A Woman Much Missed

by Valerio Varesi

  In the last analysis, everything came back to that pensione which seemed to be the well-oiled hinge on which a whole world turned. Before going to bed, he listened to the voicemail which had been blinking all evening. “Have you found your tongue after going back to that bordello?” Angela said, guessing that he had ended his evening there. If truth be told, the Pensione Tagliavini and Fernanda’s home were more depressing than any brothel.

  He got up late. It was mid-morning by the time he arrived at the questura, which he found in a state of festive torpor. At that time of year, with the holidays approaching, everyone felt they could take it easy. He reflected how right he was to stay at work over the Christmas period and during the summer holidays – all the more so since Juvara attended to all the bureaucracy, leaving him only forms to sign.

  “They’re still looking for the old girl, are they?” he said to the inspector, hoping to be reassured.

  “All the patrols have got a photograph. I had twenty copies printed specially.”

  With a cigar clamped between his teeth Soneri gave a grunt and went out a few minutes later. In Borgo Angelo Mazza, he hesitated for some time in front of a doorbell alongside a brass plate which read FOTO TROMBI. Once again he was tormented by a feeling of anxiety about wasting time rummaging through matters which had no bearing on the case. Juvara had alerted him to the fact that journalists were hoping to interview him about his investigation. What could he tell them? That every so often he felt compelled to track down photographs from the days of his youth?

  Finally he rang the bell. He well remembered the basement premises lined with metal shelves, each one labelled. The criteria adopted for the filing system were plainly very personal. Trombi went by genres: political personalities, demonstrations, sporting events, churches, monuments, and so on. Within each category, the subdivision was chronological, year by year, but the overall principle was highly abstruse. It occurred to Soneri that once its creator was dead, no-one would ever again be able to decipher the code to that strongbox, so packed with history.

  “You’ve not changed much,” the photographer remarked as he showed him into his studio.

  The commissario could not say the same about him. Trombi had gone to seed, and the skin on his face seemed to flow onto his chin like melting wax. He pointed to a seat while he withdrew into another room, leaving Soneri in an office with small windows which were only a few centimetres above the pavement. He returned with an envelope which he handed him.

  “I’ve been keeping this aside for years. Now at last I can give it to you,” Trombi said.

  The commissario opened it. When he saw his own face with his boyish smile, and Ada at his side, something deep inside him seemed to crumble.

  “When did you take this?”

  “In 1975. The date’s on the back.”

  For a moment he thought he was going to collapse. He had been given a glimpse of his life through someone else’s eyes, and of an Ada who was not the woman he had known. A forgotten instant from his past was being handed back to him, but it was like being paid in a currency which had been withdrawn from circulation.

  “Any more?”

  “Perhaps, but you’re asking too much of my memory if you think I know where to find them,” Trombi said, waving an arm at the shelves.

  “What about Ghitta? Do you have any photographs of her?”

  Trombi heaved a deep sigh which made his round belly expand before shrinking like a deflated football. His expression became sad and regretful. “She was one of the best-known people in the city, but I read in the paper that there was hardly anyone at her funeral. Don’t you find that strange?” He lifted a small three-step ladder and moved back among his shelves.

  “No, I don’t find it in the least strange,” the commissario said, without taking the trouble to explain why not.

  When Trombi noticed Soneri’s pained look and saw in his eyes an invitation to let the subject drop he decided not to pursue the matter.

  “I don’t have all that many pictures of Ghitta,” Trombi said, offering him a folder. “She didn’t like having her photograph taken. When she was in company, she hid behind somebody else or crept out of the frame. I only managed to get her a couple of times, when she wasn’t aware I had my camera out.”

  There was a close-up taken some years previously, before Ghitta began to show her years and when it was still possible to see that she must once have been a good-looking woman.

  “I took that one with a telescopic lens. I’d like to give it to her family, to go on her tombstone.”

  “There is no family,” Soneri said.

  The photographer was taken aback, and said nothing more. Meanwhile the commissario continued raking about in the folder. There was one of her in profile, walking along a snow-covered Via Saffi in front of the pensione, others of her at the window waving to passers-by, one waiting at a bus stop, and finally in a publicity shot taken in the pensione’s golden years, hands on her hips and surrounded by her lodgers, like a teacher with her class. The caption underneath read PENSIONE TAGLIAVINI, WARM WELCOME AND GOOD FOOD. Soneri studied the row of faces, hoping to come across some old acquaintances.

  “They weren’t real lodgers, just people picked out because their faces suggested they were good boys and girls,” Trombi said. “In those days people still trusted advertising, and some of Ghitta’s real students looked like convicts! They needed something better to persuade worried families from country villages.”

  Soneri put down the advertisement and picked up the last picture in the folder. This time he immediately recognised Ada at the centre of a group of students in front of No. 35 Via Saffi. Ghitta seemed agitated, her overcoat blowing about in the wind.

  “There had been a gas leak, and the firemen had evacuated the building,” Trombi said.

