The soldier pursed his lips. ‘The party, I mean? It’s interesting, I can see. But after the other night, when Rosselli passed out on stage …’ He gave a little exhalation of contempt. ‘Who’s paying you?’
Sandro shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ah – it’s complicated,’ he said. Because he could hardly say ‘the vengeful mother-in-law’. He improvised. ‘The party’s administration realize that things are at a delicate stage. They want to clean up their act – that is, get more organized. Make sure there’s nobody inside working against them, that kind of thing.’
‘Or outside the party?’ Arturo set his fingers together as if in prayer, regarding Sandro over the top of them with the same mild amusement.
‘Well, yes,’ he said, startled. ‘I suppose. Do you know anything about that?’
‘You mean us?’ The lazy smile. ‘We’re keeping an eye on them,’ he said, ‘no more than that. You have to admit, they’re a whole arsenal of loose cannon. What do they believe in? Sabotaging power stations? Stopping the functioning of the city, obstructing progress?’
Sandro recognized an uneasy kinship between him and this man: a shared weariness at the thought of idealism, at its disconnection from the practicalities.
‘Well, there’s the road on the edge of Scandicci,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘The new shopping mall. I happen to know that there are obscure permissions to be obtained from the army for road-building. It may be how things work in Italy, but do we really need that? Aren’t they entitled to raise their objections? Don’t they have – a democratic right to do so?’
‘Of course,’ said Arturo, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘They have rights. Just as we – the bureaucracies they so object to – have duties. We gave permission for the road because all the technicalities had been observed, the signatures obtained, the fees paid. It didn’t happen overnight, it’s taken five years. You can’t just deny on a whim a business consortium the right to the lawful exercise of commerce.’ He smiled. ‘And as I’m sure you’re aware, we aren’t so important; it’s just a formality, the army’s permission for roads. One of those things.’
Sandro did know. The colonel seemed completely relaxed: he was in the right, after all. They were going to be so delighted, thought Sandro, the lot of them: the Berlusconiani, the comune, the vested interests, when they found out. The road would go through and they wouldn’t have to lift a finger to finish off the Frazione. The sudden disappearance of a post-natally depressed woman, the partner of the movement’s leader, would do their work for them.
Still Sandro persisted, Maria Rosselli’s grim, triumphant face haunting him. He realized he’d agreed to take this on to defend poor Flavia Matteo, not to hunt her down.
‘But even if Rosselli doesn’t get to parliament,’ said Sandro. ‘If he becomes – let’s say – assessors for roads in the comune? Wouldn’t that put a spoke in it for you lot? He could cause trouble.’
Arturo just shook his head a little. ‘We’re used to that,’ he said. ‘It keeps us busy.’ He smiled again. ‘Keeps us out of Afghanistan. Some of us.’
Sandro felt his shoulders sag, and despite himself he let out a sigh. He gazed despondently at Arturo’s bookshelf. Russian literature. He squinted at the name on the bust: Aristotle. Sandro wanted not to like this man, but it was difficult.
‘Look,’ said Arturo then, almost kindly. ‘It seems to me that if anyone’s got a reason to have a go at the Frazione, it’d be some business interest or other, wouldn’t it? Or at a pinch, the secret service boys. But to be honest, the amount of time I’ve spent watching the Frazione Verde mill around aimlessly at one rally or another, they’re just not a threat to anyone. They don’t need – what? Sabotaging?’ He laughed. ‘They’re going to fizzle out of their own accord.’
And with that he straightened up and glanced at his watch.
Damn, thought Sandro, checking his own. He’s right, isn’t he? And I’ve got to go.
*
Luisa hadn’t expected it. Why not? What else was the woman to do with her grandchild? It was the practical solution, not to mention better for Sandro: he could talk to Niccolò Rosselli without interruption.
‘You brought the child,’ she said blankly.
Maria Rosselli, stern as some kind of governess rather than a blood relative, stood at the door holding the baby, swaddled to a stiff cocoon, in her arms with a faint air of dislike. It – he – was asleep, upright, his plump face flushed pink, with a small spike of hair protruding from under a woollen hat. Round and rosy and healthy, he did not, thought Luisa, look like his father.
