“I know, Gerri. People talk. I knew they weren’t true. But the blonde . . . she’s nothing like your mother. I hear she’s always at the beauty parlor, the spa, the perfumery, leaving a trail of money behind her like a snail. I know it’s none of my business, but you’re going to end up in ruins if this continues. And I felt it was my duty to tell you, given the good relationship I always had with your parents.” Ghinozzi puts on his hat, giving it a tug over his ears, and points to the row of coins on the counter. “Remember, I’ve never bribed a soul.”
As the door closes behind Ghinozzi, Gerri thinks about his parents. About the rumors that circulated, just because his mother had been a beautiful woman. They said that Carmela knew all the secrets of chocolate. And that part was true. The house liqueur, the one made with chocolate that the lumberjacks drink to warm up, was her recipe. That morning she had left the house to go pick up some test results. Gerri had heard his father tell the story a hundred times. She was convinced she had some illness, but she had nothing of the kind. She was healthy as a fish. But she never found out, because the bus she took that morning to go hear the doctor say she was fine went over the wrong bridge. His father left the countryside a year later to go back to Sicily, to his sister’s. He left Gerri the bar and some good advice on women that he didn’t heed.
FOUR
“I was on my way to work at the practice room, but then I spotted the patrol car,” says Viola, crawling through the window. “So I slipped behind the house. I was hoping it would go, but that idiot is spending his whole day here. What, are they scared you’ll escape?”
“What do you mean you were on your way to work? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Details. I was hiding here behind the house, then I saw the cat scurrying up the ladder and the open window.” She spots the cat on the pillow and goes over to stroke it. “Thank you, little friend. You saved me today.”
“I thought I saved you,” says Giulio.
“You might save me from catching a cold if you close that window.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to having visitors. You know how it is, I’m—”
“Under house arrest, I know. You keep saying that. Were you working?” she asks, gesturing toward the desk. Viola approaches the drawing pad. “What’s this?”
“A tree. I’m working on a story that should start there.”
“You make everything seem so easy. I’d like to show you my drawings one day. Maybe you can set me straight.”
“Sure thing, if they don’t put me away for life. Listen, about that Wi-Fi stick, could I borrow it?”
The girl looks at him. Giulio feels scrutinized, tested. Teenagers do it all the time, and their reactions can be unpredictable.
This girl in particular seems to be on the wild side. So many piercings, a tuft of hair over her eyes, heavy makeup. Always fidgeting with the long line of piercings in her left ear.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asks.
“What do you care?” But maybe a softer approach would be better. “Look . . .” He doesn’t remember her name.
“Viola.”
“Look, Viola, I have to look for something important, and I’ll give it back as soon as I find it. And in the meantime, you can hide here.”
“I don’t think you should use it. You’re not supposed to have any contact with the outside world, if you really are under house arrest.”
“That sounds a little strange coming from the girl who just crawled through my window.”
The girl looks like she’s still figuring out the situation. She huffs, as if she’s been forced to do something she’s not convinced about. She places the backpack on the bed and rummages in one of the pockets, which seems to be full of stuff, until she pulls out a USB stick.
“Here it is. But if they catch you, don’t sell me out.”
Giulio takes his laptop bag, pulls out the laptop, and turns it on.
“Can you even use that?”
“Calm down. The ordinance says I can use the computer to work, but I can’t go online. So they unplugged the Wi-Fi here at the hotel. That’s why I need your adapter. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. At most I could make some Skype calls if they haven’t closed my account. But I doubt they have. Things never happen as quickly as they do in the movies.”
The girl nods; she seems convinced. She takes off her jacket, stretches out on the bed, and scoops up the orange cat into her arms.
“So, what’s this secret work you’re doing?” he asks her as the laptop starts up.
“I’m working on a song, but I think it’ll be an instrumental thing, so I don’t know if I can even call it a song. Maybe I should call it a ‘track,’ right?”
“Sounds interesting.”
“I have a band, like I was telling you the other day. It’s called Lilith. We’re breaking up on June twenty-first, but before that we want to record a track and put it on YouTube.”
“What’s it about?”
“No lyrics, it’s an instrumental. I just told you.”
“So you’re saying instrumental songs aren’t about anything? What kind of musician are you?”
“It’s inspired by things that no one should ever forget. Maybe that’s what it’s about.”
“It sounds like it was written for me.”
“So is it true?” Viola lets go of the cat and sits up. “What’s written in the paper, I mean. About how you lost your memory and everything else.”
“I have no idea about everything else. But the part about losing my memory is true.”
“What’s it like?”
“That’s what you want to know?”
“Yeah, why?”
Giulio turns. “Because you entered the bedroom of a suspected murderer. Now you’re alone with him and your biggest concern is what it’s like to lose your memory?”
“My mom says you didn’t do it.”
“Seriously? I hope she’s right.”
“What was she like as a kid?”
