Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [46]
‘Did you lose it here?’ asked Fiorenzo.
Immediately Enrico said: What?’
The other waited a moment before saying: ‘What you're looking for.’
‘How do you know I am looking for anything?’ said Enrico quickly. He had been wondering for a moment whether he should be brutally direct and intimidating, as the police were with anybody scruffily dressed, or polite and formal like urbane and egalitarian city folk; in the end he had decided the latter was better suited to that mixture of pressure and readiness to negotiate which he thought should set the tone for their relationship.
The man thought a litde, let out another little puff of air, turned and made to leave.
‘He thinks he's got the upper hand,’ Enrico thought. ‘Could he really have found it?’ There was no doubt but that the stranger had put himself in the stronger position: it was up to Enrico to make the next move. ‘Hey!’ he called and offered his pack of cigarettes. The man turned. ‘Smoke?’ asked Enrico, offering the pack, but without moving. The man came back a few steps, took a cigarette from the pack, and as he pulled it out with his nails snorted something that might even have been a thank-you. Enrico returned the pack to his pocket, pulled out his lighter, tried it, then slowly lit the other man's cigarette.
‘You tell me what you're looking for first,’ he said, ‘and then I'll answer your question.’
‘Grass,’ the man said, and pointed to a basket laid by the side of the road.
‘For rabbits?’
They had climbed back up the slope. The man picked up the basket. ‘For us. To eat,’ he said and began to walk along the road. Enrico got on his scooter, started up and moved slowly alongside the man.
‘So, you come round here looking for grass every morning, do you?’ and what he wanted to say was: ‘This is your territory in a way, isn't it? Not a leaf falls here without you knowing about it!’ But Fiorenzo got in first: ‘This is common land, everybody comes.’
Clearly he had understood Enrico's game, and whether he had found the necklace or not, he wasn't going to say. Enrico decided to show his hand: ‘This morning somebody lost something right there,’ he said, stopping the scooter. T)id you find it?’ He left a pause then, expecting the man to ask, ‘What?’ Which he eventually did, but not before having thought it over a bit: a bit too much.
‘A necklace,’ Enrico said, with the twisted smile of one referring to something that was hardly important; and at the same time he made a gesture as though stretching something between his hands, a string, a ribbon, a child's litde chain. ‘It's got sentimental value for us. So you give it to me and I'll pay,’ and he made to pull out his wallet.
The unemployed Fiorenzo stretched out a hand, as though to say: I haven't got it,’ but then was careful not to say so, and with his hand still stretched out said instead: That'll be hard work, looking for something in the middle of all this … it'll take days. It's a big field. But we can start looking…’
Enrico leant on his handlebars again. I thought you'd already found it. That's too bad. Not to worry. I'm sorry for you more than me.’
The jobless man tossed away his cigarette stub. ‘The name's Fiorenzo,’ he said, We can come to some arrangement.’
‘I'm an architect, Enrico Pre. I was sure we could get down to business.’
‘We can come to some arrangement,’ Fiorenzo repeated. ‘So much every day and then so much on delivery of the missing item, whenever that is.’
Enrico almost whirled round, and even as he moved he didn't know whether he was going to grab the man by the scruff of the neck, or whether he just wanted to test his reactions again. As it turned out, Fiorenzo stopped still without making any move to defend himself, an ironic expression of defiance on his plucked-chicken face. And it seemed impossible to Enrico that the pockets of that skimpy crumpled jacket could hold four strings of pearls; if the man knew something about the necklace, God only knew