And then you die az-8

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen drowned his cigarette in the glass that Nieddu had previously used as an ashtray, then picked it up and carried it to the kitchen.

  'Where did you take my drink?' Gilberto demanded. 'You don't heed another drink,' Zen responded from the hideous kitchen. 'What you need is some food.' 'I'm not hungry.'

  "That's why you need some food. "Hunger comes from eating, thirst is quenched by drinking." But not if you're drinking whatever this is.' 'White rum.'

  Zen reappeared in the doorway. 'You need to eat, Gilberto.'

  'There's nothing here to eat Nothing you'd want to eat' 'Then we'll go out' ‘I can't.' 'Why?'

  Nieddu rolled up off the sofa and confronted Zen blearily.

  'They all know me in this neighbourhood. And they know what’s happened. The word's gone round. And if I show up, alone or with some male friend, the gossip and the sniggering is going to start. "Look, there's that Sardinian who cheated on his wife and got dumped." I can't take that, Aurelio. It used to be it was the women who suffered. "Her husband's run off with another woman." It was okay for the man, unless he was cornuto. But things have changed. I haven't been outside the building since it happened. I've been living on what was here, tinned stuff and pasta. I can't show my face in any of the restaurants round here.'

  Zen smiled and took his arm.

  'Fine, we'll go somewhere near my place. There are several good places – nothing fancy, good solid home cooking – and no one will know you from Adam. Come on!'

  The cab Zen called, from the cooperative he always used, arrived almost too soon. He still had not decided where to go. In the end he asked for Piazza del Risorgimento. They could walk from there.

  'She lost her looks,' said Nieddu as the lighted streets slipped past. 'Rosa?'

  A single, stiff nod was the only response. 'That happens,' Zen replied.

  'Yes, but it happens in different ways to different women. That’s what’s so cruel. If it was uniform, like…' He paused. 'Yes?' queried Zen.

  'I don't know,' said Nieddu. 'Like something. There must be something if s like, right?'

  'Probably’

  This is going to be a long night, thought Zen. But he already felt better, just being outside that apartment with its air of acquiescent despair.

  'One minute she looked thirty, the next she looked sixty’ Nieddu went on. 'No, that’s not quite right. There were a few years when she looked thirty most of the time, except in certain positions in a certain light when she suddenly looked sixty. After that, the balance tilted the other way. She looked sixty most of the time, except once in a while when she suddenly looked thirty again. That was the worst moment. Now she just looks sixty all the time.'

  They had reached the embankment along the Tiber. Nieddu turned his eyes from the bright lights to the left and gazed out at the dark ditch on the other side.

  'She had wonderful skin. Did you ever notice her skin, Aurelio? It was like a girl's, even when she was forty. And then it wasn't any more. It went all spongy and slack. It must have been dreadful for her, like wearing the finest silk all your life and then having to dress in cheap cotton. But it was tough on me, too. And so I stopped trying. With my affairs, I mean. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just didn't feel as guilty as I had before, so I didn't make as much effort’

  He emitted a harsh laugh.

  'I've even thought that maybe that’s what really pissed her off when she found out about me and Stefania. It wasn't just that I was fucking the help, it was that I couldn't even be bothered to cover it up properly. I'd got sloppy and unprofessional. That may have seemed like the last straw, the ultimate gesture of disrespect'

  The taxi dropped them in Piazza del Risorgimento. This dingy clearing in the urban jungle, with its eclectic mixture of imposing umbertino facades, the manically raucous traffic through which quaintly retro trams made their stately way, the central island laid out with tall pines and shrubbery that had seen better days, the inevitable grandiose and birdshit-bespattered statue, and the imposing line of walls surrounding the Vatican City State, had always appealed to Zen for some reason he would have found difficult to explain, still less justify.

  Steering Nieddu firmly away from various bars he seemed inclined to enter, Zen led him to a trattoria on a street just off Via Ottaviano. He himself went there seldom, precisely because he kept it as a resource for those times when he didn't want to be instantly recognized by the owner and subjected to the barrage of chat, gossip and nosy questions which were the inevitable lot of any regular. Zen ordered a bowl of vegetable soup and half a roast chicken with green salad. Giorgio said he'd have the same and a litre of red wine.

