Persona Non Grata

by Timothy Williams

  “They say the boilers went up.”

  “Never been on a ship in my life.”

  “That’s not the story I heard …”

  Gino tapped the frames of his glasses. “In the hills, Trotti. During the war.”

  “You were a partisan?”

  “Partisan? Me?”

  “What were you doing in the hills?”

  Gino had turned his head towards Principessa. “Doing what everyone was doing—I was doing my duty. Only I chose the wrong side.”

  “You were with the Fascists?”

  “And not ashamed of it. I never changed sides. Mussolini never did me any wrong.”

  Trotti’s voice was incredulous. “You were a Fascist, Gino?”

  “When we were caught—me and seven other Repubblichini—I was the only one they didn’t kill. Somebody knew my mother.” He raised his shoulders. “The partisans spared my life—and instead they blinded me. They thought they were doing me a favor.”

  60: Friends

  IT HAD STARTED to rain: heavy, fat drops that fell noisily on the pavement.

  Trotti stood in the doorway of a closed shop until the blue bus pulled around the corner and came to a standstill at the bus stop. As he climbed aboard, he recognized the driver—he had once been arrested for larceny—but the man kept his eyes beneath the peak of his cap and took Trotti’s fare with little more than a curt nod.

  Trotti sat at the back of the bus.

  There was a five-minute wait while bulky peasant women climbed aboard. They shouted to each other in dialect. They had been to Mass in the cathedral. Some glanced suspiciously at Trotti.

  He turned and looked out of the window until the bus set off.

  They crossed the river and the buildings grew more scattered as they reached the open countryside. It was hot in the bus and the women had brought in puddles of dirty water that ran across the floor in meandering rivulets.

  A thin mist hung over the fields.

  The bus gathered speed.

  At Gravellino they turned left. Most of the passengers got off at a concrete shelter near the war memorial. The driver climbed down from his seat to help some of the older and larger women alight. He joked and he ran his hand beneath the chin of a pretty young mother holding a baby in her arms.

  Then the bus drove through the village and soon it was in the new residential area that had grown up in the last few years.

  Trotti got off outside a small café. It was one of the few original buildings; most houses were low buildings that imitated the style of the farmhouses they had usurped.

  Gardens hidden by high privet hedges and cypresses that demarcated well-kept barriers between neighbors.

  It had stopped raining. The air was cool. For a moment, Trotti stood by the roadside, breathing in the air of the countryside—a bittersweet mixture of grass, dung and rain.

  The house was at the end of an unsurfaced road. The white Audi was in the garage. Beside it, a motorcycle. Trotti rang at the front door.

  It was a while before Signora Bianchini answered.

  She was wearing a pair of jeans that accentuated the flatness of her belly and, on her feet, small yellow slippers. It was not the first time Trotti had seen her without make-up but he was surprised by the freshness, the youthfulness of her face. And by her smile.

  “Commissario—how nice to see you.” She stepped back and Trotti could not tell whether the pleasure was real or feigned.

  “Is your son at home, signora?”

  “You must come in.”

  “It is time I spoke to Riccardo.”

  “I don’t think my son has anything to hide.”

  Trotti looked at her. “Then why have you been hiding him?”

  “This way, please.” She turned and led him into the house.

  The living room was dark and smelt of varnish. An antique grandfather clock in one corner and a vase of freshly-cut flowers on the polished table. Expensive furniture.

  Two men sat at either side of the table. They had been talking but they looked up as Trotti entered the room.

  Signora Bianchini asked, “Would you gentlemen care for a drink?”

  Trotti sat down at the table and his glance went from Riccardo Bianchini to Capitano Spadano of the Carabinieri.

  “Some local wine, perhaps, Commissario?”

  “And some truffles?”

  61: Revelation

  “I KNOW SHE is not beautiful—but she has had a hard life. And things haven’t always been easy for her. Yet she is very intelligent and when she says she could have gotten married, it’s the truth.”

  “She calls herself a woman of the twentieth century.”

  Riccardo’s face darkened. “You have no right to mock.”

  Trotti smiled. “I am too old to mock.”

  “Don’t laugh at her. She is a good woman. She has spent her life looking after her mother—and her sister.”

  “A sister?”

  “A couple of years younger than her.” He tapped his head. “The sister’s not quite normal. Sometimes you can hear her shouting.”

  “What for?”

  “She lives in the apartment above Loredana’s. Lately the doctors’ve put her on drugs—but there’s a married brother in Poggibonsi who’s always wanted the mad sister put away. Loredana …”

  “Loredana?”

  “Signorina Podestà’s real name.” Riccardo frowned. “She’d never hear of having her sister committed. So, for the last ten years, she’s looked after her. That’s why Loredana’s never got married. She could have—an intelligent woman like her. But instead, she chose …”

  “She should have married her teacher friend.”

  “She believed him.” Riccardo shook his head. Pearls of moisture had formed along his forehead. “A man who promised Loredana that he would get a divorce, and for years she really thought he would give up his wife and children to live with her. Loredana believed him until the day she found him upstairs in bed with her sister.”

  “Intelligent and stupid at the same time, Riccardo?”

