Preview of “L’Italien”, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

The dog is the first to smell something, as it lifts its ears and then leans its head between its paws, looks out the door and growls softly as Elena puts down the book she is holding and pays attention.

“Hush, Argos. Easy … shut up.

Nothing is heard, but the animal remains agitated. She gets up, turns off the light on the flexo, opens the door and walks out into the darkness of the little garden, just as a distant noise begins to be heard from the nearby Sierra Carbonera. A moment later, a faint roar of engines rumbles through the night as fleeting shadows fly over the house in the direction of Gibraltar, lit only by the moon.

Again, she thinks. They are still there, in the sky.

They hadn’t come for ten nights.

She staggers back, seeking protection against the wall of the house, with the trembling dog beside her legs, as she watches the swift black figures rise above the bay as the a dark mass of the British colony is illuminated with a dozen long, thin beams of white light, reflectors which twinkle and crisscross the sky as in a strange luminous party. One of them lights up the black shape of a plane for a moment, then another, before losing them. Then, immediately, rapid lightning bursts, splashing the sky: artillery explosions whose dry and monotonous sound takes a few seconds to be heard. Boom, boom, boom, they do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There are also white and bluish lines which rise slowly and disappear in the air or fall reflecting in the water, against the light of the silhouettes of the anchored boats. And a moment later, the lightning bolts from the bombs that hit the Rock are flashing with orange lights and a low growl that Elena feels in her eardrums and in her chest.

It barely lasts a minute. Suddenly the explosions of bombs and anti-aircraft artillery cease, the reflectors still oscillate for a few seconds scanning the empty sky and they go out one after the other, making the night shine to the stars and the moon. The huge boulder turns out to be a dark mass whose only light is now the precise and distant reddish point of a fire that appears to be burning in the Gibraltar harbor area. And calm returns to the bay.

Elena walks into the house and presses the gooseneck switch to continue reading, but the power goes out. Groping, with ease of habit, he takes a box of matches, lifts the glass tube of an oil lamp, adjusts the wheel, and lights the wick. The yellow and orange light illuminates the living room, the books on its shelves, the sideboard with porcelain and bottles, the rocking chair, the table and the carpet on which Argos has lazily laid down again. There is also an old painting on the wall above the sofa, the cracked canvas of which shows a sailboat trying to reach the harbor amid the waves of a storm. And a picture in a frame on the worktable: Elena, three years his junior, arm in arm with a handsome dark haired man who wears a merchant navy uniform, a cap under his arm and pilot stripes on the cuffs.

You don’t want to read any further.

No, of course, tonight.

So don’t even try. He stands in the center of the room, looking at the photo. Infused with the bitter and sweet taste of a still recent memory, still raw. In memories and physical sensations, distant but not forgotten. Even though, he concludes, two years later the loneliness is not as bad as it started with, the pain is more intense, he has come to wait. Or be afraid. It is tempered by the peaceful passage of days, work, books, the nearby sea, the company of the dog, long walks, friends at a suitable distance, freedom of mind without much affection: not even, very distant, that of his father – sometimes a letter, a cold telephone call – which is aging after the worries of the war in Malaga, nearly two hundred kilometers away. There is even relief in the absence of close, intimate connection with their perplexities and fears. Relief and also strength. We fear little when we expect little, beyond ourselves. When, if necessary, life fits in a suitcase to escape any landscape without having to look back.

Just Argos, he thinks. And then he leans in to stroke the dog, who when he feels his hand turn around so that he can scratch his stomach. Just him and that figurative suitcase. A neutral, comfortable world, devoid of surprises and emotions. Easy to transport and live, there or elsewhere.

And yet, he concludes. However.

After thinking for a moment, he walks over to the sideboard and opens a drawer. The three strange watches that the man who came out of the sea wore with him have been there ever since. She removed them from her wrists while she attended to him, and neither he nor those who picked him up thought to take them when leaving. They took the knife but forgot it. He found them on the floor as the sound of the car died down, and he studied them for a moment before putting them away in the drawer, hidden under napkins and folded tablecloths, waiting for someone to come and pick them up. But no one has ever come, and they are still there, two months later.

He takes them out and looks at them again. It is a watch, a compass and another device whose usefulness is unknown to him. All three are made of steel, with rubber straps. The compass consists of a plexiglass hemisphere and a quadrant with the cardinal points floating inside. The black dial of the watch displays the Radiomir Panerai inscription; and its markings, as in the others, are fluorescent, visible in the dark. The third instrument has a scale of numbers which can indicate pressure or depth.

He sits down with the three instruments on his lap. The man found at the seaside and the one she recognized in the morning in Algeciras merge into her head, disturbing her as if she was not safe when approaching a cliff or a well which disturbed and attracted her at the same time: a mystery to be unraveled, the free end of an enigma. There is a war there, another, or maybe it will always be the same; and the three watches in hand, the Italian found near the port, his secret – no doubt there is, or still is – are part of it. She feels that if she doesn’t put those watches back in the drawer and forgets who wore them, if she continues with the idea that gradually defines her intentions, she herself will be part of the dark network. Deceptively distant bombs and searchlights that instantly lit Gibraltar.

After all, he decides, it wasn’t I who came to meet him. War has already come to me without my looking for it. More than two years ago in Mazalquivir, two months ago at sunrise on the beach, a few hours ago in Algeciras. Curious geometries of life. There are things that just happen, he concludes. Perhaps because a hidden rule determines that they must happen. And three times is too much to be considered on the sidelines.

She smiled absorbed, with some astonishment, without noticing that smile. Sitting at home by the light of the lamp, the dog stretched out at her feet and the three clocks on her knees, Elena Arbués has just decided that the war, which she believed to be foreign, is once again part of her life.

Now you need to know, and you plan to do it.

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