Death and the Olive Grove

by Marco Vichi

  He woke up past eight, heavy headed. He shaved in a hurry and went out. The sky was still full of clouds, but it wasn’t raining. He went on foot to buy matches, as usual passing through the streets where he had played as a child. He remembered that period well. The games they played were never peaceful; they were harsh tests of courage, wild, dangerous challenges, slingshot battles, and often one of them ended up at the Misericordia to get stitched up. Nothing had changed in those streets since then; the atmosphere was the same as when he used to set out on his bicycle from the distant Cure to come to these narrow streets full of mystery and misery. Walking through Piazza Piattellina, he turned to look at the wall where four little pricks from Ponte di Mezzo had once smashed Natalino’s face. It was as if he could still see the stain on the stones. They left him on the ground half dead, blood pouring out of his nose. Natalino had ended up spending several weeks in hospital. The doctors had put his face back together as best they could, but his features were never quite the same after that. After he recovered, he went to take revenge, and somebody nearly got killed. All this over a girl …

  The inspector passed in front of a closed metal shutter covered with rust and slowed his pace, head full of memories. This used to be the shop of the Captain’s Wife, the tobacco lady who in the early days of Fascism had lived in Africa. He remembered her well. She had rotten teeth, and when she laughed it was a horrific sight. Her shop was always filled with the fog of a thousand cigarettes. She sold everything imaginable, and very rarely sent a customer away unsatisfied. She was the only person who ever went into the back room, and she always returned with the right thing. She died before the war. The shop was shut down and had never reopened. The Captain’s Wife had no relatives. Her only companion was Gertrude, a furious little monkey that used to run about the shop with its teeth bared, terrifying customers. When the old woman died, it was given to a circus passing through.

  He bought matches in Piazza Tasso and went back to get his Beetle. He was in a bad mood. He drove along looking at people’s faces, trying to imagine who they were and what sort of lives they led, to keep his head uncluttered for a bit. But the same ugly stories kept coming back to him.

  He crossed the Arno and in Piazza Santa Trinita saw a man who made him start. He slowed down to have a better look. It was indeed him, the stranger who had punched him in the liver in the olive grove at Fiesole. He had come out of a side street and turned down Via Tornabuoni. He looked to be in a big hurry and was taller than Bordelli remembered. Well dressed, but not wearing a tie. If he had seen him only from behind he might not have recognised him, but the face was unmistakable. A face with heavy features, covered with wrinkles and as though marked by an ineradicable horror that emanated mostly from the eyes.

  Bordelli accelerated, turned on to Via della Vigna Nova and parked the car with two wheels on the pavement. He got out in a hurry and walked back to the corner of Via Tornabuoni. He waited for the guy to pass and then fell in behind him. The man was walking serenely, without turning round. He seemed not to have noticed anything. He turned onto Via de’ Giacomini, walked its entire length, then turned right on to Via delle Belle Donne and, after another thirty yards, slipped into a doorway, having opened the great door with a key. As soon as he saw him disappear inside, Bordelli sprinted for the door, but got there too late, finding it locked again. There were five buzzers outside the door. He rang one at random, pressing several times, but nobody answered. He then tried another, at the bottom, and a few seconds later heard the door click open. Climbing the stairs in a rush, on the first-floor landing he found a very old woman waiting for him in her doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry, signora … Did a man enter your home just a few moments ago?’ asked Bordelli, approaching her.

  ‘And who are you, may I ask?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?’ she cried, taking a step back.

  ‘Please remain calm, nothing is happening.’

  ‘Is there a criminal in the building?’

  ‘Lock yourself inside and don’t worry,’ said Bordelli, leaving her to chew on her fear and heading upstairs. There was only one apartment per landing. The second-floor flat had no name on the door. He rang the bell and heard footsteps approach. The peephole darkened for a couple of seconds, and then the door opened and Bordelli found the person he would least have expected to see standing before him.

  ‘Hello, Inspector … You’re still an inspector, aren’t you?’ said the man, smiling tensely.

