White Death (2011)

by Jones, Tobias

  ‘The only lead so far is an agency called Casa dei Sogni. Some woman called Marina Vanoli got the contract to sell the whole block. Plus she bought the best flat going.’

  ‘Merda.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Marina Vanoli?’

  ‘Sure. I spoke to her today. Or yesterday. I can’t remember any more. Why?’

  He was shaking his head. ‘Merda,’ was all he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vanoli is Luca D’Antoni’s wife.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Luca D’Antoni?’ he said, surprised I hadn’t heard of him. ‘He’s the assessore all’urbanistica. He’s the person on the city council who decides about urban planning. He’s …’ He couldn’t finish his sentence. Indignation or disbelief seemed to rise in his throat and choke his words. I watched him shaking his head. He was smiling and frowning at the same time.

  I stood up and paced around the bar trying to work out what might have been happening. Marina Vanoli’s husband was the assessore all’urbanistica, so any decision on planning permission went through his hands. It seemed probable that he was tipping off Masi, or Moroni, about what land was ripe for the picking months before the redesignation was made official. Moroni sent someone in to soften up the owner and then snapped it up. Once the whole thing had gone through, Moroni put the lucrative business of selling the flats through the politician’s wife’s estate agency as a way to say thank you. And it was quite a sweetener. All Vanoli’s husband had to do was give the nod to a constructor and his wife would make a few hundred thousand. No wonder he kept nodding, allowing millions of cubic metres of concrete to be poured onto the beloved territorio.

  And that, I guessed, was why she sold mainly new-builds: most of her clients were large-scale constructors who were thanking her family for their support. It was all, as Spago had said, legitimate and open. There wasn’t anything illegal going on. Some people might have said there was a conflict of interest but there’s no such thing, not to an Italian politician. For them, there’s only a coincidence of interest, a delightful alignment of interest, a fortuitous coming together of interest. There’s no conflict to speak of.

  I felt a surge of anger coursing through me. I went and sat down again and looked at Giacomo. ‘D’Antoni’s part of Italia Fiera, right?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘If you publicise this you could walk the next election.’

  I watched him draw breath, like I was asking him something he wasn’t prepared to do.

  ‘I’ll never be anything other than a stone in someone’s shoe. I might stop them walking for a moment or two, but that’s about it. I’ll never walk an election.’

  ‘But this would give you a huge advantage.’

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at me with those pensive eyes.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Be very careful, Casta,’ he said. ‘If this is as big as you suggest, there’ll be a lot more to it than you know. You go public with something like this, the players will be out of sight before the ink is dry. If you want justice, you sometimes have to be cautious. You have to wait for justice, be patient.’

  ‘Yeah, just wait for it to come to you. There’s a thin line between caution and collusion.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, taking off his glasses and holding the top of his nose. ‘I’ve walked it all my life. Every politician does.’

  ‘I’ve never understood that,’ I spat, too aggressively. ‘I mean, why doesn’t an opposition oppose, like it does in every other country?’

  He put his glasses back on and stared at me. ‘I can only answer for myself. If I went public with everything I know about the ruling party,’ he shook his head and laughed bitterly, ‘I could cause a crisis, no doubt. But I don’t, and I’ll tell you why not. I’ve learnt that the more cynical the public is about politicians, the more they vote cynically. And that means the most cynical politicians get elected. It means there’s no room for idealism any more. No one trusts you any more if you say you care about education or health-care or poverty. Look what’s happening nationally. It’s now so accepted that politicians are in it for themselves that anyone who says otherwise is less trusted than someone who admits it up front. I don’t want to add to that cynicism. I don’t want to give the public any more reason to think their politicians are all corrupt.’

