Adam's Rib

by Antonio Manzini

  “Just a piece of luck, Farine’.” And he took back the little scrap of fabric. “Well, take care of yourself. And thanks for your excellent work and blah blah blah.”

  Without shaking hands, Rocco walked past him, leaving the room without taking his eyes off the white cloth label. Luca called after him: “Take a look at the things I left in your office.”

  “You can bet on it. Will you put the seals back in place, so I don’t have to?”

  ROCCO SCHIAVONE AND OFFICER ITALO PIERRON knocked on the door of the Baudo residence in Charvensod, a handsome chalet with a chimney spewing gray smoke into a gray sky. A chilly wind had begun to rush through the valley, making the pine needles whistle and banging shutters. Patrizio Baudo’s mother opened the door. “Deputy Police Chief . . . please, come right in . . .”

  “I was looking for Patrizio,” said Rocco as he wiped his feet on the doormat.

  The woman smiled and nodded her head. “He ought to be down in the garage. He uses it as an office and warehouse. Can I offer you anything?”

  “Absolutely not, thanks . . .”

  The house smelled of furniture wax. “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the woman said, pointing to the leather sofas by the crackling fire. “I’ll go get him right away.” She moved off silently. She opened a door and started down a metal spiral staircase.

  “Nice place,” said Italo, looking around. The whole living room was lined with a wooden boiserie and on the walls hung strange paintings done with old lace. Cowbells and antique wooden skis, a couple of alpine landscapes, and a corner bookshelf mostly filled with cookbooks. There was a handsome wooden crucifix over the kitchen door and a painting of a Virgin Mary with Christ Child by the front door. “Come on, Italo, we’re not here on a social call,” Rocco said brusquely. And he went down the metal steps that led to a cramped little room full of jars and paintbrushes. There was a half-open door. Rocco pulled it wide and found himself in a cellar apartment, about a thousand square feet. Patrizio’s mother was standing in the middle of the large room. “He’s not here,” she said. “He must have gone out.”

  That underground loft was full to the ceiling with athletic equipment. Hanging on clothes racks, wrapped in cellophane, were ski pants, trekking pants, sweaters, and windbreakers. Hanging on pegboards, on the other hand, was an assortment of mountaineering equipment. New items, on display. Climbing harnesses, ice axes, helmets, crampons, ropes, and carabiners.

  “I just don’t understand . . . I even looked in the garage. The car is still there,” the woman went on, looking at the two policemen.

  Rocco stepped closer to examine the merchandise.

  “These are my son’s samples. He put it all here because he didn’t have room in his apartment.” The mother continued to look around her. “Maybe he went for a hike. Have you tried calling his cell phone?”

  “It’s turned off,” said Italo, standing next to a group of futuristic-looking bike tires.

  “I wouldn’t know what to tell you. Not half an hour ago he was down here organizing his samples. He’ll be back at work tomorrow. Can I ask why you want to talk to him?”

  “No,” said the deputy police chief. “You can’t. Arrivederci.” He turned and went toward the spiral staircase. Italo told the woman good-bye and followed his boss.

  IT WAS A WOMAN CLEANING THE ARRAY OF VOTIVE candles under the icon of the Madonna in the church of Sant’Orso who untangled the mystery. “No, Father Sandro isn’t here. He went with Patrizio Baudo to the cemetery, to visit his wife’s grave.”

  Snorting in annoyance, Rocco left the church. “This wild goose chase is starting to get on my nerves.” Before leaving the house of Our Lord, Italo crossed himself. “You want to get a move on?” Rocco shouted at him.

  IT WASN’T HARD TO IDENTIFY ESTHER BAUDO’S grave. It was the one covered with flowers and wreaths. It was heaped high. That was because Esther was a new arrival. That’s how it always went. Fresh funeral, fresh flowers, and the legends on the purple satin with gilded edges still legible. Then with the passage of time the colors would fade, the flowers would wither, the wreaths would crumble, and the grave would become the same as all the others. A couple of flower stalks in the vases. Nothing more.