  Spadano raised his glass of barbera to hide a smile.

  “She is very intelligent—very intelligent indeed.”

  “You should have told me the truth.”

  Riccardo Bianchini looked unhappy. He was sweating. Three fingers rubbed at his right eyebrow.

  “There was nothing for you to be afraid of.”

  “That’s not what you said before. You seemed to think that I had attacked Laura.”

  “I didn’t think anything—I was simply trying to find out the truth.” Trotti turned to Spadano. “I was worried about the Vardin child—and the thought that there was some maniac loose in the city.” He turned back to Riccardo. “You should have told me what you knew. You must’ve suspected that Podestà—”

  “I didn’t know anything. When I came into the Questura, I swear I didn’t know anything.” The forehead glistened.

  Spadano looked at the boy. “At least suspected, Riccardo?”

  “That’s not what I was thinking about. I was much more concerned about my mother—and about her finding out. You see, I’d been telling her that I was at a friend’s when in fact I was with Loredana.”

  Trotti said, “Signora Bianchini would have had to learn sooner or later about your Signorina Podestà.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You weren’t worried about Laura?”

  “Of course I was concerned about Laura. She’s nice. Only it never occurred to me that it was Loredana who attacked her. Never occurred to me until Loredana invented her story of rape at Ciel d’Oro.”

  “What did Signorina Podestà do that for?”

  “It was then I realized she was trying to protect me.”

  “Why protect you?”

  “Because of old man Vardin. He never saw Loredana—but that didn’t stop him from giving you an identikit of me. He never got out of bed in time to see Loredana running down the stairs. But Vardin hates me—and he wanted to get me into
trouble. I was scared when you showed me the identikit and, later, I told Loredana. That’s why she felt she had to help me.”

  “And the soldier?”

  “What soldier?” Riccardo looked puzzled.

  “Arrested—and they found a knife under his mattress.”

  “A mistake—a coincidence.” He raised his shoulders. “Loredana did it—she told me herself, said that she was jealous. She didn’t want to hurt Netta—but she couldn’t bear … oh, I don’t know, she really thought that I was sleeping with Netta.” A drop of sweat ran from his temple down the side of his face.

  “In the end, it wasn’t Netta but Laura that she hurt.” Spadano looked at the boy from over his glass.

  “Loredana didn’t know they’d changed beds.”

  Trotti said, “But you’d told her how to get into the house?”

  Riccardo was silent. “You suspected Podestà, didn’t you?”

  Trotti shrugged. “You should have told me about your affair with Signorina Podestà.”

  “Not in front of my mother.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m all that Mother has.”

  “With the truth, I could have saved a lot of time. Perhaps even saved a human life.”

  “I can’t hurt my mother.”

  Spadano’s voice was gentle. “A human life was lost, Riccardo—lost because you didn’t tell the truth to Commissario Trotti.”

  “Mother has never minded my having girlfriends—in fact, the more I have, the happier she seems to be.” He ran his hand across his forehead. “But a long, long time ago, Mother told me that she was going to hate the woman I married.”

  “Why?”

  “Terrified of losing me.”

  “You’re her son—how can she lose you?”

  “In her affections I have replaced Papa. I am the man that she should have married.”

  Trotti said, “What’s that got to do with Podestà?”

  “With both Podestà and Netta.” He hesitated. “Loredana and Netta are different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  An unexpected, almost wolfish smile broke through the sweating, tense face. “At times, I have been … well, very fond of them. And Mama doesn’t like that. She is always afraid of my falling in love.”

  “You’re still only seventeen.”

  “Eighteen.” A shrug. “For Mama, I am the same age as her. I am her real husband.”

  “You’re in love with Antonetta Vardin?”

  “I used to be—until I realized what she was like.”

  “And you told Podestà?”

  “Of course not.” A brief smile. “I should have, I suppose. But I liked teasing her. That way, I could—well, I could get her to do things.”

  “Things?”

  There was a carafe of water beside the half-empty bottle of barbera. Riccardo poured himself a glass. “Loredana is not very beautiful. She hasn’t got a nice face, I know—a turned-up nose, as if the skin has been pulled too tight. And eyes that stick out a bit. But she’s a woman—and she’s taught me a lot of things. A lot of things.”

  “In bed?”

  “Loredana is afraid of losing me.”

  “So you blackmailed her?” Spadano said.

  Riccardo turned his head. “Of course not.”

  “You blackmailed her, Riccardo.”

  “She was jealous. Not because Antonetta is pretty or anything, but because she is young. Loredana likes to think of herself as a woman of her century. But she’s terrified of growing old.” Riccardo hesitated. “I think …”

  “Yes?”

  “I think she would like to have a child.”

  “By you?”

  The boy raised his shoulders. “Why not? She likes me.”

  “And you’d marry Signorina Podestà?”

  Riccardo turned to look at Spadano. “A man doesn’t have to be married to give a woman a child.”

  A tap on the door.

  Spadano stood up and quickly opened the door.

  The almond eyes seemed anxious. “Do you gentlemen need anything?”

  “Most kind of you, Signora Bianchini, but I think for the time being we have drunk enough barbera.”

