by Marco Vichi
‘While he was at it, he could have written: Closed for national holiday,’ said Piras, standing up. Tomorrow he would have to get up at dawn to continue the surveillance of Panerai. He said goodbye to Bordelli and went home to bed.
Bordelli finally lit a cigarette, still walking round the room, looking at the walls. Every so often he glanced out of the window and saw only rain. So the butcher was nostalgic for Il Duce … So what? There were a lot of Italians just like him, and they frightened him less than some dark souls who called themselves anti-Fascists. But most importantly, that sentimental journey to Predappio had no objective relation to the little boy’s murder. Another dead end. He was wasting his time chasing ghosts. Perhaps he should resign himself to the likelihood that the butcher had nothing to do with the murder. He would wait another week and then call off the surveillance …
He flopped into his chair, feeling exhausted. He wished he were somewhere else, maybe even someone else. In his twenty years with the police it was the first time he didn’t know which way to turn, and the idea of failure obsessed him. But there was no point in tormenting himself. All he could do was wait and hope.
He tried to distract himself with other concerns … There were four years left before retirement. He had no children, no wife. He ate too much, drank too much, smoked too much. He had to change his lifestyle, buy a house in the country, stop smoking, marry a beautiful woman and tend a vegetable garden. His curmudgeonly cousin Rodrigo hadn’t wasted any time. In February he’d sold his flat in Viale Gramsci for several million lire and for a song had bought an old peasant house with two hectares of land up from Bagno a Ripoli. After restoring it he still had plenty of money left over. He lived there with a woman he was crazy about, and at the tender age of fifty-four he was planning to have at least three children. Bordelli had learned all this from his Zia Camilla, Rodrigo’s mum. It had been a long time since he’d heard from Rodrigo, and so he picked up the phone to give him a ring. A little chat with his cousin was just what he needed to distract himself. He and Rodrigo were so different that the best way for them to understand each other was to avoid each other. But this was exactly why he wanted to talk to him, to smile at the continuous misunderstandings that arose from their surreal conversations. He dialled the number, but after some ten rings, he hung up. Too bad, he had been primed for it.
It was raining harder and harder, the sound like an enormous frying pan sizzling. He lit another cigarette and went out of the office. Just to be sure, he dropped by the radio room to hear the very latest on the butcher. Nothing unusual, no news.
He went home, cursing the bloody autumn weather, blaming it for all the tension that was biting at his heels. In the hope of calming down, he stayed a long time under the hot rain of the shower, singing old songs from back in his day … Mamma son tanto felice, perchè ritorno da te … He had to stop thinking all the time about the murdered boy … La mia canzone ti dice, ch’è il più bel sogno per me … But he would find the killers, he had to … Mamma son tanto felice, viver lontano perchè? …18
Still humming, he slipped on his bathrobe and went into the kitchen to look for something to eat. There wasn’t much choice. He prepared himself a plate of pasta with tomato sauce, following Botta’s instructions. He sat down to eat it in front of the telly, which was already on, keeping the wine within reach. The National channel was showing a science programme that he couldn’t manage to follow. His brain kept worrying fruitlessly, turning round in circles like a stripped screw.
He finished the pasta, with compliments to the chef. In spite of everything, he’d managed to enjoy his penne al pomodoro. He emptied his glass and lit a cigarette. Blowing the smoke up towards the ceiling, he sighed like a soul in purgatory. Now that his hunger was slaked, a subtle anxiety clouded his every thought. He felt old. A poor old wretch defeated on all fronts. He imagined himself already retired, senile and spending his nights counting the change in his purse as he’d seen his grandfather do. Broth, hot-water bottles and a great deal of rest … Then, one day, death and amen.
It was barely ten o’clock. He didn’t feel like spending the whole evening staring at the telly, entertained by delightful thoughts about the meaning of life. He needed to go outside and change his mood, have a little conversation with somebody … He thought of Dante, the half-mad scientist who lived in Mezzomonte in an old villa with its doors always open, a giant full of energy with long white hair flying in all directions. He’d met him in the summer of ’63, when investigating the death of Dante’s sister Rebecca. They’d become friends, even though they saw each other rarely and still used the formal address with each other. Dante was a night-owl and at that hour had probably just gone down to his underground laboratory.
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and went into the entrance hall to phone him. He let it ring for a long time, and finally he heard someone pick up.
‘Dante here … Who is it?’ asked the scientist in his deep ogre-like voice.
‘Good evening, Dr Pedretti. Am I disturbing you?’
‘Ah, Bordelli … How are you?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know. And you?’
‘I am still curious about the world.’
‘I wish I were too …’
‘But you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be a policeman.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘Why don’t you come and see me, Inspector?’
‘That’s exactly why I called.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘I’ll be there in half an hour …’
He covered his head with an umbrella as he got out of the car, then entered Dante’s big house through the front door. Lighting his path with a match, he groped his way down the stairs to the large underground laboratory, which was as big as the entire floor plan of the house. It had been created by knocking down the old basement walls in the name of science.
