The Sense of an Elephant Read Online Free

distinguished, but I didn’t see the doctor.’
    â€˜He had already left at that hour.’
    â€˜I saw a blonde woman and a little girl.’
    â€˜His wife and daughter.’
    â€˜If they’re any guide, the doctor is one handsome man.’ She caressed his ringless fingers. ‘Have you spoken to him?’
    Pietro sprang to his feet. On the sideboard stood a glass amphora. Anita had filled it with coloured buttons and decks of cards. He pulled out the
briscola
cards. They were worn at the edges, the images faded. He began to shuffle them. ‘Today I used my set of keys to go into his flat.’
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜This afternoon.’
    She pushed aside plate and silverware. ‘Goodness, and then?’
    â€˜I saw a photograph.’ Pietro shuffled the cards and spoke softly. ‘He liked Vespas when he was little. After that I had to leave.’
    Anita slipped the cards out of his hand and had him cut the deck. Then turned them over two by two: the three of cups and the six of coins, the king and the ace of cups. ‘Thecards say you’ll go back. Back to his flat. Because he’ll need you.’
    Pietro looked over her shoulder. The ace of cups had been the first card dealt. He put an arm around Anita like he had done after climbing down from the Rimini–Milan train, the day when they first saw each other again after ten years. She’d brought him home with her, to a comfortable two-room flat in a big ugly building north of the city. And he had slept there ever since: the four nights before becoming a concierge and virtually every night following.
    Anita blew gently in his ear, loosened his tie.
    He turned his head, buried his nose in her hair.

6
    He woke with a start.
    Anita, beside him, said, ‘You had a nightmare, come here.’
    Pietro caressed her head. ‘I have to go.’
    He went to the kitchen and drank from a glass with a hand-painted lizard on it. The green ran outside the lines of the pointed tail. He dressed and before leaving noticed that she was up, wearing a light dressing gown and gazing at him.
    â€˜He’ll need you,’ she said to him again.
    Pietro crossed the room to embrace her, then left.
    The night had swallowed Milan, swallowed him as well as the Bianchi carried him home. Traces of the nightmare stayed with him during the entire return trip. It was always the same. A ship and the salty air, with no sea beneath the ship, just emptiness. And his fall from the bows, down, down, until he woke. He banished it by pedalling, pedalling without stopping all the way to the condominium. Such was his frenzy that he struggled to insert the keys into the building door. Left the Bianchi against the downpipe at the entrance to the courtyard, calming down once he was there, his gaze directed at the doctor’s windows. They were dark. In one he could make out the ceiling beams and a chandelier with many arms. The beams and the chandelier were enough for him.
You will need me
. A darkened window was enough. He returned towards the concierge’s lodge and just before entering noticed something on the ground, a leather bracelet. Picked it up. It was frayed at theedges and smooth on top. On the underside a date had been etched:
14-9-2008
. He placed it in the drawer of his night table.
    Then the concierge took off his suit, hung the shirt and jacket in the wardrobe, chose a red tracksuit as pyjamas. Instead of the bed he would make do with a blanket and a mothball-smelling pillow inherited from the previous concierge. Picked up too a crossword puzzle and a pen, then removed his socks and went into the empty room. There was a musty odour that rose from the filthy floor. Three of the walls had been recently painted white, the fourth left half plastered, sign that the work had been interrupted. He opened the porthole window that looked into the courtyard and turned on the lamp. What remained of memory? Pietro stood frozen, staring at the