Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence (11 page)

‘Well, I’ve got all the umbrellas you want,’ said Rosa, a little disappointed. But luckily she didn’t stop massaging him.

‘Why don’t you tell me some old story about your family?’ Bordelli mumbled. He loved listening to Rosa reminisce about times gone by. She was a good storyteller, and she liked doing it almost as much as she liked shopping for shoes and provocative little dresses.

‘Have I ever told you about the time Zia Asmara fell in love with the parish priest?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Bordelli lied, happy to relive yet again the travails of Zia Asmara, painful to the one who had lived them but most amusing to listen to.

‘Zia Asmara was my mother’s little sister. At twenty she was the prettiest girl in Cerbaia, and all the men in the area would have given their right hands for her. Not just boys, old men, too. But she fell in love with a young village priest who’d just arrived from Bologna, and she used to go to all the masses, at all the different times of day, just to see him …’

After two hours of torrential downpour only an insistent drizzle remained, as streams of dirty water flowed down the pavements. It was well past midnight. Aside from the occasional passing car, there was nobody about. Bordelli hugged the walls of the buildings as he walked, huddling under the small pink umbrella Rosa had lent him. He’d nearly fallen asleep in her miracle-working hands, and had to yank himself violently out of that limbo.

He passed under the Uffizi arcade, just to avoid returning by the same route he had come by. His feet were cold and wet. Leaving the Ponte Vecchio to his left, he continued along the Lungarno. The rainfall was letting up by the minute, but he still needed the umbrella. Without stopping, he cast a glance over the parapet. The Arno was more swollen than ever, heaving in great muddy splashes and flowing fast with a dark murmuring sound. It would not have been much fun to fall in just then. When he got to the corner of Via de’ Tornabuoni, the rain suddenly stopped, and he closed the absurd umbrella with a sense of relief. The moon was smothered by a thick mattress of clouds, looking like a torch trying to make its way through the fog.

Crossing the Ponte Santa Trinità, he noticed some youths on Vespas and Lambrettas proceeding slowly alongside the Via Maggio pavement across the river, gesticulating at a man who was walking peacefully along. Then they put their scooters up on their kickstands, got off and surrounded the man. Bordelli quickened his pace, and as he approached he heard the youths’ mocking voices. There were five of them, all about twenty years old.

‘Homo …’ one of them yelled, running his hand over his crotch. ‘You wish, eh?’

‘Pan-sy, pan-sy, pan-sy,’ chanted another.

‘When d’ya last take it up the arse, eh?’

‘Tomorrow,’ answered another, guffawing.

‘So you like little kids, do you? Pervert!’ said the one who seemed like the ringleader, and he dealt the man a slap that resounded in the quiet street. At that point the other four started slapping him around as well, and the poor man fell to the ground. The insults grew more violent, and they started kicking him in the face. The youths didn’t even notice the burly man approaching at a quick pace.

‘Hey, bed-wetters …’ said Bordelli, drawing up behind them. They all turned round at once, all with the same surprised sneer on their faces.

‘Ah, what a pretty little umbrella,’ said the ringleader.

‘One fairy draws another,’ said another, as the others laughed.

‘There’s plenty for you too, Gramps.’

‘Show us how you bugger each other,’ said the leader, swaggering towards Bordelli. ‘Gramps’ dropped his little umbrella and punched him square in the face, sending him rolling on the ground. The other four hesitated, full of rage. Bordelli looked each one of them in the eye. They were well dressed, with clean faces. Rich kids.

The ringleader got up slowly, trembling, his jacket covered with blood and a hand over his mouth. The inspector thrust his hands into his pockets with self-assurance. He felt like the good-looking hero of the film he’d seen at the Gambrinus. He was well aware that if they all jumped on him at once, he was screwed. He had to play the fear card, but he wanted to do so without pulling out his badge.

‘I’ll give you guys two seconds to disappear, and then we start counting teeth,’ he said, pulling his fists out of his pockets. They all gave a start and looked at one another. One step forward was enough … The boys jumped on their scooters and were off at full speed, shouting insults and laughing.

Finally Bordelli went to help the victim, who was still on the ground, from where he’d witnessed the scene. His face was bleeding, and he was breathing heavily. The inspector had seen him walking about the neighbourhood in the past and had immediately understood that he didn’t like women.

