Free Rage by Sergio Bizzio

the window. It was a good opportunity, given that Rosa had been there only minutes
earlier, and could always assume she had failed to close
the thing properly. Light flooded into the room as Maria
peered outside. The sky looked uncertain whether to
clear or to cloud over. The citizens' habits appeared to
be running to form for the time of day: he estimated it
must be around two in the afternoon. On the building
site, his former workmates must be just about finishing
their lunch break. Was there anything about that world
outside he still missed? A good roast beef. Three days
earlier he had eaten it straight from the oven. And a
cigarette. He had never smoked heavily, but ten yards
below him, down on the pavement, he saw a man pass
by with a cigarette between his lips and he longed to
have one. That was when he realized that what he most
missed was using his sense of smell. To be able to smell
a roast, inhale a cigarette. And the scent of Rosa.
    Ever since he'd been living in the villa, he'd smelled
nothing except the odour of damp. Did Senor or Senora
Blinder smoke? In the villa, cooking took place both at midday and again in the evening, yet the smell of it
never penetrated as far as his upstairs attic. Why would
they, then, be able to sniff out the smell of his tobacco,
had he any? He determined to undertake a reconnoitre,
on one of the very next evenings, down to the living
room on the ground floor, with the intention of finding
out whether Senor or Senora Blinder were smokers
and, assuming that one of them was, rob them of one
or two of their cigarettes. In his own room, perhaps
anywhere on the top floor, he could smoke without fear
of discovery. Maybe he could even try it out right next to
the window, open just a crack, looking out on the street,
just like now.

    He spent the afternoon reading. When the daylight
began to give out, he did his gymnastics exercises. Then
he went to the bathroom, washed, and returned to bed to
take his siesta. At two in the morning, he went downstairs
to the kitchen to get his dinner and, bearing in mind
that Rosa gave no sign of having noticed any change in
the quantity of food there, decided to help himself to
breakfast as well. That way he ate better and risked less.
    After dining, he set off on his walk around the house.
He undertook it completely naked. He'd decided henceforth to leave his rucksack in the loft, where it would
be hard to distinguish from the mass of other bags
and boxes, and in order not to have to carry it around
with him wherever he went. He had learned to move
about in such a stealthy fashion that he seemed almost
motionless, or as if the floor itself were transporting
him. Like a man on a moving walkway. The same thing
applied when he did his athletics. He didn't jump like
a ballet dancer, in the sense of becoming suspended
in mid-air, but did the opposite: he took large leaps,
allowing the weight of his body to catapult him in a long jump, just above floor level. He was capable of jumping
more than three yards from his starting point, virtually
without having lifted off. At the end of the leap, one of
his feet would just skim the floor's surface, in order to
kick off on the next leg of his trajectory. His body thus
described a succession of interconnected curves, each
one propelled forwards by sheer force.

    He returned an hour later. The window into his room
was still open. The sky was clear, and cars passed only
intermittently; there were no pedestrians. The moon
shone like a radioactive rock. He lay down. He was about
to fall asleep when he heard some faint noises from
on top of the cupboard. He refrained from moving. It
didn't even seem to matter to him that the rat hadn't
emerged, that it was, after all that had happened, still in
his room. Now he knew where the bone had gone.
    "Goodnight," he said to the rat.
    He heard himself and was shocked. It was a long time
since he'd listened to the sound of