Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (28 page)

“I saw Hölderlin spring at me in slow motion,” she told me later. “It was like my last hour had come and I'd entered another space–time continuum.”

Be that as it may, a person's reflexes take over at such moments. Poldi spun round, grabbed the musket and, while Hölderlin was still in mid-air, clouted him on the head. The Dobermann uttered a yelp and landed with a crash on the coffee table. There was another crash as the old musket simultaneously went off. The powder charge erupted from the muzzle with plenty of smoke and flame, blowing a hole in the ceiling and generating a recoil that tore the weapon from Poldi's grasp. Profoundly shocked by both occurrences – the crash and the detonation – Mimì shied like a startled horse, then froze. Although the blow with the musket had not been enough to put Hölderlin completely out of action, it did at least gain Poldi some time. Still moving with unwonted agility, she dived over the back of the sofa and ran up the stairs to the roof – a typically irrational thing to do, because she could easily have reached the front door instead. That, however, would have entailed dodging past Mimì and the dazed Dobermann, which formed a kind of optical-psychological barrier. Meanwhile, Mimì unfroze and Hölderlin scrambled to his feet.

“After her.”

Breathing heavily, Poldi reached the roof terrace.

“Help. HEEEEELP.”

But no one could hear her. Everyone in town was joining in the procession. Skyrockets, brass band and fervent singing combined to produce a din that reverberated around the streets and rose into the night sky, which was tinged with the glow of torches and candles.

“HEEEEELP.”

Not a chance. Poldi briefly considered escaping on to
Dottore
Branciforti's roof terrace like Turi, but didn't think she was up to it.

So there she stood, all alone on her expanse of roof, feeling rather frightened because Hölderlin, overwrought and still slightly dazed, appeared a moment later. That he bore her an unmistakable grudge was evident from the way he herded her towards the parapet overlooking the street. Mimì, who came toiling up the stairs after him, left Poldi in no doubt as to how the night would end.

“Germany is such a lovely country, Donna Isolde. Why couldn't you have stayed there? Why did you have to poke your nose into things that don't concern you?”

“It's an old failing of mine,” Poldi gasped with Hölderlin's slavering muzzle inches from her face. He had both forepaws planted on her chest as though he meant to push her off the roof, and her supposition to that effect was probably correct.

“How did Valentino get hold of the letters and the lock of hair?” she called to Mimì, more to gain time than for information's sake.

“Pure chance. I had an arrangement with Patanè concerning the, er, ‘exploitation' of my various properties. That was how Valentino must have come across the letters. I had mentioned Femminamorta to Marisa in the last one I wrote her. Valentino put two and two together and looked around the mine. He saw me throw a rose into the cistern on the anniversary of Marisa's death.”

“How romantic.”

“I didn't kill Marisa,” Mimì snapped. “It was an accident. She meant to leave me for that – that
footballer
. She wouldn't even keep my letters, the silly girl.”

“That doesn't surprise me somehow.”

“Hold your tongue. I worshipped Marisa. It was an accident. She was so scared by Hölderlin the First, she staggered backwards and hit her head on the side of the cistern.”

“You could have explained all that to the police.”

“The police were the least of my worries. It was the scandal. You didn't know my father. He would have torn me to pieces and disinherited me.”

“A pity he didn't.”

“And so, with a bleeding heart, I laid my goddess, my Diotima, to rest in there, hoping to preserve our love and our secret for all time.”

“You simply dumped her down there like rubbish.”

Mimì was growing calmer. He peered over the parapet. Then, serenity personified, he stepped back.

“Believe me, Donna Isolde, everyone in town will mourn your death. I shall contribute a wreath and recite some poems by the Master at your funeral. It will be extremely moving.”

“Oh, don't go to any trouble,” gasped Poldi.

Mimì shook his head. “No one will be surprised, Donna Isolde. The drinking, the depression, the foreign country – no wonder you longed for death like a far-off, unattainable lover. That's what people will think.” Thus spake the romantic in him. Then he turned prosaically pragmatic. “And now, Donna Isolde, you have a choice: either you jump of your own free will, or Hölderlin will assist you by tearing your face off.”

