I felt terribly alone.
My generation had got lost. There was no longer any place for the kind of constructive movement I had always wanted. There was nothing but emptiness around us. No more dreams, no more hopes, no desires. Nothing mattered anymore.
That’s when I decided to go to India.
There’s no doctrine, there’s no discipline in Indian philosophy. Life’s a game; learn to live with yourself. If you can love yourself, then you’ll learn how to love other people. In India I came to understand all forms of society, on the left or on the right, are coercive. In wearing saffron, in embracing transcendentalism, I found freedom.
Zen says, “Stop running after a goal. What you’re looking for is within you.” I’d been running for thirty-two years—obtuse, arrogant and schematic. I’d never learned to look at myself. I had never learned to relax.
I’d already met Chiara during my imprisonment and we liked each other. It was fun—but then one day she smiled at me and she said, “I’m pregnant.” I already had a son by a first marriage but I hadn’t been a good father. Yet when Chiara said those words, I suddenly understood the meaning of life.
Prince: The meaning of life?
Gracchi: Life goes on. We don’t have tenure; we’re passing through and it’s our job to make the best of it, for ourselves and for others.
29: MGM
The photocopied sheets had slipped from his hands onto the floor, and now muffled shouting came from the street.
It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning before Trotti awoke in the dark room.
Using the remote control to turn on the television, he watched twenty minutes of an old American film before finally pulling himself out of bed.
He threw open the blinds.
Eyes blinking in the sudden light, Trotti looked out onto the new day. A cloudless sky above the terracotta roofs of the Eternal City. Somewhere a bird was singing hopefully, and there was the smell of coffee and petrol fumes in the air.
The muscles in his shoulders were stiff from hauling his suitcase through the streets of Siena. The sore throat had gone; his lips had healed. His knee was stiff but did not hurt. The spremutas and their vitamins had done him a world of good. Trotti was refreshed after a good night’s sleep.
A spring morning in Trastevere.
As he looked down on the street three stories below, Trotti was aware of feeling unreasonably cheerful. Leaving home and coming to Rome for a few days had been a wise decision, even if his cousin was not happy about the prolonged absence. Too bad.
As for Wilma, she was young enough to be his granddaughter. He had found her company delightful, but Trotti knew that she could never be interested in an old man like him. A very old man like him.
It was good to see Pisanelli again.
Trotti shaved to the music of the Hollywood fantasy. In the bright mirror, he examined his features. The bruised cheek had turned yellow. Beneath the lathering soap that smelled of almonds, his skin showed further signs of aging—less supple, less elastic.
(“Who knows, you should live out another twenty years—supposing you’re allowed to.”)
Trotti laughed and grazed his chin with the razor.
He showered, got dressed and polished his shoes on the overlap of the counterpane.
Leaving the Carabinieri coat hanging from the back of the door, he was about to leave when the bakelite telephone by the bedside started to ring.
Trotti barked ungraciously, “What do you want now, Spadano?”
Wilma Barclay gave a girlish laugh at the other end of the line.
30: Austerlitz
Trotti went down the narrow stairs to the reception. Nobody was in sight, even though Trotti had been told the hotel was full. The American film continued, cheerful and unheeded, in the gloomy entrance hall. Animated shoes danced around Fred Astaire for an absent audience.
The Hotel Toscana smelled of floor cleaner, and somewhere he could hear a woman shouting.
He dropped his room key on the counter and went out into the city.
He was surprised to find himself whistling a tune from the musical. Trotti had never liked American music, not even at the end of the war when jazz was the popular antidote to twenty years of Fascist culture. Piero Trotti preferred opera, Italian opera. At least you could understand the words.
The Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere was only a two-hundred-meter walk from the Hotel Toscana, and Pisanelli was already waiting for him, reading the newspaper on the terrace of a bar. He sat slumped in a chair, his left leg and the crutch held out straight before him. His sunglasses were pushed back onto the receding hairline. The suede coat had been draped over a spare chair.
“You never whistle, commissario. Why the good mood?”
“Been waiting long, Pisa?”
“Not more than a couple of hours.”
Trotti nodded to the blue portable telephone on the tablecloth. “You could’ve called the hotel.”
“You needed to sleep.”
“You should’ve woken me.”
“I don’t want you tired and irritable.”
“I’ll have time enough to sleep in my grave.”
It was indeed a beautiful morning, with a warm sun shining on the open square and the central fountain. The freezing cold of the Apennines seemed a world away. Walls blossomed with wisteria.
Trotti placed a hand on Pisanelli’s shoulder. “Your future wife doesn’t need you this morning?”
“Best if I’m out of the way,” Pisanelli replied. “Anna’s with her family. With her father and her brother, Piero. And her stepmother.”
“How’s the young Piero?”
“Doing well at the technical institute. Studying computers.”
“Named after me, you know, Pisa.”
“We all have our cross to bear. How’d you find the hotel?”
“I slept well.”
“I’m not sure I trust your good moods,” Pisanelli remarked grimly.
