by Marco Vichi
Piras whispered a last goodbye to Sonia and hung up. He glanced at his watch – half past five – and went into the kitchen. Felix the Cat was on the telly, with the volume turned down almost all the way. His mother looked at him dejectedly.
‘Poor Benigno,’ she said, still stripping away the damaged cabbage leaves, ‘what a terrible thing.’ She didn’t have the courage to ask about the mysterious girl who had called.
‘Where’s Dad?’ asked Piras.
‘He’s behind the house. The handle on the hoe’s broken.’
‘I’m going to Pina’s to see Benigno.’
‘Tell her we’ll be there shortly.’
‘All right,’ said Piras. He went into the entrance hall, leaned the crutches against the wall and put on his overcoat, buttoning it up to the collar. The moment he opened the door the phone rang again.
‘Shall I get it?’ his mother asked, taking the cabbages out of her lap.
‘No, never mind,’ said Piras, walking over to the telephone. It might be Sonia again.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Piras, how are you feeling?’
‘I’m feeling fine, Inspector, and yourself ?’
‘Not too bad. Doing anything interesting?’
‘Nothing very interesting, but I’m going to pay my last respects to a neighbour who died,’ said Piras, and he told Bordelli in a few words what had happened. Then he asked about Baragli.
‘He hasn’t got much time left,’ said the inspector.
‘Does he know that?’
‘He seems to, at certain moments.’
‘I hope I can make it in time to see him,’ said Piras.
‘Well, you never know …’ said Bordelli. The phone call was slipping into gloomy territory. They said goodbye and Piras went out.
The Setzus lived next door. Parked on the street were a couple of cars and a few three-wheeled vans. Some scooters and bicycles were propped up against the wall. He knocked on the door and Adele, the young daughter of Sergio Minnai, a cousin of Giovanni’s, came to the door. She was seven years old and had a big mop of black hair on her head. Piras had never heard her say a word. He stroked her cheek and went inside. The children were all in the kitchen, having a snack and quietly playing.
Piras climbed the stairs, one step at a time, as Giovanni started coming down slowly, arms dangling. They met halfway and stopped. Giovanni’s face looked tired and his bald head was glistening with sweat. Piras asked him how his wife was doing. Giovanni shook his head and in a whisper told him what had happened over the past few hours …
Pina had spent the night pacing about the house, reciting the rosary. At dawn she’d collapsed and lain down on the brick bench next to the hearth. Early that morning Giovanni had gone with the carabinieri to their Oristano station to complete the formalities. They asked him about Benigno’s pistol, which turned out not to be registered, but neither he nor Pina knew a thing about it. The report stated: ‘weapon of unknown origin not registered by owner’. They also told him that in such cases the judge declared the weapon illegal and ordered it destroyed. Then they told him that Benigno had died around 6 p.m. on Sunday and that his mortal remains could now be returned to his next of kin.
And so Giovanni had gone to buy a coffin for Benigno and returned to Bonarcado with a hearse from the funeral home. A little while later an ambulance arrived, and the body was laid in state in the house. Benigno’s body had been brought to their house because his parents were no longer alive, he was an only child, and he had never married. Pina was his closest relation as well as his sole heir. Pina’s and Giovanni’s sons had been alerted, but they both worked ‘on the continent’, had very young children, and unfortunately could not come, not even for Christmas. The journey was too expensive to make every single year. They would come the following year.
‘What’s happening with Benigno’s sheep and pigs?’ Piras asked.
‘Barraccu’s looking after them.’ He was an old friend of the deceased who lived in Tramatza.
‘I’m going to go say hi to Pina,’ said Piras.
Giovanni went downstairs, and Piras went up. He quietly entered the death chamber, which was illuminated only by candles. There were some whispers of greeting, then silence. The children downstairs could be heard making noise, but nobody paid any attention. There were some twenty people in the room, relatives and friends. Piras knew most of them. His eyes searched for Pina in the penumbra and found her sitting in a corner. He went over to her, trying not to make any noise with his crutches.
