Death in August

by Marco Vichi

  Botta raised his hands as if to defend himself from an accusation.

  ‘But I said I wasn’t saying anything good about Nazis, only that they weren’t all the same,’ he said. Then he wanted immediately to tell the story of the other thing that had happened to him. First, however, he served everyone a last spoonful of pudding, scraping the bottom of the tureen. Nobody refused — on the contrary — and after that last bit of Turkish cream, some of them turned to the papassinos.

  Ennio then resumed speaking.

  ‘A few months later, I found myself face to face with another German. His uniform was in tatters, and he was unarmed. He showed me a picture of his girlfriend and seemed desperate. He told me he was a deserter and said he’d never shot anyone. He kept saying “Italiani amici.” He begged me to get him past the front. He wanted to go home. To Mamma, I thought. I didn’t know whether to believe anything he told me, but in the end I remembered the German who had let me go and I decided I should help him. We spent the night in an abandoned barn. The front was only a few miles away, and we could hear the blasts of the heavy artillery. We lay down next to each other under a blanket, and then, in the middle of the night, it started raining mortar shells. With each explosion the German grabbed hold of my arm and squeezed and squeezed, muttering in German. The shelling lasted a long time, and the next morning my arm was covered with bruises. We got up and headed off through the fields. I helped him cross the front. And that’s the story. The guy might be German, but every time I think back on it I feel I did the right thing. What do you think?’

  Dante put a large hand on Botta’s shoulder, crushing him into his chair.

  ‘You did exactly the right thing. One man saves you, you save another, and he saves another. Human actions are links in a chain, whether they are good or bad. This is something you should always bear in mind: whosoever does evil not only does evil, but passes it on.’

  Canapini knitted his brow and nodded solemnly. He’d had a lot to drink, and something important was simmering inside his head. Then he raised a finger and said:

  ‘Yes, but what is good and what is bad? If a man steals to eat, is it good or bad? And if a policeman catches him in the act and instead of arresting him gives him some money, is that right or wrong?’

  Canapini was clearly drunk. He actually had a happy expression on his face. Fabiani looked at him fondly.

  ‘Good, I think, is everything that puts life above all else. Evil is everything that runs counter to this assertion.’

  Canapini tried to get Bordelli’s attention.

  ‘What’s an “assertion”?’ he asked.

  Bordelli was about to reply when Botta took the words out of his mouth. He had, in spite of everything, gone to school in his youth.

  ‘It means statement, affirmation, declaration … You know, something somebody says.’

  Canapini smiled and took a sip of grappa.

  ‘So, someone who steals in order to eat is doing good,’ he said, ‘because he will die if he doesn’t eat.’

  Fabiani smiled.

  ‘Naturally,’ he said.

  This made Canapini very happy. He raised his glass and toasted the psychoanalyst.

  Dante was in deep meditation. A mysterious shadow had fallen over his face, as if he were hatching some new invention. Bordelli lit his umpteenth cigarette and invited Diotivede to tell a story.

  ‘If you feel like it, of course,’ he said. The doctor asked for a cigarette, even though he normally didn’t smoke. Bordelli lit it for him, admiring, as usual, the old man’s fitness and childlike freshness. Diotivede looked down at the millions of crumbs scattered across the tablecloth. He looked as if he were searching among hundreds of stories for the one most appropriate to the mood of the moment.

  He smiled.

  ‘This is probably a little silly, but it’s something that made a lasting impression on me, I’m not sure why. It must have happened at least fifty years ago, around 1914. I was almost twenty and engaged to a beautiful girl of Greek origin. If I close my eyes I can still see her: the long, black hair, and a mole right here, next to her lip. Her name was Simonetta. We were very much in love but quarrelled a lot, especially over silly things. We both wanted to be always right. We used to quarrel everywhere, even in public. That day we were walking along, about a yard apart, hurling abuse at each other. People were giving us a wide berth and looking at us with disapproval. At one point I said something particularly nasty to her and she came at me screaming and kicking me in the shins. Then she scratched me in the face with her fingernails and drew blood, so I grabbed her by the wrists and twisted them brutally …’ Diotivede mimed the gesture and grimaced in shame. ‘At that moment, I felt someone grab my arm, and I turned round in anger, only to find an old vagrant, dirty and smelly. He looked at us with despair in his eyes, trying to say something but not managing to say it. He had the foul breath of an alcoholic. He had seized hold of our wrists and wouldn’t let go, forcing us to stop hitting each other. He was staggering, and his face was covered with broken veins. I thought he might be unwell, or mad. Simonetta, too, had calmed down and was looking at the old man with a sort of disgust. He was still clutching our arms, when at a certain point he started shaking his head and saying: “No! No! S’il vous plait … You mustn’t … Faut pas faire ca … Faut pas vous battre! Regardez-vous dans les yeux.” I remember his face well, he had lost almost all his teeth, his cheeks were grey with the dirt of months without bathing. “Embrassez-vous, s’il vous plait, whether you love each other or not, c’est pas important, c’est pas important, embrassez-vous s’il vous plait.” A man in uniform walked past and told him to stop bothering us, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him away. But the old man kept yelling from far away, “Embrassez-vous, embrassez-vous.” I looked at Simonetta, threw myself into her arms, and she burst into tears. And there you have it. This is the first time I’ve ever told anyone. That old tramp didn’t know us, he’d never seen us before and was probably even crazy, but he had the freedom of mind to tell us what he felt. After that day, whenever we started quarrelling, one of us would say, “Embrassez-vous, s’il vous plait,” and we would both start laughing.’

