“Engaged in ‘it,’” Poldi put in helpfully.
Montana bit his lip. “If you can’t remember a thing, Avola’s confession stands.”
Poldi nodded sadly. “But it wasn’t him. He’s just not the murderous type. I know what I’m talking about, and I can tell that you don’t believe it either.”
Montana clicked his tongue indignantly. “A confession’s a confession. Just stay out of it, okay? If you don’t, I may not be able to help you.”
“Am I in trouble, then?” Poldi asked softly, leaning forward a little.
It was something of an ambiguous question and something of a request for forgiveness, for it must be said that Poldi was pierced to the core by the very sight of Montana looking so dishevelled and moody and unjustifiably jealous. It was a long time since any man had set her aflame the way he did. He expanded her heart, his touch scorched her skin and made her vibrate, made her feel lighter than she had for a long time. She wanted to kiss and embrace, caress and fondle him all at once. She wanted to hold his hand, lay her head on his nice hairy chest, sleep at his side, simply look at and admire him, sit on a bench beside him in the sun, watch him smoking and eating, hear his voice and know everything about him. And that was why losing him was what she did not want at any price, even if it meant she had to become a good girl at her age. Well, let’s say, try at least to do so.
“No, you aren’t in trouble, not where the investigation is concerned,” said Montana. “Not so far, anyway. Come to headquarters tomorrow and give a statement, and that’ll be that.” He rubbed his hands together as though ridding them of dirt of some kind, the traditional Italian gesture meaning “Done, finished, sorted, let’s not talk about it any more.” He drew a deep breath. “As for me personally, I’m not going to stipulate what you can or can’t do, nor do I expect an apology. Although . . . yes, come to think of it, perhaps I do. Yes, I certainly do expect an apology, because I didn’t like ‘it’ at all, you hear? Not one little bit, I didn’t. I feel tempted to make a scene you’ll never forget. I feel tempted to smash the place up, but I can control myself. I’m not the stereotypical Sicilian male who bristles at every last little thing and insists on seeking satisfaction with a sawn-off shotgun. I’m a paragon of self-control, that’s why. I spend the whole day dealing with idiots and liars, I’m utterly overworked and short of sleep, but do I blow my top? No, I control myself. I’m supercool. Be damned to my Sicilian blood. You’ll do as you please in any case, whether I go berserk or knuckle under. Madonna, I’d like to go berserk sometime, I really would, but I keep a grip on myself, understand? I behave like a civilised central European, but only because I’m sick to death of discussing personal relationships for nights on end. Know something? You can get stuffed!”
“Who can?” Poldi retorted amiably. “Women in general or just Alessia and me?”
Another mean little dig, true, but it simply tripped off her tongue.
Montana stared at her aghast, as if it had struck him only now that he had long been engaged in a losing battle and his back was to the wall. He sighed. “Vaffanculo, Poldi! Vaffanculo!” He got to his feet with a grunt. “Don’t bother, I know the way out.”
He had gone before Poldi could bring herself to apologise, and she had a nasty feeling that she might have overdone things a bit.
“A bit risky, wasn’t it?” I remarked when she told me about it later. “I mean, competing directly with the younger woman like that?”
“I couldn’t help it. I live in the here and now. And besides, I sensed things weren’t going too well between Vito and Alessia. I could well imagine her putting him through the wringer all night, because she naturally had a woman’s intuition like me and sensed there were times when Vito wasn’t up to the job.”
“‘It,’ you mean?”
“The man had utterly worn himself out with me, and even the most active volcano needs a break between eruptions. With Alessia, I suspect that ‘it’ may have been more of a damp squib than a firework display.”
Her expression as she told me this was smug and self-assured.
“Besides, I had a murder to solve, didn’t I? One’s private life has to take a back seat on such occasions, unlike what you see on TV. Even though the right of way through my noddle had been temporarily suspended, I strove to concentrate on essentials. For instance, on what in the world could have prompted Achille to confess to the murder.”
“It didn’t occur to you that he might actually have committed it?”
Poldi regarded me pityingly. “Ever heard of the word ‘intuition’? Does it mean anything to you?”
