Authors: Marco Vichi
By late morning there were only two rooms left to scour, and he still hadn’t found a thing. On the other hand, he had managed not to smoke, and this gave him a certain satisfaction. If he’d prevailed over the Nazis, he could prevail over that stupid vice. He decided to search Badalamenti’s bedroom first. He went in and turned on the light. Ugly room. A light fixture of glass fruit, small metal lamps painted with green enamel, light brown furnishings reminiscent of a post office. A large rectangular mirror with a light blue frame hung from a wall. But the
pièce de résistance
was the gold-plated wooden bed, with a headboard inlaid with fanciful squiggles. On top of it was a great pile of clothes removed from the drawers. Bordelli rummaged through them. Underpants, vests, socks, all fine brand-name stuff. Beside the window was a small writing table with a black marble top and a rather fancy Leica camera on it. It was clear the killer hadn’t committed the murder during a robbery.
The two drawers of the desk had already been rifled through, like everything else. Papers large and small lay scattered across the floor: old bills, money orders to be filled out, empty envelopes, stamps. Nothing of importance.
He cast a 360-degree glance around the room. Hanging on the wall above the headboard of the bed was a print of a Quattrocento Christ inside a thick frame of black wood. Bordelli lifted it off of its hook to look behind it, and something fell on to the pillow. Setting the picture down, he picked up a small stack of black-and-white photographs held together by a broad rubber band. There was even a small envelope with the negatives. The first photo was of a beautiful girl in a bikini, very young, with long black hair. She was standing, leaning back against a door jamb and smiling innocently. On the whole, a rather provocative picture. She had a very beautiful body, if a little immature. But she wasn’t far from her full flowering. Bordelli brought the photos into the light and removed the rubber band. There were twelve in all. The dark young girl was as beautiful as the sun. Three of the shots showed her in a bikini; in a few others she was wearing a very short dress revealing two magnificent legs; and in a couple of others her breasts could be seen behind her folded arms. In the background, a few corners of Badalamenti’s flat were recognisable.
Written on the back of each snapshot was a name:
Marisa
. He wondered why Badalamenti kept them hidden. Putting the rubber band back around them, he put the photos in his pocket and resumed sifting carefully through everything, with no results. At last he gave up and went into the sitting room, the last to be searched. It was a rather spacious room, with large red terracotta tiles and floral curtains that dragged along the floor.
Between the sofa and the black leather armchairs was a low glass table that Badalamenti must not have cleaned very often. The only other piece of furniture was an unsightly modern glass-fronted cabinet full of glasses and bottles. The inspector opened both doors to have a better look. Cognac, whisky, Spanish brandies, all expensive stuff. Below, next to the glasses, was a tin can of the sort used for varnish. He grabbed it and pried off the lid with his house keys. It had grey putty inside. What the hell was a can of grey putty doing with the drinking glasses? He put the can back in its place and glanced at his watch. It was almost one o’clock, and he was starting to feel hungry. He would resume his search calmly after lunch.
He went down into the street with the intention of walking over to the Osteria di Santo Spirito for a panino and a glass of red. Then he changed his mind. He got in his Beetle, drove through the centre of town and parked the car in the inner courtyard of police headquarters. The sky had clouded over, and it felt a little less cold outside. After spending all morning holed up in that ghastly apartment, he felt like walking for a while in the open air.
Crossing Viale Lavagnini, he slipped into the Trattoria da Cesare, where for many years he’d been eating almost daily. As he entered he greeted the owner and waiters with a nod and exchanged a few quips with them. It was almost like being among family.
The inspector never sat at a table. His place was in the kitchen with the Apulian cook, Totò, where he had his very own stool. He considered it a privilege, and probably would have made a stink if anyone else were ever granted permission to enter that paradise of splashing sauces and drums full of offal.
‘Have you ever thought of getting married, Totò?’
The cook was enveloped in a cloud of infernal smoke, with six pans on the cooker at once. Bordelli watched in amusement as the material was transformed. A chunk of butter, a bit of meat, and some other insignificant thing turned into a pleasure for the tongue and palate. Totò was a shrimp, but had the touch of a bullfighter. Any animal had to feel honoured to be mistreated by him. He could handle many pots at a time, and he bragged about it like a little boy. He kept the whole kitchen going all by himself.
