Livio suddenly felt guilty. If he were alone he would never paused to check which side came the cry of the child. His wife stopped suddenly on the other hand so close to the glass doors of the station. A man ran into their backs, cursing through clenched teeth in a taxi and disappeared, closing the jacket in door. Livio did not have time to please that Loredana grabbed her by the arm moving from the entrance that were hampering. Terms
At seven in the evening was a desert, so it was difficult to identify the small long-haired blond in front of the ticket office closed. On the ground, a small suitcase of chess. Two boys with ripped jeans tucked into boots and large sweatshirts over the knee looked at her with such deep interest to forget for a moment the beers they had in hand. The little girl dressed in white. Blank was also shoes and cotton stockings, one of which slipped down, revealing a white calf. The big tears that rolled down her cheeks and effort to recover his breath is not broken by sobs masked the graceful features of the face.
At a rough guess, Livio judged from afar, could have up to ten years, then turned to his wife, but did not see her. He was already crouched in front of her. The feeling
played by Lorenzo as he approached at a brisk pace towards the ticket office was spot on. The child was foreign. He had to dust off an Englishman rather primitive but effective way to find out his name and how old he was. He said his name was Charlotte and Livy had been right, he was nine. They did not understand where it came from and was not English, apparently little that he managed to say it was what she had been taught in school. The idea of \u200b\u200b
Livio to take her arm to the station with the hope of running into a couple of parents in a panic was unnecessary, then decided to examine the case of chess, immediately realize that was locked with a padlock fitted combination. Loredana
led Livio and the baby in a bar where they tried to calm her down over a cup of sweet tea trying to find out where his parents were or who had accompanied to the station.
had to leave? She had just arrived? As it was past the time when it was noticed to be alone?
Livio saw few alternatives. Police. We thought they would. Loredana
did not agree. He did not trust to leave in the hands of a couple of policemen that would eventually lead to the control panel without having to worry if he was hungry, thirsty, need to go to the bathroom, and amid shrieks, with people constantly coming and going, with the risk of not having an eye and lose it again.
Livio asked his wife to lower his voice, as from a few minutes the bartender looked at them angrily, but not so much on the tone of the conversation, but for the contrast of the seated figures in front of him. With their clothes and Livio Lorenzo would have gone unnoticed even by playing a trumpet in the church who had dressed as Charlotte had done everything to make it resemble a porcelain doll.
Now that the warmth of the tea had warmed her cheeks and brightened eyes seemed to have been kidnapped by an illustration of a fairy tale for children. Noticed it too, now in his fifties, and away from a fresh and youthful that he did not remember having ever had. No children. They could not have. But if they could put one in the world would never have reached the refined delicacy of the white color of the rain-eyed creature. Loredana
imagined the room where the baby woke up that morning: she was sure she had long pink curtains that absorb the sun's rays.
keep it long in silence. The white dress, the blond silky hair and small soft hands around the cup were soothing, relaxing. It seemed that time stopped scroll until the eye was placed on her.
's cell phone rang and he jumped Livio. They called the restaurant where he had booked, he wanted to surprise Loredana, but had not noticed that the eight had passed long ago.
He rose from his chair and said to cancel the booking.
Livio usually not discussed the decision of his wife and he did not even once. Charlotte would have housed until the following morning when, before going to work, would turn to the police.
During the trip from the station to the apartment the girl did not say a word.
looked out the window mesmerized with her suitcase on his lap.
"Sometimes I forget that traffic and not concrete are necessarily part of every person's life, "said Livio pointing the rearview mirror on the expression of the small wonder: the tiny mouth was slightly opened wide as that of those, the movies, is fascinated by a particularly intense scene. Livio
pulled the coat from the pack of Camels and lit one. A puff of bluish smoke stretched out like a tablecloth on the windshield.
"rolled down the window, will you smoke?" Loretta recalled him. The crystal fell
creak. Without a new traffic light at the noise of the city entered into the machine along with a fragrant smell of cooking. The girl said something,
leaned over the rear seats and the repeated with a finger pointing to the pizzeria next door. While parked
Livio happy hands began to beat like one of those monkeys with the saucers. Loren smiled. Not happened often.
