“It’s the wind,” Matilde said. “But that branch should be cut. It kept me awake again last night.”
It was just before midnight. While he was waiting for the moaning, which seemed late, Orimbelli grabbed a bottle of wine from the table behind him and was holding it against the light to see how much was left when someone knocked on the shutter at one of the windows.
Matilde jumped up. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Domenico.”
Matilde went to open the door and Domenico presented himself in the dining room.
“There’s someone at the gate. He won’t say who he is. He wants to speak to Signora Cleofe. He saw there were lights on the ground floor and he asked to come in.”
“I’m coming out to see,” I said, and I followed Domenico through the grounds as far as the gate.
I saw a man on the other side of the bars and I asked him what he could possibly want at this hour. He took off his hat and showed me his face. I’d never seen him before.
“I am Berlusconi, the engineer,” he offered the words slowly, in a quiet voice, “Signora Cleofe’s brother. Let me in.”
In the meantime Domenico had recognized him and he opened the side gate to the visitor waiting to come in. I walked beside him up to the entrance, then fell behind as he crossed into the dining room.
Orimbelli was still holding the bottle in his hand and sat in front of the fireplace, but facing the door.
Berlusconi remained at the threshold. He looked at the women, trying, perhaps, to determine which of the two was Matilde.
Orimbelli put down the bottle, got up quietly and offered the seat to his brother-in-law, who put his hat on the table, sat down and began watching the flames licking the chimney.
He was a handsome man in his forties with dark skin, and completely bald. Still watching the flames, he finally spoke.
“Where is my sister?” he asked in a tone so sharp as to seem hysterical.
No one answered. When I realized that Orimbelli preferred that I speak, I said, “Signora Cleofe died between the twenty-first and twenty-second of September of last year.”
Berlusconi started, but didn’t take his eyes from the fire. “The twenty-first of September,” he said. “And what did she die of?”
“She drowned.”
“But you—who are you?” he asked as if he’d only just noticed he was talking to a stranger.
“I’m a family friend. Of the Orimbellis,” I answered, indicating man and wife.
Berlusconi slowly drew back from the fire, maintaining his distance from his brother-in-law. Resting one arm on the table, he began to look at Orimbelli and Matilde, one after the other, as if to read on their faces the rest of the story I’d begun to recount. Then he lowered his head once more and said, “I get it. Everything’s clear. My sister dies and you two get married right away, joining the Berlusconi legacy to the Scrosati.” He turned to face Orimbelli. “But you knew I was alive!”
“You told me not to say anything. You renounced everything. You didn’t want to come back to Italy …” Orimbelli protested, almost under his breath.
“Yes. But something compelled me to come back. Something specific. I knew very well that Matilde was free, because proxy weddings are annulled if they’re not consummated within six months. But your union explains so much.”
He turned toward me. “Where did my sister drown?” he asked abruptly. “In the lake? Out in front here?”
“No. In the dock,” Orimbelli said. “She drowned in the dock after we made our intentions known. Before I went, I left her a letter.”
Berlusconi stood up and picked up his hat from the table. “I left my suitcase at the hotel in the village,” he said, turning to me, “and I did the right thing, almost as if I’d known! I’m off. But we’ll see each other again.”
“I must tell you,” Orimbelli added, “that in February of this year, the Tribunal declared you presumed dead after ten years … We did everything according to the books.”
“Well done. That way, as my sister’s only heir, you become the owner of my estate, of my house in Milan and of this villa. Great! Tomorrow we’ll talk! Tomorrow!”
I got up to accompany him to the gate. As we passed through the grounds, we heard the heartrending cry of the split magnolia just over our heads.
Berlusconi stopped and listened. The lament came again, quieter this time. He looked up. Although he realized it was the sound of a broken branch, he said, “It sounded like a genie, sneering, as they do in Ethiopia. But genies? They’re here, too, dear sir.”
I was at the port in Oggebbio by nine. For the past few days, I’d taken advantage of the good weather to beach the Tinca and have her repainted. I was working alongside an old fisherman from the area, sanding under the keel, when Berlusconi came out of the Albergo Vittoria. He saw me and walked down to the shore.
“I’m getting the boat ready for the summer,” I told him.
“I see that, but I’d like to have a few words with you, if you don’t mind.”
We went to sit in the sun on a wooden trestle a little way from the boat.
“Have you known my brother-in-law for long?” he began. He spoke loudly enough to be heard at the end of the road—by Cavallini, who’d come out of his place to snoop.
“Since last summer,” I said quietly. “I actually met him right here, where I’d stopped one evening with my boat. We became friendly and traveled around the lake together for the whole summer. After a while, Matilde joined us and we made a trio, in fact, a quartet, since the woman you saw last night also joined us. From time to time, we came back here and between one trip and another, I was a guest at the villa. So I met Signora Cleofe. During the final trip last year, while we were eating in a hotel in Luino, the carabinieri alerted us to the death of your sister.”
“How long had you been away?”
“Two days. The evening before we’d stayed in Pallanza. They stayed in the Hotel Beau Rivage and I was in the boat with my friend.”
