Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

by Mario Giordano

  “Wait!” Poldi caught him by the arm.

  “No, Poldi, I can’t give you a precise date of death. I got into a lot of hot water the last time.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean . . . well, perhaps you could let me know who killed Madame Sahara, then I wouldn’t have to leave any loose ends behind. Carpe diem, you know.”

  Death was clearly of two minds.

  “I think you already owe me that little favour,” Poldi added.

  “Very well, since it’s you,” Death said with a sigh. “But it won’t be more than a pointer in the right direction. Do you have a pen and paper?”

  Hurriedly, Poldi fetched him a ballpoint and a tear-off pad from the kitchen. He splayed his fingers like a concert pianist and feigned profound concentration, then bent over and jotted something down. Quite what, Poldi couldn’t make out. All she saw was that Death was writing slowly. Painfully slowly. He wrote and wrote and wrote . . .

  When Poldi awoke from wild dreams the next morning, she was almost surprised to find she hadn’t been reincarnated as a bug of some kind. Instead, she was wearing her red silk pyjamas and lying in her bed, beside which her wig was neatly perched on the head of an old shop-window dummy. The Sicilian morning was blinking at her between the slats of the shutters, laden with the scent of jasmine and the nagging voice of Signora Anzalone from next door, which was probably what had woken her.

  She remained lying there like that, totally compos and somewhat surprised to be still alive. It worried her that she was once again unable to remember how the night had ended, or what Death had written down for her, or how she had got to bed. The next sensation she experienced, however, was one of relief that it had all been no more than an unpleasant dream.

  So my aunt was feeling perky—perkier than she had felt for a long time. Even her crown had stopped throbbing. In the highest of spirits, she got up and attended to her toilette. She sprayed herself liberally with scent, slipped into a billowy caftan, and combed and teased her big black wig before clapping it on her head.

  The bedroom was the only place where my aunt ever removed her wig. No one apart from my late Uncle Peppe and Vito Montana had ever been privileged to see what lay hidden beneath it. Needless to say, everyone in the family had a theory about what her thunderstorm of a wig concealed and what her natural hair colour was, but Poldi firmly rejected any such questions. Not even Aunt Teresa, her favourite sister-in-law, had ever been granted a glimpse of what lay beneath the holy of holies. Even old beach photos depicted young Poldi in a skimpy bikini—and a wig.

  Then, magnificently resurrected like the phoenix tattoo on her left breast, freshly titivated and ready for the next stage in her investigation, she cast a preliminary glance at the corkboard to which she had pinned all her clues and leads and connected them with woollen thread. Two things at once caught her eye: (a) the piece of paper the sad signora had secured in Madame Sahara’s house, and (b) a sheet from her tear-off pad.

  It bore another list of names.

  But an entirely different one.

  Poldi was thrown for several moments because she couldn’t recall when she had made this list and pinned it to the wall. I mean, who would want to believe that her little chat with Death had not been just a drunken hallucination? It reassured her to find no half-full tumbler in the living room, but the tear-off pad and the ballpoint were still there. Poldi removed the piece of paper from her corkboard and scrutinised it.

  I should mention that my Auntie Poldi had a thing about lists. To her, lists had always possessed a magical quality. Lists were a lever with which to prise open the workings of the subconscious. Lists were beacons in the mists of meditation. Lists mitigated chaos, instilled order and harmony. With the help of lists, one could surf on one’s memory to the shores of knowledge. Lists could fill the pit of despair with consolation and dissuade my aunt from drinking. They were also just fun. Poldi kept a lot of lists. Long lists, short lists, shopping lists, playlists, ratings lists, lists of names, odd and mysterious lists. Depending on their age and importance, these were clamped to the refrigerator with magnets of many colours and in various physical conditions, fluttered on the washing line with the laundry like Tibetan prayer flags, or hung framed above Poldi’s bed. One type of list came into being as follows: Poldi would relax, try to let go of all disruptive and negative thoughts, close her eyes, breathe steadily, open her eyes again and simply write down whatever was going through her head. It might be a list of her lovers, lists of the handsomest policemen in the world, to-do lists, bucket lists, lists of magical places, lists of hitherto unnoticed things, lists of unloved animals, ratings lists of her favourite songs, favourite restaurants, favourite demons, favourite saints, favourite names and all the countless things my aunt simply liked. Or lists of suspects in a murder case. This was just such a list:

