by Alen Mattich
“Have you been adulterous or had impure thoughts about other women?” Della Torre listened. Footsteps had drawn close to the confessional boxes and then paused.
“Oh no, Father. It’s not that. No, I’m not even sure it’s a sin against God what I did.”
“What is it that’s a sin against your wife but not a sin against God?”
“Well, you see, it’s embarrassing.” Whoever it was pacing the church wandered away.
“Confession should not be embarrassing. It should be an unburdening, an opening of yourself to God.”
“This might be a new one on God. I don’t really know how to say it.”
“Say it as simply as you can.”
“Well, Father, my wife caught me this morning trying on her clothes.”
“You were trying on her dresses?”
“Not her dresses, Father, not exactly. Her underwear.”
“Her underwear?”
“Yes, her bra and underwear and stockings and suspenders.”
“You wore her undergarments?”
“Yes, Father. Surely that’s not a sin.”
“Were you putting them on for unnatural purposes?”
“Sort of, you might say.”
“For sensual gratification?”
“Oh no, Father, they were very uncomfortable. Pinched everywhere.”
“Had you done this before?”
“Never, Father.”
“So why did you put them on?”
“Well, you see, Father, I’d been telling my mates at work that my wife has got very fat since we married. So fat that I could fit into her clothes. They laughed it off; they didn’t believe me. I mean, I’m not a tiny fellow. Not overweight or anything. Just not tiny. So, you see, it got me thinking. And since she’d gone off shopping this morning and I didn’t need to go to work, I thought I’d give them a go. Her clothes, I mean. Except she’d forgotten something and she came back. And caught me.”
“You tried on your wife’s clothing to prove that she was fat?”
“Yes, Father.”
“And not for sensual reasons?”
“No, Father.”
“I see.”
“The complication is, Father, that if she thinks I did it because I like to dress in women’s clothes for sensual reasons, as you put it, she’ll be worried sick. Furious, but worried sick. But if I tell her it’s because I wanted to prove how fat she’s got, she’d want a divorce. And that wouldn’t be good for either of our souls.” Della Torre spoke softly, hesitatingly, listening for sounds in the church the whole while he spun his story.
“No, indeed not.”
“But what I really need now, Father, is somewhere to hide so that she can’t find me. I’ll go home once she’s cooled down and try to come up with some reason for her.”
“Maybe you should tell her that it was an experiment but that you disliked it, and anyway you went to confession straight away.”
Della Torre heard the door to the church bang with an echo. The footsteps were gone. “Thank you, Father. I knew you’d understand. But would you mind if I just stayed in here for a little while? Just to stay out of range of her frying pan?”
“By all means, by all means. We normally don’t take confession on weekday mornings, but I was in the sacristy and heard some footsteps so I thought I’d make sure no one had come to steal the candles. They come to steal candles sometimes. The old ladies are the worst. And when I saw the confessional door was shut . . . Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.”
The priest had already started out of his side of the confessional when della Torre stopped him.
“Aren’t you going to give me penance?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’d forgotten,” the priest said, hastily sitting back down. “How about a dozen Hail Marys and as many Our Fathers. That should cover the past six months. And whatever sin you might have inadvertently committed in putting on your wife’s things. And now say the act of contrition.”
“Lord Jesus, son of Mary and God, have mercy on me as a sinner.” Della Torre marvelled at how much of the long-distant ritual he could remember.
“Your sins are forgiven; now go in peace. I mean, stay. As long as you like. And then go in peace. And I wish you well with your wife.”
“Thank you, Father.”
The minutes counted down. He wasn’t tempted to leave the sanctity of the confessional. No one else seemed to come in that morning. No tourists, no penitents, no old ladies looking to steal candles. Half past eleven turned into twenty-five to. Then twenty to. Then a quarter of an hour. Ten minutes. He’d waited as long as he could.
He ran out of the church and through the town in a hobbling sprint, every step a bolt of pain. Out of the corner of his eye he could see somebody else running.
The catamaran loomed over the historic waterfront like a diabolical machine designed to drag the population of these sleepy little towns into worlds in which they did not belong. Passport control was in a building just past the kiosk where he’d bought the ticket. The catamaran’s engines were running and quayside officials were preparing to lift the warps once the gangway was pulled up.
“You’ll be lucky to make it,” said the passport control guard in Slovene.
“Sorry,” della Torre replied, pulling out his Italian passport. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re cutting it very fine,” the officer replied in rough Italian, looking through the passport. “Where’s your entry stamp?”
“My entry stamp? I don’t know. I didn’t notice them put one in.”
“Did you come through here?”
“Oh no, I came with a friend from Trieste. We drove down. My friend’s Slovene. I don’t know why, but they didn’t stamp me at the border.”
“Criminal how negligent they can be. They get so much traffic up there that they just stop bothering sometimes. Wouldn’t catch us doing that.”
