The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (108 page)

The director of the language school cleared her throat throughout the viewing. She spoke softly with the two policemen, then directly addressed Yee Jan in English.

‘This isn’t the first time. I think the film, it’s possible, is making things worse.’

Yee Jan sucked the skin on his knuckles – which film? Did she mean the movie they were shooting on the seafront? The policemen didn’t appear to care and he wondered at how Italians seemed to love their uniforms, however stupid they appeared wearing them because they always looked a size too small and were over-dressed in ornament. Just dumb.

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘No. Most of the people who come, come only once. And sometimes, once they’re here, they wait for a while. It’s not clear why, exactly.’ But this time there was a complaint from one of the students about a man waiting outside, and when the secretary checked the tapes, she noticed it was the same man coming time after time. ‘We don’t know for how long.’

Yee Jan sat forward, and repeated his question. ‘Why is he here?’

The director shifted back in her seat. ‘There isn’t much we can do. It’s a public street. There is the sign outside. Every time something comes out in the newspapers or a book – and now this film – we have people who come to the school, they go to the palazzo on via Capasso, then they come here to look at the sign outside. I have asked them to take down the sign. But I don’t think it would make a difference.’

It sounded to Yee Jan like this would be the preferred option. Take down the sign, rename the school. Easy.

‘Why is he following me?’

‘Was. He was following you. This footage is from last week. He hasn’t come back this week.’

‘So why was he following me?’

At this the director looked deeply pained. ‘Because,’ she answered carefully, ‘one of the people who disappeared was one of our students. A Japanese student.’

Yee Jan nodded, he knew the story. ‘I’m American. The features are Korean.’

‘I don’t understand it either. But it’s always the same. People are curious. It’s an unfortunate mistake. I think this is what happens when an idea spreads. I think someone has seen you and just become fascinated with the idea.’

While the error was just about plausible – in a general sense – it was a simple fact that Yee Jan looked nothing like a Japanese housewife, not even close. In any case, Yee Jan had shown utmost sensitivity for the first couple of weeks at the school over the issue of his mannerisms and his clothes, and toned everything down. He’d kept to a simple wardrobe of dark T-shirts and black jeans. Although he sometimes changed after lessons, not one person from the school had seen him. Only slowly, over several weeks (and the difference becoming more noticeable this week), had he allowed himself to relax, to return to being human, feminine; his body becoming less constricted, his gestures broader, larger, and he’d started wearing a few more bangles, a little more make-up. He’d began to laugh again, that double laugh, the supple ripple that underscored and lit up conversations, and that coarse horny bellow that singled him out of any crowd. Yee Jan’s laughter was a gift given generously. He began to address himself in the third person when he was forgetful, or if he made a mistake. He began calling the boys
girlfriend
,
girl
,
ragazza
, or sometimes
she
, in a manner which suggested affection, and enjoyed making a mess of the genders in class to amuse himself, his tutors, the other students.

It was possible with his black hair, the occasional clasp, the eyeshadow, the hint of eye-liner (nothing even close to the amount of make-up he wore at home), the plucked eyebrows, his mannerisms (that lazy, sexy walk, those smooth gestures where his hands followed one beat behind every motion), his height, his skinniness, that he could be mistaken for a girl – a girl – but not, no way, a middle-aged Japanese housewife.

There were too many questions. Did this man follow him because he looked the type – Asian and petite? Did the man have some kind of problem with his sight, or was he crazy? Was he certain about his choice, or did he consider, vacillate, become certain then uncertain? How long did he follow? Did he come all the way to Vomero, door to door, or did he give up at the
funiculare
? Did he intend to harm him? Or was it something else? Yee Jan had seen in movies how a slight gesture made without deliberate intention could fashion a whole world of consequences, happenstances, and while he didn’t believe that this would occur in life, he wanted to know if the man believed that he had given him a signal, a please follow me? In any case: how curious was he, this man who wore jackets in the middle of the summer?