Irrationally, Luisa hadn’t expected the baby only because babies did not feature in her life. No children of her own, no nieces, no nephews, no grandchildren. Cousins had children, but Luisa had stayed out of their orbit, consciously or otherwise, in the thirty years since losing her own. She leaned towards the baby, saw his mouth work at an invisible milk source in his sleep.
‘I left the perambulator downstairs.’
Perambulator. It would be the huge old thing Maria Rosselli had gone to Milan to buy when Niccolò was born, fifty-odd years ago. Where could you keep such a thing, in this day and age?
‘He’s put on weight since she went,’ said Maria Rosselli coolly. ‘It’s the formula milk. It’s marvellous, these days. All there is for mothers, now.’ But there was still that expression of distaste. Although it was warm the old woman was wearing an ancient winter coat of very good quality, and a hat.
Luisa found she wanted to offer to take the child from her but she did not. ‘Come in,’ she said, and stepped back to allow the old woman into the apartment.
She’d taken the morning off work at Frollini: Beppe had, as always, been laidback about it but Giusy had moaned. Luisa almost never took time off. ‘I’ll be in at midday,’ she said when Giusy had finished. ‘That’s precisely an hour and a half.’
With a heavy sigh that indicated she was here very much against her will, Maria Rosselli deigned to enter. She looked around as she passed through the hall, right to left, for something to disapprove of, a big plasma screen perhaps, or a marital bed with satin and flounces and cushions, but she found nothing and remained silent, reserving judgement. Luisa ushered her into the salotto, the big sitting room with its small, ancient television, where they spent almost no time at all. But she didn’t want Maria Rosselli in her safe cosy kitchen, silently criticizing her spice rack and the contents of her draining board, and putting her on edge.
‘Here,’ she said, and suddenly she could stand it no longer; seeing the old woman holding the child as though he might be a bomb or a hostage, she took the baby with one quick movement before Maria Rosselli could say anything, and set him down on the sofa. Like some sort of chrysalis, he didn’t stir in his swaddling. ‘Coffee?’ she said.
Maria Rosselli looked at Luisa as if she did not believe for a moment that she would be capable of producing a decent cup of coffee. ‘Water,’ she pronounced. ‘Just a glass of water.’
‘It’s a long time since we spoke properly,’ said Luisa, when she returned from the kitchen. As if they ever had spoken properly, she and old Signora Rosselli, nothing but guarded niceties concealing a standoff, but the elderly had to be given their due. She set the glass down warily in front of her guest, on a coaster on top of a hand-crocheted snow-white doily, everything she might want in deference to her status. But the old woman made a sudden, explosive sound of frustration; beside her on the deep sofa the baby started briefly.
‘I don’t see why I had to leave them alone,’ she said angrily, ignoring the overture, leaning forward over hands that were clasped in her lap and thrusting her strong chin at Luisa instead. ‘I’m Niccolò’s mother. There are no secrets between us. I know more about that – that relationship than anyone.’
I’m sure you do, thought Luisa, and she nodded seriously. ‘But still,’ she said easily. ‘It’s not that we – that Sandro thinks there might be secrets, not at all. At least, not between you and your son. But, professiona
lly, it’s simply easier for him.’ She smiled gently. ‘He’s not a young police officer any more, after all. He needs all the help he can get, concentrating. One person at a time, you see?’ And silently apologized to him for the slander.
Maria Rosselli, who obviously prided herself on faculties undimmed by the passing of time, leaned back into the sofa, mouth pursed in satisfaction.
‘How’s the baby, then?’ Luisa said, knowing she’d have to keep the woman here as long as possible. ‘You’re managing?’
‘Managing?’ said Maria Rosselli, and snorted. ‘It’s hardly work, is it? Hardly a complicated business. One small baby. Only interested in the next feed. And six weeks – well, in some ways it’s the ideal age. None of that separation anxiety nonsense, more or less anyone will do. I mean – if she never comes back …’ She broke off, shrugged coolly, and Luisa stared in frank disbelief.
‘But you want Sandro to find her?’ she said, before she could think about it.