  ‘Even if they are?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He smiled. ‘Not all of them are. Not even the majority are. What are you really interested in?’ he asked gently. ‘The state of our democracy?’ He did a slow-motion blink as he tilted the top of his head. ‘I don’t think so. Do you really care about corrupt politicians?’ He stared at me through doubtful eyebrows. ‘Hm?’ He shook his head. ‘You’re only concerned about Tommy Mbora. You want justice for a young boy. For all I know, you think that if you get justice for him you get a slice for yourself. Hell, I know you’re owed some.’

  ‘This isn’t about me.’

  He looked through those distrusting eyebrows again. ‘Of course it’s about you. Everything we do is personal. Life was unfair to you. You lost both parents. There’s nothing more unfair. So you’re trying to make up for it. You race around trying to get justice for the little guy. Whoever he is, wherever he is.’

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about me. ‘Same as you,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, it’s personal with me too.’ He smiled. He said ‘personal’ like he was preparing for a fight. ‘But if you want to get to the heart of it, you’ve got to play the game.’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘The game they’re playing.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m saying you can’t rush in and shout “thief”.’

  ‘Or murderer?’

  He ignored me. ‘All you would be doing is tipping off the big players, telling them all that they should run for cover. Believe me, if you want to build a case, you have to build it, you can’t take the first brick you find and throw it to the crowd. That just draws attention to yourself and hurts the wrong people.’

  I was shaking my head angrily. I felt like I was pumping the accelerator of a car in neutral. I was desperate to do something, but I felt impotent and here was the man I trusted more than any other telling me to stay like that. To go with the flow. He was almost double my age and half my speed and I suddenly felt there was a gulf between us. I felt the old furies rising up. I tried to douse them with a swig of the wine but, as always, that only gave them strength.

  Giacomo could see what was happening and put a hand on my forearm. ‘Casta,’ he said gently, ‘Casta, look at me.’

  It took an effort to aim my stare in his direction.

  ‘I hate what goes on here as much as you do,’ he said. ‘I’ve dedicated my life to trying to change the system, you know I have. But you can’t just stand up and denounce the lot. You’d have every part of the establishment on your back. You’d have their usual attack dogs let off the lead and pointed in your direction. You don’t even know what went on yet.’

  I was almost dizzy with anger. Shaking my head in frustration, I felt him squeeze my arm. ‘You’ve got an idea.’ I heard his voice. ‘You’ve got a circle of corruption. Politician to businessman and back to politician’s family. I see it all the time. But you’ve got to get inside that circle. It’s no good pointing at it and shouting for people to come and have a look. It’s like pointing at a child’s bubble: as soon as you touch it it disappears.’

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘You’ve got to assume they’re more worried about losing a business opportunity than losing a twenty-two-year-old boy. They still want that land. They don’t care whether it’s got blood on it.’

  I looked up at him. It was the first time he had suggested there was something positive that could be done. He patted my arm as if to emphasise the point. He was giving me the same advice I had given Bragantini: that he should pretend he wanted to sell. Only that way could we see who st
epped forward.

  ‘The carrot rather than the stick?’

  He nodded, grimacing slightly as if it went against his instincts as much as mine. ‘You have to deal with them to know who they are. You have to get close to them.’

  I stared at the table, hearing his words as if they were coming from miles away. Most people who got sucked into the system started that way. Justifying their presence inside it by saying they just wanted to understand it. They wanted to know how it worked, so they could know how to bring it down. Only most of them eventually got sucked in. They started doing deals themselves. They got too close and couldn’t pull out the knife or slip off the cuffs any more.

  I breathed deeply and recovered my composure.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

  He nodded quickly like it was obvious.

  ‘Tell me who’s pushing the “Bragantini Assassino” slogan in your party. I want to know if someone your end is stirring up the campaign against him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It suits everyone to paint my client as the fall guy, as the evil padrone. It suits your side because your followers love nothing better than proof that the landowning classes are ruthless profiteers.’

  He winced at my parody of his politics, but said nothing.

  ‘And the ruling party will be happy because they want all the heat on him, not themselves. Someone in the giunta wants that land sold and they’ll be happy to see Bragantini under as much pressure as possible.’

