“Yes, please.”
Barbara takes off her jacket and drapes it over a chair. She wraps her warm wool shawl even tighter. She takes a cup, fills the coffee machine, and presses the illuminated button. The aroma of Arabia blend quickly follows.
“It’s supposed to snow tomorrow,” says Barbara. “Might be the last one of the season.”
“The deputy prosecutor is coming tomorrow afternoon,” says Giulio. “They want to question me.”
“I know, Grazia told me. She’s the one guarding you, did you know that?”
“We’ll need to prepare a room.”
“I’ve already thought about that. You’ll be in the dining room, we can stay downstairs in the basement.”
“For Buraco?”
“Of course not. Buraco is on Wednesday, tomorrow is Tuesday.”
“So who’s coming tomorrow?”
“We formed a committee.”
“A committee?”
“Didn’t I tell you? We found out a company bought a tranche of the old woods that for some godforsaken reason doesn’t fall within the protected area. They’re going to build a waste treatment plant.”
“In the middle of the old woods?”
“Right in the middle.”
“Can they even do that?”
“The commission has to decide.” Barbara brings the coffee to the table. “Apparently, they’re going to meet in a few days to vote on whether to issue the permits. The crazy thing is that to bring that stuff out there they’ll have to widen the roads for the trucks. Insanity, don’t you think?”
“And so you formed a committee.”
“A committee for the defense of our woods, of course.”
Giulio opens a sugar packet and empties it into the cup. He had grown unused to all that white out there.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back very often.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“All right, almost never.”
Perhaps this isn’t the time to make him face certain issues. Barbara checks the clock on the wall.
“Let me know if you need anything. Akan is going out to pick up some eggs. He said he wants to make you tagliatelle.”
“Mom . . .”
“What.”
Giulio looks out the window. “It’s as if it’s all covered in snow.”
EIGHT
The only sound that survives at Bar Fuga is the music from the slots coming from the other room. The girl, Viola, is gone. She seemed to be in a hurry. Gerri hopes she didn’t hear this morning’s spat with Katerina, but in vain. He knows she did. Just like he knows that people in the village have started whispering about him. He knows because that’s how things go. He fills another glass and gulps it down, though today it tastes more bitter than usual. Gerri’s forty-five today. They say a time comes for everyone, sooner or later, when you’re the only one who knows it’s your birthday. And usually that’s not a happy day. The most important thing to remember is that it only lasts one day. But people say a lot of stupid things. Gerri feels the weight of the truth that if life were a football game, he’d be at the end of the first half, sitting in the locker room, tired, with an overwhelming disadvantage and the depressing awareness that his opponent has more legs and more breath than he does. He messed up the game plan. Got the wrong day, the wrong game. It happens, the championship is long. The door to the bar opens. The lumberjacks. They’ve been freezing their butts off, and a round is in order. Today, he offers drinks on the house. Why? Because it’s the bartender’s birthday, and this year he’s found a way out of celebrating alone. The referee blows the whistle, or maybe it’s just another damn slot machine. Fact is, the field awaits him, the second half begins. There’s a game to turn around. Cheers.
“The story of the Kurdish man who was shipwrecked on the mountain.”
Giulio is standing in the kitchen door. Akan is at the workbench. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, and his hands are coated in flour. He’s preparing the dough for the noodles. He looks up, sees Giulio, and smiles.
“Whenever you want to write that story, you have my permission.”
“And reveal the Gherarda’s greatest secret?” Giulio asks, entering the room. “That the guardian of the secular tradition of wild boar ragù comes from the other side of the Mediterranean?”
“From the cradle of civilization.”
“You never take the credit you deserve for all this work, infidel.” Giulio approaches him, rolling up his sleeves. He notices the pot on the stove where Akan’s ragù is simmering. “I think a good Christian sampling is in order, a pious swipe, if you will . . .”
“The bread is still in the bag,” Akan tells him with a nod as he resumes kneading.
Giulio approaches the bag. He takes out the loaf.
“You disappoint me, Akan. You have that wood-fired oven out there and you go and buy bread—”
But as he takes the loaf, he reveals the newspaper underneath it. His photo is on the front page.
“The wood-fired oven isn’t warm enough yet,” says Akan. “It’ll be ready for tonight. It’s the Evening of Bread, remember? A lot of people are coming, you’ll see. Too bad you can’t . . .” But Akan’s voice seems to come from far away. From a place where everything is still whole.
Giulio looks at the newspaper. He’s reading the piece about him. His story with Patrizia. When it started, when it ended. Everything is there. The stalking charges, the messages he sent her, the nights he spent outside her apartment, the harassment. All of it.
“Don’t read that.” Akan interrupts the movement of the dough. “It’s a load of nonsense.”
“But it’s my nonsense.”
Akan approaches him. He wipes his hands on a cloth. He takes the newspaper out of Giulio’s hands and puts it back where it was.
“I weathered my storm, Giulio. Now you have to weather yours.”
Giulio studies him. The Kurd’s face is lined with wrinkles, his skin dark. Sometimes he has the eyes of someone who has stared death in the face and lived to tell the tale. Giulio purses his lips and nods. Weather the storm. He hopes he’s ready for it.
