Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

by Mario Giordano

  “Why? Because that’s where I’m living during the changeover.”

  “What do you mean, changeover? Is something wrong with the house?”

  “Stop asking silly questions. I’ll explain in due course. Now step on the gas, for God’s sake!”

  And then: Femminamorta.

  At kilometre eight we turned off the Provinciale onto the narrow approach road that led across the Piante Russo tree nursery. In the distance I could already glimpse the gateway, flanked by two stone lions, and when I got out I found everything just as I’d always imagined it from Poldi’s descriptions of the place: the old country house built of volcanic rock, its dilapidated walls lime-washed pink, the sunbleached sundial, the ornamental eaves, the little bell over the entrance, the pines and palm trees, the enchanted garden. I grasped at once that it was a magical place where friendly spirits roamed and time stood still.

  It was very chilly inside and smelled musty. The old furniture and antiquarian library exhaled the dust of centuries. Poldi and I appeared to be alone in the house. She showed me into a room on the ground floor, a former private chapel whose ceiling was adorned with frescos of saints and the Madonna. There was only one tiny window, the little old bureau against the wall looked decrepit enough to collapse at the slightest touch, the bed creaked and groaned like someone with lumbago, the tiles in the adjoining bathroom were encrusted with at least half a century of lime deposit, and the place smelled even mustier than the living room next door. But I took to it at once. More than that, I sensed I would write some great stuff in there.

  “Freshen up a bit and then we’ll talk,” Poldi decreed before going off to make some coffee.

  I took my time. First I smoked a cigarette on the terrace. Waves pounded the lava cliffs in the distance and a cold east wind drove masses of clouds and spindrift across the sea towards Etna. It was a bleak day. The Sicilian winter had chilled the house, and nothing much would change before April. I stubbed out my cigarette but kept the butt in my hand rather than desecrate such a heavenly place.

  And then I did something I really shouldn’t have done, but something came over me—I simply couldn’t resist it. I tiptoed through the house until I located Valérie’s bedroom. I didn’t root around in her things, I swear, but I wanted at least to take a peek at the place. It made a much lighter and airier impression than the chapel downstairs. The French window led to a stone balcony at the back of the house and afforded a fantastic view of Etna. Everything inside was white, including the painted furniture. There were piles of books and antique knickknacks everywhere. The bed had been stripped, but lying on it was a pair of big sunglasses Valérie had obviously forgotten to pack. Standing in the doorway, I tried to imagine what she looked like. There were no photos of her anywhere, worse luck. I pictured her as being very petite, with big eyes, laugh lines, sensual lips, bobbed hair, tight jeans and a striped Breton fisherman’s shirt. Or in a short, translucent wisp of a summer dress, all elfin and coquettish and as utterly sexy as a girl in one of those French movies with frustratingly unresolved endings—the ones in which the characters merely canoodle and quarrel and make no sense. But all at once I was gripped by a strange sensation, as if someone had come into the room and was eyeing me reproachfully. Feeling uneasy, I shut the door and went downstairs.

  Poldi, who was waiting for me in the living room, seemed preoccupied. Beside her coffee stood a glass of grappa. She was looking wearier than usual, it struck me, but she only sipped her drink, which was uncharacteristic. She could easily sink a bottle of Prosecco and half a bottle of grappa a day, not to mention several espressos laced with brandy, some liqueur chocolates and a lunchtime beer or two. Quite an intake, in fact, and more than enough to have killed me. Uncle Martino had intimated on the phone that Poldi was going through a bad patch. It was clear that something had gone terribly wrong in recent weeks.

  “You feeling okay, Poldi?”

  “Don’t I look it?”

  “To be honest, no.”

  “Don’t treat me like some daft old crone who has to be helped across the street.”

  I tried to change the subject. “Where’s John?”

  “Out,” she said quietly. “He’ll be back soon, but we’ll be gone well before then.”

  “Mind telling me where to?”

  “We have to go and find Handsome Antonio.”

  Whoever that was.

  But she’d said “we.” It was the first time my Auntie Poldi had actually said “we.”

  Nobody had known about Poldi’s marriage to a Tanzanian man. Neither my other aunts nor Signora Cocuzza, with whom Poldi had recently shared many a spicy secret, nor Vito Montana, the grumpy, dishevelled, chain-smoking, jealous commissario of police, Poldi’s light of love and—according to her—a sexual force of nature.

  So it was hardly surprising that Montana was dumbfounded when, one fine Sunday morning, Poldi’s husband reappeared as if nothing had happened. I often picture various versions of this first encounter. These range from an ultra-cool black-and-white noir scene to the histrionics of a silent film and the emotional explosion of a neo-realist Italian social drama.

