Free The Crocodile by Maurizio de Giovanni

melted away like the snow back home. Now she sees that she’s given everything to someone she knows nothing about, with no possibility of getting it back.
    But just as Eleonora lost it, she regains it, her faith. Her heart restores that faith to her, intact. She can’t be so badly mistaken. Love is love, isn’t it? It’ll find a way. Aside from all the obstacles, above and beyond a few broken dreams and a few others that will have to be adjusted, life will triumph, and life is the two of them, after all.
    Eleonora thinks of his father. She thinks of the man whom she has yet to meet. She thinks of the strictness that he described, the man’s rigidity. She thinks that perhaps a man who loves his son so intensely will understand why she is now becoming so accustomed, so tenderly accustomed, to the fragment of life that she carries within her. There should be a certain degree of understanding, from one parent to another. Love is a universal language.
    Eleonora looks around her. She chose to meet in the university park, the place they first met. It’s a talisman, it’ll bring her luck, of that she feels certain. She’ll see him coming towards her, like he did the first time, with his easy, confident gait, his broad shoulders, slightly jug-eared—one more thing about him that she loves so much. She’ll see him first and she’ll smile in his direction. Then he’ll see her and he’ll break into a happy smile, as he does every time he sees her. And everything will be fine.
    Everything will be fine.

CHAPTER 21
    The old man walks by night down the street where the rich people live. He has read that prices go as high as a thousand euros per square foot around here. He’s only interested in knowing whether there are security guards, and what their routines are.
    The old man learns quickly. He takes note of schedules, situations, habits. If you cordon off a place, he thinks, then you turn it into a little world unto itself with only a few inhabitants, and people all move in roughly the same way. Of course, if it were one of those places where everyone knows everything about everyone else, like his hometown, then it would be impossible to pass unobserved; but here, he’s become invisible. People’s eyes slide over him and move on, as if he were made of air.
    Which is a good thing, he thinks. A very good thing.
    The other morning, in fact, he’d found himself face to face with the girl. He was following the route, he felt sure that she’d accept a ride from her girlfriend, the way she almost always did on Wednesdays when she had violin lessons in the evening. But, like everybody else, she failed to see him entirely. A city full of phantoms.
    He walks past the park. He’s decided that the right moment is in fact when she comes home from her violin lesson. The girl is right-handed, and she only uses her right hand: she’ll shift her violin case over to her other hand, she’ll pull out the keys to the street door, and she’ll open it. She never buzzes upstairs. And her routine never varies by more than ten minutes or so. There’s a night watchman in the park, but he doesn’t start his rounds until ten, at times ten-thirty.
    Next to the small entry door set in the larger carriage door is a stunted tree, a sort of dwarf cypress; the old man has a vague notion that this is called a thuja tree. A person could hide right behind that little tree, provided he weren’t too tall. And that won’t be a problem for him.
    He pulls a tissue out of his counterfeit designer duffel bag to dab at his weepy eye, and his hand brushes against the cold metal. The old man finds the contact deeply reassuring.
    The street where rich people live is deserted tonight. He’s seen it at all hours, teeming with traffic or completely empty as it is right now.
    A light rain starts to drizzle down, silently. The old man checked the weather report and knew that it would rain. It’s not strictly necessary, but it’s certainly helpful: there won’t be