He looked back. He could see another man rushing towards the building, the young man with the flat peasant face.
“Next time, make sure the stamp’s in there. You can end up in a lot of bother without one,” the passport control officer said. Della Torre took his stamped passport and made a running leap at the gangway, terrified his left knee would give out on him, as the flat-faced man ran into the building.
“You, let me look at that ID before you go rushing through,” he heard the border guard shout behind him. Thank god for Slovene petty-mindedness, della Torre thought.
He was on the boat before he dared turn around. The young man was remonstrating with the passport control officer. Another man had only just arrived at the barrier. He stared up at della Torre, a shrug implicit in the way he stood. They might have missed him now, his eyes seemed to be saying, but they knew where he was going. And when he’d be getting there.
“THIS IS ADDING insult to injury. Pulling me away from my hospital bed when I’ve been grievously wounded and then leaving me to fester in your office without so much as a cup of coffee while you disappear for hours.”
Anzulović had meant to get right back to Strumbić once he’d got off the phone with della Torre, but by the time he’d got back from the cathedral to the UDBA offices, he’d been stopped by Lieutenant Colonel Kakav, who wanted to know why they hadn’t arrested the offending officer yet and whether Messar was really up to the job.
Anzulović had spent a long half-hour persuading the man to be patient. Kakav was little better than a politician. No. Worse, Anzulović reflected. At least politicians were occasionally funny.
But Anzulović knew what was bothering Kakav. Messar was incorruptible. He was efficient and successful, and when Kakav would want to control him he’d be out of reach. Messar never even let a barman stand him a drink.
By the end of the meeting with Kakav, Anzulo
vić felt like washing his hands and changing his shirt.
“Julius, don’t give me grief. Three hours is how long you cops keep people waiting just to ask where to take a piss in that station, so don’t be complaining to me.”
“It’s a matter of professional courtesy.”
“If you were a professional, I might be courteous,” Anzulović said with more venom than he’d intended. “I’m sorry about that, Julius. It’s been a hell of a couple of days. Have you written up that statement for me?”
Strumbić handed a couple of badly typed sheets of paper to Anzulović.
Even before reading it, Anzulović said, “It’s not signed.”
“It’s not a fair copy,” Strumbić said.
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“I’m not here to be insulted, Anzulović. You know very well what I meant is that it needs to be typed by somebody who can actually type. I’ll sign it then.”
Anzulović knew Strumbić was stalling. He read the pages.
Strumbić had done what he’d been told to do. According to him, della Torre had been with the Bosnians but hadn’t shot Strumbić. On reflection, della Torre had been standing in the wrong place to have shot him in the shin. It must have been one of the Bosnians. The tall one.
Strumbić gave descriptions of all three, but they were generic enough to be useless. He gave a better account of the car. Which was exactly the one stuck to the tree in the gorge near his weekend cottage.
Best of all, he indicated clearly that he thought della Torre was there by force. It seemed the Bosnians wanted something out of them both. What it was, Strumbić didn’t elaborate.
After the shooting, the Bosnians disappeared with della Torre. The implication being that they’d kidnapped him.
“It’s good as far as it goes. Not Shakespeare. More like Three Stooges. But the audience ought to buy it,” Anzulović said. “There’s just the little matter of your thumbprint.”
“I’ll sign a fair copy in duplicate. I sign this and give it to you, who knows how you’ll change it to suit yourselves.”
Anzulović shook his head. Why was it that nobody in this country ever trusted anyone else?
“So what’s to keep those Bosnians from looking you up again?”
“I have a feeling they’ve been taken care of.”
“What about the people who sent them?”
“My colleagues on the Zagreb force are taking a close interest in my welfare.”
“I’ll tell you what. How ’bout I photocopy this and you sign both copies.”
Strumbić shook his head, but before Anzulović could start grinding away at the detective, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Anzulović said.
It was Messar. He looked down at Strumbić and then back at Anzulović.
“We tracked della Torre to Piran.”
Anzulović nodded.
“But he got away.”
“Oh?” Anzulović tried not to look pleased.
“He got on a ferry to Venice. The Slovene police and port services wouldn’t help, and by the time my men got through to me, the ferry was in Italian waters.”
“What happens now?”
“We’ll have men waiting for him in Venice.” Messar was one of the few Department VI people to refer to the UDBA as “we.” “The ferry will be there in about an hour. We’ll pick him up and arrange for transport back.”
“They can do it quietly, can they?”
“They’ll be quiet.”
Anzulović nodded. It was out of his hands.
When Messar left the room, Strumbić looked at Anzulović. The old cop seemed to care about della Torre. The saddlebags under his eyes hung lower than ever, his pallor looking even more like badly cooked veal.
“So it looks like Gringo will be back with us soon,” Strumbić said. He was pretty sure he was unhappy with this state of affairs. Anzulović was right. Della Torre could make life hard for him.