  RUSSO

  MR. X (HIT MAN EMPLOYED BY RUSSO)

  THE AMERICAN WITH THE DIVINING ROD

  DORIS AND THE DELIZIOSI

  THAT ODD YOUNG MAN ENZO

  AVOLA’S (TWIN?) BROTHER

  SOMEONE WANTING TO COVER FOR AVOLA

  AVOLA HIMSELF

  ME

  Poldi thought it quite plausible that she would find herself on the list. After all, she couldn’t remember a thing. Madame Sahara’s prognostications had dismayed her, not to say jinxed her a little, so she couldn’t be altogether ruled out as a suspect. She thought it a good list, generally speaking, though she crossed out Doris and the deliziosi right away. She would have liked to do the same for Avola, but there was that confession. She considered it mendacious but surmised that Avola intended it—for whatever reason—to cover for the real murderer.

  Anyway, it was a list she could work her way down, step by step, in a thoroughly professional manner.

  Nevertheless, something pricked her subconscious like a laundry tag in a new cashmere sweater. There was something wrong with the list. It looked incomplete somehow. Poldi strove to remember that afternoon in the vineyard and all the people who had been seated at the long table. The grape pickers were also suspects, theoretically, but Poldi presumed that Montana had already questioned and checked them all forensically. She realised that this also went for the persons on the list, of course, but it wasn’t about the list; it was about gaining access to her subconscious and giving her intuition a leg up.

  There was someone missing.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  It was someone who didn’t have to have been seated at the table that afternoon.

  Poldi emptied her psyche like a Zen master.

  And then it came to her.

  She went back into the living room, where the tear-off pad lay on the glass-topped coffee table. The ballpoint had left indentations on the next sheet. This was only natural, except that the sheet bore a ghostly, barely discernible name that did not appear on the original list. Poldi found this spooky, but, spooky or not, she wasn’t an ungrateful person, so she put her hands together and said, “Namaste, Death. In other respects, get stuffed.”

  She shaded the indentations with a pencil and the additional name took shape: MAGO RAMPULLA.

  A new player, so to speak, but not an entirely unfamiliar one. Mago Rampulla, a clairvoyant and fortune-teller by trade, proclaimed his comprehensive services—palmistry, tarot, crystal ball, numerology, regression, aura analysis, life counselling, lottery number predictions—on posters all over the place, usually right beside those of Madame Sahara. He not only advertised himself, with scant originality, as “The Incomparable,” but went one better by including a picture of himself. Ill-advisedly, one is bound to say, because the black-and-white photo of a corpulent, balding, mustachioed man in an ill-fitting suit conveyed the crafty truculence of an utter charlatan or sleazy estate agent—or worse. He was probably less than five feet tall, and thus, according to Uncle Martino’s Mafia gauge (“The shorter the man, the likelier a Mafioso”), practically self-revealed as a small-time crook.

  Prize question:
What do Sicily and remote Carpathian villages have in common? Answer: The extent of their superstitions. There are few places in the world where centuries-old superstitions have persisted as stubbornly and are still celebrated as in Sicily. The multiplicity of clairvoyants and fortune-tellers speaks for itself. It may be down to the Sicilians’ primordial angst, for they have been plagued by successive conquerors for thousands of years. All Sicilian superstition revolves around one thing alone: malocchio, the evil eye. One either has malocchio or one hasn’t; it can be neither rejected nor deliberately acquired. The gettatori, who possess it, can jinx, sicken, sterilise, bankrupt, disfigure or even kill their fellow mortals. All human activities are threatened by malocchio.

  What to do? The best thing, of course, is never to catch a gettatore’s eye, or to make a fica by sticking your thumb between the index and middle fingers—an obscene gesture, but unavoidable in this instance, as is the mano cornuta, the horned hand, which is also widespread in the heavy-metal scene, but for different reasons. Another popular defence against the evil eye is a red corno, or devil’s horn, worn as a talisman round your neck. Toccaferro, or touching a piece of iron, is also reputed to help, and never goes amiss because it’s supposed to bring good luck in general.

