Authors: Giorgio Scerbanenco
‘Well, Attorney Sompani told me that you could do me a favour,’ said the perfect Silvano. He pretended to be embarrassed, but it was only pretence, he seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t be embarrassed sitting naked astride Garibaldi’s horse in the Largo Cairoli at the aperitif hour.
‘What favour?’ Duca asked patiently – you had to be
patient or you’d kill yourself – getting off the windowsill and going and sitting down on a little stool in front of the merchant of filth, and it was almost as if he could see him with his bottles of filth in his hand, about to open one. A doctor struck off the register, as Duca was, is an interesting specimen to some people. Since he had left prison, he’d had plenty of opportunities for work. All the pregnant girls in the neighbourhood, all the girls who were afraid they were pregnant, had turned to him, crying, threatening suicide, but in vain, and there had been so many that he had finally taken the nameplate saying
Dr Duca Lamberti
off the door, all that was left was the two little holes where the screws had been, but it had been no use. And after the pregnant girls, there were the drug addicts, they’d also offered him a lot of work: as far as the addicts were concerned a doctor struck off the register would be more willing to issue the right prescriptions, he still had the prescription books, and as his career was in ruins they could do business together, without any risk, said the drug addicts with their pale nails, the backs of their hands mottled with what looked like pink bruises, making him truly sick of life. And after the drug addicts came the prostitutes who’d got diseases, ‘I daren’t go to my usual doctor, he’d only inform on me to the police, and they’d just lock me up,’ because of course he wasn’t the usual doctor, he was an exceptional doctor, a doctor who had done three years in prison for euthanasia, so obviously he knew how to cure syphilis, he must have been a specialist in that when he was in San Vittore, musn’t he?
At last the visitor took out his bottle and uncorked it. ‘It’s a rather delicate favour, doctor. Attorney Sompani told me you’re very strict and will probably say no, but it’s a special case, a very human case, a girl who is supposed to be getting married and …’ – and at last the revolting filth came
out, flowing from the bottle, in the perfect voice of this perfect bearer of filth. What it amounted to was a hymenoplasty: the special case, the very human case, was a girl who was supposed to be getting married, and her bridegroom wanted her to be a virgin, and in fact was convinced that she was. In reality the girl, and this was very human, had not had the courage to confess to her fiancé that she had lost her virginity in a blind fit of passion, long past, because she knew that if he discovered the truth he might even be capable of killing her. A hymenoplasty would resolve the matter in an elegant, undramatic fashion, the fiancé would be happy that his bride was a virgin, the bride would be happy that she had married well, while he, the doctor, Duca Lamberti, would get, for performing the hymenoplasty, one million three hundred thousand lire now and seven hundred thousand once the operation had been performed. In cash, of course.
‘I’m giving you ten seconds to get out of here before I smash your head in,’ Duca said, getting lazily but resolutely to his feet and theatrically picking up the stool on which he had been sitting: he had learned to act, too, and had no intention of forgetting it.
‘Let me say one more thing,’ the other man went on, unfazed, because the more cunning they are, the more obtuse. ‘You might like to get back on the register, I have a contact who …’
He walked from his apartment to Police Headquarters. Superintendent Carrua was eating, on the desk there was a plate with a roll, just a roll with nothing in it, plus a few black olives and a glass of white wine. Duca talked to him as he was eating the olives, peeling them carefully with his teeth, then put down on the desk the thirty ten-thousand-lire notes that had been given him by the merchant of filth, and in the darkest corner of the office – because here in Headquarters, as his father had once explained, the sunnier it is outside, the darker inside – in that dark corner sat Mascaranti, who had written everything down: he couldn’t help himself.
‘He told you he could get you put back on the register?’ Carrua said, working conscientiously on an olive.
‘Yes, he even told me how he’d go about it, it was obvious he’s familiar with that world.’
‘Do you think he could do it?’
‘I think he could, if he wanted. He even knows an influential politician, someone we both know well, who could be of great help.’ He told him the name.
‘And do you think he really wants to get you back on the register?’
‘I don’t think so at all.’ It had been a nasty encounter, which smelt to high heaven, but he was in it now, in this kind of work, and he couldn’t hope to go back to the respectable world.