  Patrizio Baudo just sat there, next to the priest, staring at the headstone. Rocco gestured to Italo, who understood immediately and stayed about thirty feet away. The deputy police chief went over to the bench and sat down on the widower’s other side. He said nothing.

  “Deputy Police Chief!” said Father Sandro.

  “Can you leave me alone with Signor Baudo for a minute?”

  The priest exchanged a quick glance with his parishioner, patted his hand, stood up, and went over to Italo.

  Rocco waited for the other man to speak first.

  “Buongiorno, Commissario,” he said.

  “I’m not a commissario and this isn’t a particularly good day. Especially not for you.”

  Patrizio Baudo, the koala bear from Ivrea, looked at the policeman with his small, drab eyes.

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “No. I don’t understand.”

  Rocco stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it. The sound of the River Dora flowing past was calming, as were the small cypresses running beside the lane. But what Rocco was carrying inside him was a tornado ready to splinter anything it touched. It had been building up all night long. “So tell me something,” he began, after taking a first drag on his Camel, “did you enjoy beating your wife?”

  “Me?!”

  “No, my dick. Now let’s see. How many times did you send her to the hospital? The way I read it, five. Correct me if I’m wrong.” He pulled out a sheet of paper with his notes. “All right, I’ll read you your resume. Your wife suffered a fracture to the ulna and the radius of her right arm. Then she broke her right cheekbone and two ribs.” He folded up the sheet of paper and put it back in his pocket. “And that’s just the fractures, the times you overdid it. I can just imagine the bruises and lacerations, no? You have a lot to learn. There are much more sophisticated techniques. For instance, there are ways of hitting that are incredibly painful and leave no marks. Have you ever thought of beating your wife on the soles of her feet with a club? Or even with a rolled-up phone book? Believe me, it hurts like a bitch and it never leaves a bruise. Or you could try with a wet washcloth. Use that on someone’s legs and you might leave a faint red stripe, nothing more, but the pain is intolerable.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ah, you don’t? Would you mind doing me a favor? Take off your gloves.”

  “Why?”

  “Just take them off. Since the first time I saw you, on Friday, I haven’t had a good look at your hands. Let’s say I’m a bit of a fetishist.” He dropped his cigarette on the ground. Patrizio Baudo slowly took off first one glove, then the other.

  “Let me see your hands.”

  Patrizio held out his hands, palms up. Rocco grabbed both hands and turned them over. There were cuts and bruises on the knuckles. One knuckle was actually black. “They still haven’t healed from last Friday? Did you try using a little Nivea cream?” Rocco remained calm. But Patrizio was scared. More scared than if the policeman had started shouting.

  “So now I’m going to ask you again, politely this time. Did you enjoy beating your wife black and blue?”

  The man turned to look at Don Sandro. “Don’t ask the priest for help. Look at me and answer my question!”

  Still, the priest managed to read the look of alarm on Patrizio’s face and hurried over to the bench. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Padre, do me a favor and butt out of this.”

  “Patrizio, tell me what’s happening here.”

  But Patrizio had lowered his head.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on, Don Sandro. This gentleman has spent the last seven long years amusing himself by beating his wife bloody, so b
adly that he sent her to the hospital more than once.”

  The priest’s eyes opened wide: “Is . . . is this true?”

  Patrizio shook his head no.

  “Don’t lie, Patrizio!” From benevolent and blue, Don Sandro’s eyes hardened into a pair of razor-sharp arrowheads. “Not to me. Did you do what the deputy police chief is saying?”

  “It didn’t . . . it didn’t always go that way. Sometimes I . . .” And with that he stopped.

  “Go on. I want to hear. You what?” said Rocco. But Patrizio kept his mouth shut tight. And Rocco went on. “Now I’m going to lay the situation out for you, and you’re going to listen quietly without interrupting, and if you do I’m going to break you in half right here and now, in front of your wife’s grave and your spiritual father.”

  “Please, Dottor Schiavone . . .” the minister of God objected.

