shoulder covered by black tresses – the hair had a herbal smell as well – and the fear, the pain and the cold went away. Never before in his life had he seen such a beautiful woman, such a tantalising nakedness. He hardly felt time pass, but when he sat up the room looked different. He climbed down from the table and rummaged through his pocket to retrieve the penknife and the metal box.
The flame undulated slightly, moving its shadows around. Sal tried the sharpness of the blade, placing its tip against his finger; then, with an unmoving face as if in preparation for an execution, he took hold of her right hand and gripped her ring finger, on which the black stone rested, between his forefinger and thumb. Contemplating the finger, he adjusted it and then started to cut it scrupulously, without even a flinch when the bone gave way. Finally, the finger was severed from the body. Sal put it in the metal box, closed it, and watched the motionless body again.
‘I love you…’
He had started to sober up. He plugged his ears. The summer heat had poured into the basement. From outside he could hear the sound of a racing engine. He took the box, put it into his pocket and dashed out the door, his heart pounding in his chest.
‘I love you…’
The basement smelled bad again, and when he was outside, out of breath, Sal stopped a little and fell to his knees on the burning asphalt. The heat had dried out all traces of rain. And in Sal’s ears, the two words that had been so funny before, giving him butterflies in his stomach, still echoed: ‘I love you…’
II
‘FAREWELL!’
In the summer afternoons, when it is very hot, the neighbourhood seems to be asleep. Yet it is actually all an illusion, because real life runs its course inside the houses, away from the heat, in the shady corners where people stay still for hours on end or move very slowly to preserve their body temperatures. During those afternoons, in which the heat pervaded all living spaces, Emi was bored to death and would have given the world to run about at leisure on the empty streets, alone but for her thoughts. Her body, throbbing in all its joints, didn’t seem to be inconvenienced in any way by the heat but with things as they were, she had to stay inside, pretending to sleep and waiting for the call from Sal that would announce four o’clock. Emi hated to sleep, and that was partly because she had no patience. She felt she was losing precious time which she could have used for thinking or for doing lots of other things. For instance, she could have crept to the attic and from there onto the roof, from where she could have spied any movement up to two blocks away. She could have stayed indefinitely like that, watching people swarming by and passing one another blindly. Up on the plate roof soaked in sunshine, she felt that nobody could know she was there, the small god of the neighbourhood.
She pricked up her ears. Fully dressed, she was sitting up in bed, with her knees drawn to her chin and her toes outstretched. Her forehead rested on her kneecaps, and she scrutinised the streaks in the bed’s upholstery, inside the grooves of the fabric where the threads blended in a secret mesh. She heard the same noise again. Jumping out of bed and rushing to the window, she caught sight of Sal, staring up at her from the pavement below. When he saw Emi, he waved his hand and signalled to her to come down. She opened her window.
‘Why are you so late?’
Sal threw her an outraged look – what did she mean by ‘so late’? It was raining, that’s why.
‘Come down, will you?’
He was late because strange things had been happening to him, things he could talk about with no one but her.
‘In a minute!’
Emi slammed the window shut and dashed to the door. Behind her, a woman’s voice squeaked angrily: ‘Emilia, where are you off to?’
Emi darted through the front door and rushed into the street, bumping against Sal, who was just about to enter. They stopped and gazed at one another for a moment until Sal, happy to see her at last and