‘Ciao, Pina,’ he whispered.
She looked up, and a smile appeared on her face swollen with grief.
‘Ciao, Nino.’
‘Why don’t you go and rest for a while …’
‘Do you think he’ll go to hell?’ she asked.
‘Hell doesn’t exist, Pina.’
‘I don’t think God will send him to hell, I really don’t think so …’
‘God doesn’t send anyone to hell, Pina. I’m going to go say goodbye to Benigno.’
He went up to the deceased. The coffin lay on the bed, sinking into the mattress. The lid was propped up in a corner of the room. Benigno looked at peace, which he had never done when alive. The head wound was hidden by a large square dressing. His cheeks had fallen back towards his ears, and the skin on his face was shiny, as if someone had oiled it. A dark wooden rosary was threaded through his fingers, with the crucifix in plain view. He’d been dressed up in a fine black suit and his Sunday shoes. Piras sent him his best wishes. He remembered when, as a child, he used to go fishing with Benigno in a rough torrent near an old abandoned mill at the foot of the Montiferru. They would go to a spot where the water formed a peaceful cove and sit on a rock, watching the cork on the surface, waiting for it to go under. At times they didn’t say a word for hours at a stretch. The sound of the torrent filled their ears, and when he went to bed at night, he thought he could still hear it …
He felt something graze his elbow and turned round. Pina was beside him, approaching the coffin. She looked at Benigno and smiled. Then she reached out and caressed his face, first the cheeks, then the forehead, nose, mouth. To leave her undisturbed, Piras took a step back, then felt someone squeeze his arm. It was Giacomo, Giovanni’s older brother, his face carved by his seventy years.
‘Where are Maria and Gavino?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘They’re on their way. Do you know anything about the funeral?’
‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning,’ said Giacomo. There was a buzz in the room. Piras turned round and saw his parents come in.
That evening Bordelli went to have a bite to eat in Totò’s kitchen and ended up chatting with him until almost eleven. It was easy to talk to Totò. He always had something to say about everything. But it was also easy to eat and drink too much in that kitchen. As he was leaving, the inspector swore that he would not set foot back in that place for at least a week. But he said this to himself often and didn’t really believe it. It was just a way to ease his conscience until he had finished digesting.
Getting into the car, he thought he would drop in on Rosa but then changed his mind. He felt like being alone. He’d been feeling strange lately, and he didn’t know why.
He went home, poured himself a glass of grappa and turned on the television. He was just in time to watch the last national news report. The most important news item seemed to be Christmas. What presents Italians were buying for one another, how much they spent, who had a tree and who a crib, what they would be eating for Christmas Eve supper and Christmas Day lunch. All one saw were smiling faces. Apparently those who didn’t smile weren’t worth interviewing. The poor and unhappy were not part of the celebration. But perhaps the poor and unhappy no longer existed and were now extinct; maybe everyone was now rich and happy and bought each other gifts and tons of meat and tortellini. And he was just like everyone else, except for the fact that he laughed less than them. Bordelli shook his head. He felt like an old Scrooge letting bitt
erness get the better of him.
He emptied his glass, put the cigarette he’d been holding between his lips back in the packet and went into his bedroom, where he lay down in bed and turned out the light. Staring into the darkness, he started thinking about the girl in the photographs, the beautiful Marisa. What the hell were Rinaldi and Tapinassi up to? How long was it going to take them to find her? He could hardly wait to talk to her and learn the whole story behind those photos.
