by Diego Marani
Salazar turned out the light, put his pipe down on the bedside table and watched the coils of smoke wreathing upwards in the semi-darkness until he fell asleep.
Looking them in the eye aroused even more revulsion. That is, if you could locate their eyes in the yellow masks of those faces distorted by suffering. But Salazar was a hound of God, and he did not flinch. He learned to recognise them. From 148 to 152. His ‘set of five’, he called them, as in bingo. Inevitably, he also felt compassion for them, though he tried to keep it in check, in order to allow his soul to be totally taken over by suspicion. He must not put his trust in those expressionless faces, those livid hunks of flesh now barely stirring amidst the chill whiteness of the sheets. They were not often awake, so Salazar found himself having to make a tour of the dark rooms more than once. He would pause whenever he caught somebody’s eye. He could not always be certain they had seen him; he would show them the crucifix and sit down by the bed. The ‘conversations’ he had with them were largely silent, conducted by means of signs, brief gestures before they lapsed back into sleep, uttering faint groans which sometimes sounded like strangled laughter. Some tried to talk to him: they spoke of matters of little importance, asking him to move something on the bedside table, to give them a glass of water, which they would not be able to hold, or to look for their slippers under the bed, slippers they had not worn for days or weeks, and which the cleaner had put on the chair when she mopped the floor. Their fear seemed dimmed by some even greater worry which was theirs alone, and which they did not seek to share. In their moments of wakefulness they looked around them as though uncertain where they were, almost irritated by the voices and shadows which distracted them from their calvary. They had work to do, they had no time to spare to listen to pious relatives or cooperate with wretched nurses offering pointless pills.
‘Sister, could you tell me which of these five are still taking medication?’ That evening Salazar had arrived with a bee in his bonnet. He had separated some files out from the rest, and now he put them down on the desk.
‘Let me just check,’ said the sister, turning the computer screen in her direction.
‘I particularly want to know who’s being given morphine,’ he added.
‘All except 148.’
‘Doesn’t he need it?’
‘He’s already been given the regulation amount. It’s a rule. The patients need to bear witness to Christ’s suffering on the cross…’ the nurse explained, as though reciting by rote.
‘Of course,’ murmured Salazar, running a hand thoughtfully through his hair. At that same moment he saw the woman from the evening before, going towards the exit. She was wearing a blue handkerchief tied beneath her chin, with a tuft of fair hair protruding from it on to her forehead. She was a hard-featured woman, with narrow eyes above high cheekbones. She walked with a firm, proud step, as though powered by some secret rage. One hand was in her pocket, the other on the strap of her shoulder bag. Salazar opened the file of patient 148: Marco Bonardi lived at Via Cornelia 327, in Monte Spaccato. He was looked after by his daughter Chiara.
It was he, no. 148, who seemed the most alert. One afternoon Salazar had found him propped up on his elbows, apparently looking out of the window. The nurse came up to lay him down flat on his back again, explaining to Salazar that it was spasms of pain that caused him to adopt that unusual pose. Sometimes he would talk out loud, eyes wide open, but empty, staring out on to the darkness of delirium. Yet every so often it seemed to Salazar that those eyes would flash – in alarm, perhaps – as though he had recognised him as someone he knew. He was the old man who was visited by the woman with the rosary. All in all, Salazar was more suspicious of her than of him. He’d kept a close eye on her, evening after evening. Her grief was somehow too self-assured; too falsely spontaneous, allowing the onlooker to sense a certain calculated detachment even in the way she said her prayers. Nor did the rosary she handled so distractedly look right in her hands: they were fine hands, educated hands, which seemed almost to think when they touched things or tucked that rebellious tuft of fair hair back into her handkerchief. Because he had to start somewhere, the inspector decided to find out more about Chiara Bonardi.