“Pallanza, if I’m not mistaken, is about fifteen kilometers from here.”
“More or less. But you’re quizzing me for nothing. Go to the prosecutor in Pallanza and you’ll find out everything. They’ll let you see the file with the carabinieri’s reports and the witness testimonies.”
“I’ll go,” he said. “I certainly will. I want to get to the bottom of the story of my sister’s suicide. You don’t know my brother-in-law!”
“I know him well as a sailing companion …”
“You don’t know who my brother-in-law is! Martina—is she still in the house?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Martina was seduced by that monster when she was eighteen. He deposited a fine sum for her and gave her a passbook to keep her family quiet and avoid scandal. And he volunteered to go to Africa. Now do you understand the kind of man he is?”
I was speechless.
Berlusconi nodded good-bye to me and went back to the hotel. After a bit he came out with his suitcase and got into a taxi he’d had called. I found out later from Cavallini that he’d transferred to the Hotel Beau Rivage in Pallanza.
XV
WHEN the boat was properly caulked and revarnished, I took it back to the dock.
I slept and ate with the Orimbellis, who’d sworn me to stay with them, thinking that Berlusconi would return. But he didn’t. He remained at the Beau Rivage in Pallanza. He left it in the morning and returned to it in the evening.
It wasn’t difficult to work out that he was looking into the death of his sister. He’d been to the proscecutor to see the inquest report and had questioned all the taxi drivers and motorboats from Pallanza to Intra, in Baveno and in Stresa. He spoke to the doorman every day, but without getting anything out of him. The doorman stayed at his post until midnight, and the nightwatchman didn’t remember having opened the door to anyone at the time, either after midnight or before eight in the morning.
Berlusconi tried to see if he could leave the hotel one nig
ht after midnight using one of the service doors which was on a spring and could be opened without a key only from the inside. He managed to go out unobserved. Half an hour later he rang the bell and the night doorman came down to open up for him. In the morning, having gone out early, he tried to reenter the hotel between eight and eight-thirty without being noticed. Taking advantage of the temporary absence of the doorman, he achieved his goal without a hitch.
But it didn’t prove anything. Discouraged, he was about to leave Pallanza, where he’d been for almost a month without setting foot in Oggebbio, when he ran into some unexpected good luck. Hanging about the old town, he found himself passing a cobbled street where there was a little basement bicycle repair shop. On a sudden hunch, he went in and asked the mechanic if he would rent him a bicycle until the next day. He was asked for a deposit, which he gave, and then he said he’d stop by that evening to get the bike.
“Before eight,” said the mechanic, “because that’s when I close the workshop.”
Berlusconi went back to get the bicycle at seven-thirty and leaned it against a plant along the lakefront in a poorly lit area, securing it with a lock.
At half past midnight, he left the hotel while the doorman was sleeping in his cubbyhole on the first floor. He went to pick up the bike and started off in the direction of Intra. He got to the environs of the Villa Cleofe in Oggebbio in under an hour. He hung about for a long time, walking back and forth in front of the villa without meeting another living soul. Then, hiding the bicycle around the corner of a house, he climbed the villa wall, crossed the grounds and lowered himself over the breakwater to get to the shore. When he came to the dock wall, he removed his shoes, socks and trousers and entered the water. He had to plunge in up to his chest to get inside to where my boat was because the water level was high, as it is every spring.
Mission accomplished, he went back to the beach, dried himself off with a towel he’d brought along, put his clothes back on, and crossed the grounds once more to get the bicycle. He rode back to Pallanza slowly. At eight, he returned the bike to the mechanic, paid the hire fee and went to the hotel. He mingled with a group of Swiss tourists coming out to the islands, then slipped into the dining room without being seen by the doorman, and ordered breakfast.
At nine he returned to the mechanic and asked how many cycles he rented out.
“Only the one,” the mechanic replied. “It’s mine. The one I gave you.”
“Do you often rent it out?”
“Never. The last time was last autumn … in fact to someone like you, who came to get it in the evening and brought it back in the morning.”
“Would you be able to recognize that person?”
“I think so,” answered the mechanic. “He was a short guy, rather stocky, with slanting eyes and a crew cut.”
“What sort of accent did he have?”
“From Milan, I’d say.”
No one at the villa had heard the outcome of Berlusconi’s investigation. The news had filtered through only via information from Orimbelli’s solicitor, because Berlusconi had hired a lawyer to start proceedings to reverse his status as “presumed dead.” He probably intended to return to Africa once he reclaimed what was his, or at least to disappear from the lake.
Orimbelli was anxious to hear of his brother-in-law’s departure. “Let him take everything that’s his and get out of here, that ill-omened bird! So I never have to hear his squeaking falsetto again, for any reason!”
However, he did have to hear it again.
I’d put the Tinca back in the water awhile before and sometimes I’d go for a spin in front of the villa. But Orimbelli didn’t want to go out anymore, and neither did Matilde. They stayed in their separate rooms all day long and met only at table, often with me, where they never failed to carp at each other.
One afternoon at around one, while we were having coffee, Domenico came in to say that Berlusconi was at the gate.