Finishing up his
spaghetti alla carbonara
, Bordelli thought with pleasure of the cigarette he would smoke once he’d finished his lunch. Totò emerged from his inferno and came up to him.
‘I’ll serve you in a second, Inspector. Wait till you taste the osso buco.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘Did you like the pasta?’
‘Love at first sight.’
‘Don’t you think there was a little too much pancetta? Sometimes even I get it wrong.’
‘Cut the false modesty, Totò, you’re not convincing anyone.’
‘Nobody’s perfect, Inspector,’ the cook said, grinning like a braggart, before returning to the hob to see to the customers’ orders. Bordelli refilled his glass.
‘Totò, did you hear my question earlier?’ he asked.
‘What question, Inspector?’
‘Never mind,’ said Bordelli.
The cook drew near with a frying pan in his hand.
‘You like it hot, right?’ he asked.
‘I can’t live without it.’
‘Then have a taste and see if you like this osso.’
The meat was practically submerged in rather dense red sauce.
‘Your own invention?’
‘Almost … It’s sort of done in the Algerian style.’
‘You’re becoming as cosmopolitan as my friend Bottarini,’
Bordelli said to provoke him. The previous year Botta had replaced Totò in that kitchen for a few days, keeping the restaurant going without much trouble, and when Totò had returned from his trip to the south he’d heard tell that his stand-in knew how to cook
foreign stuff
, not knowing that Botta had learned all those dishes by spending time in the prisons of half the countries in Europe and even a few in North Africa.
‘Give me a break with this Botta, Inspector! I’ve always known how to cook those dishes! It’s just that nobody ever asked to me to make them before,’ said Totò, lower lip jutting in disgust, waving his greasy hands in front of his face.
‘There’s certainly nothing wrong with learning new things, Totò,’ Bordelli persisted with feigned innocence. Totò shook his head dramatically and sighed.
‘Keep that wine close to you, Inspector, this stuff is pure fire,’ he said, then turned back towards the cooker with his arms dangling. Never tell a cook he could learn something from anyone, Bordelli thought, studying the osso buco. It looked magnificent but dangerous.
Totò was endlessly filling dishes and bowls and passing them to the waiters through the semicircular hatch that gave on to the dining room. Bordelli put the first bite of meat in his mouth and felt his gums burst into flame. He took a long sip of wine.
‘Very good,’ he said with tears in his eyes.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ Totò said slyly.
‘What are you doing for Christmas, Totò? Going down to see your folks?’ the inspector asked, to change the subject. The cook paused for a moment, then approached, wiping his hands on his apron.
‘This year they’re coming up here. Cesare has decided to keep the restaurant open over the holidays. And what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Why don’t you come and spend Christmas with us, Inspector? There’s more than fifty of us, and we make enough noise to wake the dead. And you really ought to see some of my lovely cousins …’ he said suggestively, drawing the shape of a woman’s curves in the air with his hands.
‘Thanks, Totò, I’ll keep it in mind,’ said Bordelli, cautiously continuing his journey through the Algerian fire. He didn’t really feel like thinking about women at the moment. His last affair, which had ended badly, still weighed heavy on his mind. Milena, a twenty-five-year-old Jewish girl, had left a wound inside him that hadn’t yet healed. To chase the thought from his head, he put another piece of that devilish osso buco in his mouth.
Pietrino Piras came home from a difficult walk on crutches. The doctor had told him that the more he moved, the more quickly he would heal, and he couldn’t wait to get back to Florence. He didn’t like sitting around twiddling his thumbs.
And Florence meant being with Sonia. He was dying to see her. At the moment she was in Palermo with her family and would spend the entire holiday with them. They talked over the telephone three or four times a week, and his mother kept trying to find out who this girl was who called so often asking for her Nino. He pretended it was nothing and wouldn’t even tell her the girl’s name. He was always jealously guarded about his things, and especially about Sonia.
It was lunchtime. In one corner of the kitchen stood a small Christmas tree adorned with the same baubles of coloured glass he’d known since childhood. His mother had decorated it that morning, much later than in years gone by. A fire had been burning in the hearth since the morning. Pietrino sat down at the table with his father, and Mamma arrived with a serving bowl of spaghetti in tomato sauce.
