Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions (3 page)

2

                  
Tells of Valentino, of Poldi's ultra-private photographic project, of afternoons in Torre Archirafi, and of sad Signora Cocuzza. Poldi becomes anxious and is nearly killed by some palm trees. She snaffles something in Acireale and soon afterwards discovers a small but heavily guarded paradise, which has been bereft of a lion.

Valentino was a quiet, slim young man of not quite twenty. He was one of those Sicilian types in whom Sicily's Arabo-Norman heritage shows through: olive complexion, broad nose, generous mouth, blue eyes.

“A good-looking lad,” was Poldi's verdict. “Just as sexy as my Peppe used to be. One could really take a shine to him.”

Believe it or not, despite her sixty years and ample figure Poldi was still in great demand, certainly to judge by the glances she got from the local menfolk. She had always been a hottie and a fan of men in general, especially men in dapper police uniforms. That became clear to me when she showed me the photo albums containing her collection. The fact was, Poldi had a hobby: photographing good-looking traffic cops from all over the world. Having travelled widely in the previous thirty years, she had filled five capacious albums with steam-ironed, uniformed masculinity from Alaska to Australia, Belgrade to Buenos Aires. All the photos were neatly dated and many bore names indicating that Poldi had become better acquainted with the custodians of the law in question. Tattooed Maoris in snow-white shorts posed for the camera, a moustachioed Sikh in immaculate khaki brandished his lathi, and mounted New York cops wearing mirrored sunglasses bared their teeth. It was a proud parade of dapper figures, well-pressed trousers and bristling moustaches. Canadian Mounties in their flaming red full dress uniforms, narrow-hipped Scots in black and white, short-legged Bolivians in olive drab and snappy berets, wistful Siberian youngsters in fur caps – my Auntie Poldi had snapped them all. But her favourite subjects were
Vigili Urbani
. At least half the photos were of Italian traffic cops in their white gloves and, in some cases, white tropical helmets.

“The handsomest ones are in Rome. By far. No comparison, absolutely unbeatable. Graceful as Nureyev, every last one of them. Their hand movements, their uniforms – perfect. But don't go thinking they'd ever smile. They never smile until they're off duty, as I know from personal experience. But here, look, I spotted a prize specimen in Taormina the day before yesterday.”

On Wednesdays Poldi attended a language school belonging to Michele, a friend of my cousin Ciro's, so Wednesday was the only day of the week on which she stayed sober. Her Italian was quite sufficient for everyday use, but that wasn't good enough for her.

“Why the stress?” I once asked her. “Why bother, when you're planning to drink yourself to death?”

Clumsy of me, very clumsy, to voice my other aunts' suspicion so explicitly.

“What sort of idiotic question is that?” she barked at me. “Until you've mastered the
passato remoto
, my boy, keep your pearls of wisdom to yourself. Understand?”

At all events, Poldi had photographed an exceptionally smart
Vigile
in Taormina and planned to make his acquaintance at the next opportunity. He wasn't in the first flush of youth, with his neatly trimmed beard and moustache and little pot belly, but he wore his immaculate uniform with the enviable arrogance of a good-looking chump whose
mamma
still irons his shirts.

But back to Valentino. He wasn't a chump – although he still lived with his parents as a matter of course – but he hadn't managed to land a traineeship or a regular job. He really wasn't a stupid youth, as Poldi quickly realized. Like many young Sicilians, he coped by doing odd jobs and toyed with the idea of emigrating to Germany. Sicilians find it a cinch to emigrate for decades: bag packed,
bacio
,
addio
– and off they go.

Valentino helped Poldi with the minor repairs that became necessary soon after the renovation of her house. No disrespect to my cousin Ciro, but his builders had made a rotten job of the roof. When I went to change the bulb in the top-floor bathroom, the bowl shade tipped a Niagara of rainwater over me. A miracle I wasn't electrocuted.

Valentino could change fuses, put up pictures, repair the air conditioning and go shopping at the HiperSimply. He was a multi-talented youngster, and Poldi soon took him to her heart, in which, as everyone knew, there was plenty of room. She even gave him German lessons, not that the accent he acquired would have made him comprehensible outside Bavaria. But in any case the Germany project came to nothing, because early in August Valentino suddenly vanished without a trace.

