A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbanenco Read Free Book Online Page A

And he didn’t get one.

4
    Even in Milan, the sun rises every now and again. It had risen that morning, there was a reddish glow on the top floors of the buildings, people were already panting with the heat. He parked the Giulietta in the Piazza Leonardo da Vinci. ‘Let’s go and see my sister. She should be awake, the baby has her first feed at six.’
    The mammoth fifteenth-century door, in marked contrast to the modesty of the building, was closed, but he didn’t even look at the door, he whistled and Lorenza appeared at the window on the first floor with her child in her arms.
    ‘I didn’t think I’d heard right, I wasn’t expecting you at this hour,’ Lorenza said, throwing him down the keys.
    ‘This is a friend of mine, make us some coffee.’ He led Davide up the short flight of stairs. ‘The apartment is old and small, and has a double supply of cockroaches, they come in from the street and also the courtyard. We won’t be here long, though.’
    Lorenza was on the landing, with the child in her arms. She was in dark pyjamas and her shoulder-length hair was gathered into a ponytail by a common elastic band.
    Duca took the child in his arms and made the introductions, by pure chance Sara wasn’t soaking wet. ‘Has she already done it or is she about to?’ he asked Lorenza.
    ‘She’s done it, I only just changed her.’ Lorenza’s dark eyes were looking at him happily, she even looked happilyat Davide. It was her way of looking at life: even when she came to see him in prison she looked at him like that, she talked to him like that, in that happy voice: ‘The lawyer says everything’s going to be fine.’
    ‘Then I’ll hold her, and come with you to the kitchen while you make the coffee.’ He turned to Davide, who was sitting motionless on a rickety chair. ‘Excuse me, Davide, I’ll be right back.’ In the kitchen, he walked up and down with Sara in his arms: she was a quiet child, as long as she was in someone’s arms, otherwise she screamed as if her throat was being cut.
    ‘My cigarettes are in the right-hand pocket of my jacket.’
    Lorenza took them out, lit one, and put it between his lips.
    ‘In the left-hand pocket I have a cheque and some money. Take all the money and leave me the cheque.’
    As she took all the notes from his jacket pocket, Lorenza turned pensive. She put them in a drawer in the kitchen table and lit the gas under the already prepared coffee maker. ‘What is this, Duca?’
    ‘It’s an advance for my job.’ He blew the smoke in the opposite direction from the child. ‘It’s a job I’m able to do, don’t worry, Carrua found it for me. I may not be able to come and see you for a while, that’s why I came today.’ And also to give her the money: on the baby’s high chair there was a roll, a sign that Lorenza had not been able to buy the Plasmon biscuits she usually got.
    ‘But what is it you have to do?’ Lorenza had become more fearful about things since Duca had been in prison,since their dad had died, since she had found herself alone and the doctor had told her one day that in his opinion she was pregnant. Fear made her large, beautiful mouth narrow a little.
    Without going into too much detail, he explained what he was supposed to do with the young man who was in the other room, and they went back in there with the coffee and found him where they had left him. Duca kept the child in his arms for the rest of the visit, it was a risk because if Sara decided to pass water it could well ruin his new suit, his only suit, but Sara’s little hand around his neck and the other hand feeling for his nose, her laughing blue eyes, her stammering of a few syllables, were worth it: it was a calculated risk. In the meantime he was watching Davide, but there wasn’t much to see. The lack of alcohol made him even more alien to this everyday world. He had even stopped answering questions, except with a smile or a nod of the head, and he was also a little pale: he