Cosi Fan Tutti

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘This one’s alive!’ he said, bending over Libera.

  Gesualdo put his hand on Iolanda’s bosom, then leant down and proceeded to administer the kiss of life. Sabatino did likewise with Libera. After a long interval, the victims began to show feeble signs of animation. The two men immediately redoubled their efforts, squatting astride the women’s supine bodies and pumping their chests vigorously.

  Dario De Spino, all this while, had been looking on from the doorway. He appeared to be holding his breath, for some reason, as a result of which his face had turned bright red.

  Possibil non par

  Professor Esposito had arranged to meet Aurelio Zen in Piazza del Duomo, but when Pasquale dropped his passenger off there was no sign of the professor. Pasquale was sceptical as to the chances of his ever reappearing.

  ‘Your watch must have cost – what? – three, four times what you owe him? Why should he let you redeem a pledge which is worth more than the debt it secures?’

  This verdict was delivered with the gravity and assurance of an economist explaining why the government’s fiscal policies are doomed to failure. Zen had no answer to its implacable logic, but he decided to wait for fifteen minutes anyway. Before dismissing Pasquale, he broke the mobile phone out of the box and, as a test, dialled his answering machine, which was taking calls for the disconnected phone.

  There were two messages. The first was from Gilberto Nieddu, asking him to get in touch ‘as a matter of the gravest urgency’. The other was from someone called Luisella, who just said she would call back. Zen switched off the portable and was about to put it away when he realized who Luisella was. He closed his eyes and uttered a curse.

  ‘How’s that, duttò?’ asked Pasquale with a worried look.

  ‘This thing brings bad luck,’ muttered Zen, holding up the mobile phone.

  Pasquale seemed to take this complaint literally.

  ‘I’ll change it for another, if you want. But what’s the problem, exactly?’

  ‘My ex-wife just called me.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Pasquale, as though everything was now clear. ‘That’s not the phone, duttò. That’s the moon.’

  ‘The moon?’

  ‘It’ll be full tonight.’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘That happens every month, Pasquale. I haven’t heard from my wife for seven years. Why now?’

  ‘Because it’s also the solstice, duttò. When the solstice and the full moon fall on the same day, even San Gennaro is overmatched.’

  With this thought, Pasquale went off to circulate the poster of John Viviani amongst his fellow tassisti. Professor Esposito still had not appeared, so Zen dialled Gilberto Nieddu’s number in Rome – or rather the number of a printing shop in the outskirts of the city belonging to a distant relative whom Nieddu had roped in on a ‘Sardinians versus the Rest of the World’ ticket when times got tough.

  Zen left a message and his number with this cut-out, then held the line until Gilberto was put through.

  ‘Aurelio! Thank God you called.’

  From the tone of his friend’s voice, Zen gathered that his message had been something more than mere hyperbole.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s your mother, Aurelio. I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but … well, she seems not to be at home.’

  Behind Zen’s back, a chorus of car horns played a brassy big-band fanfare.

  ‘That’s impossible! She never leaves except to come and visit your kids.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s when we first suspected something was wrong. She was supposed to come over this morning, but when I called for her there was no answer. Then Maria Grazia, the housekeeper, showed up and we went inside. It was empty, Aurelio. No Giustiniana, no note, no nothing. I was hoping that perhaps you knew where she was.’

  Zen felt his head spinning.

  ‘Look, I can’t come up to Rome just now. Maybe tomorrow, I don’t know. Can you make a few enquiries? Ask the porter, the other people in the building …’

  ‘I wish I could, Aurelio, but I have to go abroad. I’m flying out of Fiumicino in a couple of hours. A business trip.’

  ‘But you told me you’d had to surrender your passport.’

  ‘Oh, and one final thing,’ Nieddu said in an oddly strained voice. ‘You remember that video-game cassette you brought me to look at?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’ve just discovered there was some sort of mix-up. Apparently the one I gave you back wasn’t the same one you gave me. There were a bunch of them lying around in this place I went to test it. I suppose I must have picked up the wrong one.’

