Back to Bologna az-10

by Michael Dibdin

  As usual these days, Gemma failed to see the lighter side of the situation and flounced out of the room, loudly abusing Zen with a string of vicious expletives and slamming the door so hard that it bounced open again. He went to shut it properly, his initial humour fading fast. What had all that been about? One more irrational and unpredictable fit of hysteria. Welcome to another day at Via del Fosso. The phone lying on the floor seemed to be emitting gurgling sounds. He picked it up.

  ‘ Pronto? ’

  ‘Is this Aurelio Zen?’ a voice barked in his ear.

  Zen wasted a sarcastically unctuous smile on the plastic mouthpiece.

  ‘It is indeed!’ he announced in a falsely jocular tone. ‘He himself, as ever was, larger than life and twice as real. And whom, pray, have I the honour of addressing?’

  ‘Gaetano Foschi.’

  The name rang a bell, but it was only after the caller had testily supplied further information that Zen linked it with the short-tempered, workaholic southerner who was deputy head of the Criminalpol section of the Interior Ministry.

  ‘What the hell’s going on there?’ Foschi demanded. ‘The place sounds like a madhouse.’

  ‘It often feels like it too.’

  ‘What? Why aren’t you answering your duty issue phone?’

  ‘It’s not switched on.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m on sick leave.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Dottor Brugnoli,’ Zen replied with the air of a chess master declaring checkmate.

  ‘Ah, you’re one of Brugnoli’s babies, are you? Well, I’m sorry to have to inform you that life around here has become rather more spartan during your prolonged absence. As in stake them out on the mountain and see who survives.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Call me back on your encrypted mobile. This line is not secure.’

  When Zen did so, Foschi informed him that Brugnoli, Zen’s patron at the Ministry had taken up the offer of a consultancy position with a leading bank following a governmental ‘crisis’ and cabinet reshuffle of which Zen had heard nothing.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he explained feebly. ‘I had to have an operation and I’ve been on indefinite sick leave ever since.’

  ‘Very indefinite,’ Foschi retorted. ‘So much so that there’s absolutely no record of the fact in the personnel database.’

  ‘Dottor Brugnoli told me that he would arrange everything.’

  Foschi laughed shortly.

  ‘I’m sure he did, but that was before he arranged his own departure to greener pastures in the private sector. Since then we’ve gone back to playing strictly by the book of rules, according to which you are available for immediate active duty. Are you saying that such is not the case?’

  Zen thought for a moment. He could probably get a letter from the consultant excusing him from service for another month or so, and explaining and documenting the record of his case. On the other hand…

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s this Curti business.’

  Zen had no idea what he was talking about, but he had already created a bad enough impression for one morning. He decided to bluff.

  ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

  Foschi sighed deeply.

  ‘It’s a damn shame you don’t live here in Rome like everyone else, Zen. That’s something we may have to review in the light of the changed situation. It would make things so much easier if we could discuss this face to face.’

  Zen said nothing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Foschi went on, ‘the Questura in Bologna are handling the actual investigation, but we need someone to go up there and liaise with the Ministry. Your name came up.’

  ‘Why should they tell me anything they don’t tell you?’

  Instinct told him that bluntness was the best way to whatever organ had been substituted for Foschi’s heart.

  ‘They won’t. But they’ll tell you sooner, and above all you’ll be in a position to report back on what they’re not telling us.’

  ‘Why should they try and conceal the truth? We’re all playing for the same team.’

  ‘I’m not saying that they necessarily will. But they are going to be under enormous pressure to deliver results, and quickly. Lorenzo Curti was a figure of fame and notoriety not just in Emilia-Romagna but on a national and even international level, a millionaire entrepreneur who owned the Bologna football team and was also the majority shareholder in a dairy conglomerate currently under investigation for tax evasion and serious fraud. In short, this promises to be the highest-profile case in the Bologna jurisdiction since the Uno Bianca fiasco.’

  After a moment, Zen recalled the spate of serial killings around Bologna in the late 1980s involving a white Fiat Uno. He also recalled that when the perpetrators had finally been brought to justice, they had almost all turned out to be policemen working out of the Bologna Questura, many of them involved in the investigation into their own crimes. It had taken years for morale in the Polizia di Stato to recover from this scandal.

