Cosi Fan Tutti

by Michael Dibdin

  And then, as if in answer to his prayers, he saw a couple of policemen up ahead, holding those lighted red wands they used to stop traffic. They must be doing one of those routine searches that Zi’Orlando mentioned, ostensibly to check that everyone’s papers are in order, but actually to pick up some easy money because they knew damn well that they weren’t. He didn’t care. If they wanted bribes, he would be happy to bribe them. Whatever it took.

  But to John Viviani’s disappointment, the two men in police uniform made no attempt to stop the taxi. On the contrary, they waved it past with vigorous gestures, as though impatient to have the street to themselves once more. But they compensated for this apparent negligence as soon as the next vehicle appeared, a few minutes later. Its hump-backed form and orange colour indicated that it was one of the municipal rubbish trucks returning to the depot, and as such might reasonably have been expected to be waved through the road-block just as the taxis had. But this time the red wand was raised, the official hand held out, the service revolver drawn, and the crew obliged to descend.

  Un disperato affetto

  On the Scalini del Petraio, it was already night. The steps scuttled away, a gutter between high crumbling walls overhung by gauds of greenery, sparsely lit by isolated lamps whose patches of yellowing light merely served to emphasize the topographical complexities concealed in the darkness all around and the twilit immensity above, defined by the conflictual paths of swifts and bats. The former swarmed, scooped, coiled and collided in a turbulence as continual and serene as that of electrons; the latter tirelessly maintained their preordained courses to and fro, like mechanisms in some early industrial process superseded elsewhere by more up-to-date technology but surviving here, like so much else, for want of capital investment.

  Seemingly unaware of any of this, a young man made his way down the steps with a rapid, impatient stride. From a window in the little piazzetta where the alley briefly levelled out before flowing into its final and even more precipitous plunge towards the depths below, an old man sat on a balcony looking out at the night, the moon rising behind Vesuvius, the sketchy indications of the peninsula and islands out in the bay. He leant forward as the footsteps clattered across the pitted black paving stones beneath, a look of wonderment on his face.

  ‘Arcangelo! he murmured. ‘Si tu?’

  But it wasn’t, of course. Arcangelo had been killed in 1944, aged two, buried alive when a bomb collapsed a six-storey building down by the port. The person speeding across the paving and down the second series of steps was Gesualdo, on his way to gather up the few belongings he had left at Don Alfonso’s house, to erase this entire episode from his life as though it had never occurred.

  That’s all I need to do, he thought, just clear out and forget everything that’s happened, and still more what hasn’t. Then, just as soon as he could get a few days off, he would find out the name of the hotel where the girls were staying and hop on a plane. A couple of hours later he would be in London, knocking at their door. Orestina would come to open it, thinking maybe it was the maid come to turn down the beds, and instead …

  That’s what he was thinking as he slipped the key Don Alfonso had given him into the lock and twisted it masterfully. Like the cheap copy it was – three for the price of two at a stall in the Forcella market – it snapped off, leaving a jagged remnant in the lock. Filled with frustrated rage, he punched the bell button repeatedly. At length a light came on and feet descended the staircase.

  ‘Who is it?’

  A man’s voice, one he doesn’t recognize.

  ‘Police! Open up!’ yelled Gesualdo.

  A pause, a click, and the door slid open. Iolanda stood revealed in a full-length gown buttoned decorously tight about the throat.

  ‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said.

  Gesualdo pushed past her and hurried upstairs. The apartment on the top floor was as he left it that morning. He speedily gathered together his belongings and packed them into the canvas bag in which he brought them. Then he turned, to find Iolanda gazing at him.

  ‘You’re going,’ she said.

  Gesualdo zipped up the canvas bag and looked around to see if he had overlooked anything. With chilling precision, Iolanda spat on the tiled floor at his feet.

  ‘Coward!’

