Traitors to All

by Giorgio Scerbanenco

  ‘Be careful they don’t break your net, if they’re that big.’

  ‘And you’re breaking my balls.’ He looked daggers at him, a furious Sardinian.

  Whereas Duca Lamberti, the furious Emilian, looked at him with a smile. ‘That’s why I’m going. I’ve finished. There are some drugs that are missing, it’s still a bit unclear what happened to them, but Mascaranti can deal with it. I’m going.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I wanted to tell you you did really well. This was the biggest gang in the North of Italy.’

  ‘It was good of you to trust someone like me,’ Duca said. ‘You’re a talent scout, you recognise genius.’

  ‘Sit down a minute, I have to talk to you, don’t be such a smart alec.’

  ‘I won’t sit down, thanks, I’ve been sitting down all this time looking at a toerag.’

  ‘I just wanted to tell you you did very well.’

  ‘You already told me.’

  ‘Let me talk, Duca, otherwise I’ll get angry.’ He was speaking in a touchingly low voice. ‘You did very well and I can see to it that you get put on a salary here.’

  ‘I’d like that, and I like the work. How much will the salary be?’ A hundred and forty thousand, maybe, because he was recommended by Carrua, plus travel expenses every now and again, if he was good. If a criminal shot him and blinded him, for example, they would send him at the State’s expense to a school for the re-education of blind people, and they would teach him to be a switchboard operator: hadn’t there been, up until a few years ago, a switchboard operator in Headquarters who was a blind former police officer?

  ‘Yes, I knew you’d answer that way,’ Carrua said, ‘but with a hundred and forty thousand lire a month you can’t support your sister and niece.’

  He’d guessed right, a hundred and forty thousand, he could guess the future, he could even become a psychic. ‘Well, then?’

  ‘I think I can have you put back on the medical register,’ Carrua said, ‘not the same way as that other fellow, what was his name, the one who reminded me of Solvay soda?’

  ‘Silvano Solvere.’ He had stopped smiling.

  ‘That’s right, Silvano Solvere, he promised you he would get you put back on the register, I can’t promise it for certain, but I can tell you that if you write me a letter, just a few lines, you know, within a month you may be able to reopen your clinic and I’ll come there for a consultation because – ’

  ‘Forget about that, just tell me what kind of letter I need to write.’ He was very serious now.

  ‘There’s no point in making a face like a rabid dog,’ Carrua shouted now, and carried on shouting, ‘I have to explain something to you and I’ll explain it even if you’re rabid.’

  ‘I am rabid.’

  ‘And I’ll explain it all the same. The letter has to go something like this: I did three years in prison for having, in my capacity as a doctor, killed a patient of mine with an injection of ircodine, for the purpose of euthanasia. I recognise now that, even though driven by idealistic and humanitarian motives, I made a mistake. Euthanasia is an absolutely inadmissible practice, the death of each individual must come only for reasons independent of the will of man and, beyond the duty to help every individual by any means possible, an individual has the right to hope until the last moment of his life. And admitting this mistake I give my word that I will never do it again and I asked to be readmitted to the medical register, etc., etc.’

  ‘Yes,’ Duca said.

  ‘What do you mean, yes? If you mean you’ll write it, there’s the typewriter, write the letter, sign it, give it to me and I’ll see to the rest.’

  ‘ “Yes” means I’ll think about it.’

  Carrua was about to start shouting again, but restrained himself. ‘It doesn’t seem to me there’s much to think about, but all right, think about it. But hurry up. The professor who may be able to help me is only in Milan for a few days.’

  ‘All right, I’ll hurry up,’ he said icily. ‘Can I go?’

  ‘Yes, you can go,’ Carrua said.