When the waiter approached the table, Charlotte, with a menu with both hands raised, seem hidden behind a screen. Loredana
Livio and ordered a pizza each and mineral water.
The waiter grabbed the controls and was about to leave, but recalled him as Loredana Livio, lowering the child's menu, he found a confused little face with large eyes shining. The waiter did not betray the slightest astonishment, said he would pass it through a couple of minutes.
What Charlotte does not want the pizza was clear: continue to shake my head every time that word came out of the mouth, and Loretta back uttered a word for them meaningless. Resigned took the checkered suitcase, enter the combination and drew a vocabolarietto that flipped in a hurry and then show it to Lorenzo with his finger pressed on the word hallon. Loredana closed vocabulary and examined the cover. It was a dictionary from Swedish to Italian. Passed it to Livy, after esserselo nursed like a jeweler with a precious dubious said: "So? What eats svedesina? "
" Raspberries "said Loredana without taking your eyes off the girl.
The restaurant did not have them fresh, but as the days of sweet cake with berries Loredana ordered three slices, extracted from the fruits which were embedded in gelatin and set them on a clean plate. There was a nice little pile and Charlotte eagerly devoured while Livio and Loren were in the middle of the first slice of pizza.
Before the arrival of a time account Loretta went to the bathroom. When she returned her husband was waiting for waving a Polaroid to develop. He had just moved away, he explained, the child had taken a camera from the case and took the snapshot that portrayed him in the foreground with the expression of surprised and amused. Loretta looked at Charlotte smiled, showing a row of teeth as white as sugar confetti.
The girl fell asleep in the car. Livio was to pick her up and bring her home while Loretta's made its way aprendogli the door of the building and the apartment, where they were greeted by a wrap-around dark and a smell of dirty dishes and cigarettes off evil. Loredana
noticed it immediately, turned on the light and opened the window. The living room with kitchenette was in turmoil. She had been away for two weeks had seen the sick mother to give her sister the chance to take a little vacation. "Thank God you can not see the crap that you've created," he said softly mend quickly what came to hand.
"Where do I put it?" Livio said that he had not moved from the entrance.
"It's not a purse," his wife scolded him emptying an ashtray full of butts in a plastic bag hanging from the arm of a chair.
"So you tell me gently where you're going to fix it?"
"On the couch while, then goes over and prepares the bed. Sleep with us. "
Livio got busy and then went into the living room and sat down to smoke with his elbows on the table while his wife is taking off the gloves and threw them in the sink. The room smelled of detergent. When he turned back, tired and with the need to lie down, saw what her husband had placed in front of him. "The lock is open," he said staring at the case of chess.
Lorenzo took a chair and sat down beside her, saying: "I want you to promise me one thing."
"What?"
"Anything to put it back inside and we'll pretend not to have ever seen. I have never stolen and I'm not going to start tonight. "
" Okay, "said Livio. He was serious.
Rummaging in the case, in addition to the camera and vocabulary, fished a hair clip, a box with toothbrush and toothpaste, a brush and a dossier
bound in brown leather that, when opened be understood a photo album. Looking through the headlines as the only person they saw was an old lady with gray hair as a smoke stack. He was pictured alone and in different environments: the center of a town hall in the twilight of a country house, near the sea, on a boulder in the middle of a stream. He seemed happy and in good health. Loredana immediately thought of his mother sick in bed. She had been happy and smiling too. Livio browse other pages amazed at how she acquired as a better appearance, fresh and lively. The hair was not gray as in the first photographs of a blond but sparkled more and more turned on. Even the look was something different or was only the effect of light being a part of the pictures taken in the summer?
"Who can that be?" Said Livio.
"I do not believe the mother, too old."
"Grandma?"
"Why a little girl she would go around with the storybook grandmother's?"
