Back to Bologna

by Michael Dibdin

  Now he was heading back to the little urban pied-à-terre that he maintained a short distance from the university, to freshen up and change out of his smoke-poisoned clothes before going to lunch with a visiting academic from the University of Uppsala. By bicycle, of course. In Bologna, bicycles were associated with the populace: impoverished students, pensioners scraping by, penny-pinching housewives and the like. For a world-famous author and academic, with untold millions in the bank, to be seen on one instantly transformed his battered though structurally handsome 1923 Bianchi S24 from a humble means of transport into what semioticians called a ‘sign vehicle’, thus making one of those arcane jokes for which Ugo was famous. God, he was cool.

  And then something happened.

  Afterwards, of course, it was perfectly obvious what this was, but the instant offered nothing but fleeting and confused impressions, followed by a sickening loss of balance, the jarring impact, and multiple aches and pains. The next thing he was distinctly aware of was a man standing over him. Ugo himself appeared to be lying on the cobbled street with the handlebar of the bicycle lodged somewhere in his kidneys.

  ‘Aurelio Zen, Polizia di Stato,’ the man snapped, displaying some sort of identification card. ‘You’re under arrest for dangerous driving.’

  Ugo tried to say something, but the man had turned away and was loudly phoning for an ambulance. It was then that Ugo saw a woman leaning groggily against the nearest parked car. There was blood on her face and she was breathing rapidly.

  ‘Immediately!’ the policeman named Zen yelled. ‘It’s a matter of the highest urgency. My wife has been run over.’

  ‘I’m not your damned wife!’ the woman retorted.

  The man folded up his mobile and strode over to Ugo, who had by now regained his feet. He looked absolutely beside himself with fury, or worry, or both.

  ‘I can’t effect an arrest now,’ the policeman told him, ‘as I need to accompany the victim to hospital. But if she turns out to be seriously injured, God forbid, then I shall take further steps. Give me your details.’

  Ugo got out his wallet and handed Zen his identity card, along with another giving his home address and title, position and contact numbers at the university. That might get him a little respect, he thought, picking up his bike as a siren made itself heard in the distance.

  ‘Excuse me!’

  He turned. The woman he had struck was looking at him.

  ‘Aren’t you Edgardo Ugo?’

  He nodded. She smiled and her bloodied face lit up.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you,’ she went on. ‘I was at your cook-off with Lo Chef this morning. I thought you were wonderful!’

  For possibly the first time in his life, Edgardo Ugo found himself at a complete loss for words.

  ‘I’m so sorry that this happened,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t apologise enough.’

  The woman laughed lightly.

  ‘Not at all, it was all my fault.’ She jerked a thumb at Zen, who was anxiously scanning the far end of the street for the ambulance. ‘We just had a row and I couldn’t get away from the restaurant quickly enough. I dashed out without even looking to see what was coming. There was no way you could have done anything about it.’

  ‘Here it comes!’ called Zen.

  ‘And don’t pay any attention to him,’ Gemma confided to Ugo. ‘All that stuff about arresting you? That’s just bluff and bluster.’

  Then the ambulance was there, the paramedics stepping out. Ugo mounted the Bianchi and tried to cycle discreetly away, but the collision had dislodged the drive chain. He didn’t want to get his fingers filthy, or to linger, so he set off on foot, pushing the bike.

  At the corner of the street, beneath the arch marking the entrance to the former ghetto, he turned to look back. Apparently the ambulance crew didn’t consider the woman’s condition serious enough to put her on a stretcher and were getting her seated in the back of the ambulance. The incident had drawn quite a crowd, including one young man wearing a black leather jacket decorated with the crest of the local football club. He also noticed that the policeman who had threatened him did not in fact get into the ambulance, as he had said he would, but watched it depart, then turned and started walking in Ugo’s direction.

