Death in the Tuscan Hills

by Marco Vichi

  ‘Does this game last very long, Einstein?’

  ‘The last person who said that to me is now eating only broths and purées …’

  He felt like making an ass of himself, just to lighten things up. For the moment he wanted to forget Eleonora and Adele, not to mention his appointment on Monday with Beccaroni …

  He imagined himself saying to Rosa: On Monday I’m going to kill one of those gentlemen who raped Giacomo. What would she do? Would her jaw drop? Would she clap her hands? Or would she simply smile, thinking it was another bitter attempt at wit?

  The waiter arrived with a smile, quickly cleared the table, changed the tablecloth, and brought some clean cutlery. He was a tall, thin lad with eyes popping out of their sockets and buck teeth. As nice as was necessary, never pushy … The perfect waiter.

  Moments later Riccà came across the room, steam rising from his apron, and stopped at their table. He’d brought a bowl for the dog, a tempting fish soup. Meatball sniffed the air, raised his head and, without bothering to stand up, started eating.

  ‘So, Tuscans, what’ll you have?’

  ‘You Massese are also Tuscan, according to the map,’ Bordelli pointed out.

  ‘That stuff means nothing …’

  ‘So you’re Ligurian,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Better dead than Ligurian … We’re Massese, and that’s enough.’

  ‘If you ask me, you’re all pirates,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘How romantic …’ Rosa sighed, lips puckered, forming a heart.

  Riccà cast her a sidelong glance, pretending to be offended.

  ‘So, what can I get you? A nice dish of spaghetti with clam sauce … A mixed fry of calamari, shrimp and little fish … and a carafe of Candia … Excellent choices, congratulations …’

  And he left without waiting for their confirmation.

  ‘He picked everything himself,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘He’s not a sluggard like you.’

  ‘The last time a woman dared to—’

  ‘No, I beg you! If you say that one more time, I’m leaving!’

  ‘The last time a woman—’

  ‘Oh my god! You’re not usually such an idiot!’

  ‘Okay, I’ll stop.’

  ‘Praise be to God …’ said Rosa, folding her hands.

  The bug-eyed waiter brought the wine to the table, and while waiting they began to drink.

  Fifteen minutes later the spaghetti finally arrived, before quickly vanishing from their plates. Almost immediately afterwards the mixed fry arrived, and another bottle of wine had to be opened.

  ‘When will we be driving back?’ asked Rosa, glass in hand and looking a little tipsy.

  ‘You’re worse than a spoilt child …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can’t we just enjoy the moment without thinking of what pleasures lie ahead?’

  ‘Oh, you and your complicated arguments! I hate them …’

  ‘Complicated?’

  ‘The last man who said that to me … went to sleep and never woke up,’ said Rosa, laughing so loudly that for a moment everyone in the room fell silent. Even the dog raised his head, then lowered it again.

  ‘You’re drunk …’

  ‘So what if I am? I feel fine … And you look like a mummy …’

  She kept on laughing without stopping, but it wouldn’t last much longer. Bordelli was very familiar with the effects of white wine on Rosa. After the good cheer and laughter would come the melancholy, and then, to finish things up, a good little cry to wash it all away. Once the cycle was completed, everything would return to normal.

  At around three o’clock customers began to get up from their tables. Rosa was already at the melancholy stage, remembering old stories about her family with a quaver in her voice.

  ‘Zia Bettina died all of a sudden … and I didn’t manage in time to …’ And right on schedule came the tears, only a few, punctuated by a sob that sounded almost like a burst of laughter.

  ‘Would you like a dessert?’ Bordelli asked her, as though nothing was wrong.

  ‘I can’t. I’ve eaten like a horse,’ she said, sniffling. Wiping her face with a pink handkerchief, she flashed a smile. She was drifting back into cheerfulness. Her eyes were just a little red. Bordelli lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the ceiling. He looked at Rosa with affection, thinking he’d never met a woman as innocent as her.

  When the room was completely empty, Riccà came and sat at their table, managing not to step on the dog, and he filled a glass with Candia.

  ‘To women …’ he said, raising the glass, and he savoured a big gulp of wine.