  The commissario looked more closely and identified the mysterious boyfriend standing next to Ada. He had never seen him standing before and he felt a stab of retrospective jealousy over his height.

  “Do you know this man?” he asked the photographer, pointing at the young man.

  Trombi shook his head.

  “Are there any other pictures of him?”

  Trombi doubted it, but took the stepladder and went into another room, leaving Soneri staring at the photograph. One moment of life frozen forever. What he liked about photography was its implicit rebellion against time, something we can all identify with. It occurred to him that possibly his obsession with staring out at the night, when the whole city was immobilised in the mist, had something in common with the stillness of a postcard. Right now, all he could hear was the click-clack of heels as they hurried past the little street-level window, the rush of people all a-flutter over their preparations for the festive period, the pressures of life reduced to one vain scurry, everything compressed into one brief dash, or one swift and speedily exhausted flapping of wings, like the flight of a grouse. One click, like Trombi’s at the height of the tumult in Parma in the aftermath of the ’68 demonstrations, whether of the killing of Mariano Lupo in front of the Roma cinema, of missiles being thrown, of the occupation of the Duomo, or of marches with chants he could still recall: “Masacci you pig / You’re going to catch it big”, or “Ricozzi you Fascist / You’re first upon the list”. How much time had passed? Hardly any at all, and yet everything had already faded: the faces, the memories and the utopias.

  “Maybe I snapped him at some demonstration or other.” Trombi was making an effort to remember, and at that moment it occurred to Soneri that he might be one of the last people to be making an effort to recall the recent past of a city afflicted by amnesia. Parma had locked its history away in a dark cellar, and now the whole city was happily trampling over it in its futile, festive madness.

  He felt Trombi’s hand on his shoulder. His attention had wandered as he listened to the rhythm of the shuffling feet above his head, but when he looked at the table he saw a collage of photographs of faces carefully painted with passion, rage and vitality:
beards, moustaches, long hair and heavy rectangular glasses like those worn by Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti. He struggled to make out Ada’s man behind a banner proclaiming “Student Movement”. He seemed somehow to be skilled at concealing himself in the middle of a crowd of protesters, but his height gave him away.

  “Look at this one over here and you’ll get a better view,” Trombi said.

  It was the only scene in which he stood out clearly, perhaps because a police charge had thrown the rows of marchers ahead of him into disarray, leaving him with no cover. The camera had caught him in full retreat, and if there was fear in his eyes, he also wore an expression of disdain. At his side, another gangly individual in an anorak was preparing to flee. His face was turned towards the lens at the moment the picture was taken, and that chance pose revealed him to Soneri thirty years later as Selvatici, the restless figure, later a lawyer, who once occupied the room next to Ada’s.

  “Half these people passed through Ghitta’s lodgings,” the commissario said.

  “Those who weren’t from the city, although a lot of them later made a good career here,” Trombi said. So saying, he pointed to faces which the commissario struggled to recognise: the future deputy mayor Lusetti with a red scarf round his neck; Councillor Pecorari beside him, fist raised, sporting a Stalin-like moustache.

  “A lovely couple, eh?” Trombi said.

  “A couple of turncoats,” Soneri muttered through his teeth, remembering the sneering looks the pair of them had directed at him during their student days. “Do you know this Selvatici?”

  “Not really. All I know is that he’s a lawyer, but I’ve never come across him.”

  “He was another one of those who lodged with Ghitta. Have you never thought of sorting out all this material?” he said, looking around at the shelves whose depth made the room seem smaller, leaving no more than a narrow corridor between them.

  “Where in the city centre would I find the cash to rent a studio big enough? I can only just afford this cellar. The day the sewer bursts, it’ll take the whole of old Parma with it.”

  “We’ll all go the same way,” Soneri said, as he headed off. “But before the flood comes, keep an eye open for any other pictures of Ghitta and her lodgers. The next time I drop by, I’ll take them all to safety.”

  He was hardly back on the street when his mobile rang. “Have you got your tongue back?”

  “Not completely, but I’ve got a notebook with me. I’ll drop you a line.”

  “You’ve never written me so much as a postcard. Anyway, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “What?” he said, feeling suddenly under pressure.

  “Lesson number two,” Angela said.

  “Alright, alright. The Milord.”

  He heard a snort as she hung up.

  In the restaurant, she astonished the commissario by ordering tripe alla parmigiana. Alceste wrote it down, his silent smile signalling approval. Soneri chose culatello, courgette tortelli and a bottle of Bonarda.

  “Will that be enough for you?” Angela said. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “I’m not going to be sitting behind a desk. In any case, I see that at long last you’ve decided to try to make up your calories,” he said, alluding to the tripe.

  “That may be, but from my desk I can see things you can’t.”

  The commissario abstained from asking what, because that would be playing Angela’s game. He hated all these riddles and the theatricality that went with them. He lit a cigar and began puffing slowly.