  She turned and walked out. Fine, he thought, what do I care? Better that she despises me, that way she won’t come muling and whining after me. All the same, calling him a coward! What a fucking nerve! What did she know about cowardice or courage or anything else? What did she care about what he had been going through, about how tough it was for a man to do the right thing? His last remaining doubts were swept away. Bitch!

  Bag in hand, he strode downstairs. Outside the door to the lower apartment, Iolanda was waiting for him. He ignored her, but she stepped in front of him, blocking his way. Once again Gesualdo tried to push past, but this time he was repulsed with disconcerting strength.

  ‘Listen to what I have to say,’ she told him, ‘then leave, if you want to. You may think you know me, but you don’t. Don’t think I’ll come running after you like your other women. I am not like other women.’

  Gesualdo stood there, mesmerized by her intense, brilliant stare. It was only once she started talking again that he realized that she was not speaking broken Italian any more, but his own harsh, musky dialect.

  ‘This is all a farce. I am not Albanian. I am not a virgin. I am not looking for work. The man who owns this house set this up to trick you. But I’m the one who’s been tricked. I’ve fallen in love. I know it’s hopeless, but I don’t care. Even though you’re leaving, and I’ll never see you again, I need to humiliate myself by telling you that I love you, and that I always will.’

  She stepped back, leaving his way clear. For a moment neither of them moved. Then Iolanda came up to him and grazed his cheek lightly with the fingers of her left hand.

  ‘I will be whatever you want,’ she said. ‘Your friend, your lover, even your wife.’

  Gesualdo looked at her, his breath coming in rapid, shallow spurts.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Just take me.’

  He let his bag fall to the floor and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘What’s the use?’ he demanded in a tone of despair. ‘You know you can do anything you like with me. We men are all the same.’

  Iolanda gripped his wrists, pulled his hands apart and kissed his mouth briefly.

  ‘Not quite all,’ she said.

  Tanti linguaggi

  ‘What part?’

  ‘Come?’

  ‘Hackney.’

  ‘What means “acne”?’

  ‘Commonplace. Trite. Done to death.’

  ‘Cosa dice?’

  ‘No, he died in his bed, although I have to admit as how the Krays had put the word about. Only as luck would have it, they got nicked before anything came of it, know what I mean?’

  It was clear from the expressions of the other three people at the table that the answer to this question was ‘no’.

  ‘His ’art did for ’im!’ exclaimed Immacolata Higgins impatiently, clasping the imposing sculptural massif of her left breast.

  ‘Like Rimbaud,’ John Viviani murmured, drunkenly moved. ‘When I was young, I wanted to die for my art too. Only it turned out I didn’t have any.’

  ‘Rambo?’ queried Aurelio Zen in a tone of desperation. ‘Cioè i film di quell’italo-americano, come si chiama …?’

  ‘Stallone, Silvestro,’ replied Pasquale complacently. ‘“O cunuscevo ’a guaglione. ‘A famiglia soja steve ’e casa propio ’e rimpetto a nuje.”’

  ‘“I knew him when he was knee-high to a grasshopper”,’ Immacolata translated for the benefit of the American. ‘“His mob lived just down the terrace, number twenty-four. Vesty – that’s what we used to call him – was a skinny little runt. I remember I used to sneak him out some of my bangers with bubble and squeak, try and feed the blighter up
a bit. That’s how he came to have those big muscles, but needless to say I never got so much as a simple ‘Thank you’ when he became a big noise up there at your actual Cinecittà …”’

  ‘Per l’amor di dio!’

  Silence fell. Zen looked around the gathering.

  ‘Well, this meeting has certainly been a huge success so far,’ he began.

  ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘No kidding!’

  ‘Your glass is empty, duttò. Waiter!’

  Zen glowered at them.

  ‘Signora Higgins has been kind enough to regale us with the complete story of her interesting life, from those difficult early days in the village near Aversa to her memorable and fateful encounter with a young British soldier in 1944, leading us with tireless energy through every detail of the years of exile in London, where she acquired her excellent command of the native dialect, to her eventual return home following her husband’s untimely death.’

