Chapter 64
Our streetcar left us close to Corso Garibaldi, from which, based on our map, we could reach Corso Como in a short while. Corso Garibaldi had a more selectively chic population compared to the areas immediately adjacent to Duomo’s square, and although vivid it had a touch of the quiet flavour typical of residential areas. I walked lightly, dancing my feet in playful moves every now and then, mesmerized by the colourful melody of the shops’ glasses, with their displays of elegantly exotic clothing, flowers, classy bicycles, cakes and cookies, and other objects, all of which, even ordinary ones, had an unordinary taste to them. But above all, it was an ice-cream shop that attracted my attention. The bottom part of the glass was satin, with flowers decorated on it, while the top was transparent and I could see the lady dressing a cone for an eager kid, a smile on her face as she carefully placed a third scoop of chocolate on top of what looked like cream and pistachio.
The view of the kid’s cone and of the tasty palette of ice-cream colours made my mouth water and I said, “Let’s go in!”, dragging Jack by the arm. And yet there was something disturbing about the ice-cream shop, although I couldn’t pin it down.
Jack noticed the initial eagerness, and then the doubt alternating lights and shades on my expression, and looked at me curiously, “Are you sure you want it or are you simply set on taking it all in, no matter what?”
“I don’t know…the ice-cream looks good, no?”
“Sure, let’s go for it”, Jack said, still observing me as we opened the door of the shop
We stepped in the shop just as the kid was walking out, lapping on his cone happily, eyes crossed by looking at it from a close distance. The place was cool and sweetly scented. The lady smiled and said, “Un attimo solo”, raising her finger and walking away at the back. We figured she meant “One moment”, and were glad we were gaining some more time to decide since there were about 20 tastes of ice-cream among which we could choose from. I noticed there was a copper bell at the counter, one of those you see at the hotels, and its presence made me anxious for reasons I couldn’t yet define. I turned around, looking at the street, and caught a glance of a familiar face.
Jack followed my gaze, “Everything ok?”, he asked and I shook my head no.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I saw the cleaning lady…”, I replied faintly, almost in a whisper
“Where?”
“Out there…”, I said, trying to spot her, but she was gone already, so fast I was no longer sure about how much of what I had seen was real and how much of it was imagined
“You mean the camouflaged cleaning lady who tried to shoot you?”, Jack frowned, and I nodded
I looked at the copper bell again and was about to ring it, when the lady came out, smiling
“Avete scelto?”, she asked, standing at the counter with an ice-cream scoop in her hand
I gave her a look that must have appeared blank, and which she mistook for a perplexed reaction to her question
“Ah, you are American?”, she said with the thickest accent, half as a question half as a statement, intrigued by the novelty of two foreigners standing in her shop
I nodded, pointing at two tastes, randomly, resisting the urge to run out of there as fast as I could. And it was then I remembered: the dream. The ice-cream shop, the satin glass, the flowers on the glass, the copper bell and the danger. Mori telling us to run. Jack there with me, running with me, the two of us lifted in the air. And then the light, Jack’s caring face close to mine. When my thoughts returned to the shop Jack had a cone in his hand, and had just finished paying.
I wrapped my arm around his, dragging him to the door hastily, and heard myself say, “We have to run”
“Arrivederci!”, said the ice-cream lady on our back, with a loud cheerful tone, waving goodbye as we were halfway out the door
“Bye”, Jack said for me, as I dragged him out
“Iris, are you sure of what you saw?”
I shook my head no, and repeated, “We have to run”, the urge of my faint voice resounding in my panicking abdomen, in the beat of my heart and the softness in my arms, in my dizziness. The street blurred, its view flickered in patchy spots of black, intense light, black, intense light and black again, its darkness expanding in my view, large, larger and then complete.