He grabs the bread and reaches for the serrated knife.
“Did someone around here say something about a pious swipe, or was I hearing things?”
NINE
“Do you think they’ll send someone?”
Donato drives the patrol car. He has to practice. Grazia is sitting next to him with the bag of sandwiches on her lap. The encounter with Scalise didn’t go well for him. There was no opportunity to discuss his future. But if they just sent some reinforcements to the station, he might be able to put in for a day to go see his wife.
“I don’t know, maybe they can send someone else because of Rodari.” Grazia is thinking of something else entirely. Her daughter smokes weed and maybe even brags about how she makes a fool of the Marshal.
“How many times do we have to pass by the hotel?” asks Donato.
“I don’t know, we’ll pass by when we have the time and I’ll record it. If someone has a problem with it, we’ll let them tell us.”
The car arrives in front of the hotel, and Donato turns off the engine.
Grazia doesn’t get out.
“Should we wait?” asks Donato.
“You have somewhere to be?”
The phone rings. Grazia picks it up and passes it to Donato.
“Carabinieri,” he says. “What? To GeoService? What? Blood? But . . . Okay, okay. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“What happened?” asks Grazia.
“That was the GeoService office. They found the head of a fox stuck on a pole and something written in blood across the door.”
“We’ll wait a few minutes and then go.”
“A few minutes?”
“Are you sure you don’t have somewhere to be?”
Viola’s scooter peeks around the curve. She parks it in front of the entrance to the hotel and crosses the street toward the patrol car.
Grazia lowers the window. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.”
“Thank Barbara for me. I’ll see you tonight.”
As Viola walks toward the Gherarda, Barbara waves at Grazia from the window.
“Now that Rodari is under house arrest,” says Donato, “is it okay for Viola to be eating with them?”
“Officially, Rodari is confined to his room in the other wing of the hotel, and there’s no reason to go verify that, right? Besides, he’s only a suspect in the murder, he hasn’t been officially charged, so I don’t think he’s so dangerous at the moment.”
“I’m just saying because—”
“Barbara is a friend, I can’t take care of my daughter because we’re up to our ears, and I’d like her to have one good meal today. Any other questions?”
“No, boss.”
“Perfect. Now, then, if you don’t have any other questions, we can go and see about this fox head stuck on a pole.”
“Sure, boss.”
The patrol car pulls away.
Viola drops her backpack on the living room sofa next to the fireplace. Right behind it is the rack of Gherarda hunting rifles. It’s funny to think they can shoot for real. Whenever she leaves her backpack here, she can’t help but stop and consider it.
“Remingtons. Hunting is a religion around here.”
Viola turns. She didn’t think she’d find him right there in front of her. Her mother had told her that he was staying in another wing of the hotel, more or less separated from the rest of it. And instead, Giulio Rodari, the man under arrest because he apparently killed his ex-girlfriend and stashed her corpse somewhere they still haven’t found, is standing in the living room. “They were my father’s. He was the hunter in the family.” Viola is quiet, searching for something to say. “Even my aunt knew how to shoot, she had killer aim. But I take after my mother. I wouldn’t be able to catch a wild boar in the crosshairs from a foot away.”
“Hi,” says Viola, not knowing what else to say.
“Hi. I didn’t mean to scare you. I saw you here and I wanted to say hello.”
“I . . .”
“You’re Grazia’s daughter.” He looks like a kind person. His hair is disheveled, he’s wearing a fleece with a ski lift tag, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a century. He’s carrying a plate of noodles and a glass of water. “I wanted to see if you looked like her.”
“Yeah.” Viola wanted to add more, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’ll let you go, sorry again.” He starts up the stairs, but Viola is curious.
“So do I look like her?” she asks.
“A little,” he says, turning back. “When we were your age, we were close friends. Now that I have to stay in my room, I sometimes feel like I’m back in those days. I had a David Bowie poster on my wall, only now, whenever I turn to look at it, it’s gone. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you these things. I’m a little out of it.” He turns again to leave.
“We play ‘Heroes’ . . .” She stops him. Again.
“Who’s we?”
“I’m in a band.”
“Beautiful song—really. We can be heroes just for one day . . .”
“You don’t look like you’d be a David Bowie fan.”
“What do I look like?”
“More the classic rock type.”
“Is it because I’m holding a plate of noodles with ragù and a glass of water?”
“Maybe.”
“Room service is on vacation and I . . .”
“Of course, you’re under . . . that is, I mean . . .”
“I’ve been arrested, yes. House arrest. Strange concept, don’t you think? In the sense that either you’re arrested or you’re at home, right?”
“Come to think of it . . .” Viola hates it when she says “come to think of it,” because she can never find anything else to say after that. But she knows that she shouldn’t be talking to this guy, and that if her mother finds out she’ll freak. So naturally she can’t help but talk to him.
“All right, I’ll let you go. I shouldn’t be in here, much less talking to you. The court order lists all the parts of the hotel where I can go, and this is absolutely off-limits.”
