Michael Dibdin: Back to Bologna

‘And then?’ he prompted, trying to keep Vincenzo’s brain engaged and his reflexes dormant.

Vincenzo shook his head urgently and plunged down the hall to the bathroom. A moment later came loud groans followed by the sounds of repeated vomiting. Rodolfo sighed and returned to bed, locking the door behind him.

‘I don’t like your friend,’ said a quiet voice.

‘He’s not my friend. We share this apartment, that’s all.’

Flavia edged herself upright in the bed on each elbow alternately, the fleece of dark-red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts. She cleared it off her face, lay back on the pillow and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table.

‘Why?’ she asked.

As so often, out of sheer ignorance of the basic logic of the language, she had wrong-footed him. That was what happened if you had affairs with foreigners, Rodolfo reflected sourly. Next thing you’d be falling in love and deciding that their banal gaffes were actually profound insights into the human condition.

‘Why what?’ he asked irritably, his idyll now completely disrupted. He was equally angry with Vincenzo for waking Flavia, and with Flavia for allowing herself to be woken.

‘Why do you share with him?’

Rodolfo lay down on the bed beside her.

‘I don’t know. It just happened. Like you and me.’

Flavia smoked quietly and made no reply, her startling blue eyes regarding him with no little concern.

‘I got back after Christmas to find that there’d been a fire in the building where I had been living,’ Rodolfo went on. ‘It was a question of finding alternative accommodation, and fast. On the allowance my father gives me I didn’t have a lot of choice, and of course most places were already let for the whole academic year. So I photocopied some ads with those tear-off strips and pinned them up all over the university district, but nothing came of that. Then someone who was moving out of this apartment tipped me off about it. It was out of my price range, but I came round to take a look anyway and ran into Vincenzo as I was leaving. He’d heard about the place independently, and of course money’s no problem for him. He paid the landlord a deposit right away and then suggested that we go and have a drink together as he had a proposition to put to me. I didn’t know him, but he seemed pleasant enough. Anyway, classes had already started and I couldn’t afford to be choosy. Over coffee-well, he had something stronger-he suggested that since there were two bedrooms we should share the apartment and split the rent. When I told him that even half would be a stretch for me, he said, “All right, you pay a third, on condition that I get the big bedroom. I don’t care about the money, but I need my space and I don’t like living alone.” So there you are. Pure chance.’

‘There’s no such thing as chance.’

Rodolfo laughed.

‘If you kept up with the news, you’d know that there’s nothing else.’

The girl frowned.

‘So you’re not-what is it?- credente?’

‘A believer? Of course. I’m a fervent Protestant.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. I protest against everything.’

Flavia’s frown deepened.

‘I try to watch the news, but I can’t always understand.’

He leaned over and kissed her pale face.

‘I don’t mean the small screen, I mean the big picture. And there’s nothing to understand. Or better, nothing that can be understood. Deterministic materialism is the only game left in town. The intellectual high rollers have figured out the odds down to the last decimal point, and basically they agree with Vincenzo. Details aside, the deal is that shit happens.’

From the hallway, as if on cue, came the sound of the toilet flushing. There followed various unidentifiable thumps and bumps, and finally the slam of the other bedroom door.

‘Yes,’ said Flavia.

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, I understand. But…’

She fell silent.

‘What?’ Rodolfo insisted.

But Flavia shook her head in that decisive way she had.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s none of my business anyway. What do I know about this country, what’s normal and what’s not? I’m just passing through. Another piece of shit working its way through the system.’

Rodolfo chose to regard this as a challenge.

‘Tell me anyway,’ he insisted, rolling over and holding her.

‘No. It would be invadente.’

This gave him a chance to lighten the mood.

‘But you are an invader!’ he declared, clutching his chest with one hand and flinging the other out dramatically. ‘Not only have you invaded my country, but also…’

He was about to add ‘my heart’, but realised just in time that under the circumstances this might not sound like ironic hyperbole but simply hurtful. Lost in her own thoughts, Flavia seemed to pay no attention to the unfinished sentence.

‘He reminds me of…’

She broke off to shake the ash from her cigarette into the saucer by the bed.

‘He’s very beautiful,’ she finally added inconsequentially.

Again Rodolfo made an attempt at humour.

‘Believe me, if I had a single gay gene in my body…’

Flavia seemed uninterested in this speculation.

‘But he’s wicked,’ she said, as if pointing out the logical conclusion of her argument.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Flavia did not seem troubled by either his manner or the question.

‘I probably used the wrong word. Or maybe this thing doesn’t exist here.’

Aradiant smile appeared for a moment, transfiguring her intimidatingly regular features.

‘But you spoke of genes in your body,’ she continued, expressionless again. ‘Well, I have my own genes, and one of them gives me a very clear sense of this thing, whatever you call it.’

She stubbed out her cigarette and lay back.

‘Vincenzo’s just a spoilt brat,’ Rodolfo said in a dismissive undertone. ‘Father’s a lawyer, mother has a pretend job with the giunta regionale fixing up artsy exhibitions and the like. Typical Bolognese upper middle class, in short, with a history of mild political activism when young that makes them socially acceptable now, and enough disposable income to take pricey “alternative” vacations in the Lofoten Islands or wherever. It’s all the usual cliches, so Vincenzo’s done the cliched thing and rebelled against the family life he can return to any time he wants. He skips his classes and exams, hangs out with a bunch of low-lifes at the football stadium, and drinks to excess. But evil? He doesn’t have the balls to be evil. Or anything else for that matter. The guy’s just a wanker.’

Flavia just lay there, gazing up as though at a distant light faintly visible through the ceiling.

‘Nevertheless, I know such people,’ she said at last. ‘Even though I never met them, I know them. Can you understand? Ion Antonescu, Gheorghiu-Dej, Corneliu Codreanu…I know them very well.’

Rodolfo yawned. It was late, and he had a lot of revision to do for Ugo’s seminar the following day. His attitude to his renowned tutor had become much more overtly confrontational of late, so he’d better be able to demonstrate a flawless grasp of the subject.

‘Who are they?’ he murmured.

‘Which one?’

‘Any of them. The last one.’

‘Codreanu? King Carol had him killed in 1938. Two years later Antonescu overthrew the monarchy and turned the state into a dictatorship run by the Legion of the Archangel Michael, otherwise known as the Iron Guard.’

Rodolfo yawned again and embraced her.

‘You’re Scheherazade, spinning me crazy stories to keep me awake all night. You and your Ruritania! I don’t believe the place even exists.’