...more

When ten or twelve rings screeched through the narrow room, a tremor shook Vito Piranese’s features, which then froze into a perplexed landscape. The telephone settled in for the count, took up all the space in the studio, which was too small for the both of them. The rings slicked through the air, overlapping, their reverberations holding together like hyphens—and by the time twenty-five of them had filed by, Vito understood who was calling.

Now it would never stop, so Vito took his time. He checked all the fasteners on his artificial limb, running his finger under the buckles and centering each strap in the hollow of its worn groove while thirty, then forty rings spewed out, bouncing against the wallpaper decorated with tacked-up photos of chesty blondes. At around the fiftieth, Vito Piranese stood up and walked without a limp to the phone, on the sideboard near the hot plate. From a drawer in the sideboard he took a ballpoint pen, whose tip he rested, ready for action, on a notepad; then he lifted the receiver to his ear and said, “Yes.”

“Piranese?” went a voice.

It was the same female voice as the other times, with a soft precision that left no room for argument. Vito enjoyed picturing the owner of that voice, her no doubt imperious mood, her form surely like those of the women he had crucified on the wallpaper; long platinum blondes with wide scarlet mouths, ivory teeth, and tanned breasts to which one could yield without a second thought. So at the sound of his name, Vito repeated, “Yes, yes, it’s me.”

“Thirteen, forty-seven, fourteen,” said the voice. “Again?”

“Please,” said Vito.

She said it once more. At the other end of the line there was, in fact, a tall young blonde, but she was sheathed in a strict tailored suit. She sat at a desk buried under telephones with different tones, some without dials, others loaded with buttons. To her right, at the bottom of a cabinet, slept several files, suspended like bats; and to her left shelves within easy reach held up teletype machines, fax machines, and terminals. She hung up and turned toward a man who was also tall, standing near her in a midnight-blue suit, absent eye in dark face. For several minutes he had rested on the young woman a glance that was distracted, although filigreed with lust. “There,” she said, “it’s done.”

“Good,” said the man. “Now let him know I’m here.”

Lifting another receiver, she announced Colonel Seek. “It’s all right,” she said. “He’s expecting you.”

The colonel walked toward a double door, knocked, passed without awaiting an answer into a much larger and longer room laterally decorated with landscapes, classical portraits of top-ranking civil servants, and exotic objects under glass: official gifts from foreign counterparts. At the other end of the room, a Charles the Tenth desk supported the elbows of a frail man hunched over a square of paper, a cigarette glued to his lip, one eye shut against the trail of smoke. There were no files on the desk, no books anywhere; only one black and one red pencil and the white square.

Motioning toward an armchair, the man then offered the colonel a pack of “Maryland”-style Gauloises, which had become a rare variety. These were cigarettes that one didn’t see every day, they had to be special-ordered in tobacconist’s shops, in short that no one smoked anymore except for this man, whose pearl-grey, slightly stained, and fairly baggy suit suggested a creature of the shadows who kept away from the grandstands and press organs, someone off-limits to the public. No one knew his name. Still, the fact that the Tobacco Authority continued to produce Marlyand Gauloises for this exclusive use gave some small idea of his influence. He lit one with the butt of its predecessor. “No, thank you,” the colonel declined. “I have my cigars.”

“What’s the situation?” worried Maryland.

“Things are falling into place,” said Colonel Seck. “I just want to make sure Chopin hasn’t gone anywhere. I’ll know in a week and then we can move. We’re off. ”