One afternoon in the January of the last year of the war, Piero Trotti was coming home from the fields when he saw a couple of mules outside the house. There was also a Wehrmacht car, parked in the middle of the road. Taken by surprise, Piero felt fear rising in his belly. He broke into a run, his clogs hitting the surface of the village street.
As he got nearer, he could hear the sounds of shouting and laughter.
Mongols.
Mongols—they had been seen recently in the hills around Santa Maria. Nobody quite knew what they were supposed to be doing. Small, fearsome men from the heart of Asia who had been taken prisoner on the Russian front and who had now chosen to fight alongside Hitler’s army.
They were said to carry no arms; they were capable of murdering a partisan with their bare hands.
Trotti had a knife in his pocket, a knife that he had been using to cut wood, a penknife with a curved, sharp edge. As he ran, Trotti pulled the knife from his pocket and gripped it firmly in his right hand.
It was his mother’s voice that he heard first.
Trotti burst into the house to find his mother sitting in the warm kitchen, surrounded by a crowd of a dozen men. Some sat on the table, several were on the bed. Their round, foreign faces were wreathed in smiles. Their red cheeks glowed. Several held tin mugs and Trotti’s mother was laughing in a way she had not laughed in years.
“Poor souls,” she said, after the last soldier had left. “They can’t speak German, they can’t speak Italian. I saw them in the road and they looked so lost. So wretched. I invited them to drink some Ruski caj. With my Slovene and their primitive Russian, we could talk a bit. Poor, lost things.” She added sadly, “They told me about their mothers.”
Russian tea? Where on earth had his mother been hiding Russian tea?
Piero Trotti’s mother had been born in the limestone hills of the Carso, north of Trieste. She came from a small farming village where the people made teran, a dark, sharp wine. As a little girl she had spoken Slovene but just before Trotti was born, her schoolteacher father left the Carso. At that time, Mussolini wanted to impose Italian purity throughout the nation—Trieste had been Austrian until the end of the Great War. In the little village school, her father was replaced by a swarthy schoolmaster from Catanzaro. The Fascist government relocated Trotti’s grandparents to a village near Parma.
Italo had been born in the Carso. By the time Piero Trotti came into the world, his mother and Enrico Trotti, a silent, hard-working man from the flatlands of the Bassa Padana, were already living in the hills beyond the Po.
Trotti’s mother never spoke to her children in Slovene.
Perhaps at a time of Fascist conformity, she wanted to show that she was a good Italian. That was why Italo was given his Christian name. Unlike Trotti’s father, an ignorant and dour peasant, his mother spoke and wrote Italian well. It was Trotti’s mother who had taught the little Piero to read and write before he had been sent off to the village school.
There were times, after the departure of her first son, when Trotti would hear his mother talking to herself in Slovene. Alone in the Apennines beyond the Po, perhaps she believed that no one other than God would understand her prayers for the safe return of her first child. Or perhaps it was the only language that allowed her to express her deepest wishes.
Italo was murdered in February, 1945 and Trotti’s mother reverted to talking her native Slovene. When her only grandchild was born fifteen years later, the nonna would often take Pioppi and look after her for weeks on end. At that time, Agnese was sitting her exams to become a doctor.
Pioppi learned to speak Slovene at her grandmother’s knee. Sometimes she and her grandmother would chatter for hours in the language and Trotti felt unpleasantly excluded.
“Your daughter has taken the best part of me.”
It was when the nonna died, that Pioppi stopped eating.
In 1986, Pioppi and Nando spent their honeymoon with distant relatives in San Daniele del Carso—in Stanjel, as Pioppi insisted upon calling the place. Even now, Trotti would sometimes hear Pioppi—married to Nando and living in Bologna—talking Slovene. To herself or to the little girls.
Tata, ljubim te.
I love you, Papa.
Pomagaj!
Trotti drove fast, without dipping the main beams that lit up the surface before him. The road slid beneath the car as he raced towards Bologna, raced towards Pioppi and his granddaughters who needed him.
Pomagaj!
Help!
85: La Grassa
The dashboard clock ticked softly.
Trotti was making good time. He got off the superstrada and onto the autostrada at Certosa, but it had been raining in the Apennines and there was a landslide. Blinking lamps and unsmiling Polizia Stradale forced the northbound traffic into a single file and then to a halt.
At the bottleneck, Trotti saw soldiers in protective clothing and keflar helmets. Beneath floodlights, there were several armor-plated vehicles and a bulldozer.
Probably another unexploded Allied bomb from the war brought to the surface as the water-logged soil slid downhill.
The smell of war came back to Trotti, the drone of the American planes flying north to flatten Milan. Then the cars in front spread out into three lanes and he could pick up speed again.
It was nearly midnight by the time Trotti pulled right into the slip road for the Bologna Sud exit. He released the pressure on the accelerator and the Fiat ran smoothly towards the lights of the Fat City.
