turned thirteen.
"So cute. You don’t bite, do you?" he said, stroking it carefully, then with more confidence. He drew another puff of smoke from the cigarette and blew it towards the rabbit, that backed against the wall, bothered. He reached out and grabbed it clumsily. The animal, touched where it had been wounded by the teeth of Riccardo, started and jumped down, hitting the floor with one side. Its eyes were now dark as chocolate chips and it trembled with fear. Even its breathing had become faster.
"What are you doing? Did you want to end up like that one?" the inspector asked, stroking it gently until it calmed down.
August 15 – 06:40
When Alida left the police station, after the long interrogation she sustained from Brembati in the tiny room with smoked walls, the inspector could not find peace of mind. Standing motionless on the steps of the police station, he lit the tip of yet another cigarette and watched the woman get into the taxi he had called for her five minutes before.
A new day had begun. And it had begun in the worst way.
The blood stains on the walls of the chains room had proved to be of rabbits, and Alida had not had the slightest hesitation in explaining that the place served as a location for her husband's favourite hobby: photography.
As soon as they had bought the apartment in Viale Romania, they had decided that the room would have belonged to their first child. But, not being able to have any, Luca had turned it into a private corner where to vent to his artistic talent. He used Alida as a model for his shots, and one time he had indulged in the whim of recreating an unhealthy environment with a grotesque atmosphere, inspired by the work of a Canadian artist he particularly admired. No animal had been abused or killed to set up the room. The blood, that Luca had demanded to be true for a more realistic effect, had been bought for a pittance in a farmhouse outside of Rome, from a rabbit breeder whose name Alida didn’t know.
"So I guess you don’t mind showing me the photos your husband took. I'm no expert, but I might find something interesting anyway," the inspector had said as soon as Alida had finished answering with confidence the first set of questions.
"Impossible. I decided to delete them after his death. There is nothing left after I found that he cheated on me. Cameras, equipment, I threw away everything."
"Sure you didn’t get confused and mistook your friend for a camera too?"
"What you said wasn’t funny."
"It wasn’t meant to be."
"Riccardo was like a brother to me in the orphanage."
"You already said that to my colleagues before I arrived, a really nice story. Now I'd like to hear something less moving, for instance why that man decided to fly out of your kitchen window."
"If I knew I would have already told you, wouldn’t I?"
"I don’t think so. You are hiding something, and doing it very well, with obstinacy, which leaves me thinking that what you are covering is much bigger than I can imagine, or you wouldn’t try so hard."
"Do you remember when I came to Rebibbia to see the face of the murderer of my husband?"
"Sure," the inspector replied with regret.
"It was that day that I met Riccardo again. It had been almost thirty years since we had last met, and in that time none of us had heard news about the other. But we made a sad discovery."
Alida paused and looked down at the edge of the desk, worn out by the armrests of the chair rubbing it too many times. Brembati studied her carefully, trying to understand whether she was playing a part. When Alida spoke again, her voice was full of sadness.
"We realized that our characters had changed for more or less the same reason: prison. Mine was called marriage, his Rebibbia. On one side there was a man who hadn’t possessed a woman for too long, on the other a woman whose marriage, ended in disaster, had taken away from her the desire to open up to another person. I refused him and he flew into a rage. I got scared and ran away from home, like any other woman would have done. What happened next I cannot explain because I wasn’t there, but I guess it was the result of a repressed instinct."
"Repressed instinct" the inspector repeated, weighing every syllable, "I'd like to believe it, and I might have said the same thing if I hadn’t entered your living room and I hadn’t seen the walls of the corridor. No one is capable of such a thing."
"Is it my fault if I didn’t give it to him and he smashed my house?"
"Language."
"And you stop looking for what doesn’t exist. There are people who can attest it, one of whom, if I am not mistaken, is an agent of yours. The moment I opened the gate of the building Riccardo fell on the sidewalk. I wasn’t home when he went mad."
The inspector laughed, pushed his chair and stood, rubbing his big belly on the edge of the table with the risk of making a button of his shirt jump.
