A Darkness Descending

by Christobel Kent

  The windows and shutters had been opened and from outside in the piazza came a harsh grinding noise as the machines continued with their work of excavation. For a moment it seemed to Sandro that the sounds were of a city under siege, that those in power simply didn’t know what they were doing and covered the fact up with random, pointless decisions. Dig here, build there, extend, demolish, an endless cycle of diversionary activity. What was it all for?

  They all three sat, Giuli and Rosselli on the brown corduroy sofa, Sandro on the matching chair. Very gently Rosselli lowered his son on to the sofa beside them. Carefully he placed a cushion between the child and the edge of the divan.

  ‘You said you wanted to look for something,’ he said.

  Sandro hesitated, then nodded towards Giuli. Let her find an explanation. He saw a fraction of a second’s panic in her eyes, then it was gone.

  ‘A diary,’ she said. ‘Something like that? I mean, it sounds obvious, but it might help? A notebook or a diary?’

  Slowly Rosselli moved his head from side to side, less to say no, it seemed to Sandro, than to ease some internal pressure. ‘She didn’t keep a diary,’ he said. ‘We wrote things down on the calendar.’ He nodded towards the cluttered desk and its pinboard. ‘I don’t know about a notebook.’ He frowned. ‘When Flavia was teaching she had one of those black notebooks, a big one, with an elastic band around. For teaching plans, that kind of thing.’ He looked around helplessly. ‘I don’t know where it would be. The desk was always mine. I haven’t seen it in there.’

  Giuli opened her mouth, hesitating, Sandro knew, to ask if she could rummage through his life.

  ‘You’re welcome to look,’ Rosselli said. He frowned. ‘But Flavia worked in the – in the room where the baby sleeps now. That’s where she would have kept her things.’ He frowned, as if something had just occurred to him.

  ‘What?’ said Giuli. ‘Did you remember something?’

  ‘It’s where I found the phone,’ he said slowly, and with the words felt in his pocket, pulled it out. ‘Our mobile.’ He looked down at it. ‘It’s odd. Since she died, I seem to have started carrying it around with me. Which I suppose is what one is supposed to do.’

  Giuli and Sandro both stared at the small silver object in Rosselli’s hand. Sandro had slipped the mobile back into the man’s jacket when he’d dropped him off at his apartment; he very much doubted Rosselli had even noticed. And now, calmly, as if dealing with a nervous animal, Giuli extended a hand, and Rosselli obediently placed the mobile in her open palm.

  Giuli flipped it open, with her expert thumb scrolling through something Sandro couldn’t see.

  ‘You didn’t expect to find it in there?’ she asked.

  ‘It was on the ledge above the cot,’ he said. ‘Beside the baby monitor.’ He raised his head. ‘There was something – weeks ago. It makes that noise, you know, when it receives a message? I was trying to think when I’d last seen it. And then I realized I’d heard it. Not long after the baby was born. Flavia was putting him down and the baby monitor made a sound. That sound.’ Abruptly Giuli and Sandro were both on their feet.

  ‘In the nursery,’ said Giuli quickly. ‘In there?’ And without asking if she could, she crossed the soft red tiles of the floor and went in through the open door, where the white-painted corner of a cot was visible.

  On the threshold behind her Sandro and Rosselli stood shoulder to shoulder as Giuli moved through the room. A white mobile hung over the bed, and a battered clown’s head was fixed to the bars of the cot: together with the white plastic baby monitor standing on the shelf, they were the only concessions to the child’s presence. Would Rosselli, Sandro found himself wondering, buy this child all the other things it needed? Those small towelling garments? The nappies, toys, and in due course the right books?

  Giuli had stopped at eye level with the monitor on the plain white shelf. She put a hand up and brought it back, dusty. She looked along the shelf: between some bookends stood a couple of paperbacks.

  ‘Was that all there was on here?’ she asked, turning back to look at Niccolò. ‘Just those few books?’ She took one down: Sandro saw it was a guide to pregnancy and childbirth, well-thumbed. Rosselli took a step into the room, and frowned. He crossed over to stand beside Giuli and put his hand up to the bookends.