He entered the great, silent room, which was shrouded in darkness, a pair of candlesticks spreading a lunar light that licked at the shadows. At first glance it looked like a dark church lit up with candles, and the old bookcases overflowing with books along the walls were the tabernacles. Dante’s altar was a great big workbench covered, as always, with open books, bottles half filled with coloured liquids, various gadgets and every manner of incomprehensible contraption. The scientist was standing with his elbows propped on the workbench. He was writing something in a red-bordered notebook of the kind children use in primary school.
‘Hello, Inspector,’ he said, hearing Bordelli approach in the darkness. He didn’t even raise his head. He seemed to be concentrating.
‘I hate to bother you while you’re working.’
‘I was just playing,’ said Dante, dropping the pen on to the bench. They shook hands. Dante’s handshake was powerful, almost brutal. His white mane looked like a flame of magnesium.
‘Grappa, Inspector?’
‘That’s why I came …’
‘I must have put it somewhere here …’ Dante muttered, searching among the bottles on the bench.
Bordelli glanced at the inventor’s open notebook and saw an entire page covered with a dense pattern of mathematical formulae. That was the game he was talking about. Dante raised a large, half-empty bottle, with no label, in the air.
‘Here it is,’ he said. Then he fished two miraculously identical glasses out of the Gehenna. They eased into the only two armchairs, keeping the bottle within reach. Dante relit the cigar he had in his mouth and blew a ball of smoke towards the ceiling. At the first sip of grappa, the inspector felt his legs slacken.
‘Does the barn owl still come to visit you from time to time?’ he asked.
‘Now and then. She always appears suddenly, unannounced, then disappears for a month … the way women do sometimes.’
‘Maybe one day she’ll decide to stay.’
‘I doubt it. I know women well,’ said Dante, and he burst out laughing.
‘I’d like to buy an old farmhous
e around here.’ Bordelli sighed, imagining the peace that reigned in that house.
‘There are as many as you like in the area. Most people still hate living in the country.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘But you should hurry up, if you’re serious. Before long the old abandoned houses will cost an arm and a leg.’
‘Are you really so sure?’
‘Ask me whether Monsieur Lapalisse was still alive a moment before he died, and I’ll give you the same answer.’
‘Then I’ll start looking soon. First I need to take care of some business.’
‘You mean the murdered boy?’ asked Dante.
The inspector nodded. They both remained silent for a spell, thinking. Only the light ticking of a clock was audible. Who knew whether it was still raining outside? The inventor stood up slowly and planted himself in front of Bordelli, surrounded by dense swirls of smoke.
‘For primitive man, violence meant survival. Today man no longer needs to hunt in order to eat; he goes to the supermarket and fills up the trolley. The powerful animal strength that dominated him for thousands of years now sits down in front of the television, shaves with the latest Philips razor, and goes on outings with the family every Sunday … And every now and then the beast appears with the bill.’
‘If only it was every now and then.’
‘Human consciousness is the most devastating illness in nature,’ decreed Dante, staring into space.
‘That’s encouraging.’
‘The madman Nietzsche invited man himself, rational man, thinking, self-conscious man, to cure this unforgivable illness of nature by voluntarily annihilating himself in the species. He invited consciousness to put itself in the service of nature, to restore to the human race its animal strength and purity. Instinct obliges the animal to fight so that only the best may impregnate the female, and according to him, man should achieve the same result through rational choice. It’s the most absurd proposition in the world, though fascinating. Nietzsche was trying to make bricks without straw, a bit like Marx … And both gave birth to monsters.’
‘And we’re left with the Christian Democrats,’ said the inspector.
‘Hallelujah …’ muttered Dante, sitting back down. He took two or three deep drags of his cigar, and his face disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. When it slowly reappeared, there was an ironic smile on his lips. Bordelli refilled his glass.
‘I can understand wickedness, but cruelty escapes my comprehension,’ he said sadly. He was feeling unpleasantly sorry for himself, unable as he was to do his bloody job as a cop. He emptied his glass in one swig and refilled it again. The inventor’s voice seemed to come to him from the bottom of a well.
‘The wild beasts we call ferocious have no sense of being cruel or even wicked,’ said Dante, his eyes following the lazy arabesques of smoke rising up to the ceiling.
‘Some men however are just and true, now and then.’
‘A microscopic minority, rather like a soap bubble in a sewer.’
‘I’m touched by your optimism,’ said the inspector, who deep down didn’t really disagree with him. Dante smiled.
‘I’d like to tell you a fable …’
‘Go right ahead,’ said Bordelli, searching for his cigarettes. He asked for nothing better to distract him from the thoughts still obsessing him. Dante waved away the smoke with one hand, in an unconsciously priestlike gesture.
