Again that breath of kindness: ‘It isn’t easy to give advice.’
This miracle of kindness and surrender was possible because, at least in calls between Milan and Inverigo, videophones hadn’t been invented yet, in other words, they could still talk without seeing each other, and over the telephone she could emerge, in those few minutes of conversation, from the abyss of her desolate state as a victim, an aesthetic outcast, and again became a woman like any other, she felt that she could, with her voice, do what every other woman is able to do with a man.
‘It isn’t really advice, it’s a game,’ he returned the smile the woman behind the cash register gave him and with his eyes asked for a bean and took it and crushed it between his fingers, just to perpetrate violence on something, because violence against people was prohibited by the law.
‘A game? Really?’
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I have to make a choice.’ It was pleasant to crush a bean between your fingers, your fingers felt rough but clean and gave off a cool, bitter smell of spring. ‘I’ll say, heads or tails, and you have to choose either heads or tails.’
‘But then you must tell me the choice you have to make.’
‘No, Livia, if I tell you that, it isn’t a game any more. You just have to say heads or tails. Heads is one of the two things I have to choose, tails is the other, but you mustn’t know what it’s about.’
‘Then I have to toss a coin.’ There was a smile in her voice.
‘Yes, are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Heads or tails?’ The woman with the beans smiled, because she was listening good-naturedly, and he too smiled, waiting for Livia to reply: heads meant being a doctor, choosing a sensible profession, a normal, quiet life, while tails meant being a policeman, playing cops and robbers.
He heard her sigh. ‘Tails.’
He did not reply immediately, then said, ‘Thanks.’
‘Signor Lamberti,’ she said, ‘when we have to choose between two things it’s because we prefer one of the two more, even though it’s not as sensible as the other. At least tell me if tails was the thing you preferred.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he replied almost before she had finished speaking: exactly the thing he preferred, even if it was the less sensible of the two.
The next morning Mascaranti said to him, ‘So let’s go to Inverigo.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s stay here, next to that case.’
Mascaranti saw him pointing at the case, out there in the hall, as soon as you opened the door everybody could see it, and he did not ask if he had changed his mind, he did not say that he knew, he was an intelligent man and said only, ‘Yes.’
And they started waiting again, the thief catcher and his assistant, in the kitchen, that way they were near the precious case, exactly the way that, on safari, you stayed near the goat you were using as bait and waited for the lion to arrive. And the lion arrived.
7
She was a lioness. Anatomically so tall and brown, with those white boots over black cowboy-style trousers and the white jacket held together just over the breasts by a big black button in such a way that on either side of the button the breasts swelled as if to advertise them, she might even be considered beautiful. But the vulgarity of her face, of the slightest expression of her face, the vulgarity of her slightest gesture, even the way she held her handbag, the vulgarity of her voice, reminiscent not of a region, because it was too vulgar to be a dialect, but of army barracks where the recruits converse in obscenities, or the waiting rooms of syphilis clinics where the patients tell each other their life stories, that was the kind of vulgarity she evoked, and in spite of her height and brownness and sex appeal it was repellent.
‘Dr Duca Lamberti?’ she said as soon as Duca had opened the door to her, and as she said it, she looked at the case, because the case was right there and it was impossible not to see it.
‘Yes,’ he said, letting her in, while Mascaranti appeared from the kitchen.
‘I’m a friend of poor Silvano’s,’ she said, and there was something very vulgar in that poor Silvano, as if she was trying to convince him of the depth of her grief at Silvano’s death.
‘Oh,’ Duca said, not coldly: there was even a touch of happiness in his voice, he sensed that the safari had begun.
‘He left a case here, and I’ve come to pick it up.’
Duca pointed to the case in the corner. ‘Is it that one?’ he asked, and only a stupid lioness could not have noticed the irony of the question.
‘Yes,’ she said, oblivious.
Duca crouched next to the case and opened it, lifted some of the wood filings, took out the grip of the submachine gun and showed it to her. ‘With this?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, going closer, still oblivious.
‘You can check it’s all there, if you like.’