“A good girl, I’d say. Not really the window type,” says Giulio, pointing to the one Viola crawled through. When he looks back at the screen, the computer is ready. He inserts the Wi-Fi adapter, and a window opens asking for the password. “What do I put?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“We were classmates. It was twenty years ago, what do you want—”
“Not that. What’s it like to lose your memory? To forget about something and to realize it was important.”
Giulio looks at the laptop screen. The blank password field. All right, then.
“Once I was in a movie theater. They were playing a movie about dreams, by an Iranian director. In the end, I had this feeling they hadn’t shown us the full version, so I went to the ticket office and asked if they were sure they had all the reels.”
“What do reels have to do with it?”
“When the world wasn’t all digital, they used to use reels. A movie usually had more than one.”
“Go ahead.” Viola takes off her shoes and crosses her legs on the bed.
“In the end, the ticket office told me they were missing a reel. They had shorted his delivery, and so he had projected what he had. Just like that, without telling anyone. I didn’t know how the movie was supposed to go. And I can assure you that the narrative was the least of the problems that the director was dealing with. But my instinct that something was missing was immediate. And the hole remained. I have the same feeling about that night. I know things happened, but it’s as if someone took them away from me. I know pieces are missing, but I can’t put them back together again because it’s as if I never had them to begin with. It’s like that piece of movie I never saw. And I don’t know where to look for it.”
Strange, nobody had asked him how he felt. What effect it had on him. He had answered almost every question under the sun, but nothing like what this strange punk kid had thought to ask him.
“Procolharum, all one word. Do you know how to spell it?” Viola
asks.
“What are you talking about?”
“The password you asked me for.”
How this girl ever managed to know about that band is a story Giulio would like to hear, but there are more urgent matters at the moment.
He enters the password. The laptop connects to Wi-Fi.
Katerina burns off her salmon, butter, and prosecco as she rides the 999-euro computerized stationary bike in the front room, just forty-two inches from the bedroom where a cute, fit, nice girl has to sleep with an obese, lazy know-it-all who is as boring as all the books he says he’s read, when maybe he’s only read the plots on Wikipedia like everyone else. If they ever lost a reality TV bid, it’s clear the blame would lie with that pretentious pig.
The golden iPhone resting against the bike display lights up. The name and face that appear reflect the boring guy. Gerri is calling her from the bar. Why does he have to be calling her constantly? Why can’t he let her get on with her life without interrupting her every time she goes to do something important?
“I’m working out,” she informs him with all the resentment she can muster.
“You have to help me with lunch.”
“Do you need someone to explain how to warm up the sandwiches?”
“I need you to heat the sandwiches while I get on with other things.”
“What other things do you have to get done in that cesspool of a bar?”
“Katerina, if you don’t come now, I’ll go over there and drag you here by your hair.”
He’s slurring his speech like he does after too much sparkling white.
“Are you drunk?”
“You’re out of breath, what are you doing?”
“I’m on the bike, I told you.”
“I’m calling the landline. I want to see if you pick up.”
And he hangs up.
Katerina stares at the iPhone in her hands, mute, and wishes Gerri’s face would reappear so she could break it against the bike.
The landline rings.
Suffocating the urge to scream, she gets up from the bike and picks up the cordless phone in the hallway.
“Happy?”
“Come to the bar.”
“You’re a maniac. And a drunk. You disgust me, I can smell the wine on you from here.”
“If you don’t get down here, I’ll come and get you.”
“Fuck you. Get over your hangover first, then we’ll talk.”
She slams the cordless phone back into its cradle, nearly splitting it in two. This was the last thing she needed. But if that asshole tries to ruin her plans, he’ll take care of it. He’ll sort him out for good.
“I don’t want to spoil your party,” says Viola, “but anything you do online can be traced, and sorry if my mother is a marshal, but I don’t want to be up shit creek on your account. And this thing you’re doing is making me a little nervous. I don’t think you should do it, I’m serious.” Giulio had opened a Google profile. When the page appeared, Viola immediately noticed that the username was Patrizia Alberti. “At least tell me what you’re trying to do. You know how it is, I just lent my Wi-Fi stick to a guy who may have killed his girlfriend and hid her body, so I think it’s normal to be a bit apprehensive.”
Giulio turns, as if he’s suddenly realized something important. “You can always say you lost it, maybe in the bar downstairs. I found it and here I am.”
“Something more convincing?”
“I just have to check one thing. It might be useful. That deputy prosecutor already decided I’m a bloodthirsty monster, and if I can’t put a single doubt in her head to the contrary, I’ll be in a bad way.”
“Shouldn’t your lawyer be taking care of that?”
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep him.”
Giulio went through the contacts list. He found the one that he was apparently looking for. Leonardo Maccari. Blond, smiling, light-blue eyes. Like he just walked out of a 1980s chewing gum commercial.
“There it is.”
“Can you at least tell me what you’re doing?”
“Patrizia’s office manages its email and messaging through a Google account.”
“Which you’ve obviously violated.”