“Can I phone a friend?” Poldi gasped bravely.

Mimì was infuriated. “Go on, jump, Hölderlin.”

Hölderlin snapped at Poldi's throat and she shrank back even further over the parapet, unable to go much further. She pictured Death getting out his ballpoint and preparing to strike her name from the list on his funny clipboard. Behind her, the Madonna del Rosario procession was still blaring its way through the town at a snail's pace. She estimated that it would take another twenty minutes to reach the Via Baronessa. Twenty minutes too long, alas.

“And that's why Valentino had to die?”

“He wanted two hundred thousand euros.”

“My God, Mimì, why didn't you simply pay him off? All Valentino wanted was to get out of Sicily. You'd never have heard from him again.”

“The swine didn't give me all the letters or the lock of hair at our first meeting. He'd have gone on blackmailing me forever.”

That was why he'd called Valentino on Valérie's phone and summoned him to Femminamorta for a final payment. At their second meeting he'd wasted no time in setting Hölderlin on him the way he had once set Hölderlin's predecessor on Marisa and was now menacing my Auntie Poldi. Then he had cold-bloodedly fired a load of buckshot at Valentino's face, loaded him into the boot of Patanè's car, driven him back to Torre and laid him out on the beach at Praiola.

“Why didn't you simply dump him in the cistern?”

“Beside Marisa? Never. No one was going to lie beside Marisa.”

“Maybe that was your big mistake.”

“That's enough. Jump, or Hölderlin will do for you.”

Hölderlin came even closer. His breath stank of tartar and rotting meat. Poldi shrank back further still. Behind her, only thirty feet of thin air separated her from the potholed surface of the Via Baronessa. Not far away, the brass band leading the procession was blaring out a slow march. End of the line. Death was impatiently fiddling with his ballpoint.

And then Etna erupted.

Etna is regarded as a good-natured volcano whose lava is low in gas content and relatively inexplosive, and it regularly releases its internal pressure. A stream of lava will flatten a village once in a blue moon, it's true, and half of Catania was destroyed in the seventeenth century. But everything happens nice and slowly, so there's always time to clear out the
salotto
, tie the children's shoelaces, drink a coffee and watch the catastrophe from a safe distance. In any case, the lava tends to run down into the uninhabited Valle del Bove, of which Poldi's terrace affords an excellent view.

Good-natured or not, though, when Etna
does
erupt it transfixes you. The mountain with the picturesque plume of smoke then becomes a gigantic living creature that roars abruptly like a furious old man roused too soon from his siesta. The air quivers with each eruption, galvanizing one's nerves and imagination. Just such a roar, a gigantic
boom
issuing from the bowels of the earth, rent the air behind Mimì, went thundering through the salty night air, rolled down the slopes, surged over tranquil Torre Archirafi and its bitter mineral-water spring, and pierced Poldi to the marrow. Having lived with their volcano since time immemorial, Sicilians treat its eruptions and its irksome showers of ash with equanimity, but when “Mongibello” makes its presence felt, no one remains unaffected. Everyone turns to look.

Mimì did too.

Even Hölderlin did.

Poldi saw a huge fountain of lava erupt from the volcano – a wonderful sight, a last farewell. Things happen like that sometimes, so unforeseen, so immediate, so unmistakable. Suddenly, everything becomes clear. With this greeting from the volcano and death before her eyes, my Auntie Poldi was transfixed by a frisson of unbridled
joie de vivre
. In that brief instant she realized how good it was to live between the sea and the volcano in company with the aunts, the mushrooms, Valérie, the sad signora, Montana and all, and that she wanted to survive for a while longer, not just for this very last moment.

She didn't really register Etna's second exhalation because everything happened very quickly after that.

Hölderlin released her and spun round in alarm as Montana came storming out onto the roof.

“Get him, Hölderlin,” screamed Mimì, but before the Dobermann could respond to changed circumstances and fly at Montana's throat, the policeman opened fire and Hölderlin collapsed with a death rattle. Shocked by the volcanic eruption and his dog's swift demise, Mimì Pastorella clutched his heart, groaned, and collapsed likewise. Heart failure. Fatal. Nothing to be done.

