'Of course not. It won't happen again.'
'I knew you were a well mannered girl who would understand, not like that woman on the first floor. Do you know what she did?'
'Erm… no, I can't say I do.'
'She bought herself a dog without asking anyone's permission.'
'I don't think you have to ask permission any more to -'
'Whether that's true or not, it's a matter of good sense, I'd say, living in a flat. Anyway, she left the dog outside in the communal garden, did you know that?'
'Yes, but it's a small dog.' Viola would like to have a dog. She would shower it with affection. She has never owned a dog; she hasn't even had a cat. Not even a canary.
'Do you know that dogs' urine is acid? The plants die. Haven't you seen the pansies? Burnt! Dogs' urine is corrosive - it burns plants - and who's going to pay for new ones? They were so pretty. Without getting any thanks from anyone, I used to water them myself. What can one do, that's what I'm asking myself, what can one do…?'
'I'm sorry, but I have to go now.'
'But what do you have to go and do? I know you don't work, and you don't have children.' 'I have to go and… make the dinner.'
'I'm sorry for disturbing you, then, if you still have to make dinner. I was just speaking on behalf of the tenants. Everyone ought to be a bit more interested in any problems affecting us all.'
'Bye.'
'Goodbye.'
Viola is now exhausted. She throws herself onto the sofa and surrenders herself to the embrace of the cushions. She thinks about the burnt pansies, viole del pensiero. It seems like an omen. Viola in the midst of her thousand thoughts. Burnt.
She thinks about how she didn't even finish school. In the third year she was kept back and then she'd met Marco. Or perhaps she met Marco and then in the third year she decided to stop and to just acquire a diploma as a business secretary.
She knows how to type OK. She doesn't ever read books, just magazines. Glamour is the one she likes best. She can cook, but what else? Her boyfriend goes out every night, so she isn't even much good as a wife. If only she were a wife! Not that he will ever marry her.
Viola would like to get married. In a white dress.
She can picture a white dress, tight at the waist. She imagines herself with her hair up and little roses in it.
She wears nice make-up, like the models in her magazines.
He is waiting for her at the altar. There are flowers everywhere, and lots of smiling people.
She realises that she is crying.
It won't happen.
It will never happen, and that hurts her. Inside.
If only she had a dog. Or at least a canary.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
''This evening you're having dinner at my house.
I've already organised everything, and I've told them we're going to the pictures. But, instead, I'm seeing Luca.'
'I can't, Giulia. I'd love to but -'
'Miew's invited too. I've got fish specially for her.'
I don't believe it, even dinner for Miew? And only because last time I said no, because otherwise Miew would be left at home on her own.
'I'll expect you at eight, on the dot,' she adds bossily.
Eva doesn't like going out in the evening. She's scared of the dark, of what might be hiding under its dark-blue mantle.
'OK.'
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY
Marconi looks out at the rain from his armchair.
The chair has its back turned to the kitchen and the front door.
It doesn't give a damn, his armchair, it leaves everything behind.
He looks out.
He thinks about the girl with red hair.
He thinks about her sad eyes, so blue. So light that they hurt.
His mobile phone is resting on his right leg.
His left leg, stretched out unnaturally, rests on the radiator.
It's too high there to be comfortable, but he likes sitting like this.
He would like to pick up the phone, dial ten numbers, just ten, and then he could hear her voice. But he can't do that.
He wouldn't have anything to say, and then… He can't do it, that's all there is to it.
But he would like to.
He likes women.
Mysterious creatures. Fragrant.
He likes women's eyes.
He feels that hidden in the depths of a woman's eyes is a whole other world.
Perhaps a world inhabited by everything they've seen with those eyes.
His mother had lifeless, tired eyes.
She had seen too much shit during her life, and in the end that was all she had left to fill the emptiness of her dark eyes.
He was a child, and a child can't fill that emptiness.
A child can only see what's right in front of his nose.
A child only sees as far as the things he needs.
This child had seen her for the last time as she sat on the bench in front of their house on that sweltering Wednesday. The same sweltering Wednesday that sometimes comes back to haunt him in those nights when it rains or it's too dark. Just like this one. She had her apron tied around her waist and that same look in her eyes. He didn't understand what those eyes were trying to say. When he did understand, it was too late.
He has never understood women.
He thinks about the murderer.
A woman. Definitely fragrant.
Beautiful. In fact, stunning.
He thinks about what they must have thought, the men who saw her standing there in front of them a moment before they died.
It started raining again a while ago. Yet more rain.
Like tears.
The telephone rings.
I'll be there straight away.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Giulia lives in a huge house in the Saragozza area of the city.
As she rings the doorbell, Eva - the cat box in her hand - watches the glittering snake of lights leading towards San Luca. The light radiates up into the sky. It's a reassuring sight. Miew lets out a miaow; she's uncomfortable and she's grumbling.
The lock on the side gate clicks open. The gate is wrought iron, painted black, and matches the other, much larger, automatic gates and the railings that look like long eyelashes silhouetted against eyes lit up by a yellow light.