‘Everything okay?’

‘To be honest, I was feeling better before,’ the man muttered, slurring his words. But he managed a smile. He looked to be about the same age as the inspector. He was thin, with a long, gaunt face, and two watery eyes like a beaten dog’s. The orange silk scarf around his neck was blood-stained, like his shirt and jacket.

‘Would you like me to take you to Casualty?’

‘Do you really not recognise me, Bordelli?’ said the man. The inspector took a good look at him, and suddenly remembered.

‘Don’t tell me … you’re Poggiali …’ he said.

‘Or what’s left of him,’ Poggiali said, smiling. He got to his feet with Bordelli’s help, and then leaned against the wall to keep from falling.

‘It was the same story even at school, remember?’ Poggiali touched his teeth to make sure they were still all there.

‘My memory’s a bit hazy,’ said Bordelli, shrugging. In truth he remembered his school days perfectly well, when the Fascist regime glorified the sort of masculine man who impaled women. Even in middle school the boys used to make sport of queers and sometimes even beat them up, although many of them used to follow them into the bathrooms and let them masturbate them for a few cents.

‘You pack quite a punch,’ said Poggiali.

‘I used to box a little as a kid.’

‘God bless boxing.’

‘I live just round the corner here, come and tidy yourself up,’ said Bordelli, picking up Rosa’s umbrella.

‘I live nearby too, why don’t you come to my place?’

‘As you wish,’ said the inspector, curious to see where Poggiali lived. They started walking down Via Maggio side by side. Poggiali was still wiping the blood off his face, limping almost like Piras.

‘Only you and a couple of other friends used to leave me alone,’ he said.

‘I have to confess that at the time I didn’t have much sympathy for people like you.’

‘What about now?’

‘Good question …’

‘What exactly is it about us poofs that bothers you all so much?’ Poggiali asked, with a frankness that made Bordelli smile.

‘It’s not an easy subject for people of our generation,’ the inspector admitted.

‘Nor for today’s youth, apparently.’

‘There have always been idiots and there always will be.’

‘You should all be happy to have fewer rivals hunting for birds, no?’

‘I’d never thought of it that way.’

‘In other words, what do
you
care if we like men?’ said Poggiali, turning on to Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti. Bordelli didn’t know how to reply, and his old school chum smiled.

‘Whenever you see a queer you immediately think of some perversion, something sexual and nothing else. You imagine the sight of two men fucking and it disturbs you.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said the inspector, realising that Poggiali’s orange scarf had immediately made him think of the boy who’d been raped and murdered.

‘And yet I assure you that we homos have the same full range of feelings as you humans,’ Poggiali said blithely.

Arriving at a door with the paint peeling off, he pushed it open and they climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Poggiali’s flat didn’t look very big, but even the entrance had something elegant and unusual about it. They went into a small sitting room cluttered almost obsessively with statuettes, theatre masks, ceramics, crazy paintings, terracotta animals, busts of generals and ephebes, and bouquets of dried roses. Two walls were covered with bookshelves up to the ceiling. Poggiali opened up a little bar lined entirely with mirrors on the inside.

‘Help yourself, I’m going to the bathroom to freshen up a little,’ he said, leaving the room.

Bordelli calmly rifled through the bottles and found a French cognac. He filled a small glass to the rim, then flopped on to one of two sofas upholstered with imitation tiger skin. He’d never seen a room like this before, and his gaze got lost in the countless different objects vying with one another for space. There were a great many turtles of every shape and size. One was on the floor and must have been over a yard long, while the smallest was ridiculously perched atop a Fascist fez. A strange, miniature museum where one would have needed a whole afternoon to examine each piece … The exact opposite of Bordelli’s place, which was bare and disorderly, even sort of lugubrious.

‘Here I am, good as new,’ said Poggiali, in a fluttering purple dressing gown and slippers. Despite his swollen lip and a cut on one cheekbone, he looked untroubled.

‘I guess you like turtles,’ said Bordelli.

‘It’s a question of affinity. In the face of danger, they withdraw into their shell, like me.’

