by Marco Vichi
‘Would you like to order something, sir?’
‘A coffee, thank you.’
‘Straight away, sir,’ the well-trained boy said, and vanished at once.
Bordelli thanked Ortensia for agreeing to meet with him, and to save time he immediately asked her about Orlando. The woman blushed and turned towards her mother.
‘Mamma, could you let us have a little time alone?’ she whispered.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Please, Mamma… Just half an hour …’ Ortensia begged her, touching her arm.
The woman screwed up her face, but in the end she obeyed and grabbed her handbag. Bordelli stood up with her and smiled politely, waiting for her to leave before sitting back down. Ortensia was about to speak, but the waiter arrived with the coffee and she immediately closed her mouth, seeming impatient.
‘Did you want to tell me something?’ Bordelli asked as soon as they were alone again.
‘Forgive me for bringing my mother along … I didn’t want … I have a very jealous husband … He knows nothing about my relationship with Orlando … And so I thought it best …’
‘No need to worry,’ Bordelli interrupted her. The woman gave him an embarrassed smile, then leaned slightly forward, looking him straight in the eye.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Orlando was murdered,’ she whispered, immediately covering her mouth with her hand as though she’d said something outrageous. Bordelli felt a tingling at the back of his neck. In a fraction of a second a concatenation of thoughts flashed through his mind … If Ortensia was aware of some concrete motive on which to base a case for murder, then with a bit of luck he might be able to find … Maybe not proof that would stand up in court, but at least … In short, he would be compelled to try to discover the mechanism of a crime, and once he’d done this, he would have, on a silver platter, the solution for Beccaroni’s ‘suicide’ …
‘Please tell me everything you know.’
‘Well … I … When Orlando passed away … we were no longer together …’
‘I already knew that.’
‘Ah …’ said Ortensia, surprised and slightly alarmed.
‘It was his friends from back then who told me, Neri and Gianfranco.’
‘Quite a pair, those two …’ said Ortensia, without malice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All they ever thought about was having fun.’
‘But you were saying, about Orlando …’ Bordelli pressed her gently.
‘But you … Why do you want to know these things?’
‘Because I have the same suspicions as you about Orlando’s death.’
‘Well, I may be wrong, but …’ She stopped.
‘Please go on,’ said Bordelli, putting his elbows on the table to get closer to her.
‘As I was saying … We were no longer together …’
‘Without being too indiscreet, may I ask why you left him?’ Bordelli cut in.
‘For a number of reasons …’
‘Can you tell me which? Of course, you’re under no obligation …’
‘We saw things differently … At times it seemed like he was hiding something … And I wasn’t sure I loved him any more …’ said Ortensia, avoiding his gaze.
Bordelli smiled. Usually anyone who had a number of reasons for something was trying to hide just one, the real one. He sat there in silence, looking at her, and she blushed. She rummaged through her handbag until she found her gold cigarette case. Bordelli offered her a light, then took advantage to light up one of his own. Ortensia exhaled the smoke and shrugged faintly.
‘I was convinced he had another woman,’ she said, a bit of the old jealousy flashing in her eyes.
‘Do you still think so?’
‘I don’t know … He always swore that it wasn’t true.’
‘Did you see each other at all after you broke up?’
‘We still talked over the phone, and we often quarrelled … That is, I would quarrel with him … He would say he loved me, and we should get back together … He said he would marry me …’
‘But you didn’t believe him.’
‘I admit I didn’t … I was confused … There were certain things I didn’t understand …’
‘Like what?’
‘On the evening of the tragedy Orlando had phoned me a little after nine … He was upset and kept asking if he could see me … But not to talk about us … He had to tell me something important that he couldn’t put off … He didn’t want to say anything over the phone, but he swore that it was something very, very serious. He asked me to forget my pride for a moment … It wasn’t an excuse to steal a kiss from me, he said; he wouldn’t even touch me, he promised …’
‘And did you accept?’
‘He seemed very troubled, and so in the end I let him talk me into it. I asked my parents for permission, and then I told Orlando he could come to my place … He showed up just minutes later … He’d called from a bar not far from our house … My parents welcomed him politely but were unable to mask their embarrassment. They would have been very pleased if I’d married him, and when I left him—’
‘What did Orlando tell you?’ Bordelli asked impatiently.
‘Well, we went into the sitting room to be alone … He took my hands in his and told me he’d discovered something terrible … And he needed to get it off his chest … But it might be dangerous, he said, and he made me swear not to tell anyone what he was about to tell me …’ Ortensia stopped and looked around.
‘Can you tell me now?’ Bordelli whispered.
The woman squirmed nervously in her chair, as though undecided. Then she stiffened, staring fixedly at something behind Bordelli.
‘Who is that man? What’s he looking at?’ she hissed with a shudder. Bordelli turned round and saw a pale, thin young man in glasses, who immediately looked away.
‘You think it’s strange when someone admires a pretty woman?’ he said, smiling.
