Death in August

by Marco Vichi

  ‘Tell me something, Rodrigo. Do you remember the last time I dropped by to see you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so … years ago, it seems … you really got on my nerves.’

  ‘No, not years ago. It was a month ago, at the most.’

  ‘A month … Yes, maybe you’re right … I threw you out, if I remember correctly …’

  Bordelli heaved a long sigh, deliberately, for rhetorical effect.

  ‘All right, Rodrigo, now tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘What the fuck do you mean by “what’s going on”?’

  ‘I mean, if you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen.’

  Rodrigo freed up the couch, throwing everything on to the floor, and lay down on it.

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Take a look around. Tell me, how does a man so finicky and neat to the point of obsession turn his house, from one day to the next, into a magnificent pigsty? Don’t get me wrong, I say this with admiration.’

  ‘This is my house and I’ll do whatever I like with it.’

  ‘Good answer. A child couldn’t have said it better.’

  ‘Why don’t you just leave me alone?’

  Bordelli took a sip of Triple Sec and repressed his disgust.

  ‘You shouldn’t be so mistrustful.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘If you’ll spill the beans, I promise it won’t leave this room.’

  ‘You talk like a cop.’

  ‘I appreciate the retort, but only because I didn’t think you capable of it.’

  Rodrigo took a long swig. For a moment his face shrivelled like a fist; he looked as if he had stomach pains. Then he suddenly burst out laughing uncontrollably and slid off the sofa, chest heaving. He spilled his Triple Sec all over himself, which made him laugh even harder. He could hardly breathe, and tears rolled down his face.

  At that moment, for the first time in his life, Bordelli felt sympathy for his cousin. Seeing him writhe in laughter on the floor, he felt like giving him a big kiss on the forehead. It was beautiful. He thought that whatever it was that had happened to Rodrigo, it had given him a chance to become freer. The results, for now, were a bit strange, but still better than before. Perhaps Rodrigo was suffering like a dog, but at last he was able to let himself go. One could only hope it didn’t end soon.

  Bordelli finished his Triple Sec in one gulp and pulled out a cigarette. He could have easily resisted, but he didn’t because he wanted to see what would happen. The old Rodrigo would have goggled his eyes and screamed at him to extinguish ‘that disgusting thing’ at once. He lit the cigarette and blew out a nice big mouthful of smoke, waiting for his cousin’s reaction. Rodrigo slowly stopped laughing and, still lying on the floor, looked at Bordelli thoughtfully.

  ‘Could I have one of those?’

  ‘Shall I toss it to you?’

  ‘I’ll come and get it.’ He crawled on all fours to the packet, extended five dirty fingers and took a cigarette. Bordelli lit a match for him, and Rodrigo thrust his whole face towards it, singeing an eyebrow, though he was too busy lighting the cigarette to notice. After the first puff, he coughed for a good minute. With each hack, smoke came out of his mouth. He nearly lost his voice.

  ‘How the hell can you … smoke this … this stuff?’ he said, eyes red. Bordelli decided to take him by surprise.

  ‘It’s about a woman, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Rodrigo took three puffs in a row, without coughing. His voice, however, was stuck in a gravelly timbre.

  ‘She’s a monster, not a woman,’ he said.

  Bordelli decided not to press the issue, at least for the moment.

  ‘What are you doing for the holidays, Rodrigo?’ he asked.

  ‘What have the holidays to do with any of this?’

  ‘You’re not taking any time off?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Rodrigo extinguished the butt on the floor and rested his chin in his hand.

  ‘A monster,’ he muttered.

  ‘Want to come to my place for dinner on Wednesday? There will be four or five of us.’

  ‘Give me another cigarette.’

  Bordelli tossed him one, followed by the matchbox.

  ‘What do you do all day long, Rodrigo?’

  ‘I watch TV. Did you see Celentano the other day?’

  ‘Has she dropped you?’

