by Marco Vichi
They lapsed into silence again. They ate, drank, and exchanged long stares. The popping fire, the great kitchen and its cracked walls, the countryside immersed in darkness and peopled with animals out hunting in the woods under an indifferent moon … Bordelli, meanwhile, was still waiting for Piras’s question, trying to imagine how he would phrase it.
In that silence, an old memory, for no reason, resurfaced from the depths of his mind … The corpse of a small child abandoned in the snow, riddled with bullets and hard as marble, eyes wide open and staring at the heavens. Its only crime was to have been Italian, an Italian traitor, a damned little traitor in a country occupied by the Nazis. He witnessed the child’s burial again, when they broke apart the frozen earth with pickaxes, cursing and sweating like pigs in the cold of the wild. As they were covering the body with clods as hard as stones, he’d thought: If one day I found the man who shot this baby in front of me, what would I do? He’d pictured himself looking the man in the eye, glaring at him, and he’d realised with anger and terror that he would have found something familiar in that man’s gaze, he would have found a man a lot like himself standing there before him … But he would have killed him just the same – indeed, he would have killed him for this very reason, because he was a man like him …
‘Are you happy living out here, Inspector?’ Piras’s voice slid out on to the table like a wad of cotton, breaking the silence. But that wasn’t the question Bordelli had been expecting.
‘I’m not an inspector any more …’
‘Don’t you feel a bit isolated?’
‘I don’t think that’s the right word for it.’
‘What do you do all day long?’
‘A whole lot of interesting things … I walk in the woods, read, chop wood, go shopping, light a fire, cook, eat, watch the telly, and soon I’ll even have a kitchen garden to hoe.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’ Piras insisted.
‘Depends what you mean.’
It was true that the seclusion and silence of the countryside tempted one to ruminate over everything and feed one’s melancholy, but he loved this life more than he would have imagined. There was nothing he could do about it.
Piras refilled the wine glasses and took a long sip.
‘Did you read this morning’s Nazione?’ he asked.
Bordelli smiled faintly. At last Piras had decided to broach the issue.
‘You mean did I read about the butcher’s suicide?’
‘What do you think about it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why do you think Panerai killed himself?’
‘I don’t know … Maybe he tried to shoot a sparrow and missed?’
‘No, seriously. I can’t figure it out …’
‘He’d killed a little boy, Piras … You know that. You and I are the only ones who know it.’
‘So, out of remorse?’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t see someone like that shooting himself in the mouth.’
‘Remorse can play some dirty tricks on you, Piras. It smoulders under the ashes, and when you least expect it …’
‘Even a gorilla like Panerai?’
‘Apparently …’
‘What if he was murdered?’ said the Sardinian, looking him straight in the eye.
‘I really don’t think so. But even if it were so, I have to confess that I wouldn’t waste a single minute looking for the killer,’ said Bordelli, peeling an apple. Piras kept brooding, casting long, interrogatory glances at Bordelli.
‘I even thought that you … I wouldn’t swear by it, of course … But the moment I heard the news, the first thing that came into my mind was … Seeing how things really are, it wouldn’t even seem so unusual to me …’
‘You think I did it?’ asked Bordelli, saying it for him. Piras said nothing, but sat there waiting for the answer, gripping his wine glass. The inspector let him stew for a few moments, then shook his head.
‘Well, I didn’t, Piras. But I must say I certainly wasn’t upset about it … Would you like an apple?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘One arsehole less in the world is still one arsehole less, Piras.’
‘Of course … But … As I was saying …’
‘Tell me in all sincerity … Do you have any suspicions? Have you been to the place where he killed himself? Did you see something that didn’t look right?’ asked Bordelli, chewing his apple.
‘I went to the woods with Detective Silvis but didn’t notice anything unusual. At a glance it did look like a suicide.’
‘So what are you worried about?’
