‘What’s the name of this shrinking violet?’
‘Adele Terrini.’
‘Let’s go back to before. How did you leave things with Silvano Solvere? Strange name, it reminds me of Solvay soda.’ He was becoming an idiot too, Carrua thought, after spending so much time shut up in this office.
‘That he’ll come and pick me up and take me to see the young lady.’ Simple.
‘In other words, you have to go where he takes you.’ Obvious. ‘And when you’re with the young lady you have to operate on her? By the way, is it a dangerous operation, does it take long?’
Duca explained the operation, using technical terms, nothing vulgar: both he and Carrua hated gratuitous vulgarity. ‘Of course, as a doctor who’s been struck off the register, I can’t even apply a sticking plaster, but I could perform this operation with police consent.’
‘What if the girl gets an infection and dies, what do we do then?’ Carrua asked.
‘You know there’s an answer to that question,’ Duca said irritably. ‘Either you make contact with these people and take the chance of discovering something crucial, or else you leave the files on Turiddu and his lady friend in records, pretend you’ve never heard the name Silvano Solvere, and I go home.’
‘I was thinking of you,’ Carrua said very softly, ‘if the girl dies, or is seriously ill and the thing comes out, even if you did it for the police, it’s all up with you.’
‘Why, hasn’t it been all up with me for a long time now?’
Carrua stared at the sun outside the window. When he spoke again, he actually sounded sad. ‘So you’ve made up your mind.’
‘I thought I’d already said I had.’ Even the most intelligent people, like Carrua, could be obtuse sometimes.
‘All right.’ He hated and admired Duca, just as he had hated and admired Duca’s father, for his doggedness and inflexibility. With no money, no career, with a sister and a little child to support, instead of minding his own business and sorting himself out, he was throwing himself into the most hopeless kind of work there was, the work of a policeman, an Italian policeman at that, an English or American policeman would have been another matter, but an Italian policeman gets it from everyone: stones from strikers, bullets or stab wounds from criminals, insults behind his back from the general public, reprimands from his superiors and not much money from the State. ‘All right, but do things the way I say. Mascaranti is coming with you.’
He liked that idea.
‘And the car will have a radio.’
He wasn’t too keen on that. ‘A car with a radio is too conspicuous,’ he said. ‘They gave me the money, so it’s quite likely they’re keeping their eyes on me, that’s why I came here on foot today. If they notice the radio in the car, that’ll be the end of it.’
‘Mascaranti will have to make sure you’re not spotted. But that’s not all, I’m also going to have our special team, the S. squad, tailing you.’ He started shouting. ‘And don’t tell me that’s too many people. If you know anything at all about this profession, you must already have realised what could happen to you.’
No, he didn’t tell him it was too many people: Carrua was absolutely right.
‘And Mascaranti will also let you have a gun,’ he said it harshly, but without hope. ‘With a special temporary permit, of course, because you aren’t allowed to carry a weapon.’
‘No, no guns, I don’t like being armed.’
‘These people are often armed.’
He refused categorically, vaingloriously. ‘Don’t give me a gun, I’m already dangerous enough without one.’ He wanted to say more – that if he had a gun he wouldn’t hesitate to fire it, he wouldn’t hesitate at all – but he didn’t say it, because Carrua knew.
‘All right, forget it,’ Carrua said, yielding. ‘That means Mascaranti will have to take care of both of you. Another thing is, these people will phone you at home, so we’ll put a tap on your phone and record all the calls you make or receive.’
That was fine with him.
‘And one more thing: I have to inform the Commissioner of the investigation.’ He stood up. ‘If anything happened to you, I’d be fired, they’d send me back to Sardinia to eat bread and olives.’
‘You seem to be eating plenty of olives here.’
‘Don’t try and be clever,’ Carrua said. ‘Just tell yourself I have no desire to be fired, so I don’t want anything to happen to you. It doesn’t matter to me if we discover anything or not, because we’re not going to eradicate these people all by ourselves. But I want you in one piece, and I don’t want us all to end up in the newspapers.’