  “Don Sandro, you can’t even begin to imagine how hard I’m working to stay calm and collected. And just to put things into terms you’ll find familiar, I think it’s nothing short of miraculous that I’m not blowing my cool entirely and kicking this piece of shit’s ass in. Now then,” Rocco went, steadily raising the volume of his voice. “On Friday morning you beat your wife black and blue. Why, what had you found, some text message on her cell phone? Did you suspect she had a lover?”

  “I didn’t . . .”

  Rocco let fly with the speed of an express train at full velocity; a straight punch knocked Patrizio Baudo’s head around on its gimbals. “I told you not to interrupt me.”

  “Dottor Schiavone!” shouted the priest as the widower put a hand up to the cheek that the deputy police chief’s hand had just stamped, leaving a mark like a decal on window glass. “No interruptions, I believe I just told him. Let’s go on.”

  “Dottor Schiavone, I’m not going to let you—”

  “Padre, stay out of this. This isn’t one of your little lost sheep. This is a vicious coward who’s always gotten away with it. Am I right, Patrizio? Then let me continue, and don’t try to interrupt again. On Friday morning you beat your wife silly, she still had the marks on her face. You went overboard and you killed her.”

  “I told you that—”

  This time it was Rocco’s elbow that smashed into Patrizio Baudo’s cheekbone. The impact snapped the man’s head around 180 degrees and a spurt of blood shot out of his mouth and stained the gravel at the priest’s feet. “Oh sweet Jesus!” he said. “Dottor Schiavone, I’m going to let the authorities know . . .”

  “Silence!” Rocco shouted, with foam on his lips. “Shut the hell up.”

  Italo had come over. What looked like a peaceful conversation, at least from where he’d been standing, was suddenly deteriorating into something terrifying. He knew that he needed to be ready to intervene as needed.

  Deputy Police Chief Schiavone went on talking, calmly, while the widower spat out a mouthful of red saliva. “And all that happened in the kitchen. You strangled her with the tie. The necktie that your wife gave you for your name day. So you decided to stage a suicide. But first you drew the curtains and then—still worried someone might see something, some chance observer, someone from across the street—you actually lowered the wooden roller blinds, and that was your mistake. In part because there’s no one who can see into your windows from across the way. No one lives across from you, hadn’t you ever noticed that? But you were in a hurry, you knew that Irina would be there at ten, you didn’t have much time to think, so you lowered them. Then you went out for a bike ride. If I were to ask you, would you be able to come up with anyone to confirm your alibi? Did anyone see you out riding? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Patrizio said nothing.

  “Now is the time to talk. I asked you a question. Did anyone see you on your bike?”

  The widower shook his head no.

  “Excellent. Then you got rid of the necktie, which was the murder weapon. You went home and you put on the whole charade. You kept your gloves on all morning, you never once took them off. And even when I came to the church to show you the brooch, do you remember? You were still wearing your gloves. Just like you are now. You were afraid to let anyone see your hands. You were afraid to show those hands, hands that had beaten someone. Specifically, your wife, Esther.”

  Patrizio had pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his lip. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill her.”

  Rocco looked at him. He needed to clench his teeth and ball his fists as hard as he could to keep his impulses under control. He stood there, glaring at the man’s jugular. He’d have happily ripped it open with his teeth.

  “Esther and I . . . we fought, it’s true. She . . . she just knows how to make me see red. I swear it, when she acts a certain way I just go blind with rage. She wanted to go away, she wanted to go to live with that bitch, Adalgisa!”

  “Patrizio . . .” said the priest. “Patrizio, I’m begging you. Come back to your senses.”

  “What senses do you want me to come back to?” The koala’s eyes widened, spreading like an inkblot on a sheet of paper. Now those eyes were completely dark and the white seemed to have vanished entirely. “She didn’t understand, Padre. I loved her but she was constantly testing me. Every blessed day. Every day was an ordeal. She’d send texts and then erase them. Who was she texting? I had to know. I was her husband. Jesus Christ on a crutch, did I or did I not have the right to know?”

