Chapter 1
Leonardo did not believe this was a problem. His opinion, of course, was not founded on any study of the subject, it was just this: an opinion. But it was enough, given that he himself was his only listener. Everyone forgets things and experiences, especially traumatic experiences. He had heard something about the conscious mind opening the door to the unconscious, throwing in there all the crap that might prevent you from going to work, making money, eating, fucking etc, then closing the door and forgetting. He had also heard that these things come back to haunt you in your dreams, or when you are old enough to shit in your own pants, but he had never had a problem with the former (he never remembered his dreams, which this might be a problem) and the latter... well, it was still a long way off.
He thought about this while watching some program on TV. The thought came to him from the rotten smell of some dead rat, probably trapped between the thin walls that allowed him to hear what his neighbor was watching on his TV. The smell reminded him of a funny experience as a boy. It was a weekend when his family had gathered at his grandparents’ small country house in Bellapietra. The house had everything children love: a lake with geese and various fish that nibbled at the pieces of bread he and his cousins threw into the water (despite his grandparents’ warnings), a small, improvised soccer field, a pool table (reserved for the adults), bedrooms for everyone, and so on. And then there were the chickens. He could not remember the whole sequence of events, but he did remember that at one point he broke the neck of one of the chickens on the farm. For fear of being punished, he hid the small body under the sink, behind some black bags. In two days, they noticed a strange smell; in four days no one come go into the kitchen without throwing up. It was his grandfather who discovered the chicken under the sink, already rotten and full of worms; his grandmother, who was helping, vomited on the floor, contributing to the stench.
He was intrigued as to why he had forgotten the episode. Like all the stupid things children do, he was petrified and depressed that day, especially after the beating he had received, but now he remembered it with a certain joy. He wondered if his parents or uncles still remembered it.
His train of thought was cut off by the smell in the room. Maybe it was due to the unbearable heat, but his throat burned when he breathed, and it was already so dense that he could no longer pay attention to the program on TV. The wide-open windows gave little relief. If it really was a trapped rat, someone would have to open the wall and get it out. That was something he would leave to his neighbor: if sounds passed so easily between the two apartments, and given that the smell was so unbearable there, the other man was probably smelling it too.
As if the neighbor had noticed the smell at the same time, a few minutes later Leonardo heard his footsteps through the wall and into the hallway and after that the knock on the door. The man was shirtless, with his hairy chest showing, and shorts too short for him. Leonardo didn’t judge him, as it was indeed too hot.
“Hey, Leo,” he greeted him. He had beer and cigarettes in his breath. “There’s a horrible rotten smell coming to my room. I think there’s another dead rat between the walls.”
Leonardo frowned. “I’m not smelling anything here.”
The neighbor snorted, “It smells really bad. Yesterday I thought it was a thing of my head, but it’s really bad today.”
“Maybe it’s under the floorboards.” It was a sensible guess. He agreed. The man was a good person, but prone to angry outbursts when contradicted.
“Shit,” he said. “Okay. I’ll sleep in the living room and call someone tomorrow. Night. Good talking to you, Leo.”
“Take care, Tony.”
When Leonardo returned to his living room at least he had the relief of hearing Tony’s television being turned off and enjoy a few minutes of silence, but the smell hung in the air like a green, dead cloud. Frustrated, he went into the bedroom to try to sleep, but even with the door closed he could still smell the stench. Drifting in and out of an ever-light and restless sleep, he got up cursing everything and nothing in particular and went to the living room to look for the body, thinking in penance for the grandfather who went out looking for the chicken years ago, for fucking Tony, who might be sleeping soundly in his living room, for the landlord who would get the most expensive service he could get.
It actually looked like the mouse was under his floor. In the corner of the room were some loose floorboards and, already regretting it, he removed them to try to peek underneath. To his surprise, he didn’t get a puff of poisonous air in his face; it even seemed better to breathe down there, but de decided to get a flashlight to make sure there was nothing hidden.
The body was in the hall closet, where he kept the flashlight. It was behind the coat hangers and was only visible if one turned on the light. And it was not the body of a rat, but of a man, a little underweight it seemed, perhaps in his mid-thirties, naked, with a knife wound in his neck and his face swollen and pale.
Upon seeing the face, Leonardo came close to fainting. He was overcome by a sudden panic attack in which he thought for a moment that the man was alive, hiding in his closet just to attack him upon opening the door. His vision was sucked into a whirlpool, along with his mind, which made it impossible for him to think or move. His heart was beating so hard that it was difficult to breathe.
He didn’t know if he even screamed. He didn’t think so, because there was not a sound in the hallway or in the other apartments that indicated alarm. Some of his panic vanished when he realized that the man was in fact dead, but the countless questions and the dreamlike confusion that surrounded the scene like a dense, purple cloud still left him disoriented. He felt that he was the target of some ruse, some bad joke, but he didn’t know by whom or why. He gradually calmed down, but the panic now gave way to the stench that had been amplified a thousand times and that compressed his stomach and gave him false attacks of vomiting. He had to go to the kitchen and put a wet cloth to cover his nose and mouth. There he sat in a chair, paralyzed, thinking, and wishing he was still dreaming.