  ‘I just love listening to Italian,’ John Viviani enthused. ‘It’s kind of like going to the opera. You don’t understand what the hell’s going on, but it all sounds really cool.’

  ‘Great coat!’ commented Pasquale.

  La Igginz translated.

  ‘Guy I met this evening in a wine shop sold it to me,’ Viviani replied. ‘It’s a genuine Versace, and guess how much it cost me? Only thr … two hundred thousand!’

  ‘You were robbed! I could have got you two like that for …’

  ‘Basta, altrimenti impazzisco!’

  They all stared at Zen, who had risen to his feet.

  ‘Who is this guy, anyway?’ demanded John Viviani.

  ‘Filth,’ Immacolata Higgins replied with a dismissive gesture.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘A rozzer! Old Bill.’

  She looked at him with irritation. Didn’t this Yank understand his own language? Pasquale stepped into the breach with a vivid mime showing someone being arrested, handcuffed and led away, protesting vigorously but in vain.

  ‘He’s a cop?’ asked Viviani incredulously.

  ‘Too right,’ Aurelio Zen replied, speaking through the medium of the British Tommy’s widow. ‘And you, my son, are in dead lumber.’

  Viviani shook his head.

  ‘This is like just too weird.’

  ‘According to the official record, you are listed as a disgrace to the regiment and rotten to the core, a deserter to be shot on sight, no questions asked.’

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ Viviani exclaimed. ‘The guy’s an imposter! Tell him to show me some ID.’

  Unfortunately Immacolata had just swallowed some pizza the wrong way and was temporarily indisposed, although she recovered in time to deliver Aurelio Zen’s concluding remarks.

  ‘However, seeing as how your granddad was from Naples and therefore you’re one of the family, so to speak, I’m prepared to bend the rules, turn a blind eye and look the other way as long as you keep your end up and do your part. In short, you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours.’

  ‘Is this guy some kind of pervert?’ whispered Viviani.

  Zen produced the mug-shot of the escaped prisoner and handed it to the American with a sense of growing futility. It was by no means clear what, if anything, John Viviani had made of the proceedings so far. His grasp of Italian appeared to consist of a few words such as vino and grazie, and Immacolata Higgins’ English was apparently not much less foreign to him. On the other hand, after an initial moment of panic when he seemed to think he was about to be robbed, he had not made any objection to being brought to this suburban pizzeria and subjected to an informal interrogation across the red-and-white checked tablecloth.

  ‘I get it!’ he said at one point. ‘Living here is kind of a West Coast thing, like surfing. You either ride the waves or you get crushed by them.’

  But now, suddenly, that fluid ease had gone. As Viviani gazed at the photograph of Giosuè Marotta, he seemed to awaken from a long and restless sleep, the dream fled and his worst fears were confirmed. He began babbling in English, ragged, incomplete phrases that seemed to make no sense even to himself. His translator, however, had no difficulty in identifying and articulating the gist of Viviani’s incoherent diatribe.

  ‘It weren’t ’im!’ shouted Immacolata Higgins, clasping the American to her formidable bosom. ‘He didn’t do it! He’s got friends who saw ’im not do it! For Gawd’s sake, sir, don’t break the ’art of ’is poor old white-’aired mum by sending my only boy to the Scrubs! He’ll go straight in future, as San Gennaro’s my witness. And if there’s anything you need in a dry goods or bespoke line, yer ’onour, a nod’s as good as a wink, know what I mean?’

  When she finally fell silent, Viviani wrestled free of her surrogate maternal grip and turned to confront Aurelio Zen.

  ‘OK, what’s the deal?’ he asked stonily.

  ‘The deal,’ Zen replied, ‘is that you tell me everything you know about this affair – what, when, how, why and with whom – unabridged and unedited, from start to finish. In return, I shall contact the US Navy with the news that you have been safely recovered following a tip-off, although the kidnappers who had been holding you unfortunately escaped.’

