Valerio Varesi - River of Shadows

“Anteo didn’t talk, not even to me. For my son, the problem was not sailing on the river. It was his silences that got to him.”

Soneri was about to let the matter drop. He let his arms fall to his side and gave a deep sigh. It was then that the woman raised her eyes from the floor and stared straight at him. The commissario was on the point of striking a match but stopped and waited expectantly.

“There was something strange, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with it.” Soneri did not move a muscle. “A week ago, someone phoned here looking for him.”

“Had that ever happened before?”

“Never.”

“Did they say who they were?”

“No. A man. From the voice it seemed he was an older person.”

“Did he seem to you to belong to these parts?”

Claretta stood thinking, as though she were unsure of the precise answer to give. “He spoke dialect perfectly, but he didn’t speak good Italian.”

“That can happen with people who hadn’t been to school all that much.”

“No, I mean he spoke Italian with a foreign accent.”

“What do you mean, foreign?”

“I’m not sure. Spanish, perhaps.”

“And what did he say?”

“That he was looking for my uncle.” After a pause, Claretta was more precise. “But he didn’t say straightaway that he was looking for Anteo Tonna. He said he was looking for ‘Barbisin’.”

“And who is ‘Barbisin’?”

“It was a nickname they used to give my uncle in the past.”

Someone opened a window, allowing in a gust of wet wind. The woman shivered as though she had been struck a blow, and went behind the bar to serve a customer who had just come in. The commissario’s mobile rang. He left the bar, saying good-bye with a wave, and waited until he was in the middle of the street before pressing the answer button. Juvara shouted out “Hello!” a couple of times without hearing anything in reply. Soneri cursed the machine and had to move to another corner of the piazza to get a signal.

“Boss, I haven’t really got much to report. Decimo Tonna really and truly did live on his own. His neighbours saw him come and go, but he only ever exchanged the time of day with them. He did his shopping at the supermarket and never went to the local bar. I’ve also heard that some social workers went to see him a couple of times, but he chased them away.”

“Does the parish priest know anything about him?” the commissario said. More and more frequently the priests were the only ones you could turn to. And more and more frequently, they knew nothing either. “Check the files on the two Tonnas. They were once Fascists…”

“That’s nearly fifty years ago,” Juvara said.

Soneri thought this over for a few moments until he heard the ispettore repeat again: “Hello, hello?”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said, closing his mobile without saying good-bye.

He walked a little way with myriad thoughts churning in his head, and only after a minute did he realize that what he was experiencing was the overture to a thoroughly bad mood. He felt he was caught up in twin cases but was incapable of disentangling from either any workable lead or even the outline of a hypothesis to work on. Meantime, he found himself confronting the silent faces of the Tonna brothers whom he had never seen alive. The only one he had seen was Decimo under the special white sheet used for corpses, with only the white of his eyes visible and blood trickling from his mouth in the graceless grin of death.

In one of the narrow streets, the mobile rang again.

“So you’re not drowned.” It was Angela.

“Not yet, but don’t lose hope. The river’s still rising.”

“Why not throw yourself in, seeing you’re so keen to be there.”

“I’m afraid of drowning in the dark. Anyway, I’ve just eaten.”

“That’s the one thing you’ll never forget to do.”

“Christ, Angela, I’ve only just got here. And I can’t make head nor tail of the business.”

“O.K., Commissario, you do your investigating. And when you come back, bring me a little something.”

“It’s so much easier for you lawyers: you play about with words, you pull down and build on the facts other people have dug up for you.”

“Don’t play the victim,” Angela said. “I’d like to see you plunge every day into that tank of alligators called a courtroom. I have colleagues who would sell their mothers for a handful of coins.”

“Could anyone be worse than a murderer?”

“Have you any idea what happened to the barge?” she said, her mood becoming more cheerful.

“No, but I have persuaded Alemanni to unite the inquiries into the two brothers.”

“You can pat yourself on the back, then. In all my dealings with that one, I’ve never once got anything out of him. He rejects every application I make, even the most straightforward ones.”

“He’s nothing but a gloomy old bugger who can’t get it into his head that it’s time for him to move on.”

“I hope to see you before you go drifting off somewhere. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity in a couple of days. If you have any memory left, you’ll understand…”

He heard the mobile being closed with a snap which seemed to him like the sound of something being broken, but at that moment, walking under the colonnade, he chanced on the osteria called Il Sordo. Inside, under hanging chandeliers with a few candles in each, there were eight beechwood tables. The light was faint but sufficient for games of briscola. He recognized Barigazzi and three other men he had seen at the boat club standing at the bar.

“Did you get out in time?”

“Nando, the boy operating the radio, is still there dismantling it. He’ll be here shortly.”

“Did it come up sooner than you expected?”

“No. It will reach the shack about three o’clock. We know the river, so we know it’s pointless hanging about waiting for it.” It was Barigazzi who did the talking.

“Can I get you something?”

“We never say no. It’s an offer that might cost you dear around here,” they all replied, making for an empty table.

The deaf barman, whose misfortune gave its name to the Il Sordo bar, kept his eye on them until they sat down. When he came over, no words were spoken, but Barigazzi held up four fingers and his thumb and the man nodded. Soneri was about to ask him about something else, but he stopped when he felt a hand on his elbow. “No point. He’s taken out his hearing aid this evening, so he wouldn’t hear a thing.”

It was only then that the commissario became aware that small amplifiers the size of cotton wool balls were protruding from both of the landlord’s ears.

Barigazzi introduced Vernizzi, Ghezzi and Torelli. “In fact,” he said, “you’ve met the whole committee of the boat club all at once.”

Then he pointed to the owner of the bar. “He does that when he’s in a bad temper. He pulls the apparatus out of his ears and listens only to his own silence.”

“What a bit of luck,” Soneri said, thinking of certain calls from Angela. He looked around at the walls covered with photographs of great opera singers, all in parts from Verdi. His eyes fell on a Rigoletto while, in the background, the notes from one of the more romantic numbers swelled up.

“Aureliano Pertile,” Ghezzi said, without a moment’s hesitation.

The deaf landlord himself wanted to live in silence, but he provided music for his guests. He reappeared with a dark, thick glass bottle and four majolica bowls foaming at the brim. Soneri recognized it as a Fortanina, a wine low in alcohol but high in tannin, sparkling like lemonade.

“I thought it had vanished from circulation,” he said.

“It was declared illegal because it didn’t reach the required grade of alcohol, but the landlord makes it in his cellar,” Vernizzi informed him. “You’re not here as a spy, are you?”