Cockpit (12 page)

“Oh, it’s you,” he murmured.

“You prescribed pills and tablets and capsules for me. I took them all.”

“Did they make you ill?”

“Not even that. They have done absolutely nothing.”

“You wake up an old man to tell him that? I warned you not to expect a miracle.”

I lowered my voice. “The miracle I expected is here, but the drugs that were supposed to help me worship it do not work.”

“There are other ways of worshiping a miracle.”

“They come later. Now I need the one enjoyed by the village peasants you and I left behind.”

“If that’s what you need, call these peasants instead of me. I can do nothing more to help you.” He hung up.

As she returned from the bathroom, she overheard the final words of conversation. I apologized for making a business call. “What language were you speaking?” she asked.

“Ruthenian. It’s the language of the peasants I lived among as a boy.”

She threw her clothes over a chair, put her necklace on the night table and turned off the light. I lay with my eyes open, listening to her breathe.

We got up early. She seemed at ease but slightly withdrawn. Her eyes were distant, but she still attempted to make conversation.

“Where did you get those boots?” she asked.

“I made them myself.”

“Really?”

“As a boy, I worked with a shoemaker. Every few months, I select leathers and pay a shoe repair shop for the use of the equipment after hours. I now have three or four pairs of shoes and boots that fit perfectly.”

“Why don’t you get them custom-made?”

“I prefer making them myself.”

“Do you always have a reason for everything you do?”

“Always,” I replied. “Custom-made by me.”

She hardly touched her breakfast and asked me to call a taxi to take her to the airport earlier than I knew was necessary. When I started to object, she placed her fingers over my lips. We embraced. She walked to the door, and, just before closing it, turned back to me and said, “God spare beautiful women from men with imagination.” Then she was gone.

Soon after her departure, the floor maid, alerted by the concierge, came to collect her tip. She asked me why my wife had left before me, and I replied she had been notified of a death in her family and had to return to our home that morning.

During the afternoon, I was too preoccupied with business to brood about what had happened. Just as I returned to my hotel to change, the phone rang. I lifted the receiver, expecting a business associate; instead, the concierge said it was Madame Leuwen calling long-distance. Sounding desperate, she told me I must listen very carefully.

She had packed so hurriedly, she said, that she had forgotten her diamond necklace, which she must have left on the night table in her hotel room. She pleaded with me to retrieve it immediately and to arrange an absolutely safe way of delivering it to her.

“What if the necklace has already been stolen?” I asked.

“That would be the end of everything,” she said.

“Why?”

“Once I report it missing, the insurance company will make a thorough investigation. The police and possibly even Interpol may become involved. They will drag you into it. The press will seize on the affair, and my husband’s political future …” She faltered.

“What is the value of that necklace?” I asked.

“It’s insured for over three-quarters of a million dollars.”

“I’d better get moving,” I said. “How do I get in touch with you?”

“Call me at home. My husband won’t be back until tonight. But please …” Her voice broke. “Please find it.”

I looked around my room, uncertain where to begin. From now on, if the jewels were not found I would be a prime suspect. I could see the headlines in the newspapers. My removal from Service. My trial. The end of her marriage.

As soon as I arrived at the Hotel de La Mole, the reception manager recognized me as Madame Leuwen’s travel agent.

“Was Madame pleased with the accommodations?” he asked.

“Delighted,” I said. “She hopes to visit you again soon. Meanwhile, I want to pick up a necklace she left in her room.”

“Let me check,” he said, disappearing into his office. During his absence, it seemed that my life hung on that necklace, but he came back all smiles. “The floor maid found the necklace and locked it away in the second-floor vault. I told her that you will be right up to sign for it.”

I thanked him, and handed him a large tip.

The maid recognized me as Monsieur Leuwen. “I just had a call from the reception desk that your travel agent is on the way here. What a coincidence!” she exclaimed.

I noticed her for the first time. She was in her late forties, a tall, powerfully built woman with uneven skin pigmentation and a high-pitched, resonant voice.