Duca also stood up, a little less irritable now. ‘Let’s go, Mascaranti.’
‘Yes, doctor,’ Mascaranti said.
Carrua also stood up. ‘He doesn’t like to be called doctor,’ he said to Mascaranti: he was the one who was irritable now. He picked up the pile of ten-thousand-lire notes. ‘And you have to keep this and spend it was as if it was yours. These people may search you and they need to find their money on you.’
Of course. Below, in the courtyard of Headquarters, a pigeon, a single pigeon, stood motionless in the sun, as if it was asleep, or as if it was a fake bird made of stone, and the car with the radio, which Mascaranti had gone to fetch, passed within one metre of the pigeon, but the bird did not move.
4
The bell rang, very, very politely. Mascaranti shut himself up in the kitchen and moved his gun from his holster to his jacket pocket. Duca went and opened the door. They didn’t do this every time the bell rang, but since nobody ever rang that bell now that his sister and niece were in the Brianza, and in fact nobody had rung it for four days now, especially not in that polite – too polite – way, they knew this was the moment they had been waiting for. And as soon as he opened the door, Duca saw the case, it really was a case, not a big bag, and he saw the woman’s beautiful long legs, such young legs, and such a young face, and her body encased in a bright red dress coat.
‘Dr Lamberti?’ The voice was less young, and much less polite than the way the bell had rung: although she spoke Italian, there was a strong tinge of Milanese dialect, that heavy, vulgar Milanese from the far edge of the city, from Corsico or Cologno Monzese, where Milanese, unrefined but pleasant, merges with more rural and alien-sounding dialects.
He nodded, yes, he was Dr Lamberti, Duca Lamberti, and he let her in, because he had already understood.
‘Silvano sent me,’ she said in the hall. She wasn’t wearing make-up, apart from lipstick and false eyebrows drawn with a pencil, with blank spaces beneath where the real ones should have been, an effect he found clownish and repulsive. He motioned her towards the surgery. The case must be a little heavy, to judge both by the look of it – it was rather like an instrument case, with metal straps – and by the way she was holding it. ‘Take a seat.’ They were clever: they had sent the girl here instead of coming to fetch him, as he had been told they would. Had he been told the truth about anything?
Before sitting, she put the case down in a corner, then took off her dress coat. Under it she was wearing a red slip and sheer black stockings. She picked up her handbag, sat down, looked in her handbag for her cigarettes and lit one. They were Parisiennes. ‘Would you like one?’ She held out the packet.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking one: he liked Parisiennes, and it might mean that the girl spent time in Switzerland or France.
‘Is there anyone else here?’ she asked.
‘Yes, a friend of mine.’ You had to be open with these people, he couldn’t exactly hide Mascaranti in a wardrobe as if this was a bedroom farce. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t lose your temper, I was only asking.’ She was sitting back, comfortable and composed, in the little armchair. ‘It’s quite hot, isn’t it, even with the windows open?’
From the extremely modest glass cabinet he took the instruments he needed, in order to sterilise them. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, but he didn’
t feel the heat the way she did. But heat is a subjective sensation. ‘Yes, it’s starting to get hot.’
‘Sometimes, though, I feel cold, even in July.’
‘I’ll be right back.’ Carrying the instruments in a glass bowl, he went into the kitchen, and without looking at Mascaranti, found a cooking pot in the dresser, filled it with water, threw the instruments into it and switched on the gas. This was his first return to the sacred mission of medicine. The last act he had performed as a doctor had been to kill an old woman who was sick with cancer – you call it euthanasia but you end up in prison all the same – and now once again he was doing a bit of social work, restoring her virginity to a healthy young woman who had absentmindedly lost it.
‘How’s it going?’ Mascaranti asked.
Only when he had lit the gas did he look at him, and reply, ‘Fine.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Did you check downstairs?’ He went to the window which looked out on the courtyard, but withdrew almost immediately: in the courtyards of large cities, the spring air is filled with the smell of stones and rubbish and cooking, which is not very inviting, especially at night.
