Vertigo (10 page)

It was almost midnight in Limone when I got back into harbour again and walked round to my hotel. Holidaymakers were everywhere, in couples or family groups, a gaudy crowd moving like a cortège in procession through the narrow streets of the small resort locked between the lake and the sheer side of the mountain. Their sunburnt, painted faces swaying over the solid mass of their bodies were those of the wandering dead. Unhappy they seemed, every one of them, condemned to haunt these streets night after night. Back at my hotel I lay down on my bed and folded my arms under my head. There could be no prospect of sleep. From the terrace came the noise of the music and the confused blathering of the revellers, most of whom, as I realised with some dismay, were compatriots of mine. I heard Swabians, Franconians and Bavarians saying the most unsavoury things, and, if I found their broad, uninhibited dialects repellent, it was a veritable torment to have to listen to the loud-mouthed opinions and witticisms of a group of young men who clearly came from my home town. How I wished during those sleepless hours that I belonged to a different nation, or, better still, to none at all. Around two in the morning the music was turned off, but the last shouts and fragments of conversation did not die away until the first grey streaks of dawn were visible over the heights of the far shore. I took a couple of aspirin and fell asleep when the pain behind my forehead began to ease off, like the darkness that drains from the sand as the water recedes after high tide.

August the 2nd was a peaceful day. I sat at a table near the open terrace door, my papers and notes spread out around me, drawing connections between events that lay far apart but which seemed to me to be of the same order. I wrote with an ease that astonished me. Line by line I filled the pages of the ruled notepad I had brought with me from home. Luciana, at work behind the bar, threw me repeated sideways glances, as if to check that I had not lost my thread. She also brought me an espresso and a glass of water at regular intervals, as I had requested, and from time to time a toasted sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin. Often she would stand beside me for a while, making a little conversation, her eyes wandering over the written pages. On one occasion she asked if I was a journalist or writer. When I said that neither the one nor the other was quite right, she asked what it was that I was working on, to which I replied that I did not know for certain myself, but had a growing suspicion that it might turn into a crime story, set in upper Italy, in Venice, Verona and Riva. The plot revolved around a series of unsolved murders and the reappearance of a person who had long been missing. Luciana asked whether Limone featured in the story too, and I said that not only Limone but indeed the hotel and herself would be part of it. At this she beat a hasty retreat behind the bar, where she continued her work with that absent-minded precision that was peculiarly hers. Now she would prepare a cappuccino or hot chocolate, now pour a beer or glass of wine or grenadine for one of the few hotel guests sitting on the terrace during the daytime. Occasionally she would make entries in a large ledger, her head inclined to one side, looking for all the world as if she were still at school. More and more frequently I felt impelled to look over towards her, and whenever our eyes met she laughed as if at some silly inadvertence. On the wall behind the bar, between the colourful, shiny rows of spirits bottles, there was a large mirror, so I was able to watch both Luciana and her reflection, which gave me a curious satisfaction.

Around midday the guests disappeared from the terrace, and Luciana too left her post. The writing was becoming increasingly difficult, and soon it all seemed to be the most meaningless, empty, dishonest scrawl. I was greatly relieved when Mauro appeared, bringing the newspapers I had asked him to get me. Most of them were English and French, but there were also two Italian papers, the
Gazzettino
and the
Alto Adige.
By the time I was reading the last of them, th
e Alto Adige,
the afternoon was almost over. A breeze was stirring the sunshades on the terrace, the guests were gradually returning, and Luciana had long since been busy behind the bar again. For a long while I puzzled over an article the heading of which,
Fedeli a Riva,
seemed to me to suggest some dark mystery, though the piece was merely about a couple by the name of Hilse, from Lünen near Dortmund, who had spent their vacations on Lake Garda every year since 1957. However, in the arts section of the paper I came across a report which did have a special meaning for me. It was a brief preview of a play that was due to be performed the next day

