“Chillemi will never change. He’s keen to preserve appearances, but he’s too fond of being on the front pages.”
“Commissario, it’s absolute chaos here.”
“Has anyone been looking for me?” Soneri said, feeling as he spoke that he had put his finger on an open wound.
“No, nobody,” was the embarrassed reply.
“Just as well,” Soneri said, cutting him off before he could go any further. And it was true – none of it mattered to him anymore.
12
HE COULD HAVE sworn he was woken by a police siren. He got out of bed while Angela was still asleep and felt overcome by an unpleasant feeling of exile, the same sensation he had experienced as a boy when waking up on the first morning of his holidays with his parents in a claustrophobic seaside boarding house in Liguria. That first thought was enough to arouse in him the regret and guilt of matrimonial infidelity. He groped his way to the bathroom, feeling lost as he always did when he stayed overnight. As he washed, he heard a police siren. It had not been a dream.
He left just in time to savour those final moments when the city was still sunk in its nocturnal peace. It appeared that the duty of arousing the city had been entrusted to the Franciscans of Sant’Uldarico, become from the moment the church doors swung open, the silence was broken by vans and trucks from newspaper offices or bakeries, followed a few minutes later by the footsteps of the old women moving as fast as they were able to keep their morning appointments. He waited for Juvara, but saw no sign of him. He moved silently towards the chapel of Sant’Egidio from where he could keep an eye on the central nave and the confessional, into which Friar Fiorenza let himself shortly afterwards.
He waited for about thirty minutes in the sepulchral silence, watching the old women come and go. He would have liked to say a prayer, but felt unable to do so. The epicentre of his emotions was too deep to manifest itself even with a sign of the cross. After waiting in vain, he left the church just as the city was coming fully to life. The mysterious woman had not arrived. He called Juvara, but his telephone rang for some time before a sleepy, childlike voice answered.
“If you behave this way with your dates, you’ll never get a girlfriend,” Soneri reproached him cheerfully.
“I fell asleep on the couch,” he mumbled, still half-asleep, before being startled into life. “Bloody hell! It’s nearly seven!”
“It’s alright. You were better off staying in bed. She didn’t turn up.”
“I stayed awake until four, but then . . .”
“It’s a sign you’re still young,” Soneri said, with a touch of envy in his voice. “O.K., give me a brief report on what’s been going on during the night.”
“They released both Avanzini and Pecorari after an interrogation lasting a couple of hours. House arrest for the pair of them. Chillemi went off at about three, but I doubt if he will have got much sleep. He’s on a high. This is his big moment.”
“What’s on the agenda for this morning?”
“They’ve announced that another magistrate is on his way from Florence in connection with the part of the inquiry relating to the terrorists.”
The commissario’s mood darkened.
“As far as I can gather, they’ve got hold of the address of some terrorist base around here, and perhaps they’re actively looking for someone,” Juvara said.
“Now that you’ve had a rest, keep an eye on the situation and let me know immediately if there are any developments.”
His father-in-law was expecting him, and Soneri knew he would have to make an effort to keep in check the emotions the visit would re-awaken in him. He tried to put on a professional air.
*
Pino stretched out his great calloused peasant hand. “It’s good of you to remember every year,” he said, ushering him into the kitchen.
Soneri took a quick look around, enough to verify that everything was still in its place. He would rather it had not been so. The two men stood in awkward silence, frozen by an embarrassment which hovered over their every gesture. Ada’s absence created an emptiness which deprived them of words and drained away their thoughts.
“Give me your coat,” Pino said at last. “Will we smoke a cigar together?”
The smoking became an accomplice to their silence. With a cigar between their fingers, the absence of words became more tolerable.
“So how are things?” Soneri said at last.
Pino stretched out his arms and replied with an ironic smile: “For me it’s the last waltz before the music stops.”
Soneri tried to offer encouraging words, but his voice was tired. “There’s still time. The bandsmen have only just learned the rhythm.”
Pino gave another smile, but this time the irony was tinged with bitterness. “You know when you really feel old? When you know more people on the other side than on this, more friends dead than alive.”
“I’m old too, then. In my line of business, I get to know people only when they’re dead.”
As soon as the words were out, he realised that that notion applied to Ada too. But the old man could not know it and he smiled again, still in the same manner. Irony was perhaps his dominant cast of mind, or perhaps the indispensable drug which might make the last waltz bearable.
Smoke wrapped itself round their silence. “I’ve brought you something,” Soneri said, as he planted a Christmas hamper of dried fruit and salami on the table.
“You shouldn’t have,” Pino said. “I eat very little now.” He said no more for fear of putting into words what Soneri believed he could read in his eyes. He was sure he had been on the point of saying something about Ada, before drawing back out of delicacy, or perhaps out of fear of the pain his words would cause both of them.
“There’s no sense in not talking about it,” Soneri said, gently.
From behind the veil of smoke, Pino nodded. “It’s like toothache. When you have it, you can cope to some extent, but you avoid biting on the bad tooth.”