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ Foschi concluded. ‘Your assignment is not to take command of the investigation but to remain fully informed about progress and to report developments to me personally on a daily basis, and more frequently if necessary. That way, if the media vultures start to circle, we’ll be ready for them.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘How soon can you get there?’

  Zen was about to remind Foschi that he hadn’t agreed to go yet, but instantly realised that as far as he was concerned he had.

  ‘In a few hours.’

  ‘Very good. I’ll tell them to expect you after lunch.’

  When Gemma came in, Zen had already showered and dressed and was busy packing. Without offering a word of apology for the vile names she had called him at their last encounter, she started gathering together her clothes. Clearly this would be another day when they were ‘not talking’. Someone else, however, was.

  ‘…sure to tune in again next week, when Romano takes a pilgrimage to the temple of the one and only Parmigiano Reggiano!’

  ‘Believe it or believe it not, it takes no fewer than sixteen litres of the finest, richest, freshest milk to make a single kilo of this, the Jupiter of cheeses lording it over the rabble of minor gods. And then as much as two years of completely natural ageing, according to traditions handed down over seven centuries of continuous production…’

  The television screen at the far end of the living room, visible through the open door, showed contented cows grazing, pails of creamy, pure milk being poured into vats and then cooked in a cauldron over an open fire, while authentic-looking peasants stirred the brew with wooden staves, all interspersed with close-ups of a Luciano Pavarotti lookalike got up in a chef’s outfit beaming toothily at the viewer while belting out extracts from Verdi’s ‘ Celeste Aida ’.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to apologise?’ Gemma demanded, pausing in the doorway with her bundle of clothing. As had become customary, she would dress in the spare bedroom. It seemed just a matter of time before one of them started sleeping there.

  ‘I might ask you the same,’ Zen replied mildly.

  ‘What have I to apologise for?’

  ‘Ditto.’

  ‘For cruelly mocking me when I fell over! You just lay there cackling instead of even offering to help me up or ask whether I was hurt. And the only reason it happened was because I got out of the shower to wake you for your stupid phone call.’

  Zen slipped several strata of socks into a spare corner of the suitcase. He seemed to have only one clean vest. Oh well, he’d buy more in Bologna and then have them washed at the hotel. With the situation the way it was, the last thing he wanted was to raise the question of dirty laundry.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ Gemma went on, still hovering in the doorway.

  Zen nodded. No, not that green horror, he decided. He hadn’t worn it for years, but the laws of thrift inculcated by h
is mother died hard. He laid the rest of the shirts flat on top of the other garments, then closed the case.

  ‘So where are you going to go?’

  ‘Bologna.’

  The first flicker of some expression appeared on Gemma’s face, but was instantly suppressed.

  ‘Why Bologna?’

  Zen was about to tell her, but then decided to let her twist in the wind for a while. It was the least she deserved after the way she’d treated him.

  ‘Years ago I was stationed in the city,’ he replied airily. ‘I loved it, and I’ve always wanted to go back.’

  Gemma regarded him levelly for some time, then gave a light but studied laugh.

  ‘I could stop you, you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, not stop you leaving. But I could certainly ensure that you enjoy this visit to La Grassa a lot less than your last. A single phone call would do it.’

  He laughed mirthlessly in turn.

  ‘I doubt that one more of your tirades could ruin my stay. At least I won’t be in the same room to listen to it.’

  ‘Oh, the phone call wouldn’t be to you.’

  Zen set the suitcase on the floor, straightened up and confronted her. She scrunched her face up and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘We have received a phone call, Dottor Zen,’ she said in a voice an octave lower than usual and with a passable imitation of the Bolognese accent. ‘A Signora Santini, resident in Via del Fosso, Lucca, alleges that just over a year ago you murdered an ex-officer of the Carabinieri, one Roberto Lessi, in her apartment and then forced her at gunpoint to assist you in disposing of the corpse at sea. She further asserts that you subsequently moved into her apartment and have terrorised her both mentally and physically with a view to ensuring her silence. She is prepared to testify to this effect in court. It is therefore my duty to…’

  They regarded each other in wary silence.