  'Anyway, what about you, Aurelio?' he asked in painfully pro forma tone of voice. 'I heard the Mafia tried to kill you.'

  'That was a long time ago.'

  'So where have you been all this time?'

  'In Iceland, just recently.'

  The wine arrived. Gilberto poured himself a large glass and downed it in one go. 'Iceland, eh? What's it like? Icy, I suppose.' 'No, that's Greenland.' 'Logical.'

  After that, the conversation rather flagged. Gilberto, in the throes of alcoholic anorexia, picked at his food with the tentative air of a stranger in a strangeland who has been invited to dine on unrecognizable local delicacies of whose nature and origin he is deeply suspicious. Zen ate his with a pleasure heightened by the fact that the soup had seen better days, the olive oil was of the industrial variety, the grated parmesan dried out, the chicken overcooked and too salty, and the salad leaves of the indestructible variety that resembled the rubber helmets that ladies at the Lido had used to wear during his childhood. It all reminded him very pleasantly of Maria Grazia's well-meaning culinary attempts, associated in his mind with the dull, cosy, slightly stifling family household from which he had spent a lifetime trying to escape, and which had now vanished, leaving only the empty shell for him to return to a little later in the evening.

  'Do you want my advice, Gilberto?' he asked, pushing his plate away and lighting a cigarette.

  'Not particularly. What do you know about it? You've never even been married.'

  ‘no’

  'Yes I have! Damn it, you were my best man.' Nieddu made a gesture as if swatting at a fly he couldn't be bothered to kill.

  'Oh, Luisella. That doesn't count'

  'Oh no?' Zen felt suddenly angry. 'And why not, might I ask? Because she didn't have perfect skin like your immortal beloved Rosa? Or because I wasn't unfaithful to her for years on end with every woman who came within reach?'

  Nieddu shook his head calmly.

  'No, it’s because you didn't have kids.'

  'It isn't a real marriage if you don't have children? That s absurd!'

  'No, if s not. But you wouldn't know about that. Or about anything else concerning my situation. So you can keep your fucking advice to yourself, thank you very much.'

  By now, Zen felt furious. He stood up, grabbed his coat, paid for his half of the meal and walked out. He had reached the corner of the main street when he heard a voice calling his name, and turned to see Gilberto Nieddu rushing after him, with one of the waiters from the restaurant in close pursuit.

  'Aurelio! Stop!'

  Zen stopped.

  'Don't you dare talk like that to me, Gilberto,' he said frigidly. 'I don't give a damn about you or your problems. It serves you right.'

  He turned away, only to be pulled back by Nieddu.

  'No, no! It’s not about that! I haven't got any money to pay for dinner. Can you lend me some?'

  By now the waiter had caught them up, and was staring from one to the other with an anxious expression. Zen suddenly burst into laughter. He gave the waiter the same amount as he had already paid inside, plus a small tip for his exertions. When that transaction had been taken care of, he turned to his friend again, all anger now gone.

  'Go, Gilberto,' he said. 'Go to Sassari. Go to the house. Don't phone, don't write, don't tell her you're coming. Just go.'

  Nieddu loo
ked suddenly shifty.

  'Well, I don't know about that. Maybe later, if she's lucky. Once she starts to see reason. Let a little time pass, eh? Let her suffer a bit, realize what she's lost. Then I might go.'

  'By then Rosa will have become accustomed to the situation, maybe even started to persuade herself that she enjoys it. And in a month the children will have started at a new school and will have a new circle of friends. Go now. Go tonight, if there's a flight. And if there isn't, hire a plane. You've got the money. Take a cab to the house and tell her that you've got a jet waiting at the airport to take the family home again.'

  'It wouldn't be a jet. More likely a turboprop.'

  'It doesn't matter what kind of aircraft it is, Gilberto!'

  'But what about the brother?'

  Zen looked at him solemnly.