  The priest raised both hands to his face. Patrizio went on: “Last year, I went and stayed with my mother for two weeks. And do you know what Esther said to me, Padre? Do you want to know? The happiest two weeks of my life! Her exact words. And the same thing with her cell phone. Text after text to that bitch Adalgisa, all of them saying: the happiest two weeks of my life! But still, she wanted money, fine lady that she was. Boy, did she want money! What about me? It was my job to work like a slave to make sure she had a credit card and plenty of cash to pay for her ridiculous whims.”

  “Why didn’t you ever come talk to me about it? Why didn’t you ever say anything?” asked Don Sandro.

  “What could you understand about it, Padre? What do you know about having a wife? Have you ever had any experience in that area?”

  “You’re right, I don’t know anything about having a wife. But I know a little something about the human soul,” Don Sandro replied.

  “All you’ve ever been able to tell me is: confide in Christ. Confide in Christ. But where was Christ for the past seven years? Where was He? Let me tell you where He was, Padre. Somewhere else. And you know when Christ came back? When I punished her. That’s right, that’s when peace returned, let me tell you. And believe me, I’m not ashamed to say it, bending her to my will was the only solution. Even if sometimes that was painful to me.”

  “You were breaking her bones!”

  Patrizio’s bloody smile seemed like a mask of horror. “Sure, that happened once or twice. Maybe even a few times . . . but you see? I might not have meant to, but sometimes all it took was a little bit of force and crack!” He snapped his fingers. “She broke like a twig. Not that I wanted it, but it would just happen . . . she had brittle bones, evidently. I bet if I’d never broken anything, we wouldn’t be here arguing right now, would we?”

  Rocco got to his feet. Patrizio was still talking to the priest, and by now it seemed that there was no way of stopping him. Usually a priest hears confession in secret, Rocco thought to himself. And also, maybe he wasn’t remembering the details exactly, but wasn’t there supposed to be the sign of the cross and some other kind of religious formula before you can start pouring your shit into the priest’s ears?

  “I knew it the whole time, but there always has to be someone at home who gives the orders and someone else who obeys them. And if that means that sometimes I had to resort to physical discipline, well then, Padre, what can I tell you? I resorted to it. Don Sandro, you can’t imagine what it’s like to live with a woman who might decide, from one minute to the next, that she wanted to go out and
do who-knows-what with who-knows-who. I caught her red-handed, you know that? I caught her red-handed with a coworker of mine. In a café. Drinking a granita di caffè. With whipped cream. In February!”

  “You . . . you did this to your wife . . .” said Don Sandro with his eyes fixed on the ground. Patrizio Baudo went on shouting, his teeth stained with blood as hysterical tears rolled down his cheeks. “She’d snicker behind my back every time we went out. Even in church, Don Sandro, even there. One time, you know what she said to me? That it was a pity that you’d become a priest, because it was such a waste of a handsome man. So what’s the explanation? You must have had impure thoughts about my wife, that’s it, isn’t it? Tell the truth!”

  “Patrizio, you need to calm down!”

  “Why, are you saying you wouldn’t have taken a piece of her?”

  Don Sandro’s right hand shot out with an astonishing agility and left a bright red mark on Patrizio’s cheek.

  “Padre,” Rocco said. “Please. Control yourself.”

  Don Sandro was having difficulty breathing and he kept his eyes glued on Patrizio Baudo’s face. The hand that had slapped him was bright red. “What have I done . . .” said the man of God, “what have I done . . .”

  Rocco glanced at Italo, who was standing a few yards away from the bench. The officer read an unequivocal message in his boss’s glance. So he stepped toward Patrizio Baudo while pulling a pair of handcuffs out of their case.

  “But afterward, Esther understood!” Baudo was whispering to Don Sandro as Italo fastened up the cuffs around his wrists. “She’d understand and ask me to forgive her. And if I did what I did to her, it was out of an overabundance of love. That’s right, it might seem hard to believe, but it’s true.”

  With a mighty yank Italo tried to drag Patrizio away from the bench and guide him, handcuffed, toward the car. But he went on talking. “And then she’d understand, Padre, you hear me? And she’d come to bed with me. And she’d be sweeter and more womanly than ever before. Why didn’t she ever report me to the police? Eh? Answer me that, why not? You tell me why, Dottor Schiavone. Did you ever see her at police headquarters?”