‘The fact is … You said it yourself … I know that Panerai was an animal, whereas the others weren’t …’
‘You’re right, Piras, absolutely right. Care for some grappa?’ asked Bordelli, standing up.
‘Four killers, two suicides …’ muttered the Sardinian. Bordelli brought a bottle of grappa and two small glasses to the table and sat back down.
‘I don’t really feel like talking about this all evening, Piras …’
He poured the grappa and pushed a glass towards the young man. Piras took a sip, and had to make an effort not to cough. When he saw that Bordelli was about to light a cigarette, he got up and went and sat down beside the fire. He couldn’t stand the smell of cigarettes and considered smoking the stupidest of vices.
‘All right, then, we won’t talk about it.’ He sighed, staring at the flames. Bordelli took a few puffs and, as a favour to his young friend, quickly stubbed out the cigarette, which was still almost whole. He went and sat opposite him, on the same brick bench as before.
‘Did you like fairy tales when you were a little boy, Piras?’
‘Yes …’
‘Why? Do you remember?’
‘Well, I guess it was because the bad guy was always punished in the end, and good prevailed.’
‘And do you think it’s right that little children learn to believe in something that almost never happens in real life?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘I think it is … In spite of everything, it’s always best not to give up …’
‘Are you trying to tell me something?’
‘Never mind, Piras. Old men sometimes like to play the “wise grandfather”, especially in front of a warm fire.’
After reading for about an hour, he turned out the light. Before getting under the covers he’d put a few logs in the cast-iron stove on the first floor, and the warmth filled the air, along with a strong scent of burning wood.
Piras had left about midnight. Over the course of the evening, Bordelli kept reading in his eyes a desire to reopen the discussion of the Panerai the butcher’s suicide, but the Sardinian had asked no more questions.
He lay in the pitch darkness with his eyes wide open and, as used to happen when he was a little boy, saw bright kaleidoscope-like designs in the emptiness. He couldn’t very well tell Piras the real situation. Not now, anyway. This was a war he had to fight alone. He had made a mistake, and he had to make up for it. He alone had to shoulder the burden. The regrets were already becoming hard to bear.
During the last days at his old flat in San Frediano, before falling asleep each night, he would think of all the things that had happened in that bed, not all of them pleasant. He couldn’t help but remember the nights spent making love with Eleonora, her dark, luminous eyes, the lovely scent of her skin … But then he would see her between the sheets with her face swollen and her eyes empty, trembling in fear. Poor Eleonora. She’d been punished without having done anything wrong, brutally raped by a pair of goons for the sole purpose of sending a message to him, Bordelli, the ball-busting police inspector who’d been sticking his nose where he shouldn’t. They’d broken into his home and waited for the beautiful girl, who’d wanted to surprise her knight between the sheets. But instead of her knight she’d found two thugs who forced her on to the bed to violate her in body and soul, for the sole purpose of advising he
r knight to stop making trouble for the king. And they’d even left him a piece of paper with a list of names on it: Rosa Stracuzzi, Dante Pedretti, Pietrino Piras, and so on. The message was as clear as a telegram: If you don’t desist, we’ll kill every person you care about. Full stop.
He’d been a damned fool. He’d threatened murderers, knowing he had no evidence to incriminate them. What had he expected to gain from it? Perhaps to scare them, make them feel in danger … But one of them was quite powerful and hadn’t taken the joke too kindly. And Eleonora had paid the price for it … He couldn’t forgive himself for this. And, as if that wasn’t enough, she had left him.
And what about him? Had he done the right thing by quitting his job? But what else, really, could he have done? Could he have stayed on as chief inspector of police knowing he would never succeed in putting Giacomo’s killers in jail? When you can’t play by the rules of the game, it’s best to stop playing. It was a little like the time when, many years ago, he’d won twenty-five months’ worth of salary from a dear friend at poker. Obviously he’d declined to accept his winnings, but from that day on he’d never played poker again.