Then he thought again of Odoardo. He could see the young man’s grim face, his nervousness at the mention of Badalamenti’s name. It might mean nothing, of course, but why indeed had he given a start? If he’d never before heard of the man, why did he have that expression? True, he might never have met him. His mother would certainly have had no good reason to tell him about the man blackmailing her with those scandalous photos. Still, the boy gave him something to think about. That afternoon the inspector had checked the phone book and found Giampiero Balducci, architect, at Via Timoteo Bertelli 29. He’d felt tempted to call him then and there, but on second thought had decided not to. Given where the case stood at that moment, what point would there have been in talking to the architect? What more could the man have told him about Odoardo? The inspector rolled on to his side, head full of vague impressions and useless questions. He kept coming back to the same point: Odoardo wasn’t left-handed. He even reviewed Diotivede’s explanations again, and found nothing to object to. The doctor had been quite clear about things. Asking him to confirm them yet again might make him turn nasty.
Bordelli changed position again, thinking he had to be very patient. Sooner or later something would turn up. But his brain kept on whirring. At supper time he’d gone back to call on the three men on the list who hadn’t been there in the morning, and he’d returned the promissory notes to all three, unbeknownst to mothers and wives. Each had thanked him in his way. One with tears in his eyes, another with a hearty laugh. Mario Cambi had given him a bottle of farm-fresh olive oil and a jar of home-made tomato sauce … None, however, was left-handed. It was as if there were no left-handed people left in the world …
The inspector sighed deeply and buried his head under the pillow. For the moment the list was the only lead he had. He turned on to his other side, thinking he had to stop obsessing about his job. He was always turning something or another over in his head. He swept it all away, but a second later the shadowy face of Odoardo returned. The boy had a hardness in his eyes that certain sensitive people sometimes have, as if always leery, always careful to probe the world around them to avoid being tricked. He seemed quite emotional, yet able to pull himself back together in a hurry. When Bordelli told him that Badalamenti had been killed, his lips had hardened like a fist, but only for a second. But Odoardo wasn’t left-handed …
21 December
He was woken up by a dull thud. It must have been a rubbish bin crashing against the truck while unloading. He remained in bed a little longer with his eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the morning. He heard the creaking of some vendors’ carts on their way to the small open-air market in Piazza Tasso and realised that it was seven o’clock.
He took a long hot shower. After making coffee, he sat in the kitchen and drank it while leafing through the previous day’s newspaper. He stopped on the cinema page. Perhaps one of these evenings he could take Rosa to see a film.
They hadn’t been to the pictures for several months. The last time they’d gone to see a James Bond film replete with shoot-outs and corpses painted gold like church candelabra, but the main attraction was Sean Connery, who was able to elicit a sigh even from the finicky Rosa.
‘Did you know he looks like you?’ she’d whispered in his ear in the packed cinema, during a close-up of Connery. The people seated closest to them heard everything and turned round to stare at them, to Bordelli’s great embarrassment. Good thing it was dark.
‘Talk softly, Rosa,’ he’d whispered back, face burning red.
‘What did I say?’
‘Easy now …You’re supposed to be quiet at the cinema …’
‘Shhh!’ enjoined a number of people all around.
‘See, it’s you they’re upset at!’ Rosa had said in all innocence. She’d liked the film immensely, not least because of the handsome actor. Another time he’d taken her to see a Western with endless shoot-outs and dead men who didn’t bleed. She’d had great fun anyway, because one of the bandits was a blond guy with long hair and a face wicked enough to make you quiver. But Rosa’s favorite films were the ones with Totò.
Bordelli went out at eight and got into his Beetle. The streets were still wet with the night’s rain, but at that moment the sky was clear, and the sun shining through the car windows almost managed to warm him up. He crossed the Arno and minutes later turned on to the Viali. There was already a bit of traffic. When he got to Le Cure he turned down Via Volta and drove past the house where he’d grown up. As always he turned his head to look at the ground-floor windows. The shutters were open and some light shone through the living-room windows. He remembered every detail of that room the way it used to be. There was a large walnut cabinet with a glass front, full of antique glasses, a Flemish painting with sheep and clouds, and decorative floor tiles. It always gave him a weird feeling to know that another family now lived in that house.
