A Walk in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

person’s crossed destinies in his or her left elbow. To me, the whole thing was totally meaningless, but she didn’t notice.
    In fact, she asked me if we could try an elbow reading. I said yes, that was fine. I knocked back the last gulp of wine from the half-empty glass and told her to uncover her left arm.
    As I was pinching the skin of her elbow – an essential practice for discovering the trajectories of crossed destinies – I noticed Margherita. Standing in front of the sofa. Right on top of me.
    “There you are.”
    “Yes, here I am. Actually, I’ve been here for a few minutes. But you were quite busy, if I can put it like that. Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”
    I made the introductions, thinking as I did so that suddenly I wasn’t having fun any more. Margherita said Pleased to meet you – she never says Pleased to meet you – with the friendly expression of a hammerhead shark. Silvia said hi , with the intense expression of a stone bass.
    Then I said maybe it was time to go. Margherita said yes, maybe it was.
    So I said goodbye to my new friend Silvia, who seemed rather disoriented.
    We said goodbye to a few other people and ten minutes later we were in the car, with the sea racing by on our right and the outlines of the apartment blocks on the sea road a few miles in front of us. To be honest, I
have to admit that the sea, the apartment blocks and all the rest weren’t in perfect focus, but somehow I managed to hold the wheel.
    “Did you have fun with that girl?”
    I tried to look at her without taking my eyes off the road. Not an easy task.
    “I was just playing a game, you know. I was telling her about Druid astrology.”
    “And elbow readings.”
    “Oh, you heard.”
    “Yes, I heard. And saw.”
    “Well, I was only passing the time, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Anyway, you didn’t seem exactly bored, with that Rasputin in the two-button Prince of Wales suit. Who was he, the secretary of the Philosophers’ Association?”
    Pause.
    “You’re great.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. As great as a stiff neck.” She paused a moment. “Or better still, toothache.”
    “Toothache seems more appropriate.”
    “Yes.” She was trying very hard not to laugh. “The things you think of. Reading elbows. You’re crazy.”
    “I think of all sorts of things. Right now, for instance, I’m thinking some things. About you.”
    “Oh yes? Things that might interest a girl?”
    “Yes, yes, I think so.”
    She paused a moment. I was trying to keep my eyes on the road, which was becoming ever more elusive amid the fumes of organic wine. But I knew exactly the expression Margherita had on her face at that moment.
    “All right, then, Druid astrologer, elbow reader, drive on. Let’s go home.”

9
    On Monday morning, I went to the Public Prosecutor’s department.
    I entered the courthouse through the entrance reserved for magistrates, staff and lawyers. A young carabiniere I’d never seen before asked me for my papers. I said I was a lawyer and he asked again for my papers. Of course I didn’t have my pass with me, so the young carabiniere told me to go out and come back in through the public entrance. The one equipped with a metal detector, in case I had a submachine gun under my jacket.
    Or an axe. They’d installed metal detectors after a madman had entered the court with an axe stuffed down his trousers. Nobody had checked him, and once inside he’d started to smash things up. When he was finally cornered and disarmed by the carabinieri, he said he’d come to talk to the judge who’d found against him in an inheritance case. That must have been his idea of an appeal.
    I was just about to turn round and do as the carabiniere had said, when I was spotted by a marshal who was on duty in court every day and knew me. He told the young man I was indeed a lawyer and he could let me pass.
    The entrance hall was packed: women, young men, carabinieri, prison warders and lawyers, most of them