Rome Noir Read online

  “You mean Kurt Cobain?”

  Yichang snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You know, we Chinese are a superstitious people. Many of us believe in ghosts and don’t like to sleep in a room where someone took a gun and blew his brains out.”

  I avoided explaining to him that things hadn’t gone exactly like that. It was more convenient that he and his Chinese friends continue to believe that Cobain had killed himself in the Hotel Excelsior.

  “So do you think it might interest you?”

  It might, yes. The prospect of moving to Via Veneto, of living in the city where I was born like a Russian prince in exile, attracted me quite a lot. And for only a hundred euros a month!

  Yichang said he would introduce me to the manager of the Excelsior as soon as possible, maybe the following night. I didn’t know how to thank him. I wanted to repay him in some way, but Yichang waved his hands and shook his head, he wouldn’t even speak of it. He ordered another beer, made some comments about a girl, then wrinkled his forehead as if he had suddenly remembered something.

  “There might be one thing,” he said. “Would you like to play a little card game?”

  “Cards?”

  “Yes. You know how to play poker?”

  Obviously I knew the rules of poker, but I wasn’t at all the typical player. To tell the truth, cards had always bored me. But Yichang insisted, and when I tried to demonstrate my indifference to games of chance, he said, “What a lot of big words. I’m just proposing a little game among friends to pass the time. Nominal bets, just small change, enough to add some excitement. Come on, you can’t say no.”

  Little game, big words. His way of speaking in diminutives and augmentatives made me uneasy. But he was right, I couldn’t refuse. Not if I really wanted to move to Via Veneto.

  I returned home at 9 in the morning. I lay on the bed and, staring at the blades of the fan rotating above me, I thought over the bizarre events of the night. Or rather, the events that I should have found bizarre but that at the moment appeared to me only manna fallen from heaven.

  First of all, it should have seemed bizarre that a Chinese guy was so expansive with a stranger, and, furthermore, a Westerner. Then there was Yichang’s perfect Italian and the business of the suite at the Hotel Excelsior. Even a child would have been suspicious. But as I said, at that time I had a tendency not to think too much. In a single stroke, while drinking beer and looking at whores, I had found a new place to live and won two hundred and fifty euros: I confined myself to thinking this.

  Yes, because between one thing and another the little game had gone on for hours and, in spite of the fact that the bets were limited, I had left the Forbidden City with a tidy sum in my pocket. I may not have been a great player, but Yichang showed himself to be even worse. Above all he was obstinate. In the sense that he seemed purposely to do his utmost to lose. And this was the thing that should have made me suspicious. But I was intoxicated by the ease with which I was winning money.

  Yichang kept his word. That night we went together to the Excelsior and he introduced me to Signor Ho. There was no problem. After a few preliminaries and a handshake, the suite was officially mine. For a deposit I left the two hundred euros that I had won at cards. With a warm smile, Yichang said that I couldn’t refuse him the right to recoup.

  I couldn’t, as a matter of fact. We decided to meet at the Forbidden City at 3 in the morning. I won that night, too, but a little less, because Yichang succeeded in taking a few hands himself. I discovered that losing, rather than worrying me, increased my desire to keep playing. For reasons that in time I understood but which were then completely obscure to me, winning a hand after having lost one made me feel stronger. So that I even considered losing some on purpose, a little out of vanity and a little out of pure enjoyment. In spite of the money I won, however, cards still essentially bored me. I never changed my ideas on the subject. For me, there’s nothing more tedious or foolish than poker. Maybe that’s why I remained a terrible player.

  You understood perfectly, I said terrible. Little by little, I don’t even know how, I began to lose. And the more I lost the more I raised the stakes and the more I wanted to keep playing. Every night I went to the Forbidden City, I sat at a secluded table, and I played. I played and lost. From time to time, raising my head from the cards, I’d find my eyes meeting those of a girl who was dancing, and for an instant I’d feel nostalgia for the time when drinking a beer and looking at whores had been the crowning moment of my daily routine.

  But it was really just an instant. In less than a second I was plunged back into the idiotic questions that assail the mind of a cardplayer. Pass, bluff, stand. All bullshit, and the moral of this bullshit was that I lost and Yichang won.

  Yichang and his friends. Because a couple of other players always joined us, and none spoke a word of Italian. They won, too, but less than Yichang.

  In the space of two months I accumulated debts of nearly two hundred thousand euros. A sum I had never seen in my life. Yichang seemed to take it lightly. We played with chips and when, at dawn, the accounts were settled, Yichang wrote everything down in a notebook, but he never asked me for a cent. In fact, he told his friends that he would be my guarantor. He said that there was no problem. That I was an established professional who wrote for the papers. When he said that, I trembled inside.

  Then came the crash, the devaluation, or I don’t know what. As I said, I’ve never understood anything about the economy. The fact is that prices began to rise, including the rent on the suite at the Excelsior. So my debts spread like an oil spill, and with that we finally come to the time when I had the strange dream of the dead girl in the bed.