  'You really are a loser, aren't you?' he said.

  'I make five times what you do, Zen, and pay a quarter as much tax!' Nieddu retorted violently.

  'So what? If you don't get over to Sardinia right now and bring back your wife and the mother of your children, then as far as I'm concerned you're a loser.'

  He handed Nieddu a couple of thousand-lire coins.

  'This'll get you home on the metropolitana. Call me when you have good news.'

  When Aurelio Zen reached the address he still thought of as home, he had a very strange feeling: it was as if he were entering it for the first time. The spacious gloom of the entrance hall, the antique elevator in its wrought-iron cage, the neighbour's caged bird which mimicked the squeaky hinges of the front door to Zen's apartment; all these details, for years so worn with use as to have become transparent, now asserted themselves as fresh perceptions, potentially significant information about a territory never encountered before.

  The lights still didn't work. By touch and instinct, aided at moments by the flame from his cigarette lighter, he found his way to the kitchen and then the cupboard where they had always kept a stock of candles for use during the power cuts which had at one time been a frequent occurrence. He bundled six of them together, tied them up with a length of twine chosen from the many odd pieces that Maria Grazia stored in a drawer because 'You never know when it might come in handy', then lit the wicks and made his way back to the living room, where he placed the bunch of candles on the table. The flames spluttered and wavered and then grew tall and steady, making the walls and ceiling glow in a way that reminded Zen irresistibly of the camera ardente at the funeral home where he had gone to view his mother's body.

  "They don't put the body in the box,' said a voice in his head, 'they wrap the box around the body.'

  No, that wasn't right. He'd been misled by the previous association with his mother's funeral. The word had been bottles, not body. 'They don't put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.' In some hospital, during one of the few lucid memories he had of that whole period. A young doctor was preparing to give him an injection of liquid drawn from one of a set of glass phials packed into a cardboard box on the trolley beside him. Zen had remarked, in an attempt at humour, that it must be hard work fitting all those tiny bottles into such a tight space. And the doctor had explained, adding that his brother worked in packaging and never tired of telling him that wraparound was the wave of the future.

  But why had that voice come back to him now? He had often noticed that if he found himself humming some tune, there was usually a connection between the words, or title, or general context and associations of the music, and something that had been preoccupying him without his conscious awareness of it. The same must be the case here, he thought, but what possible connection could there be? Bottles, boxes, packaging, wraparound… None of these had any evident relevance. Nor did threats to his life and the resulting injuries, not to mention doctors or hospitals. He was finished with all that.

  He moved his luggage into the bedroom where he used to sleep. Maria Grazia had stripped the bed before leaving. He didn't feel up to remaking it, so he fetched a pillow and some blankets from the linen cupboard in the hall, blew out the candles in the living room and groped his way back to the bedroom. The air was filled with the unctuous smoke of the candles, which made him realize that there had been a previous and not dissimilar odour in the apartment which he only now identified as the sweet-and-sour fetor of his mother's dying flesh. The thought made him close and lock the bedroom door behind him. A few minutes later he was lying fully clothed on his bed, wrapped up in his coat and the blankets. A few minutes after that he was asleep.

  He awoke a moment later, or so it seemed. It was an instant and complete awakening with no memory of dreams, no drowsiness, and no evident cause. The room was silent and dark, apart from a faint glimmer coming up through the shutters from the street below. He lay on his back, staring up at the lamp hanging like a predatory bat from the ceiling. He had always loathed that lamp, he realized. Then he thought: Now that mamma's dead, I can get rid of it.

  A sound broke the silence. It was difficult to say what might have caused it, but the source seemed clear. He lay quite still, listening intently. Eventually there was another sound, equally generic and almost inaudible, but it too had been located just outside the room, behind the locked door leading to the rest of the apartment. But that was absurd. Clearly there was no one out there. How could there be?

  The silence then remained unbroken for so long that he almost convinced himself that he had imagined the earlier noises. Then he heard a distinct metallic scraping that he recognized instantly. Someone was turning the handle to his bedroom door.

  'Who's there?' he shouted, sitting up in bed.