  Dante seemed very pleased with this story. He sucked on his cigar and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Man is a wondrous thing. I am certain even God is sometimes surprised,’ he said, and burst out laughing in his inimitable way.

  Botta, who was a sentimentalist, asked Diotivede how things had turned out with the beautiful Greek girl. The doctor grinned bitterly.

  ‘The year after the war broke out, I left for the front, and when I returned Simonetta was with somebody else. She was very beautiful.’

  There was a silent pause, as if each was thinking of past loves gone wrong. Piras’s eyes were bloodshot from all the alcohol, but he was full of energy and one could see he felt good. Even the smoke no longer bothered him. He pulled his chair closer to the table and rested his elbows on the tablecloth.

  ‘Just outside my town, Bonacardo,’ he began, ‘there is a big grey boulder, over six foot tall, at the edge of a stream. It has a rather even hollow in the middle, forming a sort of seat that looks as if it was carved by human hands. The village elders say that long ago a woman fell in love with a man, and he with her. But they kept their love secret, because their families despised one another because of a disputed boundary. In short, the usual Romeo and Juliet sort of story. They would arrange to meet at night at the grey stone, calling it “our rock”. And they would part in the morning, weary and happy. It was a great love, the kind that can last a lifetime. And that was, indeed, what they imagined for themselves, that they would live together for ever. But one day he decided to leave to join Napoleon’s army, which was descending over Europe to bring the Revolution to everyone. He said he could not be happy if he didn’t do this, and that love shouldn’t make people selfish but give them the strength to do important things. He said that if he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t have the courage to leave,
and that if he didn’t leave, he would feel like a coward. This was the price of happiness. He dreamt of freeing the world from tyranny and promised her he would return soon, in triumph. “Wait for me at our rock,” he said, “wait for me there, I’ll be back soon.” She wanted to cry but didn’t. She held him tight and kissed him. She wanted him to leave with an untroubled heart. So she sat and watched his ship sail away until it vanished over the horizon, and the very next day she went and waited for him at the grey boulder. She leaned her back against the stone and thought of him, his face, his kisses, of every time they had shared their love in that place. The rock was the symbol of their secret love. The months went by, without any news of her beloved. She became more and more weary and desperate. She hardly ever slept and ate only so that she would be pretty when he returned. At night she would slip out of the house and lean against the great rock, gazing at the stream. She would watch the water rush past and think that time, itself, stood still. After a year had gone by, she started to think he was dead, but she didn’t want to accept this. She couldn’t. In the end she thought that she too had to pay the price of happiness, just as he had done. So she decided to make a vow. On her knees she prayed before an image of the Blessed Virgin, as the little children around her made fun of her. “My dear Madonna, please save my man. Ask me something, speak to me.” The Madonna said nothing, but the girl nevertheless believed she understood what she needed to do. She swore she would never again quit the place where they had loved each other, until he returned. She would spend her life standing in front of the grey stone, and she asked the Virgin to punish her if she was unable to keep her vow. “If I ever step away from our rock, you must drown me in the stream. You must kill me.” But even this was not enough. And so she convinced herself that if she ever stepped away from the rock, her beloved would die that very instant, felled by a ball of lead. Thus one winter’s day she headed for her rock, carrying only a blanket. A week went by. Everyone in town thought she had gone mad, but to keep her alive they brought her food to eat and water to drink. She would thank them with the faintest nod of the head, and hardly ever spoke. Fatigue clouded her vision, but she continued to fight off sleep. She did not want to fall asleep, because she was afraid that if she did, she would fall to the ground and lose contact with the stone, and her beloved would die like a dog. After three weeks of this, however, she realised she could not keep it up. She had committed the sin of pride, and sooner or later she would fall to the ground and he would die. She asked to be bound to the stone, but nobody would do this for her. They all told her to go home, to stop playing the madwoman. Even her mother came, together with the priest, to try to persuade her. But she would not be moved, and to every attempt to take her away she replied that if they tried to remove her from that rock, she would throw herself into the river at once and drown. In the end, they let her be. One night she felt on the verge of collapse. Another minute and she would fall to the ground. The blood was draining from her temples. She only had time to say, “Forgive me, my love,” and then she saw no more.’

