"The boys. They locked me in" she moaned.
"Oh, Christ, I'm sorry” exclaimed Salieri, in a tone that seemed more annoyed than worried to Sandra.
"Where are they now?"
"I don't know." The woman shook her head. "I was calling her, but they ripped my cell phone out of my hand."
Salieri didn't speak, but her expression underlined a clear apprehension. Come in, Doctor. Let me offer you something."
Salieri sat in the living room, accepting the invitation but refusing to drink. He sat on the widest square of the sofa, the one less greyed by Chicco's hair.
Sandra closed her shell-like fingers to her face.
"Daisy is also ill. Very ill." she moaned.
The psychiatrist took the phone and tried to track the boys down.
"I've come for Adriano: he denies me publication” the man explained, staring with disappointment at the phone ringing off the hook. He tried to reassure Sandra that her boys would be home before dinner. Sandra nodded tiredly.
Salieri stared overthinking at a spot in front of her shoes and, pointing his elbows at her knees, pointed out: "I have already paid three hundred thousand euros for a cottage. A rustic
house to be set up on the outskirts of Pavia. They will only give me a professorship if I publish the case of Adriano Magnoli. But if it all blows up I will suffer an economic and image damage that will throw me to the ground definitively".
Salieri then confessed to trusting Sandra's help. Only she could persuade Adriano to change his mind.
"My wife is convinced that we should leave Castelmuso and..." Salieri interrupted. After an embarrassed silence, he added, "Excuse me, Sandra. I shouldn't be talking to you about Nicole."
The woman hastened to reassure him. "It's not a problem. It's been so many years."
Salieri raised his eyebrows in a faint expression of perplexity. "So many years, yes” he admitted. "Your husband. And my wife. Well, we all know how that turned out."
"It wasn't our fault” Sandra bitterly agreed.
"They were just two unhappy people."
Salieri gave a reassuring tap on the woman's knee.
"You've never had an easy life, dear Sandra. And your husband, I mean, it's terrible what happened to him."
Sandra grimaced anxiously, as she was imagining, reliving a person's state of mind when she decided to commit suicide.
"My husband was no saint. I may have hated him for a long time, but other than that, I sincerely hope he did not suffer."
Salieri responded in a sympathetic tone, and spent himself comforting her.
"No, he did not suffer. An elastic tie rod leads to a rather quick death." The doctor ended the sentence with a cough, as if he'd realised he'd said something too much.
Sandra watched the clock face on the wall clock face.
"I'm going to get ready. I absolutely must find the boys."
"I'll wait here” Salieri made with apparent tranquillity.
Sandra walked up the stairs and down the corridor, her heels resonating on the oak parquet that Daisy had had put in at her expense.
She entered the room. She remained silent, her heart banging hard on her sternum. She felt his head explode. She pressed her fragile fingers against her temples, her eyes agitated and feverish, chasing haunting memories.
She saw again the contemptuous face of Adriano who was pleased to describe the death of his father.
“It took him an hour to hang him from an oak tree. Hard, clean, convincing work...”
Migraine became unbearable.
“...he pulled a syringe full of barbiturates out of his coat pocket. Pentobarbital to be precise...”
He's laughing at Daisy's insane smile.
“...an induced coma, quick and painless. Simulating an injury wasn't very original. But it worked.”
Sandra bit her fingers to suppress an overwhelming urge to scream.
She reached into her trouser pockets to look for her phone, but she remembered that Daisy had ripped it out of her hand.
She thought back to the psychiatrist's words. “An elastic tie rod leads to a rather quick death.”
She was shaken by a disruptive fear.
No one knew that Paolo had hanged himself with an elastic cord.
She was the one who found him that night. She remembered perfectly well her last text message: a farewell message. A crazy run, and then, the sight of what was left of her husband: a puppet hanging by a single thread. She remembered the desperate cries, the efforts to pull him down, the string that pulled him from his neck, his face dark as a piece of dry leather. She had thrown that string, that elastic tie, away. The police had picked up a hemp rope that just happened to be there.
