Adam's Rib

by Antonio Manzini

  “This is Giorgio. Giorgio, say hello to daddy.” The man grabbed Giorgio’s chin and forced him to look up. Now his face was illuminated by the light streaming through the broken windows.

  Blood oozed from his mouth and his nose. Giorgio barely opened his eyes. He smiled. He had blood on his teeth too.

  “What . . . what have you done to him?”

  “Nothing much, trust me,” said the new arrival, who was clearly the leader of the pack. “But this sack of shit stuck his pee-pee where he shouldn’t have. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  The undersecretary said nothing.

  “Do you or don’t you?” the man bellowed.

  The honorable undersecretary nodded his head three times.

  “In that case, my friends and I are giving you one last chance. Either this dickhead stops once and for all, or next time we’re going to turn nasty.”

  “Because we know how to be nasty, did you know that?” said the big man behind him.

  “What . . . what do I have to do?”

  “That’s something you’d need to tell us,” said the leader of the band. “You see, my friends were suggesting we might do a number of things: cut his dick off, slice off his balls. All things I completely endorse, and perfectly just, no doubt about it, but in the end we’re reasonable people and we thought we’d give you one last chance.”

  “I could have him institutionalized and—”

  “Do whatever you think’s best. I’m just warning you, though. If we have to come back, what happened to your son today is going to look like a stroll in the park.”

  “I understand,” said the honorable undersecretary in a small, frightened voice.

  The sound of the drops of water falling from the ceiling into the puddles below filled the silence.

  “Papà, can we please go home?” Giorgio suddenly asked.

  But Fernando Borghetti Ansaldo was impervious to pity. He looked at his son, blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh, tied up like a ham on a pole, and felt a surge of hatred and resentment surge up his throat. “You’re a dickhead, Giorgio,” he said. “A complete dickhead.”

  “Yes, but now we’re going home, aren’t we?”

  Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” echoed through the enormous foul-smelling room, making the undersecretary flinch. The leader of the trio quickly slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. “Oh fucking Jesus . . .” He pulled out his cell phone.

  “Yes?” he said, vanishing behind the cement column.

  “Dottor Schiavone, of the Aosta police?”

  “That’s me. Who’m I speaking with?”

  “What’s that echo I hear?”

  “Pay no attention to that. Who is this?”

  “It’s Tomei.”

  “Tomei?”

  “From the Tomei menswear shop, in town.”

  “Ah, of course. I’m all ears.”

  “I told my wife, my son, and even my part-time sales assistant about what you’re looking for, and my wife had a bright idea.” (He emphasized the English term part-time annoyingly once again.)

  “Good.”

  “So, she’d like to speak with you. Shall I put her on the phone?”

  “No. Believe me, this wouldn’t be the right time to talk.”

  “Are you in a meeting?”

  “Good guess. I’ll come see you as soon as possible.”

  “It’s always a pleasure to be able to help Aosta’s finest, after all, and . . .”

  But Rocco missed the rest of what the man had to say because he’d already ended the call. He came back around the cement column. The undersecretary was still there. And also there, tied securely to the column, was the undersecretary’s son.

  “Now, where were we?” asked Rocco.

  “The honorable undersecretary had just said that his son was a complete dickhead,” said Sebastiano.

  “Ah, yes, that’s right. Couldn’t agree more.” Then Rocco walked over to Furio. “Do you mind? Let’s cut through the bullshit.” With a rapid move, he seized Furio’s pistol. He strode straight over to Giorgio and aimed the gun at the young man.

  “No!” shouted the undersecretary. Furio and Sebastiano stood motionless, watching in horror. Rocco pulled the trigger over and over again, firing into the reinforced cement just inches from Giorgio’s head. The deafening gunshots blasted in quick succession while the cement, chipped to flakes by the bullets, peppered the side of the bound man’s head; he flinched with every shot. Fernando Borghetti Ansaldo felt a warm rivulet run down the inside of his trouser leg. And to judge by the stain on the floor, his son too had pissed his pants. After firing all six shots, Rocco handed the pistol to Furio.

