Death in Sardinia

by Marco Vichi

  ‘You haven’t drunk your coffee,’ said Bordelli. The youth was staring avidly at the rain-battered landscape.

  ‘The game is over, Inspector. Now you can go back to being a policeman.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Bordelli.

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’ Bordelli got up and went over to him, stopping behind him.

  ‘For a game to be over, all the players have to be in agreement,’ he said. Odoardo turned to look at him. He had dark circles round his eyes.

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Stop playing dumb. You already know,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘But I don’t understand why.’

  ‘Because it’s the last day of the year.’

  ‘Ah …’ said the lad, and he turned to face the window again.

  ‘There’s one question I can’t answer. Why, when your friend realised I was about to discover the truth, didn’t he run away?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t give a shit about going to jail, he only wanted to know the truth about his mother.’

  ‘Well, now he knows everything. Next time you see him, give him my regards.’

  ‘What about those photographs?’

  ‘They’ll just rot inside a file in the court archives,’ Bordelli lied. He planned to burn them, along with the promissory notes.

  ‘Will you be back, Inspector?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Bordelli. He took out the ring the non-existent Ciro had given to Rosaria and dropped it on the table.

  ‘Don’t forget to give this to your friend,’ he said. Odoardo turned around for a second, to look at the ring.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, then turned round again.

  Bordelli headed for the stairs, lighting his umpteeth cigarette. It wasn’t yet two o’clock, and he’d already lost count of how many he’d smoked. He would have an easier time of it the next day. As he descended the stairs, he felt light, as if relieved of a burden. He went out, closing the door behind him. It was raining cats and dogs. The Beetle was almost hidden by the curtain of water. He pulled his trench coat tightly around him and, paying no mind to the rain, walked out from under the loggia and towards the car.

  Just before supper, Piras told his mother he was going out for a minute, and headed for the door without his crutches.

  ‘Nino! You’re walking!’ his mother said, hand over her mouth.

  ‘I used to walk before, too, Mamma.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not dangerous?’ Maria asked, running up behind him.

  ‘I’m taking it slowly, don’t worry.’

  ‘Where are you going at this hour?’

  ‘To say hello to Pina and Giovanni.’

  ‘Ask them if they want to come and watch the television later.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And don’t be late for supper. You know your father gets upset,’ said Maria.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the shed.’

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ said Piras. He went out of the house and walked slowly towards the Setzus’ front door. It was the first time he’d gone outside without crutches. He’d been wanting all afternoon to tell Pina what had happened, and in the end he’d made up his mind. She still knew nothing about it, Giovanni likewise. Pintus had appeared in the local newspaper, but they didn’t know how to read, and talk of the arrest hadn’t yet reached their ears. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Piras wanted Pina to start the new year thinking that Benigno was in heaven, enjoying the view in the company of angels.

  ‘Ciao, Pina.’

  ‘Nino, you’re cured! Come in.’ They went into the kitchen. Giovanni was there, too, sitting in his chair.

  ‘You’ve chucked your sticks,’ he said. A pot of polenta hung from a chain over the fire. Pina took a bottle of wine and filled three glasses.

  ‘Would you like a biscuit, Nino?’ she asked.

  ‘No thanks, Pina. Mamma asked if you want to come and watch television later.’

  ‘What’s showing?’ Giovanni asked.

  ‘There’s Mina at ten o’clock, then they’re going to replay the best things of the year … It’s supposed to last until past midnight.’

  ‘All right,’ said Pina.

  ‘Actually I came here because … I have something to tell you,’ said Piras.

  ‘What?’ asked Pina, alarmed. It was as if she already understood.

  ‘Don’t get upset … I just wanted you to know before the new year …’ said Piras, at a loss for words.

  ‘About Benigno?’ asked Pina.

  ‘Maybe … He didn’t kill himself …’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Pina, crossing herself.

  ‘So what happened, then?’ asked Giovanni, who didn’t quite understand.

  ‘He was murdered,’ said Piras.

  ‘By who?’ asked Pina, squeezing her glass.

