Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (20 page)

11

                  
Describes a misunderstanding, the after-effects of knockout drops, and sundry discoveries. Poldi fails to find her key, expels an uninvited visitor with the aid of a muzzle-loader, and makes discovery number one. She gets personal protection and accompanies the aunts to the lido. There she makes discovery number two, conducts a serious private conversation, and soon afterwards makes discovery number three.

Poldi got to her feet with an effort and saw Death standing in front of her. He was looking embarrassed and rather at a loss.

“Well, well,” she said calmly. “So it's time, is it?”

Death put on his reading glasses and glanced at the list on his clipboard. “One moment; not so fast. You aren't on today's list. Something…” – he cleared his throat nervously – “something must have gone wrong.”

“You can say that again,” Poldi grumbled, smoothing her dress down. “I always thought my end would be more dignified. Look at my dress. Do you know what that cost? Oh well, never mind, let's make the best of it.”

She looked across at the bottling plant. The young people outside the entrance, the wedding guests lining up outside the Portaloos, the stray cats – they all seemed frozen in mid-movement. Even the glow from the street lights looked harsh and ossified.

“Just as a matter of interest, is this eternal damnation, or am I in Purgatory?”

“Weren't you listening?” Death snapped. “I just said something's gone wrong. It isn't your turn yet.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning you aren't on the list,” Death repeated more meekly. “I'm sorry.”

“Hell's bells and buckets of blood,” Poldi thundered. “Bugger the list. I'm dead and that's that.”

“No, Poldi, you aren't.”

“So where the hell am I, then? What is this?”

Death gave an embarrassed cough. “A, er… near-death experience?”

Poldi grabbed Death by the scruff of the neck and shook him a little. He was quite lightly built.

“Let go of me,” Death wailed, brandishing his clipboard. “Please. I can put you down on the list any time, if you're really so keen.”

Poldi released him. “Okay, then, let's do it. Where do I sign?”

But Death lowered his clipboard again, looking positively dejected. “No, can't be done. Listen, Poldi, it doesn't work like that. Those knockout drops in your wine weren't supposed to kill you. Though —”

“Though they nearly did, is that what you mean?”

Death became all formal again. “I'm not authorized to disclose information on the subject of destiny.”

Poldi got the message. “So it's a balls-up of the first order.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Death conceded. He sounded genuinely apologetic. “I'm really sorry. Well… I'll be seeing you.” He turned to go.

“Hang on,” called Poldi. Death was looking rather exhausted, she saw, and no wonder. If you've been on the go since the beginning of time, you're bound to reach burnout sooner or later.

“What is it?”

“When
am
I for the chop? I mean, just for interest's sake.”

“You really want to know?”

“Come on, we've been having such a nice chat.”

Death hesitated. “Very well, Poldi, since it's you,” he eventually said with a sigh. He consulted his clipboard again.

Although Poldi couldn't make out any of the names, she saw that they were listed in quite small print and neatly arranged in date order. Death ran his ballpoint down the list name by name and sheet after sheet.

And then…

“Ah, there you are. Officially certified, rubber-stamped and signed. Your date of death is the —”

Unfortunately, that was when Poldi woke up.

It's hard to say in retrospect who put the knockout drops in my aunt's glass, just as the whole course of the evening remained hidden behind a sort of blackout curtain. Poldi was able to reconstruct only parts of it later on, and we can't tell whether everything happened just the way she thought, whether certain conversations actually took place, whether her recollections are accurate, and whether she really overheard Russo and Patanè arguing. The one tangible clue was a bloodstained handkerchief in a zipper bag and her final memory of a pair of men's black shoes.

Groaning, cursing and afflicted with the thickest of thick heads, Poldi recovered consciousness on the ground beside the SUV. She was still a little dizzy, she was thirsty, she had a metallic taste in her mouth, and the veil of oblivion was lifting only slowly. But she was alive. She did feel rather miffed at failing to learn her sell-by date, but there were more important issues to be addressed at present. Like what had actually happened.

She could remember nothing at this stage, only those black shoes and the fact that Death had said something about knockout drops, but that sufficed her for the moment.