The next evening, the woman seemed to be waiting for him at the vending machine on the ground floor; or at least she didn’t immediately move away when she saw him approaching. She was sipping a cappuccino, warming her hands on the hot plastic beaker. Visiting time was just over. The relatives were filing out, a silent crowd of them thronging the entrance hall with its artificial plants. A smell of cooking wafted along the corridors. Salazar went up to the vending machine, put in a coin and pressed the button for an espresso.
‘Good evening, might I have a word?’
‘By all means.’
‘Our paths crossed some days ago. I am a pilgrim priest. I’m in charge of the patients in the palliative care unit.’
‘I know,’ she said quickly, hiding her mouth behind her beaker.
‘We hold prayer vigils, we help the sisters and give a general hand with the running of the place.’
The woman nodded, a flicker of impatience visible on her face.
‘I know what a pilgrim priest is,’ she said with a strained smile, as though trying to be polite. She looked at the crucifix on Salazar’s jacket.
‘We are also here to help the families. We know that these are difficult times. But life must go on, and there are so many problems. Is there anything that I can do for you? Have you children who need collecting from school? Elderly relatives who need looking after? Anything else that I could do?’
‘No thanks, I have no children. And father has lived alone for many years.’
With the yellow ochre light from the street-lamps filtering in through the glazed doors, the modern building looked more than ever like an industrial hangar.
‘Please, if you’re busy, don’t let me keep you.’
‘No, that’s all right. It’s been a long day, I’m just having a hot drink before going out again. Tomorrow I shan’t have time to come and see my father,’ she said, swallowing the last drop.
‘I hear they’ve stopped giving him morphine,’ Salazar ventured to say.
‘Those are the rules,’ she answered sharply.
‘Is he eating?’
‘He has the odd teaspoonful of water. Then there’s the drip…’
‘It could be a long business…’
‘We are in the hands of God,’ the woman broke in as though she wanted to end the matter. Then she sighed, long and deeply, and started looking around nervously for something in the distance on which she could focus her attention.
‘Perhaps it would be better to let them die…’ said Salazar suggestively, his eyes on the woman’s face. She pressed her lips together and looked quickly back at him.
‘But that’s just what we’re doing, isn’t it?’ she said in a low voice. Then she threw the plastic beaker into the bin, smiled coldly and walked away, knotting her blue handkerchief firmly under her chin. Salazar waited a moment or two before going up the stairs. He looked at his watch: a quarter past seven. He ran up to the first floor, took his coat from the coatrack in the sister’s office and went back down to the entrance hall. He had no difficulty in spotting the blue handkerchief among the other heads walking towards the door. There were few people in the overground station. The train coming from Labaro was already pulling in. Salazar hurried on to the platform and just managed to slip into a carriage at the last minute. Chiara Bonardi was seated a few feet away, with her back to him, staring blankly into the middle distance. The lights of Torrevecchia skittered over the train windows. Beneath the flyover the streets all looked the same, with their rows of red and yellow lights, and the windows of the blocks of flats which the train almost seemed to be running into when the railway curved. Raised shutters revealed kitchens and living rooms, lit televisions, corridors and stairs. Salazar looked idly at the headlines in other people’s newspapers. The river Aniene had burst its b
anks and flooded the railway at Monte Mario; there was a crush at the station on Via Boccea. Chiara Bonardi was now moving towards the door. Salazar waited for her to get out before doing so himself. He followed her through the puddles of a car park in front of a supermarket, then along a road which ran beside a building site. She then went into a wider street which was better lit, and full of traffic. Salazar followed her at a prudent distance, checking his whereabouts on his handheld sat nav. They were a few hundred metres away from what he knew to be her home address. Via Cornelia was the next on the right. The woman crossed the street, stopped in front of the window of a bar and went towards a low, wide block of flats in the middle of a row of garages. She walked up the steps, stopped to look for her keys in her bag and disappeared into the entrance hall. Salazar waited for a moment before going up to check the bells: Bonardi, fourth floor, staircase B. He looked at his watch: it was eight forty-four.