in Bolzano. I had just finished reading this short article, underlining a thing or two, when Luciana brought me a Fernet. Once again she lingered, looking at the newspaper spread out before me.
Una fantesca,
I heard her say quietly, and I thought I felt her hand on my shoulder. It occurred to me then how few and far between in my life were the moments when I had been touched in this way by a woman with whom I was barely acquainted, and, thinking back, it seemed to me that about such unwonted gestures there had always been something disembodied and ghoulish, something that went quite through me! For example, I remember an occasion years ago, sitting in the darkened consulting room of a Manchester optometrist's and gazing through the lenses inserted into those strange eye-test frames at the letters in the illuminated box, which were in clear focus one moment, completely blurred the next. Beside me stood a Chinese optician whose name, so a small badge on her white overall told me, was Susi Ahoi. She said very little, but every time she leaned towards me to change the lenses I was aware of the cool aura of solicitude that surrounded her. Time and again she adjusted the heavy frame, and once she touched my temples, which as so often were throbbing with pain, with her fingertips, for rather longer than was necessary, I thought, though it was probably only in order to position my head better. Luciana's hand, which surely rested on my shoulder unintentionally, if it did so at all, as she leaned to take the espresso cup and the ashtray from the table, had a similar effect on me, and as on that distant occasion in Manchester I now suddenly saw everything out of focus, as if through lenses not made for my eyes.

On the following morning - I had decided to go over to Verona after all - it turned out that my passport, which Luciana had placed in a locker in the reception desk when I arrived, had gone astray. The girl who made up my bill, repeatedly stressing that she helped out at the hotel only in the mornings, rummaged in vain through all the drawers and compartments. At length she went to wake Mauro, who spent a quarter of an hour turning everything upside down and inside out and leafing through every one of the various passports kept at reception without finding mine, before fetching his mother down. Luciana gave me a long look when she appeared behind the desk, as if to say this was a fine way to take one's leave. Taking up the search for my lost passport, she said that the passports of all guests were kept in the same drawer, and not a single one had ever been mislaid since the hotel had been in existence. So the passport must be here in the drawer, and it was only a question of using one's eyes. But then, she told Mauro, he had never been any good at using his eyes, presumably because she, Luciana, had always used hers for him. Ever since he was small, if he couldn't find something right away - a schoolbook, his pencil case, his tennis racquet, his motorbike keys - he simply claimed it wasn't there, and whenever she, Luciana, had come to look, of course it
tuas
there. Mauro objected that she could say what she liked but this passport, at any rate, had vanished -
spa-ri-to
, he said, emphasising the individual syllables as if for someone hard of hearing.
Il passaporto scomparso
mocked Luciana. One remark led to another, and before long the argument started by my passport had escalated into a family drama. The
padrone,
too, whom till that moment I had not set eyes on and who was half a head shorter than Luciana, now arrived on the scene. Mauro told the entire story from the start, for the third time at least. The girl stood there without saying a word, continuously smoothing her pinafore with an embarrassed air. Luciana had turned away and, shaking her head and running her fingers through the curls in her hair, kept saying
strano, strano,
as if the disappearance of the passport, which could no longer be doubted, were the most extraordinary thing that had happened in all her life. The
padrone,
who had promptly embarked on a systematic search, placing all the Austrian, all the Dutch and all the German passports together, pushing the Austrian and Dutch ones aside with a definitive gesture, and examining the German ones closely, concluded from this operation that while my passport was indeed not among them, there was, in its stead so to speak, one which belonged to a certain Herr Doll who, if he remembered correctly, had left yesterday and must inadvertently have been given my passport — I still hear him calling out
inavvertitamente
, striking his forehead with the flat of his hand in despair at such negligence - and that this Herr Doll had simply pocketed my passport without checking whether it really was his own. Germans, declared the
padrone
, concluding his account of these incredible occurrences, were always in far too much of a hurry. Doubtless Herr Doll was now somewhere on the motorway, and my passport on his person. The question was now how I was to be provided with provisional papers proving my identity, in the absence of the passport, so that I could continue my journey and leave Italy. Mauro, who appeared to be responsible for the mix-up, apologised most profusely to me, while Luciana, who now took his side, ventured that after all he was still little more than a child. A child, exclaimed the
padrone,
casting his eyes up to heaven as though requiring support from that quarter in this hour in which his patience was sorely tried - a child, he exclaimed again, but this time to Mauro, a child he certainly is not, just mindless, and so, without the least regard, he compromises the good reputation of our hotel. What will the
signore
think of Limone and Italy when he departs, the
padrone
demanded of Mauro, pointing to me, and, with the question still hanging in the air as quasi-irrefutable proof of my discomfiture, he added that I must now be taken without delay to the police station, where the police chief, Dalmazio Orgiu, would issue me with papers which would at least be valid for leaving the country. I put in that I could obtain a new passport at the German consulate in Milan and that there was no need to go to any further lengths on my account, but the
padrone
had already pressed the car keys into his wife's hand, picked up my bag and taken my arm. Before I knew what was happening I was sitting beside Luciana in the blue Alfa and we were driving up the steep streets to the main road, where the police station stood somewhat set back behind tall iron railings. The
brigadiere
, who wore an immense Rolex watch on his left wrist and a heavy gold bracelet on the right, listened to our tale, sat down at a huge, old-fashioned typewriter with a carriage practically a metre across, put in a sheet of paper and, half murmuring and half singing the text as he typed, dashed off the following document, which he tore out of the rollers with a flourish the moment he had completed it and read it over once more for good measure, handing it

