Valerio Varesi - River of Shadows

“If that’s the case, by three he’ll run into the bend at Luzzara. Once he’s passed the bridge at Viadana, there’s no way he can move towards the Mantua bank without rudder and engine.”

“If he’s dead, it’d be better if he went down with the barge. It’s what he would have wanted,” Gianna said.

It was the first time anyone had voiced the notion of Tonna perhaps being dead, but the thought had come into each one’s mind.

“No barge can navigate four bridges on its own,” Ghezzi said, cutting short the discussion.

Once again it was the radio which broke the silence. The order had been given to pile the newly filled sandbags near the embankments and alongside old coypu burrows.

Barigazzi once again left the clubhouse, crossed the yard under the driving rain and climbed the embankment. The river had risen considerably in a few hours. The sandbank which separated the quay from midstream had been swallowed up, and the boats which were still tied up looked as restless as stallions. The town was afloat in a lake of lights oxidized by the wet weather. A few hours more and the fish would be swimming higher than the magpie nests. An immense pressure was building up against the embankment, stubbornly searching for some cavity. Barigazzi was making his way back to the club through sheets of driving rain, but first went back down to take another look at the stakes. The midnight marks were already deep underwater. The light from the club, battered by the driving rain, seemed like wisps of smoke or steam in the yard.

The old man shook himself in the doorway before going in, relishing the warmth within. The radio was talking about Tonna. “They’ve lost sight of it… The light is out?… You think it’s the battery?… Ah! It flickered out… And now there is nothing to be seen?

… The carabinieri have switched on floodlights near the Guastalla bridge. At other spots they’ve turned the headlights of their jeeps on to the river?”

“The final curtain,” Vernizzi said.

“Now they’ll turn their attention to the flooding.”

The telephone rang again.

“Yes, yes, we know that the light has gone out,” Gianna said. “You’re coming back? Barigazzi,” she said, looking over at him, “Barigazzi says it’ll run aground at the Luzzara bend… He says about three o’clock.”

When she had hung up, she explained: “They’re going to the Guastalla bridge to watch it pass under the floodlights, then they’ll wait for it at Luzzara.”

Barigazzi shrugged. “Now that the light’s gone off, they’ll leave him to his fate.”

The radio repeated the news several times with maddening insistence. “Tonna’s barge is making its way downstream. It’s holding to the middle, but it seems the hand on the tiller is not exactly up to it… Yes, yes, I am telling you, the engine’s not running.”

“Who believes it’s navigating normally in this weather?” Torelli was growing impatient.

“With no engine, the battery will run flat.”

“In just a few hours?”

“Tonna’s as mean as the drought in ’61. He uses batteries lorry drivers have thrown away.”

“He always lives in the dark or he uses the candles you put round coffins. As soon as it gets dark, he moors at the first place, gets off to have something to eat and then goes to bed.”

“What a cheery life! You can see why his grandson…”

“So the light kept burning all that time, down at the mooring…” Barigazzi said. He spun his hand round, all five fingers pointing upwards in a gesture suggesting some piece of machinery searching in vain for a plug.

“It’s not that difficult to work out,” Vernizzi said.

“No,” Barigazzi murmured, looking up at the clock. “In less than two hours we’ll know everything.”

They all looked up. The hands on the club clock were almost at 1:00.

The carabinieri returned. “I’ll say I haven’t seen you,” the maresciallo mumbled, as damp and swollen as a savoiardo biscuit dipped in Marsala. He was an unhealthy colour, whether from the onset of influenza or from suppressed rage.

“You’re just not used to this rain,” Barigazzi told the maresciallo, who gave him an evil look in return.

“Another nine centimetres. It’s coming up like Fortanina wine when you pull the cork,” the old man went on.

The radio operator passed on this news, and received equally alarming data in reply.

“At this rate, you’re going to have to sound the retreat in the carabinieri headquarters as well,” Barigazzi said. “But it won’t take much evacuating,” he said, staring at the only carabiniere, a shy young man accompanying his superior officer.

The maresciallo swallowed the grappa which Gianna had poured for him without waiting to be asked.

Barigazzi joined him at the bar. “It suits you fine to let your colleagues in Luzzara attend to this other business,” he said gravely.

“What other business?” came the surly response from somewhere under the officer’s helmet.

“This business of the barge.”

The officer’s face brightened. He was evidently relieved. “Why Luzzara?”

“It will get as far as that,” Barigazzi assured him. “Tell them at the station, if anyone’s still there.”

Vernizzi went out for a pee. “It brings good luck if you piss in the river,” he said. He lived in the town but he had never got used to peeing in a closed W.C. As he drew near the riverbank, he became aware of just how high the water had risen. There was someone at work with the winch at the moorings, trying to pull ashore a boat still riding at anchor. The clammy libeccio wind ensured that the rain drove into the side of his body.

“You’ve pissed yourself,” Torelli teased him when he saw Vernizzi come in with his trousers wet.

“Not at all. I’ve salted the sea.”

The radio announced that the barge was close to the Guastalla bridge.

“Call them and ask if they can actually see it,” Ghezzi instructed Gianna.

In seconds the woman was on the line. “Moving slowly… And the lights are still off, right? Ah, difficult to see. The cars have pointed their headlights where it sails in and out of view.”

Barigazzi imagined himself on the embankment, standing behind the vehicles whose headlights were resting on the surface of the water, picking out glimpses of the hull in the bobbing confusion of barrels, logs, dead animals, tree trunks.

“It’s going past?” Gianna was shouting into the receiver. “Are you sure? Too dark? In midstream… This bit has gone smoothly as well.”

Barigazzi looked up at the clock. “It’s all over now.”

The others looked at him, not sure if he was referring to the river or to Tonna. Probably both. Vernizzi remembered hearing his pee gurgle on the surface of the water scarcely a metre from where he had been standing.

“Gianna, start packing up,” Barigazzi told her.

The operator unplugged the radio in preparation for moving out. Everything that could be carried to safety was swiftly put into large boxes, making the club look in no time like temporary premises. Torelli manoeuvred the lorry into place in the yard and for a moment the lights played on the surface of the river without reaching the far shore. Then they started loading. In all the coming and going, the radios on both sides of the river continued broadcasting a litany which became a sort of rosary for all the wrecks dragged away by the current.

“What about the clock?” Vernizzi said.

“The water’ll never get that high,” Barigazzi said firmly, noting that it was a few minutes before three. “This is the epilogue,” he reminded everyone.

Then, in the almost bare room, silence fell. One bottle of white wine remained on a table. Gianna found some paper cups and shared the wine out among the company until it was all gone. A few more minutes of waiting passed, leaving them to listen to the rain hammering on the roof and to the incessant drip drip from the beams. At 3.10, the telephone rang. At the first tone, Gianna got quickly to her feet, but Barigazzi stopped her with a sign and made for the telephone himself. Without waiting for whoever it was on the other end to speak, and without even a “hello”, he said: “Has he run aground?”