‘Once upon a time there was a very intelligent mouse who one fine day decided to write an important treatise. He wanted to recount, in minute detail, the customs and habits of the human race. During the day he would go out of his mouse hole and mill about here and there, observing the life of men, and then at night he would return home and patiently write by candlelight about what he had seen. He was a very sensitive and discerning mouse. Nothing escaped him. He caught every nuance and could see through appearances. After a year of this he finished his book, which came to exactly one thousand pages. By a strange quirk of fate his treatise ended up in the hands of a scholar who wanted to translate it at all costs. It took him many years of effort before he was able to decipher the mouse language, but at last he found the right key for it. He translated the treatise and was truly astonished. He could hardly believe it: the little mouse had described the life of the human race better than any man could ever have done. He was very anxious to meet the enlightened little mouse who could grasp the subtlest mechanisms regulating human society. He sought him far and wide, hoping to shake his little paw and pay homage to his knowledge. But when he finally discovered where the little mouse lived, he threw up his hands in dismay. Riddle me this: why?’
‘The mouse had turned into a man?’
‘Much simpler: the mouse had his hole in a concentration camp,’ said Dante, smiling majestically.
‘That’s the kind of story they should be telling the little children …’
Saturday morning he arrived at the office with his spirits in tatters. He collapsed in his chair and lit a cigarette, inspecting the various objects and papers covering his desk. It had rained all night, and was still raining. The monotonous sound of the water was the perfect background for his state of mind. Time seemed at a standstill. The wait was becoming unbearable. What sense was there in holding out hope? The butcher led the most normal, banal of lives. He was a blackshirt, but it stopped there. The Giacomo Pellissari file lay on the desk; by now Bordelli knew it by heart. There was a knock at the door, which opened slightly, and Rinaldi’s head appeared.
‘Here we go again, sir,’ he said softly, with a dark look in his eye.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Inspector Gorghi … He’s interrogating a lad … in his usual way.’
‘Bloody fucking hell,’ said Bordelli, standing up with a sigh. He followed Rinaldi, his hands itching. They trotted down the stairs to the ground floor.
‘Who’s the lad?’ Bordelli asked.
‘Some student.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Inspector Gorghi found some anarchist broadsides in his pocket.’
‘The animal’s probably trying to get him to confess to crucifying Jesus Christ,’ said Bordelli. He’d detested Gorghi from the first time he ever saw him, and always did everything possible to avoid having anything to do with him.
As they turned down the corridor where Gorghi had his office they could hear the young man’s cries. Bordelli told Rinaldi to wait for him in the radio room, then barged in without knocking. He found Gorghi with his fist raised, ready to strike again. The kid had a broken lip and his glasses were on the floor, crushed from having been trampled on.
‘Bordelli, how nice to see you,’ said Gorghi with a worried sneer, lowering his fist. The youth was looking anxiously at Bordelli’s angry face, fearing that the beating was about to continue with four hands.
‘What has this terrible criminal done?’ Bordelli asked, breathing into the face of his underling.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Gorghi said defiantly.
Bordelli had no more words at his disposal and so decided to let his hands do the talking. Without warning he dealt Gorghi a punch square in the face, which sent him flying backwards. Gorghi fell on to the desk, as pens and papers went flying all over the place before the young student’s astonished eyes. When he raised his head again, blood was flowing from his nose, which he covered with a handkerchief that immediately turned red. The boy didn’t know where to look, but a hint of a smile began to appear on his lips. Gorghi was glaring at Bordelli with hatred, swearing under his breath. The inspector ignored him and started humming a little song. He picked up the phone and rang the radio room.
‘Send me Rinaldi at once; I’m in Gorghi’s office,’ he said, then hung up.
Gorghi was panting, livid with rage and embarrassment. He’d been made to look like a nincompoop in front of that little bastard with a head crammed full of bullshit ideas, and he couldn’t stand it. He was percolating revenge in h
is mind, but didn’t dare breathe a word for the moment. Bordelli calmly picked up the youth’s broken glasses and handed them to him.
‘I’ll have someone take you home.’
‘Would you please explain to me what’s going on?’ the lad asked, standing up.
‘A difference of opinion,’ said Bordelli, smiling.
‘Are you … a policeman?’
‘No, I’m the baker from across the street.’
They heard footsteps, and Rinaldi came through the door, out of breath.
‘Your orders, Inspector?’
‘Please take this gentleman home.’
‘Straightaway, sir.’
‘So I owe thanks to a police inspector,’ the student said with a tinge of bitterness.
‘There are worse things in life.’
They shook hands before the dark, glaring eyes of Gorghi. The kid shot a malevolent glance at his tormentor and left the room, with Rinaldi following behind.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Gorghi muttered, pale as a corpse.
‘Pull another stunt like that and I’ll have you shipped off to Orgosolo to hunt down Mesina,’19 said Bordelli, leaving the room without turning round.
He went upstairs to his office and lit a cigarette, watching the raindrops drip down the window panes. The whole thing had left him with a slight feeling of nausea. He’d never been a violent man, but bastards like Gorghi made him come out fighting. Actually, such individuals weren’t worth the time of day, and a minute later he’d already stopped thinking about him.
All at once he decided to go and pay a call on Panerai, without any precise plan in his head. It was a few minutes before seven. He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and went out of the door, suppressing the desire to light up another one. He descended the stairs slowly. In the lobby he grabbed an umbrella at random, then went and got into the Beetle. The windscreen wipers were old and left streaks of water on the glass. He wanted to see the butcher again, look him in the eye, exchange a few words … What was he expecting? To read in his eyes that he was the killer?
