Lauretta Salvini

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Engraved Inside


Flying in murmuration, starlings draw geometrical shapes that change with a liquid harmony against the dusky sky. Their arrival galvanises the tourists, who welcome the birds with cheers of wonder and aim their smartphones at the fowl-flowing clouds framed by the stillness of ancient Roman ruins.

Would they notice the consequences of that celestial dance? The ugliness of their excrement or the dangers of dirty sidewalks the morning after? Foreigners enjoy the pleasures of low-cost air travel, special hotel rates, and pre-cooked Italian food. They use the Eternal City in a hit-and-run style.

As traffic increases, exhaust fumes fog the air. People walk in crosscurrents on the Lungotevere. Bikers weave through cars, drivers argue with pedestrians, and I fly.

My eyes scour the streets.

Left. Centre. Right. Centre.

I am a hawk. A vulture, a magpie. A peregrine falcon today.

Long ago, I was a tourist myself. I often travelled with Ida. She was a ballet dancer. Italy was our favourite destination. We revered Milan and Naples for the glamour of their opera houses and Verona for the splendour of the Arena. Enthusiastic audiences and excellent conductors, she used to say. The two of us had our way of visiting places away from the crowd. Alone.

I like women who go off the beaten track. They prefer quiet alleys to busy piazzas. Instead of sipping latte macchiato at bar tables, they fill their water bottles at public standpipes. There is no urge to talk to local people or chat with charming servers about the weather. They are overwhelmed by the beautiful surroundings,
which resonate with their tender souls.

When I see a defenceless woman, the game starts. I allow some distance between us. I let other people walk ahead, but my eyes stay fixed on the gull. I need to tune in with her way of meandering around the city. It makes me focus on the prey before attacking. The rhythm of her steps enters my body, and I adjust to it. Whether she is fast or slow-paced tells me how she will react when I strike. Anxious women excite me. Sometimes, they run away, forcing me to corner them in dead-end streets like hopeless mice.

Ida was afraid of rats; even squirrels terrified her. Their frantic movements disturbed her. I guess. She never told me. I never asked.

Many things remained unspoken between us. I remember Ida’s silent tears as she entered the dressing room after her last performance. I was about to say something when she knocked over the vase of flowers I had arranged for her on the ironing board. Pieces of glass scattered on the floor, and water splatters discoloured the ink of my happy-new-life card. How can I survive without dancing? She screamed. I offered her no answers. The artistic director suggested she become a ballet teacher, but she wasn’t sure about it. She never wanted to have children.

The stage had the power to transfigure her. At times, I sacrificed the pleasure of watching her dance to observe how her talent captivated people. Their faces yielded astonishment, fascination, and rapture. While she danced, jealousy mocked me in the darkness of my first-row box seat. When she stopped performing, my puerile heart claimed a victory over my worst love rival—Le Ballet.

After we exchanged gold rings as tokens of our love, my desire was to have her all for myself. Day after day, she surrendered to her new existence away from the gaze of the audience. Wrapped up in my adoration, her trust in me grew, making me the luckiest of men.

Left. Centre. Right. Centre.

I fly like the hawk, the vulture, the magpie.

The peregrine falcon, this time.

Until I single out a prey.

A woman wearing a colourful headwrap walks across the Lungotevere near the Synagogue. She stands out from the pedestrians who dart across as the traffic light sends its amber warning. Her hands are pressed on her belly. One of her lean fingers is decorated with a ring that flashes on her skin.

In Via Petroselli, she stops even though the light is green. People pass her by, speeding up to the other side of the street. The light turns red; a small crowd surrounds her. The light is green again, but the woman remains rooted to the pavement. The more her glance intensifies, the paler her hands become. Her fingers stiffen.

An appetising quarry, different from anything I’ve tried before. Maybe the woman works as a nurse at the hospital on the Isola Tiberina, or she is a patient worried about her health. Doctors can be insensitive. They avoid going beyond official medical reports. They shouldn’t be so dismissive, even when details are painful, shattering, and impossible to overcome—they obsess the mind and taint the heart.

The woman cannot be older than forty or forty-five. When she resumes her walk, hands in my pockets, I become her shadow.

She hastens towards the unlit sidewalk of Vico Jugario and catches her breath under the trees. I light myself a half-snapped cigarette rescued from a street sweeper’s broom. As I puff out, my head gets dizzy. I have been fasting for almost two days. Not enough money to buy myself something, or time to stand in line at the soup kitchen. My stomach grumbles, but I’ve been close to starving before.

