Michael Dibdin - Back to Bologna

But where to? The loss of his wallet changed everything. He was not only homeless and wanted by the police, but down to four euros and sixty-three centesimi in small change, most of which he promptly spent in the first bar he came to, just to warm up. He was staring at the drying stain in his coffee cup, as though hoping to read his fortune in the grounds, when a memory of something he had seen earlier that evening came back to him. He cringed with humiliation at the very idea. What a comedown! Talk about riches to rags. But there was no obvious alternative, and it might just prove to be what he needed to see him through the next few days, until things sorted themselves out. It was certainly worth a try.

Flavia looked up from her battered paperback at the clock above the alcove where the proprietor was busily crafting raw pizzas beside the maw of the oven. One of the two waiters reappeared, the skinny Stan Laurel lookalike. He regarded her quizzically.

‘Ready to order?’ he asked, when Flavia did not react.

‘I’m waiting for someone.’

And he was more than twenty minutes late, she thought, as the waiter sidled off. It had been absurdly naive to imagine that he would come at all. Her relationship with Rodolfo had been intense, diverting and instructive, but she had never allowed herself any illusions about the ultimate outcome, even before he started acting in this strange, angry, icily controlled way. But with his university career in ruins, there was no longer any reason for him to remain in Bologna, or with her. That was what he had been hinting at last night, taunting her with lying about her origins and then refusing to sleep with her. As for this evening, he simply wouldn’t show up, leaving her to get the message. But she already had.

She glanced up hopefully as the door opened, but it was a stranger, as tall and austere in appearance as her own dead father. Flavia finished the chapter she had been reading and then consulted the clock again. The thirty minutes grace she had allowed Rodolfo had passed. She put on her coat and headed for the door.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the fat waiter, who was serving two pasta dishes to a nearby table. ‘My boyfriend just phoned to say he can’t make it.’

Ollie inclined his head sideways in a way that could have meant anything or nothing.

In the street just outside, she literally ran into Rodolfo. He dropped the duffle bag he was carrying and kissed her on the mouth.

‘Everything’s all right!’

They returned together to the table that Flavia had vacated, the only one free now that half of the rest had been pushed together to form a large rectangular area seating about a dozen, presumably for a group that would arrive later. Rodolfo stowed the nylon bag in the corner and then, in a breathless rush, told Flavia that he had been to see Professor Ugo in hospital, had been readmitted to the course, and could finish his thesis and graduate.

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Flavia coolly. ‘Then what?’

Rodolfo shrugged.

‘Come the summer, I’ll want to go back to Puglia, at least for a while. My father says he needs me, although who knows how long that will last. Anyway, I’m sick of this damned place. Afterwards we’ll see.’

Flavia nodded vaguely.

‘What’s the weather like in Puglia?’

‘Ah, much warmer than here! The people too.’

She pointedly did not respond.

‘And in Ruritania?’ he asked with a self-deprecating smile.

‘The weather in Ruritania? It doesn’t exist.’

Rodolfo took her hand.

‘I’m sorry, Flavia. I was so angry about what had happened, almost insane, and I took it out on you. I apologise.’

There was a silence.

‘What’s in the bag?’ Flavia asked at length.

‘Oh, just some clothes Vincenzo asked me to bring him. Apparently he’s going to be away for a while and couldn’t get back to the apartment. The reason that I was so late getting here is I had to go back and pick that up after visiting Ugo.’

He smiled at her.

‘Anyway, enough about all that. Let’s talk about us.’

‘Us?’

‘Will you come with me to Puglia?’

She gazed at him for at least a minute, levelly and without the slightest expression.

‘As what?’

Rodolfo mimed exaggerated shock and horror, silent film style.

‘As my fidanzata, of course! They’d stone us both to death otherwise.’

Stanlio manifested himself at the table.

‘Two margheritas with buffalo mozzarella,’ Rodolfo told him, not breaking eye contact with Flavia. ‘And a bottle of champagne.’

‘…a bottle of spumante,’ the waiter repeated, writing on his pad.

‘No, not spumante. French champagne.’

The waiter looked doubtful.

‘I could get some from the bar down the street. But the price…’

Rodolfo produced a well-stuffed designer wallet, an evidently expensive item that Flavia didn’t recall having seen before.

‘Is irrelevant,’ he said.

As a newcomer to La Carrozza, Aurelio Zen had been allocated a small table set apart between the end of the bar and the front door. This afforded a close-up view of interactions between the overworked waiters and the foulmouthed owner, with much interesting commentary on both sides, and a blast of freezing air whenever the door opened to offset the searing heat of the wood-burning pizza oven at Zen’s back. He ordered a glass of beer but no food, on the grounds that he was waiting for someone.

‘Eh, like everyone!’ the thinner of the two waiters had replied cryptically.

Zen looked around the premises, but the only person who seemed to fit the waiter’s comment was a young woman sitting at a table near by, who kept glancing up from her book at the front door. She had surveyed Zen for a moment when he entered, with a look of hopeful eagerness that immediately faded as recognition failed. She had blue eyes of the most astonishing clarity, as bright and guileless as ice, but much warmer. She was very attractive in other ways too, and Zen found his own gaze returning to her both for this reason and because the title of the book that she was reading seemed to be The Prisoner of Zen, although her plumply elegant forefinger partially covered it.

In the end she gathered up her things and left, rather to his disappointment, only to collide in the street outside with a young man who kissed her spectacularly and then led her back to her table, where the couple were now canoodling and chatting enthusiastically over a bottle of bubbly wine. ‘Ah, youth!’ thought Zen, glad to have someone to feel happy for. Now that his brief interlude of high spirits-probably a delayed reaction to the shock of his arrest-had passed, his own prospects for the evening seemed considerably less promising. The news that Stefano’s girlfriend had miscarried promised to add a vast new uncharted minefield to the blighted warzone that his relationship with Gemma had become. He had apparently acquired an almost infinite capacity for saying or doing the wrong thing, and this new development, which could hardly fail to be the main topic of conversation between them in the immediate future, offered plenty of scope for his talents in this respect.

It was then that a thought occurred to him. As matters stood, he had no real standing in the Santini family, but as Stefano’s stepfather he would have to be accorded at least a grudging toleration. So if the situation started to get out of hand back at the hotel later that evening, he would simply make a proposal of marriage to Gemma. That would at least clarify the situation, whatever the result. If she turned him down, they would have to part. If she accepted, they would have to put up with each other. It might not be the most romantic solution, but it was eminently practical.