Her slight, dark shadow crosses the well tended garden. The shapes of trees appear out of the darkness, their branches curving so that they look like trees in an oriental painting.
'Daddy, this is my friend Eva,' Giulia says, sounding rather like a pimp.
Her father,. about sixty, hair thinning but well groomed, and dressed in grey Armani, has a hint of a smile that looks more like a grimace, lighting up his face with an ambiguous light.
'Eva, this is my mother. Isn't she beautiful?'
'Yes,' lies Eva, and can't help noticing that the woman has had plastic surgery to her nose, mouth and presumably her breasts, and thinking that soon the same thing will be done to the daughter.
The dinner begins. A fish starter: a risotto with seafood comprising lots of strangely named sea creatures liberally doused in white wine.
Miew is being treated like a VIP, on the floor, next to the table. She is eating salmon from a gilded saucer but, judging from her expression, she would much prefer her usual toxic croquettes.
'Usually we don't allow animals in the dining room, but Giulia insisted. It has been vaccinated, your cat, hasn't it?' asks Giulia's mother.
'Of course. And she's clean - she sleeps with me,' says Eva, wishing that she could say No, she's got scabies, just to see how she would react.
Dotted around the room are valuable rugs, porcelain and glittering silverware, enormous still-life paintings. This room wouldn't look out of place in a castle.
Eva, lost in wonder, looks at a threadbare picture in a gold frame. It depicts peasants bending over, while sowing their crops.
'It's beautiful, isn't it?' says Giulia's father.
'Yes, very beautiful. I've never seen anything so big.'
Everyone laughs.
'It looks very old,' Eva adds, embarrassed.
'It's a tapestry, from 1860. It belonged to a noble
Spanish family that lived for a while here in Bologna. I bought it at an auction. Giuliacci wasn't ready to let it slip through his hands, but in the end I bid enough to leave him standing. Just think…'
'You shouldn't talk about money at the table, dear.'
'You're right, dear,' and he dabs at his mouth with his napkin, as if to wipe away the sum of money that he was going to disclose to her.
Miew seems bewildered by the suffocating atmosphere and by such a vulgar show of wealth. She jumps on to a piece of furniture, wood with an ochre grain, endangering the safety of a cut-glass vase.
'Oh, please. That vase came from my mother's collection. Stop that animal now!' cries the mother without, moving her silicon lips.
The cat looks at her defiantly and starts to purr, rubbing herself against the vase.
'It's worth more than the two of you put together. Stop that animal!'
'Got her,' says Eva with the cat in her arms. 'She was just playing. She's never broken anything at home.'
'And I was only joking, what I said. I can't even remember exactly what I said,' the mother giggles nervously.
After dinner Giulia starts to show her round the house. It would be more appropriate to call it a museum. Antiques, collections of everything worth collecting, and finally her room.
She carries a bunch of enormous keys, like Bluebeard. And she boasts about having made copies of even the 'forbidden' keys, because every now and then she likes to readjust her pocket money.
Hers is truly a room for a princess: a four-poster bed with yards of pink taffeta curtains, silk sheets, and ornaments everywhere. Photographs with Giulia in close-up and full-length, her head turned to the right, then to the left; now smiling, now serious. But always artfully posed.
'Now, let's go' Giulia says. 'I can't stand your cat when it miaows like that. You wouldn't expect me to let it run around loose in here, would you? And anyway, Luca's expecting me. Remember, if anyone asks, I've been with you all this evening,' Giulia says.
'No problem. It's not as if anyone ever asks me anything anyway.'
'Yes, but if anyone does, I've been with you. Say you'll say so, or I'll be upset.'
'Yes, yes,' repeats Eva.
'Thanks, you're a star!' and Giulia hugs her on impulse. 'Oh, by the way, you're looking a bit muscly, you know. Your arms - it's revolting. You shouldn't overdo the gym, or you'll end up looking like a man.'
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
'How many times have I told you?' He glares angrily at her. 'I don't want you going through my things. I don't want you wearing my jumpers, my socks or any other fucking thing of mine, do you understand?'
'It's just that I feel comfortable in them.' Viola stretches out her arms to show how good she looks in the jumper a couple of sizes too big for her.
'Viola, I've told you time and again. You need a jumper, buy yourself one. You're not short of money. But I don't want you using my things. I just don't want you to. It drives me mad. And I don't want you going through my wardrobe.'
'But I have to open the wardrobe to put your things away after I've ironed them…'
'No excuses. Socks the other day, today my jumper. How can I make you understand?'
'But what harm is there?'
'Wash my things and put them on the chair, like I told you. I want to put them away where I want. If you do it I can't find anything. You know that. You've got your own wardrobe, I've got mine. You've got your things, and I've got mine. I don't pinch your things and put them on. And your perfume gets on everything you use, and I smell like a whore.'
'But Marco, what harm is there if I use one of your jumpers. This one's old and you never wear it, and it's black and you don't wear black…'
He comes closer to her as if to hit her. He raises his hand.
