Chapter 30
Bologna, 23 March
The warehouse stood right next to the building site for the new hospital. When it was finished, it would be the biggest in Europe.
The entrance was obstructed by the trailer of a lorry. Pierre slipped into the narrow passage between the lorry and the wall. It was hot inside, with a smell of damp and petrol. Two boys not much older than himself were unloading big tin drums and lining them up against the wall.
‘Hi,’ said Pierre. ‘I’m supposed to talk to Ettore.’
‘Ettore? He was here until ten minutes ago, then he left, but he should be back soon.’
‘Can I wait here?’
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ replied the younger of the boys, and without stopping his work he pointed to a chair at the back of the shed.
Beside the chair, two men were talking and studying some pieces of paper. Pierre preferred not to disturb them and leaned against the wall. He lit a cigarette to kill some time, but felt like a halfwit when one of the men pointed out that the drums contained fuel and smoking near them wasn’t the best idea in the world.
He stubbed out the cigarette against the wall and slipped it back into the pack. He couldn’t stay long, he had left the bar on an insignificant errand, and Nicola had got out on the wrong side of bed that morning.
The boys seemed to be tireless, and were still hard at work around the lorry. From the little that he knew, everyone who worked with Ettore had a partisan past, and those two must have taken up arms before the age of eighteen. The hardest of them came from the ‘Red Star’, the others had been later additions. Gas said there were about fifteen of them in all. The boss was called Bianco, but he was sick, and now he followed the business from a distance, having been replaced by Ettore on the ground.
The two men studying the papers raised their voices. Raised voices, harsh words. The men doing the unloading stopped halfway between the lorry and the wall, glancing towards them. One of the two had grabbed the other by the jacket, and was shouting in his face. ‘You’ll pay for that, you son of a bitch, you’ll pay me the lot, right now!’
The drums rolled to the ground, the noise bouncing off the ceiling.
The one who had been grabbed by the jacket wriggled free. The boys went and stood next to him. The other man was training a pistol on him.
‘Tell your mate to come over here too,’ Pierre heard him say, but without giving him time to finish, he dashed towards the lorry and climbed underneath it, wriggling towards the exit on his elbows.
When he re-emerged, clutching the back mudguard, he found himself looking at a pair of legs and a pointed gun. He felt something like the blow of an enormous weight around his heart, and hid his head under his arm.
‘Come out quietly,’ a voice whispered. ‘No nonsense.’
Pierre did so, stiff as a piece of salt cod. The voice went on speaking. He didn’t understand the order, but he seemed to recognise the voice and raised his face.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ Ettore said. Then he curled his index finger to beckon him over. ‘What’s happening in there?’
‘I didn’t know,’ Pierre replied breathlessly. ‘Someone wanted to be paid, and drew a gun.’
‘Is he alone?’
‘Yes, he’s alone.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On the other side, towards the back.’
Ettore moved the palm of his hand towards the floor, indicating to Pierre that he should wait where he was, and disappeared behind the corner. In less than two minutes Pierre heard his voice booming around the shed, followed by a shot. Two.
A moment later he saw a head peeping out from underneath the lorry. It wasn’t Ettore, nor was it one of the boys, and the man was holding a gun. There was no time to gauge his expression. He kicked him right in the face, so hard that he almost turned him over. He heard Ettore’s voice again, behind him this time, calm as ever.
‘Well done, Pierre. I hope you didn’t kill him.’
He handed the gun to the other man and bent down under the lorry. The face of the guy who wanted to be paid looked like a burst watermelon. He was bleeding from an eyebrow and from his mouth, and his nose was smeared over his right cheek. His other cheekbone was reddish-purple. He was still breathing.
‘Palmo, Beppe, take him away,’ Ettore ordered once he had risen to his feet. ‘Wait for him to recover, and tell him we’re through with him, and I don’t want to see him again.’ Then he smiled, turning back to Pierre. ‘Well, you showed up at a good time. Come on, let’s go for a drive.’
The 1400 was parked across the way, under an acacia. They got in. Ettore started the engine and set off with a faint squeal of tyres on the gravel. He drove towards an area of the city dominated by railway tracks, barracks, warehouses and vegetable gardens. It was as though urban expansion towards the plain had been somehow obstructed there, and the remnants of the city ran in two streams of asphalt and bricks parallel to the railway tracks, along Via Emilia in one direction, and out of the Porta Lame in the other.
‘Good news,’ began Ettore with his cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘I’ve found someone who can take you to Yugoslavia. I’ve got a load that’s supposed to be setting off towards the end of the month, from Ravenna.’
‘Ravenna?’ Pierre’s eyes turned towards the driver. ‘By sea?’
‘Yes, in a boat, it’s safer and shorter.’
‘Why?’
‘Travel by land has been risky, relations between the Italian border guards and Slovenian customs officers aren’t as good as they were immediately after the war, when there were communists over there, or rather friends of the communists from over here.’ He broke off for a moment to wind down the window. ‘On the boat it’s different, the guy taking care of the cargo will take care of you too, just as if you were one of his cases, he’ll unload you in a safe place, he’ll even drive you to the first village, and then
say goodbye.’
‘And how much would it cost me?’
‘Without a discount, almost 200,000. But after what’s happened, I can offer you half that, documents included.’
Pierre whistled between his teeth and turned to look outside. A Lambretta parked against a hedge, in the middle of nowhere, declared the season of love on the grass reopened. If he had had a motor scooter like that, he and Angela would really be able to enjoy themselves, without doing everything on the sly, in constant fear of passersby and neighbours. But he couldn’t afford a Lambretta, and he couldn’t afford such an expensive journey, either.
He ran a hand over his mouth. ‘Where am I going to get 100,000 lire?’ he whispered to himself.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A hundred thousand lire is too much. If I turn my pockets inside out I can just about manage 50,000.’
‘Fifty thousand?’ Ettore widened his eyes and dismissed the idea with a nervous gesture. ‘You thought you were going to cross the Adriatic for as little as that? Who put that idea in your head? Was it that fool Gas?’
‘No, Gas has nothing to with it, I just thought. ’
He felt a bitter taste filling his mouth, like a childhood memory of being forced to drink that disgusting cod liver oil, followed by honey, of course, although the honey was never a match for the taste or, even worse, the smell. Silence roared in his head like the engine of an aeroplane. After a few minutes, Ettore spoke again.
‘Listen, there is one way of getting the price down.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Your bar has a spacious cellar, doesn’t it? Fine. Let’s say that the minute you get back from your trip, you rent it to me for six months. Wait, let me finish, I don’t mean you won’t be able to use it any more, I just need enough space for a few boxes, where no one’s going to be poking their noses in. And that’s enough. What do you think?’