  Rodrigo lit his cigarette and pushed away a pile of detritus with his foot, remaining seated on the floor. He tore a page from a newspaper, rolled it up into a ball and aimed it at a vase across the room.

  ‘I should never have met her,’ he said through clenched teeth. He tore out another page and did the same as before; the ball hit the neck of the vase and rebounded far away. He started laughing again, from the effect of the Triple Sec, losing control and burning the sofa with his cigarette in his convulsions. Bordelli rather enjoyed watching him; he’d never seen him in such a state. Then Rodrigo stopped laughing and turned decidedly gloomy.

  ‘I want her … the witch,’ he said.

  ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘I said I want her. She’s very beautiful.’

  ‘And what about her? Is she as far gone as you?’

  ‘I think so. And that’s what scares me.’

  ‘Scares you?’

  Rodrigo changed expression and sat up.

  ‘You want to know the real reason I’ve been holed up at home for two weeks? Do you?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Because every time I leave home I go immediately to her place and we make love all day for two days straight. Now do you understand?’

  ‘Is that all? And to think I was worried about you.’

  ‘You’re right to be worried.’

  ‘Well, there are worse things in life.’

  ‘But don’t you understand? Joy, happiness … they’re ghastly.’

  ‘Don’t worry, happiness doesn’t last very long.’

  ‘Well, I’m scared stiff of all that. Do you think it’s easy … just like that, overnight?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’m afraid, terrified — I’m entering a world I know nothing about, and yet I can’t help but enter it. Is that a little more clear?’

  ‘Crystal clear. But what world are you talking about?’ asked Bordelli.

  ‘I can sit there and look into her eyes for hours and hours, and when I hold her in my arms, I don’t give a damn about dying … Does that seem normal to you?’

  ‘Sounds like the usual lovey-dovey stuff to me.’

  ‘Of course, except that this time it’s happening to me, which is another matter entirely.’

  ‘I think that’s fantastic, don’t you?’

  ‘I feel like I’m being swept away by a river in spate, I no longer know what I feel …’

  ‘Perfectly normal.’

  ‘Not for me. I’ve tried to stop and think, to try to understand what is happening to me.’

  ‘And have you understood?’

  ‘Only one thing: that the wall I had built around myself, brick by brick, has collapsed, like the house of the three little pigs. There’s nothing left standing.’

  ‘Magnificent.’

  ‘What the hell is so magnificent about it? I’m trying to tell you I’m shitting my pants!’

  ‘Throw yourself into it, Rodrigo. I’m telling you for your own sake. You’re over fifty, and life is shorter than the time it takes a mouse to piss. You’re still in time to throw it all overboard.’

  Rodrigo was tense, continually wiping his face with his hands.

  ‘Why me, of all people?’

  ‘If I were in your place, I would dive straight into that river in spate and gladly drown. You can sort things out later.’

  Rodrigo kept staring at the floor, long faced. He was puffing on the spent butt like a madman. Bordelli decided it was time to go and stood up. His cousin had to think this through alone, and probabl
y needed to slap himself in the face a few times. He looked around for his shirt. Rodrigo turned abruptly to look at him.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ he said.

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘I won’t see you out.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Bordelli put on his shirt.

  ‘Would you do me a favour on your way out?’ said Rodrigo.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Would you plug the phone back in?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  Bordelli left him lying there, staring at his own feet. In the entrance hall, he bent down, plugged in the phone cable, and went out. He hadn’t descended the third stair when he heard it ring. He turned back to eavesdrop. The seventh ring was interrupted halfway through, and then he heard Rodrigo’s voice.

