‘Do you feel any pain?’
‘It burns but only a little bit.’
‘Any discomfort?’
‘Not really.’
Congratulations, Dr Duca Lamberti, you’re a good hymenologist: after all those years of study, all those years when your father ate almost nothing but mortadella – you’re from Emilia Romagna, you should like mortadella – and all those books you read, and Esculapius3, at last you’ve made it, now you have a future in front of you, as a great restorer. He covered his face with his hands, almost as if he was sleepy. ‘Lift a leg, slowly, as high as you can.’
‘It’s like a gymnastics lesson,’ she said, doing as he said, very smoothly, showing off: she was like a cat on a roof.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’
‘Lift the other leg.’
Her black stocking slid down to her calf as she shamelessly lifted her leg, shamelessly raising the short slip and looking him in the face.
‘Do you feel any pain?
‘A bit of discomfort, but not very much.’
He picked up her handbag and took a cigarette from the packet of Parisiennes.
‘What time are you getting married?’ he asked.
‘At eleven, so that everyone can be there, the whole of Romano Banco and the whole of Buccinasco, and the whole of Ca’ Tarino, and they’re even coming from Corsico.’ In the meantime she had put on her knickers and then her suspenders. ‘The little church in Romano Banco is lovely, you should come and see it, you know he arranged for traffic police on motorcycles? They’re going to stop all the traffic, from the Naviglio all the way to Romano Banco, you don’t know what it’s like when someone like my fiancé gets married in a place like that.’ She might have been talking about some tribe in the Mato Grosso. ‘Even the mayor is coming, and tonight there’s actually a lorry full of flowers coming from Sanremo, what do you think of that, all the way from Sanremo! He made me phone Sanremo, to make sure they were coming at the hour he said, at four in the morning, so that the priest and the people in the oratory will have time to decorate the church. Actually I’d quite like it, if I wasn’t thinking about Silvano.’
She took a cigarette from her handbag, lit it, took the red dress coat from the chair on which she had thrown it, put it on, still with the cigarette and her lipstick in one hand, and did her lips, looking at herself in the big mirror from the handbag.
‘Can I make a phone call?’ she said, pursing her lips.
‘In the hall.’ He opened the door for her, switched on the light, and pointed to the phone.
She dialled the number calmly, right there in front of him. She had no secrets from him: only stupid people bother with secrets, with ciphers and codes and special signals. With her eyes shining, as if she really had slept a whole night, she stood there next to him as she spoke into the phone, and smiled at him, wide awake.
‘Ricci’s pastry shop?’ She winked at him. ‘Signor Silvano Solvere, please.’ With the little finger of her right hand she touched the corner of her right eye. ‘That’s the pastry shop that did my wedding cake, they’re delivering it to Romano Banco, it must be taller than I am, it cost two hundred thousand lire, and Silvano has gone there to have a drink and wait for me, it’s where we always meet.’ She stopped the chatter and became serious. ‘Yes, I’ve finished, I’m getting a taxi now.’ And she hung up immediately: Silvano couldn’t have been much of a conversationalist, at least not over the phone.
‘Can I call a taxi?’ she asked, being by the phone. ‘I don’t remember the number anymore, do you have a directory?’
‘86 71 51,’ he said, and watched as she dialled.
‘Imola 4, in two minutes,’ she said, putting the receiver down. Every gesture she made was shameless and vulgar. ‘I’m going straight down, thanks for everything.’ She could have been a guest taking her leave after a tea party.
‘The case,’ he said. That case, whatever it was, that he had seen as soon as she had appeared in the doorway.
She stood by the door, looking quite cheerful: she was the kind of woman who came to life after midnight. The hall was so small that looking at her he could see the specks of gold in her violet eyes. She looked wonderful, she looked so good in that red dress coat and those black stockings, she was very Cinemascope, something from a sensationalised, half-fictional investigation into the world of vice: the photographic model comes out at midnight to go to the brothel from which they’ve just called her. It wasn’t true, she was actually on her way to get married, he’d patched her up to be a virgin again so that she could get married, but that was the look she had, and as she did not reply, he repeated, ‘The case,’ and pointed to the surgery, where she had left the case, whatever it was.