  ‘To women? I don’t see why …’ said Bordelli, which earned him a kick from Rosa under the table. Riccà turned round.

  ‘Domenico, bring us three coffees,’ he shouted.

  Less than a minute later, a dark kid with blue eyes brought out a tray with the coffees. Behind him appeared a beautiful little girl with the same colour eyes as her brother. They were Riccà’s children. And Bordelli started thinking bitterly that it was sad to grow old without any children …

  ‘When are we going home?’ asked the little girl, looking bored.

  ‘I’ll be along in a minute … Go to your ma …’

  ‘Ouf!’ said the girl, walking away with her brother as Riccà gazed at them fondly. After knocking back his coffee, he started telling them about a lifeguard friend of his, Azelio, who a couple of days earlier had very nearly drowned in rough waters, owing to bad disgestion …

  Bordelli looked at his friend Nessuno, former partisan of the Divisione Garibaldi, and it made him think of the war … This placid man, who now cooked fish for dozens of people daily, had gone up into the mountains after 8 September …

  The Germans launched their attack on La Brugiana on 2 December 1944, and immediately the partisan divisions took up defensive positions between Monte Penna and Bergiola Foscalina. A bit like everyone else, Nessuno had a model 91 rifle, with only one charger. Within his division, he formed a trio with his brother, known as ‘Torero’, and Alessandro Rocca, known as ‘Viper’.

  When they suddenly spotted a column of German soldiers in single file, the shooting began. They mostly heard the crackling of the Germans’ automatic weapons. Fearing encirclement, the partisans fell back. The Nazis continued firing wildly, and Nessuno was hit in the shoulder. The bullet was headed straight for his chest, but was deflected by a German torch he kept in his jacket pocket. Gushing blood, he managed to follow his comrades as far as the Gioia Quarries, where they encountered other partisans and a group of evacuees. They all took shelter in the quarry, but nobody knew what to do. News from the outside kept accumulating. Were they surrounded? Was it better to leave the quarry? Meanwhile, down below, at Poggio Piastrone, the shooting went on ceaselessly.

  Luckily the Germans did not come up as far as the quarry and slowly began to withdraw. Nessuno’s wound kept leaking blood, and only around sunset was his brother able to head off on foot for Carrara, with Viper, to look for a doctor. They didn’t return until late that night, and when the medic saw the wound, he told Nessuno he’d been very lucky. If the bullet hadn’t been deflected by the torch, it would have punctured a lung. Which, in a situation like that, would have meant certain death … Amen.

  At midnight they passed the roadhouse at Montecatini, in an entirely unexpected drizzle. The dog was dozing on the back seat while Rosa slept, her blond head propped against the window. Bordelli thought of Nessuno and the bullet that could have killed him. He, too, had had several brushes with death during the war, and each time he’d felt as if someone on high was looking out for him …

  It had been a long, pleasant day. After lunch they’d taken a long, slow walk along the beach, shoes in hand, in front of a steel-grey sea, while Meatball kept diving into the water, as happy as when running through the woods. They’d all watched in silence as the sun dipped below the horizon, with Bordelli recalling all the times he’d witnessed the same spectacle from the deck o
f a ship. Under a Leopardian moon that appeared in the sky out of nothing, ghostly and indifferent, he thought of the long summers of his youth, the blinding sun setting over an expanse of sea ablaze, the gulls diving into the water, his first crushes, which had the mysterious power of keeping him from sleeping … Once, as a child, he’d nearly drowned, dragged out to sea by the undercurrent on a stormy day while playing at the water’s edge, before his father saved him, fishing him out of the water half conscious and making him throw up all the water he’d swallowed … It felt like a thousand years ago …

  While walking barefoot across the sand, a profound melancholy had come over him, and he slowly slipped into a sort of strange resentment of time itself for transforming everything …

  Without realising it, they’d walked all the way to Ronchi. Given the hour, they’d decided to stay for dinner, turned round and walked slowly back the way they’d come. Just before eight they returned to Riccà’s trattoria and sat down at the same table. The restaurant was still half empty, but was sure to fill up quickly.