  ‘Almost certainly by the Fascist who was about to shoot him in ’43.’

  ‘Santa Bonacatu!’ Pina cried, crossing herself again. Piras briefly told them everything that had happened. Pina and Giovanni listened to him dumbfounded.

  ‘… and they broadcast Pintus’s photo on the TV news, but so far nobody has called in. I’m convinced he’s the one. There are too many coincidences. But since there aren’t any photographs of that Fascist, nobody can prove it,’ Piras said in conclusion.

  ‘Benigno once drew us a picture of him,’ Pina said, frowning.

  ‘Where?’ asked Piras.

  ‘Right here. He was here with us, and he drew us a picture of him. Remember, Giovanni?’

  ‘Yes … Wha’d you do with it?’ asked Giovanni.

  ‘I put it away somewhere ‘cause I didn’t want to see it. It scared me,’ said Pina, eyes wet with tears. Piras stood up.

  ‘So you’ve still got it?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Pina.

  ‘Well, please try to find it.’

  Pina wiped her face and went off in search of the drawing. Piras stayed in the kitchen with Giovanni. The fire was consuming a big olive branch. It would take a long time to reduce it to ash, but it would succeed in the end. Pina returned a few minutes later, holding a page torn from a notebook. She handed it to Piras as if it were burning.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Piras.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Pina, crossing herself again.

  ‘Though I have my doubts whether a drawing like this would hold up in court,’ said Piras, perplexed. All the same, he folded up the drawing and put it in his pocket.

  ‘I have to go home to eat, or Dad’ll get upset,’ he said. Pina walked him to the door, put her hands on his shoulders, pulled him down to her level and kissed him on the forehead.

  ‘I told you Nino wouldn’t go to hell,’ she whispered. Piras gave a hint of a smile and left. When he got home, Gavino was already sitting at the table. The evening news report had begun some time before.

  ‘What smells so good?’ asked Piras. The aroma suggested rabbit and potatoes.

  ‘Why are you never here when we sit down to eat?’ asked Gavino.

  ‘Don’t start …’ Maria said to her husband. She put the pan on the table and started filling their plates. Rabbit and potatoes. When Carosello began, all three of them started watching. When Calimero appeared, Maria stopped eating and watched the skit to the very end. It was her favourite. Pietrino liked the animated puppet of Lagostina best … Gavino, for his part, was waiting for the women, who were always beautiful on TV.

  When Carosello ended, President Saragat appeared and gave his year-end speech to the nation … Unemployment, Vietnam, European unity, disarmament, NATO … High rate of production, wider distribution of wealth … The twentieth anniversary of the end of the war in Europe …

  ‘And to every one of you and your families, I wish peace and prosperity and the brightest of futures.’

  After supper the Setzus arrived, and they all sat down to watch Disney cartoons. Pina’s eyes were wet, but she seemed more serene. Her Benigno was
in heaven. Around ten o’clock Ettore and Angelo also showed up to watch Mina. Then the Faddas arrived with their little girl. Then the Congius. Soon the Piras kitchen was completely full. Everyone wanted to watch the montage of the best skits of 1965. Now and then some dancing girls came on, and Gavino watched with eyes a-glitter. Maria noticed, but that night she didn’t care.

  Piras was thinking that it would have been nice to spend the evening with Sonia, at her place, in Florence, alone, over a candlelit dinner with a good bottle of wine … He was planning to call her just after midnight to tell her he would start the new year without crutches … and then he would tell her: ‘Saludi e trigu e in culu a s’aremigu.’46

  Bordelli lay in bed, slowly smoking a cigarette. It was still drizzling outside. He hadn’t even bothered to undress. The room was in total darkness. On his way home he’d remembered to buy a leather football for the little boys. He’d won the bet, but had decided to lose it. He thought that in the end, the person most guilty of the murder of Badalamenti was Judge Ginzillo, who had denied him the search warrant he’d asked for many months before. If the usurer had been arrested, nobody would have killed him, and therefore there would have been no murderer … He was well aware that this reasoning didn’t hold water in the eyes of the law, but he didn’t care. He blew the smoke out of his mouth and imagined it rising to the ceiling. His head began to fill with the usual images of the past … his mother, his father, a few women, the war, the dead. He wished he could empty his mind and sleep.