“I read one of your books.” Rodari looks surprised, but maybe he always does when someone tells him they read one of his books. “That is, not now, a few years ago. When I was younger. It wasn’t bad, the story of the gnome. It was good, seriously. Your drawings are great. I draw sometimes too. My mom bought it for me, the gnome book. She told me about you, that you went to school together and all that.”
“Thanks for telling me, it makes me very happy to hear that.”
“I liked the fact that the gnome can disappear because the woods protect him. Disappearing into the woods has always been my dream.”
“Mine too, sometimes.” Rodari seems a bit sad now. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything about disappearing into the woods to someone who has been accused of making a woman disappear. “Be well,” he tells her, before climbing the stairs. And this time, Viola finds no good excuse to stop him.
THE SPIRITS OF THE WOODS DON’T FORGIVE
These are the words written on GeoService’s door. But they weren’t written in blood. The person who found them just assumed that was the case after he saw the fox’s head. For Grazia, all it took was getting a few steps closer until she smelled the paint.
The office is set up inside a wood and plastic prefab cabin located near the site where the plant is supposed to be built. It’s still empty, but if they approve the waste storage and treatment permits, the employees will begin to arrive.
“I pass by here about twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon.” The lumberjack who reported what will be officially described as an “act of vandalism” recounts the discovery. Next to him is Eugenio Falconi, the mayor of the village, the second person who heard from the lumberjack. He’s a short man who wears a cowboy hat. Next to him is Aurelio Magliarini, who goes by Maglio, the owner of Magliarini Forestry Services, who was the first to be notified of the finding by his employee.
“We maintain the cabin,” explains Maglio, “by agreement with the owner. We shovel the snow, stuff like that.”
“It’s a serious offense,” says the mayor, “and who knows what it’s all about.”
“It seems pretty clear to me,” says Donato. “These are the offices of the company that wants to build a waste treatment plant in the middle of the woods, and these Spirits don’t have any intention of forgiving the damage the decision will cause.”
“You mean if the decision causes damage,” the mayor replies. “The permits won’t be authorized, son. I mean, they killed a fox. What kind of environmentalist goes around decapitating foxes?”
“Marshal, if there’s nothing else,” says Maglio, “we have to get back to work.”
Grazia checks the ground. The animal’s blood has pooled at the base of the long pole. It’s paint, even here. She takes a picture with her phone.
“What if it has something to do with old Peter’s story?” asks the young lumberjack.
Grazia turns to him and catches Maglio’s gaze, silencing him.
“Who’s old Peter?” asks Donato.
“He was a wanderer,” says Grazia. “From northern Europe—I don’t know where exactly, some German forest. He lived in the woods. He claimed to be a diviner. But then he disappeared, probably during that flood four years ago. An overlooked death, since it happened around the time the bridge came down. No one has seen him since.”
“But there’s nothing to be sorry about,” says Maglio. “He was some hobo who lived in the woods. It’s no one’s fault if something happened to him.”
“Did they ever find his body?” asks Donato.
“No, it’s one of the many mysteries about this place,” says Grazia, staring out into the old woods.
TEN
I’m the orange cat. I have a secret.
It’s not imp
ortant, though. Not as important as what happened four years ago. I was lazing on the windowsill, the one that looks out onto the meadow. It’s my favorite place, because there’s a radiator right under it, and I love the warm air. And then from the kitchen there’s the smell of things to eat, and I love to be there to smell them. I love it all. They say I’m fat, but it’s just how I’m built.
That day, however, the kitchen was closed. Actually, I think it was the first and last time I didn’t get a single whiff of food. Everyone knows the story. There was a time when they used to gather every week to tell it. They said it was their way of not feeling guilty because the faces of the people who are no longer with us begin to fade with time. You come to forget them. It’s normal. A cat knows.
So for a time they would meet here and remember what happened. In those afternoons there were always cookies and pastries that left crisp crumbs on the floor, and everyone, when they saw I was there, would give me a bite and a rub.
There were seven people on that bus, including the driver.
And they all died.
The problem, according to what they said when they gathered here and offered me all those treats, was the rain. Too much rain. But rain falls, and not even people, who can build these warm homes with radiators that give off the heat I like so much, have ever invented a way to stop the rain. So it seems to me that blaming the rain for raining is a little like blaming fire for burning you because it’s hot. In reality, you’re the drunk who got your whiskers too close to the flame. Anyhow.
The real problem, which became clearer as they gathered together with that woman, the one everyone is looking for now and who—according to rumors—Giulio killed because he went crazy, the real problem, as I was saying, was the state of the bridge. Because the water flowing beneath it had eaten at the ground that had been supporting it for a long time. But even in this case, I mean, is it the water’s fault for eating the earth? Is it possible that they can build such beautiful houses, with radiators that give off the heat I like so much, and still not understand that water eats the earth? It’s like the story of the fire and the drunk who burns his whiskers. Maybe the problem is they don’t have whiskers. And even the few who do, I dare say, wear them so short that they’re completely useless.
The Hawthorne Season Page 5