The Parrots Page 17

  The passer-by replied without stopping. It was after midday. The Writer looked around him with the air of someone who has just woken from a dream.

  A few paces from him, on the pavement, a Pakistani street vendor was selling his useless merchandise. At his feet, he had stick figures that danced when he clapped his hands and little electric cars that went round in a circle and got in between his legs like scared little mice.

  In his hand he had a coloured pistol blowing soap bubbles that the wind immediately dispersed. Driven by a childish curiosity, The Writer approached.

  “How much for that?” he asked, pointing at the plastic pistol.

  “Ten euros.”

  “Five. I’ll give you five.”

  The Pakistani nodded, in no way troubled by that abrupt decrease. The Writer extracted a crumpled banknote from his pocket, took the pistol and gazed at it in his hands. He started walking across the bridge in the direction of home. But halfway across, he stopped and sat down on the ledge. With a solemn gesture, he aimed the pistol at his temple and put his finger on the trigger. Then he burst out laughing. Next he aimed his gun at the river and fired.

  A swarm of iridescent bubbles flew up into the sky.

  Never before had he felt so light and transparent.

  The Writer had made his decision.

  The Beginner had spent the night on the sofa of an old friend from his university days, but hadn’t been able to sleep a wink.

  The squeaking of the springs, the heavy material of the smoke-steeped sofa, the damp that hung in the basement apartment his friend shared with a work colleague, the proximity of that apartment to some paleo-Christian catacombs, had given him a grim, restless night, one of those nights when all you can do is keep looking at the luminous hands of your watch and hope it will soon be day. It was only when the longed-for dawn arrived that his eyelids had at last started to close, but he had made an effort and got up. Soon the two clerks would wake up to go and work in an office on the other side of the city: at the thought of having to fight for the little bathroom at the end of the corridor, and of seeing his friend sleepily spreading Nutella on bread beneath the green fluorescent light in the kitchen, with his bum crack visible under the Juventus T-shirt he had been sleeping in, The Beginner felt a kind of disdain. He wasn’t a university student any more, he’d had enough of shared bathrooms, hairs stuck on the soap bars, bills divided by calculator and stickers on the juices in the fridge according to whose mother had sent them.

  He had already lived that life: but now… now he was a writer, damn it, one of the most promising around (there were even those who maintained he was potentially the greatest). All he had to do was demonstrate it. For a start, he stretched and got to his feet, splashed some water on his face from the kitchen sink, then looked around for a pen and paper, intending to leave a note for his friend. But just as he was thinking about what to write, he was struck by an awful sense of dejection. What was he doing in this place? Who was this friend of his? Why hadn’t they seen each other in all these years? The Beginner flopped back on the couch. He felt more alone than he had ever felt, like a writer without a single reader.

  To hell with the note, to hell with his friend, and, yes, to hell with The Prize too. Without The Girlfriend The Beginner was lost. He too had made his decision.

  Subject: Your last chance

  Congratulations, you have won our prize!

  The Master carefully reread the first line, mentally articulating every syllable. Then he continued.

  Dear customer,

  To get it all you have to do is hurry up and subscribe to our latest offer.

  The offer consists of eight fine red wines, and four crisp whites, and also includes four small bowls ideal for sauces, condiments or appetizers.

  Included with the package you will receive a jar of truffle sauce, a jar of stuffed peppers, wild boar sausages cooked in Barolo and some tempting cucumbers in oil.

  As soon as your order is received, the package will be conveniently delivered to your home via a reliable courier.

  The products will travel at our risk, and in case of damage we will replace the goods at no extra cost.

  In the next few days you will be contacted by one of our agents to agree on the details and time of the delivery.

  Very best wishes

  Torchio Wines

  The Master folded the sheet of paper carefully, slipped it in the envelope, and put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket. Then he closed the letter box, leaving two reminders from a debt collection company to germinate in the dark.

  Feeling pleased, with the intention of subscribing to the latest offer in his head and the weight of his years on his back, he waved to the Nigerian prostitute who had taken up her usual position outside the gate and walked down the tree-lined drive that led to his house.

  In The Writer’s house, everyone was asleep: The Second Wife, The Ukrainian Nanny, The Baby, The Filipino (yes, he was asleep, too)—everyone except The Writer.

  Locked in his study, his features tense, his face illuminated by the bluish light from the computer screen, he was looking at the website of the biggest online bookseller and reading the comments on The Beginner’s novel. There were five in all.

  Win4life: A book as irritating as it is ugly. There’s no plot, no logical development and, as if that’s not enough, there isn’t even a main character! The aspiring writer who wrote this rubbish isn’t content to tell a simple linear story but, in his conceit, has tried to play around with chronology and interior narration. The result is quite frankly unreadable. I got to page 200, I defy anyone to do any better!!!

  Rating: 1/5

  Mundialito: The story seems interesting and well written at first, then as it goes on it becomes boring and falls off badly… overall, nothing to write home about…

  Rating: 3/5

  Tigersden: Likeable, a good read, not bad for a first novel. We’ll hear more about this author.

