There were always three of us at dinner: me, my wife Chiara and the guy from the news. One with the look of a German priest, with smoky hair and a big nose. It rarely happened that the journalist was not present. And that is when Chiara and I dined out. In that case it would have been too complicated to carry the television with us.
Chiara always complained about the fact that I ran to turn on the TV as soon as I got home. She said she didn't look good on her. That at least at dinner we should talk. Of anything but talk.
That's why he often started a conversation by brushing him off and did so by asking me how work went.
«Like this» I replied shrugging my shoulders without taking my eyes off the TV.
It annoyed me to tell her that business wasn't great. At that time I was repairing home appliances and my job, most of the time, consisted of removing a few coins from the filter of a washing machine, or recharging the freon of a broken-down freezer.
Nothing to fix my spirits or make me rich.
In short, I tried to hide from Chiara the fact that my balls were spinning like the drum of an Aquos at eight hundred spins of the centrifuge. That Thursday, she took advantage of the fact that my attention was once again on the German priest.
"I've invited Signor Betti to dinner," he said.
I took my eyes off the TV for a moment and watched her. Then I looked at the news guy again quizzically.
It must have seemed to Chiara that I was asking him: "But did you hear it too?"
"Mr Betti?" I said then.
"Yes. I invited him to dinner.”
"And when?"
"Tomorrow."
“But how did that get into your head?”
"Come on baby. It's a stupid dinner."
"Oh shit, Clare. It may be a stupid dinner but Mr. Betti is one of the strangest people he knows. »
“Depends on what you mean by strange. You are too strange sometimes, Raimondo.”
In saying "strange" Chiara had put down the spoon she was eating her soup with and had drawn those odious quotation marks in the air using the index and middle fingers of both hands.
“Okay, I'm going to be weird too. But that doesn't mean people invite me over for no reason. Have I been to dinner at the Colonna's lately? Or, I don't know, did Signora Alessi ever ask you if I could eat with them one of these evenings?»
Chiara laughed, then said that she had done it without thinking about it. She told how Mr. Betti, in an outburst of kindness, had helped her with the shopping bags a few days before.
"You know, I bought that too."
He pointed to an unopened box that looked quite heavy and said that to thank him for the help he had told him about dinner.
Signor Betti lived on the top floor, the eighth. I bet no one in the condo knew his name. For everyone he was "Signor Betti". And I think that the appellation "signor" in front of his surname, if he had earned it by the fact that he always addressed people as her. His doorbell, on the intercom, was the only one with a single surname written on it.
He was a very tall man and this was already enough to intimidate. He must have been in his fifties. His shoulders were slightly hunched and he walked a little hunched over, as if he was supporting something invisible with his back. He was around all day. At any time, and in any weather, you could find him somewhere in the neighborhood. He especially he was sitting on the bench behind the kiosk. The only one in the sun within a mile. This led me to assume that he didn't have a job. Otherwise he wouldn't have had all that free time.
He always wore a beige raincoat and a green scarf. Even on hot days. When it rained, however, she also carried a black umbrella. Not that she opened it, mind you. She held it like a walking stick, pointing the metal end into the asphalt to steady herself and not slip. Every time I met him I wondered how he kept going. Only once had I exchanged words with him. Four or five months before. I had opened the elevator door and found him inside. He was leaning against the wall by the mirror, his small black eyes that looked like they'd got the wrong pupils in their sockets. I almost screamed in fright.
"Crush me the eight, please" he told me.
I satisfied him. On the way up to the eighth floor, we didn't talk about how late spring was coming or how much traffic there was in the city. He said nothing about it but something about the world.
"It's not a place for everyone, this one."
He said exactly that. And I only knew how to nod and say "goodbye" as soon as the elevator doors opened and he started to leave. I never told Chiara about this episode.
However, Friday arrived and, when I returned with a good bottle of Cesanese, the house smelled of lavender mixed with something that was cooking in the oven. Chicken, maybe.
Chiara was already cooking and seemed to have been there for a while by how dirty the kitchen apron she was wearing was. The one that says I don't cook like my mother on her. Which I never understood if it was an insult to my mother-in-law's cooking or to Chiara's.
"At what time?" I said as I took off my dusty shoes.
"What time what?"
"What time did you tell him to come?"
Chiara looked up at the clock hanging on the wall and said it must have already arrived.
"I don't think he's coming," I said. “And I'm not surprised he didn't call.”
"I do not think so. He seems like such a nice person to me."
About half an hour passed during which Chiara didn't say a single word. All she did was put out the fires and stop the sizzle of the oil in the pan.
I would bet a million on what he would say at any moment.
"Something must have happened to Signor Betti."
I would have been a millionaire.
"Honey, what do you think happened?" I said. “He just didn't come. Funny how that one is, maybe he even forgot it.”
"It's not like that, Raimondo. And more than half an hour we wait. We have to go see if anything's up."
Chiara stared at me for a moment. She then she took off her apron untying the knot behind her back. She threw it without caring where she landed. She took the house keys and went out onto the landing.
Reheating the chicken and eating was the second option.
The first, which left no choice, was to follow my wife. I ran up the stairs as I heard Chiara already knocking on the door on the eighth floor. She was still knocking when I arrived, panting.
"Mr Betty? Mr. Betti, can you hear me?»
Chiara looked really worried.
“Honey, stop it. Maybe he's just sleeping," I said in an attempt to calm her down. But my advice had the same effect as those written on cigarette packets.
Chiara knocked more vigorously. But nothing happened. She looked at me and asked what we could have done. Certainly, having reached that point, we could no longer hold back. I was convincing myself that the poor guy was really in danger.
Meanwhile, no one in the condominium had shown up. Yet we were making quite a mess. I could almost see them behind the peepholes in the doors, listening to what was happening.
I decided to call XNUMX and it was very difficult to convince the girl on the phone by telling her the story of the dinner and blah blah blah, that I wasn't a relative but a neighbor, and other bullshit.
"I'll send someone," the woman finally said and took the address.
When the team arrived I went up to the guy who seemed to be in charge of operations and started giving the same explanations again.
He did the same things Chiara had done just before. She knocked very hard without getting different results. Then she decided it was time to break down the entrance. She turned to the boys who were with him. They fiddled around for a while with some tools they kept in a sort of metal box. Then one kicked at the lock.
The door opened.
I still remember the unnatural position of that body lying on the floor. It was the only time I saw Mr. Betti wearing an unworn jacket, shirt and trousers.
In the days that followed, Chiara got busy but found no relative, friend or colleague who had Mr. Betti's fate at heart. That he had gone like this, without leaving anyone in tears and without even touching my wife's chicken.
A short while later we were back for dinner.
This time with the TV off.
I had noticed that Chiara had a new hair color. A chocolate color that brought out her eyes, I told her about her.
The author
Andrea Santacaterina, born in 74, was born in Terracina, on the Lazio coast, but has always lived in Frosinone. He started writing short stories one morning after a sleepless night reading collections by Raymond Carver. His obsessive passion for American football resulted in the collaboration with the sports fiction blog Quasi Collective network Em Bycileta.
In 2013 he published for Lit Edizioni a biography of Mario Balotelli entitled The meaning of Mario.