That evening, when he got back to the Carmelite Convent, it seemed to him that someone had searched his room. Nothing was missing, his pipe was in its place, as was his diary. But somehow it was not quite as he had left it, Salazar was sure of that. He ran his hand over the door posts and the top of the cupboard: strangely, there was not a speck of dust. He inspected the lamp, the backs of the chairs and the bathroom cupboard in search of bugging equipment but found nothing. Still harbouring a lingering suspicion, he sat down at the table and began to write.
Atheist is a catch-all term. If you have grown up among churches, you are not the same sort of atheist as you would be if you’d grown up among mosques. Everyone is an atheist in terms of their own God. Some religions guard against atheism better than others; Protestantism, for example, fairly welcomes it in. Anyone who has been capable of contesting one set of dogma will not accept another; and anyone who starts to think rationally about God will be an atheist. But atheism will not be eliminated by persecuting atheists. It is the sons who have to be targeted, the fathers are already lost. That is why, in Holland, we have forged an alliance with the imams. We are experimenting with mixed services, studying the psalms and the suras together, though unbeknownst to the powers that be, for obvious reasons. For them, everything is a matter of outward form. They would not understand; indeed, I would be in trouble if they found out. For the moment I have to act in secret, but time will prove me right. The old generation of theologians will be swept aside by the new priests of Bible-Koranism. The powers that be cannot conceive of such a phenomenon; they will become aware of it only when it is already rampant. This is the new frontier of globalised faith. The churches which will survive will be those which stand firm against competition in the new market of religions. If they do not want to be swept away by the new forms of evangelism, the new sects, and scientism, our leaders must accept change. Furthermore, this is the only possible future: the three religions of the book must make common cause. No one will have any difficulty acknowledging the Pope of Rome when there is just one faith. But in order to bring about this revolution, we must start now. We must make our presence felt in schools, in the street, through all manner of networks and associations. A westerner who goes into a mosque is a triumph for us too. He has become a believer, he has set reason aside. No religion is better than Islam at cloaking faith in reason. Muslims use reason to reveal the intelligent order which pervades creation, and that is the way to disarm science. We stand around wrangling over the sacraments and women priests; we can’t agree on anything, not even on the emblem of the cross. They simply kneel down beneath the crescent and then all pray in the same way. I observed our atheists during lauds. There they are, dressed up as believers for decency’s sake, possibly even with a rosary in their hand. The Church makes do with appearances. It is far too long since it inspired martyrdom.
That Friday the Vicar’s black shoes were already on the footstool when Salazar went into the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. He kneeled down before the confessional, which already smelled of mouthwash.
‘Vicar, I need to gain access to the personal files of the doctors in the palliative care unit,’ he said without further preamble.
‘Identify yourself, my son,’ came the cold answer from the other side of the grille. Salazar patiently recited the Credo and then gave his registration number, as procedure required.
‘You cannot afford to skimp on such matters, inspector! You never know who might be seated on this chair! Even today the abortionists threatened the Holy See with new manifestos: posters extolling the secular revolution have been stuck up on the Leonine Walls, no less. Now speak on.’
‘Vicar, I need to consult the files on the doctors in the hospital. I was told to ask you for your permission.’
‘I will give authorisation to the Guarantor of Faith at San Filippo Neri and send you copies of all the files you wish to see. Are there any other developments?’
‘Nothing as yet, Vicar. I have identified several suspects and am making enquiries. The hospital is not as closed a world as I had imagined.’
‘I thought as much. We have been dropping our guard for quite some time. In a way this helps us lay our trap. So, play your cards well and reveal yourself only when the moment to strike has come.’
‘Maybe you’re right. We’ve dropped our guard,’ Salazar concurred. Then he crossed himself, stood up from the prie-dieu and walked off down the nave.
