Valerio Varesi - Gold, Frankincense and Dust

“They’d have thrown it all out,” Nanetti said in a whisper.

Soneri said nothing but went on peering at the man in some perplexity.

“There you go again. Now you’re starting to brood. I’d be as well having a sandwich at the bar and staring at the wall. Let’s at least talk about this burned corpse,” Nanetti said.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about,” Soneri muttered, turning to look once more at the man beside them.

“Alright, alright.” Nanetti dropped the subject.

“I was thinking,” Soneri started up again, “there could be some resemblance, some connection between the woman consumed by the flames and this man here,” he said, referring to the man with the newspaper.

“Well …” Nanetti said with some scepticism.

“I mean, someone who turns up looking well off and in a position of authority so as to conceal what he really is.”

“He’s hardly concealing anything.”

“Yes he is, from most people here. Remember we’re nearest to him and policemen into the bargain. He had a one-in-a-million chance of bumping into two men like us. And as to being in authority, I haven’t the slightest doubt. He looks like a businessman.”

“A good actor. But authority … what authority can the burned-out stump of a human being command?”

“The dead are always in authority. They belong to a world which terrifies us and that in itself inspires respect.”

Nanetti stopped to think this over. Meanwhile the man at the table alongside them had finished the roast and was about to move on to the grilled vegetables which were lying untouched on a side plate. He shot a glance from time to time at the steak left more or less intact by the male companion of the woman whose place he had taken, but he did not touch it.

Nanetti had to make an effort to keep himself from laughing at the commissario’s almost morbid curiosity. “What would you be like if it was a good-looking woman?”

Soneri gave him a brief look of apology, before turning his attention back to the man, who returned his glance with a smile. “Did you see the woman who was sitting here?” he asked, with complete naturalness.

The commissario nodded in surprise. He was caught off guard, as though he had been gazing too intently at a woman’s cleavage.

“Would you not kiss her?” the other man continued amiably.

“Yes, perhaps.”

“For me, it is as if I were kissing her.”

Soneri shook his head while Nanetti looked on in amusement. “I don’t understand.”

“Regrettably, eating with her fork and drinking from her glass are not really such intimate gestures,” the man sighed.

“It’d be better to have her tongue in your mouth,” Nanetti let slip.

The commissario stared at him, reproaching him for what he considered unjustifiable vulgarity, but the stranger did not lose his composure. He arranged his lips into the smile required by etiquette, and went on: “If you examine the question from the point of view of hygiene, a kiss is infinitely more compromising. In any case, I would never touch a man’s plate,” he said, pointing at the steak opposite him.

Soneri considered the conversation a surreal postscript to the surreal events he had witnessed the previous evening. Or perhaps he was seeing things in a wholly new way. Still reeling and disconcerted, he noted that the man’s jacket had fraying hems and that his newspaper was a day old.

“I can say I dine like a king and savour sniffing the perfume left by ladies on napkins. It’s almost like making love. At least I lunch and dine in their company. The rest can be left to the imagination. One can indulge in fantasy, but that’s exactly why the experience is so satisfying. Sex is a function of the brain.”

Neither Nanetti nor Soneri spoke a word as they rose from the table, but the strange man gave a gentle wave of the hand which spoke of a natural nobility of bearing.

“You might’ve offered him a dessert,” Nanetti said as they went to the cash desk. The commissario still did not speak.

Alceste always wanted reassurance that he had pleased his clients. “Everything alright?”

“More than alright,” Nanetti smiled. “And there was some entertainment thrown in.”

Alceste’s expression darkened, and he looked down. “I know. I should show him the door, but I feel sorry for him.”

“Let him be. I don’t care how he looks, but I am curious about him.”

“He’s an old marchese fallen on hard times. He was born into money, but he squandered it all. He used to have three palaces in the city, but they swindled him out of the lot because his head’s in the clouds.”

Nanetti stretched out his arms as if to say it happens all the time.

Alceste went on. “They call him Sbarazza. He goes from restaurant to restaurant, but I think he’s happier here than anywhere else. I used to offer him a lunch through there, in the kitchen, but he declined anything that smacks of charity. That’s the way he is. He wants to keep up the appearance of being master of his own world. Not many people are aware he eats leftovers. He does have class. He sits there and gives the impression of having always been there. He finishes off what others leave behind, but he’ll only eat from women’s plates. First he observes them, then takes their place. It doesn’t bother me, but some of my colleagues can’t stand that kind of behaviour. They can’t bear him eating dishes others have paid for. They’d prefer to throw it out, but I could feed half the city with what’s left uneaten. Nobody wants it, not even for their dogs.”

Soneri and Nanetti stood listening to Alceste in amazement. When they went out, they walked in silence because there was nothing to say. A sort of burning inner wound tormented them, but without their being able to identify it precisely.

“What a story! Seems unbelievable,” Nanetti said finally.

The commissario shook his head. “No, it’s just that poverty causes scandal and hides itself away.”

By the time Soneri was walking across the yard at the police station, the afternoon was rapidly dying. Gusts of mist were burying the fading day and the neon lights from the offices announced the onset of darkness.

“Did you find anything in the missing persons register?” he asked Juvara.

“No. The usual names, the ones we already know. I also checked recent crime reports, but I found nothing. I’m afraid we’re dealing with an illegal immigrant.”

“There’s a surprise!” The thought had been preying on Soneri’s mind. Someone dies miles from home, no-one knows where she is and no register with information on her can be found. At least the old man on the coach had a scrap of paper in the form of a visa. That thought unleashed a torrent of associations. The image of the bus leaving the Pensilina passed through his mind. The dead man on it came from Romania and there had been Romanian travelling people in the encampment next to the dump at Cortile San Martino. The burned body could have been an illegal immigrant too.

Under the inspector’s astonished gaze, he jumped abruptly to his feet, but his rush to the door was interrupted by the telephone. Once again it was Pasquariello, who launched straight in: “It looks as though the Lower Po Valley has become a hunting estate.”

“Has the questore given orders to fire on those poor bulls?”

“Are you serious? He couldn’t give a damn about the bulls. Somebody from the transport company that was taking the beasts to the slaughterhouse came here to see me, and he told us that this morning when they went to round them up they heard shots.”

“Somebody could have been shooting out of fear.”

“Who knows? I dispatched a couple of squads, but in this mist not even the company vets managed to make any headway.”