After they ate dinner at an outdoor table at the restaurant, a meal that consisted of Wiener schnitzel with potatoes and a wild-berry sauce (Dante ordered just potatoes), Colomba set about enjoying the entire king-size bed, albeit with its uncomfortable single quilts. Before lying down, she took her pistol out of the backpack and inserted the ammunition clip. Dante watched what she did from the balcony. He’d managed with considerable effort to drag a chaise longue out there and was planning to sleep on it. He chain-smoked, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. “Wait, didn’t they confiscate your gun?”
“My department-issued gun, yes. This one’s my own personal property. Don’t you remember it?” She held it up for him to see through the half-open French door. It was a Beretta Compact, very similar to her regulation weapon but with a shorter barrel, and it fired slightly less powerful bullets. It had been a gift from Rovere, and wrapping her hand around the grip took her back in time.
“They all look the same to me. On one side is a guy who pulls a trigger, on the other side a guy who starts bleeding.”
“This gun saved your ass and mine, too. So show her the proper respect.”
“Did you give her a name, like the swords in Game of Thrones?”
“ ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow.’ ”
Dante started in amazement. “You’ve watched a TV series? You?”
“Have you forgotten that I spent two months in the hospital? I had to do something, didn’t I?” she asked, feinting skillfully in response. Actually, she had thoroughly enjoyed the series and had continued watching it every chance she got, even though she often couldn’t say who was with whom or on whose side, much less who was related to whom. The only one she clearly identified was the girl with the dragons who took all the hottest men to bed. “And no, my gun doesn’t have a name. That’s not something we do in the modern era. Any other questions?”
“I’m just amazed that when a cop is put on suspension, they let him keep his personal weapons.”
“Unless he’s sentenced for some serious crime, why not?” Colomba replied, her pride piqued.
“Because then maybe he’ll commit some serious crime with his personal weapon.” Dante grinned and swallowed two tablets of different shapes and colors, tossing them back with vodka from the minibar. “Every so often I ask myself how the human race has survived this long.”
Colomba set her pistol down on the side table, next to a yellowed copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World that she was reading, and turned off the light. “You’d better get some sleep,” she said. Then she took off her clothes and, dressed only in panties and a camisole, slipped between the sheets.
Dante had the benefit of reflected light and good night vision. He knew that he really ought to have looked the other way while Colomba was getting ready for bed, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. If he’d reached through the crack in the half-open French doors, he could have touched her. He didn’t, but he was glad Colomba couldn’t see him at that moment. His emotions would have been clearly and unmistakably visible even to those who didn’t know how to read postures and micromovements.
You’re turning into a sex maniac.
He had always acted with her as if neither of them possessed sexual attributes. Though it seemed to him the most appropriate form of behavior, it always cost him a great deal of effort. What kept him from courting her in even the shyest manner imaginable was the certainty that she wasn’t interested, as well as his own experience, which had taught him that any relationship between them was bound for wrack and ruin. The excuse that all the women in the world use on their unwanted suitors isn’t necessarily false: sometimes it really does ruin a friendship.
Still, for some time now—to be specific, ever since they’d met again thanks to the terror attack on the train—something aside from physical attraction had been burrowing at his gut, something that Dante couldn’t name only because he didn’t want to give it a name. And for sure, that name wasn’t friendship.
Dante twisted around on the chaise longue and smoked one last cigarette.
What a mess. As if you didn’t have enough trouble.
He turned his mind to the other woman tormenting his dreams, in a decidedly less agreeable manner than Colomba, and fell asleep with the image in his head of a blue-tongued witch.
What he couldn’t know was that the witch was already hard at work.
4
Giltine knew that too much pain could make a human being lose his mind, so she had made judicious use of the flame, alternating it with suffocation and compression, taking care not to break the bones. Pennelli had fainted half a dozen times in those hours, but he had never once modified his version. He’d never spoken with anyone, he hadn’t told anyone else about her. “It didn’t seem like that was to my advantage,” he’d said through his tears and between retching when she’d finally removed the sock from his mouth. Then she’d put the sock back in and jammed the red-hot camp stove under his left armpit, making him arc up on his heels in a soundless scream.