  ‘Are you joking? Jesus Christ, Gilberto! So where’s the original?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s in safe hands. Well, I’ve got to go, Aurelio. I hope your mother gets in touch soon. Ciao!’

  The line went dead. Zen frantically redialled the number in Rome, but there was no reply. He was trying Gilberto’s home number when a figure standing meaningfully close caught his attention. Professor Esposito bowed politely.

  ‘I’d given up on you,’ Zen said ungraciously. The news of his mother’s disappearance had shaken him more than he had yet appreciated. He imagined her having slipped out of her mind, as effortlessly as a dust-ball carried through an open window by the draught. She might even now be wandering around the traffic-ridden streets and addict-haunted parks of the capital, babbling to herself and accosting strangers under the illusion that she was back home in Venice, where everywhere was safe and everyone knew everyone.

  ‘We had an appointment,’ the professor remarked in a puzzled but slightly hurt tone.

  ‘The cab driver who brought me here said you’d never show. “The watch is worth more than what you owe him,” he told me. “Why should he bother to give it back?”’

  Professor Esposito looked pained.

  ‘Evidently he must be a low and ignorant class of person. It is true that I could have realized a short-term profit on the transaction by retaining your watch, but only at the cost of forfeiting your custom in the future and injuring the good name I have been at such pains to build up over the years.’

  Zen nodded vaguely, but he wasn’t listening. He had to find his mother, but he also had to find the escaped prisoner – and, above all, the US naval ensign who had gone AWOL. If what Gilberto had told him about the videogame cassette was even half true, then John Viviani was potentially in deadly danger.

  ‘“Never make an enemy unnecessarily, nor neglect an opportunity to make a friend,”’ observed Professor Esposito sententiously, ‘“for enemies can harm you and friends help you in ways and on occasions that you can never imagine.” Francesco Guiccardini.’

  He slipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and produced a watch which he handed to Zen.

  ‘I happened to notice it had a tendency to lose time, so I took the liberty of showing it to a friend of mine who cleaned it thoroughly. Then I thought, Gennà, Gennà, what have you done? Is it likely that the dottore wouldn’t have got the watch fixed himself, if he wanted to be on time? If he has omitted to do so, it can only be because he wants it to run slow so as to provide an excuse when he’s late for some professional or social appointment. And now you’ve ruined everything for him. What an idiot you are, Gennaro!’

  Zen thanked the professor for this thoughtful and ingenious hypothesis, but assured him that he had just never got around to getting the watch repaired. He then handed over the money he owed. The professor bowed again.

  ‘You have my card,’ he said. ‘If you ever have any other little matters which need sorting out, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Actually …’

  Professor Esposito was instantly all attention.

  ‘Yes?’

  Zen shook his head.

  ‘No, it’s nothing.’

  Neither man moved.

  ‘That card of yours,’ Zen said at last. ‘It mentioned various services of an, er, supernatural variety.’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would they include tracing someone who has disappeared?’

  Bisogna consolarle

  The kiss of life having proved effective, Gesualdo was all for calling a doctor to check the two girls’ condition, and then an ambulance to take them straight to hospital ‘and off our hands’. But the mere suggestion was enough to set off another crisis.

  ‘First I cut her throat!’ screamed Libera, grabbing a bread-knife and holding it to Iolanda’s neck. ‘Then my own!’

  ‘It’s just the effects of the electricity,’ Dario De Spino told the men. ‘They’re still in shock, so to speak.’

  Libera waved the knife about as though executing a sculpture carved from the humid mass of the afternoon air.

  ‘No doctors! No hospitals!’ she spat menacingly. ‘No authorities! No papers!’

  ‘They’d only deport us,’ Iolanda explained in a calmer tone. ‘And back home they’d lock us up in a concentration camp! No one ever comes out of those places alive.’

  ‘Better a quick and honourable death here!’ yelled Libera, brandishing the knife.