  ‘And you think someone is puppeteering?’

  ‘Someone’s pulling the strings. Someone from Italia Fiera will be making your lot dance to their tune.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong.’

  ‘You’ll let me know?’

  He nodded wearily, staring into his glass before draining it. He put it down slowly and we looked at each other without saying anything. I left my wine unfinished and we headed out into the warm night air.

  The demonstration was breaking up and Giacomo and I shook hands on the corner of the square. ‘Mi raccomando,’ he said, before walking off to join his comrades.

  It was another beautiful spring evening. As I walked towards the river, I could just see the black outline of the Apennines in the distance. I leant over the balustrades and stared at the river, at all the water that had washed down from those mountains as the snow had melted. It glistened in the last light of the sun.

  Everything looked stunning: there was just a trace of blue light left on the horizon and above it the sky went orange and black. I could see young couples walking towards the Parco Ducale, the dimming light adding intimacy to their stroll. I looked back at the Pilotta and saw its familiar bricks looking august and defiant. Bats were pirouetting above the line of mopeds that were making their way home.

  Standing there, with the sound of the strong river beneath my feet, I could understand why people didn’t want to hear about any more scandals. There are just so many already. We’ve all got scandal-fatigue in this country. It’s got to the stage where it’s repetitive and predictable. A politician suspected of this. A businessman suspected of that. It’s only ever a suspicion anyway. There’s no certainty in scandal, just supposition and guess-work and paranoia. It drives people insane after a while. There are people who have lost their bearings completely, who have lost the ability to be able to believe anything they’re told. They end up driven mad by doubt and suspicion. It’s so much easier to take everything at face value, to believe what they tell you. To go to the beach and swim in the sea. Go to the mountains and enjoy the slopes. Order tortelli and crack open the Sangiovese.

  But then I thought about Tommy Mbora. Thought about his blackened body, lying there rigid and flakey like a half-charred log. That was reality. No amount of Arcadian langour could remove those images from my mind. I didn’t want to live in a fairytale. Didn’t want to swallow all that bull about the bel paese.

  I walked home along the river feeling melancholic. I felt the need for company, the need to spend time with my bees. I wanted to be hypnotised by nature outside the city. I drove to the supermarket on the way to Mauro’s house. I put twelve kilos of sugar in my basket and headed to the check-out.

  ‘Sweet tooth?’ smiled the woman at the counter as she fired a line of red light onto the barcodes.

  I smiled and passed her a note but didn’t say anything. I was too tired to explain what it was for. I headed out to Mauro’s place in the country where I kept the hives and parked in the drive. The lights were on inside, but I didn’t want to disturb him. I went into his garage and found an axe. I sharpened it on his stone. Within a few minutes I had enough logs and kindling. I took them out to the corner of his yard and lit a small fire. I went to get a pan and filled it half full of icy water from the outside tap. By the time I had done, the wood was hissing and spitting nicely. I put the water on and stood close to get warmer. I opened all the packets and poured them into the large pan.

  As I stirred with a thick stick I could slowly feel the gritty sugar dissolving. The water was thickening into a mother-of-pearl syrup. I kept stirring, doing figures of eight with the spoon until I was almost hypnotised.

  I always come back to the hives as a respite. Once you’ve seen all the chaos and bloodshed of the city, you long for the busy serenity of tiny insects, each one performing a precise task for the colony. The bees seem, at first, to embody randomness, but the more you study them and watch them, the more you realise that every movement has a meaning. After a while that frenetic, throbbing hum of thousands of bodies appears beautifully ordered. Every dance communicates the distance and direction of nectar. Every determined bee is doing its duty, performing its allotted task for the benefit of queen and colony. I can understand why beekeeping has often been the task of monks, why the modern hive was designed by a priest: the hive is like a monastery where obedience and patience and sacrifice are rewarded. It’s where the beekeeper can renew his sense of awe and wonder at the natural world.

