NICOLA ROCCA
TWO DROPS OF WATER
ENNEERRE
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- Nicola Rocca Pagina Autore
- Nicola Rocca
enneerreautore@outlook.it
Cover art © Alberto Motta
Cover design © Nicola Rocca and Alberto Motta
Translated by Andrew Fanko
Publisher: Tektime - www.traduzionelibri.it
Any reference to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Literary and artistic property reserved.
All rights reserved.
2016
Summary
PROLOGUE
FEBRUARY 2016
THE DEPARTURE
NOVEMBER 2016
MANY YEARS EARLIER
THE BITTER TRUTH
EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT
EPILOGUE
For Sandra and Davide,
who achieved their
greatest dream.
For all those who,
like me,
exist in limbo,
straddling the finest
of fine lines that separates
two different worlds.
N.R.
"You will learn, to your cost,
that on life's great journey
you will encounter many masks, but few faces."
(Luigi Pirandello One, No One and One Hundred Thousand)
TWO DROPS OF WATER
PROLOGUE
The room is in semi-darkness,
the pitch black alleviated only by the dirty yellow light of a street lamp filtering through the window.
Aldo Martelli stares up at the ceiling.
It's an ordeal he has endured for years now - in and out of hospital. No particular illness, but he's ninety years old, and there's no cure for old age; it comes for us all, followed sooner or later by its trusty friend, Death.
His throat seems to be closing up, every breath a laborious wheeze.
All he needs to do is reach out and press his emergency button. A nurse would come running and fit his oxygen mask.
Aldo knows there is little point; it would just delay his last breath for a few more hours. He may as well let himself drift off into that deepest of sleeps that he knows so well. A sleep that has been his livelihood for seventy years.
Martelli Funeral Directors. Two shop windows and a preparation room.
Thinking about it still brings a smile to his face.
So much time has passed. It seems like only yesterday, but now his entire life has flown by.
The weight pressing down on his lungs increases. Aldo may never have experienced his own death, but it is all too familiar to him. He can sense it.
Now that his time has come, he's not afraid. Life has been kind; he can have no complaints. He has never lacked for money or affection.
His thoughts turn to Mina, whom he married before either of them had even turned twenty. Gradually, images of their children come into his mind. Then the grandchildren.
Their faces seem so real he cant help but smile. Such a beautiful family.
As his vision begins to blur from a lack of oxygen, another memory pops into his head. He thinks of the little white coffin and the secret he has kept for over thirty years.
It was so long ago now, but he can remember it as if it were yesterday.
He still cant explain why he did it. Could have been greed; could have been a million and one other things.
He deceived an entire town.
He opens his mouth wide in an attempt to steal one final breath, and his eyes relax and fall open.
Just a split second more of suffering, and the secret would go with him to his grave.
FEBRUARY 2016
A mia volta mi fido del mondo
non ti dico le botte che prendo
Non c'è modo di starsene fuori
da ciò che lo rende tremendo e stupendo
(La linea sottile [The Fine Line] - Luciano Ligabue)
CHAPTER 1
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.02
So you're not married and you dont have a boyfriend?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.02
Nope. Neither of the above.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.03
How come? Must be your choice, right? There can't be a lack of interest. Ive seen your photo...you're a stunning girl.
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.04
Girl? Im not sure I still qualify as a girl at 33 :-(
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.04
You may be 33 but you look about 25. And you're still a girl at 25, trust me!
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.05
If you say so...
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.05
So you still havent answered my question. How come a GIRL as hot as you isnt married or in a relationship?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.06
Ermmm....next question please!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.06
Ooops...have I touched a nerve?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.06
Ill say... And what about you? Married?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.07
Thats touched a nerve right here too :-(
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.07
Wow. Love is definitely NOT in the air around here!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.07
You're not wrong, SadChantal. Is that why youre sad? Did your last relationship go tits up?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.08
Maybe...But loves not the only reason. What about you anyway? Whats the deal with your name?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.09
Just paying a little tribute to my 2 favourite directors: Alfred Hitchcock and Dario Argento.
OK, so apart from love, what's making you sad, gorgeous?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.09
Im just going through a rough time...Id rather not talk about it.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.10
Understood. Well talk about something else shall we?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.10
:-)
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.10
Hmmm...we need something a bit more fun and light-hearted...
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.11
Anything would be more fun and light-hearted than the last year of my life.
Go on, fire away...
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.12
It might not be the most fun and light-hearted topic for most people,
but it is for me: What do you do? For work, I mean.
Chantal sat motionless in front of her PC. It was unbelievable how this guy had managed to hit her where it hurt. Hed started with family, then moved on to love, and finally, in an attempt to talk about something more fun and light-hearted, he'd delivered the coup de grace.
Work had been a sore point for a while now.
She began to tap away at the keyboard, and her words appeared on the screen.
Fuck off, she muttered, burying her head in her hands.
She deleted what she had just typed, reducing the message window to nothing but a flashing cursor.
The thirty-three-going-on-twenty-five-year-old girl got up from her swivel chair and headed into the kitchen.
Where the fuck are they? she asked herself, scanning the table she hadnt cleared from earlier.
Nothing. They werent there.
