Poisonville

by Massimo Carlotto

  I did what I presumed her lover must have done, and parked my car in the parallel side street. Dogs barked as I walked past, but no one paid any attention. I opened the garden gate and walked up to the front door. I broke the seals of the district attorney’s office, and I pulled my set of keys out of my overcoat pocket. I still had my keys because the detectives hadn’t gotten around to confiscating them from me yet. A few seconds later, I was in the house. I made sure that the shutters were tightly fastened, and turned on the light.

  I was torn between two emotions: sheer terror at the idea of being caught, and pure determination to find any evidence that would provide me with her lover’s identity. The house was a mess, after the going-over that the Carabinieri had given it. There were splotches and smears of grey fingerprint powder everywhere. I found nothing. Finally, I gathered my courage and walked into the bedroom. I wanted to find out the truth about something that had been tormenting me from the moment I had discovered that my fiancée had a lover. What I was about to do was absolutely necessary: unless I resolved this, it would become an obsession. I swung open the twin doors of the large armoire and began rummaging through the drawers. I found my hands filled with Giovanna’s lingerie; my fingers explored the light silky objects. I had purchased almost every item for her, in costly boutiques, in cities that were of course far away from our hometown. I had always been a lover of fine underthings. And Giovanna responded to this fantasy of mine. I liked watching her as she slowly undressed, removing her silk thigh-highs and her bra, and then slipping under the sheets next to me with nothing on but her panties. She wanted me to slip them off her, down her legs, but only at the last moment. In the days since the murder I had often wondered if she had offered herself to her lover wearing “my” lingerie. As I rummaged through the armoire, I hoped I would find different lingerie. And fortunately, one drawer yielded up the hoped-for trove of ordinary, unremarkable underthings. I felt a tremendous sense of relief. Giovanna might have betrayed me, but at least she had made sure to protect our little secret. Giovanna did love me after all.

  I heard a muffled noise from downstairs. I immediately turned off the light and looked down over the railing. I was certain that it was the Carabinieri, and I racked my brain to come up with a plausible excuse. Then the cone of light from a flashlight illuminated the floor.

  He came in the back door, I thought. In a split second I came to the conclusion that it must be the killer, and I hurtled down the stairs.

  He heard me coming and pointed the flashlight straight into my eyes. A roar issued from my chest, and I lunged at him. We tumbled to the ground. I was shouting as I tried to hit him. He defended himself by clubbing me in the throat with his flashlight. It was a lucky blow, and it left me gasping.

  He took advantage of my helplessness to get to his feet and shine the flashlight on me. I could hear him panting. I was trying to gather my strength to attack him again. He wouldn’t get away from me.

  The cone of light swiveled around, and I suddenly found myself looking at a drawn, creased face, framed by long dirty grey hair, pulled into a ponytail with a rubber band.

  “It’s me, Alvise Barovier,” he said. “Giovanna’s father.”

  My father invited me over to his house for dinner. He only did that when he had something important to tell me. Otherwise, we’d meet at Nevio, his favorite restaurant, a short distance from his law firm. It used to be a country inn, without any furnishings to speak of but with incredible cooking. The food was still first class, but an architect had transformed it into a horrible deluxe restaurant, with walls painted Venetian pink, and tables and chairs in the Parisian brasserie style. Papa’s cook was good, too.

  “Tagliolini in hot broth, assorted boiled meat with a side dish of peas and potato purée,” the butler announced as he set the tureen on the table. “Nothing could be better when it’s this cold.”

  Papa asked him to open a bottle of Merlot. It was from Selvaggia’s wine cellars. The Conte Giannino, earlier than all the others, had grasped the potential of Venetian wines at a time when most of the local farmers produced low-quality vintages. He had hired a famous Piedmontese enologist. In just a few years’ time his vineyard had established a national reputation for itself, and his wines were being praised in trade magazines. After his death, the Contessa had ignored the wine business, leaving all the details to the enologist and to Filippo, who wanted to carry on his father’s work. Filippo had been very fond of his father.

  “I talked to the district attorney,” Papa announced, as he poured me a glass of wine. “He assured me that he will personally keep an eye on the investigation, though he’s not going to replace Zan.”

  “Is that all?” I blurted out in disappointment.

  “Zan will do his duty. Marchesin is a tough old nut, and he’ll keep me posted on progress, so we can offer suggestions, too.”

  “I would have preferred a more talented prosecutor.”

  “That’s the best I could do,” he defended himself. “Problems with the internal workings of the local magistrature—these are problems we have to deal with on a daily basis in court.”

  “Mele hinted to me that he needs a longer leash, more freedom to take initiatives of his own.”

  He nodded his head. “Understood. I’ll pass the message on to Marchesin.”

  I changed the subject. “Did Giovanna ever talk to you about her father’s trial?”

  “No. And I was glad to avoid the subject. That whole matter caused Giovanna a lot of pain, and I didn’t want to open old wounds.”

  “She was certain that her father was innocent.”

  Papa looked at me in surprise. “Really? She told you so?”