  Later that night, Yichang asked me if by any chance I could lend him a thousand euros. I had gotten to know these people a little and I am well aware that when a Chinese person circles around a problem, it means that he’s presenting the bill. He had said “lend” but in effect he meant pay. And not only a thousand euros but also the rest of my debt, or at least a considerable part of it. I had no idea where to go to get fifty, let alone a thousand and the rest. I told him that he must excuse me but I was a bit short.

  “A bit short in what sense?” He couldn’t understand how a journalist like me didn’t have enough to lend a friend a thousand euros.

  I had to tell him the truth. I would have been better off making up some more nonsense, but I saw no way out. And then I’d had it up to my ears. The situation was tearing me to pieces. I wanted to go back to my old life and stop playing, stop losing, stop fooling a friend. Because Yichang had behaved like a true friend, he had shown that he trusted me. And how had I rewarded him?

  I would have liked to see him outside of the poker game. Have a few beers and talk about this and that. Yichang was in fact an amiable companion, a cultivated person. While we played, he often recounted interesting details about the history of Rome. He was a real expert. He had read Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire five times. Before meeting Yichang I didn’t even know the names of the seven hills, but thanks to him I learned a lot of things. For example, that the greatness of Rome consisted above all in its eternal decadence.

  I wonder if my life went as it did because I’m a Roman. It’s consoling to be able to convince ourselves that our ruin is a kind of predestination, something genetic, or some such nonsense. It relieves you from the obligation of being sorry for all you have not done or could have not done. Like telling Yichang the truth.

  I didn’t expect him to take it so badly. I imagined that he would be pissed off, of course. I owed him a boatload of money, basically, and maybe he had already made plans for how to spend it. But what happened caught me off balance. He made me understand that I had understood nothing, excuse the wordplay.

  On the table were the cards, the bottles of beer, a couple of ashtrays full of butts, and the piles of chips. Yichang raised his arms, held them suspended a moment, then pounded his fists down violently. The objects tottered, ti
pped over, fell to the floor. The two other Chinese guys gave signs of smiling. I bit my lower lip and hung my head.

  “Look at me,” said Yichang.

  I did.

  His face was a mask of tension. He was breathing hard through his nostrils. He stared at me for moments that, it seemed, would never pass, then he pointed at me with his index finger and uttered my full name.

  “Tommaso Pincio. You … you … you…”

  He never said what he was about to say. He got up abruptly and went off somewhere. The other two Chinese sat motionless in their places, staring at me. I thought it was best not to move, either.

  At the Forbidden City, no one noticed a thing. All was proceeding as usual. The girls’ bodies swayed lazily to the rhythm of the music. One of them came down from the stage to sit on the knees of a client, an Asian man of around fifty.

  I recall that at that moment they were playing a remix of “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” The one by the Global Deejays, you know it? A rather silly tune, but then the Chinese are not very sophisticated. Every so often in the song you hear a female voice saying the names of various cities. Paris, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and a bunch of others. Even Baghdad. And I would have liked to find myself anywhere, including Baghdad, but the Forbidden City.

  Then Yichang returned to the table. He gathered up the cards, lit a cigarette, and said, “Okay, let’s get back to the game.”

  The expression on his face was indecipherable. He seemed to have calmed down, but I glimpsed a light in his eyes that I didn’t like. I tried to say that I would rather not play. I wanted to go home. I felt like a shit. I had lied. I had accumulated a mountain of debts that I would never be able to pay.

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, seriously. I lied to you and I can’t forgive myself.”

  “It’s true, but for that precise reason you can’t withdraw.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “You see, if you withdraw now I’ll be forced to have your dick cut off by one of the girls.” He stared at me for a few seconds, then: “I was joking, obviously.” But he didn’t have the tone of someone who was joking. I tried to show a hint of a smile. We played. Every so often I glanced at the other two, but they gave no sign of having understood what Yichang had said, and he hadn’t uttered a single word in Chinese. I had a lot of ugly thoughts. I think it was then that I began to use my brain again, a little. However, I promptly got into another one of my usual messes.

  Incredible to say, but I had started winning again. Yichang didn’t seem at all disturbed by this. In fact, he began to make some jokes and he told a story about the origins of Rome, as if nothing had happened. I felt tremendously embarrassed and wanted to contribute to the conversation. Since I was short of subjects, I had this bright idea of recounting the strange dream I’d had the night before.

  Yichang listened attentively but said nothing. He continued to lose. When we stopped playing he was down by almost three hundred euros. It wasn’t much compared to the two hundred thousand I owed him, but at least it was something. He took his notebook and updated it, saying that we would see each other the following night at the usual time.

  I don’t know if it had something to do with telling Yichang my dream, but the following night there was something new. Sitting to one side, near our table, was a girl. Yichang introduced her. Her name was Yin. Like all the girls in the Forbidden City, she was very pretty. I didn’t remember having seen her before, but that didn’t mean much. Ever since I had thrown myself body and soul into cards, I had stopped paying particular attention to what happened on the stage.

  Yichang said that she was there to serve us. He asked if I had anything against it. All this was rather odd. Usually, when we finished our beers we raised a finger and immediately more were brought. Our needs were always limited to this. I didn’t see how this girl could serve us. But could I make an objection?