15

                  
Describes my Auntie Poldi in close-up on her terrace, an embrace and a promise. The weather changes and Poldi has to turn up at police headquarters. Various matters need sorting out, not always with agreeable results. It's always the same: just when you think something's over, something else gets in the way yet again.

Stirred and inspired by my Auntie Poldi's account, I devoted the next day – my last day in the Via Baronessa for the time being – to rewriting the first chapter of my novel. Before emigrating to Munich, my great-grandfather Barnaba has to solve a murder. Decades earlier, the aristocratic landowner Calogero Macaluso brutally set his dog on an innocent peasant girl and hounded her to death for refusing him. Since then, legend has had it that the ghost of a monstrous dog haunts the district and commits atrocities. When Macaluso's last surviving grandson is found torn to pieces in my great-grandfather's orange grove, he has to find the murderer in order to prove his own innocence. He succeeds in doing so thanks to his brilliant inductive logic and the assistance of the lovely Eleonora. Barnaba lays a trap for the dead grandson's rival, a relative of the murdered peasant girl, in the bleak Valle del Bove, shoots his trained Dobermann, and ensures that the murderer gets his just deserts. At the chapter draws to a close, Barnaba and Eleonora make love al fresco while Etna erupts above them in a meaningful manner.

I rewrote the chapter in a sort of frenzy. That evening Poldi asked me to read it aloud to her. She listened attentively without interrupting, never fidgeted once or rolled her eyes. When I had finished and was regarding her nervously, she shook her head.

“It's crap. Dump it.”

“Any
constructive
dramatic or stylistic comments?”

She poured herself a Scotch. “No. You can do much better, though. It's all a question of practice.”

My Auntie Poldi knew a thing or two about storytelling.

But back to Poldi's showdown.

In the background, the erupting volcano and the oompahpah of the procession, which was just turning into the Via Baronessa. In close-up in the foreground, my Auntie Poldi. Pale, wig askew but otherwise all right. She stared in shock at the two corpses on her terrace, Mimì's and Hölderlin's, and at Montana, who felt Mimì's pulse and shook his head. He holstered his gun, rose to his feet and walked slowly over to Poldi, deliberately obstructing her view of the dead bodies.

“Are you all right?”

Poldi couldn't get a word out, just stared at him.

“Poldi.”

She whispered something almost inaudible.

“What did you say?”

“Could you —”

“Could I what, Poldi?”

“Could you please put your arms around me?”

No problem. Montana put his arms around my aunt and held her tight. He held her, silent and strong and rather sweaty, until her shock subsided at last and she was able to weep. And he continued to hold her in his arms, as if he never wanted to let go of her, until she gradually stopped trembling.

“Better?”

Poldi nodded and sniffed.

“I have to call my team now, okay?”

Poldi nodded again but continued to hold him tight.

He gently detached himself and looked into her eyes. “Like to sit down?”

She shook her head. “How did you get in?”

Montana held up one of the spare keys. “Assistente Rizzoli got this from one of your sisters-in-law. I'd been meaning to return it for ages.”

“I'm glad you took your time.”

“I'm glad you can smile again.”

The procession was now making its way along the Via Baronessa. The Madonna del Rosario, a meek but majestic figure, swayed past in her canopied palanquin carried by eight young men of Valentino's age. Poldi didn't recognize the march because the brass band's off-key rendition was mingled with the singing of Torre Archirafi's candle-bearing townsfolk, but she didn't care. It sounded wonderful. Heavenly.

“
Namaste
, life,” she whispered.

“Did you say something, Poldi?”

“No, nothing.”

Having alerted his colleagues, Montana shepherded Poldi down to the living room, sat her down on the sofa, thrust the musket aside and poured her a glass of grappa.

“Drink this, it'll do you good,” Poldi said in a low voice.

“What?”

“You've got to say that. They always say that in films. Go on, say it.”

“Drink this, it'll do you good.”