  “Next time I’ll aim lower.” And he strode briskly out of the huge room.

  Furio turned to look at the politician. “Is this clear to you?”

  Fernando shut his eyes and nodded. Giorgio was whimpering softly. “I swear it. Giorgio will never hurt anyone again.”

  Sebastiano went over to the young man. “Borghetti? We can get in anywhere, whenever we want. Next time instead of you, we’ll take your wife.”

  Furio laughed. “But something tells me that we’re not going to be seeing each other ever again, are we?”

  Then the two men left without another word. Fernando Borghetti Ansaldo stood there, looking at his son, tied to a chair. He stepped closer. The young man reeked of shit.

  THEY WERE LISTENING TO A GOLDEN OLDIES SHOW ON the car radio. Right now, “Just an Illusion” by Imagination was playing.

  “Ah, all the memories . . .” said Sebastiano dreamily.

  “Greece. Summer, 1982,” Furio began. “We hooked up with those Dutch girls, you remember, Rocco?”

  But Rocco was looking out the car window. Seba and Furio exchanged a glance and then did nothing more than to hum the British hit song. Over the piece of dance music could be heard Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Rocco answered his cell phone while Seba lowered the volume on the car radio.

  “Schiavone. Who is it?”

  “Ciao, sweetheart, it’s Alberto.”

  It was the medical examiner from Livorno.

  “What’s up . . .”

  “There’s news. I need to speak with you. All right, first of all, I’ve examined all the belts and neckties from the Baudo home. No trace of epithelium, hairs, nothing.”

  “Mmm . . .”

  “It wasn’t with any of these items that Esther was strangled.”

  “In that case, whatever was used must now be—”

  “Exactly, who knows where it is now. But I need to talk to you about something much more important.”

  “I’m out of town right now. When I get back to Aosta I’ll call you.”

  “Where are you?”

  Rocco didn’t even reply. Alberto understood immediately. “Fine, I’ll wait to hear from you. But listen: this is important.” And he hung up.

  Rocco put his phone back in his pocket and nodded to Seba to turn up the radio again. But “Just an Illusion” was over. Now the radio was playing Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True.” Screaming, Sebastiano switched the radio off.

  PRIMA PORTA IS A TOWN JUST OUTSIDE OF ROME, beyond the bounds of the Grande Raccordo Anulare, the beltway. It’s on the Via Flaminia, the main artery that runs north toward Terni and the green hills of Umbria. But first and foremost, for the people of Rome, Prima Porta is the city cemetery, officially known as the Cimitero Flaminio. It covers 370 acres, with forty-five miles of roads. To get around, you either drive or take a bus. A city all its own, made up of eternal residences: graves, vaults, and two-story funerary chapels.

  Sebastiano and Furio had stayed in the car. Rocco wanted to walk the last hundred yards alone. He crossed the road as the C/8 bus barreled past, heading for the Islamic section. The sky was gray, and as he strode past a fresh grave, the sickly sweet odor of flowers nauseated him. He went past a pine grove and there opened out before his eyes an expanse of headstones jutting from the soil like so many derelic
t teeth. Lost in the sea of graves, two women dressed in black hunched over, busy doing something to the headstones. Rocco went straight as an arrow to the third row. He walked up to the black marble slab.