“Honestly, Poldi, give me a break!”
6
Tells of the fruits of the Lord, messages sent us by life, and the Sicilian notion of “under normal circumstances.” Uncle Martino comes up with a theory that posits a link between the Cyclopes and the CIA. Poldi becomes concerned and goes full speed ahead, only to be detained by an elderly gentleman and Saint Venera. Soon afterwards, she makes a shocking discovery in an accursed place.
The fruits of the Lord . . . Poldi couldn’t get the phrase out of her head. It got caught up in her thoughts like an autumn leaf under a windscreen wiper, and it was beginning to get on her nerves.
But things that annoy us, Poldi once told me, are simply messages sent us by life and ought to draw our attention to something. And my aunt knew a thing or two about life’s messages.
The only question was, what was life—in its peculiar, inarticulate way—trying to convey to her this time? Poldi sometimes imagined herself to be a plump, sweet grape on a vine, waiting in sun, wind and weather for the wine grower to pick her and transform her into something delicious. Sometimes she thought of Padre Paolo’s admonitory parable about Noah’s drunken stupor. Sometimes she thought of Avola, who was a wine grower and possibly a murderer. And sometimes the whole of life, which could end so swiftly and abruptly, seemed to her like a vine that could be killed off by a single hailstorm. And the way in which the Almighty treated his noblest fruit sent my Auntie Poldi into a towering Bavarian rage that made her forget all about her heartache and hangover, swept away her doubts and cleared her head. In short, my auntie was back in the zone. She was a ruthless investigative machine, a criminaloid, a deduction queen, a born huntress. Or so I imagine.
“Namaste, life!” she said, grateful for this purifying rage, clasping her hands together on her bosom. “The rest of the world can kiss my ass!”
But where to begin her investigation? Padre Paolo had been unleashed on Dottore Carbonaro, and Signora “Still Waters Run Deep” Cocuzza had undertaken a “special mission.”
Poldi was touched. “It seems,” she told herself, “that having a team isn’t such a bad thing.”
It felt good to have friends and not suffer from cosmic loneliness.
But she still had to decide what her own next step should be, and that made her head spin a little. She could have done with a beer, but no way. Poldi’s self-control was positively superhuman by this time. She felt like Odysseus, lashed to the mast and listening to the song of the Sirens.
So she could now have launched her investigation with supercharged energy. But only “could have,” because at that precise moment she was visited by my Aunts Teresa, Caterina and Luisa and my Uncle Martino, plus Totti the dog and my cousins Ciro, Marco and Laura. It was Sunday lunchtime, after all, and with us that always means pranzo with the family.
Sicilian relations are no different from relations elsewhere in the world. They can be annoying. You love and respect them, you enjoy seeing them on high days and holidays and at weddings, children’s birthdays and funerals, you tolerate their quirks and laugh at their old chestnuts. Yes, but only in small doses, please. And that’s the problem with Sicily: small doses don’t exist. It’s the works or nothing. The upside of Sicilian relations: they bring mountains of food with them.
My own family members are no exception in that respect; they’re perpetually annoying. At the same time, those Sundays devoted
to overeating, listening to good advice from the aunts and horsing around with my cousins have been the happiest times imaginable ever since my childhood. Moreover, our family possesses a secret weapon in terms of wit and eccentricity: Uncle Martino.
Just as he had every day since retiring, Uncle Martino had spent the whole morning roaming Catania’s fish market with the utmost concentration, a dog-end eternally lodged in the corner of his mouth. The fact is, buying fish in Sicily is serious business, a quest for maximal freshness and minimal prices, and thus a largely male-dominated affair.