Before the little girls were born, Pioppi and Nando had lived in an apartment in the heart of Bologna, near the university. From the bathroom, they had a breathtaking view across the city roofs to the Asinelli and Garisenda towers. The office where Pioppi worked was just five minutes’ walk from her front door. For six years, she and her husband had led the existence of superannuated students—working during the day and in the evenings hanging out in the local bars. Pioppi seemed determined to catch up on the student life that she had missed as an undergraduate in her dour native city. Here in Emilia, everybody seemed slightly mad, and the madness was contagious. Pioppi’s happiness in Bologna was tangible, the same happiness she had as a little girl, before Agnese decided she wanted a job, before the nonna died.
On a couple of occasions, Pioppi and Nando had taken her father to a smoke-filled place in the student quarter to hear guitar music and drink strong wine. Trotti was far from happy about the marijuana that everybody seemed to be smoking or the tablets they were taking. Being among young people made Trotti feel even older than he was.
“Like a peasant, you’ve never learned how to enjoy yourself.”
It was when Francesca was born that Nando decided they should leave their apartment and move out into the suburbs. He wanted his daughter to have a garden to play in. By now, Nando had a good job working for a cheesemaking association; he also had a German car and needed somewhere to park it.
Pioppi gave up her office job and became a housewife and mother. She took readily to the new calling and was, Trotti realized, a better mother than Agnese had ever been. But then, Nando was a lot closer to his girls than Trotti had allowed himself to be with Pioppi.
Trotti always got lost on the way to his daughter’s house.
It was Easter Sunday, almost midnight, and everything was closed. He recognized the unlit Q8 service station and then took the first turn to the right. Trotti had driven another couple of kilometers before he realized that he would have to turn back. Here on the edge of the city, there was a vast industrial zone, and TIR trucks waited silently in the brightly lit parking lots.
“Blast.”
Trotti backed into the parking lot of a modern church, almost hit a bus stop overhang with the rear bumper, and then headed north again. A few moments later, a car went past him in the opposite direction. Trotti knew it was the Volkswagen Golf but had to wait until it dr
ew level before he could see beyond the blinding headlamps.
Looking in the mirror, he saw the car execute a neat turn in front of the church.
Trotti was tempted to call his daughter, tempted to call Magagna again. He was scared.
This time, he found the proper turn but instead of going left, he continued north towards Bologna. When the road curved, Trotti pulled sharp right into a side road and turned off the lights.
He slid his body down in the seat. He had parked awkwardly between a couple of large cars and from somewhere there came the smell of baking bread. Stretching his neck, he could use the mirror to see the road he had just left.
Almost immediately, a car went past the top of the road. He could not see whether it was a Golf, but he had the impression the car slowed, as if the driver was looking to his right, searching for Trotti’s rented car.
Trotti waited more than five minutes while his thumping heart returned to a more reasonable rhythm. Then he turned on the lights and started the engine. Rather than reversing up to the main road, he decided that he could drive round three sides of the block.
Trotti was in luck. He looped back to the main road and the turn he should have taken was immediately opposite him.
Five minutes later, Trotti reached the villa.
He turned off the headlights before allowing the car to quietly coast to a standstill.
The lights of the house were all off, except for the porchlight. The night air was silent.
Pioppi’s house stood behind an iron fence. The house was surrounded by a garden and half the basement had been transformed into a garage. Trotti could not see if Pioppi’s car was there. He could make out the shape of Francesca’s bicycle leaning against the wall.
Trotti unplugged the phone from the dashboard and slipped it into his trouser pocket.
Magagna had not bothered to return Trotti’s call.
Trotti got out of the Fiat, closed the driver’s door silently, and walked the twenty meters to the gate. The gate came open under pressure and Piero Trotti sensed that something was wrong.
He stopped in his tracks and waited.
Trotti remembered his training in Padua. His eyes needed to adapt to the darkness and he could feel that he was being watched.
Somewhere a cat meowed. There was the sound of water in the garden fountain, and Trotti wondered why the pump was working in the middle of the night.
Here in Emilia, the air was chill, probably ten degrees at most. Spring had not arrived in the Po valley and he was glad he was wearing socks. Trotti pushed his back against the gatepost, allowing his breathing to slow, allowing his sight to adapt to the darkness.
No noise came from the house; there was no familiar flickering of the television from beyond the blinds.
Perhaps he should call Pioppi on Pisanelli’s mobile.
After a brief wait, Trotti stepped forward, heading towards where the girls’ bicycle leaned against the wall. He placed his feet carefully, not wanting to disturb the gravel. He walked on tiptoe, bent forward, crouching slightly.
An old man in scuffed army shoes tiptoeing across his daughter’s garden. Trotti told himself he was being foolish, that Pioppi had probably gotten fed up with waiting for him. She knew that he was a slow driver.
Pomagaj!
He stepped past the bicycle and had his foot on the step that led up towards the kitchen entrance. There was a scraping beside him and Trotti turned.
Trotti hit the wall and something was placed over his mouth as he lost consciousness.
86: Renault
Hell would have proper lighting, neon strip lights as well as all the flickering reflections of the eternal fire.
This could not be hell, and Piero Trotti was not dead yet.
Buried but not dead.
As consciousness returned, Commissario Trotti resented the stubborn beating of his heart; death should have brought him release from the pain and Trotti was in pain, terrible pain. He wanted to die now; he needed deliverance. What use was a coffin if he was not yet dead? His hands were behind his back. He could hardly move them and his right arm, the arm he was lying on, had gone numb.