Still groaning, she staggered to her feet like Polyphemus blinded by Odysseus, drew several deep breaths while waiting for the drumbeats in her head to subside a little, and looked around. It was still dark. She could make out the old bottling plant, but it wasn't illuminated any more. Everything was steeped in gloom. No one to be seen. The party was over.

And nobody missed me, let alone came looking for me, Poldi thought bitterly. She peered at her watch. Just after half past three. How long had she been lying on the ground? No idea. All she knew was that she could have simply died there, for all anyone would have cared. Balls to the lot of them.

Still rather wobbly on her legs, Poldi straightened her dress, retrieved her handbag from the ground and looked up at the night sky. The stars twinkled at her and the moon seemed to perform a coquettish little hop before it dipped below the horizon.

“
Namaste
, life,” Poldi said softly, somehow glad not to have been on tonight's list after all, and set off for home. Cautiously, step by step, stomach churning with rage and assailed by waves of nausea, she tottered home along the esplanade, steadying herself against the walls of the buildings that lined the waterfront. She felt she was in a totally unfamiliar place. She passed no one, no lights were on in the houses, and the dark sea was lethargically slapping the rocky shore. The whole town seemed to be guiltily avoiding her eye. It merely flickered its street lights in a nervous way and pretended to be asleep.

“If that's your attitude,” muttered Poldi, “you can kiss my ass.”

On reaching No. 29 Via Baronessa, she felt in her handbag for the key and found the self-seal bag containing the bloodstained handkerchief. She stared at the small plastic envelope for a moment, trying to remember where she'd got it from. She failed, and she also failed to find her key, even when she emptied out her handbag on the doorstep. The key was gone.

Just then, Poldi heard noises. They were definitely not in her head. Crisp, rhythmical blows, not loud but coming from not far away, they were interspersed with scratching and scraping sounds. The noises trickled down on my aunt from above like crumbling plaster, mingled with the sound of shuffling feet and heavy breathing. They were coming from the roof terrace, no doubt about it.

Poldi wondered what to do. Shout for help till the whole street was awake? Tiptoe away and call the police? No, because her stomach was still churning with rage, and besides, she knew from a reliable source that she wasn't scheduled to die yet. Whoever it was that had invaded
her
house with
her
key was going to get an earful.

Gingerly, she tried the front door. It was locked, but that didn't matter because Poldi, who often forgot her key, had taken the precaution of sticking a spare one to the back of her letter box. She lifted the little metal box off its mount as quietly as possible, detached the spare key and silently let herself in.

Without turning a light on, Poldi tiptoed into the living room and over to the wall on which hung the antique firearms Montana had eyed so suspiciously. She took down an eighteenth-century infantry musket
dating from the War of the Bavarian Succession, a plain, unadorned muzzle-loader from the Fortschauer Armatur factory, 19 mm calibre, with a walnut stock and a long barrel. Its numerous dents and signs of use indicated that the weapon had probably mangled the intestines of several Prussian fusiliers, shattered their limbs and perforated their skulls. Poldi's father had taken an enthusiastic interest in that particular aspect of Bavarian history, and although Poldi had never really shared his passion, she had kept his small collection of firearms as a memento of him. The guns had long been deactivated, because the barrels were welded up and plugged with steel, but they still had their bayonets.

Despite the darkness and despite her headache and nausea, Poldi managed to fix the bayonet on the barrel. The musket, which now weighed heavy in her hands, seemed to awake from a long dream and whisper to her about the atrocities it yearned to commit once more. And who could blame it, it whispered. After all, killing was the only thing it had ever been taught to do.

But Poldi had no intention of allowing the musket to indulge in any shenanigans. She merely wanted to make a bit of an impression. And so, with the muzzle-loader at the ready and her stomach still churning with rage, she crept step by step up the stairs to the roof, whence the staccato noises were coming. By now, she had guessed what was going on up there. Anxious to exploit the surprise effect, she paused on the last step, drew several deep breaths, counted up to three, and then burst out onto the roof.

“FREEZEHANDSUPORIFIREDOWNONYOURKNEESANDBEQUICKABOUT IT.”

All of it in German, of course, to enhance the effect still further.

The figure, which had been attacking the cemented gate lion with a cold chisel, uttered a startled cry and spun round. It was dressed in black, together with gloves and a face mask such as bikers wear beneath their helmets.