  ‘Hello, Beatrice … no, it’s nothing serious, don’t cry … Let me explain …’

  At nine that evening Bordelli pulled up at Dante’s gate in his Beetle. He got out and paused for a few minutes to look at the countryside. The sun was low on the horizon. A cool, mild wind had risen and now caressed his face. The thought of spending a little time with the inventor made him feel better. He pushed the gate open and walked down the lane. A family of cats lay spread along the rim of a waterless fountain. He liked this house, drowning as it was in a sea of wild vegetation. It had a peaceful atmosphere. As he walked along, spikes of brome grass remained embedded in his trouser legs near the bottom, prickling his ankles. In the silence he could hear the soporific hum of an aeroplane overhead. He would have liked to lie down in the tall grass and go to sleep.

  The front door to the villa was wide open, and by now Bordelli knew his way around. He went downstairs to the great room where Signor Dante spoke to mice. He found him standing in the middle of the room, enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke. He was still wearing the same white smock, open over his paunch. The inspector threaded his way through the piles of books stacked on the floor. The inventor made a gesture of greeting without breaking his train of thought.

  ‘Did you phone me?’ asked Bordelli.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Dante, distracted. He shook some ash to the ground, went to get the bottle of grappa, and filled two small glasses, passing one to Bordelli. Then he extracted a photograph from his pocket.

  ‘You’ve only seen her dead. I wanted you to see what she really looked like,’ he said gloomily. It was a photo of Rebecca as a girl. She was very beautiful. Smiling, with a lock of hair in her mouth.

  ‘She always used to do that,’ said Dante.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Put a lock of hair in her mouth.’

  ‘My mother used to do that, too,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘Do you ever think of death, Inspector?’

  ‘At night sometimes, before falling asleep.’

  ‘What exactly do you think about?’

  Bordelli took a sip of grappa and suddenly felt all the weight of the day on his shoulders.

  ‘They’re rather vague thoughts,’ he said.

  The inventor waved his index finger in the air.

  ‘I often think about it myself, and I don’t like it one bit. Death is unacceptable, disgustingly unacceptable … unless there really is such a thing as an immortal soul, an eternal consciousness of oneself.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Dante dropped his hands into the pockets of his smock. A deep furrow formed in his brow.

  ‘And what about the resurrection of the flesh? What do you think about that?’ he said.

  If it hadn’t been so hot, Bordelli might have tried to reflect on this. Dante chewed his spent cigar and began to pace in silence through his ingenious debris. The rhythmical sound of his footsteps very nearly managed to put Bordelli to sleep. A few minutes later, Dante was standing in front of him again.

  ‘The great themes, Inspector … It’s the great themes that drive me mad. Death, consciousness, life … Take life, for instance. A spermatozoon plunges headlong into an ovum, and immediately a long-term project is set in motion. The cells proliferate at a dizzying rate, clustering, diversifying. Out of that initial, infinitesimal particle will grow a beating heart, hands, fingernails, hair, glands, and a brain with the power to think of itself … And it’s already all written down, from the position of the liver to the composition of the cartilage. But from time to time nature, too, gets things wrong, and so you’ll have six fingers on one hand or one leg shorter than the other, or else she may construct a brain incapable of understanding the simplest things … And the reason for this? A simple mistake? Or is there a design? And why, if I know I can’t answer these questions, do I continue to ask them?… A little more grappa, Inspector?’

  There was no point in answering. Dante was already headed towards the bottle. He returned, clutching it by the neck, and filled the two little glasses to the brim again. Emptying his own, he dropped his head, chin resting on his chest.

  ‘Always the same questions: Why does God allow evil? Is history the work of man, or does it have an independent force of its own? And what about time? What is time?’

  ‘Before I forget, would you like to come to my place for dinner on Wednesday?’

  They left early in the morning to avoid the heat, car windows open all the way. Bordelli was in shirtsleeves, driving with one hand and enjoying the air blowing over him. He could still smell the nauseating odour of Dante’s grappa in his nose. He hadn’t shaved, and every so often ran his hand over his stubbly face. He wondered where Rodrigo might be at that hour. Maybe he was walking about naked in his flat, declaiming Byron to his woman, also naked, in a smoke-filled room, both drunk and happy after a night of sex. At any rate, his disagreeable cousin was becoming much more agreeable to him.