“But I don't want to.”

“Don't be silly, Poldi. And don't budge, I'll deal with everything.”

“Don't go, Vito.”

“I'm not going.”

“Promise me.”

“I won't go, I promise. Shall I call your sisters-in-law?”

“Please don't. There's no rush.”

Poldi registered little of all the forensic palaver that went on. She nodded absently to Assistente Rizzoli, who was once more involved, answered questions she forgot the next moment, and saw Montana telephoning. She shuddered and started crying again despite herself when the zinc coffin containing Mimì's corpse and Hölderlin's plastic body bag were carried past her. Although she gradually recovered after two double grappas, it took her quite a while to grasp the full extent of what had happened. Montana had to tell her several times.

He had intended to speak to her that night in any case, he said – on a private matter. He'd wanted to clarify something, straighten things out, clear the decks emotionally, shed light on the darkness, put his cards on the table. But that wasn't all. Their conversation that morning in the bar near the prefecture had haunted him all day long like a persistent salesman harassing an irresolute customer. He had been possessed by a strange kind of nervousness and vague irritability that spoilt his concentration and made him feel queasy – meteorologically speaking, all signs of an approaching cyclone. Montana detested indecision, especially in himself. He hated unresolved situations as much as unsolved cases. Falling between two stools and not knowing what to do infuriated him, made him insufferable towards his colleagues, and had become blended with his instinctive feeling that Patanè could not be Valentino's murderer into a vile cocktail of ill humour and heartache.

“Did you say heartache?” Poldi cut in.

“Let me finish, will you?”

“
Forza
, Vito.”

He hadn't been entirely honest with her, he went on. Her instinct hadn't, of course, deceived her. Alessia was a colleague, though in the administrative branch. He hated lies, he said. Lies were the worst thing of all, lies were the enemy, the poison he had to swallow every day, the thing that could destroy you if you didn't take care. That was why he had meant to call on Poldi after work and clarify a few things. He had been eating a sandwich in the car when he received this anonymous call. Number withheld, unfamiliar voice, brief message to the effect that the German signora might be in danger and he ought to hurry.

“Who was it?” asked Poldi.

“I told you: anonymous. Obviously, someone who knew what Mimì had in mind.”

“A woman's voice?”

“No, a man's.”

“How did he get your number?”

“Madonna, Poldi, I don't know. Anyway, I slapped the blue light on my roof at once and stepped on the gas.”

Needless to say, Poldi was itching to know what he had originally intended to clarify with her – in other words, which way the cookie would crumble as far as she was concerned. But Montana wasn't having any of it. He was tired, hungry and sweaty, he'd shot a dog and failed to prevent a heart attack, saved my aunt's life and solved a murder case.

“I've had enough for one day,” he said.

And that's the way it stayed.

The next day Poldi had to go to police headquarters to make a statement. The volcanic eruption seemed to have ushered in a change in the weather. Towering above Etna, which was growling to itself, was a column of smoke and fire thousands of feet high. But the weather wasn't as hot as it had been. Veiled all over in cirrostratus, the sky dispensed a soft, milky light that smoothed the edges and outlines of the world and dispelled the lethargy of the summer. Sky and sea merged, and even Signor Bussacca looked as energetic and supercharged as Livingstone preparing to cross the Kalahari. Signora Cocuzza, who was obviously in the know, went so far as to wink at Poldi when she dropped in for a cappuccino and a
cornetto
. It was a good day. My Auntie Poldi had often been in places she never wanted to leave but was compelled to, but this morning she felt she'd really come home at last.

She told Signora Cocuzza about the anonymous call to Montana, but her new friend merely frowned and shook her head, and Poldi believed her. She then made a brief call to Teresa from the bar. She had informed her sisters-in-law of events in the Via Baronessa the previous night, although it had been late. She felt she owed them that, and besides, she needed Teresa's help in regard to an official matter.