  The probable scenario: Sunday morning, Poldi and Montana are cuddled up in bed like a couple of teenagers when someone rings the doorbell. Ring, ring, ring! It’s almost incessant. Exasperated, Montana tumbles out of bed, wraps a towel around his slightly expanding waist, to which Poldi likes to cling during their nocturnal voyages across oceans of lust, and opens the front door. Confronting him is a tall, strapping black man. Mid-forties, alert expression, a head taller than Montana, in pale chinos, white T-shirt, green puffer jacket. All very dapper.

  Montana: “Yes?”

  The man, in English that suggests an East African accent: “I’m looking for Poldi Oberreiter. She lives here, doesn’t she?”

  “And who are you?”

  Montana has switched to commissario mode, not that the man facing him seems at all impressed. He gets no further, because he hears a smothered exclamation behind him.

  Poldi: “Well, I’ll be buggered!”

  Whereupon the stranger: “Poldi! Hey, Poldi! It’s me!”

  And Montana: “Will someone tell me what’s going on here?”

  Poldi has then to explain who the stranger is, namely, her husband, John Owenya, from Tanzania. And that is when things start to get difficult.

  “My husband,” she says quietly, avoiding Montana’s eyes. “Husband. Marriage certificate, ring, church—the works, know what I mean?”

  Bewildered, she stares at the stranger as if he’s a ghost, a revenant risen from the dead.

  “Well I’m . . .”

  “It really is me, Poldi.” John comes closer and spreads his arms with a beaming smile, but Poldi promptly fends him off.

  “Stop! Not another step!”

  “What is all this?” growls Montana, who is becoming less and less enamoured of the situation.

  Poldi strokes his cheek. “I was just about to tell you, tesoro. Get dressed and make us some coffee, okay?” She turns to John. “No need to stand around. Come in.” She ushers him into the inner courtyard and points to a chair.

  “Sit down. Don’t budge and don’t touch anything.”

  “Poldi, I wouldn’t have come, but—”

  “Not a word. My house, my rules, or you can piss off again right now.”

  John raises his hands in surrender. “Hamna shida. Your house, your rules.”

  Poldi chivvies Montana into the bedroom to get dressed and disappears into the bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she flops down on the lavatory seat, buries her face in her hands and weeps.

  Once she has recovered some of her composure, she quickly adjusts her wig and makeup, sprays herself liberally with scent and puts on her favourite caftan, the white one with the gold thread.

  When she enters the courtyard, Montana and John are facing each other across the garden table in silence. Montana, who is just filling two espresso cups with coffee from a little aluminium c
affettiera, never takes his eyes off the newcomer. John seems unperturbed. His expression is serious but not nervous. He holds Montana’s gaze and nods his thanks for the coffee.

  Montana naturally wants to fire a thousand questions at the new arrival, commissario fashion, but there’s a minor problem: his English is poor, like that of most Italians of his generation, and the bella figura principle deters him from trying it out. So he chooses to rely on his celebrated “Montana look,” which has been known to crack the toughest of tough nuts. Sadly, John seems impervious to it. Maybe he’s a contract killer. Or worse . . . But Montana prefers not to speculate further.

  Poldi joins them at the table, sweetens her coffee and looks Montana in the eye.

  “As I said, Vito, this is John Owenya from Arusha, Tanzania. We got married four years ago. I loved him, but he broke my heart and stole my house. And it turned out he had another family on the side—a woman he had been with for a long time, but never married, and their kids. And now here he is, the bastard, he’s sitting there as if nothing had ever happened. I’ve no idea what he wants and I’ve no wish to know, because whatever he says will be a lie. Oh yes, and there’s something else: he’s a colleague of yours, a detective inspector with the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs.”

  Montana sighs. It’s just as he feared.

  John clears his throat, but Poldi’s raised finger tells him to wait his turn. She continues to gaze intently at Montana and takes his hand, the big, shapely hand with the hirsute knuckles. She loves it for its combination of gentleness and strength.

  “I’m just as much at a loss as you, Vito,” she says. “I’ll explain everything later, but first let’s get this over with, okay?”

  Montana shakes his head and gives a mirthless laugh.

  “You really knock the stuffing out of me, Poldi!”

  She kisses his hand and turns at last to John. My Auntie Poldi really is a model of composure.

  “All right, I want to know why you’re here and how you found me.”

  “Hamna shida, Poldi.” John heaves a sigh of relief. “I need your help. Thomas has disappeared.”

  That, I imagine, was when it revived. The thrill of the chase. The moment when Poldi tasted blood.

  “Why come looking for him in Sicily, of all places? Anyway, how did you find me?”

