The flame undulated slightly, moving its shadows around. Sal tried the sharpness of the blade, placing its tip against his finger; then, with an unmoving face as if in preparation for an execution, he took hold of her right hand and gripped her ring finger, on which the black stone rested, between his forefinger and thumb. Contemplating the finger, he adjusted it and then started to cut it scrupulously, without even a flinch when the bone gave way. Finally, the finger was severed from the body. Sal put it in the metal box, closed it, and watched the motionless body again.
‘I love you…’
He had started to sober up. He plugged his ears. The summer heat had poured into the basement. From outside he could hear the sound of a racing engine. He took the box, put it into his pocket and dashed out the door, his heart pounding in his chest.
‘I love you…’
The basement smelled bad again, and when he was outside, out of breath, Sal stopped a little and fell to his knees on the burning asphalt. The heat had dried out all traces of rain. And in Sal’s ears, the two words that had been so funny before, giving him butterflies in his stomach, still echoed: ‘I love you…’
II
‘FAREWELL!’
In the summer afternoons, when it is very hot, the neighbourhood seems to be asleep. Yet it is actually all an illusion, because real life runs its course inside the houses, away from the heat, in the shady corners where people stay still for hours on end or move very slowly to preserve their body temperatures. During those afternoons, in which the heat pervaded all living spaces, Emi was bored to death and would have given the world to run about at leisure on the empty streets, alone but for her thoughts. Her body, throbbing in all its joints, didn’t seem to be inconvenienced in any way by the heat but with things as they were, she had to stay inside, pretending to sleep and waiting for the call from Sal that would announce four o’clock. Emi hated to sleep, and that was partly because she had no patience. She felt she was losing precious time which she could have used for thinking or for doing lots of other things. For instance, she could have crept to the attic and from there onto the roof, from where she could have spied any movement up to two blocks away. She could have stayed indefinitely like that, watching people swarming by and passing one another blindly. Up on the plate roof soaked in sunshine, she felt that nobody could know she was there, the small god of the neighbourhood.
She pricked up her ears. Fully dressed, she was sitting up in bed, with her knees drawn to her chin and her toes outstretched. Her forehead rested on her kneecaps, and she scrutinised the streaks in the bed’s upholstery, inside the grooves of the fabric where the threads blended in a secret mesh. She heard the same noise again. Jumping out of bed and rushing to the window, she caught sight of Sal, staring up at her from the pavement below. When he saw Emi, he waved his hand and signalled to her to come down. She opened her window.
‘Why are you so late?’
Sal threw her an outraged look – what did she mean by ‘so late’? It was raining, that’s why.
‘Come down, will you?’
He was late because strange things had been happening to him, things he could talk about with no one but her.
‘In a minute!’
Emi slammed the window shut and dashed to the door. Behind her, a woman’s voice squeaked angrily: ‘Emilia, where are you off to?’
Emi darted through the front door and rushed into the street, bumping against Sal, who was just about to enter. They stopped and gazed at one another for a moment until Sal, happy to see her at last and still excited, put his hands on her face and brought his lips to her mouth. It seemed to Emi that she completely abandoned herself to the kiss, staring straight into his eyes while he was kissing her. There was a sweetish, slightly off-putting that somewhat turned her stomach but at the same time gave her tingles up her spine: that dampness that met hers, the slippery tongue that groped around and clumsily cuddled itself around hers. Then Sal let go of her, taking a step back. Emi remained with her eyes riveted upon him, visibly thrilled.
‘What was that?’ she babbled.
Sal broke out in laughter. ‘Are you afraid?’
His question was mistimed and turned a key in the girl’s interior mechanism. Emi’s expression suddenly changed and she cast a nasty glance toward him, ready to fight, then rushed upon him and thrust him away, ‘Oh, dear. You love to show off, don’t you?’
Sal made a wry face. Then he swung around and started off down the street, heading back to the apartment building. Emi stared for a few seconds in his direction, astonished.
‘Sal… Sal, where are you going?’
The air was full of little floating fluff balls, chasing each other on the pavement. Across the street, an old lady was carrying two overflowing shopping bags. She would take two or three steps, then stop, put the bags down, heave a noisy sigh and start again. When she lifted the weight, her face muscles strained in a funny grimace. Although she had started halfheartedly on Sal’s trail, Emi shuffled her feet and had time to study the old woman from a distance, watching her as she crossed the street in front of Emi. The woman had just put the bags down again and was adjusting the silk-spotted coloured scarf on her crown.
‘Do you need any help?’
The old woman gave Emi a long stare. The girl repeated the question, shouting in a high-pitched voice: ‘Missus, do you want me to help you?’
Sal had already reached the corner, but was halted by Emi’s voice chiming in the air. She had stopped across the street from the hag, pointing to her bags. Then, after the hag seemed to have answered, Emi started again, coming his way. When she got near, she put on a dismissive face.
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t know; how would I know?’
‘Well, I saw you speaking to her…’
‘I speak to a lot of people!’
Emi started ahead, with Sal following her like a good dog.
‘Are you upset?’
Sal’s voice trickled toward her ears, surrounding her, and Emi felt the need to get revenge.
‘Look, if you don’t feel like it, we don’t have to see each other every day. Only don’t have me wait, okay? I hate it!’
He threw her a distressful look. He thought she was unfair, and all of a sudden all the expectation and pleasure of seeing her was gone. He noticed that her features had become sharper and felt that nothing was the same: he could no longer tell her what he had found in Harry’s basement. He knew that the woman in the cellar had to remain his secret, and this made him extremely sad. Yet immediately he started to search his mind for an excuse to leave as soon as possible. Emi the girl was extinguished inside him like a flame over which a very weak draught had blown.
With the tip of her shoe, Emi was now prodding a fluff ball that had gathered at the corner of the street. It looked like candy floss without the stick, and this thought cheered her up.
‘Listen, Sal, doesn’t this fluff look like candy floss? If we stuck a stick inside, we could give it to Toma to eat. Wouldn’t that be cool?’
Sal