  ‘No, she—’ He broke off. ‘There were some other books here. I don’t know what she—’ And he looked around. ‘Only school textbooks,’ he said, almost on the verge of panic now. ‘But if she – that’s where her notebook would have been. I don’t know where they’ve gone.’

  Giuli opened her mouth, then closed it. Without a word she was past them and back into the sitting room; by the time Sandro was through the door she had her jacket on.

  ‘I’ll see you at the office,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’ She turned to Niccolò Rosselli. ‘I – I’ll let you know what I find,’ she said. ‘I – I’m sorry.’ And she was gone.

  The room seemed abruptly much emptier without her whirlwind presence. On the sofa the child slept on: both men looked at him.

  ‘I should put him in his cot,’ said Rosselli. ‘It’s safer.’

  ‘He’ll wake up,’ said Sandro. ‘He’s safe while we’re here.’ Neither of them moved.

  ‘Your mother,’ he began, and something seemed to clear in Niccolò Rosselli’s face: he looked at Sandro full on, and focused.

  ‘My mother,’ he said, then stopped. Started again. ‘My mother has just informed me that Flavia and Carlo were having – that they were involved with each other.’

  Sandro cleared his throat. ‘Do you believe her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Niccolò said, and sat down. Sandro sat beside him. From behind the thick lenses Sandro saw the frowning earnestness of his effort, actually to understand, to approach the question logically. ‘She said—’ He stopped, looked down at his sleeping son and his hand strayed towards the child, resting on the small, rounded shoulder.

  ‘She said Carlo had been in love with Flavia for many years.’

  Sandro nodded involuntarily, because he knew that much already: Niccolò frowned.

  ‘He’s your friend,’ said Sandro. ‘Do you think it’s true?’

  Rosselli made a small shrugging gesture and under his hand the child gave a shudder before settling back into sleep.

  Sandro pushed, gently. ‘Do you think – she reciprocated?’

  She strung him along, was what Maria Rosselli had said.

  ‘My mother has never liked Flavia, I couldn’t escape that,’ said Rosselli. It wasn’t an answer to the question: it was the first time Sandro had detected evasion in him. There was something he wasn’t saying, yet.

  Rosselli let out a long sigh.

  ‘My mother thought the child was his. Carlo’s. She pushed for the doctor to have the blood tests done. Which involved DNA testing. I didn’t really understand – it was nothing serious, a mild allergic reaction they couldn’t identify. But of course I didn’t object: why should I? And my mother was forceful.’ He sighed.

  Sandro was almost holding his breath: this was not the thing that was hidden, not yet. ‘Did Flavia seem anxious about the tests? The outcome?’

  ‘No,’ said Rosselli. ‘She was quite resigned to their being done. Submissive.’ He shook his head a little. ‘She was worried about him: I told her, it was only a rash. The tests showed that he didn’t have the gene they were looking for. And that he was my child; naturally that was not presented to me as though it had ever been in doubt.’ He turned his head to look down again at the small body under his hand. The child’s side rose and fell evenly with each breath. ‘And the rash cleared by itself.’

  ‘Do you think Flavia was having an affair?’ Sandro asked. There were shouts from outside and abruptly the mechanical noise ceased, replaced by something that was not quite silence.

  Rosselli looked at Sandro and before the man spoke, he knew, this was it.

  ‘Flavia strung him along all these years, tha
t’s what my mother said. I think it was a source of satisfaction to her, to say it.’ I bet it was, thought Sandro, but Rosselli sounded only bewildered. ‘She said, “So finally she let him have what he wanted.”’ A raggedness had crept into his voice, the frayed edges, at last, of grief and despair.

  ‘She had proof’ It wasn’t a question.

  Rosselli’s head tipped back, just a fraction, where another man might have howled, or raged. As he waited for him to speak, Sandro realized that although the drilling and scraping in the piazza outside had ceased, it was not silence that had replaced it but the distant rise and fall of chanting.

  The doorbell squealed, a hideous intrusion, and Rosselli raised his head as if trying to recognize the sound. He got to his feet, and Sandro saw him put a hand to his pocket, feeling for something, in a kind of nervous reflex. The mobile, thought Sandro, and in the same moment understood that Giuli had taken it. Rosselli lifted the intercom receiver.

  ‘Come up,’ he said, quite calm, and pressed the buzzer once, twice, to be sure.