  Rating: 4/5

  Supersimo@tascaliwebnet.it: I bought this book because I had heard good things about it, because the author is the same age as me and because they said he is a powerful new voice of his generation. Well, I really had trouble finishing the book, which was a great disappointment! A pity, because you feel that basically he can write and the idea is so up-to-date and important that it’s really a missed opportunity.

  Rating: 2/5

  Arturo: It’s a moving novel, I read it in a few hours because the main character is so engaging. Long live the young men with beards!

  Rating: 5/5

  Confidently excluding “Win4life” (he had written that one himself), and “Arturo”, which in all probability had been written by a friend of The Beginner’s or maybe his press officer, The Writer could consider himself well pleased with the public’s reception of The Beginner’s work. So they weren’t as naïve as publishers assumed!

  The Writer passed on to the older of his two rivals. He typed the title of The Master’s book in the database. The result of the search brought a broad smile to The Writer’s face. No matches found, said the screen.

  Which was no great surprise, with the kind of distribution they had. Another point in his favour: if the book couldn’t be found, that meant it couldn’t be read either. And the jury would take that into account. The Writer yawned complacently.

  Gratified by that double victory, The Writer could have calmly switched off the computer and gone to bed undefeated. Instead of which, he was summoned back by an obscure, morbid desire: to look up his own book.

  The Writer typed his own name into the database, as if every letter were an organ of an imaginary double that was coming together, piece by piece, on that screen. When he had finished assembling the golem, he pressed send to give it the spark of life.

  It emerged that the golem had written seven books, some of which sounded so strange and remote they might have been written by someone else (which of course they had been). The Writer clicked on the latest one.

  There
were ninety-two comments, two more than there had been the day before. The Writer chose the newest first option.

  Magiccat: This novel isn’t bad, though limited by a certain adolescent quality in the writing. On the other hand, it’s a quick easy read, which also means it doesn’t go very deep.

  Rating: 3/5

  bertafilava: slow, boring, far-fetched and absurd. Absolutely the worst book I have ever read. A waste of time and money.

  Rating: 1/5

  He took his eyes off the screen, hurriedly closed the browser window and from the scroll-down menu chose the Shut down system option.

  With excessive caution, the system asked him if he was really sure he wanted to shut it down. The Writer had never been so sure in his life. This world didn’t deserve him.

  In the days that followed his decision, The Writer felt a noticeable change. And one of the first visible signs of this change was an erection in the shower. As unexpected as it was surprising, the erection manifested itself in a prodigious manner, like a quack doctor’s caravan arriving in a border town. So prodigious was it that The Writer immediately wanted to run and find someone with whom to share this little miracle, but in the end he decided it was best to keep it to himself, and he masturbated in the shower.

  Apart from the intense—though very brief—orgasm, the erection had helped above all to reveal a hidden problem: the lack of any desire in his life recently.

  Yes, there had been a time when sex had been for him, like art, a noble and important branch of human knowledge. A way to achieve wisdom, a long, effortful road to awareness along which he had stopped only to catch his breath between one fuck and the next, exploiting every opportunity to penetrate different women in different ways.

  Every time he set his sights on a woman, he had seen in her the repository of a body of knowledge unknown to him, a priestess guarding an inviolable temple that he had to take by storm at any cost. The ravines and dark caverns of women’s bodies, it had seemed to him, concealed initiatory secrets and supreme truths that would finally fling wide open the gates of knowledge. That was why he had tried to penetrate as deep into them as he could, to forage in those viscera in search of priceless treasures. In his impossible journey towards that unreachable goal, he had hoped that every fuck would be the ultimate one, the supreme revelatory one, the magic formula that would put an end to his painful apprenticeship and make him a real wizard.

  He had searched everywhere, foraged in every hole, explored every lair, but to no avail. Like a disappointed alchemist, he had finally closed the magic book, drawing a bitter lesson from the experience.

  The object that The Writer had been looking for in women, either did not exist, or was so inaccessible it could not be reached with the rudimentary means at his disposal.

  The same thing had happened with The Second Wife, his relationship with whom, initially based on sex, had turned into an exchange of devotion and tenderness—her devotion to him, his tenderness towards her, of course.

  The erection had been the most visible of the changes, but not the only one. After communicating his decision to The Publisher with a laconic message in the dead of night, other things, too, had changed.

  Just for a start, the morning toast: the very next morning it had struck him as fragrant and flavoursome (had The Filipino fallen into line?).

  And even in his dealings with people he had regained a sense of involvement and a willingness to help which were surprising, at least to him.

  Walking along a street in the centre, he had noticed water gushing from a crack in the pavement and flowing into the gutter. How many litres of water were being wasted like that every hour? Disturbed by the thought, once he reached home he had called the number used to report breakdowns to the municipal water company. But there was no reply, so he had called the fire brigade, who had passed him from one office to another and then kept him on hold for about ten minutes. The strange thing was that as he had sat there listening to the music they played, a nocturne by Mozart on a loop, he hadn’t been at all irritable, but had actually hummed along to the pleasant melody with his eyes half closed. When the loud voice of a woman firefighter had interrupted the nocturne, he had almost been upset. The Writer had reported the leak and the woman had thanked him.

