Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

by Mario Giordano

  “Kindly explain.”

  “You don’t pay attention, that’s your trouble. Too preoccupied.”

  “Too preoccupied with what, pray?”

  “Why, with the fear that you won’t land a woman and sort out your novel while you’re still in the first flush of youth. Once the youth train has pulled out, you’ll have no choice but to bury your dreams and complete that tragic teacher training course of yours. Hence your premature midlife crisis.”

  “I’m not suffering from a midlife crisis!”

  “Yes you are, but don’t panic, we’re working on it.”

  I stared at her. Far from grinning, Poldi was looking entirely serious. She took a swig of whisky and puffed at her MS, the cigarette Italians have nicknamed morte sicura, or certain death.

  I tried to revert to the case. “So the buzzard was your father,” I said.

  “Sure, that’s why I sobered up so suddenly.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “Why, that I had to solve the case. That I was to take a close look at the crime scene. And that he loved me, naturally. All the things people say when they’ve been reincarnated.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  Poldi ignored me. “At that moment a weight was lifted from my heart and all was well again. I’d seen the light of pure love, and I know a thing or two about love and broken hearts.”

  She would not have been my Auntie Poldi if a broken heart had deterred her from investigating a murder, for murder was clearly involved here—Poldi needed no autopsy report nor buzzard nor full daylight to convince her of that. Judging by the amount of blood that had seeped into the volcanic ash from beneath her wig, Madame Sahara must have died of a severe traumatic brain injury. Poldi could detect no gunshot wound, so a fall or a blow seemed the only possibility. However, she could not locate a single stone big enough to have caused death after an unfortunate stumble and an even more unfortunate impact. Moreover, the dead clairvoyant was lying curled up as though asleep, having been arranged in that position post-mortem. Almost gently, thought Poldi, touched by the murderer’s solicitude. Yet he had not been able to efface the pain and terror from her features and mould them into a serene smile. The lips were parted as if in speechless horror. But the mouth was not the worst feature, for Poldi knew that the general relaxation of the muscles after death produces such rictuses. Worst of all was the horror in Madame Sahara’s eyes, which had seen the past, present and future, and had looked into Poldi’s future only a few hours before.

  Poldi looked around for footprints, but the soft soil had been churned up by the grape pickers’ shoes, not to mention her own as well. It dawned on her that she would very soon have to explain herself to a certain commissario.

  “What a god-awful mess!”

  Silence still reigned in the vineyard—midway between earth and sky, as it were. Etna was wafting a long plume of smoke across the sea; the sun had made it over the horizon and was portending another hot day. Poldi knew she had to be quick. In spite of her aching knees, she hunkered down again and examined the body with care, trying to memorise every detail. The dead woman’s arms clasped her body as though trying to protect it. Her trousers and sweater bore a sprinkling of red volcanic soil. All her rings and bangles appeared to be there. Was anything missing? Poldi couldn’t have said, nor could she detect any other injuries, grazes or bruises. Had there been a quarrel? Had the dead woman screamed? Could she have been heard? Poldi tried to estimate the distance to the house and wondered whether she ought to test this by calling for help, then decided not to because she needed more time. She was also aware that nothing is more dangerous during a preliminary investigation than a premature hypothesis.

  “In the first place,” she told me once, “you think, that’s it, it’s cut and dried. That’s because you want to wrap up the case in double-quick time—because you think you’re a genius. Yes, don’t laugh, that goes for you too. From then on, your premature hypothesis hangs around your neck like a millstone, and you never get rid of it. It makes eyes at you—it waggles its plausibility at you. You fall madly in love with your premature hypothesis—you examine every clue, every piece of circumstantial evidence to see if it fits. If it doesn’t, you bend it to fit without even noticing. Your lovely hypothesis has blinded you, and then—pow!—dead end. And I know a thing or two about falling in love and dead ends.”