  ‘Photographs,’ he said. ‘My mother said Carlo had photographs.’

  The tread on the stairs was a heavy one: before Rosselli opened the door Sandro knew who would be there.

  It was Carlo Bastone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  CORNERED BETWEEN THE TWO women at a table in the hospital’s stuffy bar, Giancarlo looked acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘Diabetes,’ said Luisa, in an attempt to defuse the situation. Although sometimes situations had to be like this. ‘I thought it was drugs. The little syringe.’

  ‘Insulin,’ said the young man with a wan smile. ‘I guess it’s kind of a drug. Not all drugs are bad: not that simple, is it?’

  Beside her Luisa could feel Gloria’s tension, and put a restraining hand on her forearm.

  ‘Sorry to kidnap you like this,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been for an appointment of my own. It’s nice, don’t you think, to see a friendly face in one of these places?’

  He glanced at her warily, not persuaded.

  ‘Have you been in to the university today?’ she said. He laughed weakly. ‘Never before eleven,’ he said. ‘I’m not an early riser. And I had the tests to do, out here.’

  ‘My daughter,’ Gloria said, unable to wait any longer. ‘You’ve seen my daughter?’

  Panicking, Giancarlo looked at Luisa, then back at Gloria. ‘You’re Chiara’s mum,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have seen it. She’s so dark.’

  ‘She looks like her father,’ said Gloria, in an agony of impatience and fear. ‘Have you seen – this man? The one she’s moved in with. Do you know him? Is she safe with him?’

  Uneasily Giancarlo shifted.

  ‘Safe,’ he said, his eyes evasive. ‘I don’t know about safe. Do you think safe’s what we want? What Chiara wants?’

  ‘That’s not useful,’ said Luisa sharply. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Are you talking about sex?’ Beside her Gloria flinched. ‘We want to know if you’ve seen him, what he looks like. Has she told you anything – anything concrete about him? Such as where he lives? His job, his age?’

  ‘She’s told us none of these things,’ said Gloria with dignity, and reluctantly Giancarlo met her eye. Without a smile Gloria, a woman who’d always seemed to Luisa like a happy child, looked her age.

  Giancarlo took in her misery. ‘I haven’t met him, no,’ he said unhappily. ‘But you know what girls are like: the guy’s all they want to talk about, how amazing he is, the little things he does, says …’ He looked away, swallowed. When he went on, he spoke as if giving evidence. ‘She finds him exciting. He’s a dominant sort of guy, alpha-male type, kind of cold, and kind of clever. That’s the impression I get. But no, I haven’t met him. Nothing concrete. Reading between the lines?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luisa. Beside her Gloria was mute and pale, hands knotted on her knee. The boy went on.

  ‘He’s older than her. A lot older. Don’t they say, it’s only the old men have the bad habits? He makes her feel small and naive and inexperienced, and only he can teach her. Alternates between loving and stern, just like he was training a dog.’ He sighed. ‘I tried to explain that to her but she looked at me like I was cruel, so I let her think the love was real. Well, it might be, mightn’t it?’

  They both looked at him, appalled, and he hurried on. ‘Anyway, I thought perhaps he’s got a good job – a responsible job. Perhaps in a position of power?’ He wiped his forehead, and with a twinge of pity Luisa wondered about the diabetes. ‘Or perhaps he’s just a nasty bastard.’

  A nasty bastard. What was it Giuli had been talking about, last night at the table? About Flavia Matteo’s dream, a man with a sword. Which signified sex that was like violence, she’d said, not able to meet Luisa’s eye. Luisa was not a woman of experience, not in that way. She and Sandro – well. It had never been like violence, and she didn’t feel like she’d lost out.

  Flavia Matteo had dreamed of a violent man, with longing. Maria Rosselli had said of her that she was weak. Luisa frowned: that was Flavia, this was Chiara. They were different.

  ‘Bad habits?’ she said.

  ‘All right, I’m talking about sex,’ mumbled Giancarlo. ‘Rough stuff.’

  ‘He hurts her?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Giancarlo, his unease deepening. ‘But she thinks he might. She’s frightened – but it’s exciting. Until it happens, it often is.’ He let out a long breath and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to collect my tests.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ said Gloria, grasping fruitlessly for him, her hand slipping from his arm. He looked down, then took it in his own.