  Marina was there, waiting for him. There were only dried flowers on the grave. Rocco picked up those withered scraps and went back to the road. He tossed them in the trash, then went over to the water fountain and filled the vase with fresh water for his daisies. He went back to the grave. He arranged the flowers and finally looked at the headstone. He knew the dates by heart, but he read them all the same:

  MARCH 20, 1969–JULY 7, 2007

  He’d chosen not to put a photograph on the headstone. There was no need. Marina’s face was branded into his mind’s eye sharper than a rancher’s mark seared into the flesh of a cow. They say that usually the faces of our loved ones gradually fade into the mist of our memories. That the features start to blur, along with the colors of the eyes and hair, their height, and especially the sound of their voices. But none of that happened to Rocco. Since July 7, 2007, Marina hadn’t lost so much as a mole in his memory. So there was no need of a photograph. The image of Marina’s face, clear and vivid, would be the last sight in Rocco’s eyes the day it was his turn. There was no doubt about that.

  “Ciao, Marina,” he said in a low voice. “You see? I came to visit. Like I promised.” He could see his reflection in the shiny, polished marble. “Look, I brought you something . . .” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a notebook. “Your words are in here. They may be useful to you.” He stuck it under the vase. Next to it he left a pen. “You know what? I found a hard word for you. I wrote it right in your notebook. It describes me. You want to know what it is? Oligemia. But I’m not going to tell you what it means, otherwise it wouldn’t be any fun for you.”

  One of the two women, dressed in black, had kneeled down and was crossing herself. Rocco too leaned over the grave, but only to remove a leaf that had fallen on the marble slab.

  “Happy Birthday, Marina . . . see you at home,” he said, and blew her a kiss.

  He walked back to the little road, looked up, and saw them. They were standing about a hundred feet away, looking at him wordlessly.

  He felt his heart climb into his throat. He stood stock-still. Laura and Camillo, too, seemed incapable of taking a step toward their daughter’s grave. Finally Rocco made up his mind and, in spite of the fear that bolted his knees in place, he forced himself to walk toward them. As Laura watched him walk toward them, she placed her right hand on her husband’s arm, as if to hold tight to the only certainty remaining to her. Rocco kept his eyes on the ground; he knew that if he looked up he wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to where they were standing. If he looked at them, even for an instant, he’d change direction and head straight back to Sebastiano and Furio, who were waiting for him in the car. Then, when he was almost within arm’s reach of the couple, he stopped and looked up. Laura’s face was covered with wrinkles, and her lovely blue eyes had faded, as had the chrysanthemums she held in her hand. Camillo’s hair, already white, had thinned, and he now wore a pair of glasses with black frames. Like his wife, he’d lost weight and looked drab, colorless. They both seemed to lack depth. A pair of cutout figurines, glimpsed through a gray veil.

  “Ciao, Laura . . . ciao, Camillo.”

  His in-laws said nothing. Laura was having trouble breathing. Camillo was even worse off: he seemed to be in a state of waking apnea. Well, he’d come this far: he’d said hello, now what? What else did he need to say? Ask for their forgiveness? He’d done it a thousand times since that day—July 7, 2007. In the morgue, at the funeral, with dozens of phone calls, but the result hadn’t changed. Marina hadn’t come back to life, and they’d never forgiven him.

  Not that he deserved to be forgiven. He knew that; the blame was his and his alone. And nothing would ever alleviate the ruthless violence of those pangs of remorse that he felt in his heart, those ripping talons that lacerated him inwardly, drawing more and more blood with the passing years. He just wished they would realize one thing: he’d loved Marina. More than anything. And he loved her still. And not a day, not a night went by that he didn’t weep for her. But a mother and a father have a greater right to grieve for the loss of a daughter than a husband does. They take precedence.

  “I know what you want from me,” said Laura, tight-lipped. “But I can’t do it.” Then she looked at Rocco again. “And I’ll never be able to.”

  Rocco nodded. Her eyes were glistening now. On her weary, pale face, here and there he caught a glimpse of Marina. In the twist of the mouth, the angle of her glance, her hairline. Is that what Marina would have been like as an old woman? “I know, Laura. But I have to go on living, and I’m standing here the way I was five years ago. I just want you to know it. For what remains of my life—”

  “What remains of our lives is of no importance,” Camillo interrupted him. He slurred his words, and his voice was brittle as glass. “Forgiveness doesn’t matter, because when hope dies, nothing matters anymore. You want to know something? I thought that dying would be the easiest thing. But it’s not. Look at me. I stand here before you, I talk, I walk, and my goddamned life won’t let me go, Rocco. It won’t do me this favor. Don’t you find that all this goes against what’s natural?” he said, pointing to the flowers with a faint smile.

