The Loneliness of the Spider

Chapter 10

It"s Butz, the editor-in-chief. I imagine him at home, with a wool cap on his head, drinking Coca Cola and cursing.

"They’ve found the body of a boy in Via Santa Caterina. He has a head wound."

"A wound like what?"

"A wound is a wound, f**k. I don’t know, a wound like..."

"Is he dead?"

I take a drag on the cigarette.

"Yes. It’s breaking news."

"I"m there in ten minutes."

I hear thunder in the distance. A thin drizzle starts falling. When I arrive at the scene, it’s pouring with rain. Through the windshield I can vaguely make out a group of people blocking the top of the street. An ambulance and two police cars are evident on the sidewalk of Corso Vico. Slivers of blue light flash along the walls of the houses. I open a gap in the wall of backs and umbrellas and reach a barrier. It is manned by a police officer. He is wearing a dark oilskin. I can see the body behind him. It is lying on its side. Around the head a brown spot is dissolving in the rain. I am reminded of a scene I saw some time ago. A woman was scraping a wall with a steel sponge and sobbing as she did so. There was a strange smell in the air, a mephitic stench. I think it was blood.

"I"m a journalist. Can you tell me what happened?"

The policeman seems distracted. He raises his voice to be heard above the noise of the thunderstorm.

"A boy is dead."

"Who is it?"

"We don"t know yet. We rang the doorbells but nobody knows him."

Raindrops drip down his face. He has a big chest and a thick neck. He is freshly shaved. He looks like the policeman in American movies, that good guy who dies on the third take, with his wife in the kitchen waiting for him and his partner, thirty shitty years on patrol together, who can’t believe that it was his turn. I wave my hand and move to the opposite side of the street. I lean against against a shop window. I have a strange taste in my mouth. Ferrous. I run two fingers over my lips.

The policeman tries to play it down.