“You must think of it as a stock exchange,” Uncle Martino told me once, “ruled by supply, demand and greed. Every customer is an expert and, consequently, your direct competitor. From the moment you walk through the Porta Uzeda and plunge into the turmoil of the market, you have no friends any more. All that matters is your mission: to snap up the best fish in the world at the very best price. For example, you want to buy some tuna, and you only want the best cut. And what’s the best cut? Beh! The belly meat, of course. You see that Alfio has three tuna left in his tub, but a queue has formed in front of his stall, so it’s unlikely there’ll be any belly meat left by the time it’s your turn. You could try to worm your way to the front, but you know you won’t catch your competitors napping. Turi, in the stall next door, hasn’t any tuna at all, and his neighbour Tano has only two, but they’re too measly for you. Tuna are in great demand, so prices are high. It’s a tense situation. Everyone’s on edge, time is going by, midday is approaching. But now comes your chance. Enzo’s stall is still bare. He has probably gone far out to fish and will return within the next hour. Even if he has caught some tuna, your competitors will already have met their requirements. That means demand will fall, likewise prices, and you’ll get a nice, cheap cut of belly meat. But what if Enzo doesn’t return in time or fails to catch anything? Then you’ll go away empty-handed. So the question is, queue up or wait? To be or not to be? All or nothing? You need nerves of steel, instinct, years of experience and the agility of a panther to elbow your way to the front and strike.”
Which was what Uncle Martino had clearly done that Sunday.
Needless to say, Sunday lunches in Torre Archirafi involved covert inspection tours by the aunts, who discreetly gauged Poldi’s alcohol intake and frame of mind. She said she’d only deferred her plan to drink herself to death beside the sea, so the aunts were still at the Code Yellow level of vigilance.
They came wafting in like a wonderful gust of high spirits, loquacity and affection. Laden with three cooler bags filled with fish, seafood, bread, vegetables, oyster mushrooms, tomato sauce, parsley, peaches and fresh parmigiana, they commandeered the kitchen, poured Poldi’s Scotch down the drain and fired up the barbecue in the courtyard. Totti went racing around the house barking excitedly, Ciro changed some defunct light bulbs, Marco filled Poldi’s jerrycan at the old mineral water plant, Laura sprawled on the sofa with Totti and chatted to girlfriends on her mobile phone, and Uncle Martino scaled some sea bream. All at once, No. 29 Via Baronessa was pervaded by the scent of cheese, grilled fish and fresh tomato sauce, by laughter, barking, the blare of the television, pop music, charcoal smoke, midday heat, appetite, stolidity, fatalism and joie de vivre. In short, by sicilianità.
My Aunts Teresa, Caterina and Luisa were Taureans—in other words, good-natured, cheerful, sensual creatures, and not easily ruffled by anything. They were also inveterate fans of police procedurals, so their reaction to Poldi’s account of the last twenty-four hours was rather blasé, not least because she could always be expected to dramatise to the nth degree. Or perhaps because they had been in Catania during the eighties, when someone was gunned down nearly every day in the course of the last big Mafia war and the first decisive anti-Mafia operations. The aunts were far more worried by Poldi’s fall from grace and her mental blackout than by Madame Sahara’s murder.
Luisa, the youngest, displayed an undisguised interest in the case. “Does this mean you’re investigating already?” she asked.
“What do you think? Vito is far from happy about it, but I owe it to Giuliana.”
“Do you already have a suspect?”
“Yes, of course. Russo must be behind it, for whatever reason, but I don’t think he did his own dirty work. He’s probably got some kind of hold over Achille.”
Before Poldi could pursue this, lunch intervened.
It was only a brief interruption, though, because leisurely meals partaken of by extended Sicilian families seated beneath orange or olive trees are as much of a modern myth as uproarious Italian weddings celebrated to the strains of massed mandolins. They really take the following course: hours-long preparations entailing the utmost care and the largest possible quantities of the finest raw materials available, then everything onto the table at the same time, then some ten minutes’ lip-smacking carnage and dissection worthy of a school of sharks running riot in a shoal of tuna, then a brief, contented “Che buono!,” a friendly, knowledgeable debate as to whether the spigola could have been a trifle fresher, the vinegar for the agrodolce a trifle sourer, the onions a trifle sweeter, and whether it is permissible to tenderise octopus. (Absolutely not!) To end with, perhaps a ripe peach or a mocha gelato. Cigarettes and coffee, then quickly back in front of the TV to watch Formula One or take a little nap. Whoever coined the phrase “Keep calm and carry on,” it certainly wasn’t a Sicilian. There’s more enjoyment and appreciation to be had from this headlong dive into the trough than from many a celebrated six-course dinner complete with the chef’s compliments, palate-cleansing sorbets and matching wines.