  Ugo turned the corner with a shrug. If the cop wanted to find him, he had the address anyway. Meanwhile he marvelled at the day’s extraordinary events. To knock someone down in the street and then have her tell you how wonderful you were! Incredible. He just hoped that she wasn’t concussed. Anyway, that was enough excitement. A hot shower and a change of clothes, then off to a leisurely late lunch with Professor Erik Lönnrot. He leant the bicycle against the house wall, between the front door and the marble copy of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 ready-made Fountain. He found his key and turned sideways to force it into the sticky lock.

  And then something else happened.

  23

  Romano Rinaldi paced restlessly and at random through the many rooms of his hotel suite, a continual gyration with no purpose except to relieve the intolerable pressure in his skull. He knew, beyond the slightest doubt, that he was going to die at any moment. What was it called? An aneurysm, a stroke, a cerebral haemorrhage. Basically your brain blew up.

  He walked through to the main bedroom, then over to the insulated glass doors giving on to the balcony over the street. The temptation to gasp down some fresh air was almost overwhelming, but he couldn’t risk showing himself, not with the ranks of paparazzi lined up like a firing squad detail below, fingers hovering over the shutter release for the front cover ‘HIS SHAME’ shot. Instead it was through into the spare bedroom and then down the internal hall to the lounge that stretched the entire width of the building. Despite his best efforts, he could hardly avoid catching sight of himself in the vast mirror that dominated the end wall.

  I’m fucked, he thought, staring at his sagging features, totally and utterly fucked. And it’s all my own fault. It was mine to leave alone, but I agreed to take it on. After that it was mine to screw up, and I did just that, in front of an audience of millions. The TV news channels would show the highlights again and again and again, until the whole country had witnessed his utter humiliation. He would be laughed at in the street and people would snigger when he was introduced to them. As for his career as Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta, forget it. He would be carrying his shame about with him for the rest of his life, like those dogs you saw with a plastic bag of their own shit hanging from their collars.

  He clutched his head and stared in the mirror. That prominent vein on his temple was surely even more engorged than it had been five minutes ago. Get Delia to call an ambulance. There had been good hospitals in Bologna ever since the Middle Ages. Back then they let blood to relieve the pressure. Leeches. That obscene object he’d been offered in a bento box when he visited Tokyo last year, some sort of raw snail out of its shell. An elegantly lacquered casket with a skinned penis inside. Well, after this he wouldn’t be invited to any more international culinary conferences, that was for sure.

  On leaving the fiera complex–fortunately his production company had laid on a car in the VIP section of the parking lot, so he hadn’t had to face the mob outside the main entrance–Rinaldi had gone straight back to his hotel, entering through the kitchens, where his sudden appearance had generated a good deal of mirth and sight gags involving fire extinguishers among the lagered-up, sweated-out peons. Then up the emergency stairs to his suite, where he had double-locked and chained the door, taken the phone off the hook and switched off his mobile before snorting his entire remaining stash of cocaine. Unfortunately there hadn’t been that much left, and by now the effects had worn off. He switched the mobile on again, ignoring the backlog of messages, and dialled Delia.

  ‘Bring me two bottles of vodka and a bucket of ice,’ he said, cutting off the speech into which she immediately launched. ‘Personally. Now.’

  Five minutes later there was a timid tap at the door. Rinaldi peeked through the s
py-hole and verified that it was indeed Delia, and that she was alone, before dismantling his barricade and letting her in.

  ‘Put it down there,’ he said, pointing to the floor of the entrance hall.

  But Delia kept going straight into the lounge, where she deposited the two bottles and the silver bucket on a glass-topped table.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Rinaldi shouted, coming after her. ‘I need to be alone.’

  ‘We have to talk, Romano.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  Delia sank into a sofa the size of an average family car.

  ‘Carissimo, I’ve been trying to call you for hours!’

  Rinaldi dropped four large ice cubes into a tall tumbler, filled it to the brink with vodka, and drank deeply.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer my messages?’ Delia went on in an irritating, deep-down-inside-I’m-just-a little-girl whine. ‘How can I help you if you won’t even speak to me?’

  ‘Nobody can help me. And I can’t help your career along any more, so don’t pretend to be personally interested. It’s over. Me, you, the series, the company, everything.’