Maria Rosselli’s eyes were like grey stones. She looked at Luisa for a long moment before eventually she spoke. ‘Don’t think it’s for myself,’ she said. ‘I can deal with the raising of this child. Niccolò – well, God knows why, but he’s beside himself. It’s his intelligence, you see. Not having any explanation for it.’ And at last she seemed to falter, her expression showing incomprehension, frustration, doubt. ‘He seems to feel the need to know why. To understand. Personally I don’t believe such a person is worthy of understanding.’
Lifting the glass of water to her lips defiantly, she took no more than a sip. ‘And the child’s clearly thriving on this formula. Sentimental nonsense, all that nature-knows-best rubbish.’
‘She – Flavia – was breastfeeding?’ Luisa said. She cleared her throat. When her own baby had died, of course they had told her the milk would come in, but that if she were lucky it wouldn’t last more than a day or two, and it had not. She tried to amplify the terrible sensation that had dogged her for those thirty-odd hours – of something having been lost, left behind, gone missing, and even in her sleep she must search for it – and apply it to a woman leaving this warm, rosy living child for not hours but days. Days that might stretch to weeks. Or for ever. She stole a glance at him down there between them on the sofa, and strained, against the sudden fury that rose in her against the absent mother, aligning herself with Maria Rosselli, heaven forbid. Strained to understand.
‘What do you think?’ she said, giving up. ‘Why do you think Flavia’s gone?’
And the big pale stone-eyes rested on Luisa as Maria Rosselli leaned forward again over her large bony hands, white-knuckled now, and Luisa could see all the fury wound tight in her big, spare frame.
‘She’s weak,’ she said, and Luisa found the level calm of her voice more unsettling than rage, hissing, or spitting or shouting. She made Luisa think of a beast of prey, lean and strong and evolved into preternatural control, like a cobra or a hawk. Maria Rosselli straightened herself. ‘She’s a weak, silly woman, I knew she would fail him and she has. I told him. Long ago, I told him. Weak but stubborn.’ She looked down. ‘Like a baby: like this baby, strong-willed when he’s after something.’
‘After something?’
‘She wanted the child.’
Like a baby wants his feed: an imperative. Luisa waited, and Maria Rosselli, steely calm now, went on. ‘She wanted to secure Niccolò, she kept on at him, on and on, and never mind his ideals. She had to prove that she was more important than the party. The personal relationship was more important than his work.’
‘The personal relationship,’ said Luisa. ‘You mean love.’ She was surprised at herself; she didn’t like the word. But something about Maria Rosselli made her contrary. And sometimes love was the right word.
‘If you like,’ said Maria Rosselli stiffly.
‘Come on,’ Luisa said. ‘Of course personal relationships are important. They’re what make the world go round.’
‘He never wanted a child.’
‘But once he was born—’
‘All right, all right,’ said Maria Rosselli, and Luisa saw the force of her jealous rage.
‘They loved each other. They were happy about the child.’
Maria Rosselli’s mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘Yes,’ she said tersely. Blood from a stone. ‘Fools, both of them. There are more important things.’
Luisa hadn’t consciously been intending to mine the old woman for information, but as Maria Rosselli’s mouth clamped shut she knew she’d had all she was going to get. Beside them the child stirred and struggled in his swaddling; raised his small, strong chin, tipped his head back, opened his mouth and wailed.
His grandmother didn’t even seem to notice.
*
Niccolò Rosselli looked terrible. Ill-shaven, gaunt, shambling as he moved ahead of Sandro further into the apartment – his and Flavia Matteo’s apartment on the Piazza Santo Spirito – and Sandro walked with his hands instinctively held out as though he might need to catch the poor man if he fell.
Worth a euro or two, Sandro couldn’t help thinking as he looked around himself furtively, even on the modest side of the square.
The apartment was not large, but comfortable. On the second floor, running from front to back of the building, which was more unusual than it might sound for a city where the old stone palaces, regular enough in their symmetrical front elevations, turned into twisting, turning labyrinths inside. Divided and subdivided and added to like termite mounds, some of them. This was not a palace, though: Sandro understood quickly that these people would never live in a grand or noble building, not even a dilapidated one. Against their principles.
Niccolò Rosselli was standing now as if uncertain of what to do next. Waiting, Sandro glanced around himself.