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  “I understand. Alvise was her father, but I was his defense lawyer and, unfortunately, I have to say that his guilt was unmistakable. He was loaded down with debt, the bank had turned off the faucets, and so he set fire to the furniture factory in order to lay his hands on the insurance money. As a result, the watchman and his wife were burned alive . . .”

  “What was his defense?”

  “The worst imaginable. He supplied a false alibi and forced me to put forward the theory of a plot carried out against him by mysterious enemies. With no evidence, without a single name. It was just pitiful. I took his case only because we were childhood friends and we had grown up together.”

  “What was he like?”

  He shrugged. “A whoremonger and a gambler. In his personal life and in business. Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to put together the pieces of Giovanna’s life. I’m trying to understand her. At the time, I was in boarding school, I didn’t know what was happening. Maybe I’ve missed something important.”

  My father spooned a little horseradish sauce onto the breast of chicken on his plate. He sighed. “I’m worried about you, Francesco,” he said. “You need to find the strength to strike back. Think of your future instead of torturing yourself like this.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “I know that. That’s why it’s important for you to come to work in the law firm as soon as possible.” He cut a forkful of chicken and raised it to his mouth, studying my reaction as he did so. There was no reaction. “I shouldn’t talk about it yet, but you are a future partner in the firm, as well as my son . . .” he continued in the voice he used in court to capture the attention of the court. “The Torrefranchi Foundation has decided to move the entire group out of the country. We are preparing an industrial site just outside of Timisoara, in Romania. All that will remain here are a few operations that are either distinctly local or very prestigious, like the wine production.”

  I gaped at him in astonishment. Papa had certainly succeeded in capturing my full and undivided attention. For the past year he had traveled frequently to Romania. He had told me that he was keeping track of cases for a few different clients. What
he was really doing was organizing the wholesale transfer of the Foundation.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The group is no longer competitive. High operating costs and too little investment in technological research and development. The Chinese are eating our lunch on a daily basis,” he answered.

  “What about the law firm?”

  He smiled with satisfaction. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. In the early days, I’m going to have to spend a substantial part of my time in Timisoara, and I need someone to run the law firm while I’m gone.” He pointed his fork at me. “I was planning to tell you about it when you got back from your honeymoon.”

  Just a few days earlier, I would have been overjoyed, but now I felt empty and listless. I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Papa.”

  He wasn’t giving up. “In two days I’m leaving for Timisoara. Why don’t you come with me? A change of scenery would do you good.”

  I laid the fork and knife down on my plate. The time had come to say something important. “Before I take on something like that, I have to find out who killed Giovanna. I don’t think I can go on living and working in this town without that knowledge. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  Papa nodded, seriously. “Understood. If that’s how you feel about it, take all the time you need.”

  As soon as it was dark, I got into my car and drove until I turned down a dirt road. I pulled up outside an old mansion that was in ruins. Alvise Barovier stood in the open front door, smoking as he leaned against the jamb. He looked like a hobo. I followed him inside. He led me to a large room that must once have been a drawing room. Now it was decorated with a sofa that was shedding all its stuffing from various lacerations, sitting in front of a fireplace in which a fire burned merrily. He pointed to the sofa. I shook my head no. I didn’t like him. The night before, after our tussle in Giovanna’s house, he had jabbered out a disjointed story, most of which I had failed to understand. He had begged me to tell no one that he was in town. He promised to tell me everything, the next day. And now here I was, in that hovel, ready to listen.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” he said uncomfortably.

  “Why are you hiding? Why didn’t you come to Giovanna’s funeral?” I bore in on him harshly.

  He threw more wood on the fire. “I don’t want anyone to see me until I’ve uncovered the truth.”

  “Really,” I replied ironically.

  He looked hard at me. “Sit down, boy,” he ordered. “I have a long story to tell you.”

  After he was released from prison, Alvise Barovier couldn’t come back to town. The guilty verdict and jail sentence had ruined him. Everyone had abandoned him. His relatives and the friends with whom he had sipped thousands of aperitifs, with whom he had played soccer as a boy, had all turned their backs. Even Prunella refused to so much as see him after his arrest. Only Giovanna had always believed in his innocence, but she was only a little girl. There was nothing she could do to help him. After traveling around Europe, he arrived in Argentina, like an Italian emigrant in the late nineteenth century. He had found work in a vineyard, near the city of Mendoza. The vineyard was owned by a family of Venetian origin. Over all those years, he stayed in sporadic contact with his daughter. The occasional Christmas card mailed in secret. Prunella refused to allow his name to be spoken under her roof. About six months earlier, he had received a phone call from Giovanna informing him that she had discovered the truth about the fire in the furniture factory. She had refused to say more, but his daughter was overjoyed. “They’ll pay for what they did,” she had said before hanging up. They had spoken on other occasions, and each time Giovanna was more confident and more determined. She had found proof that it was a plot, just as he had always claimed. Then, suddenly, she had stopped calling, and when he called her, Giovanna had been evasive. She had asked him to be patient. When the time was ripe, she’d get in touch with him. Instead, she had never called or written him again. And so he decided to return home, to discover the reason for her odd behavior. But the very same night he came back to town, Giovanna had been murdered.