She cast her eyes over to the shelf by the sink.
They werent there either.
She puffed out her cheeks in frustration and headed for the living room hoping for better luck. She raised a finger to her mouth and began to bite nervously on her nail. Her eyes were darting around the room: the glass coffee table, the shelving unit on the wall, the old writing desk...
There you are!
She walked over to the antique piece of furniture and grabbed the packet of Philip Morris. She took a cigarette from the pack and lit it, hoping that the nicotine would somehow inspire her to create a cover story that could mask what she had really, shamefully, done for a living.
By the time she had returned to the bedroom, the cigarette was already half smoked, and a couple of pieces of ash fell to the tiled floor.
Dammit! she admonished her own carelessness.
She was about to go back in the kitchen to fetch an ashtray, and a damp sponge to clean up the fallen ash, when her PC emitted a familiar ping.
She peered at the screen. There were four new messages.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.16
Hello?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.17
Dont tell me Ive touched another nerve with work!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.20
You still there?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.23
Whats going on?
Dont tell me Ive touched another nerve with work!
Well, kind of.
You still there?
If truth be told, she didnt know if she was still there or not. It was probably about a year ago that she started not really being there. And it had got worse ever since as she was beset by one problem after another, slamming into her like a high-speed train.
Whats going on?
She had no clue what was going on, only that shed lost her mind in some corner of this godforsaken earth. No, there was definitely no happy ending to the last year of her life.
She took another drag and realised the cigarette had burned down to the filter.
Fucks sake!
She flicked the butt out of the window and turned back to the screen. He could wait, for now.
She moved the cursor up and to the right, and clicked on the X. The chat window disappeared to be replaced by a giant winking emoji.
Her computer had been her virtual world for days, but she switched it off and returned to the real world.
CHAPTER 2
Until this time last year, her life had been completely different.
Mamma and Papà had raised her lovingly. When she left high school, she had wanted to start working so she could contribute to the household income, but her parents had insisted she apply to university.
Choose whatever course you like, her father had said, more serious than she had ever seen him. Well find a way of paying your boarding costs.
She chose Economics, and she already knew enough about that particular subject to know that she didnt want to be a burden on her parents for years to come. She'd found herself a part-time job at Lilly's Snack Bar so she could at least contribute to some of her uni-related expenses: train fares, books, lunches away from home.
She worked at the bar, just a couple of miles from the family home, for the first two years of her course, doing the 5.30pm-10pm shift three nights a week. The money she earned eased the pressure on her folks, at least until the country was rocked by the financial crisis. On one horrible autumn day, Chantal had received a phone call from Signor Ferruccio, who told her (sensitively at least) that he could no longer afford to keep her on. The bar just wasn't generating enough business.
And so Chantal found herself out of a job, and her parents were forced to tighten the purse strings so they could cover all her uni expenses. Then, one day, she responded to an advert:
WANTED: NIGHT CLUB DANCER
The night club turned out to be more of a strip club, requiring topless dancers to strut their stuff in front of sleazy, drooling old men stroking themselves through the inside of their trouser pockets.
But the pay was good and she needed the money, so she had agreed to get up on stage and take her kit off, surrounded by a pack of horny wolves.
When Chantal awoke from her daydream, she found herself standing in the middle of the kitchen. She took a deep breath and pulled yet another cigarette from the rapidly emptying packet.
She had tried to quit so many times but succumbed whenever life got tough.
It was more than just life getting tough though; it was a deep, dark depression that had pervaded every fibre of her being.
She took three long drags on her cigarette, glanced over at the dirty dishes piled up in the sink and shook the tablecloth over the balcony. The sparrows would be grateful for the breadcrumbs.
Taking another couple of drags, she headed back indoors and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. She wandered into the bathroom and took all her clothes off, glancing at herself in the mirror but not stopping to admire what she saw. That same body, lusted after by dozens of randy old gits at the club, had been traded in for a younger model by the man she'd thought was the love of her life.
Pushing those painful memories to the back of her mind, she reached inside the shower and turned it on. She put her hands under the jet until it reached the right temperature, stepped into the shower and waited for the water to succeed where yet another cigarette had failed, by calming her thoughts.
CHAPTER 3
He opens his eyes.
He feels drowsy, or perhaps it's the after-effects of the stuff he is forced to take.
Must be some sort of tranquiliser. But he says nothing. He doesn't moan. All that matters is that he gets what he wants. And so far, he always has.
He looks over to the opposite corner of the room.
Still there.
He smiles and begins to drool at the prospect of his favourite meal, which has been there for some time now.
He yawns.
Why me and not someone else?
He asks himself the same question nearly every day.
Why me and not him?
He doesn't actually need an answer, as long as he gives him what he wants...something to play with. Something that sates him and yet leaves him feeling empty.
He belches - damn acid reflux -
gets up from the dirty, unmade bed and thirstily gulps down some water from a plastic bottle in an attempt to get rid of the taste of whatever the hell he'd forced him to swallow.
He sniffs, slips a hand inside his pants and lightly touches his cock and balls.
He pauses for a few moments as he looks at himself in the mirror and tells himself hes not an ugly man. Sure, he could improve things if he took a little more pride in his appearance,