  After dinner they’d lingered for a long time, chatting with Nessuno over a bottle of wine. They didn’t just talk about the war but amused themselves with lighter subjects as well. Rosa kept downing glasses of Candia and laughing, getting more and more drunk, throwing her head back in laughter till she was out of breath and her eyes full of tears. When she got into the car she’d started crying, handkerchief pressed to her nose, then fell asleep.

  ‘Rosa! We’re here,’ said Bordelli, turning on to Via dei Neri. Rosa answered with a sort of childish grunt. When the car came to a halt, she half opened her eyes without bothering to raise her head.

  ‘Where are we?’ she mumbled, then closed her eyes again.

  ‘Rosa … hey, Rosa …’ said Bordelli, gently shaking her shoulder.

  ‘Sleep …’ she moaned, followed by a long yawn.

  ‘Do I have to carry you over my shoulder?’

  Rosa didn’t answer. She’d fallen back asleep. Bordelli stroked her cheek, to push the hair out of her eyes, but was unable to wake her. He gave up. At least it wasn’t raining. Sighing, he got out of the car, opened the door on Rosa’s side, and after several attempts succeeded in standing her up before Meatball’s sleepy eyes.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, sounding still drunk. She was about to collapse on the ground when Bordelli put an arm round her waist. Grabbing her bag, he searched about for the keys. With an acrobatic contortion he even managed to grab Rosa’s red shoes, wondering how one could ever walk in such heels. He left the dog in the car, to avoid any scuffles with Rosa’s cats, and they went into the building. He started dragging Rosa up the stairs as she mumbled incomprehensibly and occasionally giggled. She was hardly a slip of a girl, and reaching the top floor was no joke. As soon as Bordelli opened the door, he found Briciola in front of him, meowing desperately. The more dignified Gideon watched them from a distance.

  ‘I’ll get to you two in a minute …’

  Tossing aside Rosa’s bag and shoes, he took her in his arms and carried her to the bedroom, laying her down on the bed. He started to undress her, remembering how nice it was when his mother used to take his clothes off to get him ready for bed, without him having to lift a finger.

  ‘What are you doing to me?’ Rosa muttered with a dazed smile, not bothering to open her eyes.

  ‘If I wasn’t a gentleman, I would know what to do …’

  ‘You’re a brute … a brute …’

  She seemed to be dreaming. Bordelli removed her bra as well, noting that she hadn’t lost all the freshness from her brothel days and, raising her legs, he managed to tuck her under the covers.

  ‘Sweet dreams, Queen of Candia.’

  He turned the light off and went into the kitchen to feed the cats. Briciola attacked her bowl, devouring the meat like a starving lioness, while the gigantic Gideon observed her from a distance, patiently awaiting his turn.

  Bordelli left, feeling sleepy. On the drive home he allowed himself a cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window. Still thinking about the past, he let himself be coddled by his melancholy … When he was a little boy, he had no idea what his life would be like … He didn’t know he’d go off to war and end up shooting at Nazis.20 He had no way of knowing he would end up in law enforcement, and that one fine day he would throw his badge down on the commissioner’s desk … Nor did he know that fate would drive him to kill as a way of settling accounts with child-murderers …

  Early next morning he was already in the Cintoia woods with his backpack, blowing steam out of his mouth as Blisk amused himself as usual, running through the trees. He took a steep path scattered with large reddish stones that led up to the crest before descending softly down to La Panca. The humid air smelled of moss and wild grasses. It was Sunday, and gunshots rang out periodically. The hunters normally avoided the main trails and penetrated deeper into the woods, and with any luck he wouldn’t run into any. The chestnut trees were still naked, aside from their now swollen, life-filled buds waiting to burst open. He also saw new shoots on the plants in the underbrush, and the birds seemed more restless than ever.