"The guys in forensics went mad when they discovered that your friend had made his arm grow three feet to flay the plaster of the walls of the corridor."
Alida was speechless. Brembati began to circle the table like a fat shark around a chunk of meat.
"You know what happened at the Menozzatti family chapel?" he assaulted her after tucking his shirt into his pants. Alida did not answer.
"Someone decided to visit your husband to make sure he was still resting in his coffin."
"And was he?" Alida asked, swallowing with difficulty.
The inspector reappeared in front of her.
"He was, but we're still wondering what happened to his right ear."
Alida's heart started to beat faster.
"Was your husband buried missing one ear, as far as you know?" Brembati asked with the naturalness with which he could have asked the time to a passer-by.
"No," Alida said, avoiding to look at him.
"Good, because those who attended the funeral said the same thing. You weren’t there when he was buried, am I wrong?"
"You’re not wrong. So what? What are you accusing me of?"
Brembati attacked again.
"Mrs. Menozzatti, where were you last night between eleven and midnight?" he asked, starting again to walk around in the room.
"If you don’t mind, I started using my maiden name again" Alida shielded herself regaining a bit of courage.
"That is?"
"Zannelli."
"It suits you."
"Does it?"
"Instead of helping me carry out the investigation, you show your teeth and growl like a dog. So, Ms. Zannelli, where were you last night between eleven and midnight?"
"At home."
"Alone?"
"No" After a brief pause she added, "with my rabbit."
Brembati hastened to go round the table and disappeared behind Alida so she could not see his face. "We didn’t find any rabbit in your apartment," he said hurriedly.
"I guess your agents were so efficient as to leave the door open and let it escape."
The inspector sat down. "I’m not surprised that it escaped, perhaps he saw your husband’s room and decided to look for an accommodation that did not look like a slaughterhouse."
Alida shook her head. "The fact that we started talking about a rabbit, as much as I was fond of it, makes me think that we are at a loss for words. Why don’t you call me when you want to talk about something we haven’t already discussed?"
The face of the inspector was that of someone who has mistaken a glass of vodka for one of fresh water. "Your attitude..." he tried to say.
"Is that of a tired woman who recently lost her husband and her only friend. And I’m not talking about the rabbit. That you can even keep. Will you call a taxi for me or you’d rather I did it myself?"
The taxi made a quick manoeuvre and disappeared on Viale Regina Margherita, almost completely deserted at that hour of the morning.
The inspector finished his cigarette, threw it on the street from the last step of the porch and stared into space. He must find a way to frame that woman, but the only thing he could think about was the sun; it had already risen from a few
minutes and was already heating as if it were full day. Truly disgusting.
How long till the end of summer?
How long till the end of that infamous job?
August 17 – 11:02
White. Finally the room was white again.
The day of Riccardo’s funeral, Verano was a furnace. The dead would not resurrect even if it were the Judgement day, for how cool they were in the damp earth. The funeral was attended by Alida, the aunt of Riccardo and a few ex-convicts. The priest, an old, thin man, launched in a sermon that seemed destined to last forever. When he finished, Alida approached Raffaella, hugged her tight and looked into her eyes. The woman said nothing, neither did Alida. Cicadas chirped as if they were about to burst.
Alida found in front of her house two men wearing faded overalls spotted with paint.
The masons.
She apologized for being late, let them in, offered them drinks and brought them to the room.
She had done a great job the day before. The walls were spotless. The ceiling had never been so white. The chains were gone. In their place two iron rings with spring clips that the masons barely looked at. They moved to the centre of the room, exchanging a look of vague bewilderment. The walls, devoid of furniture, were in excellent condition. What had they been called for?
"The bars," Alida said. The men turned around following the finger of the woman. "The bars have to be removed. How long will it take?"
It took less than an hour.
Alida spent the most satisfying sixty minutes of her life standing in the doorway, looking at the precise and careful work of the masons. When they left, with the bars of the grid in a tin bucket, she
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