Traitors to All by Giorgio Scerbanenco Read Free Book Online Page B

the Naviglio all the way to Romano Banco, you don’t know what it’s like when someone like my fiancé gets married in a place like that.’ She might have been talking about some tribe in the Mato Grosso. ‘Even the mayor is coming, and tonight there’s actually a lorry full of flowers coming from Sanremo, what do you think of that, all the way from Sanremo! He made me phone Sanremo, to make sure they were coming at the hour he said, at four in the morning, sothat the priest and the people in the oratory will have time to decorate the church. Actually I’d quite like it, if I wasn’t thinking about Silvano.’
    She took a cigarette from her handbag, lit it, took the red dress coat from the chair on which she had thrown it, put it on, still with the cigarette and her lipstick in one hand, and did her lips, looking at herself in the big mirror from the handbag.
    ‘Can I make a phone call?’ she said, pursing her lips.
    ‘In the hall.’ He opened the door for her, switched on the light, and pointed to the phone.
    She dialled the number calmly, right there in front of him. She had no secrets from him: only stupid people bother with secrets, with ciphers and codes and special signals. With her eyes shining, as if she really had slept a whole night, she stood there next to him as she spoke into the phone, and smiled at him, wide awake.
    ‘Ricci’s pastry shop?’ She winked at him. ‘Signor Silvano Solvere, please.’ With the little finger of her right hand she touched the corner of her right eye. ‘That’s the pastry shop that did my wedding cake, they’re delivering it to Romano Banco, it must be taller than I am, it cost two hundred thousand lire, and Silvano has gone there to have a drink and wait for me, it’s where we always meet.’ She stopped the chatter and became serious. ‘Yes, I’ve finished, I’m getting a taxi now.’ And she hung up immediately: Silvano couldn’t have been much of a conversationalist, at least not over the phone.
    ‘Can I call a taxi?’ she asked, being by the phone. ‘I don’t remember the number anymore, do you have a directory?’
    ‘86 71 51,’ he said, and watched as she dialled.
    ‘Imola 4, in two minutes,’ she said, putting the receiver down. Every gesture she made was shameless and vulgar.‘I’m going straight down, thanks for everything.’ She could have been a guest taking her leave after a tea party.
    ‘The case,’ he said. That case, whatever it was, that he had seen as soon as she had appeared in the doorway.
    She stood by the door, looking quite cheerful: she was the kind of woman who came to life after midnight. The hall was so small that looking at her he could see the specks of gold in her violet eyes. She looked wonderful, she looked so good in that red dress coat and those black stockings, she was very Cinemascope, something from a sensationalised, half-fictional investigation into the world of vice:
the photographic model comes out at midnight to go to the brothel from which they’ve just called her.
It wasn’t true, she was actually on her way to get married, he’d patched her up to be a virgin again so that she could get married, but that was the look she had, and as she did not reply, he repeated, ‘The case,’ and pointed to the surgery, where she had left the case, whatever it was.
    ‘It stays here,’ she said.
    Mascaranti must be writing all this down. There was no point, but it did him good.
    ‘Really?’ he said.
    ‘Silvano will come and pick it up tomorrow,’ she said, ‘after the ceremony, because he’s going to be best man.’
    Oh, so Silvano was coming to pick it up. That meant it was Silvano’s case. Why was she leaving it here, was it because it had dirty washing in it and she could trust him with it, or else because it contained something compromising? These people didn’t do anything for no reason. When you live like these people, he thought, there was a reason for looking on the ground rather than up in the air,