The Disappearance of Signora Giulia Read Online Free

a bun at the nape of her neck, pale, her figure ample, elegant but not overdone. Obviously a woman of a certain class, since she tried to avoid the doorkeeper’s gaze as she passed. She was clearly embarrassed, a feeling Signor Luciano’s usual friends demonstrated not in the slightest.
    Sciancalepre had no trouble recognizing Signora Giulia from the doorkeeper’s description. It stuck with him in the two rooms, still empty, that Barsanti had lived in. He went in full of curiosity and, looking around, spotted an electric light switch dangling against one wall. He inspected the little bathroom and closed a tap at the sink, which was still running with a trickle of water. He found it difficult to bring the visit to an end, fascinated as he was by the invisible presence of Signora Giulia. He saw her moving around the place, imagined her every gesture, each expression. Signora Giulia! His wife’s friend, Emilia’s mother, esteemed by the priest of M—— for her good works, her kindness and donations… Signora Giulia, with whom he’d danced so many times at friendly get-togethers, appreciating like a good Sicilian her fine, glowing Lombardian health… That sad, sweet face, which the lawyer Esengrini never even looked at, but everyone else admired. In these very rooms!
    And Luciano Barsanti? Maybe one of today’s youth who carelessly, even scornfully collect the affection and the love of women they can’t begin to understand: real ladies, delicate souls seeking a love they fantasized about as girls, and now disappointed by the realities of a bourgeois marriage that’s deadened them, confined them to a small provincial town. A young guy who had lots of affairs, a bit offbeat, someone who went for models and women who scream in bed, who’d maybe accepted this complicated relationship with a woman ten years older for some personal gain. Who could tell? Signora Giulia must have given him gifts of silk shirts or pyjamas. The concierge said she’d seen her go up several times with one of those long boxes wrapped up by shop clerks in the town centre. Shirts, pyjamas, ties, possibly a few 10,000-lire notes…
    What we won’t do to hang on to a relationship that’s slipping away from us, an image of fading love. So sad! Perhaps Sciancalepre had done something similar himself… It didn’t bear thinking about.
    He couldn’t get any more out of the concierge that would help him identify Luciano Barsanti. The building manager didn’t know anything else either. So he went straight to the town registry office. Nothing. Luciano Barsanti was one of those types who don’t register in a new town, but maintain official residence in their native town or city instead. The kind who move from one place to another without leaving a trail in the local records.
    Nevertheless, Sciancalepre could imagine Barsanti, and he felt sure that sooner or later he’d put a hand on his shoulder:
    ‘Police! Come along with me, young man.’
    * The common Italian hand gesture symbolizing cuckoldry involves holding up the index and small fingers in a configuration resembling the number 1 The sets of threes and fours refer to the lottery.

THREE
    Back in M——, Sciancalepre put the results of his busy days and his trip to Milan on a long list. He added a point to form an uncertain line snaking across Italy – now towards Rome – in search of poor Signora Giulia. He always called her that, poor Signora Giulia, when talking to himself. At home, whenever he put down his fork after consuming his daily serving of spaghetti or tagliatelle, he answered his wife’s questions with the same words: ‘Poor Signora Giulia! What was she thinking about? How could she do it? Oh women, women!’ He shook his arms over the table and glanced intently at his eight-year-old daughter beside him, already fearing for her future. His own wife didn’t worry him; she was close to fifty and extremely secure after ten years of untroubled marriage.
    But he didn’t say