Wu Ming - 54

At that moment there was a knock at the door and Marco, the nurse, came in with an affable smile on his round face.

‘Here I am, hello, madam.’

‘Hello, Marco.’

‘It’s time for his medicine.’

Ferruccio’s mouth was fixed in a pout. Then he turned to the nurse and exploded, ‘Why did you go away?’

Marco prepared the pills and poured water into the glass.

‘I was on honeymoon, Fefe, I got married.’

‘Really? And how’s your wife?’ asked Angela.

‘We’re both fine, thanks. We’ve set up home in Corticella. And your husband was kind enough to extend my leave by a week. Thank him again from me. Unfortunately it was only when I got back that I found out that Ferruccio had been ill. Come on, Fefe, swallow it down, all in one go.’

Ferruccio obeyed, then wiped his mouth with the sheet.

‘It was better when you weren’t there.’

Angela rebuked him: ‘Fefe, what are you saying?’

Marco shook his head. ‘It wasn’t better. You went mad, do you remember?’

‘I didn’t have to brush my teeth. No medication, no plughole.’

‘Stop talking nonsense,’ said Angela, helping him into his jacket,

‘and now that you’re dressed, I’ll take you for a walk. *

Angela glanced nervously at the telephone.

Couldn’t make up her mind. Just chewing her nails and two words. No medication.

A strange thing, the brain. First of all absolute zero, then obsession. Treacle smeared over every gesture. Hang up your hat, no medication. Put down your keys, no medication. Step into the corridor, no medication.

There are certain questions that Odoacre doesn’t like. He’s always saying: you’re not a doctor. He says: certain things seem strange to lay people, but the doctor knows what he’s doing. You have to let him get on with his work.

Suspicion of your doctor impedes the healing process. The gospel according to Odoacre Montroni.

There are certain questions he doesn’t like: he forestalls them. He tells you everything. Never a gap, never a misunderstanding.

Trust. Odoacre in Rome. Marco on holiday. An oversight and Fefe goes out of his mind.

So now you pick up the phone and you call Marco.

You remember what Fefe said that morning, that when you weren’t there he didn’t take his new medication? Well look, I’ve talked to my husband. No way. Terrible idea. You’ve talked to the head of department: what else do you want?

A mistake? Impossible, he said. You would have been informed. If not straight away, then on my return.

There you are. Exactly. By the time you returned the damage was done and your locum didn’t get round to telling you everything. Quite normal.

Jesus Christ, Montroni spoke in parables. When you spill salt on the tablecloth, just throw it over your shoulder and you avoid disaster. No damage, no harm done. Not in the clinic, though. If you hide the damage the harm gets worse. Contrary to professional ethics. My locum is an excellent doctor. He has my every confidence.

You don’t even know the locum. Can you trust people through an intermediary?

Fine. Then Fefe must have made a mistake. What do you expect, he’s ‘handicapped’. He thinks monsters are coming out of the plughole, how do you expect him to remember what medications he has taken. You’re right, Odoacre, how stupid I am, to pay any attention to that fool of a brother of mine.

The usual reply: no one said your brother was a fool. But he isn’t a doctor either. Put facts and instincts together: the bad breath and the medicine. But there’s nothing in his therapy to give him halitosis. Unless it was in combination with something else. What do I know: coffee. Marco is a really good person, but he always allows Fefe a drop of coffee and he shouldn’t. So the correct sequence is: no Marco, no coffee, no bad breath. Fefe couldn’t know that. He only looks at what pills they’re giving him. He swallows them down and that’s it. Believe me. That’s exactly how it was. I’ll check tomorrow.

Reassuring.

Convincing.

So why are you uneasy? Don’t you trust Dr Montroni? Don’t you trust your husband? Of course I do, of course he’s right. But Fefe is my brother. When he’s ill, they tell Odoacre. One week I take him to the sea, and Odoacre is responsible. He says something strange, and Odoacre explains it to me.

That’s exactly how it was. I’ll check tomorrow.

Angela takes her eyes off the receiver.

No medication.

Chapter 13

Bologna, 21 May

Waiting made him nervous.

Since he was a child. He never did anything without asking what came next.

You need patience in life, aunt Iolanda repeated. Learn to wait.

Patience or not, he had learned.

Ritual cigarette, dark corner of an internal courtyard, glance into the street through the open gate.

Perfect ceremonial. All that was missing was the watch. The gesture remained. Dart of the wrist, fingers on the sleeve, eyes low. Four thousand lire for a Lorenz. A gift, if you listened to Sticleina.

Wait.

Filuzzi sweat, spring heat and a lot of ground covered at a fast walking pace. No bicycle, that’d been sold too.

He stubbed out the cigarette-end in the dust, reached the gate, turned around. Clear night. Stars everywhere and the cries of cats in heat.

Almost running, from the Florida to the Bar Aurora. They had said two o’clock, on the dot. Half an hour had passed, and there was no one to be seen. The flame of the lighter lit the bunch of keys. He tried the lock for luck. The one time you let your attention lapse you’ll get nicked. He had to pull it back a little but it opened.

Another glance into the street, another cigarette. The last one. His change that morning had been just enough to buy six.

Wait. He had been forced to learn.

He had done nothing else.

His father, the letters, Angela. And what about that Redhead? The same. The revolution? Hey, my boy, you’ll have to wait, this isn’t the time, it’s going to end up as it did in Greece. He knew the lines by heart. He had no idea about half of the lines they came out with, no idea what had happened in Greece, but he knew it was something big, ask Benfenati, if you don’t believe me.

When comrade Benfenati talked about fighting within institutions, Garibaldi was the only one to have his say. As in 1921, when the bosses said they wouldn’t respond to provocation, they wouldn’t yield to violence, and meanwhile the fascist squads were out there beating people up, and not just that, and in the end it had taken twenty years to send them home. ‘We were fighting within institutions,’ he replied, ‘and meanwhile they were going their own way.’

The cat miaowed more loudly. The sound was melancholy, but it still sounded as if it was enjoying itself. No doubt about that. No alternative. Just the right instinct. Fanti said that man’s intelligence is in opposition to his instinct. But if no one convinces you, or you don’t see the whole picture, why pretend that waiting is a strategy. Bollocks, it’s just an excuse to stop looking. A clever boxer can think himself a clever strategist, but he’ll still end up on the floor. And when you hear on the radio that Mitri is waiting for his adversary, you imagine him not with his eyes lowered, thinking about sex, but concentrating on the slightest distraction, ready to explode.

Glancing around for the umpteenth time, Pierre noticed the light on the other side of the road. Bloody hell, the baker. A big problem. The baker wasn’t the kind of person to mind his own business, he was always in his doorway, keeping an eye on everyone, always wellinformed, always asking questions of the people passing, pretending to be cordial.

All of a sudden the cat fell silent.