  ‘OK, girls, OK!’ said Sabatino with a big grin, holding up his hands in token of surrender. He had no doubt that these crazy Albanians are quite capable of carrying out their crazy threats. He could still remember the stories his father used to tell about blood feuds up in the mountains near Avellino, things no one would believe possible now. Yet that had been just fifty years ago, a few hours drive from the city.

  ‘We can’t risk it,’ he whispered to Gesualdo. ‘If these two cut their throats, the cops will be all over the place. We’d be out of circulation for a year at least, and you know what that would mean for our promotion prospects. There’re plenty of hungry young bastards out there who’d be only too glad to take our places.’

  Gesualdo shrugged unwillingly.

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  Sabatino turned to the two girls.

  ‘Eh, no problem!’ he announced with a big smile. ‘We’ll just forget this ever happened, right? And if there’s anything we can do to help, within the limits of what’s possible, just tell us and we’ll be only too glad to bear it in mind. Meanwhile you can stay here …’

  ‘And you,’ Libera said, dropping the knife with a clatter and taking his hand, ‘will stay too.’

  Sabatino looked at her, then at Gesualdo.

  ‘Maybe one of us had better stick around for a while to calm them down,’ he said rapidly in dialect. ‘You get back to work, Gesuà. I’ll join you as soon as I’m free. It won’t take long, but in a case like this it’s just as well to be on the safe side.’

  His partner stared at him for a moment in a way that could have meant anything or nothing.

  ‘Whatever you think, Sabatì,’ he said tonelessly.

  Turning to go, he found Iolanda standing in front of him, gazing at him intently. For a moment he paused, as though expecting her to say something. Then, with a shrug of impatience or relief, he bustled out. Libera caught Iolanda’s eye and jerked her head sharply towards the door. With a grimace, Iolanda went after Gesualdo.

  Dario De Spino coughed tactfully.

  ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment, I must make an urgent phone call. Remember Don Giovà? One of his conquests wants me to fix up her son with a job on the cigarette-smuggling boats.’

  Catching Sabatino’s eye, he tapped the side of his nose and added in dialect, ‘Have fun!’

  ‘What was that he said?’ asked Libera as De Spino closed the door, leaving them alone.

  ‘He told me to look after you,’ said Sabatino.

  ‘And will you?’

  Sabatino gestured awkwardly.

  ‘There’s not much I can do, but …’

  ‘Dario mentioned someone called Don Giovanni,’ Libera rattled on. ‘Maybe he could help.’

  ‘No, no, he’s finished.’

  ‘Finished?’

  ‘He used to be a player around town, but he was a big womanizer. That was his downfall.’

  Libera sighed loudly.

  ‘Ah, it’s useless! Here are my sister and I, stranded in a foreign land with no one to help us. We have no work, no money, no hope. Our last chance was that you and your friend might take pity on us.’

  Sabatino shrugged.

  ‘Eh, eh! Life is tough everywhere these days.’

  Libera turned away, biting her lip.

  ‘You’re so cold! I’m desperate, and all you do is laugh at me.’

  Sabatino reached out and grasped her hand.

  ‘I’m not laughing.’

  They exchanged a long look. Libera gently disengaged her hand.

  ‘Words are cheap.’

  ‘I mean it!’ Sabatino insisted. ‘Why do you think I went to all that trouble to get rid of Gesualdo? He’s cold, all right. But not all of us are, and certainly not me. I want to help you. I want you to be happy!’

  He rubbed the fingers which had been gripping her hand. They seemed to be smeared with some sort of greasy black substance which smelt vaguely familiar, paint or polish …

  Prove it,’ said Libera, staring at him defiantly.

  Sabatino took a bunch of keys from his pocket, removed one from the cluster and handed it to Libera. She stared at it as though she had never seen such a thing before.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘A key, of course.’

  Libera looked him in the eyes.

  ‘Yes, but what does it open?’

  Sabatino reached inside his jacket and produced a pen. Taking Libera’s hand in his, he wrote something on the velvety skin of her inner wrist.

  ‘Come to this address at eight this evening,’ he said, ‘and you’ll find out.’

  Che loco è questo?