  ‘That’s absurd, Romano! You can’t just chuck the whole thing away because of a silly accident.’

  He gulped some more vodka and almost choked as he burst into incredulous laughter.

  ‘Silly accident! I almost burnt down the Bologna exhibition centre! For all I know the police are after me.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault! How were you to know that the dial controlling the burners on the stove hadn’t been calibrated properly? All the kitchen equipment was rounded up at the last moment from the manufacturers exhibiting at Enogastexpo. They have a few functional demonstration models, but most of the hardware is on static display. It was one of those units that was placed in your kitchen area. The fitters connected it to the gas supply, but they didn’t have time to fine-tune all the various functions. So you put that pan of oil on over what you thought was low heat, then turned away to do other things and entertain your fans. In fact, the flame under the pan was hotter than the safety regulations allow for that kind of stove even at the very highest setting! The outcome was inevitable.’

  Rinaldi finished his drink and immediately poured another.

  ‘No one will believe that.’

  Delia got to her feet and eyed him levelly.

  ‘They will when the managing director of the company that manufactured the stove confirms it tomorrow morning, having conducted a personal examination of the unit in question.’

  Acontemptuous shrug.

  ‘Why should he want to help?’

  ‘Well now, I wonder. Maybe the hundred thousand from the broadcasters had something to do with it.’

  Rinaldi stared at her in wonderment.

  ‘They’ve bribed him?’

  ‘Of course they have. You’re one of their premium products for the foreseeable future, Romano. They aren’t going to give you up without a fight.’

  She came over and stood very close to him, looking him unblinkingly in the eyes.

  ‘All you have to do is keep your head down for the next few days. No interviews, no comments, no phone calls except to and from me. In fact it would be best if you didn’t even appear in public. Why don’t you just stay here?’

  Rinaldi shook his head violently.

  ‘Out of the question!’

  Apart from anything else, he couldn’t possibly show his face in any restaurant in town, where most of the clients would be attending the Enogastexpo. Even room service would be risky. ‘Sorry, sir, Bologna fire regulations prohibit the preparation of flambéed dishes in the rooms, heh heh heh.’

  Delia nodded.

  ‘In that case, we go to Plan B. One of the directors of our TV channel owns a villa in Umbria. It’s luxurious and very remote. At seven this evening I’ll have a car waiting for you at the back door of the hotel to whisk you off. There’ll be a wellstocked larder and cocktail cabinet, not to mention a selection of your favourite recreational drugs. When everything’s prepared, we’ll bring you down to Rome for a well-rehearsed press conference. You’ll have been coached with an answer to every conceivable question. Then, at the end, you publicly challenge Edgardo Ugo to a replay.’

  Rinaldi jolted so violently he spilled most of his drink.

  ‘Go through that again? Are you crazy?’

  Delia laid her hand on his arm.

  ‘You won’t have to, Romano. Ugo’s lawyer is already in possession of a document guaranteeing that we will not pursue any claims against his client regardless of the result of today’s contest. Ugo has nothing left to gain, so he will decline our offer. But you will have made it, which makes you look good. After that it’s back to business as usual, planning the summer series of the show. Va bene?’

  Rinaldi thought this over for some time. Actually it didn’t sound too bad. Maybe there was hope after all.

  ‘Va bene.’

  He saw Delia to the door, and bolted and chained it after her. Back in the lounge, he replenished his glass and started to wander about again, but at a more relaxed pace than before. Vodka was good stuff, taken in sufficient quantities, but after the day he’d had Rinaldi reckoned that he deserved some of the very best. He wouldn’t be able to get that here, of course, but even a relatively modest product would be better than nothing. Once it got dark and the press corps gave up, he would slip out and try asking in a few bars around the university area. It never hurt to ask.

