Michael Dibdin: Cosi Fan Tutti

Before long, bottles of spumante make their appearance, arrayed in beds of cracked ice, together with yards of snowy starched linen to cover the trestles hastily erected at one end of the terrace to accommodate all these goodies.

And not a minute too soon, for the guests are already starting to roll up. The first to arrive is Valeria, who has only with difficulty been dissuaded from bringing a selection of snacks and appetizers of her own devising in a well-meaning attempt to bail out the helpless bachelor who has impulsively decided to throw a party for the entire cast, and now appears awed and slightly resentful at having so misjudged both the competence of the host and the scale of the hospitality which he has laid on.

But this mood does not last. As she tells Zen, her daughters have been in touch and assured her that all is well, and with that anxiety dispelled she is in a mood to celebrate.

Pasquale and Immacolata Higgins are the next to appear, the former almost unrecognisably elegant thanks to a very nice near-Armani suit and all the accoutrements. La Igginz has just spent all day, not to mention a lucrative part of the night, behind the wheel and is wearing a rather less fetching ensemble designed with a view to comfort rather than style, terminating in a pair of garish yellow plastic sandals.

Valeria Squillace starts to feel even better.

Zen returns the silver box which Pasquale gave him, slightly battered by the experiences he went through, and explains how it saved his life.

'So what's the secret?' he asks.

Pasquale shrugs.

'It's not something to speak about at an event like this, duttb. Abit of respect is called for. Let's just say that every year the corpse of a certain saint, preserved here in Naples, exudes a liquor which the priests soak up with cotton wool and make available to a few select people who…'

Aurelio Zen is already beginning to look as though he was sorry he asked, but luckily for him Dario De Spino now emerges from the interior of the house, whose front door downstairs has been left open to save the host from having to run up and downstairs every time someone rings. Dario, it must be said, thought long and hard before agreeing to show up at all. His sixth sense still told him that it would be better to lie low for a while, particularly at any function to which Gesualdo and Sabatino will inevitably have been invited.

Nevertheless, the promise of a lavish party with lots of free eats and booze was a powerful inducement, and the flattering pleas of the two Albanians, who phoned him personally and practically burst into tears when he hesitated, was just enough to swing the balance, albeit against his better judgement. He does not want to lose contact with lolanda and Libera, for whom he still has plans whose scope is validated by the spectacle they offer, entering with a studied air of confidence and sophistication, resplendent in the outfits which Dario has had knocked up for them through a friend of a brother-in law's friend's cousin's business associate.

'Quite the party, Don Alfonso!' he exclaims, voicing the thoughts of the other guests, none of whom, however, has been vulgar enough to express them.

Zen shrugs modestly.

'It's not every day one survives a murder attempt.'

'Murder?'

'How?'

'When?'

'Where?'

'Why?'

The guests, including Professor Esposito, who has just joined the gathering, crowd eagerly around Zen.

'Shortly after midnight this morning,' he begins, sending Valeria a meaningful glance, "I was on my way home when I encountered a team of garbage collectors at work.'

The newcomer laughs.

'Impossible! I'm sorry, dottore, but you'll have to do better than that. City employees at work at such an hour here in Naples? Unheard of!'

Zen smiles and nods.

'Exactly, Professor. They weren't garbage collectors at all, but a team of killers from the terrorist organization known as Strade Pulite/ 'Wait a minute!' objects Dario De Spino. "I saw the TV news story about that. It happened all right, but not to you. It was some policeman from Rome, a certain Aurelio … I don't recall… Aurelio…'

'Zen,' says Gesualdo, coming out on to the terrace with Sabatino. 'His name's Aurelio Zen, and he's a policeman.'

'Don't be ridiculous!' Valeria exclaims. 'He's called Zembla. Aren't you, Alfonso?'

She is furious at the unexpected appearance of her daughters' unsuitable suitors, even though Zen has explained that that's all over now that they've fallen head over heels for the fascinating Albanian immigrants installed in the lower apartment and have completely forgotten the Squillace girls, far away in a foreign land, thank heavens, blissfully ignorant of how quickly and with what little trouble they have been displaced in their lovers' affections.

'Why would terrorists want to kill someone like you?' demands Iolanda. 'They only go for big shots, people of real importance/ The majestic majordomo advances, holding a telephone on a long extension cord.

'For you, cummendatb/ he says, handing the instrument to Zen.

'Hello?'

'Aurelio?'

'Is that you, Gilberto?'

'I just… check you're… after the… congratulations on../ 'Speak up, can you? It sounds like you're calling from Russia!'

'I am/ 'What?'

'That's how I was able to get the passport so quickly, courtesy of my partners here. If you know the right people, Moscow's even better than Naples these days. Anyway, I was watching CNN here at the hotel and who should I see but you!'

'They ran that in Russia?'

'You're world-famous, Aurelio! And after smashing those terrorists they'll have to give you your old job back, maybe even with Some promotion.'

'Well, I don't know about…'

'So it seemed a good moment to make a small confession.'

Zen wiggles his empty glass at a passing waiter, who fills it with scintillating wine.

'When you brought me that video-game cassette,'

Nieddu says faintly, "I was at a very low ebb, as you know.

Times were difficult, not just for me but for Rosa and the kids…'

'Yes?'

'Well, like I told you, the cassette I returned to you was not the same as the one you brought me. What I didn't tell you was that it wasn't an accident/ 'It wasn't?' "I'm only human, Aurelio. The temptation was too strong. Anyone would have done the same. It was just too good a chance to pass up. The first version of this particular game sold millions, billions! And now I had my hands on a usable prototype of the sequel, months before it was scheduled to hit the shops anywhere! Can you imagine the possibilities? Of course I wasn't in a position to manufacture and market it myself, but I'd heard that they had the facilities here in the former Eastern bloc, plus a progressive, libertarian approach to things like copyright laws. So…'

Zen hangs up and hands the phone back to the grave retainer.

'I am not taking any further calls,' he says.

The paid functionary bows silently and withdraws as though he has been in the service of the family his whole life.

Meanwhile Gesualdo and Sabatino have paired off with their respective mates, and the rest of the party are disputing vociferously about their host's identity. The exchange on this subject between Pasquale and Professor Esposito is characterized by a particularly colourful and inventive display of rhetoric, which is unfortunately lost on the subject himself since it is conducted not merely in dialect, nor yet that variant common to the Borgo San Antonio Abate neighbourhood, but a sub-species of the latter, a sort of family jargon spoken only by persons of a certain age and social class from a particular couple of streets in the shadow of the eponymous church — and only then in moments of great emotion.

The resulting encounter is both competitive and cohesive, at once an affirmation of a common heritage incomprehensible to outsiders and a struggle for dominance in terms of criteria which only the other is capable of judging.