His great politeness made the woman, in all her obliviousness, play the lady. ‘Oh, there’s no need.’
He closed the case again. ‘Then take it.’ He held out the case and she took it.
Mascaranti was watching. Duca went to the door, as if to open it, instead of which he turned the key three times to close it and said, ‘Mascaranti, show her your ID’: the police ID, the thief catcher’s ID.
Mascaranti took his ID from the pocket of his jacket and showed it to the lioness, and standing there with the shiny white handbag in one hand, and the case in the other – it was so heavy that the veins on the back of her hand had already become swollen with blood – she took a good look at the badge, almost as if she was a connoisseur, and even glanced at Mascaranti’s face to compare it with the photograph, then, gently, but with a face that, even under the very vulgar make-up, which suited her, became distorted with anger – lionesses easily get angry – put the case back down on the floor, spat in Mascaranti’s face and said, ‘Filthy bastards, you’re always screwing us, just like your …’ indicating an unmistakable male attribute.
‘No, Mascaranti,’ Duca said, stopping Mascaranti’s left arm, which was rotating like an Indian club, a fraction of a second before it landed a lethal slap on the lioness’s face. ‘And you, give me your handbag, I want to see your papers, I don’t like talking to people I don’t know.’
The lioness spat at him, too: we each use whatever means of communication we possess, and in her case the principal means seemed to be her saliva glands. Duca was able to avoid this communication only by a fraction of a millimetre, but he was unable to prevent Mascaranti hitting the girl this time.
It was a nasty slap: she did not cry out, but her mouth suddenly sweated blood and she slammed against the wall and would have collapsed on the floor if Duca hadn’t supported her.
‘I told you no, Mascaranti!’ he yelled angrily.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mascaranti yelled back, ‘but I don’t like people spitting in my face and I don’t like them spitting at my friends either.’
‘Let’s stop shouting,’ Duca said, ‘and while I’m here I forbid you to use violence.’ He lowered his voice a little. ‘I want to be the only one to use it.’ He supported the woman, who was dazed, her mouth covered in blood, and took her into the kitchen and led her to the sink. ‘Clean yourself up.’ He gave her a napkin, found a half-finished bottle of whisky, and poured a little bit of it into a glass. ‘Wipe your mouth with this.’
She wiped her mouth a bit, and drank the rest, took a small mirror from her handbag and examined her teeth: she had withstood the blow quite well, and had broken only one canine.
‘Filthy bastards,’ she said, looking at her tooth.
‘Sit down and drink some more,’ Duca said. ‘You can finish the bottle if you like.’
She sat down. She was a bit tottery, because she was still in shock, and her left cheek was swelling. He poured the rest of the whisky into the glass, filling the glass almost to the brim, until the bottle was empty. She immediately took the glass and drank: she drank the whisky as if it was cold tea.
‘There�
�s still some blood coming out,’ Duca said, ‘clean yourself up and in the meantime I’ll get you some ice.’
‘Filthy bastards,’ she said, and stood up and went and washed herself.
He approached her with the ice holder, took out three or four cubes, managed to break them with a fork, filled a spoon with the fragments and said, ‘Keep this in your mouth.’
He spoonfed her as if she were a baby, and she stared at him, trying to make it clear to him with her eyes – in fact she made it very clear – that the only thing she wanted to do was spit the ice back in his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sitting down, ‘but you shouldn’t have provoked us.’
Every now and again there was a wavering in the look of hate she gave him: his politeness, the kind way he spoke to her, couldn’t have been familiar to her and puzzled her. She stood up, spat the now melted ice into the sink, sat down again, her black hair turning bluish in the ray of sunlight that fell on her head, took a big gulp of whisky, cleaned her lips with the tissue, checked that her mouth was no longer bleeding, and said, ‘Filthy bastards.’
This was a problem that had sometimes vaguely exercised Duca: how to instil obedience in a woman, how to get her to cooperate. Duca considered the use of force on a man perfectly fair and reasonable. If you ask a man, ‘Excuse me, do you know who killed that old fellow?’ and the man replies, ‘I don’t know,’ a series of slaps, or even kicks, may suddenly remind the man as to who killed the old fellow and even make him reply, ‘I did.’