“I’m here to pick up the necklace,” I said.

“Of course, Monsieur. But since your travel agent is apparently also on his way, let me check with the manager to make sure …”

When she reached for the phone, I removed her hand from the receiver. “There’s no one else coming. To some, I am a travel agent. To others, a husband.” I reached into my pocket and handed her a roll of bills. She took the
money, counted it carefully, then, giving me a knowing look, handed me a rectangular package. “Please check it, Monsieur. And if everything is in order, please sign for it.” She passed me a receipt.

I opened the package. Now that it was found, the glittering necklace seemed so trifling. I wrapped it up again, signed the paper, and hired an insurance courier to deliver the necklace.

My business in Paris ended. I packed a small suitcase and drove aimlessly through the countryside. I ate in small local restaurants and stayed at out-of-the-way inns in solitary villages. I left by dawn every day and was well on my way by the time the sun had risen over the fields. I crossed the border into Italy and kept on driving. A gust of southern wind brought me the smell of manure mixed with the acrid odor of factories and mines. Soon it began to rain. After the downpour, the splotched fields were like stained glass windows, full of multicolored pools. Behind them, rotted by the poison of industrial waste, the woods looked gray and barren.

I drove on. In the rearview mirror, I saw a man in a small car coming up behind me. He was wearing a white shirt, a jacket and tie. He honked his horn ceaselessly and revved the engine to indicate he was in a hurry. I slowed down to let him overtake me. He took off, glaring at me as he passed.

An hour later, I saw a crowd gathered on the highway and stopped to see what had happened. The little car that passed me had hit a highway pole and been ripped in two, like an envelope torn apart by an impatient hand. Out of it fell scraps of flesh and crushed bones, jagged metal and broken glass.

I picked up my camera and began to take photographs. The crowd of bystanders said nothing to me but stared as I moved around the remains of the body taking pictures. I got back into my car and drove off.

As dusk fell, I stopped in a small town, checked into an
inn, changed and went for a stroll. I walked idly through street after street, past broken-down houses surrounded by wooden fences, delapidated villas with iron gates, whitewashed churches and cheap, prefabricated apartment complexes.

Slowly the streets emptied of pedestrians. Occasional cars roared down the road, and the drivers shouted to the streetwalkers, who pretended to ignore them.

One of the whores, who was dressed in a raincoat open to her waist, called me. I approached her.

“They call me Fiammetta. Don’t you want Fiammetta’s love?” she asked.

I looked at her exaggerated make-up, at her full breasts pushed up by a tight corset, at the silver stockings and black patent leather shoes. “Maybe I do,” I said. “How much does it cost?”

She looked me over, quoted the price and waited expectantly. “Is it too much for you?” she asked.

“It’s reasonable. What do you do for the money?”

She smiled, exposing large white teeth. “I do everything. Everything.” Then she reflected. “Except, not inside.”

I wasn’t certain what she meant. “Only outdoors?” I asked.

She laughed politely, as if I had made a joke. “Of course not, you stupid man. In a hotel. The room is included in the price. It has electric lights and even a basin to wash yourself.”

“But you said ‘not inside,’ ” I persisted.

“You can do everything with me,” she emphasized, “but not inside.” She glanced down at herself.

“Even if I wear a rubber?” I asked.

“Even if you wear a rubber,” she replied.

“But what if I like to be inside?”

“What for?” She raised her voice. “I can undress very slowly for you. I walk naked for you. I touch you. You touch me.” She began to unbutton the rest of her raincoat,
revealing that she wore only a corset. “With Fiammetta’s body, you come like an explosion …”

“But not inside?”

“Not inside,” she reaffirmed.

I paused. “What if, to go inside, I pay you three times as much as you asked?”

“I told you: no inside.”

“If I pay you five times as much?”

“No inside.”

“Ten times?”

“No inside, no matter what you pay.” Then she threw up her hands in exasperation. “What kind of man are you? Why inside? Nothing special there.”

“I’ll look for another girl,” I said.