It crossed the commissario’s mind that he would have been more than happy to act that way, but the time had come for action. He had to assume once more the role of the policeman. He was ashamed, but knew he was being truthful in both parts, as husband and investigating officer.
“Do you mind if I go up to Ada’s room? I would just like to spend a little time there.”
Before he had completed the sentence the old man agreed, without looking him in the face, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. Perhaps he was thinking of his daughter, or of the uselessness of those grey days. Christmas must be a misery for him.
Everything in his wife’s bedroom had been frozen at the time of their youth – the photographs on the walls, the fashionable modern furniture of the moment, the curtains and the duvet. A sense of the vanity of things overwhelmed him and all of a sudden everything appeared senseless. A hard lump of contracted emotions, made of material resistant to all solvents, stuck in his throat like a mouthful that had gone down the wrong way, and the mirror in front of him reflected back an unwelcome image of himself. Were those tears glistening in the eyes of his reddened face? He had no wish to pay heed to them, and threw himself into searching feverishly in the drawers.
The first thing he came across was a photograph of Ada taken when she was a baby, in a dress trimmed with lace. He found other photos which amounted to a narrative of her life: Ada in a park, Ada on her first day at school, Ada at her first Holy Communion, Ada on an outing with her secondary school, Ada in the white uniform of the nursing college, then many class pictures and some close-ups of her with her friends, the thoughtful look which mark the end of adolescence. There was nothing else. That was not what Soneri was looking for. There must be somewhere in those drawers an undiscovered artefact which corresponded to the thick shadow which concealed a part of her existence.
He knew the techniques of the house search and employed them to the full, but he felt like a thief when his hand gripped a bundle of letters which seemed as if still warm from b
eing carried in a pocket. There in the middle was a photograph of a very young Andrea Fornari, his face bearing traces of a long and tormented youth. In the faint light of the lamp on the bedside table, Soneri sat down on the bed which had cradled Ada’s dreams, including that of a love which had faded, perhaps her only genuine love. He gazed avidly at the letters, confused in his own mind, staring at Fornari’s neat handwriting. His eyes wandered down the lines, searching for confirmation, which he quickly and unequivocally found.
I find myself unable to sacrifice what appears to me now like a sacred duty for a life wholly dedicated to the fulfilment of a purpose which, however attractive, is purely private. Of course I love you, but if any sense is to be given to our times it is necessary to serve another purpose. You have no wish to follow me, and so, when all is said and done, you do not fully understand me. If you really wanted to share everything with me, you would abandon your plans to be a nurse and dedicate yourself to other people in a different way. Helping one’s neighbours means above all changing the conditions in which they live, and doing so involves using methods which seem to you reprehensible and violent. The refusal expressed in your last letter indicates a deep gulf between us. I have never felt you to be so distant. Perhaps that is natural if we are discussing a goodbye, but perhaps this distance is nothing other than the emergence of two visions of the world which are too divergent. If now I speak in the language of emotions, I feel distraught, but if reason prevails in me, I believe that this is a natural conclusion.
I embrace you with deepest love,
Andrea
He read every word of the letter in one go, and failed to notice Pino standing at the entrance to the bedroom. From where he was seated, Pino seemed to occupy the whole space of the doorway. He could not make out his features, only his dark outline against the grey light of the morning. He expected Pino to be angry, but when he began speaking Soneri heard a calm, even gentle voice, as though he were addressing Ada when she was still a girl lying in that bed where he used to wake her for school.
“Now you know why she kept those years hidden from you.”
In the dim light Soneri nodded, but his father-in-law could not see that reaction and stood waiting for some response. Sensations crowded in on him pell-mell, like disconnected stills in a poorly edited film. Everything appeared to him impalpable, mere appearance, non-being. Marta’s words about life as a “clown show” still rang in his ears. A sad inebriation assailed him for a few moments, before with an effort of will he made the attempt to anchor himself again to the living moment, even if that too was merely appearance.
“I do understand now,” he whispered.
The old man drew deeply on his cigar. The thick clouds of smoke made his outline even more opaque. “She had made a pact and had no wish to betray him. I think you will understand that. She was in love with him and wanted to redeem him. She didn’t succeed, but she was desperate to keep her promise,” Pino said, wounding Soneri to the quick with his words.
“Nor did I know . . .”
“About the abortion? That was another consequence of the regrettable choice of Andrea Fornari. What were they to do? She was still a student, and he had virtually gone underground as a terrorist. What future would they have had? Ada had an abortion courtesy of Ghitta Tagliavini, and I think that from then on neither one of them could stand her. Something in the unconscious. I believe they transferred their sense of guilt onto Ghitta.”
Soneri would have liked to understand what his role was, or might have been. He felt he was stranded somewhere, almost an outsider, but he did not dare ask for fear of what his father-in-law might reply. He preferred to listen and imagine the intentions behind the words, and meantime focused on the trauma of the abortion and the scar left on Ada’s stomach like a ticking bomb set to go off at some point. “That affair condemned her,” he said in a neutral tone, as though talking to himself, but his thoughts went also to Ghitta and to how she too had been destroyed by an error of her youth from which she never recovered.