The day he’d returned from the war was etched in his memory. He’d got back one morning, after a long train ride, holding a large German shepherd dog on a leash. He’d found the dog a few months earlier, lying down in a hole carved out by a mortar shell, with a serious wound in its side and breathing with difficulty. It was almost as big as a calf, and if anyone approached, it started growling. It had fangs as long as Focke-Wulf bullets. It was a Nazi dog, seemed fatally injured, and war was raging all around it. Too much trouble to bother with. Bordelli had pulled out his pistol to finish it off, taken aim, and was about to shoot … when it occurred to him that the dog wasn’t guilty of anything and that he could try to save it. With some cunning he had managed to bring it back to camp without getting bitten and had decided to try to win its friendship. A week went by and he still was unable to approach it to attend to its wound. Once a day he would throw it something to eat, but the dog wouldn’t touch anything, leaving it all to the flies. The animal was weak and had lost a great deal of blood. At moments it lay on its side with eyes closed, immobile, and looked dead. But if anyone approached it would start growling again. Then one morning Bordelli noticed that the beast had eaten everything around it, even the biscuits, and seemed much calmer. He managed to put a rope muzzle on it and treat its wound. After another week, it had turned into a big puppy. It was called Blisk, according to the tag on its collar, and he continued to call it Blisk. Then the war ended and it seemed only natural to bring the dog home with him. When, a year later, he moved out of his parents’ house to the San Frediano quarter, his mother was almost happy. She couldn’t stand having the great beast about the house any longer, leaving fur everywhere and practically knocking her down when it wanted to express affection.
Blisk was used to sleeping at the foot of its master’s bed and following him wherever he went. Bordelli usually took the dog around with him, but when he couldn’t, he needed only to say,
‘Wait here,’ and the ferocious beast of legend would sit down in front of the door with expectant eyes. When Bordelli returned, he would always find it in the same position.
Blisk eventually got old and tired, and Bordelli stopped taking the dog everywhere with him. One evening about ten years ago, when returning home, he’d found it lying in front of the door. It was weak and could hardly move. Blisk died with his muzzle in Bordelli’s hands, after a long sort of whimper. It was almost as if the dog had waited for him to come home before dying. That same night, Bordelli had gone into his mother’s garden in Via Volta, dug a deep grave, and buried the animal …
Thinking about that night, he realised he’d slowed down too much, and so he downshifted and stepped on
the accelerator. In that area the streets were almost deserted. Just before the avenue started its ascent to San Domenico, he turned on to Via di Barbacane and climbed up that equally steep, old street. After a few curves, he pulled up in front of Fabiani’s house and got out. The laurel hedge that ran along the iron grille had been trimmed. Bordelli went up on tiptoe to look into the garden. Fabiani was pruning the rose bushes in front of the glass door of the living room and wearing a blue work smock and rubber gloves. There was a bit of wind, and the doctor’s white hair rose from his head like flames. Bordelli rapped on the gate to get his attention. Fabiani turned round, waved hello, and went to open the gate.
‘You read my mind, Inspector. I was going to ring you tomorrow to wish you a happy Christmas,’ he said, inviting him in. Fabiani had a beautiful voice, deep and warm, and eyes as clear as certain animals’.
‘Telepathy,’ said Bordelli, shaking his hand. Remembering what he had in his pocket, he felt a little uneasy, and perhaps it showed. It was different with the other people on his list, since he didn’t know them or anything about them but was only a sort of postman delivering a letter.
‘My dear Bordelli, you didn’t come here to wish me a happy Christmas,’ said Fabiani, half smiling and lightly shaking his head.
‘Why do you think I’ve come, then?’ Bordelli asked in a mutter.
‘Perhaps to tell me the tale of the big bad wolf.’
Fabiani closed the gate and headed towards the house, with Bordelli following behind. The garden looked the way it always did, well tended but not too much so. Trees and plants were arranged in such a way as to create hidden nooks and shady corners. It seemed like the ideal place for seeking solitude, which was probably exactly what old Fabiani wanted.