I liked music, do you know that? When I was a kid, I played the guitar, strictly self-taught; it might have been the only thing I felt I was really good at. I asked him if I could take a few lessons. He told me that he wouldn’t tolerate the slightest distraction from my studies. He had a look on his face, when he said it, that I wish I could show you. The face of someone who’d just been stabbed in the back. And so from then on, no more guitar lessons, Renato. Nothing at all.
I met Biagio in my second year at the university. Let me tell you one thing: I know how to study. When it comes to memorizing things, spending time with my nose in a book, staying up all night to prepare for an exam, I’m outstanding. But I don’t have a speck of intuition. No. I have no imagination, I don’t get special or innovative ideas, I don’t see things that other people miss. Biagio did. He’d understand things in a flash, then he’d reconstruct them with proofs: and they were identical to the ones in the book.
Like nearly everyone, he would have liked to be a doctor, but he didn’t even bother to take the admission test. I have no doubt he would have pulverized that test, he would have gotten the highest score in the whole country, but he couldn’t afford to study medicine. It took too long, you had to buy too many books, the fees were too high. Biagio didn’t have a cent to his name.
He chose to major in Biotechnology because he thought that meant he could start working earlier. To make ends meet, he did any work he could get. He was even a moving man, can you believe it? He transported furniture and boxes. And he managed to send some money home to his sister.
We met at a final exam. We talked a while and decided to study for the next exam together. And since then we remained fast friends.
Until Grazia arrived.
It was all going great, you know?
I gave him money, true. In fact, I paid for everything.
We’re pretty wealthy. The great man earns a good salary, but he doesn’t care about that: he works for the glory of it, there are certain things he pays no mind. So I could just take all the money I wanted and give it to Biagio. To make sure he didn’t have to go find a job, to keep him from going away and stranding me here.
We were a team, you understand? A team. He would intuit things, establish the overall guidelines, and then I would follow up on them stubbornly. We signed our articles jointly. Every so often I’d sign them alone; he’d let me do it, for money. That way, the great man could be proud of his genius son and forgive him his eccentric notion of hauling along a little bit of extra Calabrian ballast on his journey. He had no idea that things were actually the other way round. In the end, it turns out that the great man makes mistakes, sometime.
We’d have gone on like that for years. I’d have undertaken my university career, and once I had built a foundation, with a teaching position somewhere, Biagio would be able to choose whether or not to follow the same path or instead look for a job in manufacturing. In the meantime, the great man would enjoy his retirement, and we would be free. Yes, we’d have gone on like that.
Then his sister arrived.
She had won the statuette at a beauty contest when she was sixteen, at the beach. And she’d given it to her brother. Biagio was prouder of her than of our publications. He was subjugated by Grazia, who was like a cross between daughter, sister, and girlfriend. When he introduced her to me, you should have seen him, he seemed out of his mind with joy. What an asshole.
Then he started telling me about her idiot boyfriend who wanted to become a reggae singer; and his father, the murderer, who sooner or later was bound to show up to take her back home. Which is what happened, isn’t it? In the end, that’s what happened.
He’d got it into his head that he needed to straighten out his sister’s life. He didn’t know how, but he was going to straighten it out. I certainly couldn’t finance the dreams of glory that he had for her. Even the great man would have gotten mad about that, if I’d spent too much money. I told him to be patient, the academic competition for the position would take place in a year or so, he’d help me to win it, and after that he’d be free to choose more remunerative activities.
But he wasn’t willing to wait.
I should have figured out that he’d started working on his own. I should have figured it out. He had an old idea about an industrial yeast, something that, if it had worked, would be able to almost double the output of ethanol, with the same energy output. He’d come in to the laboratory, stay until late, gather up his data, and then go home to work on them further. And I, idiot that I was, believed that he just wanted to be able to keep an eye on his sister.
I wonder where he got the money for the patent. It costs, you know. You need almost four thousand euros, and he didn’t have anything like that amount of cash. She must have got her hands on it; maybe she worked as a whore. No doubt about it, she was pretty. That’s a fact. Biagio said that she looked exactly like his mother as a young woman.
Then that interview came out, and I understood. You know when the veil falls off your eyes? Everything was suddenly clear. The photograph, what he was saying about patents. The possibility of earning through research, and so on and so forth. I understood why he’d stopped coming to the university, why he was no longer working on new articles, or on our joint projects. He was dumping me. He was leaving, ready to earn his own money.
So I went to talk to him. That was my apartment, you understand? My own home. He was robbing me of my future, my prospects, out of my own apartment. I went there and I asked him to tell me honestly what he was doing.
He didn’t deny a thing. He didn’t even dream of it. He told me that he’d had no choice, that his sister’s life was at stake. That there was no time to spare, otherwise Grazia would go off with that guy and she’d ruin her chances. That’s what he said: she’d ruin her chances. And his father had arrived, too. The only way he had to resolve that impasse was the patent for his yeast.