  He left the Headquarters building, at the corner with the Via dei Giardini he lit a national-brand cigarette and smoked all of it, to calm down, which was easy enough to do, because Milan at the moment was so beautiful, it didn’t even seem like Milan, with that clear air, the light like the Swiss mountains, maybe there had been some meteorological error, and having smoked his cigarette he went on his way, he entered the galleries in the Piazza Cavour, and went to the big bookshop, a kind of gleaming ark containing all the books in existence. He went to this bookshop every now and again, he was friendly with the intelligent-looking young man who worked there, and also the tall young woman who worked there and also looked very intelligent, pleasantly intelligent. They were both there, and they both smiled at him.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the young man, ‘do you have the edition of the works of Galileo Galilei edited by Sebastiano Timpanaro?’

  ‘The one from 1936? I think so.’ Quickly, efficiently, he sent another young woman to look for the edition and after a couple of minutes there they were, the beautiful volumes bound in parchment, with the top edge gilded, the absolutely complete writings of Galileo Galilei. Duca had looked through them once, as a student, at a friend’s house.

  ‘I can do you a special discount,’ the young man said.

  ‘I don’t have any intention of buying them,’ Duca said: he would have liked to buy them and read them, read all the volumes, all the pages, but he would satisfy such a desire in another life, not in this one, there wasn’t time. He started leafing through the first volume, looking for the index.

  The young man smiled. ‘If you want to have them to look through for a few days …’

  ‘That’s very kind, I’ve already found what I was looking for, here it is, in the Galilean Chronology, page 1041 of volume 1: Recantation. But maybe I can take advantage of you. Do you have a typewriter I can borrow for a couple of minutes and a sheet of paper?’

  ‘The typewriter’s over there, and here’s the paper, it’s headed, does that matter?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter, thanks.’ There was a kind of little desk, with a little typewriter on it, and a high-backed chair behind it, as if for a university professor, and they gave it up to him with a gentle smile. He sat down, put the paper in the typewriter, in delicate lettering at the top of the paper were the words Cavour Bookshop, and under it he wrote: Recantation, copying from page 1041 of the works of Galileo Galilei, volume 1, then he lit another cigarette and continued copying:

  I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal, and kneeling before your Most Eminent and Reverend Lords Cardinals, Inquisitors-General of the entire Christian commonwealth against heretical depravity, having the Holy Gospels before my eyes and touching them with my hands, swear that I have always believed, now believe, and with the help of God will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas after an injunction had been judicially made against me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must abandon altogether the false opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and is immovable, and that the earth is not the centre of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach the said false doctrine in any manner whatsoever, either verbally or in writing, and after it had been signified to me that said doctrine was contrary to Holy Scripture, I wrote and printed a book in which I treat of this same doctrine already condemned, and adduce arguments of great cogency in support of the same, without presenting any solution of these, and for this reason have been judged by the Holy Office to be grievously suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the centre of the world and is immovable, and that the earth is not the centre and moves. Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this grievous suspicion justly entertained towards me, with sincere heart and unfeigned fai
th I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy, and sect that is contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that I will never again in the future say or assert, either verbally or in writing, anything that might give rise to a similar suspicion against me; but that should I know of any heretic, or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be. Poor man, not only was he recanting but, at the age of seventy, he was undertaking to be a spy and to denounce other heretics like himself. History is the teacher of life, and we learn many fine things. With two fingers, but very quickly, he finished copying Galileo Galilei’s recantation: I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above and in witness thereof have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word, he had even had to recite it, at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633. And he finished: I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, standing up, to the young man. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the tall young lady and went out. In the tobacconist’s shop, he bought an envelope and an express stamp, wrote on the envelope Superintendent Carrua, Milan Police Headquarters, put it in one of the two new postboxes next to the tram stop in the Piazza Cavour, then walked home, stopping in three bars on the way. In each of them he ate a toasted sandwich, without drinking anything, and at home he drank the water from the tap that didn’t really taste of a mountain stream – on the contrary – then went to bed and tried in vain to sleep.

  3

  The telephone. He got up: it was Mascaranti.