‘Mascaranti, tell the bar not to send me old olives.’
‘I already told them.’
‘They’re shameless, they sell rotten produce even to the police,’ Carrua said. Having finished the olives he started to nibble at the bread, and as he did so looked at the little heap of ten-thousand-lire notes. ‘Are you really determined to go down this road?’
‘I need the money,’ Duca said.
‘And you think you can make money by playing the policeman? You have some strange ideas.’ He drank a little white wine. ‘Mascaranti, get me the Sompani file.’ Another sip of wine as Mascaranti left the room. ‘You see, there’s something odd about this young man coming and offering you a pre-nuptial patch-up job, which is that he told you he’d been sent by Turiddu Sompani, because Turiddu Sompani died a few days ago, together with a lady friend of his. They were found in a Fiat 1003 in the Naviglio Pavese. Now I find it hard to believe that this young man of yours with the patch-up job didn’t know that Turiddu was dead, and I don’t understand why he introduced himself to you using the name of a dead man, especially as you might also have known that Turiddu was dead.’
‘Actually, I did.’ Duca got up and took the last battered olive that Carrua had left on the plate. He was hungry, he was alone in Milan, nobody was cooking for him, the restaurants were expensive. It didn’t taste too bad after all. ‘And I know something else, even without looking at Sompani’s file, which is that three and a half years ago, Turiddu leaves his car to a friend and this friend’s girlfriend, the friend can’t drive, he’s drunk, and he ends up in the Lambro, at the Conca Fallata. Repetitions bother me. Sompani’s friend and the friend’s girlfriend drown pathetically, if we can put it that way, at the Conca Fallata, inside a car, and a few years
later, Sompani and a lady friend of his also drown pathetically inside a car, in the Naviglio Pavese. Don’t they bother you too?’ He meant repetitions.
Carrua took another sip. ‘I think I’m starting to understand,’ he said, putting down his glass. ‘A doctor is the policeman of the body, a disease is almost like a criminal who has to be tracked down, you were a good doctor because you’re a policeman, like your father.’ A final sip of the wine. ‘Yes, repetitions bother me too, but if we’re right, then this could turn out to be something big, maybe even dangerous.’
Then Duca got up. ‘All right, if you don’t want to give me a job, it’s up to you, I’m going.’
At last the true Carrua, who up until now had spoken in an improbably normal voice, revealed himself by shouting, ‘No, I don’t even want to see you! You’re too highly-strung, you do even this kind of job with too much anger, too much hate. You want to eat up the criminals, you don’t want to arrest them, or defer to the authorities, or defend society. You have a sister and your sister has a child and you ought to think about them, instead of which you come here asking to put your hands on these unexploded bombs, “I’m here,” you say, “I’ll defuse the detonator, I don’t mind getting blown up.” ’ Angrily, he picked up the ten-thousand-lire notes and waved them in front of Duca. ‘Do you think I don’t know why you accepted this money from that piece of dirt? To join in the game. And if I find you in some ditch, with your throat cut, what do I tell your sister? And you know the State won’t pay even ten lire if you die, because all you are is an informer, that’s the highest rank I can give you, and do informers get a choice how they die? Why don’t you travel around Italy as a pharmaceuticals salesman, and earn some decent money?’
Duca wasn’t really listening to him: he liked Carrua
when he shouted, but the spring weather was making him impatient with everything. ‘Maybe you’re right, I’m too highly-strung to be a policeman. Not you, you’re calm.’ And he walked towards the door.
‘No, Duca, come here.’ Carrua’s voice was suddenly low, it almost moved him. He went back to the desk.
‘Sit down.’
Duca sat down.
‘I’m sorry if I shouted.’
Duca didn’t say anything.
‘How did things end up with that piece of filth? I don’t remember if you told me what his name was.’
Mascaranti, who had come back in a minute earlier with Turiddu Sompani’s file, had heard this. ‘His name is Silvano Solvere. I already looked for him in records, there’s nothing on him. We could check the fingerprints, because the name’s a bit strange. But I did find the woman’s file, an interesting file:
verbal assault on a police officer, verbal assault, verbal assault, verbal assault, drunk and disorderly, drunk, drunk,
she was admitted to an asylum that time, then there’s
attack, with strikers, on the headquarters of a political party,
you remember the time they set fire to that place?’ He paused for breath. ‘Plus prostitution and vagrancy.’