His yeast.
He had discovered it and formulated it in my father’s laboratory, with the resources and tools I’d put at his disposal, while living in my apartment, eating the food that I brought him, and yet he insisted that the yeast belonged to him.
I couldn’t even bring myself to speak. I just looked at him and said nothing. And at a certain point, he turned away from me and started checking an equation as if nothing had happened.
I think I lost my mind there. But I was cold. I could see myself from outside, as if in some movie. I turned around and took the statuette off its shelf. One blow. Then more. I don’t remember exactly.
I’d just finished, I would have left the place calmly, and she would have survived. She was as guilty as he was, but she would have made it out alive. Instead, the door swings open and in she comes.
I realized I was done for when you said that she had the earbuds in her ears. How could you have known that? Did you see her? Some outside security camera, is that it? You always read about that in the newspapers.
I put my hands over her face, I was wearing gloves; with the brutal cold we’ve been having, my hands go numb. Then I choked her, and I only stopped once I was certain that she could no longer scream. I put her on the bed: maybe it would look like someone had come in and had tried to rape her. It’s full of immigrants around here, and she is so pretty. She was so pretty.
I’m not sorry for what I did. He was a damned thief. I thought he was my friend, my best friend, but I was wrong. He was a backstabber.
A weasel, a goddamned traitor. Say so, to the great man, tell him that it wasn’t my fault. I’m innocent.
I miss him, actually, though. After each exam, after each journal article, after every success, you know what we would do? We’d hug. I never hugged anyone, but he and I would hug. Damn him.
Damn him.
LII
You need to look out for the cold. Because, over time, the cold will seep into your bones and insinuate itself into your soul.
And when it insinuates itself into souls, it changes them; it dries up the source of a smile, it fills with ice the gaps that once made it possible to stroll along the brink of sentiments and emotion, enchanting you with the sight of the panorama.
Look out for the cold.
Giorgio Pisanelli set out once again on foot for the park outside the National Library.
Once again, he was running late. The news of the arrest of Renato Forgione had thrown not only the police station into a state of frantic disarray, but the entire city. There’d been a cavalcade of reporters and television news crews in Pizzofalcone, eager to dig into every nook and cranny of an investigation that promised to be sensational, in the best possible way, luckily: the police had broken the case of the two murdered siblings in less than five days. And just think, it had been none other than the Bastards who had pulled off that coup.
In spite of that, the deputy captain felt weighed down by an enormous burden. His chat with Leonardo had undermined all his certainties: What if the monk was right? What if actually this whole idea of a murderer of the desperate, the lonely, and the depressed was just something he needed for himself? A fantasy built especially to avoid drifting helplessly downstream?
Once he reached the deserted, frost-ridden flower beds, as he watched his breath steam before him, Pisanelli saw himself for what he really was: an old, sick man, close to the end. A man toying with his own madness, someone who spent his evenings talking with his dead wife. Dead. Carmen was dead, and he was refusing to accept that simple reality.
Maybe he himself ought to step aside from life.
He looked around. Agnese wasn’t there.
Are you dead, too, Agnese? he wondered. And he asked the question aloud, in the lunar landscape of the park, empty of the shouts of children, the stern voices of mothers, and the melodious notes of birdsong. Of spring, which might never return.
He let himself collapse on the bench, indifferent to the freezing cold that stabbed into him through his clothing. He was tired. The idea of giving up, of yielding once and for all to the silence, didn’t frighten him; if anything, it comforted him. He decided that it might perhaps be time to shuffle offstage, because the emptiness of the performance he was staging day after day now struck him as unbearable.
A little bird hopped toward his feet. Lazily, poking through the icy fog that veiled his heart, he greeted the bird and, through it, his poor friend, who might perhaps be dangling now from a knotted sheet, or lying in her bed, stuffed with pills, no longer breathing. I’m sorry, Agnese. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t manage to save you. And I can’t even manage to save myself.
He lay down. The cold was terrible. Even the pale afternoon sun had abandoned that patch of park in defeat. He shut his eyes.
Ciao, Leonardo, old friend of mine. At this time of day you must be preparing for your spiritual exercises. Don’t feel guilty about not being there when I left this world.
Ciao, Carmen, my darling love. How I wish I could believe that we’re going to see each other soon, and then spend the rest of eternity together. How I wish it were true, so that I’d be about to caress your sweet face once again.
Ciao, Agnese. I hope you can find peace. And I hope I can find it, too.
“Ciao, Giorgio.”
The synchronicity between his last thought and the arrival of that voice had been so perfect that he didn’t even start at the sound. Pisanelli felt a hand gently touching him, and he sat up.
“Thanks for holding a place for me. I hope that Raimondo didn’t think that his Mamma had forgotten about him. You see him? He was waiting for me.”
