“Enzo Beltoni?”
Trotti shook his head. “No reason for Enzo Beltoni to kill Gracchi. The Carabinieri always knew that, and I don’t imagine for a moment he was a gun for hire. He was blackmailing Giovanni Verga—consequently any threat from Gracchi could be dealt with.”
“Why did she kill her boyfriend?”
“Jealousy.”
“All women are jealous.” Wilma laughed. “That merited the life sentence?”
Trotti replied, “Guerra’s existence was a life sentence.”
Wilma sighed heavily. “You seem to think all women are abused.”
“Unhappy children grow up to be unhappy adults—and Lia Guerra’s unhappy. Says so herself. Always wanted to be loved, but she never learned how to love. Unfortunately, the man of her life—Gracchi, the flawed Italian hero—couldn’t help her. He couldn’t give her what she wanted.”
“What did she want?”
“How do I know? How can anybody know when Lia Guerra doesn’t know herself. Not sex—at least not sex with a man.”
“She’s a lesbian?”
“I imagine over the last twenty-five years she’s been solicited by enough men—and by many women, too. She lives alone with a cat in rooftop flat near the Tiber—living in a golden past that never existed.”
“If she’s not interested in sex, why kill her boyfriend?”
“I never said she wasn’t interested in sex. She clearly wasn’t interested in the sex she had with Gracchi or with Maltese. After them, she graduated on to drugs.”
“Drugs are better than sex?”
“Drugs give you the high of sex without the bother of sperm running down your legs. Or so I’m told.”
Wilma flinched.
“She dried out in Switzerland, and there she was forced to face the future—her future. Her parents had paid for the rehabilitation, but she was thirty years old and needed to be free of them. Gracchi was still a good friend and, better yet, he was still in love with her, even though he was now married. Going down to Trapani and BRAMAN wasn’t a decision Lia Guerra made. It was imposed on her. There was nowhere else to go.”
“Going to Trapani’d mean returning to Gracchi’s bed.”
Trotti’s eyes wandered to the church on the far side of the piazza. “Her options were limited. She was frightened of men—but she was also frightened of being alone.”
“She slept with Gracchi?”
“You must ask her.”
“Why kill him?”
“I imagine Gracchi’s like most men.”
“I know very few men.” A grin. “Not counting the pimps.”
“Once he could get what he’d pined after for so long, Gracchi was no longer terribly interested.”
“You’re forgetting Petrarch.” Wilma shook her head vehemently. “Petrarch spent his life loving Laura. Loved her to his grave.”
“Only because Laura was married and unavailable.”
“You really don’t believe in true love?”
“You’re different, Wilma. You and your husband are going to live in perfect harmony—live happily ever after. After a long, hard day at the office, your husband’s going to write sonnets to your beauty and purity.” Trotti shrugged. “The rest of us—we’re not like that. We forget about purity and beauty if the evening meal’s not on the table, and we start to notice the orange peel on your thighs, the stretch marks.”
“Perhaps Laura had stretch marks—but Petrarch loved her.”
“Petrarch never had to share his bed with Laura.”
The girl fell silent while the gentle breeze flapped at the fringes of the Punt e Mes parasol.
Trotti said, “Lia Guerra was frightened by the specter of years of loneliness opening up before her. She had to choose between her fear of loneliness and her fear of intimacy. When she returned to Gracchi, she rediscovered all his warmth, all his qualities. I don’t know what happened—yet from the way she talks, you’d think everything was all very platonic.”
“Why leave him?”
“She never left him—she was told to leave BRAMAN. Gracchi was married, and his wife saw what was happening. Chiara had Lia kicked out—Chiara got Verga to send the other woman to Rome.”
“That’s why she killed Gracchi?”
“Gracchi did nothing to keep her—but that wasn’t why she killed him.”
“Why kill the man of her life?”
Trotti paused, “Lia Guerra learned Chiara was pregnant.”
“That was his death sentence?”
“Guerra’d always believed the love between her and Gracchi was special. When Chiara got pregnant, Lia Guerra had to admit to herself she wasn’t his only true love, his only Laura. While Gracchi’d been sleeping with her, he’d also been sleeping with Chiara. He’d cheapened their love.”
“He’d ceased to love her?”
“These things happen.” Trotti shrugged, “Lia was no longer the young, passionate and beautiful woman he’d known on the streets of Milan. She’d turned into a middle-aged woman—and just like his first wife, Bettina, or just like Chiara Gracchi, Lia had started making demands on him. Expecting him to help her, to look after her—when he couldn’t even look after himself.”
“Look!”
The waiter who had been hovering by the open door of the café surged forward as the returning gypsy children descended upon the customers of the bar, winding between the tables, grubby hands held out as they begged and whined.
A larger, older waiter stood at the door of the café and watched the children with ill-concealed loathing.
The children laughed—one made an obscene gesture—then scurried away to their game of street football.
“Lia Guerra’s completely insane.”
Wilma asked, “Why?”
“She lives in a world of make-believe. She still thinks their love was something special, something pure and enduring. Lia Guerra lives in the past.”
“It’s all she has.”
“Not the past at BRAMAN, but her years as a pasionaria. Her years with Lotta Continua. In the photograph taken by the Nucleo Politico, Lia Guerra had an intense, proud beauty as she hurled a missile at the Celere—she was young and beautiful and her Tino loved her to distraction.”
“When she was Laura.”
“When Gracchi was her Petrarch—and he never got to touch her.”
Wilma Barclay frowned. “Petrarch could never love a woman who wants to touch him?”
It was indeed a beautiful day, with a warm sun shining on the open square and the central fountain. The damp of the Po valley seemed a world away.
The American girl placed her hand on Trotti’s and for a while sat in silence, staring at the two hands. His old, pale and wrinkled; hers soft and dark.
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 27