'Do you want the fucking jumper? Take the fucking thing. I hate it, I hate it, and I hate you when you're wearing it. But never go in my wardrobe again. I won't tell you another time.' His hand is still raised, like a threat.
Viola can't lift her gaze from the floor.
He told her he hated her. She heard him, he really said it: that he hated her like he hates this shapeless jumper, with its pulled threads and its signs of wear and tear.
He has now turned away from her. He sits down on the sofa and switches on the TV.
Viola can't speak.
As always happens, her head is throbbing with words, but she isn't able to say them out loud. They cry out inside her, but her mouth is sealed shut. I miss you! That's why I go in your wardrobe and search through your T-shirts and shirts. I'm looking to see if there's a little piece of you left behind, even among your socks. Then I find something that seems to still have your smell, and I put it on and it feels like you're here with me.
It hurts, that voice in her head; it screams. It screams so much it hurts, but it doesn't make a sound.
'What's for dinner? I'm hungry, and I have to go to work, in case you've forgotten.'
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
'What have we got here?' asks Marconi, pushing up his collar. Tommasi is standing opposite him, and a shrug of his shoulders indicates that he doesn't know anything yet.
Marconi has known Tommasi for two years. At the beginning, they worked together and that was all, like with everyone else: the usual relationship between an inspector and his junior officer. Then, gradually, he started to notice Tommasi's skills and character.
A very attentive lad, with a burning desire to learn, who always followed a step behind and was always there, watching his back, like that time when there was a robbery in the supermarket in Via del Borgo San Pietro.
Marconi hadn't spotted the accomplice who was acting as look-out, and was waiting there in the parked Fiat. And, when the others had escaped in an old VW Golf, he would have got himself run over if it hadn't been for Tommasi, his shadow, who had pushed him out of the way just in time.
They had looked at each other without saying anything, but from that day on Marconi had become much more aware of him. He noticed how he had chestnut-coloured eyes, with hair the same colour, and that he raised his lips on one side when he smiled.
At the police station, the other officers used to call them 'mother goose' and 'baby goose' - not in their hearing of course. If he had overheard them, Marconi would have been really pissed off, and when he's pissed off everyone knows it.
One of the men from forensics is measuring the distance between the two bodies. The other bends over with silver-coloured, slightly curved forceps and picks up something that he then puts into a clear envelope.
Marconi takes a step forward. He's known Galliera for years, so knows that there's nothing to worry about. He doesn't bite.
'How's it going?'
'We're getting there. What do you want to know, Inspector?'
'What can you tell me so far?'
'So far, the details are fairly vague, but, as you can see, there were two shots from a small calibre pistol. One dead instantaneously. The other dragged himself to the pavement and was finished off by a violent blow with some pointed object. Perhaps a screwdriver. It went right through one eye and into his skull. I've just picked up a small, red glass jewel that was lying by the side of the second victim. Nothing else, so far. Now let me finish off here. I've got a wife waiting for me at home.'
Marconi pretends not to have heard that last bit.
He pretends not to remember that he himself has got no one waiting for him at home.
'No one heard anything, as usual, I suppose?' he asks, turning to Tommasi.
'It's a cul-de-sac, as you can see. There's only that old falling-down building and then at the end there's a wire fence that backs on to an
abandoned field. On the other side, at the far end of the street, there's a bar, a kind of social club. One of those places that plays strange music - I don't know what you call it - where strange people go, with weird hair, all dressed in black.' He tries to explain what he means by waving his hands.
'Has anyone been into the club to ask questions?'
'No, it was too late. It was almost dawn when the boy found them both. He says he came out of there to throw up and then he started to walk about to get a breath of fresh air. He's a minor, so they took him to the station. Someone will have taken his statement before his parents came to fetch him.'
'Nothing else unusual?'
'Do you mean erections? Because, if you do, you'll have to ask them. But I think they'll only be able to tell you after they've examined the bodies.'
'What are you talking about? No. What I meant was is there any souvenir left this time?'
'I don't think so. But then they haven't talked to me yet,' and he indicates the two people dressed like astronauts, who are now showing signs of having finished.
'Thanks for calling me. I hate being at home when these things happen.'
'I did what you told me. Even if Frolli didn't like it much.'
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Eva looks out of the car window. She's driving slowly, with music playing in the background. She's slightly tense but she was expecting to feel worse. For the first time in six months she's going home, to Ravenna.
To face her fears she has to visualise them. She's doing that now. The terror she feels making that journey again is like facing one of her partners at training: a potential aggressor that she has to keep at a distance. As she has learned to do. Today her coach told her that she's ready to fight in a match, if she wants to.
Perhaps because, during the exercises in pairs, she knocked Brando over. She gave him such a powerful kick that everyone turned to look. The feeling she had when she saw him on the ground, at her feet, holding his side because of the pain was tremendous. She felt alive, excited, carried away by a new fire burning inside her.
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