“I’m a stalker, wasn’t that in the newspapers?”
“I think I’ve made a big mistake coming here. Maybe you should give me back my stick.”
Giulio turns to her. He takes a deep breath and tightens his lips into a worried grimace. “Listen to me, Viola, who writes instrumental songs for a group that will break up before summer starts. Grazia, your mother, may be right. At least, I hope she is. But they already have me for guilty, and if I can’t find anything to help me, we’ll never know if she really is right. Do you know what it means to live with that kind of doubt?”
“I’m going to end up in big trouble. I can already see it coming.”
At Bar Fuga, lunchtime is approaching through an alternating rhythm of Campari and white wine spritzers. House prices are low, so most of the money shelled out ends up in the machines, which are in the other room, singing their songs, hungry as always.
Gerri is leaning with his arm against the counter. This morning he got into it with the sparkling white, and now he’s a little out of it. He can’t quite make out what the customers are saying. Especially the Kosovars, who just got off their carpentry shift. They go on and on and on in those loud voices as if they were at a festival. They raise their glasses and down their contents in a single gulp. And there’s nothing to do but fill them up, those damned glasses. Watch how many they drink, because it’s all fine and good that the prices are low, but if you get distracted, they’ll only pay you for every other one. What if it were one of them? One of these young men with broad shoulders and hard muscles. First he screws Katerina and then comes here to have a drink. And he only pays for every other one.
Beasts.
The image that crosses his mind is that. The Kosovars with their wide shoulders, naked in the woods. Young, muscular, smeared with dirt. It’s as if suddenly a light comes on in the trees and she appears, Katerina. Her long hair floats in the air. The white flesh of her naked body, covered only on the sides by a myrtle bush. Her red lips. Her round breasts and pert nipples in the cold air. The Kosovars look at her. They get excited. They start to move toward her. Like in a hunting ritual, they move in a pack. They surround her. She is beautiful and in danger. The first one is about to jump on her, but an arrow strikes his throat. The others look around. The one who got hit squirms on the ground, but only for a few seconds, before remaining motionless. The others are terrified. The second takes another arrow through his heart. He almost doesn’t realize he’s dying before he falls into a bush. They escape. They run away. And finally, Katerina smiles at him. Gerri slings the bow over his shoulder. She approaches him. He kisses her. A long, passionate kiss before laying her on a carpet of moss and kissing her again.
“Gerri, give me another Campari, I have a headache.” Maglio is standing in front of him, big as a bison, his forehead glistening. Where did he come from? Why is he sweating? Is he the bastard who’s screwing Katerina?
“Gerri, you there?” he says. “You seem a little out of it.”
Giulio looks for messages from Maccari. He finds several. Work stuff. But there’s more.
Let’s meet tonight.
Just us, okay?
What’s wrong with you?
I want to live this without fear.
Don’t you think you should move on from this story sooner or later?
I realized you’re special to me.
Don’t blow me off again.
“This guy has a future as a poet,” says Giulio.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Viola asks.
“There’s a lot of stuff. I need some time.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to nap if you don’t mind.”
Giulio turns. Viola had slipped under the duvet as he was reading the messages. Her head is on the pillow, and she�
�s putting in her headphones.
“You’re sleeping? Here? In my bed?”
“You smell decent, I don’t mind. If you’re going to get me in trouble, I should probably rest up.”
The girl who knows Procol Harum and writes songs about things that should never be forgotten closes her eyes. Giulio looks at her and seems to recognize her urgent need to seek a place of refuge. He decides to pull the curtains to give her some shade. As he approaches the window, he notices the patrol car is gone. And he suspects that Viola has noticed too.
Donato studies the tracks in the snow around the GeoService cabin. The Spirits had approached from the road. He traces them now in the daylight, and among those left by Magliarini Forestry Services and the patrol car, he thinks he can discern those of at least a few scooters. But around the cabin, the snow had been cleared by the lumberjacks who maintain the cabin, perhaps when they passed by this morning. And in the forest there are no footprints. Aside from his own.
Donato looks through the trees, trying to retrace their path from the other night, as they followed those greenish lights that, according to the website that documents haunted woods, were ignes fatui. As a rule, they’re usually blue and organic, but in this case they were green and moved too fast to be a phenomenon of natural combustion.
A reflection. The only ray of sunshine he’s seen here for a long time. Too many reflections for this officer ripped from his seaside village and transplanted into the mountains. The sun must have caught something metallic, or maybe some glass.
Donato looks in that direction. Again, a reflection in the woods. It takes off along the path he and the Marshal traveled at night. He follows it.
The reflection again. It seems to be hanging from a tree.
Grazia is back at the station. Her phone is charging, she’s sent Donato to do surveillance at the Gherarda, and she’s found the envelope where she placed the dirty handkerchief with the paint they found at GeoService. She opens it on her desk. She’s only confirming, but if it doesn’t turn out to be the same red, there’s at least a glimmer of hope that things . . .
The Hawthorne Season Page 12