Poldi waited a whole day for him to fulfil his promise to clear a blocked drain. She didn't take it amiss if someone stood her up once, but when she heard nothing from Valentino the next day and the day after that and he failed to answer his mobile, she became puzzled, angry and worried in turn. It dawned on her only then how little she really knew about him.

She did know his surname, which was Candela.

But she hadn't the faintest idea where he lived.

Signora Anzalone hadn't even noticed Valentino's disappearance, and Signor Bussacca merely shrugged his shoulders.

“
Boh.
Where else would he be. He'll have hooked up with some girl. He'll turn up again sooner or later.”

Poldi was neither reassured nor convinced by this.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Bussacca thought for a moment. “Yesterday? No, it must have been the day before. Or Monday. Yes, Monday. He bought a packet of Lucky Strike and fifty euros' worth of credit for his mobile phone.”

Poldi remembered this. On Monday, after hefting the heavy pot containing the lemon tree onto the roof terrace, Valentino had opened a new packet of cigarettes, scratched a new telephone card and activated the voucher code via his mobile.

“Do you remember which phone company the
scheda telefonica
was for?”

“A TIM. The others had run out.”

Recalling the blue and red card, Poldi felt puzzled once more, because Valentino had always charged his mobile with a red and white card before. It now occurred to her that he had also been in possession of a brand-new folding mobile that Monday.

“Why did he change providers?” she wondered aloud, but Signor Bussacca's only response was another “
Boh
”, which is short in Italian for “I don't have a clue.”

“Where's the best place to go when you want information?” Poldi asked me later, only to supply the answer herself. “You go to the waterhole, because all the animals always go there, big and small alike. Predators or prey – they're all attracted to the water and folk are no different. And where, I ask you, is the waterhole in Torre Archirafi?”

“The old bottling plant, you mean?”

Poldi sighed. “I was talking figuratively.”

“The bar?”

“
Cento punti
,” she exclaimed, and took another swig of her drink.

Poldi had long been a familiar figure in the Bar-Gelateria Cocuzza, of course, because that was where she partook every afternoon of a mulberry granita with cream top and bottom and a brioche on the side. Fragrantly, in a white caftan and gold gladiator sandals plus dramatic eyeliner and plenty of rouge, she used to sail into the bar like a cruise liner visiting a provincial marina – always around five, when the houses opened up after a long, sweltering afternoon and the whole town set off on its
passeggiata
. Since there were no shop windows to graze on, the promenaders would take a brief stroll along the esplanade before veering off towards the air-conditioned paradise of the bar like comets that have ventured too close to the sun.

No wonder, for wafting out of the bar's two ventilators from morning to night – except on Tuesdays – came a wonderful polar breeze laden with the promise of vanilla, almond milk, coffee and aromatic substances calculated to arouse ecstasy in anyone not made of stone. Outside in the square the Sicilian summer afternoon shimmered like a mirage, but the interior was dominated by the arctic hum of the ventilators and air conditioning, which dried off your sweaty armpits and made you forget the August heat for the duration of a gelato. Eight varieties of ices were displayed in creamy, glistening mounds alongside fresh cream cakes filled with wild strawberries, almond pastries,
cornetti
, brioches, and marzipan fruit. Scenting the air at the far end of the counter were golden
arancini
,
pizzette
and
tramezzini
, and slumbering behind it, hidden deep beneath aluminium lids, were granitas and bottles of ice-cold almond milk – guarantees, in short, of a kindly god's existence.

However, this impression was dispelled as soon as you entered the bar and looked into the face of Signora Cocuzza, who sat behind her till with an expression of such sadness, it almost wrung your heart. How old was she? Nobody knew for sure. Fifty? Sixty? A hundred? She might have been a ghost. Frail and thin, she exuded a faint odour of mothballs and eternity. All Poldi had managed to discover was that her husband had died ten years earlier. By contrast, her two grown-up sons looked the picture of health, their August lethargy notwithstanding, as they lounged behind the bar with their plucked eyebrows, upper-arm tribal tattoos, delinquent buzz cuts and football strips.