  There is no way to demonstrate it, but The Writer who had hung up was a better citizen—and man—compared with The Writer who had called. And even if it wasn’t true, that was how he had felt.

  That night, he had fallen asleep thinking about the municipal workers who would fill in the crack, and had even dreamt of swimming naked in an irrigation ditch of icy transparent water, between the stones and the trout, and immersing himself in the municipal springs that quenched the city’s thirst. The benefits of this invisible transformation continued to manifest themselves in the days that followed, making him increasingly open and accessible to the world.

  On Sunday, instead of sitting in his study reading the newspapers, he had offered to take The Second Wife and The Baby for a walk.

  It was early, and the park was quiet and shady. He could even hear the murmur of the fountain, which for once was not drowned by the exhausts of the cars or the ambulances speeding past with their sirens blaring. The swallows (Hirundo rustica) fluttered through the air like commas and brackets that had escaped from a giant typewriter. The Writer had offered to push the pram, and had done so with ease and naturalness, as if this—and not writing—had always been his profession.

  The Second Wife, her heels sinking into the gravel, soon got tired of walking. The Writer, on the other hand, would have liked to stay a while longer in the park, because with every circuit it seemed to him that he was capturing unusual details, details of the world that only revealed themselves to those who were willing to capture them: a heart carved into the bark of a tree trunk, a squirrel clambering up an oak, a porn magazine sticking out of a rubbish bin.

  “Do you want to stop? This isn’t some kind of riding school.”

  The Second Wife collapsed on a bench and lit a cigarette.

  “It’s really nice here…”

  The sun tickled the baby’s face, and she laughed without reason, intoxicated by sensations that were new to her. And not only to her.

  “You’ve always got a cigarette in your mouth…”

  The Writer tore the cigarette from The Second Wife’s lips and threw it under the bench. The Second Wife did not know whether to be surprised or annoyed.

  The Writer smiled at her. Then he leant over the pram. The Baby had just fallen asleep.

  “Don’t wake her!”

  Gently, The Writer picked up The Baby and held her in his arms. On his shoulder, he could feel the warmth emanating from that tiny head. The Baby had almond-shaped eyes, a squashed little nose and a round face. The Writer took one of her little hands and looked at it: the pink nails, the folds in the soft, thin skin. More than a hand, it seemed to him the prototype of an organ that would soon be going into production. The Writer put a finger in the palm of her hand, and with an unconditioned reflex The Baby squeezed it hard.

  The Writer’s mobile vibrated.

  “Can you answer that?”

  “Where is it?”

  “Right-hand pocket of my jacket.”

  “…”

  “I said right.”

  “…”

  “Hello? Hi. Yes, he’s with me.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Your publisher.”

  “What does he want?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Can’t you see I don’t want to answer? You talk to him.”

  “He can’t come to the phone right now, can I give him a message?”

  “…”

  “Hold on. He says can you drop by the office to talk about the cover?”

  “Tell him it’s Sunday.”

  “He says it’s Sunday.”

  “…”

  “He says it’s urgent.”

  “Then tell him to come to our house.”

/>   “He says can you come to our house?”

  “…”

  “He says all right.”

  “Tell him we’ll expect him for dinner.”

  “We’ll expect you for—hold on a minute.” The Second Wife covered the phone with her hand. “The nanny has the day off and you start inviting people to dinner!”

  “What’s the problem? I’ll cook.”

  The Second Wife was stunned. Since they had known each other she had never seen her husband go in the kitchen, except to look for a corkscrew.

  “Are you there? He says… can you come… to… to dinner, he’s cooking.”

  “…”

  “Yes that’s what he said.”

  “…”

  “Hold on: what time?”

  “Half past eight.”

  “Half past eight.”

  “…”

  “He says bye.”

  “Tell him goodbye from me.”

  “He says goodbye.”

  The Second Wife moved the phone away from her ear and looked at The Writer. The Baby had woken up. The Writer was sitting on the bench and was now jogging her up and down on his lap and singing her a nursery rhyme.

  “Careful!” cried The Second Wife.

  The Baby was bouncing on her daddy’s thighs and laughing like a drunk. A silvery, gurgling laugh, with her mouth and eyes wide open.

  “Stop it! She only just pooed and you’re going to make her—”

  The Baby threw up on The Writer’s beige trousers. The Second Wife glared at him.

  “They needed washing anyway,” he said, with a mischievous gleam in his eye. Even The Baby seemed amused.

  *

  When you’re young it’s much easier to be sincere than to be convincing.

  It is not at all easy for The Beginner to explain to The Girlfriend that pulling out of The Prize is much more complicated than it seems. No, not easy at all. Especially on the telephone.