Only she knew the truth.
Adriano and Daisy were right.
Roberto Salieri killed Paolo Magnoli.
Now, her husband's murderer was waiting for you in the living room. She was pervaded by anxiety that took her breath away.
She looked out the door of the room with her ears open, ready to catch the slightest noise. Salieri, however, was silent. She reached the corridor again. She looked out through the balustrade that led directly into the living room. He saw the psychiatrist contemplating with interest the painting of a Russian symbolist that his daughter had brought from Rome.
She tiptoed to reach Adriano's room. She would use the boy's computer to call Franz, the burly neighbour who lived just behind the row of poplar trees. Before she entered her son's room, she peered back into the living room.
The psychiatrist was no longer in front of the painting. Sandra heard an unbearable slipper mount. She flattened behind one of the columns in the hallway, a vantage point where she could observe the entire lower floor without being noticed.
She scrutinised the whole space below her, but Roberto Salieri seemed to have vanished.
Chicco ran from one point to the other in the room, risking a scream. Sandra stretched her neck beyond the column to peer behind the slits in the windows, from which she could see the square outside. Behind the green jasmine canopies, she noticed the shimmering side of Salieri's Mercedes.
He approached Adriano's room with caution. When she realized that she could no longer be seen, she rushed into the room and ran to her desk, risking the mass of blankets on the unmade bed.
She lifted up the computer screen. She tried to call Franz on Skype, but she couldn't get through. The Internet connection
had been blown, along with all the electrical buzzing of the appliances.
ʺHe disconnected electricityʺ she moaned.
She tried again with the computer. The photovoltaic system, although the electrical panel had been disconnected, would continue to power that wing of the villa. It was an emergency function, but it took a few seconds to activate again. Sandra opened Skype again.
The connection was restored. Franz was notified and would arrive within a minute. Franco Leni was a former soldier, an officer with several missions in the Middle East, so the perfect person to ask for help.
She waited for the answer with his heart beating with a hammer.
ʺC’mon, Franz... let's go.ʺ
A trace of life appeared on the screen.
Two lines written with a smartphone, which pierced her like the blade of a dagger.
“Anxiety is unbearable torture, often more than the object of one's fears. Isn't that right, Mrs Magnoli?”
She smelled the pungent fragrance of a man's perfume.
A manly, well-groomed hand passed by her, fingers pushing down the computer screen, flattening it on the keyboard.
"She doesn't need this” said Roberto Salieri with a kind smile.
25
Onofrio was good at concentrating on the things he knew how to do, and he left to others the jobs that his handicap did not allow him to do.
For example, he could easily transport the food on the stony river bed, as well as the stools and the folding table. The table, at that point, was no longer his responsibility, because
he just couldn't open it. He could never remember if he had to pull his legs out from under the plastic table top before it was opened wide, or vice versa. It was complicated, but it wasn't a problem. Serena would open the table. The little girl was also in charge of the sandwiches. She could stuff them, but not butter them or slice the bread. Knife blades could be very dangerous.
All the boys of the cooperative shared the tasks, showing themselves efficient and proud as soldiers ready for a war mission: they set the table in order and prepared light salads dressed with the right amounts of vinegar, oil and fine salt. In the sandwiches ended up with strips of culatello, slices of Hungarian salami, generous portions of fresh pecorino cheese, and long dark liver sausages. The latter were considered a food that did not allow any kind of mediation.
The boys either loved them, or hated them, rejecting them with all their might.
Guido had sat on the river's cobblestones for a few minutes before he came up with an excuse to get out of the way, and the boys were disappointed.
It was a nice, intrusive group, eager to give and receive affection. But Guido wasn't there for them. He was there because they were the reason he could enter the monastery. The boy walked down the dirt path, reassuring Catherine that she could have called him on his cell phone for anything.