In the piazza, gypsy children were playing football, occasionally breaking off to beg from the passersby. A few clerics and Japanese tourists entered the church or emerged from it.
The tourists showed little generosity towards the shoeless young beggars; they clutched their cameras.
Again Trotti had the impression of playing hooky, of being on a stolen holiday.
The smile left his face. “What d’you do with all your free time in Rome, Pisa? With your pension, you no longer need to work.”
“Still recuperating from the accident, commissario.”
Trotti laughed.
“You find that funny?”
“You don’t get bored recuperating?”
“You don’t get bored in your foggy northern city? You were supposed to leave that place for your house in the hills, commissario.”
“Anna Maria put a stop to all that, I’m afraid.”
“Anna Maria?” Pisanelli raised an eyebrow in faint amusement. “Another of your American ladies?”
“My cousin from Holland—the woman with the Count Cavour spectacles. She always hated Santa Maria, always hated life in the hills. Almost as much as she hated Holland. Anna Maria doesn’t want to spend the last years of her life in the place where she grew up.”
“Cousin?”
“You met her, Pisa. She took a liking to you.”
“My disarming, youthful smile?”
“Now the grandchildren are married, Anna Maria’s returned to Italy—and to via Milano.”
“An improvement in the cooking arrangements, I hope.”
“You liked my boiled eggs.”
A waiter who had been hovering by the open door of the café surged forward and brought the list of drinks to their table. Trotti smiled in surprise and ordered coffee and two croissants. Like a diligent student, the waiter took notes. He had lo
ng, thin hands and a weak, ingratiating smile; his cheeks were creased in deep wrinkles. He gave Pisanelli a radiant nod and nimbly returned to the interior of the café. Seen from behind, the waiter’s waistcoat was unnaturally narrow.
Trotti threw a glance at the open Repubblica that Pisanelli was reading.
The medical section.
“Very interesting,” Trotti said flatly and turned away.
“I try to educate myself as best I can,” Pisanelli remarked. “I’d hate to remain an ignorant peasant.”
“Many advantages to being a peasant, you know.” Trotti’s eyes wandered to the church on the far side of the piazza, beyond the noisy children. “Slow, stubborn but not necessarily stupid.”
Pisanelli returned to the newspaper.
Trotti said almost absentmindedly, “I never did believe in coincidences.”
Pisanelli looked up, “Coincidences?”
“Not in my line of business. Not after thirty-eight years as a policeman.”
31: Cherchez la Femme
Pisanelli tipped his head and asked expectantly, “What coincidence, commissario?”
Trotti was still looking at the church, “A couple of days before I was about to leave for Rome, I got a call from Spadano.”
“Your Carabinieri friend?”
“Friend in a manner of speaking. High-ranking general now, and based in Tuscany. Claims he’s working on art protection—Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico—but I’m not sure I believe him. Not sure I believe any Carabiniere. Spadano says he’s marking time until he can retire to his native Sicily.” Trotti gave an apologetic shrug. “I suppose somebody’s got to live there, Pisa.”
“You ever been to Sicily, commissario?”
“God forbid.”
“What does your Carabiniere friend want?”
“The general had some important news and he asked me to drop in on my way to Rome.”
“How did he know you were coming to the wedding?”
“No idea, Pisa.”
“You’re part of our artistic heritage he’s protecting?”
“I’m old enough.”
“You could do with renovations.”
Trotti smiled.
“You see, commissario, you do have a sense of humor.”
“After spending a couple of days with Pioppi and the little girls . . .”
“How’s your daughter?” A wolfish grin from Pisanelli as he moved in the armchair to face Trotti.
“Instead of catching the direct train from Bologna, I stopped off in Florence.” Trotti did not conceal his annoyance. “Thought I’d do some sightseeing. Foolishly, I missed my connection.”
“Not used to public transport, commissario. Things’ll get easier with practice.”
“I nearly died of frostbite in Florence.”
“With all that sugar in your blood?”
“While waiting for the first train—they closed the station, not even a waiting room to get away from the cold—I bumped into the pretty black girl you couldn’t take your eyes off last night at Termini.”
“What girl is this?”
“Glad to see your hormones are still functioning, Pisa. One thing less for poor Anna to worry about.”
“Wasn’t it you, Commissario Trotti, who had a black lady friend? From Uruguay, I believe, who did some very inventive things to your interior decorating.”
Trotti took a deep breath, “I traveled with the girl, and together we got into Siena on the early morning train. The Carabinieri were waiting for me at the station. We dropped the girl off in a bar.”
“Spadano still smokes those awful cigars?”
“Spadano thinks my life’s in danger.”
“Rhubarb sweets are no more dangerous than the noisome Toscanellis he smokes. What’d your Spadano want to tell you?”
“A long time ago—at the time when Rosanna Belloni disappeared—there was a Sicilian who was murdered in my city.”
Pisanelli nodded. “A small-time dealer called Beltoni who liked to consume what he was supposed to sell?”
“They cut his tongue out and then tied him and burned the corpse. Not a pretty sight.”
“Aren’t you forgetting I was there, commissario?”