‘It stays here,’ she said.
Mascaranti must be writing all this down. There was no point, but it did him good.
‘Really?’ he said.
‘Silvano will come and pick it up tomorrow,’ she said, ‘after the ceremony, because he’s going to be best man.’
Oh, so Silvano was coming to pick it up. That meant it was Silvano’s case. Why was she leaving it here, was it because it had dirty washing in it and she could trust him with it, or else because it contained something compromising? These people didn’t do anything for no reason. When you live like these people, he thought, there was a reason for looking on the ground rather than up in the air, only they’d trusted this woman too much. Or were they trying to frame him?
‘Thank you, doctor, I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again.’ She held out her hand. ‘Oh, Silvano told me to tell you he’ll settle up with you when he comes by.’
He opened the door for her, motioned her through and walked her downstairs to the front door of the building. Settle up: another seven hundred thousand lire. Two or three clients like this every month and he’d be fine, his sister would be fine, little Sara would be fine. Everybody would be fine.
‘Again, doctor, don’t wish me good luck because it brings bad luck.’ She went out through the front door, in her red dress coat.
7
Sergeant Morini saw the girl in the red dress coat come out as he was holding the two-way radio to his ear and Mascaranti was saying, ‘She’s on her way out, she’s wearing a red overcoat, she’s taking a taxi, Imola 4, are you receiving me?’
The taxi hadn’t arrived yet, but now it did, the usual boxlike Fiat Multipla, she got in with her beautiful, long, young legs, she got in harmoniously, and Sergeant Morini sitting beside the driver of the normal, respectable black Alfa Romeo, which did not look like a police car, said to the driver, ‘It’s that piece of stuff there.’
There were two other officers in the back, both in plain clothes, but they looked so timid and weary, you wouldn’t have thought they were police officers.
‘Roger, Signor Mascaranti,’ he said into the radio, tongue in cheek.
Then the Fiat with the girl in the red dress coat inside it left the Piazza Leonardo da Vinci and immediately turned into the Via Pascoli. At that hour it was almost impossible to follow a car in another car without being noticed, because there was hardly any traffic, apart from the usual Vespa roaring like a jet or the usual overbearing lorry. The best thing to do was keep behind the Fiat without worrying about being noticed, it didn’t matter if they suspected they were being followed or not, the fact was, they had to follow them and they would.
And after the Via Pascoli, buried in the velvet of the night and the brownish green of the large old trees swollen with spring foliage, the Fiat turned into the Via Plinio, nervously drove the whole length of the street, with dozens of closed shops on either side, shot across the Corso Buenos Aires, zoomed into the Piazza Duca d’Aosta: she couldn’t be going to the station, could she, she couldn’t be catching a train? That would make pursuit difficult, but no, the Fiat rushed down the Via Vittor Pisani, again all the shops closed, a feeling of night, only towards the Piazza della Repubblica were there a few lights, a bit of life.
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��He’s put his indicator light on,’ Morini said to the driver. ‘He’s stopping in front of the pastry shop, pull over.’
And the girl in the red overcoat, as Mascaranti had called it, because he couldn’t have known it was actually called a dress coat, got out of the taxi and walked straight into the Ricci pastry shop.
‘Get out, Giovanni, there’s an exit in the Via Ferdinando di Savoia, she may be trying to give us the slip.’
One of the two timid, weary officers in the back dashed out of the Alfa Romeo, but quietly, and entered the pastry shop almost immediately behind the girl, but with an absent-minded air, a bit like a drug addict who has just got up and is now hoping for a dissolute night.