  ‘She’s a clever girl,’ he said. ‘I thought that meant she’d come out of it OK. I don’t know. She’s just gone off the radar now, and I don’t know any more. I should have said something.’ He tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling, spoke without looking at them. ‘The thing is, it’s not always just a game. The strangeness is what she likes, but he might be stranger than she thinks. He could hurt her. He could film her, photograph her, post it on the internet …’

  Gloria made an awful choked noise in the back of her throat, and Giancarlo abruptly brought his head back down and looked at her.

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me where she was living,’ he said. ‘My impression is, he told her not to say, not to anyone. But there was something she let slip – about the Via Pisana, the road to the seaside, about being near the river too.’

  They were all three on their feet now, but it was Gloria who spoke.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think she’s in the Isolotto,’ said Giancarlo.

  *

  By the time she got to the Via del Leone, Giuli was sweating. What in God’s name was going on? Traffic stationary up and down the Via dei Serragli, the Via Romana, access blocked. There was noise everywhere, chanting from towards the Cestello, the lazy siren of a police car stuck on the Via Mazzetta, and a van full of soldiers jeering at her as she hurried by.

  ‘A demo,’ said a big woman standing outside the ambulance post in the Via Mazzetta. ‘In the Piazza del Carmine. They’re all lying down in the street, apparently, corner of Santa Monaca, Porta Romana, and nothing’s moving.’ A smile of deep satisfaction appeared on her face. ‘Police can’t get there, too idle to get out of their cars and walk.’

  In other circumstances, Giuli might have stopped to argue that not all policemen were lazy. Sandro never was. Or Pietro. But she’d been to see Wanda Terni, and in her pocket she held her prize. She let herself in, out of the midday heat of the street and into the cool hall, looking forward to the shuttered peace of the office.

  It had all suddenly fallen into place at Niccolò Rosselli’s apartment. The mobile phone, the baby monitor, the shelf – the books. Wanda had mentioned them the first time she and Giuli had met – the books Flavia had returned just last week even though Wanda couldn’t remember lending them to her. What if Flavia had wanted to hide the evidence of something, but she could
n’t bring herself to destroy it? And what if she had known she wasn’t coming home – she’d not have wanted Niccolò to find that something, would she?

  Giuli had waited in the corridor, listening to the lesson inside, interpreting the sounds. It had been nearly lunchtime and the kids were restless: you could hear the shuffle of feet, the rising level of backchat. Wanda Term’s tired, hopeful voice. Then a bell had shrilled tinnily in the recesses of the building and there’d been the thunderous scraping of a classful of chairs being pushed back, and they had streamed out of the door.

  ‘I think so,’ Wanda had said uncertainly in response to Giuli’s question. To her surprise, the teacher had visibly brightened at the sight of her in the doorway.

  ‘Yes.’ She had sounded more certain now. ‘Where did I put them?’ She had begun to pull open drawers: Giuli had seen the disarray on her desk, breathed the stale air heavy with the smell of kids and their unwashed socks and half-eaten breaktime merende. Giuli had never been sent to school with a snack; most days her mother had been comatose till late in the afternoon.

  And there they had been: Wanda Terni had emerged triumphant and dusty from her bottom drawer with a small stack of books. Primary Mathematics, Child Psychology for Teachers. A copy of a Russian novel: Anna Karenina. A battered black notebook fastened with an elastic band.

  Giuli could tell something was wrong even before she began to climb the stairs to the office, something about the light. As she rounded the stairwell she saw that the door was off its hinges and the sunlight streamed through.

  It could have been worse. Nothing had been scrawled on the walls or smeared on the desk. It was almost orderly, only all the drawers in the filing cabinet stood open, and the computer was gone from the desk.

  In her chest, though, Giuli’s heart thudded as though it might break through: she felt it in her throat as if it might choke her. They’d been here. They’d been here too.

  They? Who were they? The same people that had broken into the Frazione’s offices, and tipped off the police there was porn on the computer? It was as though the city was contracting, drawing tight like a net around her and Sandro and poor lost Chiara, and she couldn’t breathe. They – were they everywhere?