“Mind if I make a phone call?” Strumbić asked.
“Go ahead. They’re monitored, in case you’re thinking of calling your lawyer.”
“Even yours?”
“Especially mine.”
Strumbić nodded.
“The secretary’s fax machine is beyond our surveillance people’s capabilities.”
“Not monitored?”
“No.”
“I’ll use that then, if you don’t mind. You don’t have Gringo’s photo by any chance, do you?”
“Why? Missing him?” Anzulović asked.
“No. But I’m hoping Messar will be.”
VENICE ROSE OUT of the distance, the tall finger of the Campanile marking its spot on the broad horizon. Della Torre had always been indifferent to the city. Massed tourists irritated him. But mostly he disliked the deep vein of cynicism that spread through anyone who’d lived in Venice long enough. The city was beautiful. Accessible. But somehow unreachable, like those Hollywood actresses on billboards.
Everything was expensive. The food was a disappointment. There was tat everywhere. Ultimately it offered as little choice as a socialist supermarket. But the setting was, he admitted, easier on the eye than anything Lenin or Engels had ever inspired.
A little more than an hour and a half after the catamaran left Piran, Venice’s great landmarks passed along its starboard side. It docked at San Basilio. Della Torre wondered what sort of welcoming party Messar might have arranged for him on such short notice. He’d hoped the catamaran’s speed and Piran’s proximity to Italian waters would be enough to escape interception by the Yugoslav navy. But he also knew the UDBA had people in all the major Italian ports along the Adriatic. He took his time getting off the boat. No one in particular seemed to be looking for him in the dockside crowds, but that didn’t mean anything. Passport control was a formality. Della Torre slipped into the Venetian alleys, and only when there was no sign of anyone tracking him did he think about lunch.
The plate of spaghetti puttanesca was par for the Venetian course. Only just edible. The Italian beer was revolting. A few other tables were occupied, but the restaurant was mostly empty. Della Torre watched a man come in. He wore a suit in the way a travelling salesman wore a suit. As if he slept in it, bathed in it, wore it to the beach.
“Mind if I join you?” he said in an accented Italian, pulling up a chair after glancing at a shiny, folded piece of paper that he then pocketed. He lit a cigarette, ignoring that della Torre was still eating. Della Torre pushed his plate away.
“I take it you’ve got a message for me from friends,” della Torre answered in Croat.
“You got friends? Not the way I hear it.” The man flagged down the waiter and ordered a beer.
“Messar’s quick.”
The man shrugged. He looked world-weary. On close inspection, he had “retired cop” written on his features. It must have been an early retirement — he couldn’t have been past his early fifties. But his papery skin, watery eyes, nicotine-stained fingers, and large belly suggested to della Torre that his retirement wouldn’t last much longer. Overdue for a stroke. He looked like somebody in a holding pattern, waiting for the tag to be put on his big toe. Maybe a freelance was the best Messar could do on such short notice.
“So you’ve come to tell me that you want me to go with you quietly to whatever transport you’ve got arranged for me or I’ll be going back in a box, right?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, apologies. I’ve got you mistaken for somebody else. You’ll be hoping to sell me a set of encyclopedias, then.”
“An old buddy of mine suggested if I got a bit lonely I’d find somebody who looked a lot like you stepping off the Piran ferry.”
“Your old buddy’s a perceptive fellow. And who might he be?”
�
��My old buddy also suggested, some other people might be looking for somebody who looked like you stepping off the Piran ferry.”
“Were they?”
“They might have been. But they had a little problem with the local cops. Something about having been seen picking pockets. They’re just having a conversation now. It’s a shame that the conversation won’t last very long, unless they’re very naughty boys and by some happy accident are found packing guns. But I doubt it. They looked like they knew what they were doing. And they won’t be too far away.”
“Maybe I should pick up the bill.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Mind if I stand you that beer? The least I can do.”
“Beer? Is that what it was? I thought it was piss,” the man said.
Della Torre paid up and the two men slipped into the Venetian alleys.
“So who can I thank for this timely intervention?”
“A friend. Of mine. A friend who suggests you make yourself scarce somewhere that’s not Zagreb. Or Venice. He said it’d be really unfortunate if you found yourself floating face down in a canal tonight.”
“Is that what would happen if I didn’t make myself scarce?”
“Could be.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” asked della Torre wearily.
“Train station’s that way. And so’s the airport.”
“My regards to your friend.”
Della Torre didn’t think too hard about who had sent this peculiar guardian angel. Anzulović, maybe. But he knew quality advice when he heard it. He walked to the station. He briefly contemplated a train but decided a flight would probably be the thing, so he hopped a bus to the airport, passing on one of the expensive water taxis.
Riding over the long bridge Napoleon had built, a sort of drip line feeding the city the endless stream of tourists that kept it from dying of old age, he felt the thrust of fate pushing him farther. Della Torre knew he had to go to America.
