Medusa az-9

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘Those are the facts.’

  ‘Very well, but let’s try and put a little flesh on them, shall we? And may I remind you once more that you are not under oath and will not be required to sign a written statement on this occasion. That will of course change if I suspect that you are attempting to conceal anything or to protect anyone.’

  A particularly violent gust of wind hacked at the house like an axe. The still, stale air inside seemed to vibrate under its assault.

  ‘I have nothing to hide,’ Naldo Ferrero stated truculently.

  ‘That’s as may be. But your mother certainly does.’

  ‘Leave my mother out of this!’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, assuming that she told you the truth. Did you believe her?’

  ‘Why would she make up a story like that?’

  ‘Well, it would be easy to suggest a number of reasons. Let’s assume that she’d had an affair with this Ferrero, had been genuinely in love with him, and that he’d broken off with her and then died. She might have tried to convince herself that you were his son so that something of him would remain.’

  ‘My mother’s not crazy!’

  ‘All right, let’s assume that her version of events is true. We know that Leonardo Ferrero died in a plane crash. How sane is it, after all these years, for her to tell you to make a claim for an unidentified body discovered deep underground on the basis that it is his?’

  Ferrero got to his feet.

  ‘Do you think I give a damn either way?’ he shouted. ‘I never even met the man.’

  ‘You changed your name from Comai to Ferrero,’ Zen reminded him.

  ‘That was to please my mother! Everything I’ve ever done has been to please her. She asked me to contact the authorities in Bolzano and I did so. When I told her the result, she asked me to make a judicial application, and that’s what I’m in the process of doing. She’s my mother and I love her. This business obviously means a lot to her for one reason or another, so I’m playing my part and doing as she wishes. Personally, I couldn’t give a damn who my father is.’

  He strode away and disappeared round the corner of the bar. Zen lit a cigarette and looked around. Il Ristorante La Stalla was closed for the season, but even at the height of summer it was hard to imagine such an isolated venue packed out with the boisterous crowd of noisily relaxed hedonists that would be needed to make sense of what looked like, and almost certainly was, a converted barn.

  Indeed, the whole establishment had an indefinable air of failure about it, of having been bypassed by more recent developments to which it had been either unable or unwilling to adapt. Naldo had explained that it had been set up back in the eighties on communal lines, with money from a trendy left-wing film director who had installed his son here and set him up as a chef in an attempt to wean him off heroin. The cure had apparently worked only too well, for the son had subsequently left and opened a restaurant down on the coast near Ancona, a move which had been regarded as rank betrayal by the rest of the collective. To abandon their idealistic pro¬ ject up here in a remote location of the Apennine foothills — only accessible by a long unpaved track off a very minor road near a village that hadn’t been marked on the map consulted by Zen’s taxi driver — and then set up his own non-non-profit business in a hideous glass and stainless steel box right at the heart of the shameless consumerist hell down by the beach. And making a fortune at it too! Five months’ work a year and then off to Mauritius or Thailand for the winter. It was sickening, just sickening.

  There had apparently been some other defections at about the same time, possibly connected to the fact that the film director’s subsidy also abruptly dried up, so when Naldo appeared he had been warmly welcomed. The ethos of the commune dictated that all work on the farm and in the restaurant must be done ‘authentically’, meaning either by hand or with the most primitive and basic equipment such as would have been used by the share-cropping family who had once lived there. It must have been easy for the remaining pioneers to see the point of having an extra set of keen, youthful muscles about the place.

  But the sense of failure ran deeper than that. There was a generalized reek of frustration, even despair, as unmistakable as mould. Things hadn’t worked out the way they were supposed to. The members of the commune had worked their fingers to the bone, followed the idealistic principles of the movement to the letter, but they’d been let down by events. And not just here! The whole country, it had turned out, was ideologically rotten to the core. After all the valiant and tireless struggles against entrenched corruption, blatant scandals, extreme right-wing terrorism, attempted military coups and a host of secret organizations aimed at keeping the powerful in power and everyone else in subjection, those responsible had finally been ousted, only to be replaced by Silvio Berlusconi and his opportunistic pals. It had turned out that the majority of Italians did indeed want un paese normale, only not as the left had intended that slogan, meaning a ‘Scandinavian’ model of probity and socialism with a human face, but in the most literal sense of the phrase: a country much like any other; no better, no worse.

  That’s what they’d voted for and that’s what they’d got, leaving the sinistrini to weep into their pasta and bean soup prepared from ingredients grown according to the highest principles of biological agriculture, and to squabble self- destructively about whose fault it was that everything had gone wrong. Not for the first time, Zen reflected on the irony of the fact that those who had explicitly declared History to be the final court of appeal should be so reluctant to accept its judgements.