Mascaranti said yes, he had checked, he had the two-way radio in his pocket, he was really happy about that: this was life, this was work, being able to talk to Sergeant Morini, who was in the Via Pascoli with his squad, simply by taking the two-way radio from his pocket.
‘Call me when it boils, but don’t come in,’ he said to Mascaranti, and went back to the surgery and the virgin. She was still smoking, she had lit another cigarette.
‘I was almost falling asleep in this heat.’
‘Would you mind getting on the couch?’
‘All right. Can I smoke?’
He nodded, and stood watching her, without turning away, as she took off her suspender belt and slip. ‘Go on.’ She put the suspender belt and slip on the little table. From the cabinet he took a pair of rubber gloves and a little bottle of Citrosil, and poured the alcohol on his gloved hands.
‘Will it take long?’ she asked. ‘Silvano told me it doesn’t take long.’
‘I’m the doctor,’ he replied, moving the lamp in order to get more light.
‘You lose your temper easily, I like men who lose their tempers easily.’
She was certainly friendly, with that tinge of outer Milanese dialect in the way she spoke. He began to examine her. It wasn’t easy to see properly, this wasn’t exactly a big operating room, he didn’t have the facilities, he didn’t even have a white coat, a white coat makes an impression, or at any rate he couldn’t find it, where on earth had his sister Lorenza put it, but he had to carry on all the same, he had set out along this road and couldn’t stop now.
‘Have you had any diseases or infections?’
Calmly throwing the end of the Parisienne on the floor and looking up at the ceiling, she told him the name of the disease she had had. ‘Can’t hide anything from you doctors.’
He moved the lamp on the little table even closer, but it didn’t give much light. ‘Have you ever had an abortion?’
‘Yes, three.’
‘Abortions or miscarriages?’ He thought the answer was obvious.
‘Well,’ she said sadly, slightly bitterly, ‘only women who want children have miscarriages, it’s those who don’t want them who need dynamiting.’
He raised his head and took off his gloves. ‘The procedure will only take a few minutes, but after it you’ll have to lie here on the couch for at least two hours.’
‘I’ll have a nap,’ she said. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I like smoking lying down. Can you get my cigarettes out of my handbag for me?’
Of course he could. He opened the little black bag in front of her – it was full to the brim, like a make-up case – and took out the yellow packet of Parisiennes and the lighter.
‘Take one yourself.’
‘Thank you.’ He lit a cigarette for her, then one for himself. He had learnt to be a good actor: you had to, otherwise you’d drown. He’d even be able to join the Piccolo Teatro, Strehler1 would refine his talents, but he already had what it took to be an actor. He continued with his playacting: ‘When are you getting married?’ He said it almost gently: if the girl wanted to seduce him before the operation, let her, it was all part of the performance.
‘Don’t remind me: tomorrow morning.’ Lying there, her knees bent because the couch was too short for her, she smoked and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. Her black hair, not very long but thick, created a dark halo on the little white pillow: yes, she had a sour, slightly bony, slightly vulgar face, but she gave off intense waves of sensuality in the way she moved, spoke and behaved.
‘You’re getting married tomorrow morning?’ His tone was not so much incredulous as resigned.
‘Yes, unfortunately.’ Another little cloud of smoke drifted up to the ceiling. ‘Don’t you have anything to drink? I mean something strong, to forget.’
‘Maybe.’ He went back to the kitchen. He must have a bottle or two of whisky left over from the time of Michelangelo’s David,2 and in fact there was one, one and a half, he took the half, and a glass, and looked at Mascaranti. Mascaranti was looking at the little bowl with the instruments in it.
‘The water has just started boiling,’ Mascaranti said.