  The first few nights slid by smooth as glass. I continued to win big. I had recouped almost half my debt. Within two weeks I found myself ahead by a hundred euros. From the stable to the stars.

  “You see, Yin brings you good luck,” Yichang said every so often, smiling in that strange way he had on those nights. And when Yichang made these remarks, Yin smiled too, staring at me with a look full of meaning.

  I shielded myself, embarrassed. I had discovered that I was not at all immune to Yin’s charm. She was beautiful, but there was something else. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it was the fact that she sat near our table the whole time without saying anything. She didn’t even bring us the beers, as I had imagined she would. She was just a presence. She seemed to be there only to be looked at, and, indeed, I looked at her. I couldn’t help giving her furtive glances. And every time I did so, I found that her eyes were on me.

  I felt good. I was winning, and having a girl gaze at me the whole time made me feel … how to put it? Stronger, more of a man.

  The cards had extinguished in me any desire, and so it had been an eternity since I’d been with a woman. But now it was different. I felt reborn and was beginning to have thoughts about Yin.

  This didn’t escape Yichang. At the end of one night, in Yin’s presence, he said, “Why don’t you take her home?”

  I pretended not to understand.

  “Yes, you should celebrate. You’ve started winning again. You’re ahead by seven hundred euros. It’s a whim you can satisfy. I’ve seen how you look at her, what do you think? And I bet Yin wouldn’t mind. Right, Yin?”

  Yin smiled without saying anything, as always.

  I, however, felt different. I told you, I felt as if I’d been reborn. So the words came out of my mouth by themselves: “You would really come with me?” Only an idiot would ask a whore a question like that.

  She nodded her head yes and I brought her home. We made love all day, heedless of the heat and the sweat. At sunset we went out. I asked her if she wanted to have breakfast with me. She nodded. What did I expect her to say? We didn’t speak. We only gazed into each other’s eyes as we ate. We had no need for words, we felt satisfied. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t use the plural. It was I who felt satisfied. She had simply done what she was paid for—something I began to forget, despite the fact that I had always boasted that I knew how things worked at the Forbidden City.

  The fact that I’d paid nothing so far had its weight. I supposedly had seven hundred euros available. Yichang scrupulously noted my winnings in his famous notebook, but he had not yet given me a cent and I hadn’t found the courage to ask him for anything. How could I demand that he pay me after what had happened?

  Nor did Yin demand anything. When I raised the subject she shook her head and said, smiling, “Me know you many money Yichang. Me not care. Me like you.” I was struck by hearing her speak in the broken English of Asians. I realized that until then I had never heard the sound of her voice. A sound that I would not hear again for a long time. We stayed together. It became a kind of routine. I played, I won some euros, I said goodbye to Yichang and went home with Yin. We made love and then watched television or simply lay on the bed. Without ever saying anything. Or rather: It was she who didn’t open her mouth. I sometimes did. For example, I made comments on the heat or asked if she felt like something to eat. Sometimes I mentioned that I liked her. Whatever I said to her, Yin nodded her head yes. Which didn’t bother me. In fact, I found it relaxing and, in a strange way, I began to fall in love with her. I say strange because I knew nothing about Yin. Where she came from, how old she was, what went on in her head.

  In time I began to make grandiose speeches after we made love. I talked to her about myself, about how my life had been and how I would have liked it to be. I told her my opinion on all kinds of things. If there was something after death, if I believed in God or extraterrestrials. Ideas. She seemed to listen because from time to time she nodded. But the truth is that deep down it wasn’t so important whether she really listened. Otherwise I wouldn’t have spoken i
n Italian. What the fuck, the only words I had heard her say were “Me not care. Me like you.” There was a serious probability that she understood nothing.

  One day I felt in a particularly romantic vein and told her the dream. I don’t know why, but it came to mind. Suddenly, I realized that after that absurd dream my life had changed. I had begun to win and I had met her. Maybe dreams had a meaning after all. She nodded yes without saying anything. She didn’t seem at all moved by the fact that the girl in the dream was dead. A detail that I noted only later.

  Some more weeks passed during which everything seemed to keep running smooth as glass. I was becoming richer and richer, if only in Yichang’s notebook. Sex with Yin was fantastic and every day I was more in love with her. I was convinced that she felt the same, because from the beginning she had never asked me to pay her. In my screwed-up brain I had conceived the idea that her “Me like you” was worth more than “Me know you many money Yinchang.”

  Until one night, after months had gone by, she decided to open her mouth, and she did it to ask for money. In her broken English she said that, between one fuck and another, I owed her something like fifty thousand euros. If I considered the request in purely virtual terms there was nothing to worry about. According to Yichang’s notebook I was nearly a millionaire. But in my pocket I had barely a hundred euros and my bank account wasn’t much better off.

  Yin told me I don’t know what nonsense about her family in Cambodia; in other words, she really needed money. She wanted actual money, not numbers written in a stupid notebook, and she wanted it right away. Suddenly I saw her for what she was, a whore from the Forbidden City. Maybe she loved me, in the animal-like way that binds those girls to their source of income. Nonetheless, she was a scorpion, as Yichang put it.