  24

  The moment the automatic doors of the Policlinico Sant’Orsola swished to behind him, Zen felt at home. It was good to be back in that calm, purposeful, well-ordered world, where an atmosphere of assured competence prevailed and questions of life and death were discussed in cool, measured undertones. Of course, it wasn’t like that in Palermo or Naples–or even Rome, which is why Zen had gone to a private clinic–but the high civic values of the Bolognese ensured that their public hospital was a model of its kind.

  Nevertheless, the lowly and marginal status of non-patient, lacking the talismanic plastic wrist-strap, meant that passing through the various internal frontiers took a lot longer. Zen’s police identity card helped to an extent, but when he finally reached the waiting room outside the surgery where Gemma was being treated, admission was categorically refused. To make matters worse, the orderly in charge made it clear that this was at the patient’s request.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Zen retorted. ‘She doesn’t even know I’m here.’

  ‘The patient stated upon admission that if someone named Aurelio Zen asked to see her, permission should be refused.’

  ‘But that’s absurd! We live together!’

  ‘The policy of the hospital is to respect the patient’s wishes in such matters.’

  The orderly turned away and began looking through a pile of files.

  ‘How long will it be before the preliminary diagnosis is complete?’ Zen demanded.

  ‘That depends on the physician.’

  ‘I’m asking for an estimate.’

  ‘At least half an hour.’

  Zen sighed loudly and wandered to the doorway shaking his head, nearly colliding with a tiny, wizened woman whose worn-out coat was at least five sizes too large for a physique heavily discounted by age.

  ‘Bastards, they think they own you,’ Zen muttered.

  The woman tittered, an unexpectedly liquid ripple of sound. Zen suddenly recognised her as the person who had been talking to an apparently stuffed Pekinese in the bar near the football stadium the night before.

  ‘Eh, no, it’s the undertaker who owns you!’ she replied.

  Zen noted the time and went outside to have a cigarette, the ban on smoking inside the hospital apparently being observed in Bologna even by the doctors.

  An ambulance had drawn up to the ramp outside the Pronto Soccorso department, and staff and paramedics were unloading a stretcher case under the supervision of two officers of the Carabinieri. In the tradition of policemen the world over, they had parked
their car where it was most convenient for them and least so for everyone else, in this case blocking the wheeled route into the hospital. One of the officers went to move it, and on his way back Zen waylaid him and, having displayed his warrant card, enquired with mild professional curiosity what was going on.

  ‘Gunshot wound,’ the Carabiniere replied as the victim was conveyed inside.

  Zen eyed the familiar bulging plastic bag that one of the paramedics held high, filled with colourless fluid feeding the intravenous drip, formerly his sole sustenance for days on end.

  ‘Self-inflicted?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. He was in no condition to answer questions.’

  ‘All part of the job,’ Zen commented in a tone of trade solidarity.

  ‘It’s going to be news, though,’ the other officer went on, seemingly piqued by the implication that this was just another routine chore.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We checked his documents in the ambulance. Professor Edgardo Ugo. A big noise at the university, apparently.’

  Zen frowned. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it there and then. So much had happened in the past few hours.

  ‘Well, I’d better go and see about taking a statement,’ the patrolman remarked, straightening his cap.

  ‘I’ll tag along,’ said Zen. ‘I’ve got someone in there too.’

  He was hopeful that Gemma might be undergoing treatment in one of the curtained-off areas of the emergency ward, and that by circumventing the orderly at the desk he might be able to talk to her. There must have been some mistake or confusion when she was checked in. She had very likely been mildly concussed. In any case, she would never refuse him in person.

  Unfortunately the efficiency of the Bologna hospital and its deplorably adequate manning levels brought this scheme to nothing. Zen was intercepted and asked his business by a nurse, and once his identity and intent had been established he was referred to the ward sister, who ordered him to leave in no uncertain terms. As she escorted him to the door, they passed the cubicle where the Carabinieri patrolman stood watching the most recent admission being given an injection prior to the doctors cutting his clothing away. Zen smiled nostalgically. He had come to love those gleaming pricks of pain, as bright and shiny as the freshly unwrapped hypodermic itself, particularly when morphine was involved.