An old woman in a faded blue frock and black head-square paused in the shade of Mario's awning and nodded good-day. She smiled a gap-toothed smile. A bulky, slouch-shouldered youth in jeans and a stained yellow T-shirt-a slope-headed idiot, probably her grandson-held her hand, drooling vacantly and fidgeting beside her.
Mario nodded good-naturedly, smiled, wrapped a piece of stale focaccia in greaseproof paper and came from behind the bar to give it to her. She clasped his hand, thanked him, turned to go.
Her attention was suddenly arrested by something she saw across the road. She started, cursed vividly, harshly, and despite my meager knowledge of Italian, I picked up something of the hatred in her tone. "Devil's spawn!" She said it again. "Dog! Swine!" She pointed a shaking hand and finger, said yet again: "Devil's spawn!" before making the two-fingered, double-handed stabbing sign with which the Italians ward off evil. To do this it was first necessary that she drop her salted bread, which the idiot youth at once snatched up.
Then, still mouthing low, guttural imprecations, dragging the shuffling, focaccia-munching cretin behind her, she hurried off along the street and disappeared into an alley. One word that she had repeated over and over again stayed in my mind: "Necros! Necros!" Though the word was new to me, I took it for a curse-word. The accent she put on it had been poisonous.
I sipped at my Negroni, remained seated at the small circular table beneath Mario's awning and stared at the object of the crone's distaste. It was a motor car, a white convertible Rover and this year's model, inching slowly forward in a stream of holiday traffic. And it was worth looking at if only for the girl behind the wheel. The little man in the floppy white hat beside her-well, he was something else too. But she was-just something else.
I caught just a glimpse, sufficient to feel stunned. That was good. I had thought it was something I could never know again: that feeling a man gets looking at a beautiful girl. Not after Linda. And yet-
She was young, say twenty-four or -five, some three or four years my junior. She sat tall at the wheel, slim, raven-haired under a white, wide-brimmed summer hat which just missed matching that of her companion, with a complexion cool and creamy enough to pour over peaches. I stood up-yes, to get a better look-and right then the traffic came to a momentary standstill. At that moment, too, she turned her head and looked at me. And if the profile had stunned me…well, the full-frontal knocked me dead. The girl was simply, classically beautiful.
Her eyes were of a dark green but very bright, slightly tilted and perfectly oval under straight, thin brows. Her cheekbones were high, her lips a red Cupid's bow, her neck long and white against the glowing yellow of her blouse. And her smile-
– Oh, yes, she smiled.
Her glance, at first cool, became curious in a moment, then a little angry, until finally, seeing my confusion-that smile. And as she turned her attention back to the road and followed the stream of traffic out of sight, I saw a blush of color spreading on the creamy surface of her cheek. Then she was gone.
Then, too, I remembered the little man who sat beside her. Actually, I hadn't seen a great deal of him, but what I had seen had given me the creeps. He too had turned his head to stare at me, leaving in my mind's eye an impression of beady bird eyes, sharp and intelligent in the shade of his hat. He had stared at me for only a moment, and then his head had slowly turned away; but even when he no longer looked at me, when he stared straight ahead, it seemed to me I could feel those raven's eyes upon me, and that a query had been written in them.
I believed I could understand it, that look. He must have seen a good many young men staring at him like that-or rather, at the girl. His look had been a threat in answer to my threat-and because he was practiced in it, I had certainly felt the more threatened!
I turned to Mario, whose English was excellent. "She has something against expensive cars and rich people?"
"Who?" he busied himself behind his bar.
"The old lady, the woman with the idiot boy."
"Ah!" he nodded. "Mainly against the little man, I suspect."
"Oh?"
"You want another Negroni?"
"OK-and one for yourself-but tell me about this other thing, won't you?"
"If you like-but you're only interested in the girl, yes?" He grinned.
I shrugged. "She's a good-looker.…"
"Yes, I saw her." Now he shrugged. "That other thing-just old myths and legends, that's all. Like your English Dracula, eh?"
"Transylvanian Dracula," I corrected him.
"Whatever you like. And Necros: that's the name of the spook, see?"
"Necros is the name of a vampire?"
"A spook, yes."
"And this is a real legend? I mean, historical?"
He made a fifty-fifty face, his hands palms up. "Local, I guess. Ligurian. I remember it from when I was a kid. If I was bad, old Necros sure to come and get me. Today," again the shrug, "it's forgotten."
"Like the bogeyman." I nodded.
"Eh?"
"Nothing. But why did the old girl go on like that?"
Again he shrugged. "Maybe she think that old man Necros, eh? She crazy, you know? Very backward. The whole family."
I was still interested. "How does the legend go?"
"The spook takes the life out of you. You grow old, spook grows young. It's a bargain you make: he gives you something you want, gets what he wants. What he wants is your youth. Except he uses it up quick and needs more. All the time, more youth."
"What kind of bargain is that?" I asked. "What does the victim get out
of it?"
"Gets what he wants," said Mario, his brown face cracking into another grin. "In your case the girl, eh? If the little man was Necros.…"
He got on with his work and I sat there sipping my Negroni. End of conversation. I thought no more about it-until later.