I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) by Diego De Silva

doghouse, wanders the immediately surrounding area in an unsuccessful search, and so he moves on to Plan B: he seizes the animal by the collar and interrogates it, Talk, you bastard, tell me where you put it; Ringo takes the beating but doesn’t spill the beans (“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his mournful doggy eyes seem to say); Burzone loses his temper and starts flailing clumsily away at the dog; the pit bull takes it like a worn-out boxer but never quite understands what the hell its master wants from him, and it howls brokenhearted out of a general sense of guilt. At that point, I can’t help it any longer, and I break out in a nasal burst of laughter.
    â€œOh,” the disinterested colleague calls.
    â€œEh,” I reply, wiping a tear away from the corner of my right eye.
    â€œWhat are you doing, laughing?”
    â€œA little, yes, truth be told.”
    â€œI don’t see anything to laugh about. And neither does Fantasia, I’m willing to bet.”
    Okay, this is when I spit right in this guy’s face, I tell myself. And I’d be on the verge of losing my temper, for real, if it weren’t for the fact that it all just strikes me as so ridiculous.
    â€œSo, what? You want to tell him about it?” I say.
    â€œOh, now, really,” he replies, with the unmistakable sound of his tail tucking between his legs.
    We sit in silence for a while.
    I think back to the trailer I just watched. I still feel like laughing, but this time I manage to control myself.
    â€œSo what do you want to do?” he asks me.
    â€œWhat do I want to do about what?”
    â€œAbout Fantasia—what do you mean what?”
    Oh, here we are. The poor man finally gets to the point.
    â€œSo, you’re asking if I’ll accept the appointment?”
    He says nothing, opting for silence as assent. So I let him dangle uncomfortably for a while, like in the elimination scenes on
Big Brother
, when the contestants slump in their chairs waiting for the presenter in the studio to drop the axe. And in the quagmire of seconds that follow, I realize that the news of Burzone’s appointment is making me disgustingly happy. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I still feel gratified by this fiduciary appointment.
    â€œI don’t know,” I reply, taking my own sweet time. “I’ll have to think it over.”
    â€œAh,” he says.
    â€œYou know, I have so many obligations these days,” I add, shivering at the sheer fabrication.
    A moment of silence, after which my rival drives home a lunge that I really wasn’t expecting.
    â€œI can imagine how much work you have.”
    I undergo a wave of menopausal heat, culminating in an instantaneous suntan.
    Okay, I’m not a particularly well-known name among the denizens of the justice system. I don’t represent banks, insurance companies, businessmen, public administrators, Camorristi, or wealthy citizens (in fact, you might reasonably wonder: “So what is it exactly that you do for a living, if I may ask?”). I don’t frequent high-society occasions, I don’t play tennis with magistrates. I share the rent on a group office. I have no secretary, I have no paralegals or interns. Most of the time that I ought to be devoting to work (which I don’t have) I spend inventing occupations that resemble work (like walking up and down the hallways of the courtroom with nothing to do, sticking my head into the hearing rooms to watch other lawyers argue cases, making Xeroxes that I don’t need, spending anywhere from a scanty half-hour to an entire hour in the library, pretending to be absorbed in legal research, and other palliatives of the sort). I’ve got sixteen years of professional activity under my belt, and I file tax returns that are frankly embarrassing. I’m afraid I’m going to be audited one of these days, but even though the numbers on my returns look highly