by Marco Vichi
‘Get that mess out of here, it’s making a ring on my agenda.’
‘What’s the problem? You’re only going to throw it away at the end of the year.’
Rodrigo heaved a sigh of forbearance and decided to intervene personally. Setting down the red pen, he lifted the cup and wiped the cover of his agenda with a paper napkin, which he then rolled up into a ball and tossed into a wastepaper basket under the desk. Bordelli followed his every move with great curiosity. In a way his cousin’s precision fascinated him; it looked very much as if it stemmed from some sort of madness. Rodrigo then straightened his back and gave a smile that was supposed to convey calm and serenity.
‘Why are you here? Do you have something specific to tell me?’ he asked.
‘No, why? Does it seem as if I have?’
‘I don’t care. Why did you come?’
‘For a chat.’
‘All right, then. Let’s chat.’ Rodrigo folded his arms to show that he was interrupting his corrections. Bordelli sat down comfortably in a chair, and with his teacup balanced on his thigh, he lit a cigarette.
‘So, then, how are things, Rodrigo?’ he asked with a hint of a smile. Rodrigo stood up and opened his eyes wide.
‘Put out that disgusting cigarette immediately,’ he said, trying to contain his rage.
‘I don’t see an ashtray.’
‘Do you know that it takes a week for the smell of smoke to go away?’
‘I swear I didn’t know,’ Bordelli said, inhaling deeply, as if it were his last puff, asking again for an ashtray with his eyes. Rodrigo opened a secretaire and pulled out a small souvenir dish from Pompeii, set this in front of him, and immediately stepped back. Bordelli snuffed out his still-whole cigarette.
‘So … aside from the cigarette, how are you? Getting along all right?’ Bordelli asked. Rodrigo had sat back down at the desk, but seemed a little more inclined to chat, even if he had no choice.
‘Yes, all right, not too bad. And yourself?’ he said.
‘Like shit, Rodrigo, I feel like shit … Oh, sorry, I know you don’t like profanities.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rodrigo said, understandingly.
‘In short, I feel like shit … I’m fifty-three years old, and when I come home there’s nobody there waiting for me.’
‘If you live alone, of course there’s nobody waiting for you.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘So why don’t you speak more clearly?’
‘Jesus …’
‘What is it now?’
‘Nothing, nothing … Tell me something, are you still with that woman … what was her name?’
‘What’s she got to do with anything? And I don’t like the way you phrased that.’
‘Have you ever wondered why you like so much to correct other people’s mistakes?’
‘You’re changing the subject again …’
‘I was only curious as to why you like so much to correct other people’s mistakes.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Come on, try to be nice. I’m only trying to start a discussion.’
‘What kind of discussion?’
‘Any kind, provided it lasts more than two sentences.’
‘Maybe we have nothing to say to each other.’
‘Even two people who have nothing to say to each other can still talk.’
‘That’s an absurd statement.’
‘Listen, why don’t you tell me … I don’t know, tell me what you do on Sundays, for example.’
‘I try to rest.’
‘You don’t correct any papers?’
‘And what if I do? I really don’t see what you’re getting at.’
‘Nothing, I’m not trying to get at anything. As I said, I just wanted to have a chat.’
‘Well, unfortunately, I have to work.’
‘In August?’
‘That’s right, in August. Why not?’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘Strange …’
‘Tell me something, Rodrigo. Who do you vote for?’
‘I vote for whoever I feel like voting for.’
‘I don’t doubt that. But are you satisified with the way things are going?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean just what I said.’
Rodrigo sighed indulgently and started fiddling with his red pen.
‘Italy used to be all wheat and sheep … and now prosperity is finally on its way,’ he said.
‘For whom, exactly?’
‘For everyone. We used to be a nation of peasants, and now we all drive cars.’ As usual, after a difficult start, Rodrigo was warming up to the idea of talking.
‘The power of statistics,’ said Bordelli. ‘Do you watch a lot of television?’
‘Why? Do you want to be left behind?’
‘Left behind by what?’
‘For now, we’re still at the beginning, but before long, you’ll be amazed.’
‘I’m already amazed.’
‘If each does his part, we’ll all be fine.’
‘I don’t know why, but I don’t like that statement.’
‘Can’t you see that you don’t understand? You don’t understand that everything is governed by the laws of chemistry, even man and society-’
‘So it’s all very simple, in other words.’
‘Look, it’s easy to see what you’re thinking. You’re one of those who think chemistry is only a cold science.’
‘Ah, you mean I’m not alone?’
‘You don’t understand, none of you. One need only find the right formula for each thing. There are certain substances that can change the molecular structure of others. Some compounds are inert until they come into contact with a new agent that makes them explode … It’s not magic; everything is governed by precise rules.’
‘And where does prosperity fit in with all this?’
‘Prosperity is the result of new combinations of elements that have always existed. Is that not chemistry? This is an important moment for our country … and Italians know this.’
‘Italians? What do you mean by “Italians?”’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Which Italians are you talking about? The lawyer who lives on the floor below, or the day-labourer from Bari?’
‘Everything’s always a joke to you.’
