I close this letter with great affection for you, and I will go to post it straightaway.
Yours,
Cleofe
The envelope remained on the table. I read its strange address: TO SIGNOR DR AMEDEO GUERRA, NR MOHAMET ALKACEM, ADDIS ABABA. Directions followed for the name of a street I couldn’t decipher.
“It’s the name and surname I took down there; they’re on my Ethiopian passport,” said Berlusconi.
He sat down, somewhat calmer, and reported that his sister had always known he was alive, although after ’41 he hadn’t been able to send her any news because of the war. At the end of ’45 he’d begun to write to her again, and to receive her letters. He’d received three. The one I still had in my hand was the third and last; unfortunately, it had arrived six months late.
“Where has Mario gone?” Matilde suddenly asked.
“He won’t have gone far,” said Berlusconi. “But we must have him arrested immediately.” And he invited us to follow him. He’d left a taxi in the village and hoped to go directly to the public prosecutor with the two of us.
At the Albergo Vittoria they told us that the cab driver had realized that Berlusconi was going to make him wait a bit too long, so he’d gone to take a client to Cannobio, but would be back within half an hour. Berlusconi was put out but agreed to wait—under the eye of Cavallini, who never let us out of his sight and tried to guess what was going on.
More than half an hour had gone by and the taxi had still not returned when Domenico suddenly ran up. He went to Matilde and whispered something in her ear.
“Something’s happened,” she said. “We must return to the villa immediately. Mario seems to have done something crazy.”
Berlusconi came along and Domenico accompanied us to the first floor.
The door to the bishop’s bedroom was ajar, and Orimbelli appeared to be sitting on the floor with his back against the door, his head bent over his breast.
I went nearer and saw that his body was folded over at a right angle, and only his feet touched the floor; they reached close enough to brush against the chest bearing his initials, T.M.O. A thin but extremely strong cord dangled from the doorknob and circled his throat—the one I’d kept in the little box in the boat’s stern along with the keys to the dock, and which he’d surely taken from my vessel.
XVI
“A HANGING A LÀ CONDÉ,” the doctor explained. He’d come with the public prosecutor that evening for legal certification.
“Rare, but not unusual. The Prince of Condé—not the one Manzoni wrote about, who slept the night before the battle of Rocroy, but Louis, the last of the Condé—hanged himself from the handle of a window and gave his name to the technique. There are cases where people hang themselves from a headboard, raising themselves up a bit and slipping the head through the noose so that they drop suddenly into a sitting position. The weight of the body pulling on the noose is enough to cause the occlusion of the upper airways and compression of the jugular vein, with subsequent loss of consciousness. It’s therefore impossibile to save oneself in case of a change of heart.”
“Very interesting,” Berlusconi remarked. “In any case, justice has been done.”
While the doctor was speaking, the public prosecutor found a letter on the bed, folded in two, which no one had noticed. He unfolded it, read it and passed it to Matilde, who handed it to me after she’d read it. Berlusconi didn’t even want to look at it. There were few lines:
Everyone is against me. No one loves me anymore. I don’t have the strength to fight the accusations that will be leveled against me.
You will never know the truth. I have no remorse and I am perfectly calm. On my tomb I want this simple inscription:
TEMISTOCLE MARIO ORIMBELLI
1906–1947
The letter was unsigned and it spread across a sheet of paper printed with the same initials he’d used to write to his wife— T.M.O. It was impounded by the public prosecutor. After he’d arranged for the removal of the body and an autopsy, he sought Matilde’s consent to carry out a search of the house in order to look through Orimbelli’s personal effects for further confirmation of the statements made by Berlusconi and me.
He was shown the little room Orimbelli had slept in before and after his marriage, the marital bedroom and finally, the bishop’s bedroom and the chest with the initials T.M.O.
Domenico had gone to fetch chisel, hammer and pliers, and with his help the chest was opened.