  ‘Bullshit,’ remarked Zen finally.

  ‘Don’t be too sure. You keep accusing me of acting irrationally. There’s no telling what irrational people may do.’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘I’ve been summoned to Bologna for work, that’s all. To be honest, it might not be a bad thing for us to spend a bit of time apart. I’ve been through a bad patch recently, one way and another, and I’m sure I’ve been difficult at times. I know you have. Maybe what we need is a cooling-off period to help get things in perspective.’

  Gemma’s expression softened marginally, but her body remained poised for either fight or flight.

  ‘That time on the boat, Aurelio, when we moored off Gorgona,’ she said dreamily. ‘Do you remember? You told me then that we were prisoners of each other. Well, that’s what I’m starting to feel like. Your prisoner.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Me too. But perhaps we can both get over it. I hope so.’

  He picked up his suitcase. Gemma backed into the living room, keeping her distance from him.

  ‘Do you want me to drive you to the station?’

  ‘No, thank you. I can manage.’

  She shook her head sadly.

  ‘No, Aurelio. That’s just what you can’t do.’

  He shrugged this off.

  ‘Well then, I’m going to have to learn.’

  8

  ‘Mattioli, would you remain here?’ the professor remarked casually as the rest of the class left the seminar room.

  He caught the flash of anxiety in the young man’s eyes. He had intended that it should be there. It was part of the charm and style of Edgardo Ugo’s post-1968 faded leftist persona that he always addressed his graduate students in the familiar tu verbal form, and insisted that they do the same to him. This time, however, he had used the impersonal, distancing lei. That, and the use of Rodolfo’s surname, made the message quite clear.

  ‘Sit down, please.’

  Ugo gathered up his belongings and then proceeded to take some considerable time arranging them in his evidently expensive, but of course artisanal rather than designer, briefcase before paying any further attention to the student.

  ‘You’re a bright lad, Mattioli, so I’m sure you’ll understand that after that last outburst I can no longer admit you to my seminars. There’s nothing personal about this. Indeed, I find it painful in many ways. But to do otherwise would be a dereliction of my duty to the other members of the class. They have understood and accepted the principles of the course, and are attending these classes, often at considerable personal or familial financial sacrifice, in the hopes of bettering themselves and making a serious contribution to this academic discipline. They are certainly not here to listen to cheap jokes and mocking asides from someone who, despite his evident intellectual capacities, is at heart nothing but a farceur.’

  The boy stared back with his unblinking black eyes, as expressionless as the muzzles of a double-barrelled shotgun, but said nothing. Typically southern, thought Ugo. He knows that there’s been a war, that he lost, and that there’s nothing to talk about. Later he might come round with a knife and cut my throat, but he’s not going to humiliate himself further by pointless protests and weak entreaties.

  ‘Should you so wish, you may of course continue to attend my lectures,’ Ugo continued. ‘Under the rules and regulations of the University of Bologna, you are also entitled to sit your final exams and present a thesis, but to avoid wasting everyone’s time I feel obliged to tell you now that I very much doubt whether this would result in your receiving a degree. Besides, the only career possibilities open to a graduate in semiotics are in the academic field. I would naturally be contacted as a referee and I should find it impossible, as a matter of professional principle, to recommend you. I further doubt whether you would prove suited to such a career, in the unlikely event that one were offered you. There are so many talented and excellently qualified applicants these days, and so few vacancies. Quite often the decision comes down to a question of whom the other members of the faculty care to have to meet and deal with on a daily basis, and prickly, rebarbative individuals who like to show off their supposed wit and spirit of independence by making mock of their superiors are, to be honest, rarely anyone’s first choice. In short, I suggest that you look into the possibility of an alternative line of study more adapted to your temperament and mentality. Engineering, perhaps. Or dentistry.’

