by Marco Vichi
A strong wind was blowing, his hair swirling over his head. The warm gusts of sirocco smelled of the sea and of sulphur, and seemed to stick to one’s skin. From the woods came the sound of thousands of birds singing wildly, as usually happened at dawn. Love made them do strange things, too.
He walked at a leisurely pace along the path that led to the wood. By now he knew it well and could follow it with his eyes closed … All at once, amid the olive trees, he saw the silhouette of a large animal looming in the darkness, some twenty yards ahead, and he stopped. It must have been a stag. Its great horns glistened in the dark, as it moved its head slowly, majestically, sniffing the air.
He stood there watching it, spellbound by its beauty. The great deer wouldn’t leave, and so eventually Bordelli started slowly edging forward. He got within a few yards of the animal, and when their eyes met he had a vague feeling he was being judged. A moment later the animal shook its head in the air and trotted lazily off towards the wood, still brandishing its horns. Bordelli watched it disappear through the trees and felt envious … He wished he were a beautiful animal running through the woods at night in pursuit of females, coupling in accordance with the call of nature, not having to waste away in human affairs, oblivious to good and evil, far from the perfidy and perversion of the chosen species …
Continuing his walk through the olive grove, numbed by the wind and his own thoughts, he tried to forget the world and all its disappointments and sorrows. It was a special night. He no longer felt the way he had the night before, though he could never have said exactly why. It couldn’t possibly be only because of his birthday. He felt a profound transformation occurring. An era was ending, and another was about to begin … A long shudder of joy combined with terror confirmed that something inside him was changing. It was something to do with him alone; nobody else could understand it, and even he didn’t really know what it meant. He was aware only that his way of seeing things had changed, as had happened to him many times before. Nothing drastic, just a slight shift in the visual angle … Just the pleasure of discovering that life is in constant motion …
He woke up quite late and spent the afternoon working in the garden and reading in the armchair. He’d put Diotivede’s present carefully on top of the cupboard … Memento mori … It was as if the death’s-head had always been up there, looking down on the worries of common mortals. It was part of the decor. Soon he wouldn’t even notice it any longer …
He calmly prepared dinner. At half past eight, he turned on the telly and sat down at the table, filling his glass to the brim with wine, head full of disagreeable thoughts … The world was a disgusting place, that was certain. Man was basically a monster, and the worst of the lot were those cultured individuals, capable of choosing, who out of self-interest did not hesitate to act in the service of evil. The world was a disgusting place, who could possibly think otherwise? You had only to look around. As he blithely ate and drank in front of the TV news report, listening to useless information on the lively Italian political situation, millions of people were dying of privation just so that a handful of very rich people could cover themselves in gold. Of course everybody knew that; it was even a cliché. But it wasn’t easy to change things. Nobody was in a position to tamper with the diabolical machinery governing human affairs …
Should he feel somehow at fault at that moment for enjoying the flavours of a simple dish of pasta with tomato sauce? How could he help it? Was it somehow a crime not to love power? The few who gave the orders were the ones who’d devoted their lives to bullying others. Greed and selfishness were the fuel that made the engine of violence run, but every epoch had its own tools for sanctifying that violence. The clever ones were those who could find the most effortless route, and the one most fitting at that moment, to achieving the same goals. To change everything so that nothing would change, as someone had written.26 It had always been this way. Nowadays there was no longer any need to spill blood, just to milk the poor. The wealth of a few could come only from the poverty of many. Once you understood this simple equation, there was no longer any need for blood. Sweat was the new blood; violence had a new face, but the upshot was the same as before. How many people had to die to pay for the villa of an oil magnate in Capri? How was this different from Nazism? And yet everything continued just as before, but in a different form. So where were the culprits? What did they look like? And were they really guilty of anything? Every epoch had its monsters and its saints. Ever since the birth of the world, the nature of guilt had been defined by the language of power. Whoever did not agree had two choices: keep quiet or die. Schopenhauer was right: the foundation of morality was compassion, identification with the suffering of others. Failing that, horror was inevitable … And compassion was a rarer thing in this world than a five-legged dog …
He poured himself another glass, sighing. If Panerai the butcher, Beccaroni the lawyer, Monsignor Sercambi the prelate and Signorini the rich boy had put themselves even for an instant in the shoes of little Giacomo Pellissari, if they could have identified with him, imagined what he was feeling … But they hadn’t, and Giacomo died. Once again the powerful had toyed with the life of an innocent, thinking they could get away with it …
The world was a disgusting place, and thinking one could set it right was an illusion. All one could do was patch up a few small rents in the fabric, though the whole thing was rotten. It was just a way not to resign oneself to defeat, not to succumb, not to leave the rule without any exceptions. Every so often the untouchables had to pay for their crimes, in full. Whosoever toys with life puts his own at risk, however unawares …
He smiled, imagining himself as David with the sling in his hand. He’d struck the giant Goliath square in the forehead and watched him fall to the ground. Now he had only to stick his sword in his heart. It was Monsignor Sercambi’s turn. He was the heart of Goliath.