‘Look, I’m not joking. Which Italians do you mean?’
‘You tell me something. How did you end up becoming a policeman?’
‘Actually, it’s a good profession. I’ve made a lot of friends as a policeman.’
‘And a fine lot they are: prostitutes and thieves …’
‘You should meet them some time, Rodrigo. They could teach you a great deal.’
‘You are insane.’
‘Right, I’m insane because I refuse to condemn the poor and I despise this dream-besotted country that believes in the Fiat 1100.’
‘What are you, a communist?’
Bordelli shook his head.
‘For now, it is easier to say what I’m not,’ he said. Rodrigo raised the red pen and then dropped it on to the papers.
‘As usual, you don’t know what you want,’ he said smugly.
‘That’s possible, but I don’t like a poor little country that dresses up as if it’s rich. It’s asking for trouble.’
Rodrigo huffed and made as if to resume correcting papers. Bordelli finished his now cold tea and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t light it,’ he said, raising a hand.
‘I’m not worried,’ Rodrigo muttered. Bordelli stood up, approached the desk slowly, then leaned on it with both hands.
‘You know, Rodrigo, I really believe that, somewhere, there is a woman made just for me … Isn’t that also a question of chemistry?’
‘I don’t like the way you put it.’
‘Why, how did I put it?’
Rodrigo tightened his lips a
nd said nothing. Snatching a paper already marked in red from the stack, he went back to work. Bordelli looked at his watch. He had a great many things to attend to, and here he was wasting his time doing nothing.
‘I’ll let you work,’ he said.
‘I’ve still got seventy more to correct.’
‘That’s a lot …’
‘Have you anything else to say to me?’
‘Let me think.’
Bordelli pulled out a box of matches and started to shake it as if it were some South American percussion instrument.
‘You’re making noise,’ said Rodrigo, annoyed. Bordelli immediately stopped.
‘You know something, Rodrigo? One day I’d like to take you to the forensics department and show you the corpses.’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘You’re wrong not to be. You don’t know how many things you could learn.’
‘Make sure you shut the door on your way out.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll seal everything up.’
‘Bye.’
‘Goodbye, Rodrigo. Give my regards to Auntie.’
The inspector set his cup down on a stack of papers and left Rodrigo to his flourishes of red ink. As soon as he was on the landing, he lit his cigarette.
Three weeks of relative calm passed at police headquarters. But it was even hotter than before. The humid, motionless air ruled every corner of the city. The houses were saturated with the smell of zampironi and DDT. In that hazy summer solitude Bordelli often indulged in long monologues in his mind, especially at night in bed, before falling asleep. Or, perhaps more correctly, before sinking into that sort of laborious, memory-laden sleep which got him through the night. It was a kind of semi-consciousness peopled with overlapping images, where distant memories merged with absurd fantasies, and fatuous little dramas played themselves over and over to the point of obsession, tiring him out until they finally woke him up. At which point he would get out of bed, go into the bathroom, drink two or three glasses of water, then lie back down again, not bothering to cover himself with the sheet. Window still open, a pitcher of water with ice cubes on the nightstand. Sometimes he couldn’t go back to sleep at all and would spend hours and hours in a confused state of mind, as if jumping from branch to branch like a restless monkey.
Rosa, for her part, had fled the city. But not before phoning Bordelli to invite him to join her and her girlfriends on their way to Forte dei Marmi. The old retired prostitute had the innocence of a pup.
‘Come on, darling, drop everything and come with us. You’ll have three women to yourself, all in love with you.’
Bordelli had made up some annoying chores that kept him hopelessly stuck in town. He really didn’t feel like playing the stud with three ingenuous whores. Rosa had praised his heroism and asked him to keep an eye on her place.
‘You know, with all the burglars about …’ she had said. She complained that it was no longer the way it used to be, when she, the beautiful Rosa, was well known on the circuit and didn’t need to worry. Things were different now; the new generations of burglars didn’t look anyone in the eye.
‘And don’t forget the flowers, dear, don’t let them wither like last year.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Thank you, you’re such a sweetie. I’ll leave the keys with Carlino for you.’
Carlino was the barman at the corner cafe. He never closed shop.
‘Have fun.’
‘No need to tell us that, darling!’ she said, sending a barrage of kisses through the receiver.
Bordelli sighed in the dark and turned on to his side. He closed his eyes, hoping to go back to sleep. All of a sudden he saw in his mind’s eye the tattered bodies of Caimano and Scardigli, after they had stepped on an anti-tank mine a hundred yards away from him. They hadn’t even shouted. One of their arms had to be taken down from a tree. Fucking war. In the morning you were sharing dishwater coffee with a friend, and that evening you were putting his body parts into a coffin.
Bordelli often thought about the war; he still felt it very close by. Sometimes it seemed as if he had stopped shooting at Nazis just yesterday. He could still hear the voices of his dead comrades, their laughter, each as distinct as a signature. He could still hear each one’s personal verbal quirks and curses. If he had to name one good thing about the war, it was the way it had forcibly mixed people of every region together. One learned to recognise the different dialects and mentalities, the myths and hopes of every part of Italy.