  It must have been almost midnight. He began to hear the first fireworks. But Bordelli didn’t feel like celebrating. Baragli had suddenly died early that evening, around seven o’clock. He hadn’t made it to the new year. His wife and son had seen him alive at lunchtime and found him dead that evening. The funeral was set for the following day.

  A difficult question arose in the inspector’s mind: what the hell do we live for? He had no answer, but didn’t feel too anxious about it. Perhaps the explanation would arrive all by itself one day, or else it would never come at all. He remembered the time he’d asked Semmai the same question in ’44, with the Germans within spitting distance. It was night, with the moon casting a ghostly light over the fields. Semmai was a Sicilian with fiery eyes as black as pitch. He’d looked at Bordelli and smiled, then turned towards the valley.

  ‘I have no idea what the fuck we live for, Commander, but I like living.’

  Easy as crushing a fly. It was anybody’s guess how Diotivede or Rosa might answer the question, or the newspaper vendor on the corner, a poor old man with the face of someone who has just been dealt a slap for no reason at all …

  He just couldn’t relax … He couldn’t stop thinking about the past two weeks. Meeting all those young people had been interesting, but also rather distressing. In their presence he’d felt awkward and superfluous, unfit for the world round the corner. But his biggest fear was that of becoming an old man full of regrets. Perhaps that was why he’d let Odoardo go. So he wouldn’t have to remember sending someone like him to jail. Baragli’s words came back to him:

  ‘Above anything else, a policeman must be fair’. He’d said it with his eyes full of fire, the final flame before dying.

  The inspector put out his cigarette and turned on to his side. He would have liked to fall asleep, but outside, pandemonium broke out. It sounded like a bombing raid; 1966 had just begun.

  Acknowledgements

  For the third time I would like to thank my father, in the hope that he can read the stories of Inspector Bordelli up there and let me know what he thinks … even if only in a dream, or through a Hamlet-esque ghost. I am constantly reminded that he has never read a word of mine. Not because I hadn’t started to write yet when he was still alive, but simply because his son never gave him anything to read. At first owing to a residual rancour from a confused and not yet revisited past, then out of excessive modesty.These memories are a little sad for me… but clearly it could have been worse. I could have not made peace with my father before he died. Luckily, however, I did, and was able to accompany him to his burial place with a fondness not too darkened by shadows.

  For the third time I thank Véronique Seguin for having come up with the name of Commissario Bordelli … who has become a sort of neighbour to me.

  Thanks also to Franco Di Francescantonio, because Inspector Bordelli was born at his place, a pleasant flat he had kindly lent me use of for three months.

  I also thank:

  My editor Daniela De Rosa, for her infinite patience;

  Adele Urtis, Delia Silvia Dessì, Diana Bettoni Dessì, Emanuela Minnai, Francu Pilloni, Leonardo Dessì, and Ruggero Sanna for their indispensable information on Sardinia, which, together with old personal memories, made it possible for me to stay at home;

  Adele Urtis, Francesco Asso, Leonardo Gori and Maurizio Matrone for having read this novel in its early stages and given me suggestions and opinions that helped to make it better;

  Francesca Vichi and Enzo Lucchetti for their expert medical advice, which protects me from blunders;

  Silvio Bozzi (police forensics) and Maurizio Matrone (writer and police officer) for having served me magnificently as ‘police informers’ in reverse;

  Francesco Badalamenti for having graciously ‘lent’ me his surname for a character like the loan shark.