  ‘Dr Levi! What are you doing in Italy?’ On top of his surprise, Bordelli felt delighted to see this intelligent man after fifteen years. He hadn’t changed in the least … He had the same skin tightly pulled over the bones, the same hard eyes, even when laughing. He was rather short, but his gaze added another six inches to his stature.

  ‘Please come in, Inspector, I’ll get you something to drink,’ the doctor said, standing aside. Bordelli entered, and Levi led him down a corridor of closed doors.

  ‘To what do I owe your lack of surprise, Dr Levi?’ Bordelli asked.

  ‘After my holiday in Poland, I don’t think there’s much left that can surprise me, Inspector.’

  Levi had spent over a year in a concentration camp, and a painful smile remained forever etched on his face as a sort of suspension of judgement of humanity.

  They entered a rather large room. There were two sofas with a small, low table between them, a desk covered with closed portfolios, a filing cabinet with many identical drawers, and a glass-fronted cupboard full of bottles. Bordelli rifled through all his pockets in search of cigarettes, but couldn’t find any.

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t expecting me, Dr Levi?’ he said.

  ‘You are always welcome here.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my previous question … how is it you’re in Italy?’

  ‘I live here, didn’t you know?’

  ‘I have to confess I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t answer me, either. Are you still an inspector?’

  ‘More or less.’ Bordelli at last found the cigarettes, but the packet was empty. He crumpled it up and put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Would you like one of these?’ said Levi, holding out a cigarette box for him.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Levi also took one, and they lit up. Bordelli looked around. He couldn’t tell whether the room was an office or a drawing room.

  ‘Are you still involved with that stuff, Levi?’

  ‘Water under the bridge. I’m retired now.’

  Levi had worn the white-and-blue striped pyjamas from January 1944 until the fall of the Third Reich. When the Russians found him, he weighed less than five stone. It had taken him more than six months to get back on his feet, but he had recovered rather nicely. In ’47 he became a member of the White Dove, an organisation founded after the war, secretly financed by Zionists and headed by the tenacious Simon Wiesenthal. The task of the Dove was to hunt down to the far corners of the world those Nazis who had escaped trial at Nuremberg. They had headquarters on every continent, the fugitives having spread across the globe with the help of ODESSA, an organisation financed by German industrialists to help Nazi chiefs hide while they waited for the utopian recapture of power by survivors of the NSDAP.

  Every detachment of the White Dove had the authorisation to involve, in their area of operation, anyone they deemed necessary to their ends, obviously taking maximum care to vet the persons in question as thoroughly as possible. In ‘48 Bordelli had caught the eye of the organisation’s Italian chapter, owing primarily to his anti-Nazi past, and it had been Levi’s job to contact him. He had explained to Bordelli what they were about, and the inspector had agreed to work with the Dove without a second thought, happy to keep on fighting Hitler’s followers. At the time the organisation was working on the case of Dr Christopher Mong and his wife Elfi, who had disappeared from Berlin one month before the Führer committed suicide. Möng, like his counterpart Mengele, had worked on huma
n guinea pigs in a variety of Polish camps, and Elfi, like a good wife, had stayed by his side, preparing cotton wads, passing him surgical instruments, compiling dossiers, numbering corpses, washing the blood away from the laboratory. They conducted every conceivable kind of experiment, all as useless as they were cruel, and their notes were a catalogue of monstrosities. Reliable intelligence had located them in Italy as of late 1946. All that remained was to discover their new identities and perhaps their new faces. Bordelli had studied secret archives and documents, looked at never-released photographs and films. The research was slow and arduous, but the eventual satisfaction was great. Bordelli was fifteen years younger back then and felt that he was working for the good of humanity. A few months later, Möng and his wife were tracked down in a farmhouse in the Po Valley and executed by the White Dove. Bordelli received a word of thanks, and Levi left for Uruguay, where it seemed there was a veritable colony of Nazis.

  ‘Have you found any other bigwigs since Eichmann?’ Bordelli asked.

  ‘What would you like to drink, Inspector?’

  ‘Do you have any news of Mengele?’

  ‘What can I get for you?’

  ‘A cognac’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘There are people who do even stranger things,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘I don’t doubt it … Have any preferences?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like some de Maricourt.’