  So Poldi strove to concentrate primarily on details that were, at first sight, less obviously suggestive of a quarrel and homicide. That was why she eventually spotted a hexagonal silver ballpoint pen lying in the sand, a classy, very feminine object of French manufacture. The point was extended. Had Madame Sahara tried to defend herself with it? Poldi didn’t venture to touch the thing, but there were no traces of blood on it as far as she could tell.

  The ballpoint nagged at her—its image became locked into the jigsaw puzzle of first impressions and could not be detached. Although Poldi knew it was high time to call Montana, she continued to hesitate, trying to make sense of the pen. It looked too small and fragile to be a weapon, but she focused all her still rather woozy senses on it. And then it struck her: the pen pointed towards the corpse.

  I imagine that this was a revelation such as only a hangover can grant you in the limbo between nausea and a crash landing in reality, when the world reassumes its familiar shape and your brain still attaches importance to little things it usually ignores. A state of enlightenment, fundamentally. Or so I imagine, but I am, of course, far less experienced in these matters than my Auntie Poldi.

  Be that as it may, Poldi found that the ballpoint’s tip was pointing straight at the body. Now that this fact had occurred to her, she took it seriously, so she knelt down in the sand with a groan in order to check the pen’s precise aiming point. Although her kneeling might obliterate potential evidence, it was, so to speak, collateral damage. Like love and public transport, criminology subsists on compromises. And although Poldi had never in her life had any truck with compromises, she was no stranger to the power of intuition.

  The tip of the pen was pointing at the upper half of the body. Poldi now noticed that the dead clairvoyant’s hands were clenched. This almost evoked a triumphant cry from her, but she was able to control herself. Cautiously, she tried to open the dead woman’s fingers. The night had been very chilly, and rigor mortis had not yet stiffened her joints, so Poldi managed to open her fingers with little effort. She inferred from this that Madame Sahara must have been killed less than six hours earlier, or at a time when Poldi herself had just embarked on a voyage of erotic discovery with the wine grower. In other words, around the time of her mental blackout.

  The right hand was empty, but the palm of the left hand bore an inscription in ballpoint. The capital letters were still quite legible.

  “Well, what did it say?” I asked, because Poldi had inserted a long, pregnant pause.

  “Give me your hand.”

  “Er, why?”

  “Don’t ask. And look away.”

  Sighing, I did as I was told. My aunt scrawled something on my palm—not a very pleasant sensation, I’m bound to say.

  “Make a fist.”

  I complied.

  “Now take a look.”

  I looked down at my fist.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, go on, open it.”

  That was when I saw what Poldi had scrawled on my palm, and what she had discovered on Giuliana’s: ETNAROSSO.

  I tried to wipe it off, but no luck. Poldi, with her taste for the dramatic, had used an indelible red marker. Etna Rosso: I knew it only as an indication of origin on Italian wine labels.

  “So what does it mean?”

  “Oh, you and your obsessive love of explanations. With you it’s always chop-chop, wham-bang, rubber-stamp it and next, please. But things aren’t like that in criminology—or in literature either, so bear that in mind. Well, at this stage only two things were clear to me: first, that the woman had left us a clue to her murderer on th
e verge of death; and second . . .” She cleared her throat in some embarrassment and swigged her whisky.

  “And second . . .” I said, helping her back into the saddle.

  “And second,” she sighed, “that it was time to call Vito.”

  “Poldi? Is something the matter?” Montana had picked up after the first ring. He sounded worried.

  Poldi was tempted to say no. There was nothing she would have liked better than to tell him, honestly and cheerfully, that all was well—that all she wanted was to hear his voice, which was warm and still husky prior to the first cigarette of the day. This was impossible, though.

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  Instantly, his voice lost its hoarseness, becoming as calm and cool as a mountain lake. “What’s happened?”

  Poldi looked over at the body and shrugged apologetically. “A murder.”

  She heard him draw a deep breath.

  “Are you sober?”

  “Don’t ask stupid questions! Of course I’m—”

  “Who’s been murdered?”

  “Giuliana—I mean, Madame Sahara. She’s . . . lying here in front of me.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  Poldi told him.