He turned on to his side and shut his eyes. Though he felt tired, his thoughts were preventing him falling asleep. He was a former police inspector, but he was also a former commander of the San Marco Battalion. There were certain things he simply couldn’t tolerate. Nazism hadn’t started with Hitler and hadn’t ended with his suicide. Nazism by definition belonged to a specific moment in history, but its essence had always been in the air, everywhere around the world, imprisoning people and nations in its clutches …
Nice little thoughts for the middle of the night …
A nightbird’s raucous cry split the silence and, imagining the abandoned countryside under the moonlight, he remembered a poem from his schooldays …
The moon sets; the world loses colour;
the shadows vanish, and darkness
glooms the valley and hills …3
He suddenly felt like going out into the night and wandering through the fields. He turned on the light, got out of bed feeling heavy-headed, and calmly got dressed. He put on a woollen sweater and a sports jacket and wrapped a scarf round his neck. Sticking a torch in his pocket he went out of the house, but there was no need to turn it on. The moon was almost full, the olive trees’ black shadows stretching long across the faded ground. Great gusts of wind shook the foliage. He walked through the tall grass with his hands in his pockets, breathing in the cold air with pleasure. He’d always liked wind. It was a living force that made things move. Immobility was like death.
At the far end of the field a large white stone stood out from the darkness like the eye of a giant. Beyond the olive grove rose a wooded hill, while here and there the dark spikes of the cypresses poked through the round boughs of the Mediterranean pines. Reaching the edge of the woods, he heard at last the faint gurgling of the Fosso delle Acque Cadute – the ‘Ditch of Fallen Waters’ – a small stream that marked the end of his field. With each new blast of wind a tree trunk moaned.
He couldn’t tell anyone his secret – at least not yet. By now he knew he would go all the way, and he preferred living this adventure alone. It wasn’t some decision he’d made on the fly: the hand of fate had intervened.
Accompanied by his lunar shadow he started walking along a narrow path that cut through the grassy terrain parallel to the ditch, a trail almost certainly travelled by wild boar. The natural world immersed in the night made him shudder in a strange, animal kind of way. The call of the forest, you might say. Under his skin he felt a desire to tear off all his clothes and charge head down through the trees and shrubs, and maybe even howl at the moon … Obeying only instinct and the natural laws of survival, and turning his back on the filth and stupidity governing the human race …
There was no doubt about it: it was fate that had organised everything, in the simplest manner possible. Chance did not seem capable of as much. It could not have all been a banal coincidence …
Ever since he’d moved to the country he went often on walks through the woods, sometimes early in the morning, even at dawn. He would put a panino with prosciutto, a bottle of water and an apple in his backpack, get into his Volkswagen Beetle, drive up the dirt roads that led up into the hills, and finally park in some clearing by the side of the road. It was Botta who had first kindled this passion in him, when he’d taken him mushroom hunting on the Monte alle Croci some months before. And that was where he usually went nowadays as well. He would start the now familiar climb panting heavily, happy as a child to recognise the strangest-looking trees and the rocks jutting up from the ground. He would go farther each time, exploring new paths and descending steep slopes by grabbing on to the trunks of chestnuts to keep from falling. Often he was glad to lose his way, knowing he would later find it again. Little by little he was beginning to know the area and understand the network of trails. On those rare occasions when he crossed paths with a hunter, he would exchange a minimal nod of greeting and continue on his way. He didn’t like hunting one bit.
