‘It was then, my mother said, that Agostino started to change seriously. Until then, it had been gradual, a series of variations on a person she had always known. But from the moment the train started, he metamorphosed — my word, of course, not hers — into a creature superficially resembling the man she had married, only a dream double, the same and yet not the same, at once alien and fully recognizable. That was the worst aspect of the whole thing, she said. We all imagine horrors happening to us. We know horrors happen. But we imagine them happening in unforeseen circumstances, at the hands of people we do not know and would never — even as they killed or tortured us — acknowledge as fully human. But this was Betty’s lover, her husband, and before her eyes he was turning into somebody she would have fled from if she had encountered him late at night at a bus stop back in Manchester, with the rain falling and no one about.
‘There were plenty of people about once they got to Randazzo. More than enough, in fact. The whole community had turned out to welcome Agostino home, and to pass judgement on his foreign bride. First and foremost amongst them, of course, was Agostino’s mother. She and my grandfather were going to be sharing the family’s small house with the newly-weds, so she was naturally curious to see just what her son had dragged home from his adventures abroad. She was not impressed.’
‘God, it sounds like a story by Verga!’
‘This was thirty years ago, an hour’s journey from where we are now. My mother was very quickly given to understand that her mother-in-law ran the household, handled the finances, and made all the decisions. Her appeals to Agostino made no impression. He couldn’t understand why she couldn’t understand that this was normal and natural. As the days passed, his metamorphosis ran its course. Any remaining hint of romantic interest completely vanished. They were husband and wife, that was all. He would fulfil his side of the bargain, according to the local standards, and he expected her to do likewise.
‘She learned that she was not to leave the house without a valid reason and only after obtaining permission from him or his mother, and never alone. Such a thing would bring shame on the family, and she would suffer the consequences. He, on the other hand, was free to disappear for hours or even days at a time, without being expected to offer the slightest explanation. Husband and wife would go out together only for family or communal events at which their absence might be remarked upon. If she uttered a word of complaint, she would be reminded that there was plenty of cleaning, cooking or sewing to do, and that idleness breeds vice. Anyway, she would soon be a mother. That would take care of her strange foreign restlessness.
‘And for a year or two, she told me, it did. She was totally enchanted with me, totally absorbed by my needs and my company. Everything else ceased to matter. She named me Corinna, after a song by Bob Dylan which she was fond of, and she devoted herself to my happiness. She wanted to take me back to England, to show off to her family, but Agostino kept prevaricating, saying that it was too expensive. In the end her father sent Betty a ticket. Despite his previous reservations, Agostino bought one for himself, and off they went.
‘I was duly admired and cooed over, but in every other way the visit was a disaster. Betty’s parents had never approved of Agostino, and he now stopped making any attempt to ingratiate himself with them. He even pretended that he couldn’t speak or understand English any more. Even worse, my mother’s eyes were opened by this first taste of liberty since leaving England. It was sweet while it lasted, but the return to Randazzo was all the more bitter. She had bought a stock of contraceptive pills in Manchester, and now started taking them. There would be no more children with Agostino, she had decided.
‘The problem was the one that already existed. As I grew up, she became more and more overwhelmed by the stifling dimensions of the world she lived in — not only for her sake, but for mine. The idea that her daughter would grow up to be one of these local cloistered breeding machines and maids-of-all-work horrified her. She couldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.
‘She made several attempts to escape, the first by bus. It left at five in the morning, bound for Catania. There she planned to take the train to Rome and cable her father for money to fly home. Early one morning she rose quietly, dressed herself and me and sneaked out of the house with only her handbag, some money she had set aside, and her passport. The bus was waiting in the square, the door open and the engine running, but when she tried to board, holding me in her arms, the driver told her there was no room. The bus was almost empty, she pointed out. It was now, he said, but he was picking up a large group in the next village, a comitiva going down to Catania for a political rally. She told him to sell her a reserved ticket for the next day, but he told her she would have to apply in person at the head office.
‘The next time, she tried the railway. This was more difficult, because it meant slipping away in the middle of the morning. Somehow she managed to get to the station without being stopped, but once again it seemed that there was a problem. The train had been delayed, possibly even cancelled, the station master told her. He would make a phone call and find out what was going on before she wasted her money on a ticket. Five minutes later, Agostino appeared. He led us back to the house, where I was taken from her. She wouldn’t tell me what he did to her then, but that evening she was called before her mother-in-law.
‘“These adventures are pointless and stupid,” she told my mother contemptuously. “You may as well get that into your head right away.” My mother spat defiance. She was a British citizen and they couldn’t keep her here against her will. Agostino’s mother smiled. Of course not, she said. My mother was free to leave whenever she wanted — the sooner the better, her tone implied. But alone. She could leave, but they would never give up the child.
‘My mother threatened to go to the police, and the visible contempt of her mother-in-law deepened still further. The law would back the family all the way, she said, but people like them didn’t need policemen and judges to defend what was theirs. Agostino and his friends were perfectly capable of doing that themselves. And they would rather see me dead than taken from them. My mother said she had no doubt that they meant exactly what they said.
