Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

The woman seemed about to assault him. The commissario savoured his own mordant lucidity and was indifferent to any offence he gave. He stood in front of her, throwing down the gauntlet with words she had never wanted to hear, words which stripped her naked.

“For years the two of you were happy to play the part of the united couple, just so long as it kept the business turning over. It was of no concern to you if your husband went after other women in nightclubs, because the thing that mattered was to put on a brave front for the people who placed the orders, the ecclesiastical curias. A fine marriage, a flourishing company, a daughter who marries into the Dall’Argine family, a veneer of dutiful Catholicism … a model family,” he said sarcastically. “And all to display an irreproachable image, a guarantee for the bishops and traditionalist clients who buy the gold and jewellery from you. And then a Romanian girl turns up and it all gets serious. She wants a family. You know perfectly well she’ll not back off and so you threaten her, you send her threatening letters, but the girl holds fast. At that point, you take to blackmailing your husband: either you stop seeing her or I’ll cut off your allowance. No more dolce vita as kept man, no more women, no more clubs and expensive cars. And when you find out she’s expecting a child, you deliver your ultimatum. He’s got his back to the wall, forced to choose between the playboy life and giving up Nina, and he opts for the second, but he didn’t reckon with her sheer grit. She really did want an ordinary life with the man she loved most of all of them. So she had to be got rid of. After all, what was she but an illegal immigrant from Romania? Who’s going to go looking for her? And in fact nobody did go looking for her, except one old grandparent who set out for Italy to act as peacemaker between the girl and the gypsy community, but the bus journey finished him off. End of story.” By the end of his story, Soneri found himself trembling with rage.

“You’re a visionary!” Martini screamed, hissing like a cobra. “You can believe anything you like, but she was no more than a common whore. She gave herself to one and all, and I’ll tell you something else. She had a great talent for getting men all worked up. She knew how to appeal to their weaker side, playing each one in a different way. She sniffed them out like a snake, and then drew them into her trap. I can’t help laughing at your portrait of her as a victim. A vulgar prostitute! A slut!” She was yelling at the top of her voice, all pretence at being una vera signora cast aside.

Soneri stared at her in consternation. At that moment for the first time he grasped just how venomous to each other women can be, and to a degree unimaginable in a man. Her eyes expressed infinite ferocity, and her snarling mouth twisted by hatred could have torn off chunks of meat with a single bite. The commissario took a step back when she screamed at him to get out of the office. He felt sick, and as he left he was glad once again to breathe in great, reviving gulps of fresh air. He felt himself growing lighter and lighter, less bound to life and for this reason more pitiless in his judgments of it.

He sat behind the wheel of his car and when he got to the turn-off for Via Spezia he contemplated for a moment which direction to take, Cisa or the city. He remembered it was time for lunch and thought it would be a waste of time to go looking for the sun when the sky would already be taking on the colours of dusk. In the mountains in winter, only morning counts.

When it was almost two o’clock, anxiety began to take hold of him again. He was still hoping for some communication from Angela, but he sensed that she would not call that day. He decided to go to Alceste’s, once again looking for refuge in food and drink. With a wry smile, he recognised that there was not much else available to him.

There were not many people there, but Sbarazza had had the luck to find one table which apparently three women had just left.

“You’ve chosen a place where there’s not much for you to eat,” Soneri said, coming up behind the Marchese.

“Man does not live by bread alone,” Sbarazza replied. “I was very taken by the lady who was seated here.”

The outline of her lips had been imprinted on the serviette in crimson, and Sbarazza gazed longingly at that trace of femininity. “I can smell her perfume and the seat still has the warmth and the very form of her body,” he said, as if in a dream.

The commissario smiled. The old man was one of the few people with whom at that moment he was happy to spend the afternoon. There was something profound and consoling in his conversation.

“I hear you’ve solved the case of that unfortunate Romanian girl,” Sbarazza said. “So did you finally draw the right card from the pack?”

“It did finally emerge, although I was on the point of despair.”

“You see? Never give up. Never lose faith.”

“For the last few days I had been thinking I would never get a good hand.”

“It’s when it seems that nothing can happen that chance does its work for us. Even at this moment while we’re here eating, absorbed with nothing more than flavours and scents, perhaps something which concerns us is occurring. A billiard ball rolling into a pocket can be the result of a thousand cannons,” the Marchese chuckled.

“Maybe you’re right,” Soneri said as a plate of tortelli di zucca arrived at the table. “Maybe something will cannon off something else in my path this afternoon and change the prospects for me. This morning …” He tasted the first tortello .

“What happened to you this morning?”

“I was making for the hills when, on an impulse, I changed direction. I made a choice, there and then. If I’d gone the way I first intended, I’d have spent the morning quite differently. For a start I wouldn’t be here talking to you, and instead of having a plate of tortelli di zucca I’d be having a plate of gnocchi ai funghi .”

Sbarazza made a sign to him to stop. “Don’t go down that path. It’d be an infinite process and finish up in complete nonsense or with the conclusion that everything you do is wrong because there’s always a more promising possibility.”

“So? Is that not true to life?”

“I prefer to believe that if a choice has been made, there’s a reason for it. You could call it providence, or determinism, but in both cases our will is only in part responsible. The rest is something obscure that we are not permitted to know, whether it’s transcendent or immanent,” the Marchese declared, in philosophical mood.

“I deal with much more banal but all too human causes: money, sex and the passions which spring from them.”

“Those are only effects. Don’t muddle them. If you think about it, that obscure, pre-eminent cause which directs our lives conducts itself in such a way that killing or loving are, when all is said and done, on the same level of potentiality, but then, in time, the balls cannon off each other in a certain way and produce now one outcome, now the other, or both.”

The commissario savoured another tortello , and then muttered his dissent: “Do you know why I enjoy your company? You make me feel an optimist. I can’t resign myself to the thought that we’re all machines controlled from long range. Neither one of us can rule out the possibility that we might become murderers, but the fact is that we are not. The majority of people are not.”

“From fear, only from fear. For a minority there’s also an element of awareness.”

“What is this awareness? Morality?”

“A conquest, a point of arrival. When someone in thought or deed falls to the very lowest point of humanity, he begins to be aware. Then and only then, after dabbling in evil, can he choose. Other people draw back from fear of the reaction which wickedness arouses, but life with its limitless sequence of possibilities could entice them to say yes to even the most nefarious acts.”