  The list of Sicilian superstitions is endless. You never deposit your hat on a bed. You don’t spill salt on the table; if you do, you throw a pinch of it over your left shoulder. You never open an umbrella inside the house, never cross your knife and fork on the plate, never wear lilac in a theatre, never give anyone a knife, and never, ever wish someone success. Instead, you say, In bocca al lupo, or “Into the wolf’s mouth.” You never sit down thirteen at a table, because that was the number of those present at the Last Supper. In any other context, thirteen is a lucky number—unlike seventeen, because that numeral symbolises a hanged man on a gallows.

  Things become even more complicated when it comes to oneiromancy and numerology. To dream of a butterfly brings good luck, a black hen signifies a wedding, a balloon indicates a lie, and an egg stands for bad news. White grapes mean tears, the loss of teeth portends a death. Numbers are allotted to each of the ten million things a person can dream of in a long night. These must be entered on your lottery ticket. Or not, as the case may be.

  But who has the power of discernment? One person alone, of course: a mago, the magician or clairvoyant in whom you have faith. A Sicilian mago combines naturopathy with superstition and ancient magical rites, supplies voodoo dolls, prophylactic amulets and love potions, or simply listens to you. He brings back your unfaithful husband, helps you out of a predicament and embroils your enemies in one. Above all, though, he protects you from the evil eye.

  The nearest mago will usually be practising not far away, so your best plan is to consult the Yellow Pages. In case of doubt, however, drive up to Santa Venerina, because that unremarkable town on Etna has three claims to fame: the Pasticceria Russo, where you can buy the best marzipan fruits in all Sicily, the Distilleria Russo, which makes the very best limoncello, and—last but not least—its fortune-tellers. Nowhere else in the world will you find so many fortune-tellers, shamans, clairvoyants, palmists, astrologers and charlatans in one place.

  And one of them was Mago Rampulla.

  From a brief search of the Internet, Poldi discovered that Mago Rampulla had posted the vilest remarks about Madame Sahara on a social network and accused her of being a charlatan. In short, the sleazy mago had been Madame Sahara’s prime competitor and therefore had a motive for murdering her.

  Poldi reasoned that Montana would in any case check on all the other candidates on the list, so she could wait to coax his preliminary results out of him—a process for which she had ways and means. This being so, her most logical course of action was to concentrate on the only suspect that had yet to occur to the handsome commissario. Undercover, of course.

  The phone rang only twice before “The Incomparable” answered.

  “Pronto?”

  Strong Sicilian accent, voice as oleaginous as yesterday’s caponata, dripping with mistrust, an inferiority complex and avarice. Or so it seemed to Poldi.

  “My name is Isolde,” she trilled into the receiver as demurely as she knew how. “I’m German, Maestro, so you must forgive me if I don’t speak your language too well. The thing is, I saw your wonderful posters, and they awakened something deep within me. Tell me, do you also do, er . . . regressions?”

  Did he! As luck would have it, he’d had a last-minute cancellation, so . . .

  Poldi appeared tutto in nero, all in black. Her voluminous chiffon gown had a fringed skirt, a lacy décolletage and understated appliqués of little gold chains on the sleeves. She thought the latter beautifully symbolised her imprisoned soul, which was craving release. Instead of stilettos, she had opted for flamenco shoes with broad heels. She wanted to look respectable—meek and demure too, so she had draped a veil over her wig, which transported her face to a dreamy borderland midway between erotic promise and graceful timidity. That, at least, was what she believed.

  I can picture her in this outfit as she drove her old Alfa with the roll bar back up the winding road to Santa Venerina, past Madame Sahara’s house, now sealed off by the police, then a little way out of the town and farther up the mountainside to a run-down housing estate opposite the Distilleria Russo. The road consisted almost entirely of potholes, and right outside the house, garbage overflowed from two rusty bins, which even the feral cats and wild dogs steered clear of. There were the usual sagging sun blinds in every window, and cheap underwear was hung out to dry on the balconies. A small path redolent of cat piss and dead mice led up to the clairvoyant’s front door.