Bordelli turned on to his other side and thought about the fact that he had nearly stopped smoking. This was a great triumph for him. During the war he had got up to a hundred cigarettes a day, the famously terrible MILIT cigarettes issued by the government. Once the Americans arrived, smoking no longer felt like torture. But Bordelli had kept smoking a hundred a day. Thinking about it now made him feel nauseated. Without turning on the light, he reached out and picked up a cigarette, his fourth. He propped himself up on one elbow and lit it. The ashtray was in the same place it had been for years; it was hard to miss. He smoked, still jumping from one memory to another, following no order whatsoever. Sometimes his head filled with many memories at once and they began to overlap, so that it became impossible to make any sense at all of the jumble.…
The telephone on the nightstand rang, and he groped in the dark for the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Is that you, Inspector?’
‘I think so. What time is it?’
‘Two.’
‘Has something happened?’
Mugnai faltered.
‘I don’t know yet … I mean … well, a short while ago a woman phoned, saying she was worried … says some lady’s not answering her phone, and she says that’s unusual … Inspector, do you by any chance know what a “lady companion” is?’
‘I’m sorry, Mugnai, you’ll have to start over again, from the beginning.’
‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Inspector. I probably shouldn’t even have bothered you, but I’m here by myself, and you’ve always said that if I had any doubts about anything …’
‘There’s no problem, Mugnai, I’m listening, but try to make things simpler.’
‘I’ll try, Inspector, but nothing is clear, not even to me; I wrote everything down, otherwise I’d forget it … A little while ago a woman, called Maria, phoned saying she was the lady companion of a certain lady with two surnames … What’s a lady companion?’
‘I’ll explain another time.’
‘Does it have anything to do with whores?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Go on.’
‘Sorry, Inspector. Anyway, this woman, Maria, I mean, says she spends the whole day with the lady, but then at eight o’clock she leaves because the lady wants to be alone at night. Every night, however, round midnight, she phones the lady to see how she’s doing, because the lady is old and sort of sick.’
‘You should say “elderly”, Mugnai; “old” isn’t very nice.’
‘Whatever you say, Inspector … Anyway, so tonight Maria called at round about midnight, but there was no answer. She tried again a little later, but still no answer. She kept calling every fifteen minutes till one o’clock, and then she took a cab to go and check on the lady in person. She says she can see the light on inside, but the lady won’t come to the door. So she called us.’
Bordelli had already started getting dressed.
‘So why didn’t she go inside?’
Mugnai slammed his hand down on the table.
‘That’s what I said, too, Inspector! Why didn’t she go inside? And you know what she said?’
‘What?’
‘She said nobody else has got the keys to the villa, because the lady doesn’t want to give them out.’
The inspector sighed.
‘If she was so worried, she should have gone there with the woman’s doctor and broken down the door,’ he said. Mugnai practically ate the receiver.
‘That’s what I sai
d, too, Inspector! And you know what she replied?’
‘What?’
‘She said the lady’s doctor is so small that if he tried to break open the door he would break his shoulder.’
‘Well, then the fire department.’
‘I swear I said that, too. And so she says: “Well, at this point, there’s nothing more to be done. The lady’s dead.”’
‘Fine, I think I get the picture.’
‘And you know what she said next, Inspector?’
Bordelli buckled his belt, holding the receiver between chin and shoulder.
‘Go on, Mugnai, stop playing guessing games.’
‘Sorry, Inspector.’
‘Well, what did she say next?’
‘She said the lady was murdered.’
‘And how does she know that?’
‘She doesn’t know it. She only said she could sense it. Then she started crying.’
‘Maybe she reads too many mysteries.’
Mugnai slammed his hand down somewhere else.
‘That’s what I thought, too, Inspector! So what are we gonna do?’
‘Let me put on my shoes, and I’ll be on my way.’
‘Sorry about this, Inspector, but you always told me that-’
‘Forget about it. I couldn’t sleep, anyway. Give me the address.’
By half past two Bordelli was driving his VW Beetle up Via della Piazzola, a narrow little street in the hilly, posh end of town. The headlamps lit up the grey asphalt, which was full of potholes and patches. On either side of the street loomed the great facades of aristocratic villas and the monumental gates of villas hidden farther within. Against the black sky, the great, motionless manes of the trees stood blacker still. Bordelli felt an acidic bubble expand in his stomach and rise up into his mouth, prompting him to suppress, with some effort, the desire to light a fifth cigarette. He pulled up at number 110. The gate of Villa Pedretti-Strassen was closed. As the street was too narrow for him to park, he was forced to leave the car a hundred yards ahead, where the road widened. There wasn’t a breath of wind. It was still hot outside, even at that hour.
He walked back down to the villa. Beyond the colossal cast-iron gate, at the back of a dark garden full of trees, he could make out the villa’s dark silhouette. And, behind a towering hedgerow of laurel parallel to the house, the lighted rectangle of a window. Bordelli put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and suddenly felt all his accumulated fatigue. He wished he could lie down on the ground and savour the peace enveloping the villa, immobile, watching the sky and thinking of the past.