  Piras was in civilian dress and looked rather like a penniless student. Bordelli turned to face him and raised his voice to make himself heard above the German growl of the car.

  ‘Got any cousins, Piras?’ he asked.

  ‘Dozens.’

  ‘Do you get on all right with them all?’

  ‘I don’t even know them.’

  They sat in silence for a while, hypnotised by the Beetle’s noise, a dull rumble with a sort of whistle inside. Piras sighed.

  ‘Aren’t we going to interrogate these Morozzis? I mean seriously interrogate them,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, Piras, but not right away. I would like first to have something more definite in hand.’ Piras nodded and rested an elbow on the window rim. Bordelli took his hands off the steering wheel, holding it steady with his knees as he lit his first cigarette of the day. He blew out the first puff without inhaling it, since it tasted like sulphur.

  ‘So, what do you think, Piras? Have you managed to solve the riddle?’

  ‘Theoretically, yes, but the facts still elude me.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘It’s a question of mathematics. You gave me a problem to solve, an equation with an unknown. It’s all very easy on paper; the hard part comes later, when you try to apply theory to practice, you know what I mean?’

  Bordelli pressed his lips together.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Let me think it over a little longer. Sooner or later something will come to me.’

  It seemed to Bordelli that Piras hadn’t explained a thing, but he let it drop.

  By the time they got to the coast, the sun was high in the sky. The heat was more bearable than in the city. Bordelli parked the car along the seafront.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked the Sardinian.

  ‘It’s been so long since I last saw the sea, Piras.’

  The beach at Marina di Massa was covered with people. Too many people. The countless rows of deckchairs ended just a few feet from the water. There was something unpleasant about the constant movement of all those half-naked bodies on the sand. Under the grating music of the radios one could hear the distant chirruping of children playing in the surf. As they made their way through the countless umbrellas, Bordelli tried to imagine a deserted beach, going
swimming in the nude and then lying down at the water’s edge with eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the sea, the cries of the gulls, without a thought in his head.

  He stopped to wait for Piras, who had fallen behind while removing his shoes and socks. He walked towards Bordelli over the scorching sand, shiny black shoes dangling from his hooked fingers. His bony face gleamed in the sun like a copper pot. The inspector resumed walking towards the sea, and Piras picked up his pace until he was at his side again.

  ‘You should take off your shoes, too, Inspector. It makes it much easier to walk.’

  Bordelli took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

  ‘Never mind, we’re only staying a minute.’

  When they reached the water’s edge, Bordelli heaved a melancholy sigh. His head was full of memories. He saw himself as a toddler again, playing in the wet sand, his mother playing cards and gabbing with her friends, his dad never losing sight of him, his old aunts from Mantua sitting next to one another with shoes on their feet and purses in their laps, coconut vendors walking quickly by, kicking up sand with their heels. It was all a very long time ago, when women’s bathing suits started at the neck and went all the way down to the knees.

  * * *

  The waiter at the Coccodrillo remembered the Morozzis well. They had arrived at half past eight and stayed until 10.30.

  ‘Good people,’ he said in a serious tone, which led Bordelli to think that they left generous tips. Piras had pulled out a notebook and was writing everything down. It was almost noon and there was a great deal of commotion in the kitchen. The dining room was still empty, however. As he answered Bordelli’s questions, the waiter continued slowly setting the tables, stretching across them to arrange glasses with the ease of habit. He was short and slightly hunchbacked. Despite an oversized nose, his face looked empty. He called to mind the comic books of Signor Bonaventura. He circled round the larger tables, exasperatingly slow, making endless adjustments as he lined up the cutlery. Bordelli and Piras followed him around with the feeling that they were bothering him.

  ‘Do they eat here often, the Morozzis?’ the inspector asked.