‘Zia Bona dropped by,’ she said, filling their plates.
‘She’s going to get the spumante for Christmas dinner.’
‘Mamma, this is enough pasta for four …’
‘Eat, Nino, the doctor said you must eat.’
‘It’s too much.’
‘It’s not, you’ll see.’
‘If you force him he won’t eat any meat afterwards,’ Gavino said to his wife.
His parents coddled him like a child. They were happy to have him at home, even if it was because of that frightful incident. Piras’s mother, Maria, was a small woman but full of energy. She worked like a slave and never let up. She spoke in Sardinian dialect, but had gone to school up to the third grade and knew Italian fairly well. She always wore a headscarf tied under her chin and had dramatic eyes. She took care of the animals. She and Gavino had a few chickens, a lot of rabbits and two pigs.
‘Gigi and Pino won’t be coming this Christmas, either,’ said
Maria. They were the two other sons, both older than Pietrino.
They were married and had been living in France for many years.
‘We’ve known that since October. Why repeat it?’ Gavino said.
‘Well, they could have come,’ Maria said.
‘They’ll come next year,’ said Gavino, pretending it didn’t bother him.
‘I understand them, Mamma, it’s too expensive.’
‘Not even for Christmas …’ said Maria, staring at her plate.
They carried on eating in silence. There was only the sound of fire consuming wood.
Gavino kept himself busy working his small plot of land.
He’d lost an arm in combat in ’45, while fighting at Bordelli’s side. But he worked as if he had three arms instead of one. He dug holes, pruned trees, harvested tomatoes. He was very proud of his plot of land and wanted to do all the work himself for as long as he could. Every morning at dawn a friend would come by in a little Fiat 600 van, buy a bit of everything, and sell it at the market in Oristano.
Pietrino realised he was hungrier than he thought and finished all the spaghetti on his plate. His mother smiled with satisfaction when she took the empty dish away. Mothers are always right. The wine was tart and light and still smelled of grapes. Gavino made it himself, repeating each year everything he’d seen his grandfather and father do.
Maria brought two frying pans to the table. Polenta with
cavolo nero
5
and
pezz’imbinata
, little strips of pork marinated in red wine and then grilled. Pietrino knew those flavours well. They were as much a part of his life as the walls of the house or the small picture of Santa Bonacatu hanging over the fireplace.
‘I made this cabbage with my own hands,’ Gavino said, dipping his spoon into the polenta.
‘You have only one hand, Gavino, and only God can make living things,’ said Maria, ribbing him. Her husband ignored her and looked at his son.
‘Eat. Taste that? It’s good because there’s hard work in it,’ he said, squeezing Pietrino’s arm.
‘You say that every day, Dad,’ said Nino, smiling.
‘And you eat every day,’ said Gavino, entirely serious.
Pietrino continued eating in silence. After lunch he went and rested in the armchair next to the fireplace and in front of the television, a fine twenty-one-inch Sylvania on the plastic stand he’d given to his parents for their last anniversary. Maria didn’t like having the antenna on the rooftop. That metal contraption would attract lightning, she said. The Piras family owned one of the few television sets in town, and often friends and relatives would come by to watch a programme or two, especially on Saturday nights and Sundays.
As his mother was washing the dishes, Pietrino distractedly watched the end of a programme on natural science, and then the test card came up. He leaned forward and, without getting up, extended a crutch and turned the set off with the tip. He tried to read a few lines of Simenon, but his full stomach and the warmth of the fire put him to sleep.
He woke up around three o’clock and sat there in a daze, staring at the lifeless television. He yawned, feeling tired from so much leisure.
Gavino was doubtless already out in the field, while his mother had gone to see to her bees. Sometimes Piras would go with her, but he never got close to the hives. He was always amazed to see hundreds of bees land on his mother’s arms and face without ever stinging her.
Reaching down, he picked up the Simenon novel again. He’d brought a whole suitcase full of books with him from Florence, lent to him by Simone, a close friend of Sonia’s who he was a little jealous of at first. Partly because he lived right across the landing from her, but mostly because he was very good looking.