  ‘I couldn’t question Rosa Gavoni. She died of shock.’

  So they might never find out where the two packets of mescaline 6 had ended up. A few hectograms of mescaline 6, you could give a whole neighbourhood of Milan hallucinations with that, Porta Vigentina for example, because it was 6, the most concentrated form: they aren’t content with red wine any more, even though that’s also a hallucinogen, now they want explosions.

  ‘Rosa Gavoni died of shock, I couldn’t question her,’ Mascaranti repeated, thinking, because of Duca’s silence, that he had not heard.

  ‘Yes, I heard.’ It wasn’t shock she had died of, the poor woman had had to look at her Ulrico on a marble slab and say, ‘Yes, it’s him, it’s Ulrico Brambilla.’ It wasn’t shock, it wasn’t just dying. ‘Search Rosa Gavoni’s house, and the butcher’s shops, question all the assistants, do whatever you like, but I don’t have time to waste on a few hectograms of drugs, I’m not the narcotics squad,’ and he hung up, immediately full of remorse because it really wasn’t poor Mascaranti’s fault. Maybe it’d be better if he took a few tranquillisers, his sister always had some chamomile in the apartment because he didn’t want any of those pills made from methane, propane or butane, he was a man, not a diesel engine. Anyway, he’d only have to wait until the next morning, when his sister would be coming back to Milan with his niece and Livia Ussaro, and he might be calmer then. It was only four in the afternoon, he just had to wait until after ten the next morning.

  He made himself a chamomile tea, but instead of calming him it irritated him, so he tried to kill time having a bath, then a manicure, then a shampoo, then he went to the cinema and saw a film he thought was stupid but that made the audience laugh a lot, ate two toasted sandwiches in two different bars, and, digging into his reserves, bought a few newspapers and magazines, including two crossword magazines. In a news magazine he saw the headline Final Revelations on Drugs Ring, but he didn’t read the article because he didn’t believe in final revelations, there were two packets of mescaline 6 in circulation and it was foolish to believe there could be any final revelation about drugs, because drugs would never finish.

  But at three in the morning he was still awake, he had read almost all the newspapers and magazines, and solved lots of crosswords, even cryptic ones, and had had to look for something else to read. He had found the Italian Touring Club’s Guide to Italy, dated 1914, a memento of his father, a loyal member of the club, and had read the anthem of the TCI: O sacred land, o country dear – o mother always by our side – Your beauty always with us here – Your life will always be our guide – Your love is all we need to know – Away, away, let’s go, let’s go! There was also an application form for the club, more than half a century old, which stated that if the application was made by a married woman, she needed her husband’s signature – a lot of progress has been made since those dark days, now women go around carrying cases that had submachine guns in them – and he was just reading that the price of a block of sheets containing a 1:250,000 scale map of Italy was twenty-nine lire and one hundred centesimi when the telephone rang, even though it was three in the morning.

  Completely devoid of any garment, either nightwear or daywear, he went to the telephone.

  ‘Were you asleep?’ It was Carrua.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, then I didn’t wake you.’ How witty! ‘Well, I was asleep, but they brought me a girl who says she was the one who pushed Turiddu Sompani and his lady friend into the Naviglio. I can barely stay awake, can you come over?’

  Of course he could, because he wasn’t asleep, and anyway there was a girl who said she was the one who had pushed Turiddu in the canal, which didn’t make much sense, but does anything ever make much sense in life?

  ‘I’m sending Mascaranti over in a car to pick you up,’ Carrua said.

  ‘Thanks.’ He clearly heard Carrua’s yawn through the receiver.

  And after the yawn, Carrua said, ‘She’s American.’

  Duca said nothing.

  ‘American and stupid,’ Carrua said.

  That might be the case: America was such a vast, highly populated country, there must be a few stupid people in it, they couldn’t all be George Washington. ‘I’ll be right there,’ Duca said.