‘At last the situation was clear. She could leave, but only if she abandoned me. If she wanted me, she had to stay. I don’t think she ever quite appreciated what it must have cost them to be so explicit. With one of their own kind they would never have expressed themselves so frankly. The whole exchange would have been conducted in undertones and innuendoes, messages containing other messages, all in code. But my mother was a foreigner, and they had to make sure that she had understood.’
‘My God! So what did she do?’
Corinna put her head on one side and smiled. One of the reasons she looked so different from usual, Carla realized, was that she was wearing a lot more eye make-up.
‘Ah, well, that’ll have to wait,’ said Corinna with finality. ‘Enough about my mother for one evening. Your birthday is coming up, you told me. Would you like to go away for the weekend to celebrate?’
‘Where?’
‘What about Taormina? Quite apart from the pleasure of your company, I’d love to get out of town for a while, and away from these young thugs with their radios and guns.’
‘But don’t you want to go with your boyfriend?’ asked Carla coyly.
Corinna Nunziatella gave her a level look.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘But you said you were in love.’
There was a long, awkward silence.
I’m sorry,’ said Carla. ‘I didn’t mean to pry’
‘Taormina’s a charming place!’ Corinna went on eagerly. ‘And I know a very nice hotel, right in the centre but completely secluded. We’ll have to give some thought to getting rid of my escort, but I think it can be managed. If you’re interested, that is. Are you?’
The two women regarded one another for a moment.
‘What have I got to lose?’ said Carla
.
In Zen’s experience, Roman taxi drivers came in just two forms, as though cloned: threateningly sullen or manically voluble. A codicil appended to this law dictated that you always got the one least suited to your current state of mind, so it came as no surprise to Zen when the driver who picked him up at Fiumicino turned out to be one of the chattiest and most inquisitive.
Where had Zen flown in from? Sicily! Eh, must be hot there, this time of year! Even hotter than here in Rome! His cousin had married a Sicilian girl, who was definitely hotter than the local article if Maurizio was to be believed! They were living in Belgium now, if you could call it living. And where to? The Fatebenefratelli? Of course! At once, if not sooner! A wonderful hospital. Three of his own relatives had gone under the knife there. But no one in Zen’s family was involved, God willing? A friend? And Zen had come all the way from Sicily to be with him in his hour of need? Now that was real friendship! He himself, Paolo Curtillo, could do with a few friends like that, instead of which he was surrounded by leeches, vampires and bloodsuckers whose only thought was to enrich themselves at his expense. He could tell stories of barefaced treacheries, devious deals and vicious back-stabbing that would make Zen’s blood run cold, but what was the point?
And what about Lazio, eh? That second goal against Fiorentina on Sunday? No? Zen hadn’t seen it? He wasn’t by any chance — ha ha! — a Roma fan, was he? Because if so — ha ha! — he could get out right now and walk the rest of the way. Not that he hadn’t had all sorts in the cab at one time or another. Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, mafiosi — no disrespect intended — secret-service agents, policemen… Even politicians! That was the sort of man that he, Paolo Curtillo, was. As long as you could pay, he would take you wherever you wanted to go, even to Florence or Naples — even if you worked for the tax authorities!
Nevertheless, he had his limits. There was a certain class of human scum that he wouldn’t let past the door of his Mercedes SE500 — over the purchase of which, incidentally, the brother of the aforementioned siciliana had screwed him royally — only a year and a half old, and look at it, all but wrecked, three hundred thousand kilometres on the clock, he’d have to buy another next year and his wife kept telling him ‘secondhand’, but he preferred the peace of mind the warranty gave you — no, there were some people he wouldn’t let in the cab, not for any amount of money, wouldn’t even give the time of day to, and they were the so-called fans of the so-called Roma football club, that clan of degenerate wankers and marginal know-nothings who…
Outside the speeding taxi, the streets gaped, stripped bare by purposelessly bright overhead lights. The air flowing in through the open window was as clammy and oppressive as the sweat-dampened pillow used to suffocate some terrified victim. Where was he? They’d mocked up a city set, but it remained austerely or teasingly generalized, as though it had already served as the establishing archive material for so many knockabout farces and weepy melodramas that it no longer expected anyone to take it seriously as an entity in itself. What sort of show is it tonight? That was the question which every perspective and backdrop immediately asked, like the seasoned professionals they were. You want happy or sad? Sinister or idyllic? We can do either or both, and plenty more besides, but you need to tell us what you want.
‘I don’t know!’ Zen said. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘I do,’ the cabbie replied. ‘You’re a Lazio man! I spotted it right away. That Roma lot are all stiff, rich, well-connected arseholes. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the power, they’ve got everything! The only thing they don’t have is the one thing we do, and that’s balls. Courage. Belief. Pride. A spirit that will never be broken. That’s a Lazio fan for you! We don’t care if we lose and lose for ever. We know they’ve fixed the odds against us and we don’t stand a chance. E ce ne freghiamo! Vero, dottore? Fuck ‘em all! We’re Lazio to the core. We have no choice. That’s how God made us!’