Poldi gripped the musket even tighter and aimed the bayonet at the intruder. “Don't move. Down on your knees or I'll run you through.”

Again in German, or rather, Bavarian, because excitement had robbed Poldi of her fluency in Italian and she felt it would be counterproductive, under the circumstances, to stammer.

But the intruder didn't move. Rightly so, really, because “Freeze” and “Down on your knees” were rather self-contradictory and no one threatened with a musket wants to do the wrong thing.

For safety's sake, Poldi repeated everything in Italian. “Down on your knees, I said. Hands above your head, move.” Anyone who has watched TV police procedurals for several decades will have items in their vocabulary suitable for such occasions. However, the man with the chisel still seemed unimpressed.

“Drop that chisel. Take off your mask.” In order to underline her demand, Poldi lunged at the intruder as if about to skewer him with her bayonet. “Haaa.”

That did the trick at last. The intruder dropped the chisel and raised his hands, but before Poldi could say more, he turned and climbed over the parapet. Or rather, he rolled over the low wall, because he didn't appear to be very athletic.

“Freeze or I fire!” Poldi shouted at the top of her voice.

But the intruder had already landed with a thud on the terrace of
Dottore
Branciforti's next-door house and gone sprawling. Poldi heard a smothered cry. Leaning over the wall, she saw the intruder scramble to his feet with a groan, hobble across the terrace and start to climb down a creeper on the far side.

“I'll fire,” yelled Poldi. “I'll fire on three. One… two… three… Bang. Bang. Bang.”

“Did you really shout ‘Bang'?” I asked Poldi on my next visit, when she was giving me as detailed a description of the incident as her memory of it allowed.

“Of course. Why, what else was I to do? At that moment the gun and I were – to all intents and purposes – a single entity. My basest human instincts had been aroused. Higher brain function on standby, nothing but the spinal cord in action, know what I mean? What was it Chekhov said? If a gun appears in the first act, it's got to go off in the fourth at the latest. Make a note of that; it was good advice given to a young writer. Of course the gun wanted to go off, and it did. Lucky that old musket was deactivated, or I'd have shot the man down in cold blood. That's because something had been triggered – inside me, I mean. Something atavistic and elemental. In other words —”

“The hunting instinct. I get it.”

“Exactly. No need to roll your eyes like that, I was
in extremis
. I know a thing or two about extreme situations.”

I nodded – always the best policy with Poldi in such circumstances.

“Would you really have pulled the trigger if the gun had been activated?”

An awkward question, I know, but somehow I didn't want to let Poldi get away with her big talk so easily.

“You're trying to trip me up, aren't you? The fact is, the fellow winced when I shouted ‘Bang', which proves
he
thought I was capable of shooting him.”

“He got away from you, though.”

“Yes, temporarily. Only temporarily. The truth is, I'd pegged him long ago.”

I naturally wanted her to elaborate, but she yawned and said she was going to bed. Whether or not she was also a trifle stung by my scepticism, she deferred the sequel to her nocturnal adventure until the following evening.

I spent the whole of the next day working doggedly on my novel. I tried to conceive of it as a kind of weapon with which I had only to become a single entity for it to fire. But my novel behaved like a musket with the barrel welded up. It wanted, it genuinely wanted to go off, to hit hearts and shred nerves, penetrate skin, flesh and bone, I could sense it, but all that ever emerged in the end was an ineffectual “bang”. I did, however, include in the first chapter a muzzle-loader with which my Great-Grandfather Barnaba, beside himself with fury, plans to shoot the white donkey that had kicked him not long before. Barnaba swears that he will stalk the white donkey to the ends of the earth. Still limping, he corners it in the
macchia
of Acireale and takes aim. The donkey fixes him with its trusting, unsuspecting gaze. And then comes the transformation. Barnaba repeatedly hesitates, takes aim once more, hesitates yet again, and hasn't the heart to pull the trigger. In the end, he breaks down and begs the donkey to forgive him. A very emotional and affecting scene between man and beast, with a powerful pay-off of the kind I'd learnt at the writers' workshop. Just as a weeping Barnaba is about to hurl the musket into the crater of Etna like Frodo jettisoning the ring, he notices something engraved on the barrel, but all he can decipher is the name of a city: M-u-n-i-c-h.