Under a captain’s uniform there was a military sword, a dagger, a German machine pistol, a 9 mm revolver and a Winchester rifle, each wrapped in a piece of canvas. Below these, packets of letters tied with string and each bearing a name. I read some of them: Fanny, Lina, Bruna, Luciana, Marisa. They were letters from women, all of them dating from his time in Naples. In a corner of the chest, inside a leather hatbox, there was a hard hat of English make; inside, on Morocco leather, it bore the intials T.M.O. in gold. Among other odds and ends—horseshoes, Maria Teresa dollars, pipes and ivory objects—there was a pocket compass, a black brassiere, two or three pairs of women’s underwear, long silk stockings and velvet suspenders of every color.
“War souvenirs,” said the public prosecutor.
Some legal tender banknotes to the value of one million lire were found concealed in a sort of large pocket in the lining of the lid. It was all he had.
When the officials had gone, the problem of whether I should stay or leave presented itself. Could I stay under the same roof, that night and the ones to follow, with only Matilde there?
It was she who solved the problem by calling on Lenin and her daughter to sleep in the late Signora Cleofe’s room, which communicated with her own.
“I’d be grateful if you would not leave me alone, at least until the funeral,” she said.
We ate together, seated across from each other. Both of us were surprised by the strange talkativeness that possessed us. As if to distance ourselves from the mental image of Orimbelli hanging from the doorknob, we spoke nonstop about nothing in particular, while Martina came and went from the kitchen.
I asked Matilde if she’d ever lived in Milan. She’d been waiting for nothing more than the chance to speak, and began to tell me about her life, starting with her childhood.
Her mother had died of typhus when she was ten, and two years later, her father also died of a heart attack. Her father’s sisters were given custody of her, and at twelve she was sent to boarding school in Aigle, Switzerland. She spent the next six summers in the institute’s holiday home in the Vallese mountains, only returning to Italy when she was eighteen. She had a secondary school diploma and intended to enroll at university to study medicine, but she had to take care of her aunts, and when they died in succession within a couple of years, she was left heir to their material goods.
Before she died, the last aunt arranged Matilde’s marriage to Berlusconi, one of Milan’s most eligible bachelors. It was only on condition of this marriage that Matilde’s inheritance from her aunts would come to her. She was therefore persuaded to go through with it. Things, however, were hampered when her fiancé was suddenly called to arms. Nevertheless, her aunt made her marry by proxy, after which she wrote her will and died.
I knew the rest, more or less. Yet I remained curious about one thing, and I couldn’t satisfy my curiosity while the maids continued coming and going from the kitchen and listening to our conversation, if only in snatches.
I let Matilde know that I wanted to ask her something without being heard by the maids, and she signalled for me to wait.
At last Lenin retired to her room. Martina stayed a little longer in order to make us a linden tea. “It will be good for you, signora. It’ll make you sleep,” she said as she served it.
“Thank you, Martina. You may go to bed now—I’ll be coming up right away. Please leave the door open between the two rooms. I’m afraid to be alone!”
As soon as Martina had gone, I tiptoed around my question, playing with wo
rds and employing euphemisms. But it came down to my asking her whether Orimbelli was the first man she’d slept with.
Without the least sign of being upset, she answered, “No. I had an affair nobody knows about. I’ll tell you about it briefly. During the war, between forty-one and forty-three, I worked for the Red Cross in a hospital in Milan. I was twenty-three, and Berlusconi had been dead for some time, as far as I knew. A doctor—married, with children, unfortunately—fell in love with me. He was a professor and head physician, and I admired and looked up to him. A truly charming man …”
“I understand everything,” I said. “But Orimbelli? What did he say when he realized, at Polidora, that you …”
“He really tried interrogating me. He suspected it was Berlusconi during our engagement. But I cut him short, telling him it was my business.”
I couldn’t find anything to say and remained silent. I thought about the way a woman will admit previous relationships to a man she’s just met and is already in love with. She’ll always speak about smiles, bowing, hand-kissing or at most, light caresses—innocent role play, mere trial runs for what she’ll do with the real lover she’s finally discovered. But despite such caution and reserve—which is often her modesty and respect—how can one avoid thinking about how others have used her?