At my aunts’ table, everyone knows full well that what they’re eating is the freshest and most delicious food a person can cook, and they do it justice by bolting it in silence, immersing themselves in its divinity, becoming one with the universe, and gaining enlightenment from pasta al nero, spigola in agrodolce, pepata di cozze, lumache in salsa di pomodoro, calamaretti fritti, insalata di arance e finocchio selvatico, caponata siciliana and parmigiana alla Teresa. The duration of the collision is as unimportant as it is in love and in particle physics, because enjoyment—as we all know—bends space-time. If I could ask a good fairy to grant me a wish, it would be to spend the remaining Sundays of my life exactly as outlined above.
Uncle Martino had a theory about Etnarosso. He had a theory about everything, and all his theories reposed on three bedrocks: Cyclopes, Frederick II and the CIA.
Martino believed the Cyclopes to be the mythical indigenous inhabitants of Sicily, a race of tall aborigines with close-set eyes that provide the missing link between Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. He regularly and nonchalantly quashed my objection that there was no evolutionary evidence for anything of the kind.
“In Sicily,” he declared, “reality is so closely entwined with myth that certain truths cannot be perceived and measured with the blunt instruments of conventional science. The Cyclopes have left behind no written records, after all, and they’re also—alas!—extinct. They were probably exterminated in ancient times by some Greek pirate with herpes, but before that they interbred with the earliest conquerors of the island. All of us are a bit Cyclopean, even you.”
At all events, according to Martino, the Cyclopes invented the Pyramids, colonised Atlantis, were taught by the earliest extraterrestrial visitors how to alchemise lead into gold, and much more besides.
The brilliant Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II recognised this during the twelfth century. He made Sicily the centre of his empire and gathered the world’s most celebrated scholars around him with the aim of exploiting the Cyclopes’ store of arcane knowledge for the benefit of humankind.
As ill luck would have it, the Knights Templar robbed Frederick II of these arcana shortly before he could put his grand scheme into effect. After their order was disbanded, the Templars just managed to get the secrets to safety aboard a caravel bound for the as yet officially undiscovered New World, where they were guarded for centuries by their various
successor organisations at a location corresponding to modern downtown Manhattan. Yes, and guess what the Templars’ present successor organisation is. Exactly, the CIA. It’s the CIA that forms a clandestine world government, manipulates the price of gold, is poisoning us with chemtrails, denies the existence of UFOs, and was responsible for reinstalling Lucky Luciano and the Mafia in Sicily after the Second World War.
That’s the point at which Uncle Martino gets so carried away that he sideslips from Italian into Sicilian, digresses into current politics, and then, with astronomical precision, locks horns with his son, my cousin Marco, until Aunt Teresa ends their altercation with a furious cry of “Basta!”—and we all go outside for a smoke.
Uncle Martino’s theory about Etnarosso was that it was the Sicilian offshoot of a successor organisation of Propaganda Due, a secret Masonic lodge of higher-ups from politics, industry, the military, the secret services and the Mafia, their aim being to infiltrate and dismantle the Italian government and the Vatican. This conspiracy had been discovered by a certain Tindaro Martorana from Agrigento, who had been smuggled into the lodge by the MoVimento 5 Stelle, had paid for this heroic feat with his life, and was unofficially revered as a hero by the Five Star Movement. Since Propaganda Due, or P2, was known to have been an instrument of the CIA, Etnarosso was another. It was, therefore, a successor of the Knights Templar, who had meant to deploy the extraterrestrial knowledge of the Cyclopes and Frederick II against the whole of humanity. Because organisations of this calibre are excellent at disguising themselves, it had taken the gifts of a clairvoyant to perceive all this, so Madame Sahara had probably unearthed one of the most perfidious global conspiracies and been killed in consequence. But not without leaving behind a final clue: according to my uncle, the American with the divining rod was very probably a CIA killer. Case solved.
Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna Page 10