Alive for how much longer?
He must have been drugged, there had been a strange smell in his nostrils and a burning in his eyes. Now there was just the smell of gasoline and car exhaust.
Trotti had no idea of the time, but he reluctantly realized he was in the trunk of a car and that the car was moving fast. The vibration of the wheels was transmitted directly to his head where it lay on cold rubber.
On three occasions in sixty-eight years Trotti had almost left this world, yet until now, he had never felt the desire to be free of his body. There had always been restraints to his taking the final step: things to worry about, people to care for, bills to pay. Now Trotti desired death wholly; he desired an escape from the pointless suffering. Nobody could share his pain and the pain was unbearable. Everything hurt.
Carbon monoxide.
His head was wedged against something hard and metallic—a car jack, perhaps—that pushed a sharp edge into the skin of his scalp. His face was held downwards and his chin almost touched his chest. His ear was against a rubber mat.
A fetal position, with his legs bent—but what fetus was ever held in handcuffs?
He wanted to die, but Trotti tried to think of his life, tried to find reasons for living. He thought of Pioppi, of Francesca and Piera, but all he could feel was the intense pain. No fear—just the desire to put an end to the pain.
The peace of the senses, the long night.
Death, be gentle.
If he swallowed enough of the poisoned air into his burning lungs, Trotti could speed the final journey.
Perhaps he lost consciousness again; when he opened his eyes, he was aware of the jabbing in the hip that he lay on. His leg had gone numb, and the hurt was caused by Pisanelli’s telephone pushing hard against the flesh.
Never see the girls again, never see little Pierangelo Pisanelli Junior, never see the luminous smile of Signora Anna Pisanelli?
They knew where he was. Magagna, Pisanelli, the loathsome Portano—they all knew where he was. Trotti had not turned the telephone off and as he lay in the dark, the phone was silently blinking its message to the world of sanity beyond the steel womb of the car.
The telephone was in his right pocket, and they would find the lifeless Piero Trotti curled up like a baby, lying in the trunk of the Golf. Just like Aldo Moro, a bullet through the head and abandoned in the back of a foreign car.
Converging parallels.
Trotti’s cuffed hand could not reach forward to the pocket but slowly, carefully, Trotti pulled at the fabric of his trousers—another present from his daughter. No doubt now covered in grease, and Pioppi would be angry when she saw the macabre photo in the newspaper: “Papa never looked after his clothes, even when he was alive. I always told him you’re judged on the way you dress. He wouldn’t listen. My father was a very stubborn man. I think he enjoyed embarrassing me.”
Trotti put his weight onto the shoulder, and although his right hand was completely senseless, the fingers of his left hand began pulling at the cloth and he could feel the pocket and the telephone shifting hesitantly towards his back.
The left pocket moved towards his belly.
The fumes of gasoline and exhaust burned his nostrils, and Trotti gagged as acid rose in his throat.
The telephone was no longer beneath him. The slit of the pocket moved sideways, and in the darkness of the car trunk, Trotti tried to push his fingers into the opening.
Nearly seventy years old and you can depart in peace—Piero Trotti’s Nunc Dimittis.
The index finger touched the plastic casing of Pisanelli’s mobile telephone.
87: Sulphur
Consciousness returned with fresh air as Trotti realized he was no longe
r in the car. He lay on the ground and it was cold. There was damp sand on his cheeks, sand in his nostrils and sand stuck to the corners of his lips.
Trotti’s head ached badly and his tongue was dry and swollen.
Rain had started to fall, thick drops that fell onto the sand and onto his face. Trotti did not understand why he was still alive.
He had breathed lungfuls of the carbon monoxide and still he was alive—despite the headache.
There was somebody hovering over him. Trotti could not make out the face; all he could see was the blurred silhouette as the man moved purposefully and efficiently.
Beyond and above the man’s head, there were clouds in the sky, tinted at the edges with an orange flush.
The man had removed Trotti’s handcuffs and was now tying the wrists. He did not speak. The glow of a cigarette and an occasional grunt. He worked well, and Trotti could smell the man’s sour odor, an odor of smoke and sweat and anger.
Trotti hoped that his own demise would be fast. No more pain.
Beltoni’s tongue had been cut out; Trotti wondered if the twin brother, now tying Trotti’s feet, pulling the cord tight against his ankles, would dutifully repeat every detail.
An eye for an eye.
Piero Trotti was not a man given to mysticism; he had little time for anything that was not common sense. Yet at that moment, Trotti was aware of escaping from his bruised body. He was aware of being an onlooker, of hovering a couple of meters above the ground and looking down on what had once been himself, Piero Trotti—son, brother, father, grandfather, policeman. Many years earlier his mother’s baby, and now soon to be reunited with her.
No more hunger or thirst, no more desires, greed or pride. The true peace of the senses. Tortured, strangled and burned to little more than a cinder lying in the dust.
Beltoni grunted as he yanked Trotti’s head backwards, holding the thin hair in one hand and with the other, running rope around his neck.
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 22