The days went by, but Bordelli couldn’t make up his mind to take action. He was waiting for a sign. He sometimes smiled to himself, feeling like those ancient soothsayers who searched through animals’ entrails. By this point, however, he could no longer afford not to consult the fates, he thought, exchanging long glances with the skull.
He kept watering the garden, walking in the woods, reading novels … and waiting for a sign. One morning he transplanted the tomatoes, following Botta’s instructions. Three weeks later he would have to start fertilising them with pollina, and when he counted the days he realised it would fall on the anniversary of the Liberation.
He was proud of his plants. Just a few months earlier he would never have thought it possible. Lately many things had happened that he would never have thought possible. Such as the fact that he now spent a lot of time cooking, and enjoying it more and more.
He would go to bed late at night and wake up early in the morning. The days were long, but he never got bored. Even just sitting in the armchair by the fire was pleasurable. He never felt that he was wasting his time. Eleonora and Adele floated around his head like ghosts, and melancholia was a faithful, caring companion that never abandoned him … How could he possibly feel lonely?
One morning he woke up at dawn when he heard a strange sound, like someone tapping at the window. It certainly couldn’t have been the postman, since it was on the first floor. He got out of bed, and as soon as he opened the inside shutters, he saw a magpie take off from the windowsill. Was that what had woken him up? What could a magpie want from him? He hadn’t even managed to leave the room before the magpie returned and started pecking the windowpane again. Every so often it would start singing like a nightingale and imitating the calls of other birds, twisting its head and hopping about. After a few more pecks on the glass, it flew away. Bordelli waited a few minutes, but the magpie didn’t come back. Maybe it was Giacomo Pellissari’s soul come to tell him the day had arrived. The idea made him smile, but perhaps this was the sign he’d been waiting for. Actually, he was certain it was. Or he wanted to be certain. That same evening he wou
ld go and exchange a few words with the monsignor. It was do or die, like the other times …
He spent the morning vaguely trying to think up a plan, without ever leaving off any of his rustic chores. He knew very little about Monsignor Sercambi, aside from the bits of information that had emerged from the police surveillance of him in November, the same stuff that had been in Piras’s ‘birthday present’ to him. Monsignor lived in a beautiful villa in Viale Michelangelo, he employed an assistant who also served as his chauffeur, and his days, at least until suppertime, were cadenced by a rather unvarying routine.
He could have procured a high-precision rifle and shot him from a distance, as he’d sometimes imagined. But the idea didn’t sit well with him. He wanted the prelate to look him in the eye; he wanted him to know. It was no longer necessary to simulate a suicide. Monsignor was the last sentence in a fairy tale. Once accounts were settled with him, the whole affair would be closed and buried. There would be no more danger …
When he parked in Piazza Tasso, it was a little after six. He’d brought gloves, the torch and a pistol in the holster under his armpit. That was all he would need.