first to me, who was rendered speechless by this virtuoso performance, and then to Luciana for signature before endorsing it himself and, by way of completing the business, rubber-stamping it first with a circular and then with a rectangular stamp. When I asked the
brigadiere
if he were certain that the document he had drawn up would enable me to cross the border he replied, faintly irritated by the doubt implied in my question:
Non siamo in Russia, signore.

When I was in the car with Luciana once again, the document in my hand, I felt as if we had just been married by the
brigadiere
and might now drive off together wherever we desired. But this notion, which filled me with intense pleasure, was short-lived, and once I had recovered my equilibrium I asked Luciana to drop me at the bus stop down the road. There I got out, and, my bag already slung over my shoulder, I exchanged a few more words with her through the open window of the car and belatedly wished her a happy forty-fourth birthday She beamed as if at an unexpected present. Then, her head slightly inclined, she said
addio,
engaged the gears, and drove off. The Alfa glided slowly down the street and vanished around a bend which seemed to me to lead to another world. It was already midday. The next bus was not due till three o'clock. I went into a bar near the bus stop, ordered an espresso, and soon became so deeply absorbed in recasting my notes that I have not the faintest recollection either of the hours of waiting or of the bus journey to Desenzano. Not until I am on the train to Milan do I become visible again to my mind's eye. Outside, in the slanting sunlight of late afternoon, the poplars and fields of Lombardy went by. Opposite me sat a Franciscan nun of about thirty or thirty-five and a young girl with a colourful patchwork jacket over her shoulders. The girl had got on at Brescia, while the nun had already been on the train at Desenzano. The nun was reading her breviary, and the girl, no less immersed, was reading a photo story. Both were consummately beautiful, both very much present and yet altogether elsewhere. I admired the profound seriousness with which each of them turned the pages. Now the Franciscan nun would turn a page over, now the girl in the colourful jacket, then the girl again and then the Franciscan nun once more. Thus the time passed without my ever being able to exchange a glance with either the one or the other. I therefore tried to practise a like modesty, and took out
Der Beredte Italiener
, a handbook published in 1878 in Berne, for all who wish to make speedy and assured progress in colloquial Italian. In this little booklet, which had belonged to a maternal great-uncle of