  There was silence again, then a rapid series of ratchety clicks. Zen climbed out of bed as the door resounded under a tremendous blow.

  'Who's that?' he yelled again.

  Another blow, then another. The door was of seasoned oak, at least a hundred years old. It wouldn't give, unless the intruder had an axe, but sooner or later the catch must.

  Zen groped in his coat pocket and found the device he had been given at the Ministry the previous afternoon. He clicked the button at the side to turn it on, then slid up the shield over the glowing red button and pressed it as another earthquake-like tremor hit the door.

  What happened then was the last thing he had expected: the sound of a phone ringing in the room next door. It was only a moment later that he remembered that the phone had been cut off. There was a brief whisper of speech, followed by a number of unidentifiable sounds, then silence.

  It was broken a few moments later by a distant siren that veered ever nearer and louder until it wound down from a strident shriek to a mild burble outside the building. Blue flashing lights added an intermittent brightness to the glimmer in the room, while a furious pounding and ringing sounded out in the stairwell and from the street. After a while it ceased, to be replaced by the sound of clattering boots on the stone steps and then in the room outside.

  ‘Polizia’'

  Zen felt a wave of overwhelming relief that made him realize just how scared he had been. He had heard that voice countless times before, and knew it well. It was the voice of a raw young patrol officer, himself scared even more, and knowing that his only hope of saving his reputation and possibly his life was to sound overwhelmingly masterful.

  Zen unlocked and opened the door, and was immediately pinned in the glaring beams from two flashlights aimed right at his face.

  'Good evening,' he said, holding up his empty hands. ‘I am Dottor Zen.'

  The two policemen in the room lowered their torches, creating a more even light. 'What's going on?' barked one.

  'We received an all-points emergency call to assist you,' said a slightly steadier voice. 'Someone broke into my apartment.'

  'The door was open when we got here,' replied the steadier voice immediately.

  'Probably a burglar’ said the first patrolman.

  'There have been a number of attempts on my life recently’ Zen replied in a studiously casual tone, a
s though this sort of thing was all in a day's work for him.

  'The lights don't work’ said the steadier voice. 'Maybe they cut the wiring.'

  'No, the fuse blew and I haven't had time to mend it. Now could you just check that whoever it was isn't still here, and perhaps try and find out how he got in?'

  One of the two torches started searching the apartment. The other headed out to the stairway.

  'No one’ reported the first voice, returning to the room. He and Zen gazed at each other in the gloom hacked apart by his torch beam.

  There was a rush of boots on the steps and his partner reappeared.

  'The skylight at the very top of the stairs is wide open,' he announced. 'He must have been an agile little monkey, though. That window's a good three metres off the ground.'

  'Well, thank you for your prompt response’ Zen said conclusively. 'Evidently on this occasion the whole thing was a false alarm If you'll just inform headquarters about that, I won't keep you from your regular duties any longer.'

  He saw them to the front door of the apartment, then bent down and examined the door itself. There was no sign that any force had been used to open it. It was only when he straightened up again that he noticed Giuseppe, the janitor of the building. He was clad in pyjamas and a worn plaid dressing gown, and was lurking on the flight of stairs leading up to the landing.

  'Is everything all right, dottore?’ he asked.

  Zen took out the key to his apartment.

  'You didn't give this to anyone while I was away, did you?'

  Giuseppe's face assumed an expression of righteous indignation.

  'Absolutely not! It was locked up in the safe the whole time along with the duplicate sets.' Zen nodded.

  'Very well. I just wondered.'

  'If you'd told me you were coming back, I'd have arranged for the electricity and gas to be on’ Giuseppe added. 'I'll do it tomorrow, first thing.'

  'Don't bother. I shan't be living here any more.'

  Giuseppe took a few moments to digest this statement. So did Zen himself.

  'You're moving?' Giuseppe queried.

  'I'm leaving. A new work assignment. I shan't be based in Rome any longer. I'll contact the owners and tell them to cancel the lease as soon as possible. They should be able to find a new tenant quite quickly. Unless you have someone in mind, of course.'