  She glanced at her son.

  Riccardo ignored her.

  The almond eyes went from Riccardo to Trotti.

  “Signora, you have nothing to worry about.”

  Spadano gave Signora Bianchini a reassuring squeeze to her wrist.

  She looked down at the thick, strong hand. She smiled shyly at Spadano. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Another glance at her son and she withdrew.

  “You were telling us about Loredana,” Trotti said, when the door had closed. “What things did you get her to do?”

  “Loredana really is a woman of her century. She does a lot of things. An open mind and she is always interested, always active.”

  “You mean she is a good screw?”

  Spadano made a snorting noise.

  “And you told her that if she didn’t give it to you when you wanted, as you wanted and how you wanted—you told her that you would go back to the Vardin girl?”

  Riccardo had started to blush.

  “You’re a little bastard, Bianchini.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “A manipulating little bastard.”

  Riccardo shook his head.

  “Sexual blackmail. The Vardin girl wouldn’t go to bed with you, and that’s why you started to hate her—that’s what your friend Raf said.”

  “Raffaele is not my friend. He knows nothing about me.”

  “But as for Podestà—a woman who knows that she’s not pretty …”

  “She could pick up soldiers. Before me, there were enough of them.”

  “With you she fell in love, Riccardo—that’s the difference. And so you blackmailed her, threatened her by telling her you’d go back to a girl of your own age. It was only normal she’d fall in love with you—after all, you are young and attractive. As you yourself admit, she’d had a bad time with men.”

  “You have got a nasty mind, Commissario. You don’t want to understand …”

  “From her you could get what you wanted—even when she didn’t want to give it to you. Whenever she refused to open her legs or whatever, all you had to do was tell her you were going back to your Vardin girlfriend.” Trotti paused. “No wonder she was jealous. No wonder she took a knife to her.”

  “But it was Laura she attacked.”

  “Laura or Netta—it was you who told her everything. To get her jealous, you told her about your girlfriend nestling in bed and how the door was left on the latch and how you would go and see her at nights, go and screw her …”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Riccardo. Netta wasn’t to be had like that. The stuck-up little Vardin girl wasn’t as desperate as Podestà—and she wasn’t going to give in to your demands. But Podestà wasn’t to know that. You exacerbated things and in the end—you knew she wasn’t stable—in the end the woman took a knife to the young girl she saw as her rival. Only it wasn’t Netta that she hurt—it was Laura.”

  Riccardo Bianchini had lowered his head.

  “Really it could have been you who carried the knife.”

  “Me?”

  “You, Riccardo, who put the knife into Laura’s flesh.”

  “No.” Lines of moisture had formed at the side of his chin.

  “All along, you were playing—exercising your power over these women—just as your father had over your mother. But whereas with Netta it didn’t work, with Podestà it did.”

  Silence.

  “You must be very proud of yourself, Riccardo.”

  “What do you understand?” The boy looked up. His eyes were wet, and the bright teeth bit at the corner of his lip. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have made up the stories about me and Netta.”

  “Well?”

  Riccardo shrugged and he lowered his eyes.

  Trot
ti unbuttoned his collar. “Well?”

  “Of course I don’t love Loredana like that—and I’d never marry her. But I do like her—that’s what you can’t understand. I do like her. Like a sister. Or a mother.”

  Riccardo Bianchini put his closed fists to his eyes.

  62: Scratch

  THE SHORT HAIR was turning white at the temples.

  “You sent her to the hospital, Spadano. I thought it was Magagna—but it was you who sent her with the clothes. You wanted her to keep an eye on me.”

  The police radio had been switched on and Spadano was driving.

  “You came here by bus, Trotti?” He turned his head slightly, but his eyes remained on the road.

  “Yes.”

  “No car?”

  “Pisanelli’s disappeared.”

  Spadano had put an unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Today is Sunday—I imagine that even Pisanelli is entitled to his day off.”

  It was late afternoon and the air had cleared. The rain clouds had gone south, following the line of the Apennines. The valley of the Po stretched out before them; to the north, a discernible profile of the Alps.

  Trotti was depressed. Tired, depressed and feeling old. “Even if it wasn’t his day off, there’s no need for him to work for me. Pisanelli or anyone else.”

  “You ought to buy a car.”

  “It would seem I’m persona non grata in the Questura.”

  “Time you got the insurance for your old Opel.” Spadano pulled out the knob of the dashboard lighter. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “If you don’t mind, Spadano.”

  He lit his cigar. Then catching Trotti’s glance, he took the packet of Toscani from his shirt pocket. “You want one?”

  Trotti lowered the car window. “I think you ought to tell me about Signora Bianchini, Spadano.”

  “Bianchini?”

  “About you and Signora Bianchini?”

  The Carabiniere nodded and fell silent.

  The tinny sound of a woman’s voice, meaningless and insistent, came from the radio, speaking in muted, staccato rhythms, rhythms that formed a continuing leitmotiv that neither Trotti nor Spadano paid attention to.

  Spadano did not say another word until they were on the highway leading back into the city.

  “Didn’t you, Spadano?”