The previous day, a Sunday, when he’d left the house, it was still dark outside, and as he began the climb up Poggio alla Croce he’d witnessed the sunrise. It was cold as hell, and he’d even worn gloves and a hat. Not five minutes would go by without him hearing at least one gunshot. He reached the three-way junction at Cappella dei Boschi in less than an hour and took the path that led from Monte Scalari abbey to Pian d’Albero. By now he knew these haunts rather well. He’d come the first time just before the flood, when the little boy’s dead body was found hastily buried in these woods. He’d gone back several times in the days that followed, to inspect the area and look for clues. One morning a desperate squealing had caught his attention amid the shrubs, and he’d discovered Briciola, a kitten only a few days old with a damaged eye which he’d taken at once to Rosa’s. Briciola could never have known, but it was thanks precisely to her mewing that he’d found the first tenuous lead that would later lead him all the way to Giacomo Pellissari’s killers. He’d patiently managed to uncover everything, down to the last detail, but hadn’t been able to arrest the culprits, because he didn’t have enough proof … It had been a kind of checkmate for him … Then things came crashing down, and after Eleonora was raped he decided to quit the police force …
But he hadn’t wanted to think about this that morning; he’d already worn himself out enough. He’d wanted only to take a long walk, forget about smoking, sit down on a rock and eat a panino in peace.
When he reached the huge oak that the Nazis had chosen to hang ‘Italian traitors’ from, he stopped to study its sturdy black branches, which through no fault of their own had served to kill innocent people. Who knew how many other things that powerful tree had seen over its centuries of life. If only it could talk …
He’d got back on the path to Pian d’Albero, never imagining that just a few minutes later … It had all happened so fast … Thinking back on it, he almost couldn’t bring himself to believe that it had actually happened …
Round a bend he’d spotted a man crouching behind a hunter’s blind at the top of a small hill and, though seeing him from behind, he’d recognised him at once. It was Panerai the butcher, one of the four men who’d raped young Giacomo and, more importantly, the one who had actually killed him, strangling him while reaching orgasm …
Without thinking twice he’d climbed up through the trees and come up behind him, silent as an Apache … He’d grabbed the rifle out of his hands and pointed it at him.
‘Long time no see, Panerai.’ The butcher struggled to his feet, shaking like a leaf on a tree. He could barely speak. His eyes flashed with hate and fear.
‘How’s the hunting? Kill any little birds?’
‘No … not … yet …’ Panerai muttered.
‘Wasn’t it around here that you buried that little boy?’
‘No … I … didn’t do anything …’
‘Don’t be so modes
t, man … Don’t forget, you’re a devotee of the Duce …’
All of a suddenly he realised he had to act fast.
‘I … didn’t … I …’ the butcher kept stuttering.
‘Eia eia alalà!’4 Bordelli shouted, sticking the double barrels of the shotgun into Panerai’s mouth so fast he hadn’t time to react, and squeezing both triggers at once. The back of the butcher’s head exploded in a burst of blood, and his flaccid body fell to the ground with a thud. The crack of the rifle echoed across the valleys, but it was normal to hear gunshots in the woods, especially on a Sunday.
The butcher had writhed in agony for a few seconds, kicking the fallen leaves between his feet, and after a final spasm stopped moving for ever. Bordelli had let the rifle fall to the ground and left the scene with his hat pulled down over his eyes. But he hadn’t run. He wasn’t worried. He felt that everything would turn out all right. And it had. Walking through the woods back to the car he hadn’t run into anyone at all. It was as if he’d never left his house …
He’d had gloves on when he used the rifle, the leaf-strewn ground was so frozen and hard that he’d left no tracks, and the gunshot was just one of many that day. All the same, if he’d still been with the force he would never have done what he did … How could he not think it was fate? Even Diotivede, the old forensic pathologist and his friend, would never manage to uncover the truth about the butcher’s death …
He stopped for a moment, eyes following the flight of a large nightbird passing silently overhead without moving its wings. Its white, moonlit feathers stood out in the darkness as though phosphorescent, as it disappeared, gliding softly, into the dense wood.
He started feeling cold, and began to head home. He’d once read an interview with a writer who claimed he wasn’t the one who wrote his novels … The stories simply unfolded before him as though they’d already happened, and he couldn’t even bring himself to change the characters’ personalities or words … That was more or less the way he, Bordelli, felt … As though he’d ended up in a story already written and could do nothing more than turn the pages. All he knew was that he would read the book all the way to the end …