  The dry strokes of the long-case clock combined in a syncopated pattern with two sets of footsteps. Marta, the short, anxious- looking woman who had greeted Zen upon his arrival, went behind the bar and started sorting glasses. Naldo, wearing his usual sullen grimace, headed back to the table. Zen suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to get out of there, and fast. When it came to interrogations, his rule of thumb was simple: if you can discover the thing that a man despises about himself, which may of course be very different from what others despise about him, then he’s yours. But despite his best efforts, he had failed to find this crucial key to Naldo Ferrero, and there was nothing more for him here. He stood up, crushing his cigarette out on the floor.

  ‘I shall need to speak to your mother, Signor Ferrero.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  Zen sighed. How he would have loved to take the little squirt down to the police station in Pesaro and make him sweat blood!

  ‘I can get her details from my colleagues in Verona, of course, but I thought you might have wished to save me the time and effort. Never mind. The net result will be the same.’

  ‘Your time and effort will be wasted. My mother has gone to Switzerland.’

  Zen was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Leaving the country at this juncture casts considerable doubt on your account of her role in this affair, to say the least,’ he remarked coldly.

  ‘It’s got nothing whatever to do with that! She always goes to Lugano at this time of year. The next time she calls, I’m going to tell her to stay there until further notice. Whether or not she had an affair with someone thirty years ago is of no relevance to the identity and manner of death of this body that’s turned up. She knows nothing about that and I’m not going to let you terrorize her as you’ve tried to terrorize me!’

  He stood there, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet, as if expecting to be punched and quite prepared to hit back. Ignoring him, Zen took out his mobile and called the taxi driver, who had driven on to a neighbouring town after dropping him at the restaurant. The man said he would be there in fifteen minutes. Zen put his phone away and started towards the door.

  ‘Would you like a drink or something while you wait?’ the woman behind the bar asked as he passed. She was small-bodied but large-breasted, with an amiable air of blowsy sensuality that must have absolutely devastated the ranks of some small-town PCI sezione a decade earlier. Now she
looked wiser and sadder and worn-out in some way that went beyond mere physical or mental exhaustion.

  ‘The espresso machine is turned off during the week, and it takes ages to heat up, but we have beer or…’

  Zen sensed that she was trying to compensate for Naldo’s aggressive manner earlier, out of both politeness and concern about the possible consequences.

  ‘Do you have any grappa?’ Zen asked.

  The woman raised her eyes to his for the first time.

  ‘We have a local one, hand-made in limited batches using small copper stills…’

  ‘I’d be delighted to try it,’ Zen replied with a warm smile. ‘But only on condition that you join me.’

  The woman looked anxious again.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. There’s so much to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, there are the pigs to feed. I meant to do it earlier, but then the water pump broke down and…’

  ‘Signor Ferrero will take care of all that. In view of its impeccable credentials in other respects, this establishment must surely be an equal-opportunity employer.’

  He turned to Naldo, who was still standing on the same spot, seemingly lost in whatever long irresolvable internal tussle occupied his time and energies.

  ‘This is your opportunity to experience at first hand the rewards of plumbing and pig husbandry,’ Zen told him. ‘I’m sure we can count on you not to throw away a chance for personal enrichment which may never come again.’

  Naldo turned furiously to the woman.

  ‘Are you going to let him talk to me like that, Marta?’

  ‘It was only a joke!’

  Zen sensed that this was a line that had been used so many times that it was by now worn out. He also belatedly realized what it was that Naldo despised about himself: his dependency, his lack of decisive virility, his mammismo.

  ‘And besides,’ she went on, ‘it wouldn’t do you any harm to get a little exercise. I’ve told you over and over again that physical work activates the endorphins and helps with your depression.’

  Naldo scowled his way out to the back of the premises, leaving Zen with an odd feeling that he’d just scored a point of some kind, even though he hadn’t been playing to win. Marta poured a shot of a clear spirit and a glass of wine and set them both on the counter in an unhurried way.

  ‘ Saluti,’ she said. ‘I don’t drink spirits myself, but I’ve been told that this one’s good.’

  Zen sniffed the glass, then took a long sip. It was indeed a very good try for an area with no tradition of producing grappa, although lacking the last degree of refinement which producers in his native Veneto could achieve.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, producing his cigarettes and offering one to Marta, who shook her head.

  ‘So why are the police after Naldo?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re not after him. I’m trying to help him locate and identify his father’s body, that’s all.’

  He glanced at her.

  ‘Has he ever talked about that aspect of his life to you?’

  When she did not reply immediately, he threw up his hands.

  ‘Sorry! You offer me a drink and the next thing you know I’m grilling you.’

  ‘It’s not that. I’m just not sure what you want to know, or what it would be proper for me to tell you without consulting Naldo.’

  Zen nodded his understanding of the situation.

  ‘Let me tell you what he told me,’ he said. ‘Basically, he said that his mother claims to have had an affair thirty years ago with a man called Leonardo Ferrero. The man died shortly after she had become pregnant. Claudia passed the baby off to her husband as his. He apparently never suspected the truth. Later, after his death, she revealed all this to her son, who started using the lover’s surname as his own at his mother’s request. And she now claims that this unidentified body that’s turned up is that of her lover.’

  Marta nodded.