"To give it to him. Perhaps it was she who had to go and pick you up. Have you felt bad and did not have it done. "
" He would send someone else. These are people with money and having money means having people do things for you. "
" If we do inform them before having a heart attack. "
" Livio "
" It 's just a guess. "
"You're not Marlowe."
"Look here," he said, pointing to a page where the old lady looked younger than ten years.
"It is not the same person," said Lorenzo.
"But the pendant around his neck is the same."
Livio continued to slowly turn the pages back years and reliving moments of beauty and sensuality woman who regained between his hands. In mid-album could not be more than thirty-five years. Loredana, shock, caught him and locked him.
"It makes me shiver. Is there anything else in the case? "He asked suddenly to chase away the feeling of having witnessed the life a flower upside down.
"It seems to me, I checked ... wait, there's something."
It was a little black notebook, the largest of the palm of Livy.
Each page was given a Polaroid close-up of men and women, sometimes a child. They sleep, he thought Loredana. Livy also had the same impression. Then, looking more rigid sections of the faces, the pale skin and eyelids without depth, felt the soft, fetid embrace of a bottomless abyss. The smell of a thousand dirty dishes and spoiled food encrusted invaded the nostrils even if the air smelled of lemon. Loredana, shocked, rushed to the window for a breath of fresh air. Livy stood in his place. He could not look away from the faces of those corpses.
Livio tried to reason with his wife, careful not to raise your voice not to wake the baby.
"Child? Devil! Have you seen those pictures? "Hissed the woman holding the heat.
"Who told you that true? It could be a successful joke. And then if those are really dead, "after he uttered those words he looked around wondering why he did," certainly are not his fault. "
" How can you say? "
" In the middle There are photos of those people, I believe that a child can only be killing them? "
Livio, I just know that there are photos on our table at least thirty dead bodies."
"And if I understand you would like to say to the police."
"I'd be there already if I do not I stopped. "
" Imagine what a beautiful story you would have told you. Agent, how was I to know that I kidnapped the girl to the station with my husband collects corpses in Polaroid? "
" We have not seized, rather than saved. He spent the night at the station and in any case I would have said only the truth. It is certainly not my fault that ... that monster! "
" Hush! "The speechless Livio raising a hand.
There was a noise coming from the bedroom followed by weak steps on the floor. The couple held his breath until Charlotte emerged from the shadows of the corridor. From the mouth still slightly dirty word leaked that trail traces of raspberry and incomprehensible. He had both hands in the lower abdomen.
"I take my vocabulary," said Livio.
"You do not need. He needs to go to the bathroom. "
" How do you know? "
" Trust me for once and make them see where "Loretta said giving him a pat on the arm. Livio Charlotte took her hand and led her out of the living room. When he returned Loredana attacked him with a question handed to teeth tight: "Where's yours?"
"My what?"
"Your picture, the one that brought you to the restaurant," the woman's eyes were wide open most of the rosary.
"The last time I saw her she had it."
"We need to find" Loredana reopened the case of chess, and rummaged everywhere, to no avail.
"Maybe he threw" Livio suggested without conviction.
"not" his wife was at the height of nervousness, "he must have her."
"We can not try him."
"Why not?"
"It 's risky, could ... suspicious. "Livio he realized he had the wrong answer.
"Are you afraid?" I replied. Loredana pressed. "Were not you the one who said that five minutes ago was just a child?"
The man struggled to regain a modicum of force. The terror that had clung to him when he remembered the Polaroid choked him.
Because I photographed?
He tried to speak but his lips came a strangled sound you just heard.
decided to spend the night on the couch, a choice that would allow him to control the door while staying as far away the girl whose only thought them horror.
They slept in turns and had done just days would have gone to the police.
Livio was the first to fall asleep. When he awoke his wife was perfectly alert and asked him if he wanted coffee. He replied that he would stay awake without it. Loredana sighed, closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately. He dreamed of being in a room from behind closed shutters, the sunlight was too weak to see clearly, he did so to get closer to the window, but it just felt moved to have stepped on something. She was barefoot and the floor completely covered with a thick viscous layer. Finally he managed to throw open the shutters and what at first sight the carpet looked like a bloody bowel was nothing but a vast expanse of mushy raspberries. Looking perfectly illuminated the room he noticed that the far wall hung a series of snapshots. He went to the photos careful not to slip and saw faces of people depicting gruesome death, including his acknowledged.
