I followed the directions, no one stopped me. The workers, both men and women, seemed to be enveloped in a bitter indifference; even when they laughed or shouted insults they seemed remote from their very laughter, from their voices, from the swill they handled, from the bad smell. I emerged among women in blue smocks who worked with the meat, caps on their heads: the machines produced a clanking sound and a mush of soft, ground, mixed matter. But Lila wasn’t there. And I didn’t see her where they were stuffing skins with the rosy pink paste mixed with bits of fat, or where, with sharp knives, they skinned, gutted, cut, using the blades with a dangerous frenzy. I found her in the storerooms. She came out of a refrigerator along with a sort of white breath. With the help of a short man, she was carrying a reddish block of frozen meat on her back. She placed it on a cart, she started to go back into the cold. I immediately saw that one hand was bandaged.
“Lila.”
She turned cautiously, stared at me uncertainly. “What are you doing here?” she said. Her eyes were feverish, her cheeks more hollow than usual, and yet she seemed large, tall. She, too, wore a blue smock, but over it a kind of long coat, and on her feet she wore army boots. I wanted to embrace her but I didn’t dare: I was afraid, I don’t know why, that she would crumble in my arms. It was she, instead, who hugged me for long minutes. I felt the damp material that gave off a smell even more offensive than the smell in the air. “Come,” she said, “let’s get out of here,” and shouted at the man who was working with her: “Two minutes.” She drew me into a corner.
“How did you find me?”
“I came in.”
“And they let you pass?”
“I said I was looking for you and that I was a friend of Bruno’s.”
“Good, that way they’ll be convinced that I give the son of the owner blow jobs and they’ll leave me alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s how it works.”
“Here?”
“Everywhere. Did you get your degree?”
“Yes. But an even more wonderful thing happened, Lila. I wrote a novel and it’s being published in April.”
Her complexion was gray, she seemed bloodless, and yet she flared up. I saw the red move up along her throat, her cheeks, up to the edge of her eyes, so close that she squeezed them as if fearing that the flame would burn the pupils. Then she took my hand and kissed it, first on the back, then on the palm.
“I’m happy for you,” she murmured.
But at the moment I scarcely noticed the affection of the gesture, I was struck by the swelling of her hands and the wounds, cuts old and new, a fresh one on the thumb of her left hand whose edges were inflamed, and I could imagine that under the bandage on her right hand she had an even worse injury.
“What have you done to yourself?”
She immediately withdrew, put her hands in her pockets.
“Nothing. Stripping meat off the bones ruins your fingers.”
“You strip the meat?”
“They put me where they like.”
“Talk to Bruno.”
“Bruno is the worst shit of them all. He shows up only to see who of us he can fuck in the aging room.”
“Lila.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Are you ill?”
“I’m very well. Here in the storerooms they give me ten lire more an hour for cold damage.”
The man called: “Cerù, the two minutes are up.”
“Coming,” she said.
I murmured, “Maestra Oliviero died.”
She shrugged, said, “She was sick, it was bound to happen.”
I added in a hurry, because I saw that the man next to the cart was getting anxious, “She let me have
“What’s
I looked at her to see if it was true that she didn’t remember and she seemed sincere.
“The book you wrote when you were ten.”
“Book?”
“That’s what we called it.”
Lila pressed her lips together, shook her head. She was alarmed, she was afraid of getting in trouble at work, but in my presence she acted the part of someone who does as she likes. I have to go, I thought.
She said, “A long time has passed since then,” and shivered.
“Do you have a fever?”
“No.”
I looked for the packet in my purse, gave it to her. She took it, recognized it, but showed no emotion.
“I was an arrogant child,” she muttered.
I quickly contradicted her.
“The story is still beautiful today,” I said. “I read it again and discovered that, without realizing it, I’ve always had it in my mind. That’s where my book comes from.”
“From this nonsense?” she laughed loudly, nervously. “Then whoever printed it is crazy.”
The man shouted, “I’m waiting for you, Cerullo.”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” she answered.