  ‘That’s about all he told me, except that this Leonardo was in the army. That’s all he knows.’

  She finished her wine and poured them both a second measure.

  ‘But you know more,’ said Zen, studying her intently.

  Marta took her time about answering, but it was a silence with which she was at ease, unhurriedly working out what she wanted to say.

  ‘Growing up as I did, it’s difficult to trust the police. There was so much brutality and deceit… But I will trust you anyway. You have a very positive aura.’

  Aurelio Zen had had his share of compliments in his time, but this was a new one. Did it have something to do with one of those sample bottles of new lines in aftershave that Gemma brought home after her meetings with the sales representatives?

  ‘I heard about it from one of the founders of this project, one of the original Turin activists,’ Marta said. ‘Later he decided that our work here was counter-revolutionary and went off to Mexico to try and organize the Indian rebels. Anyway, at the meeting we convened to discuss Naldo’s joining the collective, Piero was very much against it. Naldo was already calling himself Ferrero then, and he mentioned to someone that his father’s name was Leonardo. This got back to Piero, who immediately became suspicious. According to him, Leonardo Ferrero had been involved in a Fascist military plot to overthrow the government. He had revealed details of this to a journalist and was killed shortly afterwards in a mid-air explosion that was never properly investigated. Piero claimed that the whole affair was bogus. The revelations that Ferrero made to the journalist contained no substantive information, while he himself was not on the plane that blew up. The leaked hints about the conspiracy would serve to either confuse or provoke the left, while Ferrero’s presumed fate would terrify any real potential traitors in the organization.’

  ‘But what did all that have to do with Naldo? He doesn’t strike me as anyone’s idea of a very competent conspirator.’

  Marta laughed.

  ‘That’s what the rest of us thought, and Piero was overruled. I think that’s when he started distancing himself from the project here, to be honest. He was used to getting his own way in a highly disciplined and hierarchical party apparatus. We still used the language and went through the motions, but the place was basically a hippie commune. He thought we were a bunch of amateurs.’

  Acar drew up outside, its headlights glaring in through the windows. A horn blared three times.

  ‘Who was the journalist that Leonardo Ferrero allegedly spoke to?’ asked Zen, stubbing out his cigarette.

  ‘I forget. But he was apparently a big name back in the seventies. Widely respected on the left and widely hated on the right. He used to do a lot of work for L’Unita, Piero said. Brandoni? Brandini? Piero had known him, of course. Everyone knew everyone in those days. It was a party in both senses of the word. That was half the appeal of it, the thing that everyone tends to forget now.’

  ‘Did anyone ever mention this to Naldo?’

  ‘Of course not! The only question was whether his joining us would cause trouble in one way or another. Once a collective decision had been reached that it would not, the matter was dropped.’

  ‘And he never raised the issue himself?’

  ‘I very much doubt whether he even knows about it.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Or cares. He certainly didn’t seem very interested in cooperating with me.’

  ‘ Naldo e quello che e. It may not be possible to help him, though I’d love to be able to. But some people would refuse a lifebelt you threw them. They would rather drown than be beholden to anybody.’

  The horn sounded again. Zen went to the window and waved.

  ‘I’ve been here ever since he moved in,’ Marta went on in the same calm voice. ‘We even had a little fling at one point. But I don’t really know anything about him. I don’t think he does himself. Children who grow up without the parent of their own sex are often like that, I think. You have to be known in order to know, and if you don’t know yourself then it’s hard
for others to know you. Does that make any sense?’

  Zen wrapped his coat around him.

  ‘Well, thank you very much, signora. How much do I owe you for the grappa?’

  Marta shrugged dismissively and walked him to the door.

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. You must come back some time when the restaurant is open. It can get quite lively in season.’

  Her tone of voice belied her words.

  ‘I’ll try to do that,’ Zen lied.

  Once clear of the front door, the force of the wind almost swept him off his feet. He climbed into the waiting taxi, which immediately swung round in a circle and started down the dirt track. Looking back, Zen saw Marta still standing in the open doorway.

  ‘Good dinner?’ the driver asked.

  ‘They were closed.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Who in his right mind would drive all the way up here? But you can’t talk sense to these yuppies from the north. They come down here looking for the simple life and authentic values. I could tell them a thing or two about that! My father used to farm around here. Not as a sharecropper — we owned the land. Of course, all the kids had to do their bit too, but as soon as he died we sold up. Un lavoro massacrante, dottore. Back-breaking labour, hour after hour, day after day. These incomers are pleasant enough people in their way, but frankly they don’t have the brains that God gave hens. Finti contadini is what they are. It’s all make-believe. The real country people couldn’t wait to quit, any who had the chance. Some of my friends even volunteered for the carabinieri or the army, just to get out. When we were in our teens, we used to go down to the sea on a Saturday night in summer, looking for some fun. All the girls used to laugh at us with our peasant tans that stopped at the biceps, the nape of the neck and the knees. But we were out in the sun all day working! Mind you, that was back before they put cancer in the sunlight.’