She stood with her legs apart, inhaling deeply to expose her breasts even more. “In this town, no street girl goes inside,” she insisted.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’ll show you. Fornarina! Fornarina!” she screamed at a woman who stood near us. “This one here,” she pointed at me, “wants to pay ten times as much to go inside. How about inside, Fornarina?”

“No inside,” Fornarina shouted back.

“Amorrorisca! Amorrorisca,” she yelled to a woman across the street. “For ten times the price, he wants inside.”

“No inside,” yelled Amorrorisca.

“Ask any girl. Go ahead; ask Selvaggia, ask Gradisca, ask Alcina, anyone …” She gave me a withering look and left me for another man.

I walked on into the night and each time I passed a girl, I stopped.

“Ten times your price if I go inside?” I proposed.

They all gave me cold, haughty looks. “No inside,” every one of them sputtered, looking at me with contempt. Soon others learned about my predilection and jeered, “No inside,” even before I propositioned them.

I moved to another section of town, and approached a much older woman. “I want to go inside,” I said. “I’ll pay ten times your price.”

“No inside,” she said, wagging her finger at me.

“But you are on the street,” I said.

“I am. That’s why I do everything you ask for. Just like that!” She snapped her fingers. “You don’t need inside.”

“But I want inside,” I said.

“Go north. There the women go inside, because they don’t know how to excite men.”

“But why won’t you?” I persisted.

She came closer. “I am a virgin,” she said. “One day I take the money I make here and go way down south, back to my family. I want to marry a nice man. His family will suspect me. They will check me with their fingers to see if I am still a virgin. Only when I marry a man I love, he goes inside. Not before.”

I recall the whores and the incident at La Mole as vividly as if I had been in Paris two days ago, in Italy yesterday. Though I wish now I could forget the Paris incident, and wonder why I remember the whores so clearly, I can’t free myself from either memory.

When I was ten, a psychologist visiting my secondary school gave me a routine memory test. She was astonished by its results and arranged for me to be tested by a group of psychologists. They showed me pages of technical jargon and statistics, complex drawings, film strips and dozens of photographs. Careful to question me on different days, they would ask me to describe what I had seen, to identify fragments of films and photographs, to extend a single curved line from a drawing or to recall the precise location of a particular face in a photograph of a crowd. After extensive testing, they concluded that I retained whatever I concentrated on, but they warned me to memorize only useful information. Otherwise, my mind would become an overcrowded attic, steadily but unselectively storing up everything
I saw. One day, they added, the attic might collapse, wrecking the house beneath.

I began to experiment with my memory. I found that it automatically intensified while I slept. If I misplaced something, such as a set of keys, I took a nap. It was as if I were dreaming a film about losing the keys that was being run backward in slow motion. By the time I woke up, I recalled where I had left them. During exam periods, when my fellow students were staying up all night to study, I slept, to their disgust, twice as much as usual. In my sleep I reviewed all the texts which I had originally only skimmed, and by exam time had total recall of all the necessary material.

At the university, I enrolled in three separate degree programs, in the humanities and sciences, and took all available electives. Often, when asked questions in oral examinations, I took more time than I actually needed to answer. Carefully watched by those professors anxious to expose my ignorance, or my system of cheating, I produced correct answers only when I was sure they expected I did not know them.

Since my childhood, I have learned to guard my memory from becoming overloaded with unnecessary data. I have developed a set of mental exercises that prevent me from concentrating involuntarily on useless details. When I don’t use the method and, for instance, allow myself to look at people on a subway, I instinctively memorize every detail of their features, coloring and expression, the clothes they wear and what they are carrying.

In searching out ways to make use of my memory, I occasionally help friends engaged in scholarly research. Many years ago, one of them was preparing an extensive critical study of a certain author, whose every work he had to read. I told my friend I had devised a program of speed-reading and memory-training that I wanted to test by skimming everything the writer had published. In order to evaluate my method effectively, I needed to know what to
look for in various texts. My friend thought I was joking, but proceeded to give me a list of the writers’ favorite topics and ideas.