  Levi’s face tensed for a fraction of a second, as if from a jolt of electricity. Then he smiled.

  ‘I don’t know it. Would you be content with a Hennessy?’

  ‘We all have to suffer.’

  Levi went and got a bottle and two beautiful glasses from the cupboard, sat down in the armchair, and poured the cognac.

  ‘So, Inspector, what do you have to tell me?’ Levi asked with a friendly smile. Bordelli took a sip of Hennessy and felt a wave of warmth over his whole body. Levi wasn’t drinking. He had left his full glass on the table, looking over at it from time to time.

  ‘The man I saw enter this building was coming to your place, wasn’t he?’ Bordelli asked.

  ‘Why were you following him?’

  ‘Tell me first who he is.’

  ‘Aaron Goldberg, a dear friend of mine.’

  ‘Well, a few nights ago your dear friend put my liver to the test,’ said Bordelli, miming a punch.

  ‘So it was you,’ said Levi, looking rather amused. Bordelli took another sip of cognac. It was excellent, even first thing in the morning.

  ‘You’re not drinking, Dr Levi?’

  ‘At this hour I’m content with the aroma. I’m rather attached to my liver.’

  ‘Well, then, I advise you not to stroll through the countryside at night,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  There was a hint of tension in the air, but neither of the two would ever have admitted it.

  ‘Tell me, Dr Levi, what was your friend Aaron doing in such a place at one o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘You were there, too, Inspector.’

  ‘Be nice, Levi, tell me everything … Is it some job for the Dove?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Levi looked him straight in the eye for a few seconds, smiling coldly, then heaved a sigh of resignation.

  ‘All right, but you must swear not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Goldberg had gone to dig up some documents.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Personal letters of Himmler and Goebbels.’

  ‘Who buried them?’

  ‘One of ours, when things got difficult. And now the time has come to bring them back into the light of day. They are of great historical importance,’ said Levi, smiling faintly.

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Everything clear now?’

  ‘So, in short, you’re still working for the Dove …’

  ‘As I said, I’m retired now. I just do odd jobs now and then, when they ask.’

  Bordelli took a long draught of cognac and shook his head.

  ‘I must say I would have expected better of you, Dr Levi.’

  ‘Is the cognac not very good?’ said Levi, with an air of concern.

  ‘I was one of yours, Levi. I worked with your people on Möng, I personally met Wiesenthal …’

  ‘Let’s not dig up the past, Bordelli, there’s no point, for any of us.’

  ‘Then let’s talk about now … Why are you feeding me all this bullshit?’

  ‘Because it’s the pure and simple truth.’

  They exchanged an intense glance, as if wanting to tell each other something. Then Bordelli smiled.

  ‘All right, then, let’s drop it. Is your friend Goldberg at home?’

  ‘He’s here.’

  ‘I’d like to shake his hand. Would that be possible?’

  ‘If it really means that much to you …’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Goldberg!’ Levi called in a low voice. A few seconds later a door opened, and Aaron’s face peered in. Levi gestured to him to come, and the man entered the room. Seen indoors, he looked even taller. He didn’t seem terribly surprised to find before him the man he had floored in the olive grove.

  ‘Let me introduce to you Inspector Bordelli,’ said Levi. The inspector stood up and went up to the beast, smiling.

  ‘My dear Goldberg, so pleased to meet you,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry about the other night,’ Goldberg said in a strong foreign accent, without changing expression. From up close his eyes looked like two holes burrowing all the way through his brain.

  ‘I’ve already forgotten about it,’ said Bordelli, but instead of shaking the man’s hand, he sucker-punched him in the liver. Goldberg brought his hand to his side without so much as a groan. He seemed to be having a little trouble breathing, and his face had turned a sickly white. Bordelli rubbed his closed fist with his other hand, marvelling at the silence of the other’s suffering.

  ‘I just wanted to communicate my admiration for you, Goldberg. I worked for your people in ’48 and it was a real pleasure, believe me.’

  Goldberg slowly recovered his wits and glanced over at Levi to know what he should do.

  ‘Go now, Goldberg, we’ll talk about it later.’