Despite the inappropriateness of the moment, Ortensia blushed at the flattery. She cast another furtive glance at the lad, and from her uneasiness Bordelli could tell that their eyes had met again. He, too, was staring at her, waiting for her to continue.
‘Forgive me … I’m a little nervous …’ She was batting her eyelashes, trying to recover her train of thought. She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.
‘Take your time,’ said Bordelli, to put her at ease.
The woman was biting her lips, but clearly she was about to start talking again. One just had to be patient. A long minute of silence passed, against a background of light music and laughter. Then Ortensia fixed her eyes on him and leaned forward.
‘I’ve never told anyone what Orlando said to me.’
‘Maybe that was a mistake.’
‘He made me swear never to tell anyone … And when I found out that he had comm … I thought I’d go mad … I was desperate … I realised I still loved him … I remembered the look he had in his eye that evening … And I was afraid … I’m still afraid, even now …’
She looked over again at the bespectacled lad and immediately averted her glance.
‘What did Orlando tell you?’ Bordelli insisted.
‘Do you swear you will never tell anyone what I am about to tell you?’
‘You have my word,’ Bordelli reassured her, hoping it really was something of great importance. Ortensia gave herself another moment of reflection, then made up her mind.
‘Orlando had been working at the firm of two important lawyers for almost two years … and a few days earlier, he’d discovered, by accident, that the two partners were embezzling huge sums of money from estates they were administering …’
‘That’s no surprise,’ said Bordelli, to avoid telling her that he already knew this.
Ortensia was worrying her wedding ring and seemed short of breath.
‘He discovered another thing, too … Also by accident, he said … On the morning of the day before, he�
�d gone back to the law offices earlier than expected, after an assignment at the courts … He heard one of the lawyers talking rather heatedly over the phone, behind a closed door … It had only been a couple of weeks since he’d discovered that the two partners were cheating their richest clients, and he’d taken it upon himself to spy on them … He wanted to gather as much information as possible, and then turn them in … And so he went into his own office on tiptoe and picked up the receiver, trying not to make any noise … And he started listening in on their conversation … The solicitor was speaking with a man he kept calling “General” … He finally realised that part of the money was to be used to finance … a conspiracy against the government … or something like that …’
‘Interesting …’ said Bordelli, restraining the desire to start immediately connecting the dots. He’d finally discovered something he didn’t already know. And apparently the SID didn’t know it either, unless they were keeping it secret. But Ortensia hadn’t finished yet.
‘Then something happened, he said to me … I remember Orlando’s story quite well, and the terrified look in his eyes … As he was listening in on the conversation, a coin fell out of his trouser pocket … The lawyer and general immediately stopped talking, and after a long silence they hung up without saying another word … Orlando quickly put the receiver back in its proper place, raced over to the bookcase and grabbed a copy of the Penal Code, which he pretended to be reading … He’d managed just in time … The door to his office opened slowly, and the lawyer looked at him with an icy smile … Ah, so you’re here? Did you need the phone? Orlando said no, pretending to be surprised by the question … He’d just got back, he said, and wanted to review an article in the Code … Which one? the lawyer asked him in a calm tone that had nothing at all natural about it. As Orlando was stammering a reply, the lawyer approached the desk and bent down to pick up the coin … You dropped fifty lire, he said, smiling … He set the coin down on the desk and left without saying anything else … Orlando was afraid, but went about his work for the rest of the day as if nothing had happened … When it was time to go home the two lawyers invited him out to dinner … It was the first time they’d ever done so … They wanted to make him an offer, they said … They took him to a posh restaurant and kept filling his glass with wine … They were in fact too friendly, and they never stopped joking around … The time went by, but the lawyers still hadn’t said anything of importance … Orlando forced himself to appear calm and even a little drunk, but he could actually hold his drink quite well and was perfectly lucid … At a certain point he asked what their offer was, and the two men said vaguely that he had a chance to earn a lot of money … He could even enter into a partnership with them, become a full member of the firm … One needed only to cheat the taxman a little … which everyone did anyway. But they would talk about it in greater detail on Monday … there was no hurry … Orlando said he couldn’t wait to become a full partner, and proposed a toast … even though deep inside he was scared to death … The two lawyers were still smiling … Orlando pretended to be increasingly addled from the wine, but every so often he noticed them exchanging a meaningful glance … At last they left the restaurant … Outside on the pavement the two men alluded again to their forthcoming agreement, congratulated him, and said goodbye in a very friendly manner … Too friendly, according to Orlando … He confessed that he had a bad feeling and believed he was in danger … And that same night … he died … Do you see now why I’m afraid? I’m the only person he told these things to … I thought Orlando was murdered from the very start, but what could I do? When he revealed all this to me, he was scared, it’s true, but I also thought he was playacting a little so that I would feel sorry for him … I didn’t entirely believe him … I feel so guilty about that …’
Ortensia was squirming in her chair, trying to control herself, and for a moment seemed to regret having told him all this.