  I also thank, in alphabetical order:

  Alessia Conte

  Lucia Montigiani

  Antonio Leotti

  Lucina Balboni

  Aquila, a ‘living encyclopedia’ of rock

  Marco Colli

  Marco Rosi and family

  Cesare Rinaldi

  Monica Barbafiera

  Duccio Viligiardi

  Neri Torrigiani

  Elia Cossu

  Orla della Bandabardò

  Gabriele Ametrano

  Paola Cannas

  Giancarlo Cannas

  Piera Biagi

  Giancarlo De Cataldo

  Piergiorgio di Cara

  Giampaolo Vichi

  Piero Pelù

  Giampiero Vichi

  Pietro Mansueto

  Gianfranco Caruso

  Pietro Ottobrini

  Giovanna di Lello

  Rossella Pisanu

  Giuseppe di Cara

  Seba Pezzani

  Jordi Curbet

  Sonia Salvagnini

  Leonardo Russo

  Véronique Seguin

  for all the indispensable information they provided me with, or for having aided me in my search for information.

  Notes

  by Stephen Sartarelli

  1 – Italian card game.

  2 – Sardinians consider the diminutive Sardegnolo an insult.

  3 – The conical megaliths of central Sardinia, which have come to symbolise the island and its people.

  4 – Mina is Anna Maria Quaini (née Mazzini), born 1940, a much-beloved Italian pop singer, one of the first Italian women to adopt rock and roll among her various styles.

  5 – Literally, ‘black cabbage’, a dark red, leafy cabbage similar to kale.

  6 – In 1959 Socialist MP Lina Merlin passed the law that bears her name, outlawing organised prostitution, including brothels, while keeping prostitution – that is, the exchange of sexual services for money – technically legal.The upshot was to drive most prostitutes into the streets.

  7 – Rosa is singing the opening verse of Rita Pavone’s 1963 hit ‘Il ballo del mattone’ (‘The Slow Dance’). The lines translate respectively as: ‘Don’t be jealous if I dance the rock with others; / Don’t be jealous if I dance the twist with others; / With you, with you, my love, my life, I only dance the slow dance, the slow, slow dance.’

  8 – i.e. dans les yeux, written phonetically according to a typical Italian mispronunciation.

  9 – In Italy the Christmas/New Year’s holiday lasts until the day after Epiphany (6 January, the twelfth day of ‘Christmas’).

  10 �
� A Sardinian grappa.

  11 – Graziano Mesina (born 1942), former Sardinian bandit and proponent of Sardinian independence, famous, among other things, for his numerous prison escapes.

  12 – Sardinian for ‘goodbye’.

  13 – Raffaele Attilio Amedeo Schipa (1888–1965), known as Tito, a world-renowned tenor.

  14 – Sardinian expression meaning roughly ‘What a pain in the arse’.

  15 – An Italian card game where one calls out ‘scopa’ when the hand allows the player to collect the cards on the table.

  16 – Vernaccia is a sweet white Sardinian wine produced in the Oristano region and drunk both as an aperitif and a dessert wine. It is not to be confused with the Tuscan Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a dry white wine.

  17 – At the time of the story’s action, divorce was not yet legal in Italy.

  18 – A spicy, walnut-flavoured liqueur.

  19 – Domenico Modugno (1928–94) was a popular Sicilian-Italian singer, best known for his international hit song ‘Volare’. ‘Vitti‘na crozza’ is Sicilian for ‘I once saw a head’.

  20 – Translation: ‘I don’t want the curly-haired woman, no …’

  21 –‘Beltempo’ means ‘good weather’.

  22 – Another Sardinian way of saying ‘goodbye’, one that expresses the wish that things will be better (mellus) the next time.

  23 – Wild boar stew.

  24 – Abarth is an Italian racing car manufacturer that in the 1960s and ’70s used to sell trademarked tuning kits for increasing road performance in Fiats.

  25 – This was the Fascist ‘battle cry’, invented during the First World War by the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, who claimed it was once the battle cry of the ancient Greeks. Mussolini later adopted it as a vocal equivalent to the Fascist salute.

  26 – April 26 1945 was the date of a partisan insurrection at Padua against the Nazi-puppet Salò Republic. It left over five hundred Germans and Italian Fascists dead, as well as 224 partisans.