Agnese sat down and started scattering breadcrumbs for the sparrow, which set to pecking happily.
“You know, I’d dozed off. And in my dream he was saying to me: Come on, Mamma, don’t you see how late it is? Giorgio must be getting worried. I jumped out of bed and I hurried over. How are you?”
Pisanelli looked at her for an instant. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and said: “Fine, Agnese. I’m fine.”
Beware of the cold, because the cold can change you.
The cold is capable of whispering horrible stories in your ear, sad stories that will turn your mood gray.
You see the cold out your window, as it extends fingers of fog and ice throughout the night, slowly and inexorably invading the streets and your thoughts.
There is no army that can withstand the invasion of the cold. It arrives like a death sentence, and there is nothing you can do.
You can only wait, and pray to survive a little longer.
Without letting the cold change you too much.
Ottavia stuck her head into Palma’s office to bid him goodnight. The commissario was standing by the window, with his back turned. His arms were crossed and his back was bowed.
“Everything all right, boss?” the woman asked softly.
He replied without turning around.
“Ah, Ottavia. Yes, have a good evening.”
His chilly tone hit her like a rough shove.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “We broke the case, didn’t we?”
Palma turned and gave her a tight smile. His face was tired, marked by deep circles under his eyes.
“Certainly, of course. You were outstanding. And you in particular, standing up to the onslaught of the journalists and maintaining total confidence, letting nothing slip. I saw the news reports here, on the office television set. They’re so good at trading in mere conjecture.”
Ottavia was worried.
“Boss, what’s the matter? You don’t look happy to me. We’ve caught the murderer, everyone’s talking about us: now there’s no way anyone will call for the precinct to be shuttered. It’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”
The commissario sprawled in his chair.
“Yes. It’s exactly what we wanted. But I wasn’t up to the task. And I just can’t figure out why not.”
“What are you talking about? You were in charge of us, you were in constant contact with police headquarters, clearing the way so that we could do our work and come to the right solution. Without you, sir, this place would no longer even exist.”
“No, Ottavia. You’re very kind, but that’s not the way it is. In order to score a point in this depressing rivalry that I’ve let myself be drawn into, I would have sent an innocent man to jail. A father, ravaged by remorse, a man who had already paid dearly, all too dearly, for a moment of blind rage. Just to win the match, just to keep the police station open, I would have taken a cheap shot, indifferent to the repercussions.”
“But you really believed that Varricchio was guilty. We all did.”
“Lojacono didn’t, and he was right. I’d forgotten the reason I chose this profession in the first place: to find the truth. Maybe I’m not suited for the position I occupy. Maybe I should step aside.”
Ottavia felt her heart tug. She walked around the desk and stepped close to him.
“Don’t you say such a thing, not even in jest. Without you, we would be nothing, don’t you understand that? We need a guide, a reference point, because we can’t do it on our own. It’s no accident that no one else wanted us. Only thanks to you have we rediscovered the strength that we thought we’d lost forever.”
Palma looked up. They were extremely close.
“Maybe someone else could handle it better. Someone else wouldn’t have forgotten that we have to be certain before we—”
Ottavia put her hand over his mouth.
“Hush now, hush. That’s enough. I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense. I told you that we need you. That I need you.”
Palma’s eyes welled up with tears. Slowly, he lifted his arm from the desk and caressed Ottavia’s hand.
She sensed his smile as it spread under the skin. Almost without realizing she was doing it, she started running the tips of h
er fingers over his face.
Then she turned and hurried away.
It’s dangerous, the cold.
After you get over the first, stinging sensation, your flesh gets used to it and it all seems to be finished, but it’s not.
The cold is a treacherous, sneaky enemy, it knows how to stage a torpor that seems like nothing more than ordinary somnolence, but is actually a bellwether of death.
The cold is treacherous, it knows how to work its way into the chinks of your armor, and once it’s penetrated it’s hard to get rid of it.
The cold knows how to kill with the weapon of silence.
Lojacono turned the key in the lock, heaved a sigh, and entered the apartment. Marinella was sitting at the dining room table, waiting for him.
As soon as she saw him, the young woman burst into tears.
“Papà, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
He stood there, motionless, like a statue made of ice.
“Believe me, Papà. It was just a childish escapade, I wanted . . . you know, all my classmates go out with boys. He . . . he’s a good person, he lives here in this building. I met him on the stairs. He’s a university student.”
Lojacono said nothing. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
“It’s not Letizia’s fault, I pushed her into it. She’s so sweet and kind, she cares for me, like a mother. I just wanted it so much, I begged her, and in the end we agreed that I’d be back before the restaurant’s closing time.”
Silence. A cold silence.
“Papà, I’m begging you, answer me! I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear to you. We went to the movies, we ate a hot dog, we laughed and we talked. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Little by little, the tears streaked her cheeks, as her sobs shattered her phrases.
Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone Page 30