  Every so often a shudder of emotion passed through his belly without warning, reminding him that the start of spring was only two days away. But perhaps it wasn’t just the spring … Adele … Eleonora … But not only … He had an important appointment the following day. Would everything go well? He asked himself for the umpteenth time whether it wasn’t utter folly to have embarked on this adventure, trusting only in some hypothetical design of destiny … But by now he knew he would go through with it. He hadn’t organised anything specific, aware that sometimes even the most carefully studied plans came to naught owing to unforeseen events. It wasn’t human will that governed things; he would do well to remember that …

  He knew only a few more or less important things, which had come out during the investigation into the boy’s murder: Beccaroni lived alone, was separated from his wife, had a daughter, kept two Dobermanns in his garden, and normally came home around half past eight. That should be enough for him. At quarter past eight on Monday he would take up position somewhere near the lawyer’s villa and wait until he came home from work …

  During his solitary walks in the woods he noticed that his thoughts now unfolded differently, following slower rhythms, and at this point he could no longer live without that feeling. Mutatis mutandis, it was a little like the experience of a painter he’d known shortly before the war, whose name he couldn’t recall … One evening, over a bottle of wine, the artist had admitted the reason why he painted … He wasn’t interested in the final result, even though he did what he had to do to exhibit and sell his works. What he really sought when he confronted a canvas was the feeling he experienced whenever he had a paintbrush in his hand, the mental space that would open up before him, the long, aimless journeys that invited him to lose himself in unknown worlds. If he’d never experienced this, he said, he would never have wasted his time painting …

  Instead of paintbrushes, Bordelli had the woods. It wasn’t just a question of moving his legs; you could almost say it was a spiritual activity … He smiled at the thought of this … Maybe it really was just his age, which kept advancing inexorably.

  After roving through his memories, not stopping at any single one in particular, he found himself making a mental list of the things he had to bring to pull off the business with Beccaroni. A pair of leather gloves, the ski mask he’d used during the war, the two handguns, and an electric torch. Food for how many days? Two? Three? Maybe even four? And what if a month went by before anyone came looking for the lawyer? No, impossible … Beccaroni had an eighteen-year-old daughter; they might even talk every day … And certainly his secretary would grow suspicious, not seeing him come into work … There might even be a cleaning lady who had the house keys … Some concerned relatives … His ex-wife, looking for him to ask for more money …

  Bordelli sighed, imagining that with any luck he
wouldn’t have to wait more than three days. Six panini, six apples, two tablets of chocolate, and a lot of shelled almonds should suffice. If worse came to worst, he could rummage through Beccaroni’s kitchen. One bottle of water could suffice, and as he finished it he could refill it with tap water. He would also bring along a book, so as not to get too bored while waiting. Ennio would look after Blisk, as agreed. Everything seemed taken care of.

  He got to La Panca, crossed the road, and continued hiking along the path he knew best … The great oak with the shrine … Monte Scalari Abbey … The triple fork at Cappella dei Boschi … He passed again the small plateau where he’d helped the butcher kill himself, and felt nothing.

  At around midday he stopped at Pian d’Albero, in front of the farmhouse where the Nazis had committed a massacre, and sat down on a flat boulder looking out over the Figline valley. As hoped, he hadn’t encountered a single hunter. Lunchtime was approaching, and the sound of gunshots had diminished. The hunters were going home to their wives and children, to stuff themselves with pasta and roast meats.

  Blisk had been gone for a while now, and Bordelli started calling him, shouting his name repeatedly. In the end he got tired of this and pulled his panino out of his backpack. He barely had time to take two bites before the dog came running. He started circling round, panting. Bordelli realised that to make him come he shouldn’t call him but ignore him. The same was true in matters of love, according to the cliché, but he’d never really believed it. Whatever the case, he’d never liked using strategies with women; he felt more comfortable acting spontaneously … Come what may …

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked Blisk, offering him a piece of bread. The white bear took it delicately between his lips and swallowed it in an instant. Bordelli gave him the cheese rinds he’d brought along for him, then the rest of the panino as a bonus, before biting into the apple.

  He decided to play another game with destiny, just for fun. He grabbed a one-hundred-lira coin and, squeezing it in his hand, thought: tails, Eleonora; heads, Adele. He flipped the coin into the air and caught it on the fly. Heads. He felt a twinge of regret. Must he now forget Eleonora? And if it had come up ‘tails’, would he not also have suffered at having to give up the beautiful Adele? He felt silly, but it was amusing just the same. One had only to refuse to believe the coin’s verdict …