‘One always worries so much about these creative people. A gal’s reach exceeding her grasp-or is it the other way around? Soaring dreams brought crashing down to earth, the inevitable brutal awakening to the harsh realities of life, and all that crap.’
Flavia made a moue he would have kissed, had it not been time to pull the trigger and have done.
‘For my people, this is normal,’ she said.
The waiter appeared with an unmarked litre bottle and two glasses, all frosty from the freezer. This was the home-made liqueur that was a speciality of La Carrozza, pure alcohol flavoured with a mixture of wild berries, lemon and spices, which was left on the table without appearing on the bill, a tradition of the house for regular customers. The upper two-thirds of the contents were a very light pinkish-purple, while the swamp of macerated berries occupied the lower section.
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ Flavia asked. ‘You never talk about your family.’
Rodolfo poured them both a drink, knocking his back to brace his nerves.
‘Just a father. He phoned me today and we talked a lot, for the first time in ages. Maybe the first time ever.’
Flavia smiled warmly.
‘That’s nice. What did you talk about?’
‘Failure. Professor Ugo expelled me from his course this morning. But I’ve decided that he unwittingly did me a favour. Failure’s the key to everything. That’s what these post-modern wankers don’t realise, or won’t accept. For them it’s all relative. There’s no such thing as failure, only alternative interpretations. It’s all a state of mind. I believed that bullshit for a while myself, but now my eyes have been opened. I’ve definitely failed. Shame about my academic career, shame about you, but that’s the way it is. I just have a couple of things to take care of-this was one, by the way-and then I’m off home.’
Flavia sipped her drink.
‘Ah, home,’ she said, lighting a cigarette.
‘Yes, but my home is a real place.’
Flavia drained the liqueur, immediately poured herself another and then lit a cigarette. She sat smoking in silence, looking all about the room at the other clients, the hefty padrone who made the pizzas, the two waiters who looked like that American silent film duo.
‘I had to go to the university library today to return some overdue books,’ Rodolfo said mechanically. ‘I took the opportunity of consulting the index in the latest edition of the Times atlas. No Ruritania.’
He paused, still not meeting her eyes, but there was no response.
‘So then I went to a computer terminal and did an online search. Apparently it’s the name of a fictional country invented by some minor English writer as the locale for a trashy swashbuckling romance. The one you were reading when we first met, in fact. What you called your “Italian textbook”. But the fact of the matter is that Ruritania doesn’t exist.’
Flavia lowered her face to the filthy tablecloth as tears welled up in her eyes.
‘It does exist! It does, it does, it does!’
Rodolfo smiled in a superior way and shrugged.
‘If you say so. Of course, some people might say you were mad, but I prefer to assume that you’ve just been lying to me all along. And I don’t care to be lied to.’
He placed some banknotes on the table.
‘Well, I must be going. I’ve got a biggish day tomorrow. That’ll cover the meal and a coffee, should you want one. Addio.’
17
The next morning, Aurelio Zen decided to raid the Amadori family residence. At least, this was how he jokingly put it to himself, over a coffee and the crispy, deep-fried batter wafers named sfrappole, in a bar on Via D’Azeglio almost opposite his hotel.
The breakfast buffet at the latter was an uninspiring concession to northern European businessmen visiting the city’s famous trade fairs, who expected to start the day with a selection of cheeses, cold meats and hard-boiled eggs, washed down with watery coffee or tea. By contrast, Il Gran Bar was almost aggressively monocultural. The espresso was first-rate, and came with a complimentary glass of sparkling mineral water. The pastries were handmade and fresh, the waiters impeccably attentive, the clientele well-dressed and quietly spoken, but what was most striking were the decorative plaques and flags mounted on the walls, each bearing the emblem of a divisional unit of the anti-terrorist DIGOS squad and other elite units of the Polizia di Stato. In the context of historically ‘red’ Bologna, the message was clear: this was an unashamedly right-wing establishment in the rich ‘black’ area south of Piazza Nettuno, located comfortingly close to the central police station and the Prefettura, the bastions of state rather than local power.
Zen was of course an agent of that power, and had amused himself with the idea of using a little of it for the first time in months. After his visit to the football stadium with Bruno Nanni, he had spent a dreary and dispiriting evening alone-the first of many, no doubt-followed by a restless night during which he had skimmed through the written report on the Curti case with which Salvatore Brunetti had fairly blatantly tried to fob him off. This had been made clear by the Bologna officer’s remarks when they parted. ‘I really must try and find time to look into the possibility of allocating you a suitable office, Dottor Zen. For the moment there just doesn’t seem to be anything available. I do apologise, but your transfer here was very sudden. All leave has of course been cancelled and the entire staff is working three shifts around the clock, so the situation’s a bit difficult. I hope you understand.’
Zen understood all right, and in normal circumstances would have been quite happy to stay well out of harm’s way and keep his head down until the initial flurry of fuss about Curti had calmed down. But the circumstances were no longer normal, as he had been reminded, vividly and disturbingly, the night before. While going through his personal belongings in search of the generous selection of pills that he was supposed to take a varying number of times every twenty-four hours, he had discovered an envelope that the consultant had handed him on his visit to Rome, saying that the contents related to Zen’s treatment and that he might find them ‘of interest’.
Feeling that they might prove all too interesting in his current state of mind, or rather mindlessness, Zen had promptly forgotten the envelope until it turned up in a side pocket of the briefcase where he had packed his supply of drugs. In hopes of dispelling the vague fears that continued to haunt him, he had opened it and started to read the enclosed document, a technical report concerning his operation. This had been a mistake. Within moments, he felt himself reduced once again to the status of a helpless object, a piece of worn-out and much abused machinery consigned to the mechanics for short-term running repairs.
‘…soft tissues were dissected away and the fascia was demonstrated on all sides of the necrotic tissue…a fine 11 blade was then used to incise the interface…and a site was selected distal to the area of involvement, the mesentery cleared adjacent to…which specimen was then presented to pathology…it was felt to be unwise to use mesh material for repair of the defect and…blood loss during the procedure was…the sponge count, needle count and instrument counts were correct and the patient tolerated the procedure quite well…’
The remainder of the night had passed miserably, and it was largely to try and regain a sense of initiative and competence that he formed the plan of visiting the Amadori family home. True, he had assured Salvatore Brunetti that he would be taking no active part in the Curti case, merely serving as an intermediary with the Ministry in Rome, but the detectives at the Questura were apparently not investigating the Vincenzo Amadori hypothesis-either because they didn’t know about it, or had dismissed it as stadium tittle-tattle-so Zen felt justified in undertaking a modest preliminary investigation himself. Besides, one way or the other he had to escape from his pleasant but very small hotel room, its high ceiling freakishly out of proportion with the other dimensions owing to the intrapolated bathroom. This errand at least gave him a destination and the shadow of a pretext.