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I was woken just before midnight by the insistent, painful stab of the telephone ringing. It was Luciana. She was screaming and it took me a moment to understand her. “What have you got to say now?” she sobbed. “This is what he was pla
“They called from the hospital-my grandmother’s dead. I’ve got to go and identify the body because Valentina’s still a minor. But I can’t do it. I can’t!” she screamed desperately. “I can’t cope with another morgue, the corpses, the undertakers. I don’t want to see any more corpses. I can’t go through it all again.” She started crying again, a devastated sobbing that seemed for a moment as if it might turn into a howl.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “Look, this is what we’re going to do.” I tried to sound practical and authoritative, like a parent talking to a frightened child. “There’s no hurry to identify the body, the main thing is for you to calm down. Take a pill now. Have you got some there?”
“Yes,” she said, between sobs. “I already took one, before calling you.”
“Good. Now take another one, but only one, and wait for me to arrive. Don’t do anything else. Turn off the TV and stay in bed. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I asked if her sister was with her and her voice fell to a whisper.
“I told her. The day I saw you, after she came out of his house. I told her everything but she didn’t believe me. I said Bruno hadn’t believed me and now he was dead. She’s just seen the fire on TV. She was with me when they called from the hospital, we watched them bringing out the bodies, but even now she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t realise,” her voice faltered, terrified, “she doesn’t realise she’s next.”
“Don’t think about that now. Promise me you won’t think about any of it until I get there. Just try to get some sleep.”
I hung up and sat for a few seconds, eyes riveted on the screen. They’d already brought out fourteen bodies and the count was still rising. I couldn’t believe it either. It was, simply, too monstrous. On the other hand, weren’t all these bodies the perfect screen? The name of Luciana’s grandmother amongst a growing list of dead. No one would look into it as a separate case; her death would remain for ever invisible, merged with the general tragedy. This fire wouldn’t even be considered arson, but an accident, a tragic side effect of the attacks on furniture stores. Maybe the Chinese man would be made to pay, that is if he really existed and they caught him. Was Kloster capable of pla
Then I had the fatal, misguided impulse, which I have regretted every single day since-the urge to act, to intervene. I dialled Kloster’s number. He didn’t answer and there was no answering machine. I dressed quickly and hailed a taxi outside my building. We drove through the night, its silence interrupted only by the distant wail of fire engines. Over the radio in the taxi I heard news of more fires, multiplying like a virus across the city, and now and again the morbid repetition of the list of dead at the care home. The taxi dropped me outside Kloster’s house. The windows were shuttered and I could see no light through the slats. I rang the doorbell a couple of times, to no avail. Then I remembered what Luciana had once said about Kloster and his habit of swimming in the evening. I went into the café where she and I had sat two weeks earlier, and asked the waiter if there was a club nearby with a swimming pool. There was, just round the block. I hurried there. Marble steps led up to a revolving door with a brass plaque beside it. Inside I rang the bell at the reception desk and a tired-looking porter appeared. I asked for the swimming pool and he pointed to a sign showing the opening hours: it closed at midnight. I described Kloster and asked if he’d seen him. He nodded and indicated the staircase leading up to the bar and the pool tables. I went up the two flights and found myself in a large smoke-filled room. A crowd of poker players sat in silent concentration at round tables. They glanced up warily when I appeared at the top of the stairs, but soon went back to their cards. It was only then that I realised why the club was still open at midnight: it was a thinly disguised gambling den. At the bar a muted television was tuned to a sports cha
“What are you doing here? Some field work on games of chance? Or have you come for a game with the boys?”
He looked at me serenely with only mild interest as he applied chalk to the tip of his cue.
“Actually I was looking for you. I thought you’d be at the pool, but they told me you were here.”
“I always come up here after my swim. Especially since discovering this game. I rather looked down on it when I was young. I thought it a game for bar-room show-offs-you know what I mean. But it has interesting metaphors, and its own little philosophy. Have you ever tried to play it seriously?”
I shook my head.
“Essentially it’s geometry, of course. And the most classical kind: action and reaction. The kingdom of causality, you might say. Any spectator can see the obvious trajectory for a shot. That’s how begi
“You haven’t heard about the fire? You don’t know anything?” I sca
“I heard there were some fires yesterday, something about furniture showrooms. But I don’t really keep up with the news,” he said.