Marco Vichi: Death in August

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Which Italians are you talking about? The lawyer who lives on the floor below, or the day-labourer from Bari?’

‘Everything’s always a joke to you.’

‘Look, I’m not joking. Which Italians do you mean?’

‘You tell me something. How did you end up becoming a policeman?’

‘Actually, it’s a good profession. I’ve made a lot of friends as a policeman.’

‘And a fine lot they are: prostitutes and thieves …’

‘You should meet them some time, Rodrigo. They could teach you a great deal.’

‘You are insane.’

‘Right, I’m insane because I refuse to condemn the poor and I despise this dream-besotted country that believes in the Fiat 1100.’

‘What are you, a communist?’

Bordelli shook his head.

‘For now, it is easier to say what I’m not,’ he said. Rodrigo raised the red pen and then dropped it on to the papers.

‘As usual, you don’t know what you want,’ he said smugly.

‘That’s possible, but I don’t like a poor little country that dresses up as if it’s rich. It’s asking for trouble.’

Rodrigo huffed and made as if to resume correcting papers. Bordelli finished his now cold tea and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t light it,’ he said, raising a hand.

‘I’m not worried,’ Rodrigo muttered. Bordelli stood up, approached the desk slowly, then leaned on it with both hands.

‘You know, Rodrigo, I really believe that, somewhere, there is a woman made just for me … Isn’t that also a question of chemistry?’

‘I don’t like the way you put it.’

‘Why, how did I put it?’

Rodrigo tightened his lips and said nothing. Snatching a paper already marked in red from the stack, he went back to work. Bordelli looked at his watch. He had a great many things to attend to, and here he was wasting his time doing nothing.

‘I’ll let you work,’ he said.

‘I’ve still got seventy more to correct.’

‘That’s a lot …’

‘Have you anything else to say to me?’

‘Let me think.’

Bordelli pulled out a box of matches and started to shake it as if it were some South American percussion instrument.

‘You’re making noise,’ said Rodrigo, annoyed. Bordelli immediately stopped.

‘You know something, Rodrigo? One day I’d like to take you to the forensics department and show you the corpses.’

‘I’m not interested.’

‘You’re wrong not to be. You don’t know how many things you could learn.’

‘Make sure you shut the door on your way out.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll seal everything up.’

‘Bye.’

‘Goodbye, Rodrigo. Give my regards to Auntie.’

The inspector set his cup down on a stack of papers and left Rodrigo to his flourishes of red ink. As soon as he was on the landing, he lit his cigarette.

Three weeks of relative calm passed at police headquarters. But it was even hotter than before. The humid, motionless air ruled every corner of the city. The houses were saturated with the smell of zampironi and DDT. In that hazy summer solitude Bordelli often indulged in long monologues in his mind, especially at night in bed, before falling asleep. Or, perhaps more correctly, before sinking into that sort of laborious, memory-laden sleep which got him through the night. It was a kind of semi-consciousness peopled with overlapping images, where distant memories merged with absurd fantasies, and fatuous little dramas played themselves over and over to the point of obsession, tiring him out until they finally woke him up. At which point he would get out of bed, go into the bathroom, drink two or three glasses of water, then lie back down again, not bothering to cover himself with the sheet. Window still open, a pitcher of water with ice cubes on the nightstand. Sometimes he couldn’t go back to sleep at all and would spend hours and hours in a confused state of mind, as if jumping from branch to branch like a restless monkey.

Rosa, for her part, had fled the city. But not before phoning Bordelli to invite him to join her and her girlfriends on their way to Forte dei Marmi. The old retired prostitute had the innocence of a pup.

‘Come on, darling, drop everything and come with us. You’ll have three women to yourself, all in love with you.’

Bordelli had made up some annoying chores that kept him hopelessly stuck in town. He really didn’t feel like playing the stud with three ingenuous whores. Rosa had praised his heroism and asked him to keep an eye on her place.

‘You know, with all the burglars about …’ she had said. She complained that it was no longer the way it used to be, when she, the beautiful Rosa, was well known on the circuit and didn’t need to worry. Things were different now; the new generations of burglars didn’t look anyone in the eye.

‘And don’t forget the flowers, dear, don’t let them wither like last year.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Thank you, you’re such a sweetie. I’ll leave the keys with Carlino for you.’

Carlino was the barman at the corner cafe. He never closed shop.

‘Have fun.’

‘No need to tell us that, darling!’ she said, sending a barrage of kisses through the receiver.

Bordelli sighed in the dark and turned on to his side. He closed his eyes, hoping to go back to sleep. All of a sudden he saw in his mind’s eye the tattered bodies of Caimano and Scardigli, after they had stepped on an anti-tank mine a hundred yards away from him. They hadn’t even shouted. One of their arms had to be taken down from a tree. Fucking war. In the morning you were sharing dishwater coffee with a friend, and that evening you were putting his body parts into a coffin.

Bordelli often thought about the war; he still felt it very close by. Sometimes it seemed as if he had stopped shooting at Nazis just yesterday. He could still hear the voices of his dead comrades, their laughter, each as distinct as a signature. He could still hear each one’s personal verbal quirks and curses. If he had to name one good thing about the war, it was the way it had forcibly mixed people of every region together. One learned to recognise the different dialects and mentalities, the myths and hopes of every part of Italy.

Bordelli turned on to his other side and thought about the fact that he had nearly stopped smoking. This was a great triumph for him. During the war he had got up to a hundred cigarettes a day, the famously terrible MILIT cigarettes issued by the government. Once the Americans arrived, smoking no longer felt like torture. But Bordelli had kept smoking a hundred a day. Thinking about it now made him feel nauseated. Without turning on the light, he reached out and picked up a cigarette, his fourth. He propped himself up on one elbow and lit it. The ashtray was in the same place it had been for years; it was hard to miss. He smoked, still jumping from one memory to another, following no order whatsoever. Sometimes his head filled with many memories at once and they began to overlap, so that it became impossible to make any sense at all of the jumble.…

The telephone on the nightstand rang, and he groped in the dark for the receiver.

‘Yes?’

‘Is that you, Inspector?’

‘I think so. What time is it?’

‘Two.’

‘Has something happened?’

Mugnai faltered.

‘I don’t know yet … I mean … well, a short while ago a woman phoned, saying she was worried … says some lady’s not answering her phone, and she says that’s unusual … Inspector, do you by any chance know what a “lady companion” is?’

‘I’m sorry, Mugnai, you’ll have to start over again, from the beginning.’

‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Inspector. I probably shouldn’t even have bothered you, but I’m here by myself, and you’ve always said that if I had any doubts about anything …’