She continued talking, perhaps guessing where my thoughts were going and hoping to interrupt them. “Now that you know everything, even things a woman should never tell, may I ask you something?”
It was a question I hadn’t expected: whether or not I intended to marry Landina. It was now down to me, my turn to be precise.
“I’m not going to marry Landina,” I told her, “because she’s already married. Her husband was captured by the Allies in Tunisia in 1943, and he returned from the States a few days ago after three years in prison. He’s kept in contact with Landina and she’s been waiting for him for a long time.”
“Landina’s married!” Matilde exclaimed. “But I never saw her wear her wedding ring!”
“She was ashamed to wear it.”
Matilde drank her linden tea, now cold. “What a heat wave!” And she fanned herself with a handkerchief.
It was almost midnight and I knew she wanted to go to bed. Not to sleep, so much as to go over the events of the last twelve hours in peace, including the unexpected revelation of Landina’s marital status, the last dramatic turn of this curious day.
I accompanied her as far as the door to her room, and then went down to the dock to sleep in one of the Tinca’s two couchettes, at least for that night. Climbing into the boat, I thought: one can’t escape here: neither in the bishop’s bedroom, where Orimbelli hanged himself, nor in the dock, where Signora Cleofe died.
The following evening I opted for the bishop’s bedroom, which was at least comfortable.
Orimbelli’s burial took place in Milan, not in the Berlusconi family tomb at Cimitero Monumentale nor in the Scrosatis’, but in common ground at Musocco. Only Matilde and I were in the car behind the coffin. We left Oggebbio early, as when we’d gone sailing, and the taxi came to pick us up at Intra. It was the same one that had taken us to Milan a few months before for the wedding, with the same driver.
The ceremony was rushed through and took only a few minutes. Matilde spoke with the undertakers about what Orimbelli wanted on the headstone and how to position it, asking them to send her the bill at Oggebbio.
The funeral over, I thought it only right to ask Matilde to lunch in a restaurant on Viale Certosa. Also, I didn’t want to say good-bye to her on the street, since I’d decided to stay in Milan for a day or two. The restaurant was close to the cemetery and groaning with the relatives of those who’d been buried that morning. It looked as if there wasn’t any room for us, but a waiter managed to find us a little table, so narrow that as soon as we sat down, our knees met—reluctantly, I’d say, since this contact was of such a different flavor from before. Matilde looked at me, her eyes no longer frightened, only bemused. We were next to a window. The sun beat down on it, illuminating her face without shadow. She seemed drained, her face drooping, her breasts sagging, as if Orimbelli had worn her out in a few months.
Facing me but behind Matilde, a woman and a girl wearing black from head to toe sat at a table like ours. They’d returned from the funeral of their husband and father, respectively. The girl, not more than eighteen, stared at me as if into space, searching for her father’s image. She had black hair, a pale and delicate face and a long neck, white and tender, which rose like the stem of a flower from a firm, decidedly statuesque bust. She was the very image of an orphan, as rendered by Cremona or Ranzoni.
I couldn’t help but look at her. I moved from the slight roughness of her forehead to the dark down of her upper lip, and met her kind, grave regard, which she settled on me in order to avoid more painful sights. She was searching for that joie de vivre, which no young person can be robbed of for more than a day.
Matilde spoke faintly, perhaps to draw me away, since she’d understood the object of my distraction without having to turn round. “When will you come to the villa?”
“In a few days. As soon as I’m back from Milan.”
After that, I couldn’t manage to get another conversation going for the rest of the meal. I’d hoped to find a way to say good-bye to her, but nothing came to me as she was getting into the car other than the banal “See you soon.”