They had by now reached the Piazza di Porta Portuense, and continued along the embankment to the bridge leading across to the island in the middle of the river. Here Zen paid off the taxi, cutting through the driver’s attempts to prolong the conversation, and walked off across the Ponte Cestio. The remnants of the Tiber, reduced to a fetid trickle at this time of year, scuttled away in the deep trench of darkness beneath the bridge.
Half-way across he stopped, his elbows on the parapet, and leaned down over the invisible depths. Grasping his squished packet of Nazionali, he lit up and exhaled a flutter of smoke, an apt correlate to the impoverished stream existing only as a minor sound effect, a susurration emanating from the darkness beneath.
As he tossed his unsmoked cigarette into the gutter, he noticed a rectangular sheet of paper lying there like a discarded letter. In another vain attempt to delay his inevitable arrival, he picked it up. To the touch, the glossy surface revealed itself to be pitted by being crushed between shoe soles and the uneven surface of the pavement. It was just one of those advertising flyers which were thrust on passers-by or stuck under the windscreen wipers of parked cars, DIVENTARE INVESTIGATORE PRIVATO was the shout-line: BECOME A PRIVATE EYE. In the background, red on white, was an image of a vaguely Sherlock Holmesian figure, sporting glasses and a prominent pipe. ‘The courses are open to all detective enthusiasts, and can open the door to a new and fascinating profession,’ continued the copy beneath.
Zen threw the paper aside and continued on his way. Perhaps he should sign up. The only problem was the name of the company running the courses, which called itself the Istituto Superiore di Criminalita. If there truly was a high-level institution of criminality in Rome, Zen was beginning to get the feeling that he already worked for it.
At the hospital, there was no one at reception, and the only person in the waiting area was an elderly derelict, drunk or mad, who was having a violent argument with an invisible opponent. Zen walked off down the gleaming corridor which stretched away, seemingly for ever, the fake marble floor a molten glare of arrogant light. There were doors to either side, but he hesitated to open them lest he interrupt the performances which might be going on inside. They should really have a red warning light, he thought, as they did at radio stations when a studio was on air.
Further down the corridor, a man was mopping the floor in a series of precise spiral motions, each followed by a rinse in the metal bucket resting on a towel, then a final squash on a grid to one side, to remove excess water before the next washing sequence began. Actually, Zen realized, he was still too far away to see clearly what the cleaner was doing, but that was how his mother had always dealt with the large red-yellow slabs of their house in Venice, working her way from the top to the bottom. He’d always assumed that she enjoyed it, the way he did the games he played. Why else would she bother? The mop handle was darkened in the two places where she wrapped her bony, calloused fingers about it. From time to time she would straighten up, press her left hand to the small of her back, and give a mild moan.
The cleaner was dark-skinned, Zen saw as he drew nearer. Some sort of immigrant. Probably didn’t speak Italian. Still, it was worth a try.
‘I’m looking for my mother,’ he said.
The man straightened up, pressed his left hand to his back and winced slightly. He did not speak, but looked at Zen with an unnerving intensity, as though registering without surprise the fact of a birth or a murder.
‘My mother,’ Zen repeated, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated emphasis.
‘What about her?’ the cleaner replied.
His startlingly liquid eyes regarded Zen with the same neutral exactitude, neither compassionate nor dispassionate.
‘She’s dying.’
The cleaner spun his mop, splaying the strands out like a witch’s hairdo, then propped it up against the wall.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
He strode off down the corridor, never once looking back. A few paces behind, Zen followed up flights of stairs and through a set of double doors.
�
�Your mother’s name?’ his guide demanded in his eerily alien Italian.
‘Zen, Giuseppina.’
The other man stood still a moment, as though attending to some imperceptible sound or scent.
‘This is the terminal ward,’ he remarked, fixing Zen with his disconcertingly lucid gaze. Zen nodded. The cleaner turned away, wiping his hands on the back of his blue overalls and looking at the names scrawled in black marker on the shiny boards outside each door. He worked his way to the end of the corridor, then retraced his steps to a door where the board showed no name, just a large black X stretching from corner to corner.
‘That means the patient’s dead, but they haven’t moved the corpse yet,’ he said, gripping the handle. ‘None of the other names are Zen, so this might be her.’
The room was smaller than Zen had anticipated, most of it taken up by a single bed in which an elderly woman’s body lay covered by a sheet. The cleaner lifted the bottom corner. A brown cardboard luggage label dangled on a length of plastic cord from the big toe of the woman’s right foot. He turned the label over and beckoned to Zen, who bent to read it. There was a name and an address. Both were familiar to him, unlike the body in the bed.
‘It’s not her,’ he said, turning towards the door.
‘Aurelio?’
The voice seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. Then Zen realized that the body lying on the bed had opened its eyes and was staring up at him.
‘Mamma?’ he whispered.
A withered arm extended itself towards him, shrunk to its essence: veins, tendons, bone. Zen sat on the edge of the bed and grasped it.
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