He woke with a start and the light of day the hurt your eyes.
the sofa beside her was empty. He went into the bathroom, but there was Livy.
The bedroom door was ajar. He opened it just enough to peek inside. Charlotte slept wrapped in a blanket. Their bed was empty. He returned to stay, the jacket was Livio sull'appendiabiti near the door. The car keys and wallet still on the table. He picked up the phone and called him. The phone rang in his jacket pocket.
What was left for the bar? Unlikely, it was not his habit to have breakfast outside. He heard the panic in the melt veins like venomous foam of detergent in a stream, then realized that a particular missed. The case of chess Charlotte was gone. He returned there. They were gone a couple of minutes, but the baby was up and dressed perfectly: he was placing something in a small suitcase.
The white dress, Loredana noticed, was the larger than he remembered and even his appearance was slightly different, more tender and childlike, as if those hours of sleep had not only strengthened, but made at least two years to rejuvenate. Brutally, in a tone of voice that did not recognize her, asked her where was her husband. Charlotte turned dedicating a placid gaze of a benevolent unnerving. Downloading the frustration that the bands nerves Loredana tore the bag from the hands of chess, he went back into the living room and poured it on the table, sure that the photo was in Livy's macabre collection of dead expressions.
picked up the black book and opened it almost tore the picture of Livy in the restaurant.
The landscape was darkened for a moment when he concentrated on his face and had to hold on to the chair not to faint. As a plant left too long without water, the expression of her husband, until the night before in Florida and meat, had taken an off-white color, his lips were almost completely disappeared inside the mouth and eyes, which Loredana remember and enjoy wide open, were closed and sunken in the orbits. Had withered.
staggering, leaning on the walls, returned to his room, where the girl was waiting standing on the bed with the camera pointed at. Loredana is petrified at the door and knew, hanging from his neck, the pendant photo album. Ordered his hands over her face, but could not move an inch, every muscle of his body was paralyzed.
Charlotte snapped the photo and the Polaroid as a sneer by third grade, came out a white language that immediately snatched cellulose with small and fast fingers.
left the room with a suitcase squeaking a chilling laugh.
Shocker Loredana followed in the living desert. The mortuary notebook was gone. Dropped exhausted on the sofa, closed his eyes and sank to a low cry, losing body awareness that soon became a prisoner of an area where there were no words, time and light.
was not alone. The heat received from the wing of the people who breathed around without making any sound.
A small child's hand stole a big raspberry from the basket of plastic while the speakers of the supermarket were announced before the opening of the case 4.
Charlotte crushed the fruit with the tongue against the palate and tasted the sweet juice slightly acre. The irresistible urge to savor those delicious, very red buds had struck suddenly in the evening when the restaurant was so skilled in using the goodness of that stupid couple. If parents during childhood had they allowed he would feed exclusively on raspberries, as they loved, and now that she had returned to show six years probably would have done really. After all, what harm is there to satisfy what has always wanted to be small and that remains dormant in the folds of the unconscious for a lifetime? He was rediscovering itself, a little 'how does a psychologist, but actually experiencing it on your body. Not sorry for all the deaths he had caused since they were essential to the operation of the camera.
Camera! What was extraordinary discovery. His life was changed when it was resigned to the fact that he could not offer any new twist.
He could not restrain himself and stole another raspberry, when a shrill voice behind him frightened her.
"Baby, you've come to the store alone?"
A girl of about twenty years old jogging suit with black hair tied back in a braid left the cart in front of the vegetable department, approached the girl and held out his hand amicably.
Charlotte seemed to think a moment: the defendant would rejuvenate more than that?
could be risky. Had set a limit and did not dare to overtake.
decided to smile and looking to escape the small suitcase of chess put his hand in that of the girl.
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