  This time Angela was not playing any game. “You remember the old Battioni factory buildings?”

  Soneri nodded.

  “Pecorari is at work on a variation of the urban masterplan that will change its use from industrial to residential,” she said in the mock singsong voice of a primary school teacher – another habit Soneri disliked.

  “So whose paw marks are on that job?”

  “You don’t really imagine you’re dealing with one of those Mickey-Mouse drug pushers whose necks you wring down at the questura?”

  “I don’t have anything to do with pushers and I don’t wring anybody’s neck.”

  “Are you seriously telling me you don’t know who was first to seize his big chance?”

  “No, but if I had to guess, I’d say Avanzini.”

  “Well done, commissario!”

  Soneri was losing patience, so he turned his attention to the culatello. As he chewed his food, he became aware that what was getting under his skin was not so much Angela’s mockery as the realisation that he had been caught unawares. Before he had time to descend into one of his black moods, Angela aroused his curiosity once more.

  “Want to know something else? The operation wasn’t all that easy to pull off, so Avanzini set up a temporary umbrella association which brought in all his rivals, including the cooperatives. Not only that: in the plan brought forward for urban renewal, the agreement with the city council includes a provision that the final balance will include the cost of the construction of the monument to the Barricades.”

  “Wonderful! So they’ve even put a price on the old anti-Fascist Arditi del Popolo.”

  “There’s a price on someone else,” Angela whispered. “And this is your business, commissario.”

  Soneri felt her hand stroke his thigh under the table. “The sooner you get shot of this case, the better for all concerned. It’s eating you up,” she said softly.

  Soneri took her hand and they remained a few moments in that position, their only contact the linking and unlinking of their fingers in time to the rhythm of their feelings. Occasionally they raised their heads, meeting each other’s gaze, oddly shy and embarrassed. In this way, without a word being spoken, they communicated everything.

  The commissario decided to return to the questura. As he left the Milord, his mobile rang. Juvara was in such a state of excitement that the words stuck in his throat and he did not know where to begin. “Commissario, Amintore Cornetti has killed himself. You know who I mean? One of Avanzini’s partners.”

  “He killed himself or was killed?”

  “It seems he took his own life. One shot to the temple with a Smith & Weston. The bullet blew his brains out.”

  Soneri suspected this was the just beginning, the initial incident that would set off a chain reaction. Now it was just a question of waiting for everything else to unravel.

  “But that’s not all,” Juvara went on. “Cornetti went to the offices of his partner at 14 Borgo Felino to commit suicide.”

  Soneri recognised that address – Pitti had led him there on two consecutive nights. It was the headquarters of La Maison s.r.l., Avanzini’s company, in which it seemed Cornetti was a partner. Cornetti himself was an entrepreneur who had made his fortune in the post-war reconstruction boom. He restored houses damaged by the bombing at a speed which met the needs of an expanding city where the prime objective was to put a roof over the heads of countless homeless families.

  The commissario lost no time in getting to Borgo Felino. There were two police cars there already, as well as a small crowd of inquisitive onlookers standing about in the cold. The officers let him into the secretarial offices, where he found a woman and a girl. The girl was holding a handkerchief to her nose and was sobbing. The older woman, who must have been in her fifties, appeared impassive but must have been deeply shaken. The officer pointed Soneri in the direction of a mahogany door which bore the nameplate AVANZINI, SURVEYOR. He pushed it open and the first thing he saw was blood everywhere – on the table, on documents, on the walls and even on the curtains, which were otherwise as grey as the mist outside.

  Although elderly, Cornetti was a bull of a man, robust in build. His shoulders slumped over his partner’s desk. Presumably, after sitting down in Avanzini’s chair, he had taken out his revolver and pulled the trigger. The shot, fired from below, had blown away half his head. The pistol had ended up against the right-hand wall, flung there by Cornetti’s final
spasm.

  Soneri closed the door as the girl started sobbing convulsively once again under the indifferent glance of the older woman. Nanetti turned up at that moment, and Soneri experienced a sense of relief at being able to rely on his colleague’s assessment.

  “Have you spoken to those two?” Soneri asked the officer in charge.

  The officer shook his head. “The two of them seemed paralysed.”

  Soneri went up to the older woman, who had a vacant expression. Her eyes were open but her face lifeless. “Can you speak?” he said.

  She shook herself and nodded.

  “When did he get here?”

  “We reopen at two thirty. He must have arrived a little before three.”

  “Was he upset? How did he behave?”

  “He seemed perfectly calm, although he wasn’t as jokey as he normally is.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He asked if Signor Avanzini was in. We told him he’d be a bit late.”

  “And then he went in there?”

  “First he asked for copies of some documents and contracts. He sat down here, examined them, and then said he would need to study a licence Avanzini had left on his office desk.”

  “So then he went into the other room.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he close the door?”

  “Straightaway.”

  “How much time elapsed from that moment until you heard the shot?”

  “A few minutes.”