  Professor Esposito’s tall, angular figure was familiar enough in the back streets north of Via Sapienza, where he was regarded with a mixture of awe and mockery. Everyone had some tale to tell about the legendary powers, both worldly and supernatural, of ‘o prufessò, which ranged from predicting the winning number in the lottery to locating a lost will by direct communication with the dear departed, from fixing up someone’s worthless nephew (who was nevertheless pate ’e figlie, with a family – God help them – to support) with a safe municipal job, to obtaining tickets for Napoli’s big game against Juventus which had been sold out for months. One story even claimed that the professor had brought back to life a child who had swallowed rat poison, simply by passing a magnet over its inert body!

  The professor’s physical appearance, on the other hand, was a subject of general derision, mingled perhaps with a tinge of fear. His height would not have been considered exceptional farther north, but here, especially accentuated by his extraordinary skinniness, it created a freakish effect reflected in the nicknames which seemed to stick to him like dough thrown at a wall: Piece of Spaghetti, Stilt-Walker, the Lighthouse, Number Twenty-Nine. This last referred to the number popularly known in the local bingo game of tumbulella as ‘the source of all trouble’, an allusion to the male sexual organ.

  On this occasion, though, Professor Esposito’s progress through the narrow, crowded alleys of this part of Spaccanapoli caused even more consternation than usual.

  ‘Mamma bella d”o Carmine!’ exclaimed an old woman selling contraband cigarettes from a tray on her ample lap. ‘The professor has duplicated himself!’

  To a casual glance this might indeed appear to have been the case, for at his side was another man of equal height and scarcely greater bulk. They were similarly dressed, too, in long overcoats and grey felt hats, and their stride – long and hurried by local standards – was evenly matched.

  ‘Some long-lost brother?’ mused the cobbler, looking up from his work outside the one-room home where five children were playing a noisy game of tag.

  ‘Why not? There’s no shortage of foundlings in Naples!’ commented his customer, playing on the original meaning of the name Esposito.

  But when the professor finally reached his ow
n home, on the third floor of a tenement above a second-hand book shop, he introduced his companion to the woman there – who might with equal likelihood have been his sister, his wife or his mother – as Don Alfonso Zembla. He then dismissed her curtly, with instructions that he was not at home to anyone.

  ‘Not even Riccardo?’ the woman queried.

  ‘Least of all Riccardo!’ retorted the professor, making the two-fingered gesture against the evil eye.

  Once the woman had gone, he set about closing the shutters and the windows, leaving the room in semi-darkness.

  ‘I needn’t bother with the costume,’ he remarked as though to himself.

  His visitor looked puzzled.

  ‘Costume?’

  The professor opened a large trunk in the corner and lifted out a long robe in a satiny crimson material.

  ‘There’s a hat and boots to go with it,’ he said. ‘It’s useful when you’re dealing with the popolino, common folk who are ignorant and credulous. With a man like you there’s no need for cheap tricks.’

  ‘I don’t see why that makes any difference,’ his visitor objected. ‘If you get results, your clients will believe in your powers, costume or no costume. And if you don’t, fancy dress isn’t going to help.’

  The professor closed the trunk with a curt shake of the head.

  ‘With all due respect, dottore, there you betray a complete misunderstanding of this science, which is not Newtonian but, if I may use the expression, post-Einsteinian! What is true for a given person in a given situation is not necessarily true for that person in a different situation, or for another person in the same situation, and still less if both are different.’

  He lit an oil lamp and placed it on the table, beckoning his visitor to be seated at one end.

  ‘If some illiterate market trader comes to consult me and sees me looking like this, he’ll think, “This is no magician, no seer, this is an accountant or a teacher.” He won’t believe what I tell him, so it’s a waste of time for me to tell him anything at all. The relationship is doomed from the start. With you, on the other hand, it’s exactly the opposite. There’s no point in me dressing up and going through a lot of mumbo-jumbo, because you would just think, “This man is obviously a fake or he wouldn’t need to bother with all this nonsense.” Am I right?’