The police had a slightly different idea. Some of the people who came to the palazzo were from families with missing people. Since the disappearance of the first victim, and possibly because he wasn’t identified, the case had brought the attention of almost everyone who had lost someone. There were forty-five similar cases in the region, of people who had just gone missing without any indication or any obvious plan or prior warning. The case was a touchstone, and sometimes people came to the palazzo or the school in the faint hope that there would be some kind of discovery or realization. Yee Jan found this unbearable.

The director said she didn’t know what to do, because there wasn’t really much that could be done. They had debated whether they should let Yee Jan know, and thought it sensible to see if he recognized the man. ‘But really . . . other than that . . .’ She raised her hands in submission.

The police asked him to watch the images again, just to make sure, and this time, Yee Jan noticed some differences. The clothes were the same, the baseball cap, the jacket, the hand to his cap, the same hand to his face. Yee Jan asked for the images to be replayed. Now he was used to the idea, something didn’t quite fit. There was a something else, a piece they hadn’t shown him on the first viewing where the man had made some kind of gesture to the camera above the door. It looked like sign language, he couldn’t tell, being brief and perfunctory it passed almost without remark.

‘It’s a wasp.’ The director dismissed the gesture before Yee Jan could say anything.

‘That isn’t the same man.’ He cocked his head to think. ‘Look.’ He pointed at the monitor. ‘They aren’t the same. Their shoulders, this one is smaller, he’s a little shorter and he isn’t so broad.’

The policemen couldn’t see it.

‘His hand. He has a ring on the second day and not on the third.’

They all leaned toward the monitor. Yee Jan was right. On the second day the man was clearly wearing a wedding ring, on the third day he was not.

‘It isn’t the same man. I’m telling you.’

The police struggled to see the difference, but once the idea was suggested they couldn’t claim to be certain that it was the same figure on all three occasions.

‘It’s all right.’ Yee Jan gathered up his bag. ‘It’s happened before. I’m used to it, kind of. Seriously, I know what to do if there’s any trouble.’ Yee Jan pushed back the chair. The police shuffled to their feet but looked only at the director.

‘I – we – want you to know that you are safe.’

Yee Jan didn’t understand.

‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean? You said this was nothing.’

The director corrected herself. ‘The police have been keeping an eye on the school, and they –’ she indicated the police, ‘want you to know that you are safe.’

‘Do you mean I’m being followed?’

The director shifted her weight. ‘You were,’ she said, ‘but they don’t think there’s any need any more. It has been a week.’

Yee Jan’s friends waited at the
alimentari
. When he came out of the school he looked first to the wall knowing that this was where the men had waited, then crossed the alley to the broader piazza in a skittish hurry – and it was easy to allow the sunlight, the promise of waiting friends, their expectation of news, and such strange news also, to diffuse the threat he felt. He knew that if he could talk this through a good few times he would be able to wrap the event in a protective shell, reform it as a harmless anecdote. Stranger still was the idea that he had been monitored by the police but had no idea about it. Yee Jan looked about the palazzo, but could not see anyone in uniform, or anyone who looked like the police.

The news came out in a flood. A single explanation delivered standing at the head of the table. He held his hands up against the flurry of questions, ordered a beer, then sat down.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’m losing my touch. He wasn’t interested in me. He didn’t want me. He wanted an ancient Japanese hausfrau.’ Yee Jan shuddered and whispered to Keiko. ‘It’s so insulting. Epic eyesight fail.’

No, he didn’t know what this man / these men, wanted, except to look, that it was probably some pathetic kind of curiosity that brought the lame and the inadequate to the language-school doors. They wanted to know about the Japanese student, the housewife, that’s why they were there. It wasn’t really much of a mystery, just people who had nothing better to do, and no other accident to gawp at. And it was all so last week.

‘Aren’t you frightened?’

‘No. I mean, maybe if I’d known about it, then yes, but I had no idea. And there’s nothing to be frightened of.’