He went into the bar and, after greeting Fosco, headed straight into the billiards room. At lunchtime he’d managed to speak with Botta, and they’d agreed to meet there. Ennio was in the midst of a game of eight-ball with a bald bloke Bordelli knew by sight, a cigarette smuggler reputed to be an excellent billiards player. Some ten or so idlers were standing around watching the match. Botta, concentrating intensely, made a shot that sank two balls and elicited shouts of amazement from the audience. When he spotted Bordelli he signalled to him that he wouldn’t be tied up much longer. And so it was. The smuggler lost handily and, after a handshake, paid up. Ennio laid his cue down and left the bar with Bordelli.
‘There’s just no two ways about it, Inspector … I’m the best …’
‘How much did you win?’
‘Five thousand.’
‘That’s just spare change, now that you’re rich.’
‘After a life of poverty, even a hundred lire has its charm.’
‘You haven’t mentioned that property in Borgo dei Greci that you were going to look at …’
‘Forget about it … It was a pigsty.’
‘I need you to lend me a hand,’ Bordelli said bluntly.
‘Whenever you like, Inspector …’
‘I need you right now, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Some locks again?’
‘Good guess.’
They got into the Beetle and drove off.
‘What’s this about?’ asked Botta.
‘I’m trying to write the ending to a nasty fairy tale.’
‘From the look on your face it seems like something serious.’
‘More serious than you could ever imagine …’
‘I’ll do my best, Inspector.’
‘Me, too …’
They went up as far as Piazzale Michelangelo and then came down Viale Michelangelo. They parked along the service road at the corner of Via San Bernardino, and Bordelli gestured towards the great villa of Monsignor Sercambi towering behind the trees.
‘That’s the one …’
‘Who lives there?’
‘Please don’t ask any questions, Ennio.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s another question …’
‘Life is made up of questions, Inspector.’
They started making small talk, clouds of smoke floating out of the Beetle’s windows. Cars and motorbikes streamed past on the boulevard, but the pavements were deserted.
As the daylight began to fade, they saw the white Peugeot 404 come out of the gate, with the chauffeur at the wheel. It was almost eight o’clock. They waited for the chauffeur to lock the gate and drive off down the viale towards Piazza Ferrucci. Bordelli started up the car, and they sped off quicky and parked at the end of Via Tacca. Setting off casually on foot, they came at last to the viale, walked along the pavement and passed Sercambi’s gate without stopping. Ennio, however, had a look at the lock and said it was child’s play. They glanced around to make sure nobody was approaching on foot. It was almost dark out now, especially under the lush trees, and the faint light of the street lamps wasn’t enough to conquer the shadows. They quickly turned round and came back at a fast pace. Just to be sure, Bordelli rang the doorbell, but nobody answered.
‘Let’s go …’ he said.
Botta opened the gate in just a few seconds, closed it behind him, and they hastened towards the villa. The windows were all dark, the garden barely illuminated by a lamp over the main door. Through the trees one could see the house next door, which had only one window lit up.
‘This one’s trouble,’ Botta whispered after seeing the lock.
‘Try to be quick, we haven’t got much time.’
‘Let me concentrate …’ He got down to work with a twisted piece of iron wire, biting his lip. In the meantime Bordelli circled round behind the villa, as the sky was shedding its last veil of light. He discovered a small outbuilding not visible from the street. He went up to one window and cast the beam of his torch inside. He saw an unmade bed, a nightstand with a bottle of water on it, some clothes piled up on a chair. It must have been where Monsignor’s chauffeur slept; therefore he did not sleep in the villa. Good. That would make it all easier. On his way back he almost ran into Botta.
‘Success, Inspector …’
‘Thanks, Ennio. And now you’d better leave … Sorry to make you go on foot …’
‘I’m happy to have a little walk. Break a leg, Inspector.’