  “What in God’s name are you doing there?”

  “Vito, please can we sort that out later? Can you come here? At once?”

  “I’m on my way. Have you informed the police?”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Dial 113. At once. Dial 113, not 112, you hear?”

  “I’ve only found a dead body, Vito, I haven’t lost my mind.”

  “And leave your mobile on. I’ll be with you in half an hour. Oh yes, and . . . Poldi?”

  “Yes, Vito?”

  “Don’t touch anything!”

  My Auntie Poldi felt tempted to utter a waspish retort, to tell him he could stuff his detective chief inspector’s tone of voice, et cetera. It was an unruly impulse to which she had normally yielded since girlhood whenever some man gave her an order or forbade her to do something. In this case, however, it occurred to her that it might perhaps be advisable to hold her tongue. So an awkward silence ensued, and before she could thank him, Montana rang off.

  Alone once more, she dialled 112.

  The same mistake she had made when she found her handyman’s body, but Poldi was no great shakes with figures, especially in her condition.

  I should explain that Italians dial 112 to reach the Carabinieri in an emergency and 113 to get the Polizia di Stato, which doesn’t make a great deal of difference when they want to report a murder or need assistance. Basically, the Carabinieri and the Polizia di Stato are competing organisations with the same function. Although this is traditionally intended to ensure that the Italian police forces act as a check on each other, in practice it leads to even more bureaucracy and wrangling over spheres of responsibility. As a commissario of the Polizia di Stato, Montana naturally wanted his boys to seal off the crime scene, not some morons from the Carabinieri. And this brings us back to the popular prejudice according to which all carabinieri are intellectual odds and sods with IQs of minus three potatoes. Hence carabinieri jokes like this one:

  Two carabinieri are pounding their beat. One says to the other, “Look, Ciccio, there’s a foot lying there!” “So there is,” says Ciccio. They walk on, shaking their heads. “Madonna, Corrado,” says Ciccio, “there’s a torso lying there!” More head-shaking. They walk on. After twenty yards, Ciccio gives a yell. “Corrado, look. There’s a head lying over there!” On examining the head more closely, they make a grisly discovery. “Madonna, Ciccio, it’s Carabiniere Luciano!” Ciccio: “Yes, Corrado. Let’s hope nothing’s happened to him.”

  Or how about this one? What’s the difference between a carabiniere and a bottle of beer? None. They’re both empty from the neck up.

  One more? A carabiniere to his superior officer: “Sir, we need some room on the shelf. May I burn the old files?” Officer: “Good idea, but photocopy them all first.”

  Very funny, but the truth is that Italian carabinieri are no whit inferior to hard-boiled New York cops.

  Poldi didn’t notice her mistake until a few minutes later, when she saw an Alfa come racing uphill to the gate. It disgorged two young officers in immaculate dark blue uniforms with smart red stripes down their pants, hands loosely fanning their holsters like a couple of pistoleros in a B feature. Resembling identical twins thanks to their military buzz cuts, they eyed Poldi and her dirndl with suspicion. Poldi, who knew a thing or two about policemen, was nonetheless delighted. They epitomised just the sort of bad-tempered, clean-shaven, uniformed masculinity which so appealed to her, and which had granted her so many memorable nights in the course of her life. It was no wonder she instinctively got out her mobile phone to take a photo of the carabinieri twins for her album of policemen.

  “Was it you that called us, signora?”

  “Oh, it’s all right. I dialled the wrong number by mistake. Would you mind notifying your colleagues in the Polizia di Stato? Thanks, very nice of you.”

  The two policemen exchanged a look and approached Poldi from opposite sides, scanning their surroundings with a professional eye.

  “Oh, and mind if I take a quick photo of you? You’ve no need to smile, even.”

  “Kindly put your phone away, signora.”

  “You reported a murder.”

  Poldi sighed. “She’s lying up there in the vineyard. Her name was Giuliana. Or Madame Sahara.”