But for reasons – instincts, rather – that must have been completely irrational, he felt himself incapable of using force on a woman. An ancestral sense of chivalry perhaps, because if a woman can kill – and the one facing him now would certainly have killed him if she had been armed, and would have done so without hesitation, killed him or Mascaranti or both – then that woman should be prepared for the reactions of the person she is ready to kill, as well as all the punishments consequent on her ability to kill. But despite this geometrical demonstration, he hesitated to use force on a woman. If he used it, in three minutes he would know everything he needed to know, everything she knew, but he refused to do so.
‘Listen,’ he said.
‘Filthy bastards,’ she said.
She was a woman who would yield only to violence, Duca thought, looking beyond the woman, at the view of the shabby courtyard afforded by the kitchen window, and given that he did not want to use violence, that meant she would not yield.
‘All right,’ he said, then: ‘Mascaranti.’
He was also there in the kitchen, the ray of sunlight that had hit the head of the lioness, in continuing its trajectory, came to rest on Mascaranti’s dark brown tie as he leaned against the dresser. ‘Yes, doctor.’
‘Please phone the house and tell them to come and get this lady. Warn them that she spits and resists.’ The house meant Headquarters.
‘Yes, doctor.’ Mascaranti went out into the hall to phone.
‘Filthy bastards,’ the woman said.
‘All right,’ Duca said, ‘you’ve gambled away your freedom. If you’d listened to me, in half an hour I’d have let you go free, we have no real interest in arresting a nonentity like you. I only wanted to know two things from you: the whereabouts of the friend who sent you here to pick up the case, and the whereabouts of Ulrico Brambilla. You just had to tell me those two things and I’d have let you go, we don’t have room in prison for nobodies like you.’
She repeated her one phrase, arrogantly lighting a cigarette with an eye-catching gold Dunhill lighter.
‘Very well,’ Duca said. ‘In a quarter of an hour you’ll be in a cell and I assure you that you won’t get out again for four or five years. There’s criminal conspiracy, there’s arms trafficking, and whatever else we find, and even though you aren’t the head of the gang, you won’t get out until 1971 or ’72.’
Mascaranti came back to the kitchen and said, ‘I’ve phoned, they’re on their way.’
She looked at the two of them, drank, took a drag on her cigarette then repeated her phrase.
‘Dr Lamberti,’ Mascaranti said, ‘I can’t resist.’
‘Then go downstairs and wait for the car,’ Duca said in a low voice. ‘When it comes, come back up with the officers and take the girl away.’
‘All right, doctor,’ Mascaranti said, and as he went out, the girl said her phrase after him and he stoically refused to turn round.
Duca stood up, took a glass and filled it with water from the tap: it wasn’t exactly water from a mountain spring, but the effort to control yourself makes you thirsty. ‘It hurts to sacrifice yourself like this for a cretin like your friend. And I’ll tell you why he’s a cretin: because he lets you walk around dressed like that, disguised as a gangster’s moll or a chorus girl on a TV variety show.’
‘Filthy bastard,’ she said. She drank the whisky, lit another cigarette, and touched her swollen cheek every now and again.
‘We’re talking about arms trafficking,’ Duca said, ‘betrayal, complicity with terrorists, multiple killings. Turiddu Sompani throws a couple in the Lambro, Michela Vasorelli and Gianpietro Ghislesi, then someone, maybe Silvano Solvere, throws Turiddu Sompani in the Naviglio, then someone else, maybe your friend, throws Silvano in the Naviglio, and we could let you all carry on, and in a few days they’ll kill your friend. As you see, I know something about you people.’
Strangely, she said nothing, just finished drinking the whisky remaining in the glass.
‘And your friend sends you here, in a white Opel, dressed like a gangster’s moll. I’m surprised the police didn’t stop you, just seeing you at the wheel of that car. When we saw it from the window, we thought, here comes the secretary of Murder Inc.’