I let two weeks go by before I returned to Oggebbio, where the Tinca was waiting for me in the dock at Villa Cleofe. I took a shuttle boat as far as Cannero, then walked along the main road so Cavallini wouldn’t see me; he never missed the arrival of the boats or coaches. I walked through that beautiful summer morning, along the walls of the villas, in and out of the shadows of their grounds, looking at the lake dazzling in every cove below and at the opposite shore, which stood out black against the sun. The sun beat down on those paths and the perfume of the ferns and herbs that grew along them rose up to me; they seemed to burst from a mountainside swollen with greenery, which ended abruptly at the lake. Along those shadowy stretches, in the shelter of cedars, camphor and magnolia, I heard the sound of my steps on asphalt in front of the gates and small doors that punctuated the walls enclosing the villas, now mildewed and shut forever. My mind was blank, and I felt like a wayfarer habituated to long walks, always confident of finding a meal and a bed just waiting for someone without a home—someone wandering the world in good spirits, sure of finding it navigable, at times truly welcoming.
I got to the villa around eleven and found the gate open. Domenico was busy in the grounds, Martina surely in the kitchen and Lenin perhaps behind the gatehouse, occupied with some business of her own.
Matilde was on the terrace facing the lake, and I reached her after crossing the whole of the ground floor without being seen by anyone.
She sat in the shade of the wisteria, in a large wicker armchair shaped like a hip bath close to the iron railings of the balustrade. She looked completely relaxed, like a convalescent on the terrace of a clinic: her head rested on a red cushion tied to the armchair and her forearms were stretched out on the armrests. Her hands hung loosely in the emptiness, seemingly pointing toward the pavement.
I circled the armchair and went to lean against the balustrade.
Her gaze, which had been surveying the great emptiness of the lake, refocused and settled on me.
“Good morning,” I said. “Forgive me for not announcing myself, but I didn’t see anyone between here and the gate.”
She seemed not to be listening to my words. Without moving, but still looking at me as if she were dreaming, she murmured, “Take a chair and sit down here beside me.”
I took a wicker chair similar to hers from under a cover and sat down next to her.
“So you’re here,” she said. And after a pause, “You’ll have heard that Berlusconi left for Addis Ababa …”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“Yes. He left—this time forever—aft
er giving me the villa and everything in it. To make up for the damage caused by his negative impact on my future prospects.”
“Then from now on you’ll always live here?” I asked. “On your own?”
“Not on my own. With Domenico, Lenin and Martina …” She looked at me intently and added, “And with you, if you’d like.”
I dropped my head and remained silent. My eyes on the pavement, I saw her rounded calves, crossed, and her rather wide feet in very narrow shoes. I knew she was waiting for my response, and that I ought to raise my head and give it to her one way or another.
I tried to imagine myself presiding over the Villa Cleofe, with the Tinca in the dock, Martina bringing me coffee in bed every morning, Domenico doffing his big straw hat at me when I crossed through the grounds and Lenin serving me at table, where I’d sit across from Matilde.
Meanwhile, I looked at her feet and asked myself how she could stand such tight shoes without pain.
But I couldn’t sidestep the issue. Matilde, staring once more at the great emptiness of the lake, was waiting.
Sleeping … I’d usually sleep in the bishop’s bedroom— to preserve my freedom and also because I knew Matilde loved being alone in her room; she’d always said so, even before marrying Orimbelli. The picture would be complete if, like a good husband, I showed up in the early morning or late at night, crossing the corridor in my pajamas and knocking discreetly at the door to her room.
I lifted my head and fixed my eyes on the lake. At that moment, the huge boat of Signor Kauffmann emerged like an apparition from the Cannero promontory. The Lady went by in silence, its four sails raised, its whiteness dazzling against the backdrop of the distant shore. The taut mainsail, mizzen, jib and flying jib, and the wall on the right completely hid everyone on board so that it seemed deserted. A few minutes later, the Lady rounded another promontory and disappeared.
It seemed to me that Signor Kauffmann’s huge boat, appearing like a vision, had passed by to tell me that life is a mysterious journey, and that it was time for me to move on and call at other points, other ports.
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