Signora Cocuzza never smiled, and seldom spoke. She merely operated the cash register, handed you a voucher, contorted her face into a kind of rictus, and then went on staring into space as if every transaction cost her another vital spark. This couldn't fail to arouse Poldi's curiosity, which was why she patronized the bar for more than just its delicious granitas. She had spotted right away that Signora Cocuzza must once have been a very beautiful woman, but she could also tell that the decrepit creature was profoundly miserable – for, as I have already said, Poldi knew a thing or two about mental anguish.

“Forgive me, signora, but have you seen or heard of Valentino in the last few days?”

The question seemed to percolate through Signora Cocuzza's consciousness very slowly. She was still holding out the voucher for Poldi's granita.

“You know who I mean,” Poldi persisted, taking her voucher. “Valentino Candela. The boy simply vanished into thin air three days ago. He may have turned up here in the meantime. Not that I'm worried.”

Signora Cocuzza almost imperceptibly shook her head as if that alone cost her a superhuman effort.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered.

And relapsed into silence. Loath to press her further, Poldi started to take her voucher over to the counter. But Signora Cocuzza wasn't finished yet.

“Donna Poldina…”

It was almost unintelligible – just a wisp of a voice. Surprised by this unexpected personal invocation, Poldi promptly returned to the till. She saw the sad signora take a ballpoint from the pocket of her apron – effortfully, as though it weighed a ton – and scribble something on a slip of paper. An address in Acireale.

“His parents,” whispered Signora Cocuzza, handing it over.

Poldi thought for a moment. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask how Signora Cocuzza knew the address, but she left it at that for the time being. She merely thanked the woman, handed back the voucher, and changed her order.

*

An afternoon in August, as already mentioned. This meant, first, that it was hot, and, secondly, that Poldi wasn't really sober. Nevertheless, she gallantly piloted her Alfa to Acireale with, on the passenger seat, a kilo of gelato in a polystyrene tub prettily wrapped in floral paper and adorned with a bow. Acireale wasn't far – practically round the corner – but the winding, narrow Provinciale, enclosed on either side by high old walls of volcanic stone, proved a sore trial to Poldi in her condition. She had to keep swerving to avoid the lemon transporters that came thundering towards her. Just before Santa Tecla a lorry laden with mature palm and olive trees shot out of the gates of a big market garden. Poldi just managed to slam on her brakes in time. The lorry driver tooted her furiously, turned out onto the road and roared off. Poldi pulled up on the verge for a moment, breathing heavily, and stared at the big gateway with the neon sign beside it. It read:

PIANTE RUSSO

Damn nearly squashed by a load of palm trees, she thought, shaking her head. Some mess that would have been.

Although she didn't know her way around Acireale, Poldi found the address on the outskirts in double-quick time. She always found her way around wherever she was, from Jakarta to Lima, because she had an infallible trick: she kept asking directions. Regardless of the horns blaring behind her, she would pull up every hundred yards and question the first person she saw. This procedure was proof against misinformation from practical jokers, and Poldi always wound up at her destination with the precision of a satnav.

Maria and Angelo Candela were both under fifty but looked older. Unemployed for the last four years, they lived on social security and the little money Valentino brought home. Their small apartment smelt of cigarettes, onions and despair, but Poldi was quick to notice the flat-screen TV. Valentino's parents didn't even look surprised when she turned up on their doorstep so unexpectedly.

“Valentino has told us a lot about you, Donna Poldina,” said Maria, hurriedly spooning the gelato into three sundae glasses. “I feel like we already know you quite well.”

“Where is Valentino now?”

The Candelas exchanged a worried glance that wasn't lost on Poldi.

“We don't know,” Angelo said in a low voice. “We haven't heard from him for three days.”

“Does he often do this sort of thing?”

The Candelas shook their heads and spooned up their ice cream before it melted completely. Or, thought Poldi, to avoid having to reply.

“And you've absolutely no idea where he might be?”