He made himself a martini and sat down on the other sofa, facing his guest. Surrounded by his inanimate objects, he looked like a monarch in a gloomy fairy tale.

Bordelli realised he was fighting off unpleasant thoughts of the sort that Poggiali had been talking about. It had even flashed through his mind that destiny had brought him to one of Giacomo Pellissari’s killers … Simply because Poggiali was a
homosexual
.

‘So, how’s life?’ he asked, to avoid thinking about it.

‘I don’t want for anything. I’m retired and own another apartment that I rent out.’

He went on to say that he’d held a number of different jobs, from postman to manual labourer, and that when his parents died he’d inherited the two flats.

‘Mine are dead, too,’ Bordelli muttered. He already knew that sooner or later he would ask Poggiali what he thought about the murder of Giacomo Pellissari, but he was waiting for the right moment.

‘Every now and then I see your name in
La Nazione
… Inspector here, inspector there …’

‘Until you see it in an obituary, everything’s fine.’ Bordelli refilled his glass and asked Poggiali what he’d done during the war.

‘I didn’t fight, I was rejected for service. Officially for respiratory insufficiency, but you can imagine the real reason. I stayed in Florence the whole time, keeping far away from the stinking Fascists.’

‘And after the eighth of September?’
¹¹

‘I escaped to the hills and almost ended up by chance in Potente’s band.
¹²
I saw my share of corpses, dear Bordelli. I even fired a gun a few times, but that’s not my cup of tea. Even among those valiant lads there were a few who couldn’t bear having me around. But I also spent some rather eventful nights with a few others,’ Poggiali said, with a smile between naughty and nostalgic.

‘Don’t tell the communists, they’ll burn you alive.’

‘I think I’d ask to be hanged first, like Savonarola.’

‘Have you heard the news about the little boy who was raped and murdered?’ Bordelli asked, no longer able to put it off.

‘Poor thing …’ Poggiali said, nodding.

‘Mind if I ask you a question?’

‘You can even ask me two, if you like.’

‘I’m just curious … Since you know about these things … Yes, well … Is it normal for a homosexual to be sexually attracted to children?’

‘Of course, just as it’s normal for all Jews to be money-lenders, all Neapolitans pizza-makers, and all women whores.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘I’m not offended. I just happen to know that you
normal
people think that way. I’m used to it, my friend.’

‘I can’t blame you, but maybe it’s not entirely our fault.’

‘Tell me something. Do you sleep with ten-year-old girls?’ Poggiali asked, sitting up from the sofa.

‘Do I have to answer that?’

‘That’s exactly my point. I like young flesh, like everyone else. But it’s nothing to do with children.’

‘Do you know anyone who sees things a little differently?’

‘I know every kind of person, fags and non-fags. There are some who like to watch other people fuck, there are others who like to have people piss in their mouth, others who masturbate while licking a woman’s stockings, and others who fuck animals … I really don’t give a damn about what people do for pleasure, unless they’re making somebody suffer for it.’

‘I’m just trying to understand what kind of people would rape a child.’

‘Well, don’t expect them to be monstrously ugly like the ogres in fairy tales. People who do that sort of thing are sick in the head, but they could easily be your friendly dentist or your neighbourhood baker. People who lead perfectly normal lives. The worst perverts I’ve ever met were rich bourgeois with spotless reputations,’ said Poggiali, emptying his glass in one swig.

‘Thanks for the cognac.’ Bordelli sighed, getting up.

‘Already off to bed?’

‘It’s late …’

‘Worried I might molest you?’ Poggiali asked, faking a woman’s voice. The inspector smiled.

‘You know what I’ve always thought? That if I’d been born a woman, I would still like women.’

‘You’re an incurable male, but at least you’re not a policeman.’ Poggiali laughed. He saw Bordelli to the door, and they shook hands.

‘Good luck, Inspector.’

‘I’ll need it … See you around, Poggiali.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Poggiali, more realistically.

The inspector slowly descended the stairs. As soon as he was outside, he lit a cigarette. He too knew that they weren’t likely to see each other again soon. He couldn’t picture himself inviting Poggiali to dinner or for a stroll about town. Even though he felt deep down that they could have become friends. The old poof actually seemed like a lovely person.