They were in a salotto at the front of the apartment with all the walls but one covered with bookshelves, more books than Sandro had ever seen in his life outside a library. A desk stood between the windows with a battered computer on it and a pinboard behind. The furniture consisted of a low, brown corduroy-covered set of two armchairs and a sofa, shiny with age. An Indian-looking embroidered cloth lay over the divano, another was hung on the back of the door, and a beaded string of brightly coloured cloth birds and bells chinked against the door jamb.
Finally Niccolò Rosselli gestured at the brown sofa and Sandro sat down. Rosselli sat in one of the matching chairs and thrust his hands under him, as if to keep them out of harm’s way, thin arms taut, shoulders hunched. He looked hamstrung, as if he might at any moment begin rocking like the straitjacketed inmate of an asylum. No wonder the mother was worried: no wonder Giuli and the rest of the Frazione Verde were too, if this man was their new bright hope.
‘You know why I’m here?’ said Sandro, and slowly Rosselli focused on him. His dark eyes were magnified by the thick, old-fashioned glasses he wore; a boy who’d ruined his eyes through over-studying, that would be the old-school diagnosis. Tentatively Sandro persisted. ‘Your mother—’ And Rosselli sighed.
‘My mother wants to help,’ he said. He spoke hurriedly as if everything was urgent, running the words together: Sandro imagined it might be rather effective in front of an audience, but in this confined space it seemed like a kind of shyness, awkwardness. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked gently.
Rosselli frowned. ‘My – my – Flavia’s gone,’ he said. ‘My partner. The mother of our child.’ How many words to describe it, thought Sandro: it would be easier if you’d married. My wife. He opened his mouth.
‘Yes,’ Sandro said. ‘Your mother said she – you haven’t seen her since Sunday. Or heard from her, I suppose. That must be hard.’
He glanced around, only now remembering the child. Asleep? Or out with the grandmother? Yes, of course: he shied from the thought of Luisa entertaining them on his behalf.
There was a silence which Sandro interpreted as agreement. Uneasily he shifted on the brown corduroy, levering himself up out of its yielding depths. It was not the way he
would have chosen to sit, asking questions like these. ‘She went before you woke? That’s what your mother said. In the night?
Then Rosselli raised his head and frowned, as if at last Sandro had asked something new.
‘Early in the morning,’ he said. ‘She was there during the night itself.’
‘Right,’ said Sandro, waiting.
‘I don’t sleep well,’ said Niccolò Rosselli wearily. ‘I often don’t get to sleep until two, three in the morning – I mean, I go to bed, but I don’t sleep. I – Flavia says, I think too much. I sleep deeply only between three, perhaps four and seven or eight in the morning. That night she was still there beside me when I got to sleep, and she was gone when I woke up. I always said to Flavia I should do the night feed as I was awake anyway. She said I could when she stopped breastfeeding.’
It felt like a long speech, somehow. If Sandro and Luisa had had a child, would he have got up in the night to feed it? He couldn’t imagine so.
‘So when you woke that morning … Sunday morning?’
‘It was eight, just before eight. Flavia had fed him in the night but still it was a long time for him to sleep. He was crying, and I woke. I don’t know how long he’d been crying.’ Niccol Rosselli stared unfocused at some point beyond Sandro. His hands came out from under his thighs and briefly went to his face. Finding them there, he pushed them under the glasses and rubbed his eyes hard.
‘It’s usually Flavia, you see. I wasn’t conditioned to respond. To the crying.’
Conditioned to respond. ‘What’s his name?’ Sandro found himself asking. ‘Your son’s name?’ It had just been ‘him’ so far.
Rosselli frowned as if unable to make sense of the question, or to remember the child’s name perhaps. ‘Luca,’ he said eventually. ‘I – we only decided recently.’ Sandro fought against what he knew to be prejudice: this man was odd; this set-up was odd. So clever, and so helpless, and so weirdly cold – conditioned to respond? – was this man or his partner even capable of looking after this child? Yet there were soft touches too; there were the brightly coloured cloths, and the bells and birds, and the photographs and postcards on the pinboard. All hers, thought Sandro.
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