Chiara Bonardi left the flat at seven on the dot to go to eight o’clock mass at the hospital. Those relatives who did not attend mass regularly, and register their entry at the turnstile, lost the subsidy for palliative care and had to pay the hospital out of their own pockets. Salazar had already been sitting in the bar opposite for a good half hour. He waited until she had turned the corner, then paid for his coffee and walked towards the block. The flat was clean and tidy. A crucifix with an olive branch hung on the wall of the hall above the mirror on the coatrack. He went through the pockets of the coat which was hanging there, and found receipts from a hairdresser’s and a beauty salon. He noted the addresses: Via dei Gracchi and Via Silla. Odd, he thought, they’re right in the city centre, a long way away from Monte Spaccato. He folded them up and put them in his pocket. The furniture was old, but well-kept. In the red-tiled kitchen, a smell of coffee lingered. The main bedroom, with its double bed, was clearly never used; the mattress was covered with an embroidered bedspread which was too short for it, and the stitching was fraying here and there. The lamps on the bedside tables were unplugged. The cupboard was empty, apart from a man’s summer jacket and a battered Panama hat. Another little room, leading into the bathroom, contained an ironing-board, a clothes rack, a shoe cupboard and a laundry basket; bottles of water, a few packets of pasta, some jars of jam and two packets of washing powder stood on a nearby shelf. Chiara Bonardi’s room must be the one at the end of the corridor, Salazar thought to himself. That room at least showed signs of being lived in: a pair of pyjamas thrown over a chair, a cup of tisane on the bedside table, the duvet pulled up over the pillow. The main item of furniture in the living room was a large green leather divan; the parquet flooring was worn but well polished, and under the television a few blocks had come loose. On the table there was a vase of dried flowers, yesterday’s paper and a season ticket for the underground, in the name of Chiara Bonardi. The books in the shelves were meticulously arranged by height, forming uniform waves which seemed carved into the wood: adventure stories, history books, travelogues and a row of geology manuals alternated with primitive statuettes and other relics. Some handles on the dresser had been replaced with other, almost identical ones, distinguishable from the originals only by the brightness of the brass. The walls were hung with framed photographs of oilfields, Bedouin on camels, tanned-looking men at the wheels of jeeps. Marco Bonardi had been a mining engineer; he had spent his life travelling the world extracting oil for ENI. Salazar pulled open a few drawers where, among piles of CDs and letters, he found four photograph albums. He took them into the kitchen, laid them on the table and began leafing through them. Th
e images they contained were of two interconnected families; they had been assembled with considerable care, with dates and comments, so as to tell a coherent story. Even without knowing him, Salazar soon identified Marco Bonardi, and was amused to see him aging from one album to the next, while the little girl who was playing around him on the beach in the first album was becoming a young woman. In photos of her with her women friends, Chiara was always the tallest; she seemed to be the leader. She was more obviously recognisable in the fourth album, where Marco Bonardi featured only rarely, alongside a sweet-faced woman who must have been his wife. In the last pages the photos ranged more widely over time. They showed a now adult Chiara Bonardi on a flower-filled terrace, and then on a beach with a woman friend. Here a sun-tanned Marco Bonardi now appeared again, in shirt-sleeves, in front of a monument, or in exotic landscapes, with palms and minarets. There were also several portrait studies, taken in an interior which seemed to be this very flat. Carefully, Salazar detached one and slipped it into his pocket. The smallest album was half empty, with just a few poorly framed shots of landscapes, small figures, the first floors of anonymous houses, a car groaning with luggage, a lit Christmas tree. There were no longer any dates, or commentaries; it was as though the painstaking hand which had organised the earlier albums had suddenly grown weary of the task. Outside, a pale sun was emerging through the smoky sky. Salazar looked gloomily at the shadows of the shutters as they lengthened on the wall. He put everything back in place and was already at the door when he realised that something about those photographs didn’t quite add up. He looked at the one he had removed from the album, running his fingers over the back and edges. He went back into the living room, leafed through the last album and then reopened it, starting at the end. It was then that he noticed that some of the photos were fixed in with adhesive corner-pieces, while others were glued straight on to the page. He detached a couple of them, more brightly coloured than the rest. The paper, too, was different, coated with plastic, and thinner. They all bore the same date on the back, stamped faintly on the margins, a date in December of the previous year.