  Piras paused to pour himself a splash of grappa. Nobody breathed a word. Canapini was panting with curiosity, curled up in his chair like a cat. In the end, he couldn’t hold back.

  ‘And then what?’ he asked. Piras took a good, deep breath.

  ‘When she awoke, she didn’t even want to open her eyes. The world no longer interested her. She extended her hand to drag herself to the river and drown, but instead of dirt she felt only air. And so she opened her eyes and saw the sky full of stars. She hadn’t fallen. The rock had opened up and formed a comfortable seat, sheltered from the wind. And so she was able to wait for her man, who returned in a sorry state, but alive and in one piece. I say it’s a legend, but the old folks in town tell the story as if it was true.’

  ‘What a beautiful story,’ said Canapini. Dante raised a glass and invited the guests to toast the women of the world, all of them, those who wait and those who leave.

  ‘To women, the true salt of the earth,’ he said. Seven glasses of grappa rose over their heads. To women.

  The following morning Bordelli woke up with the backs of both hands massacred by mosquitoes and a name spinning round in his head. Simonetta. He too had had a Simonetta. He lay there in the dark, trying to picture her face again, but couldn’t remember it. It must have been around ‘35. She was the only child of a Roman aristocrat. Her family had villas and estates almost everywhere. The last time he had seen her was at a dinner party with her parents, in a villa by the sea. It was a fine Fascist summer. There were many guests, almost all relatives of hers, important people. Bordelli arrived in his bathing suit, but this was taken merely as summer extravagance. Simonetta’s mother absolutely wanted him to sit next to her. She was never done telling him how handsome he was and caressing his arm. Midway through the dinner she started making plans for the future husband and wife, describing to her guests the villa in which they would live, the sort of life they would lead — he would do this, she would do that, and so on. Bordelli waited for the woman to finish talking, then wiped his lips with his napkin and stood up.

  ‘I think I have other plans,’ he said. He politely said goodbye to the guests, and then left. He never saw Simonetta again. Had he married her, today he might be Count Bordelli, idle rich landowner, father of a few children, and well respected in high society. He would never have known the innocence of an old prostitute like Rosa, nor the cooking of Botta, learned while in prison, and he would never have met that old curmudgeon Diotivede. His life would have been completely different, and perhaps this very day he would have strolled through the park thinking that if he hadn’t married Simonetta, he might be another man, perhaps a policeman, an inspector who dines at home with thieves who teach him how to pick locks with a hairpin, and who, when he’s sad, seeks comfort from an ex-hooker with a heart of gold.

  He felt the sweet taste of grappa at the back of his throat. When he moved his head, a sharp pain travelled up from the nape of his neck to the base of his nose, running over his skull like a cog. He took a deep breath and heard a whistle in his chest. He had smoked too much. His lungs burned. He vowed that he would smoke only three or four that day, five at the most, definitely not more than six. Seeing the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, he batted it away in rage. He remained in bed, staring at the blood-swollen mosquitoes hanging from the ceiling asleep. In a little while Botta would come to wash the dishes and put the kitchen back in order. That was the agreement: Bordelli the money, Botta the labour. Spotting a mosquito within reach on the wall and feeling his skin burn, he crushed it, staining the wall red.

  He heard some footsteps inside the front door.

  ‘Is that you, Ennio?’

  The steps arrived as far as the bedroom door, which opened partly. Dante’s leonine head appeared.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector. Shall we have some coffee?’ he said cheerfully.

  Only then did Bordelli remember that Dante had slept on the sofa.

  ‘Go ahead, I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said.

  ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Yes, and yourself?’

  The inventor smiled majestically.

  ‘Marvellous nightmares.’

  The inspector sat up, put his feet on the floor and his hands on his hips.

  ‘The coffee pot must be in the sink. Do you know how to use a napoletana?’ he asked. Dante assured him he did and disappeared into the kitchen. The inspector went barefooted into the bathroom, feet slapping the hard floor much less delicately than Elvira’s. Beautiful, young Elvira … He was unable to forget her; she returned to his thoughts at the most unexpected moments, and each time he felt older, heavier. He pissed painfully and with effort, the burning finish speaking eloquently of grappa. He rearranged his hair with his fingers and washed his face. The cold water felt good on his skin, but then the towel got snagged on his hard, short stubble. He stood there looking at himself in the mirror, hands resting on the sink, counting his wrinkles and thinking
of Signora Pedretti-Strassen stiff in her bed, hands round her throat. After the pause of the night, his mind was filling again with a swirl of ideas and questions. Especially one, the usual: how did they do it? He thought of the Morozzi brothers, sweaty and hysterical, and saw their blonde, made-up wives, who had left that nauseating smell behind in the office.