Did she believe him? Yes, 90 percent. More, 99 percent. If he’d been a hardened criminal or the member of some special squad, he might have gone on lying, hoping to be saved or at least revenged. But Pennelli was a weakling, and he would have told the truth just to put an end to the torture.
Giltine turned toward the woman, the second item of collateral damage. In what she was doing, collateral damage had been inevitable, sometimes necessary. But if the others had been predictable and calculated, Pennelli and his woman were the result of her own carelessness. The wind sprang up, and from outside came the sound of water, and with it, the voices.
Not now, Giltine begged, but the dead were angry at her failure, at her error. The voices grew in intensity; she clapped her hands over her ears and turned on the television, ripping the antenna out of its socket. The device lost its connection and the screen filled with gray buzzing snow. She turn up the volume to the highest level.
An electric wall of white noise.
Cleanliness.
Emptiness.
The lacerating sound had awakened Pennelli and made Daria, whose face was spattered with mascara and blood, open her eyes. She had broken her nose by hitting it against the floor in an effort to get her gag off. After that she had just prayed it might all end in a hurry. Her man’s moans kept reaching her, along with that horrible stench of grilled sausage. Whenever the monster with the rubber mask did something else horrible to him, the shrieks and moans came faster and more piercing, only to die out in loud panting. Then there were the desperate pleas when the monster took the gag out of his mouth and he begged, offered, and did whatever he could think of to get her to stop, for the love of God. Even with her eyes closed, Daria knew exactly what was happening next to her. She just wished the monster had blindfolded her ears, too; she’d even tried to ask her to, but all that came out of her mouth was a whiny moan.
Now both she and Pennelli watched Giltine in her ecstasy, standing on tiptoe, both arms thrown wide. She looked like she was about to have an epileptic fit. They watched her fall to her knees and cover her ears with those horrible bandaged hands. Daria decided that was her moment, the only possible opportunity. She rolled along the carpet, and once she was out in the hallway, she started crawling. If she could just make it to the door and get it open, maybe someone would see her. She’d rather throw herself into the canal than let herself be caught. But she wasn’t even halfway to the door when Giltine grabbed her ankle and hauled her back, though Daria did all she could to brace herself with her elbows and her chin, succeeding only in breaking one of her incisors.
After dragging her back to the living room, Giltine hoisted her up and took her almost lovingly in her arms, ignoring her pathetic attempts to get free. Then she placed the fish knife against her throat and cut it.
Pennelli saw the blade sink in, following the line of the chin, the wound that widened like a second mouth. He saw what no one ever thinks they’re going to be forced to see, the insides of the
woman with whom they’ve slept, fucked, eaten, and quarreled. Her trachea, which emitted a sort of burp when the blade sliced into it, the muscles, the vertebrae, the base of the tongue. And then the blood as it gushed out onto the carpet, while Daria kicked her legs, bound together with duct tape like a mermaid’s tail. A mermaid that squirmed with ever diminishing strength, until Giltine let her drop to the ground and bent over the man. Pennelli had a demented look in his eyes as rage, horror, and suffering combined into a sentiment that could have burned up the world if he’d been able to express it.
But he never got the chance.
5
Dante woke up at dawn, but he was so groggy that at least an hour passed before he was able to go inside for a shower, which he took with the window thrown wide open, lowering the temperature in the bathroom to Ice Age levels. Colomba cursed him and only brushed her teeth before going downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel. Dante ate his meal in the car with the windows open. He made his espresso with an electric moka pot hooked up to the cigarette lighter outlet.