He walked past a wooded path, ending up beyond a row of old abandoned barrels, iron circles on the ground, and slats as open as orange peels.
Sister Cecilia was gritting her rosary, her penetrating gaze following the boy's moves.
Guido returned to the monastery square. He avoided the main entrance, knowing that they would block his way.
He then went to the building next door, where the brewery run by Benedictine monks was located. He entered as if he were a regular customer. The room was very large, with a long, park-like counter with a row of staplers on top. Beyond the counter, separated by a glass panel as wide as the wall, were the machinery for artisan brewing; a glittering cathedral made of a coil of steel tubes and cylinders, storage drums and containers used for pasteurizing and storing beer. A young man with long hair gathered in a ponytail, his teeth ruined tobacco-colored, showed up at the counter.
Caterina had given Guido some tips. The boy's name was Alessandro, he had been in a community where he had cleaned up the heroine, and now worked in the convent. Guido showed the cooperative's badge.
He bought two bottles of light beer, very hopped, and, careful to look as natural as possible, said, "I should talk to Father Augusto. Piero, the paraplegic boy, is in a difficult moment..."
Alessandro stared at the floor in silence.
"I see. He wants to confess."
"Yes. I think so" he lied without restraint Guido.
"I tried to find the monk. Only the convent door is closed. I rang the bell, but no one showed up. Can you help me?"
"I can't leave the brewery” hesitated Alessandro. A moment of silence, he added, "Fuck it. It's quiet here today. It'll only take a moment. Come on."
Alessandro escorted Guido through the tall, shiny distillers, then led him to a warehouse where most of the space was occupied by a wall of wheat bags stacked on top of each other. They walked along a narrow passage dug between the sacks, stopping in front of a back door that led directly to the monastery rooms.
"Go. You will come by later for beer” Alexander urged him, opening the door wide.
"Thank you very much. See you later then” exclaimed Guido, entering a silent corridor pushed by a pat on the shoulder.
At that moment he felt he was the worst person in the world. He was taking advantage of fragile people, to be bent to his interests. But he preferred to use a good dose of cynicism rather than sitting on his hands. He orient himself quite quickly, locating the point in the monastery where to go.
He walked through the silent, deserted rooms. He entered the refectory. A cleaning woman was trying to remove shreds of cobwebs from the ceiling rafters with a very long duster. The fat, chocolate-colored woman looked at the cooperative badge pinned on Guido's shirt. She said good morning and continued to clean the rafters. Guido came out of the refectory. He pushed the stairs from the stone steps that led up to the dormitory. Upstairs, he was embarrassed by a monk who ran away like a shadow, as if he were guilty of something.
Along the hallway, the rays of light filtering through the windows faded away one by one, staining the dungeon grey.
He passed his hand over his forehead. It was warm, almost feverish.
She looked into the monks' cells. Everything was silent, grey and hostile. At the end of the corridor was another monk. His feet hiding from the edge of the coconut, he did not seem to walk, but to slip towards him. He recognized Father Augustus.
The monk's stern eyes went from the badge to the boy's face.
"The young journalist is now a volunteer” the religious man said. "You look changed, boy. "There's not a dash of bravado on your face anymore. Only anxiety, tiredness and restlessness."
Guido would have wanted to fight back, but the monk was right. At that moment, he was confused and not very lucid.
"They say there are two things that move men. Curiosity and fear. Two very good reasons for not being here. Especially if you entered without permission."
Guido, tired of saying and not saying the monk, replied: "Of course I have permission. I have permission from Frater Paolous Girolimini."
Suddenly, a worried buzz broke out of the cells. The monks, invisible but alert, waved like wasps in a burning honeycomb. It lasted only a moment, then the silence returned, as heavy as the secrets that seemed to hide those walls.
