The Poetry Of Toxic Love

Chapter II

Chapter II

"Oh, dear friend! How are your investigations into poetry going?" Dr. D'Aiazzo had greeted me expansively in his strong Neapolitan accent, after I had managed to get him on the phone via the police headquarters switchboard.

"A prize has arrived and the poet is asking," I had replied joking with an improvised eleven syllables; and I had specified: "I’ve won an important award in New York."

He had congratulated me warmly then, interspersing a few words in his dialect as he sometimes did, and questioning me with the diminutive that he himself had coined at the time, he had asked me: "Okay, Ran, congratulations aside, what is the poet asking of me?"

"It would be the imminent date of the award and my expired passport."

"No problem. Send it to me here with the tax stamps and photos and I'll have it prepared for you a ràzzo1, which not for nothing almost rhymes with D'Aiázzo, accents aside. Actually, no, do this: bring everything to my place at dinner time, 8:00pm on the dot! And that way we can also have a nice meal of spaghetti and two slices of meat fried in butter."

"Great, thank you."

That very evening I’d been the victim of the first aggression. I had thought it was a robbery by some moron and it was only with a second attempt to kill me a few days before the flight to New York, that I realized that someone wanted me dead.

As I was leaving the house to go to dinner with my friend, even before I could lock the door a man had appeared on the landing four meters from me, face hidden by a balaclava and gloves on his hands. He had pounced on me immediately with an open razor in his hand and tried to slit my throat. The blow didn’t touch me because, using a martial art move that I had learned in Public Security, I had blocked the blade half-way down and disarmed the criminal. The razor had dropped onto the ground and I had given the aggressor a good beating on the head, face and torso, making him run down the stairs. I was young then, agile and athletic and importantly, very tall, a meter ninety, whereas that individual was of medium height so as he aimed at my throat, he had hit from below and without much force. I’d thought it wasn’t prudent to pursue him and had picked up the razorand put it in my pocket to take it to Vittorio. I locked the door of the house and went downstairs avoiding the elevator and warily taking the stairs. As I had expected, though, there was no trace of the individual.

I had told my friend briefly about my misadventure, and then had given him the aggressor’s razor blade.

He had commented: "The so-called robberies started from outside are becoming more common, maybe he’d wanted to ring at the door and then go inside to rob you, threating you with that razor, but he was surprised by your unexpected appearance on the landing and, afraid that you would make a noise, he lost his head and pounced on you, trying to shut you up by cutting your throat. Because you don't have any mortal enemies, do you?"

"I don't think so."

"Thus it must have been an attempted robbery. You said he had gloves, so no prints but yours. Masked, so no facial detail apart from the eyes left uncovered: did you notice their shape and color? And tell me, was he tall, short, thin, big? razor in the right fist or left-handed? and did he say anything to you?"

"No, not a word, razor in the right, I didn’t notice his eyes in the frenzy of defense, he was about one meter seventy-five tall, thin but had broad shoulders and is certainly well built and strong because he went down the stairs very quickly even though I had beaten him up."

"That’s something, but it will be hard to find him, I guess he’s not stupid enough to have gone and got himself medicated in the hospital, but in any case after you make your complaint we can investigate with the emergency rooms. He can’t be very intelligent, though, because otherwise he wouldn’t have slashed at you and risked a jail term for bloodshed, he would have just threatened you at a certain distance asking you to go back inside quietly or he would simply have run off without doing anything to you."

"Hmm... yes."

"Okay Ran, tomorrow morning come to me at the Police Headquarters to make the report, even if you realize that it will be a little difficult for us to find him, that rascal."

Since nothing had been stolen from me, I had decided to forget it.