He’d brought a canister of Black Ivory, which had taken the place that Kopi Luwak used to hold in his heart, even though the two blends had a great deal in common. The Kopi was made with coffee beans that had been partially digested by civet cats, while with Black Ivory, the berries had been gathered from the excrements of elephants on a nature reserve. Dante had been forced to grind the beans before leaving, a mortal sin, but he took care to open the canister as little as possible, so as to preserve the aroma. Whether the fault was with the water or the coffeepot, which was practically new, the coffee didn’t come out the way he would have liked it: the fruity and the floral essences were reasonably persistent, but the animal overtones were almost entirely absent. All the same, he drank four demitasse cups while munching on bran biscuits.
Colomba came over to him after loading up on sausage and eggs and looked down at him as he awkwardly brushed away the crumbs. “You look like a bum,” she said.
“Well, this bum picked up the tab. In cash,” he retorted with a note of irritation.
“If you were broke, where did the money come from? Not that I’m complaining.” Colomba got behind the wheel and closed the doors with the appropriate button, to the applause of a crowd of kids. Back to the Future was still a cult film, even for the new generations.
“I made a deal with the concierge. He advances me the cash and charges the expenses to my stepfather, keeping twenty percent for himself as a tip,” said Dante with his usual smirk.
Colomba started the motor, and before it warmed up, it spat out plenty of imperfectly burned gas. “That’s illegal. And unethical.”
“He figures he has all the justification he needs, given the situation. What are we going to do after we meet the journalist?”
“We’re sailing with our eyes peeled, Dante. And remember, I hope I’m wrong.”
“You’re so stubborn it breaks my heart.”
They arrived in Berlin around seven that evening. Colomba, whose back was aching, refused to drive all the way to the place where they had the appointment, especially in such a spectacularly garish car. They parked at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof and continued on foot, crossing the wooden bridge over the Spree River, then walking along the riverfront esplanade.
Colomba had been to Germany before, almost always for work, but the last time she’d been to Berlin was ten years earlier, and it had been just a quick trip for a meeting with her German opposite numbers. Now, accompanied by the squeaking wheels of Dante’s suitcase, she discovered the allure of that city, which by night looked like a European New York, with its skyscrapers in a thousand different architectural styles, both old and new. For a Roman like her, such a tidy, clean metropolis seemed almost like something out of science fiction.
Dante, on the other hand, was incapable of appreciating anything; he kept his gaze fixed on the ground he was walking on. He had set out on this adventure with excitement, but the excitement had soon morphed into fear and, finally, in the last few hours, into suffocating anxiety. He was out of his usual environment, every step cost him effort, and he spied dangers in every dark corner. Now Giltine was no longer an abstract entity: he thought he could detect a whiff in the air of the chemical reek of citrus that she left in her wake as she passed.
“Everything all right?” asked Colomba, surprised by his silence.
He nodded, unconvinced.
The Sony Center was a complex of buildings near the Potsdamer Platz, consisting of seven skyscrapers and topped by a colorful dome that looked like a circus tent but reproduced the shape of Mount Fuji. All around the perimeter of Sony Plaza were shops, restaurants, and beer halls with outdoor tables, crowded with people as it was on any self-respecting Saturday night. Among the various establishments, the green Starbucks sign stood out.
“There it is,” said Colomba, then stopped when she realized that Dante had jolted to a halt, rooted as solidly as a bollard on the Bellevuestraße sidewalk. “What’s wrong?”
“I just need to catch my breath,” he lied. “From the walk.”
“You’re in better shape than I am. What’s going on?”
He pointed to the crowd. “I can’t go into the middle of all that.”
“There are no walls, and the roof is very high. There’s even a hole in it,” said Colomba, pointing to the steel guy wires that ran across the cupola.
To Dante, though, it was like looking at a gigantic rat trap. Part of his brain knew that if he set foot in there, the tent would collapse on him, crushing him. That wasn’t the rational part of him, but it made no difference. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Colomba sighed in annoyance and checked the time. The appointment was at eight, and they had only a few minutes to spare. “What does the wanker look like?”