"You threw the stone into the pond, boy. The circles on the water will now widen indefinitely, until they become waves that risk overwhelming everything. Including you” warned the monk, who put his hands into the broad sleeves of his habit, "he left quickly, as if he could not tolerate the boy's presence for a second longer.
Guido touched his forehead with the palm of his hand. It was getting hotter and hotter. He reached the last door, the one
on the right at the end of the hall. This was Father Romualdo's room, the centuries-old caretaker of the order.
He pushed the door, which opened with a whining squeak.
Father Romualdo Massi was sitting next to the desk, the tired curve of the years resting on the stick. He had the raw cloth hood pulled over his face, his eyes low staring at the red bricks on the floor.
"Did I get your forgiveness, son?" he asked dry.
Guido did not answer. He looked at him with contempt, without any relief. Grudge did not help to understand. And he wanted to know. And understand.
"You were going to kill a friend of mine” exclaimed Guido with a grudge.
"I admit it was a bad accident. But Leonardo Fratesi is fine, I think. The good Lord has been merciful to him."
"Where is the manuscript?"
The monk did not answer. He turned his hooded face to look through the window at the fog-soaked branches of the trees.
"Time is running out, son” the monk said vaguely, avoiding the boy's question for a moment, only to return to it, saying:
"The manuscript is no longer important at this point. It was important to us, because someone had understood. Frater Paolous had described a battle. A battle of a war still going on. Pardo Melchiorri was one of the fighters, the soldier in a conflict that's coming to a turning point, you know?"
"None of this makes any sense” replied Guido, seized with a sudden headache.
"My earthly mission is to erase the traces of the battles” reported the monk, who hastened to add: "but yours, Guido Gobbi is not an earthly mission. You are one of their soldiers." The headache became unbearable, and Guido felt his skin burning with fever. He was struck by an attack of vertigo, and had to lean against the wall to avoid falling.
The monk, indifferent to Guido's illness, peeked impatiently through the window, as if waiting for a late guest.
“He loves symbols.”
The voice he h
eard was not Father Romualdo's.
“It's where he heard his roots.” He heard
Guido would have wanted to locate the voice, but his dizziness didn't allow him to look around. As soon as he tried to turn his head, the room swirled even faster, making him so nauseous that his stomach acidic juices went up to the mouth of his stomach.
“The haze, Guido. He loves symbols”.
The dizziness got worse. He was forced to look at a fixed point on the wall to relieve the nausea.
“...the abbot Caligo...”
"I don't feel very well..." Guido sobbed, sobbing, in the throes he could barely hold back.
"You can feel it now, can't you?" the Benedictine asked, his eyes watery and assorted, staring into a fast-moving shadow in the hallway.
"That voice, Guido. It is the voice of the painter” the monk revealed.
Guido leaned his back against the wall so as not to fall.
"No. It cannot be."
Guido felt his lucidity slip away like sand between his fingers.
ʺThe fog. He loves symbols...ʺ thought confusingly Guido.
ʺHaze... l'abbate Caligo...ʺ
Guido avoided wondering whether, at that moment, he was delirious or whether his mind had entered a deeper level of awareness. Then, all of a sudden, the truth appeared to him in all its splendour, ripping through every shadow and dispelling every doubt.
ʺCaligo in Latin means fog.ʺ
Exhausted, he grabbed onto the back of a chair. He looked beyond the gloomy mantle of mist. "I get it. He's coming back here. The monastery is his refuge. And you protect him."
"You're not well, son. Let me help you” said Father Romualdo calmly.
The shadow on the corridor stretched out into the cell. A tall, bulky, light-skinned monk with a cruel streak in his eyes entered.
The monk matched Leo's description. He was the man who had run him off the road to steal the manuscript.
The young, rocky monk turned his arm around Guido's neck. The mighty biceps pressed against his throat, risking suffocation. Guido, without being able to defend himself in any way, was dragged out of Father Romualdo's cell.
The Dawn of Sin Page 26