At nine on the dot, cheerful, sober and smelling of spring flowers, she presented herself at the prefecture in Acireale in a pistachio-coloured pencil skirt and a cream-coloured, very low-cut silk blouse. Sensually dark lipstick, sunglasses and Nefertiti eyeliner for the requisite touch of drama, and, beneath a headscarf with lemon motifs, a sort of tribute to Etna in the shape of her towering black Sunday wig. Everyone turned to look at her. She said good morning to the desk sergeant with the outsize Adam's apple, winked at the young policemen lounging against their patrol cars, and swung her hips like a sixties film star ready to mount the nearest Vespa or jump into the nearest fountain. Assistente Rizzoli found it hard to concentrate on his PC as Poldi dictated her statement.

Attracted by the click of her ballpoint like a cat by the sound of a tin opener, Montana appeared in the doorway as soon as she had signed her deposition. He was wearing a dark suit with a black T-shirt and looked like a cross between a Russian oligarch and a star architect from Milan. In other words, by Poldi's standards: hot. He led her into his office at the end of the passage and shut the door.

“Are you going to have me on the floor?”

“Don't be silly, Poldi.”

She got the message. The cookie hadn't crumbled her way.

“Pity. May I sit down?”

“Of course, please do. Like something to drink?”

“Some water.”

Montana disappeared, giving Poldi a brief opportunity to inspect his office. It looked the way she'd expected: too small, too chock-a-block, too old, too stuffy, too depressing. A steel desk, a decrepit office chair with butterfly-pattern upholstery, a prehistoric computer, folding chairs for visitors, a filing cabinet, stacks of papers on the floor, a crucifix on the wall, a map of Sicily, and a desk diary with no entries. It was just the way Poldi had always pictured Inspector Chance's office somewhere at the end of a passage. She was surprised they didn't keep the cleaners' mops and buckets in there as well.

“See what I meant?” Montana asked from the doorway.

She turned to look at him. “It's a shame. A disgrace.”

“Only another three years.” He sat down beside her on one of the folding chairs and handed her a glass of water. “We found the murder weapon at his house in Acireale. Together with the recording you made, that dispels any doubt: Domenico Pastorella shot Valentino and very probably killed Marisa Puglisi as well. He was almost bankrupt, by the way. Hence the deal with Patanè.”

“All I wonder is, who set up the deal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Patanè is a scumbag and an idiot. He'd never have approached Mimì without protection.”

“Russo, you mean?”

Poldi made a dismissive gesture. “Pure speculation; forget it. What did Mimì's wife Carmela say?”

“She seemed quite calm. Almost…”

“Relieved?”

Montana nodded. “She denies it, of course, but I think she knew the truth all along – not that there's much of a chance we'll be able to prove it. I could spit.”

“Oh, Vito.”

“What you did was foolish and dangerous, Poldi, not to mention the fact that you obstructed my investigation. You should have informed me far earlier.”

“
You
kept withholding information from
me
.”

“I'm a policeman.”

“And I'm me. The next time —”

“There won't be a next time, Poldi.”

She said nothing.

“Still, the chief did congratulate me earlier.”

“That's good. You know the joke about God creating Sicily out of a few offcuts and offsetting such a paradise by creating the Sicilians?”

“Yes, it's a classic. A good one.”

“No, Vito, it's balls. Sicily is a paradise, Sicilians and all. You saved my life yesterday. Which reminds me: have I thanked you yet?”

He grinned at her. “Don't mention it.”

“If you go on smirking like that, I'll get naughty ideas. Well, now would be a good opportunity to tell me what you really meant to say last night.”

Montana squirmed for a moment. Then he pulled himself together and awkwardly, long-windedly, explained that he and his colleague Alessia had been an item for the past three months. Well, more or less an item, because their relationship was rather complicated too, but he had recently introduced her to his children and it had gone really smoothly. But then the thing with my aunt had hit him like a bolt from the blue – he was only human, after all, and he couldn't help thinking of her all the time, but he was also a man of principle and had had to learn to control his feelings, so he'd carried out emergency open heart surgery on himself and, well… he'd decided in favour of Alessia.

He wound up looking like a marathon runner breasting the tape.

Poldi remained silent. She could have recited the words of his monologue along with him, they sounded so familiar to her.