  This was filtered through la Igginz a few times before comprehension, followed by incredulity and then immense relief, finally dawned on the American’s face.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said.

  Siete d’ossa e di carne, o cosa siete?

  The last lingering trace of light, a greenish glimmer above the bank of thick haze out to the west, had faded from the sky. Night settled on the town, muffled and dense, smothering sounds, it seemed, as much as sight. Certainly the three figures descending the steps of the Salita del Petraio made so little noise that they startled Don Castrese’s cat which was out on the prowl, having detected the faint but unmistakable odour of fellow creatures in heat. It was only at the last moment that some sixth sense alerted the beast to the presence of the advancing trio, masked by silence and cloaked in darkness. It leapt nimbly on to a window ledge and immersed itself in an exacting ritual of washing and grooming, as though to exorcize the malignant power of this encounter.

  The three strangers who had crossed the cat’s path came to a stop outside the house opposite. The shutters of the first floor windows were closed, but a faint light filtered out through the slats and occasional outbreaks of laughter punctuated the muted hush of the night. The top floor, by contrast, was perfectly dark and silent, the windows standing open to let the air flow in.

  ‘This is the place.’

  The cat paused in its obsessional laving as the speaker, a shorter, bulkier, older figure than the other two, stepped up to the door and pushed each of the two buttons mounted on the frame, the superscribed names illegible in the dark. A bell and a buzzer sounded distantly, cutting off a further burst of laughter inside. For a moment nothing happened, except perhaps some quiet, hair-raising modulation perceptible only to cats. Then the windows on the first floor were flung open and a man’s head appeared.

  ‘Yes?’ he barked.

  ‘We’re looking for Aurelio Zen,’ said a female voice from the darkness below.

  ‘Who?’

  The name was repeated by the other two in chorus. Another head appeared at the window, a girl in her twenties with long hair and sharp, lively features.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked her companion.

  ‘There’s no one here by that name,’ he called down.

  The three figures below consulted briefly in an inaudible mutter. Then the one who spoke first looked up at the window.

  ‘ZEN, AURELIO,’ she said, pronouncing every syllable with exaggerated distinctness.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong opera, grandma!’ the girl above jeered.

  ‘I am Aurelio Zen,’ said a new voice.

  Everyone looked up at the top floor of the house, where another young man, naked to the waist, had appeared at the window.

  ‘That’s not him!’ exclaimed one of the women
indignantly.

  ‘If only!’ added another.

  ‘He was never that good-looking,’ commented the third, ‘even at that age.’

  The man at the lower window leant out as far as he could, craning up towards the upper storey.

  ‘Oh, Gesuà, what the hell are you playing at?’

  The three figures below again consulted briefly.

  ‘We’re going now,’ the one on the left announced.

  ‘But we’ll be back,’ added her companion.

  ‘What’s that man doing in Aurelio’s house?’ asked the shorter one in the middle.

  They moved away down the hill, still conferring in an undertone, and were soon lost to sight.

  ‘Maybe we should have told them he’s at the opera,’ said Sabatino.

  ‘How do you know where he is?’ Libera asked.

  Sabatino smiled in a superior way.

  ‘Because a friend of ours is currently listening in to all his phone calls, my dear. There are already quite a few little mysteries about our Don Alfonsetto. This just makes one more.’

  Gesualdo’s voice drifted down from the upstairs window.

  ‘Maybe we should have followed them, found out who they are …’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got nothing better to do, Gesuà …’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Are you alone up there?’

  There was a pause. Sabatino and Libera exchanged glances.

  ‘Iolanda’s here too,’ Gesualdo finally replied, as though making an official declaration.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said Sabatino languidly, ‘I’d suggest you forget about volunteering for overtime work and take advantage of that fact, just as I’m about to with my companion.’