  “I have ways of tracing people,” John replies rather tetchily. “His mobile phone was logged into a WLAN in Taormina a week ago. Nothing since then. I even managed to trace the hotel he was staying at and checked his room. Thomas purported to be a Tanzanian financial investor. He paid a month’s rent in advance but hasn’t been seen for over a week, and yesterday, when I happened to see your picture in a newspaper, I thought . . .”

  “You thought you’d drop in and break my heart again!”

  “Who is Thomas?” Montana interjects.

  “His half-brother,” says Poldi. “A nice enough fellow, but a bit unstable.” She turns back to John. “So he disappeared?”

  “Yes, from Arusha two weeks ago. You know what he’s like—he disappears from time to time, only to turn up again sooner or later. Rather the worse for wear, but okay otherwise. Like a stray cat. If you ask where he’s been, he always says—”

  “Don’t worry. I just got lost in the bush,” Poldi says.

  John smiles. “Lost in the bush, yes, that’s what he always said.”

  It doesn’t escape Poldi that he’s already using the past tense.

  Montana starts to ask something, but Poldi gets there first. “Because in Tanzania, you never just get ‘lost in the bush.’ Why not? Because you don’t go there on your own in the first place, and you don’t get lost because you’ll be torn to pieces by lions or hyenas, or, at best, die of thirst. The bush is a big, wild place. It’s no fun, and you’ve no business there unless you’re a game warden or a Masai and you really know your way around. Thomas is neither one nor the other; he’s a big-city boy to his fingertips. Always looks cool and dapper in some swanky rented car. A likeable show-off who attaches a lot of importance to his bella figura. A guy like that never ventures into the bush.”

  Montana gets the picture. “In other words, a small-time criminal who does the occasional job.”

  “He really isn’t such a bad lot,” says Poldi. “But no, one doesn’t always want to know exactly where he’s been or what he’s been up to.”

  Montana’s frown deepens. None of this appeals to him: neither John Owenya’s sudden appearance, nor Poldi’s secretiveness, nor the sound of this man Thomas, nor the thrill of the chase reflected in Poldi’s eyes. He is even less pleased by what John goes on to say.

  “So we weren’t too worried at first. Not until a week after his disappearance, when four guys with submachine guns pulled up outside our house and—”

  “My house, you mean,” Poldi cuts in sharply.

  “I mean our house, Poldi. Your house and mine.”

  “No, you bugger, that’s not what you mean! But get this straight once and for all: it’s my house, just mine. Not yours. You took it away from me, John. You cheated me out of it.”

  John throws up his arms. “Do we have to thrash this out right now, Poldi?”

  “No, but we will, believe you me. All right, these four guys—what did they want?”

  “They were looking for Thomas.”

  “Kigumbe’s people?”

  John nods. “So four guys with machine guns pulled up outside the house, jumped out of the car and asked for Thomas. All I gathered was that he’d made off with something that belonged to Kigumbe, who wanted it back at any price.”

  “Like what?”

  John gives my aunt a searching look. “They didn’t say. I suppose you wouldn’t know?”

  “Me? Why should I?”

  “You know why I’m asking.”

  “Yes, I know what you’re getting at. But no, John, I’ve no idea what Thomas could have stolen from Kigumbe. If he did, though, it was the height of folly. Kigumbe wouldn’t simply let someone rob him. If you ask me, Thomas is in deep shit.”

  John nods. “You can say that again.”

  “Who is this Kigumbe?” Montana asks.

  “A boss” is all Poldi says, but that’s good enough for Montana. Everyone in Sicily knows what that means.

  “I paid him a visit after that incident with his men,” John goes on. “He asked after ‘Mama Poldi.’”

  “Oh, how nice of him,” Poldi says innocently. She mops her brow. “What did you tell him?”

  “Only that you’d gone back to Munich and we hadn’t been in touch since.”

  Poldi picks up the caffettiera. “More coffee, anyone?”

  “Poldi?”

  “Poldi!”

  Poldi’s two very different policemen might have been an echo. All at once, they sound unanimously suspicious of her, and she doesn’t like that somehow.

  “What? I honestly don’t have a clue what Thomas may have stolen from Kigumbe! What else did the man say?”

  “Only that it was something of rather sentimental value.” John takes a sip of espresso. “And that it was probably worth ten million dollars on the open market.”

  Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Auntie Poldi series.

  About the Author

  Mario Giordano, the son of Italian immigrants, was born in Munich. Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, his first novel translated into English, was an Indie Next Pick, a B&N Discover Selection, an Amazon Top Ten Best Book of the Month, and a Costco Staff Pick. He lives in Berlin.

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