She had just entered when a tall, almost aristocratic man dressed in a light grey suit, a white and pink shirt and a greyish pink – in other words, salmon-coloured – tie came up to her, took her gently, almost tenderly, yes, that was the word, tenderly, by the arm, and walked back outside, under the arcades. The waiters were clearing the tables, the tablecloths were trembling in the stormy wind, and at the traffic lights, which were green, a dark Simca was parked, even though the lights were green, and in the car were two prostitutes, the older one at the wheel, the younger one in the seat next to her, close to the window, and this one was smiling, though discreetly, at the few single men coming out of Ricci’s. If they had known they had a police car behind them they would have moved on even if the lights had been red, but Sergeant Morini was in the S. squad, not the vice squad, although he had been in the vice squad and had been involved in quite a few roundups, which had made him a hate figure to all the ladies of easy virtue from Rogoredo to Rho and from Crescenzago to Muggiano, from the arcades in the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza Oberdan. And there, in the Piazza della Repubblica, you could actually see the sky, the black sky, swollen with wind and crossed by lightning flashes, and soon they would hear the rolls of thunder, which Sergeant Morini always told his two-year-old daughter were big horses in the sky hurrying to their mothers, which was why they were making all that noise.
‘Look, driver, look, they’re getting into that Giulietta.’ An olive green Giulietta that went really well with the red of the girl’s dress coat and the dove grey of the man’s suit. ‘If they put on speed I don’t know if you could keep up with them.’ Nobody could ever keep up with a Giulietta, not even an old, worn-looking one like that.
But the Giulietta didn’t put on speed, on the contrary, it went like an ambling horse, frisky but holding back, the driver and the girl in the red dress coat could be seen talking inside, and they crossed the whole of the Piazza della Repubblica, climbed onto the ramparts of Porta Venezia, and after Viale Maino, and the Viale Bianca Maria, and the Piazza Cinque Giornate, Morini started to get irritated. Despite the skill of the driver it was almost impossible for the people in the Giulietta not to have realised that there was an Alfa Romeo following them, unless, he thought, they were hand in hand, her head on his shoulder, letting Providence do the driving. But they weren’t such mystical people, he thought: they knew they were being followed, but for the moment they were pretending they weren’t and weren’t putting on speed. They might lurch forward suddenly when the moment came and disappear.
So he said to the driver, ‘Don’t keep too far from them, or they’ll get away at the first turning. I don’t care if they realise we’re following them.’
And the night ride continued, after the Piazza Cinque Giornate the Giulietta came down off the ramparts for some reason, drove down the Viale Montenero, Viale Sabotino, which looked like a stage set thanks to the late hour, the emptiness, the flashing yellow lights at the crossroads, the last cheap bar open – its neon sign Crota Piemunteisa seemed to tremble, deprived as it was of the letters r, u and a – then the Viale Bligny and the Viale Col di Lana, in other words the whole ring of old Milan, pieces of which still remained, architecturally preserved or occasionally rebuilt for the tourists, those ramparts on the terraces of which valiant men at arms had once apparently stood watch. Sergeant Morini didn’t like any of this, and as soon as the Giulietta, which was still ahead of them, had crossed the Piazza 24 Maggio, and turned onto the Ripa Ticinese and the old road, the one to the right of the canal, he contacted the S. office at Headquarters.
‘I know it’s late, but that’s no reason to fall asleep. This is Morini, in case you’re still awake and it’s of any interest to you. Don’t fall asleep again and take this down: I’m on the Ripa Ticinese, I’m following a Giulietta, license number MI 836752, inform all cars in the vicinity, I’ll keep calling back with my position.’ He hung up and looked again at the red lights of the Giulietta, which was still running ahead of them, although not exactly running, it fact it was going very slowly, along the narrow road to the right of the Alzaia Naviglio Grande.
Morini was middle-aged. When he had first come to Milan the Navigli were not yet covered and in the Via Senato there were still painters painting the dark, dense waters of the Naviglio. He was only a boy in those days, so small and bony that they called him the little hunchback, and he swallowed it because in Milan you had to swallow it if you wanted to earn your living, working as a delivery boy in a tavern in the Via Spiga, spending all day carrying flagons and bottles of wine, and he also did many other jobs until he joined the police, that was his world and he made a career of it, because he liked order and clarity, you’re either a cop or a robber, and so he got to know all of Milan, all the streets, all the different neighbourhoods and the kinds of people who lived there, and was quite familiar, maybe house by house, field by field, with the roads to the left and right of the Naviglio Grande.