“I have no idea. He was supposed to recognize me. He’s seen pictures of me,” Dante said, clearly dispirited.
Touched, Colomba patted him on the arm. “It’s not your fault, Dante. Don’t move from this spot, because without a cell phone, I wouldn’t know how to find you.”
Colomba’s understanding look made Dante feel even more humiliated. “Okay. If I feel equal to it, I’ll catch up with you,” he said.
Colomba ventured into the crowd, and Dante moved a few yards along the sidewalk so he could continue tracking her visually. He found himself looking up at the wall of one of the major skyscrapers designed by the celebrity architect Renzo Piano; on a huge screen above, he saw colorful fractals go streaming past, alternating with commercials for a sports car. The car in question was parked on a podium next to the screen, and a pair of hostesses in white gloves and uniforms were pirouetting around it. As Dante approached the car, the screen broadcast a gigantic image of his weary face, as captured by a hidden video camera operated by an electric eye.
It was in that screen that he lost himself.
He started by following a movement in the background, where he could see the little crowd behind him. A slight undulating motion that caught his eye but which he was unable to focus on properly. All that remained impressed on his peripheral vision was the image of a man with a dark blue heavy jacket who turned away suddenly, pulling the visor of a colorful baseball cap down over his eyes. Dante understood with absolute and unnatural clarity that the man was hiding from the camera. Being caught on video was an unwelcome surprise to him, because he hadn’t wanted to be seen.
By Dante.
That revelation hit him like a sledgehammer and had the effect of instantly deleting months of therapy, all his good resolutions, and his underlying rationality.
Colomba emerged from the Starbucks with a Frappuccino—which she had discovered was a cold drink and not a hot beverage, as she had always thought—and her gaze came to rest on a small group of people trying to catch the attention of a passing policeman. They were gathered around something that they were afraid might be a bomb. When she got closer, she realized that the mysterious object was an abandoned suitcase. Specifically, it was Dante�
��s suitcase.
But Dante himself had vanished.
6
Colomba dropped her cup and grabbed the suitcase on the fly, shouting “Scusi” and “Sorry” in Italian and English and running toward the far exit from the square. When she reached Bellevuestraße, she glimpsed Dante’s back in the distance as he loped along, waving both arms in the air like a marionette.
Colomba went after him, but weighed down by the luggage, she wasn’t able to make up the distance. She galloped past people who called out in protest because she had shoved them, and others who were worried that something serious was happening. Dante continued on his way, ignoring her cries.
Colomba gathered all her strength—if there were such an Olympic event as a race with trolley suitcase, she would have placed first or second—and she ate up a few more yards, gaining on Dante, who was lunging from one sidewalk to the opposite one for no apparent reason, forcing the cars to screech to a halt.
As he turned down a street along which it was possible to see a few remaining vestiges of the Wall, Dante slammed into a young couple and all three of them tumbled to the ground.
Colomba let go of the suitcases and sprinted the last hundred yards while he, after a moment’s confusion, started leaping up and down like a rubber ball. She came up behind him and grabbed him around the waist. “Dante. Please calm down, it’s me. What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer and started struggling to break free without giving any sign of having recognized her. It was like trying to restrain a feral cat that shoved and bit; his dull eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. Colomba tripped him, sending him sprawling to the ground, then sat on his belly to immobilize him. “Dante! Good boy, good boy. Calm down, please!” she said to him, panting.
The young people who had been knocked to the ground asked her in English whether she needed help, and she told them that this was her brother, that he was an epileptic, and that there were no real problems. They insisted on calling a doctor, but Colomba told them that she had everything safely under control, and the two of them finally went back to minding their own business. Colomba feared the arrival of the authorities, because she had a handgun in her backpack that, strictly speaking, she ought to have reported when she crossed the border. “Sorry, Dante,” she said, and gave him a couple of hard smacks in the face.
Kill the Angel Page 27