‘What’s the name of this shrinking violet?’
‘Adele Terrini.’
‘Let’s go back to before. How did you leave things with Silvano Solvere? Strange name, it reminds me of Solvay soda.’ He was becoming an idiot too, Carrua thought, after spending so much time shut up in this office.
‘That he’ll come and pick me up and take me to see the young lady.’ Simple.
‘In other words, you have to go where he takes you.’ Obvious. ‘And when you’re with the young lady you have to
operate on her? By the way, is it a dangerous operation, does it take long?’
Duca explained the operation, using technical terms, nothing vulgar: both he and Carrua hated gratuitous vulgarity. ‘Of course, as a doctor who’s been struck off the register, I can’t even apply a sticking plaster, but I could perform this operation with police consent.’
‘What if the girl gets an infection and dies, what do we do then?’ Carrua asked.
‘You know there’s an answer to that question,’ Duca said irritably. ‘Either you make contact with these people and take the chance of discovering something crucial, or else you leave the files on Turiddu and his lady friend in records, pretend you’ve never heard the name Silvano Solvere, and I go home.’
‘I was thinking of you,’ Carrua said very softly, ‘if the girl dies, or is seriously ill and the thing comes out, even if you did it for the police, it’s all up with you.’
‘Why, hasn’t it been all up with me for a long time now?’
Carrua stared at the sun outside the window. When he spoke again, he actually sounded sad. ‘So you’ve made up your mind.’
‘I thought I’d already said I had.’ Even the most intelligent people, like Carrua, could be obtuse sometimes.
‘All right.’ He hated and admired Duca, just as he had hated and admired Duca’s father, for his doggedness and inflexibility. With no money, no career, with a sister and a little child to support, instead of minding his own business and sorting himself out, he was throwing himself into the most hopeless kind of work there was, the work of a policeman, an Italian policeman at that, an English or American policeman would have been another matter, but an Italian
policeman gets it from everyone: stones from strikers, bullets or stab wounds from criminals, insults behind his back from the general public, reprimands from his superiors and not much money from the State. ‘All right, but do things the way I say. Mascaranti is coming with you.’
He liked that idea.
‘And the car will have a radio.’
He wasn’t too keen on that. ‘A car with a radio is too conspicuous,’ he said. ‘They gave me the money, so it’s quite likely they’re keeping their eyes on me, that’s why I came here on foot today. If they notice the radio in the car, that’ll be the end of it.’
‘Mascaranti will have to make sure you’re not spotted. But that’s not all, I’m also going to have our special team, the S. squad, tailing you.’ He started shouting. ‘And don’t tell me that’s too many people. If you know anything at all about this profession, you must already have realised what could happen to you.’
No, he didn’t tell him it was too many people: Carrua was absolutely right.
‘And Mascaranti will also let you have a gun,’ he said it harshly, but without hope. ‘With a special temporary permit, of course, because you aren’t allowed to carry a weapon.’
‘No, no guns, I don’t like being armed.’
‘These people are often armed.’
He refused categorically, vaingloriously. ‘Don’t give me a gun, I’m already dangerous enough without one.’ He wanted to say more – that if he had a gun he wouldn’t hesitate to fire it, he wouldn’t hesitate at all – but he didn’t say it, because Carrua knew.
‘All right, forget it,’ Carrua said, yielding. ‘That means Mascaranti will have to take care of both of you. Another
thing is, these people will phone you at home, so we’ll put a tap on your phone and record all the calls you make or receive.’
That was fine with him.
‘And one more thing: I have to inform the Commissioner of the investigation.’ He stood up. ‘If anything happened to you, I’d be fired, they’d send me back to Sardinia to eat bread and olives.’
‘You seem to be eating plenty of olives here.’
‘Don’t try and be clever,’ Carrua said. ‘Just tell yourself I have no desire to be fired, so I don’t want anything to happen to you. It doesn’t matter to me if we discover anything or not, because we’re not going to eradicate these people all by ourselves. But I want you in one piece, and I don’t want us all to end up in the newspapers.’
Duca also stood up, a little less irritable now. ‘Let’s go, Mascaranti.’