‘Here it comes,’ he said to the driver, blinded by the lightning and stunned by the thunder as the storm was unleashed, apparently right over their heads. He started the windscreen wipers under the sudden torrent and, without switching on the headlights, continued to follow the Giulietta.
‘This is Morini,’ Morini said into the radio. ‘I’m on the Alzaia Naviglio Grande, on the way to Corsico and Vigevano, I’m still following the Giulietta license number 836752, I just need to know where the nearest car is.’
‘It’s in the Via Famagusta, the driver says he’s right behind you.’
‘Tell him to do his work, I’ll call him if I need him,’ he shouted to drown out, if possible, the roar of the thunder.
The Giulietta had not stopped, but in the driving rain it had put on its headlights now and slowed down, it was probably not even doing thirty, and it was going quite carefully, because on that narrow road, with the canal so close without any protection, and in that weather, it would have been stupid to go any faster.
‘It’s a hurricane,’ one of the men in the back sneered, and Morini laughed softly and sharply. Where were those two going, on this road, and in this weather? They had almost reached Ronchetto sul Naviglio, in a real hurricane of rain and wind and thunder and lightning, and a solitary tram passed, improbable and empty, on the road on the other side of the canal, almost wrapped in lightning, and at that moment the driver said, ‘There’s another car coming towards them.’
‘Stop,’ Sergeant Morini said. It was as if he knew the exact measurements of the road they were going down. There were two roads with the canal in the middle, neither of them was much of a road, but the one on the left where the tram was passing was at least wide and between it and the canal there was a little rail which might not hold much back, but it was better than nothing. The road on which they were, on the other hand, could hold two cars, at least in theory, one in one direction, one in another, and by the canal there was no protection, and every now and again a drunk walking along it fell in: that was the disadvantage of the Venetian style.
The Alfa Romeo stopped, overwhelmed by all the flashes of lightning, not that it could have done otherwise anyway because the Giulietta was slowing down, as if about to stop.
‘Be careful,’ Morini said, his face suddenly illuminated by the headlights of the car coming from the opposite direction, and these w
ere his last words before the frenzied rat-a-tat, made somehow even more explosive by the scouring rain: the green Giulietta, in front of them, instead of stopping, seemed to tremble, pitilessly illuminated by the headlights of the other car, swaying as if drunk.
‘They’re shooting a whole machine gun volley at them,’ Morini said, and he could clearly see every bullet from the submachine gun hitting the Giulietta and bouncing off it like spray in the deluge of rain illuminated by the headlights.
‘Turn off all the lights and let’s jump out,’ Morini said, but it was pointless: the Giulietta, maddened by the discharge of bullets, gave a great roar and jerked forward, trying to get out of the ray of light, but there were only two ways for it to go, on the right was the wall of a house, and on the left the canal, and the car first smashed against the wall, then bounced, headed for the canal, and fell in. The lights of the car in front, the car from which the volley had come, now lit up the Alfa Romeo, but the Alfa Romeo was empty and the men, despite the deluge, were sheltering it. Suddenly the other car came straight towards them, as if intending to ram them, and Morini fired, but there was nothing they could do: the other car came within a centimetre of the Alfa Romeo, passed it, accelerated with a roar that seemed louder than the thunder and disappeared before they could do anything but fire a few futile shots into the storm-swept darkness.
Now soaking and dripping, unafraid of the rain, Morini ran towards the canal where the Giulietta had fallen. ‘Bring the car closer and put on the headlights,’ he ordered the driver.
But it was pointless. For several minutes the headlights illumined the rain-swept waters of the Naviglio Grande at this point close to Ronchetto sul Naviglio, but there was nothing to be done, the girl in the red dress coat with the long, youthful legs and her elegant companion in the grey suit had been ferried into another universe, a universe of unknown and mysterious dimensions.
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