  “I don’t understand,” said Rocco.

  “It’s supposed to be the children who put flowers on their parents’ graves, no? The day you can explain to me why the opposite has happened to us, that will be the day I’ll be able to forgive you and forgive myself.”

  He put his arm around his wife and together they walked past Rocco and started toward Marina’s grave.

  He watched them walk away, side by side, moving slowly. Laura had laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. The C/9 bus heading toward the Jewish section of the cemetery went past, lifting the hems of Camillo’s overcoat and stirring Laura’s skirts. Rocco turned and went back to the car.

  Only when he saw his friends leaning against the hood of their car smoking did he stop crying.

  “Take me to the airport, please.”

  Sebastiano and Furio said nothing. And the whole way to Fiumicino they kept their mouths shut.

  WHILE WAITING FOR THE BOARDING ANNOUNCEMENT, he took out his cell phone and punched in the number of his old office.

  “Yes?”

  “Deputy Police Chief Schiavone, please put me through to De Silvestri.”

  “Just a second,” said the impersonal voice.

  He heard a series of background noises, then the voice of Officer Alfredo De Silvestri boomed out of the phone: “Dottore . . .”

  “It’s all taken care of, Alfredo. The matter is settled.”

  He could hear the policeman’s labored breathing. “If you need anything else, you know where to find me, but believe me, I only want to get a call inviting me to come down and celebrate your retirement.”

  “Grazie, Dottore.”

  “Don’t mention it, Alfredo. Say hello to your niece from me.”

  And he hung up.

  “Alitalia, flight AZ 123 to Turin, we’re now boarding at Gate C 19 . . .”

  He stood up, pulling his ID and his boarding pass out of his pocket. He was leaving Rome, his beloved Rome. But he didn’t feel the same wrenching sense of loss he’d experienced the first time, just six months earlier. Could it be that just six months’ time had changed his city so completely? Could you become a stranger in such a short time? Who was at fault? Had Rome changed? Or had he?

  “A SHITTY DAY, ROCCO,” SAID ITALO AS HE DROVE slowly down the highway from Caselle to Aosta. “The police chief called looking for you three times, and Farinelli of the forensic squad left you a box of stuff in your office.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you were in Ivrea, trying to track down someone who might have seen something.”

  “Excellent.” The deputy police chief reached out and pl
ucked a cigarette out of Italo’s pack. “Listen, I know it won’t do any good to go on pestering you about it, but why do you insist on buying Chesterfields?”

  “Because I like them, Rocco. In fact, can I have one too?”

  Rocco stuck two in his mouth, lit them, then handed one to Italo.

  “Thanks. Did you take care of everything in Rome?”

  “Yes.” He said nothing more.

  “Who went to Esther Baudo’s funeral?” he asked after a pause.

  “Me and Caterina. We did what you told us. We took pictures of just about everyone. There weren’t that many people. Thirty people, more or less. I put the pictures on your desk.”

  WEDNESDAY

  Once again, it had snowed all night long. Rocco hadn’t slept a wink. He just couldn’t get used to the silence in this city. There were no cars going by, he couldn’t hear the neighbors’ television sets, there was never anyone shouting, and there weren’t even trains in the distance.

  Nothing.

  In the morning, when he dragged himself out of bed and pulled open the curtains to peer out, he saw that the snow had stopped falling and that the city snowplows had cleared the streets. When had they done that? Why hadn’t he heard them? What did they have, silencers on their engines? As always, the sky was a quilt of gray clouds.