Trotti said, “His brother wants to kill me.”
Pisanelli took up the Repubblica.
Trotti pushed the paper back onto the tablecloth. “This brother once worked for Gracchi. The same Gracchi that we—that you and I arrested when your little Anna was kidnapped, back in the Years of Lead.”
“That’s your coincidence? All that was a long time ago, commissario—nearly twenty years.”
Trotti’s face broke into another smile, “You were in love with Anna even then.”
“Anna was six years old.”
“Surprised you’ve managed to stay out of prison.”
The waiter brought the drinks. He placed the tray on the table, winked at Pisanelli and pirouetted before gliding off to a different table.
Trotti emptied three envelopes of sugar into his drink. He resumed as he stirred, “Gracchi spent a year in prison. At San Vittore in Milan. Accused of involvement in the killing of Commissario Pugliese but he was released for lack of evidence. Went to India and then to Sicily.”
“To set up a center for addicts in Trapani.”
“You knew?”
“I read the papers.” Pisanelli fiddled edgily with the pages of the medical supplement, “When you let me.”
“Gracchi was probably murdered by Beltoni.” Trotti set the spoon down and took a tentative sip at the frothy coffee, “Beltoni didn’t have an alibi for Gracchi’s murder. This was in 1988 and the Procura della Repubblica in Trapani was bent on making a quick arrest. Wanted to show they were combating the Mafia.” Trotti winced. Cocoa powder speckled his upper lip. “Beltoni ran away. He escaped from Trapani and went into hiding in America.”
“So?”
“He was in the United States when they murdered his twin brother—our friend, the dealer. Trussed the poor bastard up like a goat and burned him.”
“So?” Pisanelli repeated.
“They murdered Beltoni’s brother in our quiet, provincial city while he was helping me with an enquiry.”
“The brother’s out to get you? That’s the problem?”
Trotti touched Pisanelli’s arm, lowering it and the newspaper, “A couple of months ago in Trapani, the judges interviewed Gracchi’s widow. They now want to talk with Giovanni Verga—Socialist and close friend of Bettino Craxi.”
“So?” Pisanelli repeated.
“Verga’s in Nicaragua. He’s believed to have become Chiara Gracchi’s lover sometime before Gracchi’s death.”
“Cherchez la femme, as you always used to say.”
“The Mafia connection may just be a diversion. If Chiara Gracchi’s being questioned by the pubblico ministero and if she’s shown to have been involved in her husband’s death, it’ll mean the Mafia theory was a red herring all along. A red herring to get the wife and her lover off the hook.”
“To let them get away with murdering the husband?”
“A crime of passion, Pisa, and not a Mafia killing as everybody believed.”
“Which’d mean Beltoni’s innocent?”
“Innocent and free to come and go. Free to return to Italy.”
“Free to avenge his brother’s death and kill Commissario Trotti?” Pisanelli put his head back and laughed with genuine amusement. “Piero Trotti’s scared of a Sicilian hitman on the loose?”
Trotti finished the coffee in a greedy gulp and scraped at the undissolved sugar at the bottom of the cup, “I don’t like coincidences.”
Pisanelli was still laughing, “What coincidences?”
The gypsy children had ceased their soccer game. The piazza had become quiet. Even the
conversations at the adjacent tables had slackened. The svelte waiter, for a moment relaxing, was watching Pisanelli from the entrance to the café.
Trotti lowered his voice. “The girl you couldn’t take your eyes off last night.”
“What about her?”
“Wilma grew up an orphan in America.”
“So what?”
“She’s Gracchi’s illegitimate daughter.”
32: Nunc Dimittis
“A sweet girl.”
Pisanelli laughed cynically. “Sweet like your Uruguayan lady?”
“It was me who went up to her outside the station, Pisanelli. It was me who got involved. I saw Wilma standing alone in the cold, her young face pinched by the wind, and I felt sorry for her. She was shivering and I bought her a hot drink.”
“You spend too much time trying to save prostitutes from themselves.”
“She’s not a prostitute.”
Pisanelli shook his head. “Of course not.”
“A young American in search of her father. She’s been in Italy for six months—working as a babysitter for a family in Milan.”
“And you believe her?”
“Why should Wilma be lying?”
“Why should Wilma be telling the truth?”
“She thinks I can help her.”
“Impressed by the Carabiniere coat, no doubt.”
Trotti grinned with boyish pride. “She said it suited me.”
“There’s no reason for you to help her, commissario—other than she’s got a pretty face.”
“I trust her, Pisanelli.”
“You trusted the Uruguayan whore—and that never stopped her from running off with the Trotti family silver.”
Trotti said tamely, “I know I can trust her.”
“Can you afford to?”
Trotti had picked up the mobile telephone and was playing with it absentmindedly.
Pisanelli sighed. “That thing costs a lot of money, commissario. Don’t want you calling Uruguay.”
“I never gave Gracchi a second thought in twenty years, Pisa. Then within a couple of hours, a general of the Carabinieri and a young American woman are both talking to me about Gracchi. Both asking me to make enquiries about him.”
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 8