  He went and put on his underpants and his nice pale blue socks with the hole in the big toe of the right foot. He was already downstairs, waiting by the front door, in the deserted Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, when Mascaranti arrived. It was eleven minutes past three in the morning.

  4

  She had flown from Phoenix, Arizona, to New York, in New York she had taken another plane for Rome, Italy, Fiumicino, in Rome she had got on the Settebello, and had arrived in Milan, Italy, Central Station, at nine minutes past midnight, and there she had got straight into a taxi and said, ‘Police Headquarters’, she had light brown hair, almost blonde, the driver didn’t like to go to Police Headquarters, no Italian citizen likes Police Headquarters, maybe this girl with light brown hair had no money for the fare and he would have to get the police to reimburse him, which meant he could forget about it, but he let her in the taxi because of her nice shoulder-length light brown hair and her sweet face, which touched even him, a loutish Lombard taxi driver on night shift, and he would have liked to ask her what the hell she wanted to go to Police Headquarters for but, contrary to appearances, Lombards are shy and he didn’t ask her.

  And when they got to Police Headquarters, in the bright, cool May night, she got out, paid her fare, then went in through the vast gateway, and there was nobody there, nor was there anybody in the courtyard, but then a shadowy figure appeared in the dim light, a uniformed officer, and she saw him throw away his cigarette end, so she went up to him, she was fashionably dressed, with her skirt above her knees, and she had long hair, the only unusual thing was that heavy overcoat over her arm, on such a May night.

  ‘What do you want?’ the officer asked, rather abruptly, because every now and again a prostitute came in to seek protection from a pimp who wanted to cut her throat.

  ‘I’ve come to turn myself in,’ she said in her perfect Italian, perfect apart from the way she pronounced the t, because a woman from Arizona is almost constitutionally unable to pronounce it the Latin way. ‘I killed two people and pushed the car into the Alzaia Nav
iglio Pavese.’

  She could not have been any clearer, but for that very reason the officer did not understand: the rule is that the clearer you are, the less people understand. All he understood was that he had to shut this girl up in a holding room and go and look for somebody, and in fact he did immediately shut her up in a holding room, together with two prostitutes and a perfectly honest woman who worked for Pirelli but had been caught in her car committing an obscene act with her boyfriend. At that hour, however, there was almost nobody in Headquarters, they were all outside, catching thieves and whores and homosexuals and pimps, but then Sergeant Morini arrived at half-past one, with the car full of long-haired men squawking, or at least trying to, because every time they tried to squawk, Morini would slap them, and the officer told Morini that there was a girl there who had come to give herself in, he hadn’t really understood why, apparently she had killed two people.

  Morini freed himself from the long-haired men, who swore that they were singers or artists, and not male prostitutes, had the nice girl brought to him and listened to what she had to say.

  ‘I’ve come to turn myself in,’ she repeated, in her excellent Italian. ‘I killed two people, and pushed their car into the Alzaia Naviglio Pavese.’

  Morini looked at her fleetingly: the almost childlike sweetness of that face bothered him a little, it was as if a six-year-old girl had come and told him that she had killed her grandmother. This was Carrua’s case, he thought, and he contacted the officer who was on duty outside Carrua’s office and found out that Carrua was asleep, because he had not slept since Monday, and at two o’clock on Wednesday morning you can’t wake up someone who hasn’t slept since Monday. So he was about to send the girl back into the holding room, but that sweet face and light brown hair, the refinement of her demeanour, yes, refinement, made him hesitate. He didn’t like the idea of throwing her back in that room with the whores, not this girl, but he didn’t have any empty rooms, so he made up his mind and called Carrua on the phone, and perhaps because he was tired, or because he had been thrown by this angelic girl and her unlikely confession, he said, as soon as Carrua replied, ‘This is Morini, Superintendent Carrùa,’ with the stress on the u, instead of the first a, which was the correct pronunciation of the name.