  Mago Rampulla received Poldi in a shabby dark suit and bedroom slippers. He was a very short man indeed. His face was unshaven and filmed with sweat, and the shadows beneath his eyes suggested that he had slept badly, though less from drink, Poldi’s expert eye told her, than from brooding about some disaster. His handshake was about as firm as fresh dough.

  “I am . . .”

  “I know, signora. Please come in.”

  His voice was surprisingly soft and pleasant—far less oily than it had sounded on the phone. Poldi was almost disappointed.

  With a ceremonious gesture, Rampulla ushered her into the house, which smelt of stale cigarette smoke, cleaning fluid and desperation. He led her past some closed doors beyond which a television was burbling and through a kitchen in which an old woman continued to chop onions without deigning to glance at my aunt.

  The Incomparable’s studio lay at the end of a passage. It was claustrophobically small and very different from Madame Sahara’s. Its only furnishings were a little, old round table with ball-and-claw feet and a lace cloth and three rickety chairs. Hanging on the walls were prints of alchemistic formulae and treatises, astrological tables, kitschy pictures of angels and framed photos of the mago with minor Italian celebs in better days.

  Rampulla closed the door as softly and silently as he moved in general. To Poldi, it was as if he didn’t want to wake an evil spirit that was sleeping off its bloodlust somewhere nearby.

  “Please, signora.” He gestured to my aunt to sit down at the table, seated himself opposite and regarded her with rheumy eyes. He said nothing for a while. Then, “I charge a hundred euros for the first hour and fifty for each additional hour or part thereof. You can pay cash or with a credit card. Forgive me for being so blunt, but you didn’t inquire about my scale of charges on the phone, so I thought it better to make it clear right away. Is that all right?”

  “Perfectly all right, Maestro,” Poldi said huskily. She was beginning to feel a bit uneasy under the mago’s unwavering gaze.

  “So what can I do for you, Donna Poldina?”

  Poldi gave a start. “How . . .”

  Rampulla sighed. “I could tell you I have second sight, but the truth is, I also read the papers. I know who you are, Donna Poldina, and I fear I also know your real reason for being here.”

&nbs
p; This took the last of the wind out of Poldi’s sails. She had meant to employ the ultra-psychological tactic of playing on the mago’s vanity with spurious awe and flattery and skilfully drawing him out with some outrageous horror story from her past. And now this. For some reason, her investigation was not going to plan. But then, she reflected, nothing in her life had ever gone to plan. Life didn’t give a fig for plans of any kind, but despite its unpredictability, it had always behaved magnanimously.

  “Namaste, life,” she said softly. “Poldi contra mundum.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “So why am I here, in your opinion?”

  The mago heaved another sigh, as he did before every remark he uttered. His sighs resembled the minor eruptions of a spent volcano shortly before its total extinction.

  “I didn’t kill Giuliana.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “Who would know better than a clairvoyant, is that what you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Mago Rampulla clasped his soft, hirsute hands together on the table. “I don’t know. I could tell you if the murderer were sitting here in this room, but that’s all.”

  “You could? How would you recognise him?”

  “By his aura. Nothing damages and darkens a person’s aura more than murder.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Although my gifts are limited, Donna Poldina, Giuliana’s were far more so. She was a charlatan, fundamentally, but the boundaries in our profession are fluid in any case. The fact that I didn’t always say nice things about her makes me a suspect, but I never had anything against her personally; it was merely business. Yes, I admit I was envious of her. The fact is, though, Giuliana had plenty of glamour and sensitivity but no gift for clairvoyance. People simply liked her. Me, on the other hand, they dislike, and do you know why? Because I’m a gettatore: I have the evil eye. It’s true, I attract evil and pass it on to other people willy-nilly, like a curse. The evil eye can’t see into the future, but it can see auras. I sometimes wish I couldn’t, because it can often be unpleasant, believe me. I do the whole hocus-pocus with cards, numbers and palmistry just to pass the time and because people expect it, but I always see at once what’s wrong when a person is in front of me. Then the mischief takes its course.”