There was a time when searching for bread was the most dangerous thing, often the most foolish. During the war, I learnt to forget about hunger, or at the very least, to distract myself for a few hours by drawing or writing. Ida was my model and muse, but that is the past. I now hunt.

Cars rumble on the cobblestone street as I extinguish the butt under my shoe heel. The road seems paved with snake scales. Slow-paced targets are less impulsive, and I taste the anticipation. As her hands adjust her headwrap, the ring shines on her fourth finger.

A motorbike speeds up, making her startle. I hide behind a bakery van when she turns around before crossing the road. Her thick eyebrows mark a subtle frown on her otherwise delicate features. She falters like a lost kid.

I veer. My wings cut the air. Eyes are trained to spot the right clues—scarf knotted around the head, pleated skirt, bare legs.

There is a small vault around the corner.

I thank the city council for the poor maintenance of street lighting.

The razor blade is ready.

Showing the weapon is enough to get whatever I want.

My hand grabs her scarf, which slides down onto her shoulders, unveiling a mane of curly hair that opens like a night flower streaked with white.

The woman turns around, shaking from fear.

I set one forearm across her throat, pushing her against the wall.

Her flesh quivers.

I watch her soundless gape turn into a grimace.

I seize my prey with hands like talons.

The razor blade is back in the pocket.

As I feel her warm breath on my face, my hand scrabbles around her left hand’s finger.

Her eyes blink open.

My eyes squeeze shut—images from the past fog my mind. On a day many years ago, I walked into my hometown hospital. Nausea tortured me along the squalid corridors full of smeared transport stretchers as I stepped on rags and stained medical gauze.

Female? A gaunt nurse asked. There was a room for them. My eyes ran over the many bodies crouched on makeshift beds. I hoped not to see her among the injured, even though I knew I had only one other place to look for her. On the threshold of the morgue, the stink of formaldehyde shocked my nostrils before I could smell anything else. A few corpses lay in shrouds on rusty stretchers. Rigid feet stuck out with toe tags.

My head wobbled at the intimate sight of her calloused toes. She was so ashamed of her ballerina’s feet. When my fingers lifted the barbaric sheet, I saw Ida, her blood-clotted hair clinging to one side of her face and over her mouth, her eyes still open in a stupor. Her arms looked weightless, like those of a dummy. Unwilling to expose her body, I caressed her left hand and kissed her marble fingers with my chapped lips. At that moment, I realised that her wedding ring was gone.

Our names, Ida & Lazar, were engraved inside.

Later, a neighbour told me Ida had traded a woman a piece of bread for a soap chip. She wanted to surprise me by washing our clothes. Somebody killed her on her way to the river. Looters had dragged her body away from the street to steal her wedding ring before some compassionate arms could take her to the morgue.

Ida’s body used to be like a 3D anatomy model; one could see her muscles pulse under her alabaster skin. Once, I sketched her silhouette as she posed in the second arabesque. Her fingers pulled away from her face. Her velvet eyes guided her neck into a gentle torsion towards her audience. The extension of her leg en l’air was like a poem that ended with her pointe shoe.

Snipers could bet on striking their victims with telescopic precision in the besieged city. One bullet and she was dead. I felt their eyes on my chest while walking back home from the morgue, but none of them had the mercy to pull the trigger.

I fled out of despair, and now I’m a bird of prey.

My victim tries to wriggle free, her shoulders still against the wall. I block her legs, pressing my knee between them. I immobilise the woman, holding her left wrist with one hand while I take the shining ring off her finger.

She mutters something against me, and I slap her across the face. She falls to her knees. I kick her in her ribs again and again until she collapses.

Her wedding ring is in my hand: a new addition to my collection.

Left, centre, right, centre.

I am the peregrine falcon who mates for life.

I am the predatory male who mourns his wife.

As I reach the Lungotevere, I hear the thousands of starlings chirp their daily rage against each other. They will spend the night together, protected by the sparse foliage of autumn. Tourists will return to their rooms after a good meal to make love on the lap of Rome. Traffic will slow down after midnight to begin again at dawn.

And I flap my wings away from the Eternal City.

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         Photo credit: Maria Giulia Prizzitano

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Banner Art:
from Falcon Perched on a Tree,  Isoda Koryusai, 1780-90