  Goldberg left the room with a hand over his liver, without saying a word. The inspector sat back down on the sofa and picked up his glass of cognac.

  ‘Your friend wasn’t offended, I hope?’ he said.

  ‘Are you satisfied now, Inspector?’ Levi’s tone of voice was exactly the same as before, without the slightest modulation.

  ‘He’s a dear friend of yours, and yet you both use the formal address,’ Bordelli observed.

  ‘It’s an old habit.’

  ‘Dr Levi, I’m the first to admit I’m a bit dim witted, but don’t expect me to believe your story about buried documents. It makes me feel upset.’

  ‘If you don’t want to believe it, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘You could tell me what is actually going on, for example.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you were doing in that place at one o’clock in the morning …’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Just curious,’ Levi said serenely.

  ‘I was stargazing.’

  ‘And I believe you, Inspector,’ Levi said, smiling.

  Bordelli’s thoughts kept returning to the man with the black mark on his neck, but he decided not to mention this to Levi. He wanted Levi to think he knew nothing at all about anything.

  ‘All right, then we’ve said all we’re going to say to each other,’ he said.

  ‘It was a pleasure to see you again, Inspector,’ said Levi, standing up.

  ‘But you didn’t drink with me,’ said Bordelli, remaining seated. Levi’s cognac had remained on the table the whole time, abandoned.

  ‘Come and see me some time in the evening, Inspector, and I’ll gladly d
rink with you.’

  When he’d reached the door, Bordelli turned round.

  ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, Levi … Tell me the truth. It could help me to get to the bottom of something of great importance to me.’ He was thinking of Casimiro.

  ‘I’ve told you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ Levi said, smiling.

  ‘I’ll return the favour some time,’ said Bordelli. He already had his hand on the doorknob when, behind Levi, there appeared a dark, beautiful girl with a mass of hair tied behind her head.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bordelli, holding out his hand. She had two dark eyes as intense as a panther’s. She looked to be about twenty-five, and he liked her at once, in a way that he hadn’t felt for a long time. A bit like Piras with the Sicilian girl.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Milena,’ said the girl.

  ‘Inspector Bordelli.’

  They shook hands, and Bordelli imagined to himself that Milena had squeezed his fingers in a very special way. Levi forced a smile.

  ‘I won’t keep you, Inspector, I know you’re very busy,’ he said.

  ‘See you again some time,’ Milena said with a smile, and she walked away, followed by Bordelli’s gaze. Levi went up to the inspector, so close he could almost touch him.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone what you’ve learned,’ he whispered with an ironic gleam in his eye.

  ‘You can sleep easy; I don’t feel like being laughed at.’

  ‘I knew I could trust you, Inspector,’ the Nazi hunter said with a cold smile.

  ‘See you soon, Dr Levi. I always come back to see people I like.’

  ‘Come whenever you wish, it’s always a pleasure.’

  Bordelli waved goodbye one last time and headed slowly down the stairs. He descended the first flight, then the second, and only then did he hear Levi’s door close. When he reached the first-floor landing, he stopped, waited for the light in the stairwell to go out, and then went quietly back up to the second floor. Approaching Levi’s door, he put his ear up against it. He heard a door slam inside, then Levi’s angry voice. A few clipped sentences, like tiny explosions. He was speaking Hebrew. There was the sound of another door slamming, then nothing. Bordelli waited a little longer, ear pressed against the door. A good minute went by. In the silence he heard Levi’s voice call Goldberg again. The tone was less aggressive, but more worried. Bordelli heard them walking fast and speaking intensely to one another. When they came towards the door, they suddenly lowered their voices to a whisper. The inspector ran and hid himself round a corner wall to avoid being seen through the peephole, and one second later the light in the stairwell came on. As Bordelli had expected, the two had looked out the window to see when he exited the building, perhaps with no real reason to do so, as one sometimes does after a visit from an unwanted guest. When they didn’t see him leave, they had grown alarmed. Bordelli had played this little game merely to find out whether Levi was indeed concerned about the unexpected visit, and now he no longer had any doubt. He didn’t believe that story about the buried documents for a minute. Obviously something much bigger was at stake.