  But now even that is threatened. Disease and pollution and climate chaos are threatening the honey bee. My only form of relaxation is under threat, and no one knows the solution. All we know is that the problem is getting worse: there’s less forage, less pollination, fewer flowers, less honey, dying bees. It’s another, much deeper, dissolution of the monasteries. Suddenly, almost without warning, an entire way of life is under threat. The blissful, natural order of the world has been brushed aside and bees are dying and disappearing. The produce I used to get from a hive was about the weight of a sizeable child, enough to fill seventy or eighty jars. Now I’m lucky if I get two dozen jars. My only retreat from the relentless misery of the city has been taken away, and I don’t even know why or how. It’s as if nature itself is giving up on us.

  I took the pans of syrup off the fire and put them on the floor to cool. I wandered up to Mauro’s front door and knocked. A year ago he had been unhappily married and then unhappily divorced. For a while all he did was try and drown the memories and I was his preferred drinking partner. But then he met a hippie chick called Giovanna and she had done something to him. For the first time in years he had become sober and cheerful and fun.

  He opened the door, looked at me, and grinned. ‘It’s the police,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Who?’ I heard Giovanna’s voice.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ We wandered inside. ‘Ciao Giovanna.’

  He went over to the other side of the kitchen and put the water and coffee in the machine. ‘Giovanna doesn’t drink coffee,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘she only drinks strange teas. They all smell like fruit salad to me.’

  ‘Lemon and ginger,’ she said, smiling, ‘or rosehip and honey.’

  ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘You should drink them one day,’ she said. ‘Might calm you down.’

  ‘That’s what sleep and exercise and sex are for.’

  She rolled her ey
es. ‘I’ll stick with lemon and ginger thanks.’

  ‘You see,’ he said to me. ‘The passion’s already gone after only a few months.’ He looked over at her and smiled.

  I liked Giovanna. She was some kind of alternative-medicine guru. She was gentle. She was taking propolis off my hands. It’s one of those by-products of a hive which get in the way, but she said it was useful for her remedies. Mauro called her a witch-doctor. More witch than doctor, he said.

  The coffee came to the boil and he poured it into two tiny cups. He put some water on the flame for Giovanna’s tea.

  ‘You didn’t come all this way just to get a coffee?’

  ‘I came round to feed the bees actually.’

  ‘You already done them?’

  ‘I’ve made up the syrup. I’m just waiting for it to cool.’

  ‘Where did you heat it up?’

  ‘Outside in the yard. I used a couple of logs. Hope you don’t mind.’

  He pulled a fake frown. ‘They don’t grow on trees you know.’

  We laughed. I hadn’t seen him this cheerful for years. Giovanna took her tea and left us alone.

  I told Mauro, without specifics, about the case. I let off steam and, as always when letting off steam, my bitterness became apparent. I criticised the political class, the entrepreneurial class, every aspect of our local racket.

  ‘The trouble with you’, Mauro said, throwing his thumb backwards at me like he was hitch-hiking, ‘is that you’ve got no pride in your country, no sense,’ he was beating his fist on his heart now, ‘no sense of what makes this country so great.’

  I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘What’s good about this place?’

  ‘You want me to prove I’m patriotic?’ The challenge seemed stupid to me, but I didn’t like losing a challenge however stupid. Mauro was hardly patriotic, but he had served his country, or someone’s country, in various war zones: in Kosovo and Sicily and Afghanistan. He could point to his past and say he had served our weird and wonderful democracy. I thought he probably issued this challenge just to get one up on me, to show that I had never put my life on the line, which wasn’t quite true. I was almost always in the firing line, it’s just that I didn’t have a uniform or an army to protect me. I didn’t know much about history or wars or sport, the usual places patriotism comes from. I wasn’t educated like Mauro. I tried to think of the last time I had been proud of my country.