  On hearing the latter name, the two carabinieri started as if my Auntie Poldi had announced that the president or Donatella Versace were lying up there.

  “What?”

  “Who?”

  It might have been an echo.

  Poldi felt her crown start to throb again. She suspected that everything would soon become extremely complicated.

  “She’s lying up there among the vines. She was murdered—hit on the head.”

  She was already tapping 113 into her mobile when one of the policemen stepped forward and snatched it out of her hand.

  “Your ID!”

  No novice when it came to dealing with the authorities, Poldi preserved her cool and gave the twins a disarming smile. She now saw that one of them had green eyes and the other blue.

  “It’s in my Vespa’s helmet compartment. May I?”

  “Yes, but slowly.”

  “And I want to see your hands at all times.” Green Eyes put his hand on his holster.

  “Relax, boys. I’m an old biddy with a hell of a hangover, and I’ve just found a dead body. You’re in no danger from me as long as I don’t lay hands on some lipstick and a bit of rouge.” Opening the helmet compartment nice and slowly, she handed Green Eyes her identity card.

  He turned the piece of plastic this way and that, looking puzzled, then handed it to his colleague. “She’s German.”

  Blue Eyes checked. “You’re German?”

  “From Munich, but I’m living in Torre Archirafi.”

  The card was submitted to a renewed check.

  Poldi felt her knees go weak. She perched on the Vespa’s seat and thought of the buzzard and her father. She thought of Madame Sahara and the way she’d looked yesterday evening, so alive and strong and beautiful, and various questions arose in her mind. Had she defended herself? Had she known her murderer, and how long had their argument lasted? Above all, why had she written something as cryptic as “Etnarosso” on her palm, not simply the name of her murderer?

  “Your theory?” Poldi asked me some weeks later, interrupting her narrative flow. Her tone was inquisitorial, and she prodded me in the chest with her forefinger.

  Two things I detest, especially when combined.

  “Er . . .”

  “Go on, quite spontaneously. Spontaneity isn’t your thing, I know, but just try.”

  “Well . . .” I began, playing for time, but she promptly broke in again.

/>   “Never begin a sentence with ‘Well . . .’ Bear that in mind! Never. Never ever. It only shows people you’re uptight and don’t have a clue, and it’s a reflection on your virility. Saying ‘Well . . .’ makes as stupid an impression as fiddling with your glasses or fervently tasting wine for minutes on end. Get it?”

  I nodded meekly before replying. “Job conditioning.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She was a clairvoyant, and clairvoyants always express themselves in an oracular, mysterious way. In the end, they can’t help it.”

  Poldi nodded as if this was, at least, not the stupidest answer in the world.

  “That’s what I thought at first, but someone in their death throes would be more direct, wouldn’t they? So it occurred to me that Etnarosso could be something quite specific, like the murderer’s name.”

  “A pretty silly name,” I said dubiously. “Who ever heard of anyone called that?”

  “One’s entitled to expect a bit more imagination from a novelist—all right, would-be novelist. The Sicilians are knee deep in daffy surnames. You only have to think of Ficarotta, Fregapane, Sederino, Mastronzo, Dalla Palle, Ammazzalamorte, Passalacqua, Zizzadoro or Licenziato. With a name like that, you might as well lie in bed every day of your miserable life and get drunk, so why shouldn’t there be someone called Pippo Etnarosso?”

  “Well?”

  She pulled a face. “No, damn it. I couldn’t find one, not even on the Internet—and you can stick that look of triumph where the sun doesn’t shine!”

  But, Bavarian bloody-mindedness being proof against drizzle, troublesome neighbours and the rigours of daily life, my Auntie Poldi refused to be discouraged by such a minor setback and was already pursuing another hypothesis. She would not, however, reveal it to me that evening.

  “For purely dramatic reasons, understand? Get this straight: you have to toy with your audience. They don’t want you to give away all your secrets at once. They want to be wooed and enchanted. It’s like a ballet. It’s what you might call literary precision engineering.”