“I’m not at home to him!” Orimbelli bellowed. “He can see his lawyer. At this point everything’s in the hands of the lawyers.”
Matilde paid no attention to him and signed for Domenico to let Berlusconi in.
Perched on the corner of a dining room chair, Berlusconi began a speech, as if he were standing before a court. He told us the story of his investigations and revealed that he was on the verge of exposing his sister’s killer. He pointed angrily at his brother-in-law. The bicycle mechanic who’d rented out the bike to him had described him with such precision that there could be no doubt regarding his identity.
“But there’s more,” he dug in.
I stopped him and begged him to let me speak.
He looked at me, enraged, but calmed down right away when he heard me say I’d seen Orimbelli on a bike the night Signora Cleofe had died.
It was time I spoke up, and I regretted not having done so earlier. There was no need for me to pity or defer to Orimbelli. He’d had me snared from that first evening at the port in Oggebbio when, like a cat ambushing its prey, he’d watched me arrive on the last breeze. He’d coolly studied me while I hauled down and as I moored and prepared the boat for the night with the meticulousness of a straightforward or even witless person. As soon as I was on land, he’d craftily questioned me in order to reel me in. He’d taken me first for a coffee and then to his house, perfectly sure that I wouldn’t escape from his traps: the villa, his sister-in-law and of course, the bishop’s bedroom. And that’s how he recruited me to take him around so he could carry out his misdeeds. He’d involved me in his schemes and made use of me as a convenient witness for the defense, when I should have been the one to accuse him.
I was irritated not only by the risks I’d run and might still incur, but also because all at once, Orimbelli seemed the embodiment of all the waste and profligacy I’d abandoned myself to that year, indeed, a sign of the waywardness of my life, a deviation in its course which I would have to correct without delay.
“I wasn’t sure it was him,” I said, “which is why I kept quiet. I left him at the Hotel Beau Rivage as he was going up to the room with Matilde. It seemed unlikely that two hours later he’d be riding his bike along the lake at night. But after all you’ve discovered, I’m convinced it was him and I’ll state it in front of anyone. I might add that one day in Ascona, he looked into the uses of aconite. It can be used to treat trigeminal neuralgia, but it can also send a close relative to another world.”
“You’re both crazy!” screamed Orimbelli. “The conclusions of the public prosecutor are worth more than your gossip. I didn’t have the keys! How could I get into the house?”
“With the keys in the dock,” Matilde said, her voice low and trembling, “which you’d have taken from the box on the boat and then replaced.”
At these words, a precise memory took shape in my mind. After the death of Signora Cleofe, I’d gone with the marshal to Luino to retrieve the keys to the dock. When I took them from the box in the boat’s stern, I noticed that they were no longer tied to the line I’d secured them to a month before, having worried that they might slip into the water and get lost while someone was handling them.
“You’re right.” I turned toward Matilde, who seemed, like me, to have shed an unbearable weight. “The key was untied from the cord and was definitely used that night by your husband. He’d have put it back in the box during our trip to Santa Caterina, but he didn’t bother to reattach it for fear we’d notice his trick.”
“But there’s more!” Berlusconi cried out in his tiny voice. “Much, much more!”
Orimbelli could stand it no longer and attempted to fling himself at his wife. Berlusconi and I simultaneously got between them. At that, Orimbelli left the dining room, pounding on the door and crying: “Cowards! I’ll kill all of you!”
“There’s much more,” shrieked Berlusconi, scrabbling in an internal pocket. “Look at this letter!”
Frantically, he took a couple of sheets from an envelope and offered them to me.
I
took them and began to read.
“Read out loud,” said Matilde.
I started from the beginning.
Oggebbio, 21 September 1946
Dear Angelo,
I’ve had no news of you for months, but
I assume you’re well as usual, and that your silence is due to your travels in the interior of Africa, where it seems you have business, as you wrote in one of your last letters.
I’m writing today to tell you something new and, for me, troubling. I feel the need to tell someone in my family, and you— no matter how far away or how lost to the world—are the only person I can turn to.
This afternoon, the gardener, Domenico, came to tell me that there was some correspondence in the mailbox next to the lodge. I went to see, hoping it was a letter from you, but I found an envelope with no stamp on it. Inside was a brief missive written in Mario’s hand, telling me that he was in love with Matilde, that she duly loved him in return and that they had therefore decided to leave the house in order to live together while they waited to formalize their union in some way. He’d put the letter in the box around eight in the morning, just before going for another trip on a large sailboat with Matilde and a friend he’s made recently.
I’m very surprised by this letter, and I can’t make sense of it. If he wanted to bring me up to date regarding his disgraceful liaison with Matilde, he should have done so when he was leaving the house for good, and not before a boat trip from which they’ll return in a few days.
The letter I have in front of me makes me think, and seems a curious warning of something that’s about to happen.
I wish you were here. But unfortunately you decided to disappear long ago, and our correspondence remains absolutely secret.
Out of respect for your instructions, I’ve put forward the request that you be declared “presumed dead.” I thank you for the generous bequest from your part of the inheritance, but you should know that it will always be at your disposal should you decide to return.
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