  With which he walked out, leaving the young man sitting there in silence. On Via de’Castagnoli Ugo called a taxi, which he directed to his country retreat. His original intention had been to cycle back to the nearby townhouse that he used as a place of refuge during the day and an occasional overnight bolthole, but now he felt an urge to get out of the city. Why this feeling of unease? His decision had been correct and correctly executed, excepting perhaps those last two phrases. But Mattioli had had it coming for some time. The little bastard had been provocative from the very start.

  One of Edgardo Ugo’s seminarial chestnuts was that, in our post-meaning culture, to move from the sublime to the ridiculous and vice versa no longer required even a single step, merely an alternative selection from an infinite interpretational menu. When he’d brought this line up in the opening seminar of the semester, Rodolfo had replied, ‘Excuse me, professore. Are you saying that if a recording of the slow movement of Mozart’s K364 is being played in the cell where a political prisoner is undergoing torture, his or her resulting experience is simply a function of consumer choice?’ Ugo had sensed that Mattioli was trouble right then and there. Knowing the Kochel catalogue number of the Sinfonia Concertante, for example. That was a leaf straight out of Ugo’s own book: awe them with your command of arcane documented minutiae, and they’ll swallow your big contentious thesis without a murmur.

  But today Mattioli had gone too far, not only proclaiming that words had meanings, but that the relationship between language and reality, although labile and demanding constant and close attention, was by its nature (!) both authentic and verifiable. ‘The fact remains that there is a real world which
exists independently of any possible representation of it, and which in turn conditions any such representation,’ he had concluded, with the air of the young Luther nailing his theses to the church door.

  Edgardo had handled this arrant nonsense with his usual urbane charm, even getting a round of appreciative laughter from the other students for his learned humour when he suggested sarcastically that to invoke Giambattista Vico’s ‘ sensus communis generis humani ’ was hardly Scienza Nuova -more laughter-at this late date. Nevertheless, enough was enough. Standards had to be maintained and essential truths upheld. As he had told Rodolfo, it would have been dereliction of duty for him to have acted otherwise. So why did he have this slight sense of uncleanliness, as when you get a bit of meat or spinach stuck between your teeth and can’t quite remove it with your tongue?

  Twenty minutes later he was back in the spacious landscaping and clear air of his villa, set back from a secluded lane winding through the spine of hills above Monte Donato between the Reno and Savena rivers; a mere five kilometres from the city laid out beneath like a map, yet to all intents and purposes another world. For some reason the confrontation with Rodolfo Mattioli was still troubling him, though, so he decided to dismiss it by getting to work.

  Two hours passed, and the dusk was curdling beyond the window, before Edgardo laid down his Mont Blanc 4810 Series Limited Edition fountain pen, as thick as a stumpy but fully erect cock, on the sheet of heavy, deckle-edged Fabriano paper, rich in linen and made by hand using methods essentially unchanged since the thirteenth century, then thoughtfully replaced the solid black sculpted cap over its rhodinised 18-carat gold glans. He had chosen these writing tools as appropriate to the task he had just completed, a piece of cheap journalistic fluff designed to promote the recently-released film-very loosely based on a misreading of the superficial plot level of his best-known novel-in some American celebrity gossip rag sold to semi-literate sadsacks at supermarket checkouts.

  But as always, the choice had not been easy. Each of the rooms on the upper floor of the villa was a scriptorium, and each quite differently designed and equipped. It was a question of selecting the right one for the assignment in hand, and Edgardo always had at least five on the go at any given time. For an article due to be published in the prestigious learned journal Recherches Semiotiques, tentatively entitled ‘The Coherence of Incoherence’-a play on the celebrated treatise Tahafut al-Tahafut by the twelfth-century Muslim scholar known in the West as Averroes, whose Arab name Ibn Rushd opened up the possibility for the type of puns on the author of The Satanic Verses for which Ugo was justly celebrated-he was working at an IBM workstation linked by a fibre optic cable to the University of Bologna’s Unix mainframe. Meanwhile, substantial sections of his new metafiction, Work In Regress, were rapidly losing shape by being sent via his laptop to a primitive on-line translation site, where they were first mangled into Bulgarian or Welsh and then back again into Italian.