‘Whatever the case, if it really was murder, you have nothing more to fear. One of the lawyers is dead, and the other fled abroad and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.’
‘Oh my God, are you serious?’ She seemed a little relieved. Bordelli nodded, trying to appear reassuring.
‘Did Orlando tell you anything else?’
‘No …’
‘Can you think of anything else that might be of use to me?’
‘I don’t know … He had a safe … Nobody knew about it, not even his mother … He only told me … All I know is that it’s in his study … He said he’d hidden it very well …’
‘I’ll try to find it,’ said Bordelli, still thinking about the phone conversation between the lawyer and the general … A conspiracy against the government. Might it have some connection with the affair Agostinelli had told him about? The business with President Segni and General de Lorenzo? Of course not, too many years had passed; this was a different plot … There certainly was no lack of them in Italy …
‘I know the combination …’ Ortensia said in a girlish tone.
‘What’s that?’ said Bordelli, snapping out of his reverie.
‘The combination to the safe … Are you interested?’
‘Of course I am …’
‘It’s the last three letters of my name in reverse … A … I … S … , transformed into numbers …’ Ortensia whispered, looking around to check whether anyone was eavesdropping. Bordelli started calculating to himself … A … I … S … became 1 … 9 … 17 …
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Unless he changed it after we broke up …’ said Ortensia. She started stealing glances at the lad with the glasses again. Perhaps she liked him a little? Or was she simply so insecure that she couldn’t do without men looking at her?
As soon as he got home he lit a fire, burning the newspaper of the day before, which he’d hardly glanced at. Nowadays he read only the headlines and the subheads, and every so often skimmed an article or two. Every line in the newspaper seemed like one less line he would read in a novel. He felt he got to know more profound things by reading Homer or Dostoyevsky rather than the dailies. The motivations that drove men to serve good or evil were the same today as they were a hundred years earlier, or in the sixteenth century, or in the age of Aeschylus. What had manifested over time and history were only variants thereof, different modalities of the very same things … In short, he would never burn the pages of a book to start a fire …
After waiting for the flames to gain strength, he laid a substantial log between the andirons. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned back in the armchair and started thinking again about Orlando’s story. The whole thing seemed all too clear. Orlando had discovered something he wasn’t supposed to discover, and they’d murdered him and faked a suicide. As easy as drinking a glass of water … But how they hell did they do it? And was that really what happened? The motive might even be real – actually it clearly was … But where was the evidence? Where was he going to find it, after all these years, assuming there was any? Not everyone who had a motive for murder actually committed it, otherwise the world would be a cemetery … That was why the courts existed, to evaluate evidence and pronounce sentences … Though he’d behaved a little differently with the butcher … No court, just a shotgun blast … Ego te absolvo …
After putting a pot of water on the fire, he rang the contessa. He told her he’d been going ahead with the investigation and asked whether he could call on her at the castle the following morning, The contessa insistently wanted to know whether he’d already discovered something, but Bordelli politely asked her to be patient and said goodbye.
He started eating in front of the evening news report but paid no attention to it, and after amusing himself watching the skits on Carosello, he turned off the telly.
He spent the evening reading by the fire, hearing the cries of the owls in the distance. When he finished Notes from the Underground, he felt as if he’d sowed another tomato seed in the soil of his ignorance. In the end he was lucky: ther
e were still a great many books for him to discover, and he even had the time to read them. He need only let the young salesmen at the Seeber bookshop guide him.
He sat there watching the fire with the book on his knees, still walking in the wet snow along the streets of St Petersburg, slipping into the brothels to talk to the young prostitutes …
A noise awoke him. He was surprised to have been asleep. What remained of the log had broken apart and fallen to both sides of the andirons. He scraped the embers together with the fire-shovel and went upstairs. After loading the stove he dragged himself into bed and immediately put out the light. He felt tired, but his brain didn’t want to hear about falling asleep, as his thoughts kept going softly round and round like a merry-go-round. While owls big and small went about their amorous business in the night, he could hear Mussolini’s voice croaking over the radio … He saw Ennio raise his glass for a toast … Eleonora’s face appeared, covered with bruises … He stroked his dying mother’s wrinkled hand … Imagined Orlando swaying under the wrought-iron chandelier …
He curled up under the covers, as he used to as a little boy when he heard a train in the distance, passing under the Pino viaduct, and a mysterious shudder would shake his feet.
The carousel gently began to slow down, and he sank into less chaotic thoughts … In a month it would be his birthday. Not that he was really so keen on celebrating his fifty-seventh. Still, it might be an opportunity to organise a dinner with friends. He wanted to cook everything himself, and he thought of asking Ennio to write down some recipes for him. He would invite the usual crowd … Dante … Ennio … Piras … Diotivede … A quiet evening with the guys … And then, after the meal, over a bottle of grappa, each would tell a story, like the other times …