“Was that the reason?” the old man said.
“That was what the doctors suggested. A prior wound. Ghitta had no medical training.”
He saw Pino lean all the weight of his tired body against the frame of the door. He drew deeply on his cigar, making the tip glow.
“Are you saying that this might explain what has taken place? An act of revenge on Ghitta?”
Soneri shook his head. “Perhaps deep down, but I don’t believe that was the principal motive.” After reading Ada’s letters, an idea was taking shape in his mind but he could not yet formulate it with precision.
“He got his life together in Milan, a normal life, as Ada would have wished. In the final analysis, he saw things the way she did, but by the time he made up his mind to abandon the armed struggle, you were already on the scene,” Pino said.
Pino’s words left him distraught. He felt like a plug used to stop a leak, but which had then become part of the furniture of someone else’s life. He could not put into words the question he needed to ask. He found himself debating in a hall of mirrors in an attempt to escape the self-image reflected in what he was hearing.
Meanwhile Pino went on speaking. “Ada begged me to make a promise in case she passed away.” He paused to draw again on the cigar. “I told her not to be so stupid as to think of an agreement like that, that it was against nature for children to die before their parents. Anyway, the promise was that once it was all over, I would tell you everything she couldn’t bring herself to tell you herself. And that seems to be what has just happened.”
Soneri still wondered if the story was really closed. Ada was dead and Andrea had managed to get his own life together, but what about Ghitta? Could he have murdered her for revenge? Or because she knew too much? Once again he had the feeling that he had in his grasp the logical connections binding the whole story, but that once again they were slipping away from him. He was continually opening doors which gave on to antechambers but never really took him anywhere, as happened with those long-drawn-out dreams which last a whole night.
“Now you know everything,” Pino said with a sigh. “I hope you’re not angry with me, but I couldn’t break the promise I had made to Ada.”
“She should have told me herself,” the commissario said, in a tone which failed to conceal his resentment
“She couldn’t.”
Soneri gave a bitter smile. “Because Andrea was her passion and I was no more than a rebound.”
Pino shook his head in a way that indicated understanding. “Don’t think that you counted any less for her. For my wife, I too was a rebound, to use your expression. Then Ada came along. Passions are spent, the rest remains.”
“The rest might not be spent, but perhaps it festers instead.”
Soneri jumped to his feet, oppressed by the smoke-filled gloom, and held out his hand to his father-in-law, who looked back at him in the hope of finding in his eyes some trace of forgiveness. “I know I’ve upset you, but do not think too badly of me,” he said. “It was perhaps the last thing of any importance I had to do in this world,” he stammered.
Soneri moved close to him, put his hand on Pino’s arm and squeezed it gently in a gesture which, given his shyness, was as near as he could come to an embrace.
*
He wandered around the city trying to calm down, but the throng of people which prevented him from walking at a normal pace caused his temperature to rise even higher. And then his mobile rang.
“Have you seen the papers?” Angela said without preamble.
“No, I haven’t been to the office yet.”
“So this gloomy tone of voice has nothing to do with the articles celebrating the success of Maffetone?”
“Nothing at all. It’s to do with things that are much more serious. I’ve been to see Ada’s father.”
Angela’s groan made it clear to him that she understood.
“I’ll explain everything when we meet,” he said.
&nb
sp; “This evening,” she specified.
“Alright,” Soneri agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “Are we still going to be fasting?”
“Of course! It’s Christmas Eve.”
He put his mobile away, and looked up to see a newspaper hoarding with the headlines shrieking out: “MAXI-OPERATION BY THE GUARDIA DI FINANZA. POLITICIANS AND BUSINESS LEADERS UNDER ARREST.” And underneath: “CITY IN TURMOIL.”
He looked around at the bustle of ostentatious elegance, at the streets filled with people busy with last-minute shopping for food and presents, and chuckled to himself. None of them gave a damn about questions of bribery. Each was intent on their private affairs, and fully focused on the narrow horizon of their own narrow interests. He chose not to buy a copy of the paper. It was not the larceny operated by Chillemi and Maffetone that was his principal concern, but the conversation with Ada’s father. The investigation had been from the very beginning an inquiry into himself, conducted relentlessly, allowing for neither concessions nor omissions, but now weighing on him like a life sentence.
In the streets of the city centre he kept an eye open for Pitti, but it would have been impossible to pick him out in that never-ending flow. He thought obsessively of Ada and Andrea and of their union, as well as of Andrea and his father, Rosso, up there in Monchio, obsessed by the quarrel with Ghitta. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that his wife’s great love had some connection with the murder of the landlady.
A little later, when the day was dying, the tidal wave which had swept him along dumped him like a dead fish in an unexpectedly quiet lane. Once there, he had to answer the mobile which had been ringing for a while. Juvara informed him that there was even more commotion and that more arrests were expected, this time by the Digos squad. When he hung up, he felt himself happily removed from all that upheaval. He heard a soft bell announcing vespers, and when he looked up over a wall of ancient stones he could just make out in the mist the campanile of Sant’Uldarico.
A Woman Much Missed Page 23
