Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Cervello

Pollution slicked over his skin, stinging as he stroked wildly, eyes tight shut. His stomach scraped something and he felt a sensation like a caress, though he knew it should be pain. He knew he had these things called lungs, and in them were millions of pips like tiny empty seed pods, and these pods needed oxygen. Everything was swelling – reddening to anger - the outrage of the body’s components that feel no relation to personality. Then you have to tell them: this is for your own good, this not breathing. Just keep calm, just enjoy the ride – like those pilots with the soothing voices – he remembered his one and only flight: Port Harcourt to London – the British Airways stewardesses with their shining lips – the pattern on the seat – blue, red and white – the man beside him explaining how design companies competed for multimillion pound contracts to make them – chuckling – crazy isn’t it, a crazy world – he’d smiled at the man and thought about where he’d come from – how he would never go back there, it was his now: the world of seat fabric design and would you like anything to drink, Sir.
He came up soundless as an otter. With the discipline of quarry he restrained the craved for gasps and tightened himself against the bank. He was at the edge of a tunnel and could hear voices above him; a torch beam was skipping across the surface of the channel. There being no real choice, he ducked into the tunnel and disappeared from view to anyone watching from the upper world.
What to do when you can’t sleep? Was it the surrealists who came up with the idea of counting sheep jumping over a fence? Certainly whoever first counselled this as an innately soporific image possessed either a sense of humour or a unique set of neural pathways.
Mina tried to read. First ‘Storia della Camorra’. She put it down after realizing that all the Salvatores had coalesced and she had no idea which was which. She checked her watch – Maggie not due back for another hour. She put down the tome and picked up a magazine from the supply under her bed - a supplement from la Reppublica, the Rome-based daily.
When the message tone sounded she flinched. She knocked the phone off the bedside table and had to scrabble to get it, knees on the bed, bum in the air, elbows supporting her on the cold tiled floor like someone engaged in a misguided form of yoga.
…
Nico’s message. Three dots. He’d only sent her that once before. It had been meant for someone else. Its meaning, as he had explained: ‘I don’t have anything more to say to you.’ That time the intended recipient had been a friend who owed him money and was avoiding him. This time, no doubt, it was for her, and she thought for a few seconds, relishing the pain in her arm muscles, before replying with an anagram of his name made into a term of abuse. Anagrams had been a hobby of hers since student days and of course he wouldn’t get it, but that was the point.
All possibility of sleep had vanished with the textual thrust and parry. She flopped down onto the floor like an inelegant seal sliding off a rock, already dressed. With a vague notion of going to meet Maggie, even though she didn’t know exactly where the pizzeria was, she slipped on shoes and jacket, gathered up her keys, and exited the flat.
Oh yes God, you ain’t always so clever but you hit jackpot with Ransome when you give him his slimslender body – he stretch, he squeeze, he fit - through the grille, all eel-like and boneless. To re-emerge, and now only the night sky above – feel good – stars winkin’ at the Ransomresurrection. In his subterranean odyssey wall of the tunnel guided him. Higher ceiling in the middle but who could trust no jackal not going to sneak up from other direction capture him? No need risk it so he paddled at a crouch, tight to black walls, shirt sodden and ripped - snagged on ancient branch stickin’ from dat wall, jeans clingfilmy like in London deli sandwiches he wrapped, and of course he’d lost both his sandals. But hey, dirty dog free better than clean one in a cage any day.
He look up. Oh, he do like those stars. An’ tree branches swaying lightly in the wind. Moonlight in the sky - farting of a motor in the distance. He is in a park, maybe Garden of Eden. Stream which bring him flow along bottom of little ravine. He scramble up side grabbing tree roots for hold onto. Now he on level ground. Carpet ferns and fallen leaves. Smells sap and growing things in earth. This still be the same city? Possible Ransome be gone a thousand miles in the tunnel and is now in some friendly country where nobody hunting him down? Europe 2.0 Microsoft goes natural? Or maybe he’s back in Africa. Oh, Ransome, there’s a thought – like when you’re checking that Italian Honey ice cream in-da-club and she turning to find – serial killa flick momento - you staring at her – you feelin’ delightful and shivery all at once. And only one thing to do – walk away before she put the bouncers on to you. Yeah, this thought’s the same. Africa! Oh don’t even go there!
She walked down the poorly lit Via Universita, past the little shops which at night, dark and with shutters down, lost all their cheerful personality. There were no bars on this street. And even Piazza San Ciro was quiet. The orchid-shaped fountain in the centre spilled its cascade out into the surrounding basin. Anita Ekberg wouldn’t be wading around here tonight with Marcello Mastroianni, not unless the pair of them had turned into a pug-faced old dwarf wearing jam-jar glasses and a mangy hound trotting along with its nose to the ground. In a different city you might assume the old woman was its owner. Here more likely she was trying to escape it to avoid feeding the thing. The dog had stopped now and was wagging its snout furiously in an attempt to widen a hole in a binbag that sagged against the wall.
Remembering that the pizzeria was somewhere near the station, she headed down Corso Garibaldi. She decided on the way she would set herself up with a beer from Tonino’s fridge – yes, if there was one thing she got a kick out of, it was drinking in the street. She’d get one for Maggie too, and meet her with it; they could walk back together. Tonino's was near the bottom on the left, just after the park.
In Ransome district, when he was small, he remember the one time people felt like they was where it’s at. Even Ransome Uncle Victor interviewed for an American channel- Victor always mention that fact of it being American. Yes according to him all U.S.A. know his face and he a big star over there. This we talking early nineties but sure, if you from Stateside you’ll still know him today, what with your youtube internetcetera. No one ever actually seen interview aired but Uncle Victor could act it out so well that don’t matter. Whoever his audience was had to play the part of Pamela the TV reporter. This usually necessitate creation of an artificial bust, using whatever materials be closest to hand. A couple of mangoes were best, but spare car parts would do – performances of the interview tend to take place on the forecourt of the garage he work, under the shade of corrugated overhang.
You (Pamela): You seen the victim, Mr Ochikwe? Can you describe her?
Uncle Victor: It’s terrible what happened to that girl. I knew her, man, I feel like she my own daughter, so pretty, she has this reddish hair like a sunset, and she smiling like a sunshine, all happy and not bitchy-bitching at all like oilman’s wives what pass through this garage – why, that’s my question, why, you Mr I-Want-To-Get-Myself-a-Woman-but-I-too-damn-crazy-to-do-things-nice-way-so-I-got-to-kill-one…If you must do something why you not kill some bitchy-bitch fe-male why this one what give light to us poor man…
Uncle Victor got telling this story so many places word came police way and next thing he’s a suspect himself. Bit of a hole he dug there but lucky for him they caught the guy who really did it – this kid from one of the villas everyone knew had his juices all confused – twenty five years old and never did anything ‘cep shoot hoop with juniors half his high – just walked into the station one day and so the story goes says ‘I only wanted to play with her’. Real Mice an’ men scenario there. Oh yeah, Ransome know his literature…
An’ now he’s thinkin’ ‘well, well, look at that passing lady all unprotected in the blacknes’ – maybe she’s got some the thing a Ransome needs if he ain’t gonna kiss his freedom sweet cherry pie’. Hell, that big stone piece of skirt Liberty might say, Sister, a man’s gotta sometimes do stuff you don’t like, but it don’t mean he real bad guy, things are tough and he not gonna hurt you, just the money…