‘Thanks …’
They nodded goodbye outside the half-open front door, and Botta vanished outside the gate. Bordelli put on his gloves and, using a handkerchief, wiped Botta’s fingerprints from the lock, assuming there were any. He went inside and locked the door behind him.
He lit the torch and aimed the cone of light into the darkness of the vestibule, feeling the same sort of thrill he used to feel when, as a boy, he would break into abandoned houses with his friends. The first thing he saw was a beautiful wooden sculpture, in warm colours, of a woman. To judge from the long hair, it must have been a Mary Magdalen. He stopped to look at it, fascinated by the sorrowful expression on her face.
Walking on magnificent carpets, he kept slicing through the darkness with his beam of light, admiring the fine furnishings, the austere oil portraits of cardinals and popes, the beauty in the details. It seemed that all he’d been doing lately was visiting villas and castles.
He knew he didn’t have much time, but curiosity led him into various rooms to get a glimpse of Monsignor’s soul through his abode. Salons with frescoed ceilings, monumental bookcases, highly precious art objects, a large kitchen that smelled good … A magical, luxurious world where the stench of survival could never enter.
He went into what must have been the prelate’s study. A sober but elegant desk placed slantwise in front of the window, the walls lined with ancient tomes in Latin and Greek … Seneca, Julius Caesar, Tertullian, Epictetus, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Pliny, St Augustine, the Vulgata of St Jerome, the Summa of St Thomas … But there was also Petronius, Apuleius, Horace, Ovid’s Ars amandi, the epigrams of Martial, the poems of Sappho … Monsignor clearly had a keen interest in the lustful works of pagans as well …
In the middle of the desk was a modern, electric Olivetti typewriter, with several typewritten pages beside it. On the first page was the title: Saint Ambrose: Charity and Firmness. The language teemed with learning, but was at the same time clean and fluent. Monsignor Sercambi’s knowledge seemed boundless, yet to all appearances it hadn’t been enough to keep the demon of perversion away. Was it possible for a love of knowledge and a taste for depravity to coexist in one and the same person? Could good and evil cohabit the same soul? This brought to mind the stories of Curzio Malaparte that told of Nazi salons in Poland where high officials would expound upon the Renaissance, subli
me music and great literature while their fat blonde wives stuck knives into the roast goose with delicate ferocity to the accompaniment of girlish little cries … While at the same moment, children in the Warsaw ghetto were freezing to death and starving. He also recalled a story he’d once heard about Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz. One winter morning, Höss saw a Jewish child trembling in the snow and immediately phoned his wife, saying, ‘It’s very cold outside today; be sure to bundle up the little ones, my dear …’
He went upstairs to the first floor and had a quick look at all the rooms, which were austere but noble and rather welcoming. Three bathrooms with sober mirrors, silver soap dishes, immaculate bathmats, conferring on those spaces a sense of intimacy that made one want to stay there … In one of them, a white bathrobe hung from a fancy hook, and on a chair lay some clean, folded undergarments.
He found the prelate’s bedroom, the only one that showed any signs of being lived in. An antique canopy bed, and one picture, on the wall opposite, an oil painting of the Blessed Virgin crushing the serpent’s head. Lying on the blanket was a light, pale blue housecoat, which looked as if it hung loose on the body, like a frock. On the bedside table were more books, all with bookmarks sticking out from the pages. A few ancient works, a book of medieval history, a novel by Tolstoy …
He went back into one of the rooms that gave on to the front garden and partly opened one of the inside shutters, so that he could keep an eye on the gate through the slats on the blinds.
He didn’t have to wait long. Soon a car’s headlights lit up the garden, the chauffeur got out to open the gate and then ferried Monsignor out of his public life and into his private one. He stopped the Peugeot outside the front door, got out again to open his master’s door, and then went and parked the car behind the villa.
Bordelli heard the front door open and close, then some footsteps coming up the stairs. He went to eavesdrop from the door he’d left ajar. Monsignor had shut himself up in the bathroom and started running a bath. Moments later the front door opened and closed again, this time with less authority. It must have been the chauffeur.