She did not repeat her phrase, she looked at him with hate, but remained silent. Mechanically, she picked up the glass but it was empty. ‘Isn’t there any more?’ she asked.
‘I’ll send for a bottle immediately. What kind do you prefer?’
She looked at him with hate, but also with uncertainty, she didn’t like to be mocked, but looking at him she realised he wasn’t mocking her. ‘I’d prefer a Sambuca,’ she said.
The entryphone was right there in the kitchen, he asked the caretaker to send Mascaranti to buy a bottle of Sambuca and fifty grams of unground coffee. ‘Emphasise that: unground.’ The girl might want to chew a few coffee beans with the Sambuca. He lit a cigarette. ‘But the stupidity of sending you here, to pick up a case with a submachine gun, as if it was a tin of biscuits! No way is that an operation for a woman. To crown it all, we’re with the police, and so you’ve fallen into a trap, but even if I’d been “straight” and not a filthy bastard of a policeman, do you think I’d have given the case, just like that, to the first woman who comes and says she’s a friend of Silvano? At least two men should have come to pick up a case with something like that in it, two armed men, not a girl.’
‘He couldn’t come himself,’ she said, ‘not now.’
‘Then he should have waited until he could, unless he’s an idiot.’
For the first time she lowered her eyes.
‘And the stupidity of all of you killing each other! Turiddu Sompani was an important man for you people, and so was Silvano Solvere, so why did you kill them? And who’s going to kill you now? I never give advice, but as long as you hang out with idiots, things are going to go badly for you, just as they are now, falling into the hands of the police because of an idiot, and with the certainty of years and years in prison. And prison’s not a good place to be. But I can still give you a choice: you have a valid passport, here we are, let’s see’ – and from the back pocket of his trousers he took the ten-thousand-lire notes that Silvano Solvere had given him before that delicate operation – ‘twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, this is two hundred and fifty thousand lire’ – he had spent the rest – ‘it’s all I have, if I had more I’d give you more, if you answer a few of my questions and if you take me to
where your friend is, I promise you I’ll let you go free, you can go to France, maybe you’ve already been there and have a few friends there. I promise you solemnly.’ He looked at the money: it was the devil’s money, let it go back to the devil.
Her face pitifully distorted by the swollen cheek, she smiled and said, vulgarly, ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday either, to think I could deceive someone like you with a trap like that,’ Duca said, and then he began to seethe because he too, when you came down to it, had a nervous system, just like Mascaranti, and he threw the twenty-five ten-thousand-lire notes down on the table and raised his voice: ‘If I made you that offer it’s because it isn’t a trap. But go on, try and be clever, the prisons are always as full as Viareggio in high season, because you people are so stupid and ignorant. I’m telling you I’ll let you go free, I’m giving you two hundred and fifty thousand lire and you can drive away in your white Opel, because we aren’t interested in whores like you, but you won’t believe me, you think it’s a trap. If I wanted to lay a trap I’d lay a more intelligent one than that, wouldn’t I?’
She spat on the ten-thousand-lire notes, making a grimace of pain as she did so because with her mouth swollen it hurt to spit.
‘All right,’ Duca said. He stood up and went and opened the door to Mascaranti, then came back into the kitchen with the bottle of Sambuca and the unground coffee. He poured the Sambuca into a clean glass and put a few coffee beans into the liquid. For himself, he poured some more water from the tap. ‘I don’t even need you. When you don’t come back your friend will say, “Where’s my baby, where’s my white Opel?” And he’ll come looking for it, I just have to stay here and wait, with that case there in the hall, for him to come here, for the case, for the Opel, and also for you, and I’ll leave his Opel outside the front door, with a colleague posted next to it, he’ll arrive and we’ll grab him, you’ll go straight to Police Headquarters, if that’s how you want it, everybody has the right to reside where they like.’ Keeping his patience was starting to tire him out: if he hadn’t had ancestors who had won lots of chivalry tournaments, he would have got her to talk in next to no time.
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