The woman who asked the question was French, and she sat low in her seat with her arms folded, making herself as small as she possibly could. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘This place isn’t safe.’

Yee Jan saved the best piece of information till last. ‘I had an escort. All last week. And I didn’t even know it. I had police, secret police, following me just in case. Who knows, maybe they’re still here?’

On the
funiculare
back to Vomero, Yee Jan scanned the commuters, and wondered how many of these people, just out of curiosity, had walked by the language school at some point, just to place it, to know exactly where the school was located; to confirm for themselves that this was the very same sign they had seen a hundred thousand other times. He looked for a man with a baseball hat, a lightweight summer coat, but found no likely candidate. He looked among the passengers for someone who might be a policeman, and again found none, everyone looking so tired, so fed up and everyday he couldn’t imagine any one of them rushing to his aid if things got sticky. What worried him most wasn’t the current threat that some stalker might be after him – but that he hadn’t noticed. The whole event had come and gone and he’d known nothing about it.

Yee Jan decided to overhaul his look. He rose early and made sure he was first into the bathroom, where he washed his hair, then spent an hour sitting at the end of his bed waiting for it to dry with his make-up laid out. It was time, he decided, to do the whole business. He wedged a small hand mirror between the slats of the window shutter, and as he prepared himself he occasionally paused and looked out at the city, at the backs of apartments and closed metal shutters, over rooftops busy with aerials and satellite dishes. He took out the clothes he’d thought too risky to wear, and thought that unworn, as loose items without specific shape, the blousy almost translucent shirt, the chequered neckerchief, the mini-skirt (tartan, naturally), the chain-link belt from which hung raccoon-like tails, the black herringbone stockings, the patent-leather black Mary Janes, were nothing, literally nothing, elements of something perhaps, but of little substance in themselves. He stood naked in front of the window, hands on hips, then posed in front of the mirror and thought he was tiny, without clothes he barely seemed physical: I dare. I don’t dare. I dare.

He wanted to see the video again, slowed down if possible, the man or men outside the language school, leaning against a wall, sullen plains of grey like this was early TV, Ernie Kovacs maybe, some kind of gag. He wanted to click through frame by frame, give the men the same attention they’d given him: only this time they wouldn’t know it. He wanted to see that gesture, to see if this movement was conscious (a deliberate sign, a series of calculated motions) or something automatic (a wasp in his face, a complicated nervous tic). The director’s answer had come too readily: it wasn’t enough any more to know if one or two men had followed him, no, he wanted to know if one of the men had left a message.

There was no reaction on the
funiculare
, but crossing piazza del Municipio two boys shouted at Yee Jan and ran ahead, finding themselves funny, and these shouts were reassurance that he’d established himself: if someone followed him now, police or maniac, there would be a reason for it, an explanation. With his white face, finely drawn eyes and eyebrows, with his hair pulled back over his scalp, a broad soft collar (he’d chosen a butch office number over the blouse – hints of Chanel), he walked with the manner of a courtier, with delicate but confident steps, not quite primping, but mannered, definitely mannered: each footfall an assured but subtle,
me, me, me, me
. The wide reach of the piazza, this volume of space about him open and hollow, the air close enough so that he could feel himself swim forward, and he felt honest and good and happy.

The students of Elementario Due returned with clippings from the week’s newspapers and chatter about the film, the visiting actors, and news of where they were staying. Everyone expressed amazement at Yee Jan’s transformation, how perfect, how delicate he appeared, and how he seemed to flutter in front of them as someone they knew and someone they did not know. He soon bored of the attention, and became exhausted by the constant struggle to pick the simplest phrases, he ached to get outside and find the film crew (although, even this could offer only a momentary interest). As a boy in Washington State he’d felt the same kind of boredom, days on end. A dry dissatisfaction. Something akin to taking a journey, the sedation of watching the world slide by a window and holding no influence over the persistent slide of it all, of being both inside and outside, a passenger who is never really present.