  “They wanted to keep her from talking,” he said when he was done, his eyes swollen with tears.

  “Giovanna was murdered by her lover, after a sexual encounter. That’s the only truth. The sperm they found in her body proves it,” I shot back in an unpleasant tone of voice.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “No,” I replied decisively. “And there was never any plot. You were guilty as hell.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “My father told me. He also told me that you were a whoremonger and a gambler.”

  He smiled bitterly. “Good old Antonio. He never really tried to win my case. He was even embarrassed to be my defense lawyer.”

  “Your case was a lost cause from the outset. If you had just confessed, the court would have gone easy on you.”

  He seized the lapels of my coat. “I never did a thing. I’m innocent, do you hear me?”

  I grabbed his wrists, freed myself from his grip, and stood up. “Don’t get worked up. I don’t care either way,” I said flatly. “But I do want to know one thing: did Giovanna ever tell you she was getting married?”

  “No.”

  “That’s strange too, don’t you think? She calls you repeatedly, but she never provides you with a single piece of evidence from the investigation to clear your name, and she even forgets to tell you that she was about to get married.”

  He shook his head dejectedly. “That’s how it went.”

  “Go to the cemetery and put a flower on your daughter’s grave. And show your face around town, nobody cares about that old story anymore. It doesn’t make any sense for you to keep hiding, living like a hobo.”

  A nervous giggle issued from his chest. “I am a hobo. I can’t be anything but a hobo here.”

  I turned and walked to the door. “I need your help,” he begged. “I can’t uncover the truth by myself.”

  I didn’t even bother to answer. That man was just pathetic.

  I went to Prunella’s house. I hadn’t found anything at the law firm or in Giovanna’s house. Now I wanted to try Giovanna’s old room in her mother’s house. The investigators hadn’t searched there yet. Maybe Zan didn’t want to cause Prunella any new pain by searching her house. Or, more likely, he hadn’t thought of it yet. I hoped she would be alone. I was lucky. She came to the door wearing a pair of old rubber gloves.

  “I’m cleaning the silver,” she explained.

  On the kitchen table were a couple of pieces from an antique set of silverware. I wondered where the rest of the silver had gone. The radio was turned up high, and was tuned to the religious broadcaster, Radio Maria. “I was wondering if I could take a look at Giovanna’s room,” I said, “maybe there’s something in there I’d like as a keepsake . . .”

  “Sure, go right ahead.”

  It was still the room of an eighties teenager, with a few souvenirs from childhood. Her favorite doll and her old posters. There were no photographs of Alvise. I plunged into the netherworld of old memories, and I started poking around with a melancholy curiosity. On the desk was her digital camera. I turned it on, and the first image that appeared on the little screen showed Giovanna and me, smiling, wrapped in an embrace. A weekend in Paris, I recalled. I switched the camera off with a sigh, and I started pulling open drawers. I immediately found the file of documents from her father’s trial. As I leafed through it, I realized that Giovanna had scribbled comments on various pages and had underlined certain names. In particular, she had underlined the name of Giacomo Zuglio, frequently, with a blue pencil. I was surprised. Giovanna shut herself up in that room to study the record of the trial. A lengthy and meticulous study, to judge from her notes. On the last page of the file I found a yellow sticky note: “Test samples. Remind Carla.”
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br />   I slipped the digital camera into my pocket and the file under my arm. I couldn’t wait to read it.

  Carla Pisani lived in a recently built apartment house on the edge of town, a hundred yards from the railroad tracks. Not far off was the industrial area that had been built a dozen years ago. The one that sprang up after the war was in the opposite direction, by the river. It was nine in the morning on a Sunday, and I was sure that I would find her at thome. The architect had clearly meant to make the three-story apartment building resemble an old granary, newly renovated. The dish antennas on the roof, however, gave quite a different impression. As I walked up to the front door, I met a young woman pushing a stroller. The child swathed in a red down playsuit waved hello to me with one little hand.

  The mother recognized me immediately. “I used to see your fiancée here often,” she said. “She would come to see Carla. I’m sorry about what happened.”

  I gave her the standard sad smile. I no longer had the patience to listen to useless chatter.

  “Carla’s not in,” she told me. “I saw her leave ten minutes ago, on her bicycle.”

  “You don’t know where she went, do you?”

  “She generally goes out for breakfast at the café, and to buy the morning newspapers. She should be back soon.”

  I got back in my car and drove around, looking for her. I saw her bicycle leaning against the wall of an old building that housed a latteria, a milk bar. Actually, the latteria was long gone. All that remained was the sign. Now it was an absolutely standard Italian small-town café and tobacco shop, and most of the customers were factory workers from the adjoining industrial area. When I was a boy, I used to come to this latteria often during the summer. The woman who ran the place made excellent fruit frappes. My favorite was the sour black cherry frappe. I parked outside and went in. Aside from a couple of drunks who were sipping their first shot of hard liquor, the only customer was Carla. She was seated at a little café table, reading the newspaper. The barista stepped around from behind the counter to serve her a cappuccino and a pastry.