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Did I ever tell you, Segre, that I sometimes dream of the insomniacs? Funny, that, to sleep and think about those who cannot sleep. A side effect of missing out, perhaps, a desire to be part of the pack. There's no glory in being a rebel, not really. I know that now.
That I could sleep at all, with all the rotten bits and pieces of the city caught in my head, all my discoveries during my ill-fated investigation, feels a miracle. I think it was because of you, Segre, your steadiness and your light. Maybe all poor Turin ever needed was a good attorney, eh? Someone, anyone, to litigate against oblivion.
I am no litigator, I do not dream about arguing our way out of hell. I dream of music instead, Bach, played by hands much steadier than my own. Walking down the streets with the music in my ears as the insomniac mutter and shuffle around me, swaying back and forth with each brush against one another.
With the music in the background, it felt more like they were dancing rather than walking, or maybe it showed the truth: they had always been dancing. Like the plagues of old that used to haunt the South, while we North Italians turned up our noses, certain we were above such rural insanities.
How wrong we were, Segre, childish in our innocence. I dream of blood rolling down the pavements, spilling from battered feet, dripping from the gray hands of passing murderers. I dream of ancient heads creaking to the music, bits of stone rolling down their backs.
And I dream of you standing on the corner, turning your head to wait for me. Your soft smile, like a schoolboy's, is strange in contrast to the gray dotting your whiskers. You sway to the beat, to the Bach, but your eyes are clear.
"Fine night, isn't it?" you say, and take my hand, your warm fingers interweaving with mine. I nod, not trusting myself to speak, for fear that words will break the dream as easily as they would break a nightmare. You lead through the crowd, past the fresh bodies, past the statues watching us pass with dull eyes.
You lead me to stand beneath the balcony, from which you first heard the monsters call, and then you lead me inside, into the shadows of your bachelor pad. There is a bed there, the covers pulled straight and smooth. There are some confessions that even the fiercest Library could not stand to bear.
I wake up panting, your name on my lips. I have never called you after one of these dreams, Segre. I thought, perhaps, that you could visit me after I arrived in Venice, I thought maybe...just maybe, we would be rewarded for our cowardice.
Perhaps you have been rewarded, who knows. Perhaps you are already dead. Perhaps you sold me out to save your own skin, but I cannot let myself consider that possibility because it makes my breath hitch and I need my breath, Attorney Segre, I need it, and so do they.
They, standing there in the middle of the tarmac, fresh blood dripping from their grey sides. Their mouths creak open, their hands clutching at the air. They both dropped their first unlucky weapons when the music hit their ears and the bodies were trampled under their feet while the rest of us stand by, watching.
This is still a battle, make no mistake. The statues shout curses at each other, voices ragged and snarling, the same childish competitors you know as well as I: I can dance faster, I can jump higher, I am far more graceful and worthy of acclaim. The recorder had merely shone them a more novel way to fight, and these creatures do love their novelty.
They hop and whirl, their movements frantic and clumsy, the ground cracking with every landing. Some of the onlookers are jolted into the air and go flying, landing on the concrete with dull cracks. More blood stains the ground, rolling out towards the desert.
I crouch low, both to prevent being jostled and to avoid any sudden attacks from the men watching us, grim faces behind their table. They were sent here to watch the statues beat each other with the living bodies of unwanted citizens; they have been told not to interfere unless they want to face that same wrath.
They watch me, considering the risk of firing their guns, if the statues will be happy to be freed from their lively infection. I try to ignore them, to keep my focus on Bach, in snatching air when I can between each wave of notes. My playing is discordant, unsteady, but they seem not to mind.
Already my fingers are aching, my head growing light, sweat crawling down my back. I bite my lip and taste my own blood, the only nutrition in sight for miles around. Some of the people have already started to bend and lick the red puddles, for straightening up to watch.
Is it possible for me to last longer than they do? Am I only delaying the inevitable? Should I lead them into the desert like a Pied Piper, so that I am the only one to face their wrath when the music stops? There is little of the hero in me, for all my fantasies of noble truth-telling and justice in the pages of a book.
You would have done it, Segre. Or not--you fled the same way I did, after all. But I like to think you would have, that you would have been that noble when you came down to it. I like to think that if it plays long enough, you will swoop down in a stolen plane and carry me away from here, off into the sunset.
The dance whirls faster, faster, far faster than the music deserves. Their arms snap back and forth, their legs jutting out, falling on their asses before lurching again. The Prophet's stone beard sways, his eyes rolling with dull white grinds.
Around me, the people shiver as if they too want to leap, to dance, to twirl like fairies over the tarmac's broken skin. The ones who have fallen like twitching or still, the ones alive look on with slack jaws and tired eyes. A few crouch the way I do, covering their heads.
So tempting, to pull the recorder away from my lips and tell them rise up, rise up, we are many and they are few, they cannot kill us all. Easier to think than to say, easier to say than to do. The people of Turin are stiller than their statues these days, screwed into place so tight that any motion seems impossible.
The impossible happens every day. Your voice is soft behind me, a hand light on my shoulder. I shift to my knees and you kneel beside me, two penitents before the eyes of a drunken, whirligig God. My fingers are playing faster than they ever have, a song I do not recognize boiling through the air.
Grey heads rock back to glare up at the sky, mossy teeth bared in snarls, arms spread wide in perfect reflections. The sun sinks slower, the shadows crawl near, the dance whirls ever on.