‘Let it boil for ten minutes, then call me.’ He went back to the study and the girl was still smoking: even though the windows were open, all the smoke produced by this tobacco addict couldn’t pass quickly enough through the closed shutters. ‘I have whisky. Say when.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, propping herself on one elbow and taking a good swig. ‘If only you knew how awful it is, a man can’t imagine it.’ She gave him back the glass.
‘What is?’
‘Getting married to a man who isn’t right for you.’
It was true, a man couldn’t know that.
‘And that’s not the worst thing.’
‘What is?’
‘Having to leave the man you like.’ She gestured for a cigarette, and Duca gave her one and lit it for her and she continued, ‘Silvano and I have been making love for a week. We know these are the last days we’ve got, and we feel really bad.’
This was nice, a romantic touch amid all the filth, if you could call it romantic. He gave her more to drink. Women are always the weak link in any chain. But then she said, ‘Don’t give me too much to drink, or I’ll start chattering and then I’ll be here for more than three hours.’
‘Leave it if you don’t want it.’ Another brilliant piece of acting, pretending to walk away with the glass.
‘No, please, if you had to get married to a butcher tomorrow morning, you’d want to drink a lot too,’ and she made him give her back the glass, and this time, too, she took a big swig, paused, took another big swig, then sat there pensively, holding the glass in her hand.
This could be useful, knowing that she was about to marry a butcher. It wouldn’t take Mascaranti more than half an hour to find out who, among the men getting married the following day, were butchers: there couldn’t be all that many of them, there might only be one, the butcher.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ll turn out the light and open the shutters for a while, too, that way we can let out some of the smoke.’
‘I’m sorry, I always stink the place up with my cigarettes.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said to her gently, in the darkness, opening the shutters onto the mild Milanese night, ‘it’s just that this apartment isn’t well ventilated.’
‘Since you have the window open, give me another cigarette, already lit.’
‘Don’t you think you smoke too much?’ he said: she still had the other cigarette between her fingers, he could see the glow of the embers. In this filth, you had to be careful. The visitor known to him only as Silvano Solvere had sent this girl ahead to sound him out: she wasn’t born yesterday, there had to be a purpose behind all the nonsense she was spouting and the odd way she w
as behaving. He mustn’t make a mistake, he really couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes in his life.
‘Thank you,’ she said when he had given her the lighted cigarette, ‘I’m starting to get quite excited, being here in the dark with a handsome man like you.’
Her words made him feel a bit nauseous, but also made him want to laugh at the insolent confidence some people had in other people’s innocence. ‘Not me,’ he said.
‘All right, but don’t get angry, otherwise I might feel even more excited, I told you I like men who get angry easily.’
The way she said this gave him pause for thought: he was no longer so sure that it was a trap, or that they were testing him, trying to see what he was made of.
‘It’s been boiling for ten minutes,’ came Mascaranti’s voice from the hall.
Duca closed the shutters and switched the light back on. She was completely naked.
‘You didn’t need to do that,’ he said harshly. ‘Cover yourself.’
‘Go on, get angry, I like it.’
‘Stop that or I’ll throw you out.’
‘Yes, yes, throw me out, throw me to the ground.’
He always got the rare specimens, the trouvailles, the collector’s items of society. This time, an uncontrollable nymphomaniac. He went to the couch, grabbed her hair, lifted her head, and hit her with the edge of his hand, but not hard, at least not too hard, on the forehead, between the eyes and above the nose. A slap wouldn’t have worked, it would only have excited her even more, instead of which the blow made her sigh, and she relaxed onto the pillow, she hadn’t fainted, but the dizziness had stemmed the outpouring of her libido and stopped her from protesting, at least for the moment.
‘Put these back on. I’ll be right back.’ He picked up the bra and slip she had thrown down on the floor amid the cigarette ends and went into the kitchen.
When he came back with the little bowl of sterilised instruments, she was dressed in her underwear and sitting on the couch. ‘What did you do to me? I feel dizzy, I feel like I do when I’m in Rome and eat a lot of lamb and drink a lot of wine, and afterwards I feel sick, like this.’
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