And Then You Die

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘So who did you think was calling?’ Zen asked.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Drinking.’

  ‘Drinking what?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Are you all right, Gilberto?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  Zen took a deep breath.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Can I come round?’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘In an hour or two?’

  ‘Whenever.’

  ‘I’ve been travelling all night and I’m exhausted.’

  ‘So you’re not feeling chirpy? Good. I couldn’t stand chirpiness.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much risk of that.’

  Gilberto hung up. Zen followed suit, wishing he hadn’t called in the first place. Since leaving the police and setting up on his own account in the security and electronic surveillance business, Nieddu’s career had been a roller-coaster ride of success, failure and close brushes with the law. When Zen had last been in touch, enlisting his friend’s help in extricating himself from a difficult situation he had found himself in during his posting to Catania, the situation had seemed to be improving. This latest contact seemed to confirm that, once again, the Sardinian had not overlooked an opportunity to plunge himself back into crisis.

  Gilberto and his wife Rosa lived in Via Carlo Emanuele, near Porta Maggiore. They owned an apartment in a modern block, which had been borderline affordable when they bought it. By now, it must have been worth a fortune. Zen walked up the gleaming stairs to the first floor and rang the bell. Outside the tall metal-framed windows, it was already dark. He had slept for over three hours.

  He had to ring twice before the door opened and a man’s face appeared. Unshaven, unfocussed, at once haggard and bloated, it was barely identifiable as that of Gilberto Nieddu.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, throwing the door open so violently that it slammed against the wall, and instantly turning back inside.

  Zen followed, closing the door quietly behind him. The smells hit him first, a whole orchestra of them tuning up before the conductor arrived and they unleashed their full power. Once inside, the visual aspect kicked in. The pleasant, bright, orderly apartment Zen remembered had been transformed into an unrecognizable state of squalid disorder and abandon. In the living room, dirty clothes lay across the furniture and floor, an array of empty bottles and used glasses covered the table, and the air was blue with cigarette smoke. The kitchen to the left had piles of dishes and saucepans on every work surface, while still more were stacked high in the sink.

  ‘Well, this is the scene of the crime, Dottor Zen,’ Gilberto remarked with arch jocularity, reaching for one of the half-empty glasses. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Zen coughed apologetically. He did not sit down.

  ‘It looks like Rosa’s left you,’ he said.

  Nieddu laughed.

  ‘Bravo! Nothing can escape the eagle eye and awesome intelligence of the renowned Aurelio Zen. He takes a few seemingly insignificant and unrelated clues overlooked by less astute observers, processes them faster than a supercomputer and lays bare the mystery which had baffled the finest minds of Europe. Yes, the little bitch has left me.’

  Zen sighed heavily.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Four days ago? Three? Six? I forget. Who cares? She’s gone, that’s all that matters. She’s gone and she’s not coming back. She made that very clear.’

  He collapsed on the sofa, grabbed a bottle and poured some colourless spirit into the glass he had been using.

  ‘Very clear indeed,’ he added quietly, as though addressing the bottle.

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘Back home in Sassari with her younger brother,’ Nieddu continued in the same quiet tone, all bravado gone. ‘Who is threatening to come over shortly and break my legs.’

  ‘And the children?’

  ‘With her, of course. I came home one day to find the place empty, all their clothes and belongings gone, and a note on the table.’

  Zen lit a cigarette.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A friend of hers saw me and a member of my staff having dinner at a restaurant down at the beach in Lido di Ostia when I was supposedly in Turin on business. Rosa had had her suspicions about me for years, but this was the first time she’d ever been able to prove anything. Her note gave me to understand that she was taking steps to ensure that it would also be the last.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘So you’ve been doing this for years and finally got caught.’

  Nieddu refilled his glass.

  ‘Want a drink? No? Good idea. Yes, I got caught, and you know why? Because I’d stopped trying so hard. That business in Lido di Ostia, I’d never have risked anything that stupid in the old days. If I said I was going to Turin, I’d go. What happened there was another matter. But I got lazy. Mobile phones haven’t helped, either. Time was, you had to say where you’d be staying and leave the number, but now you could be anywhere.’

  He took a large gulp of his drink.

  ‘But that’s not really it.’

  ‘So what is?’

  Nieddu lit a cigarette and lay down on the sofa.

  ‘She got old, Aurelio. What else can I say? She got old.’

  Zen did not reply. After a while, Nieddu leaned over and flicked the ash of his cigarette into his drink.

  ‘You know that saying about generals? That they’re always superbly prepared to fight the last war? It’s not just generals, it’s all of us.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Can you imagine if we were twenty again, or even thirty, how easy it would be for us to win at the kind of games people that age play? We’d be unbeatable, not least because we wouldn’t care too much if we won, the way we did back then. We were under too much pressure, there was too much at stake. No wonder we fucked up.’

  ‘I still don’t see what this has to do with you and Rosa.’

  ‘I thought I was one of those generals. I thought I had the situation all worked out. Basically, I thought I could get away with a certain amount of action on the side, providing I was discreet about it. But that wasn’t the real point.’

  ‘So what was?’

  ‘That it was still working for us in bed. Maybe she even did have some proof of what I was getting up to, I don’t know, but as long as she was getting her share of attention it didn’t bother her that much. But things were changing, like they always do. You don’t notice it, any more than you notice the days growing shorter at this time of year. But they are, imperceptibly. The solstice is past and winter’s on its way.’

  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 need 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 it’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 strange land 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.’

  ‘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, it’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 looked 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.’r />
  ‘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.’