He swung left on to the slightly wider road that curved along the bank of the river into which all this land drained, and which in turn drained into a minor tributary of the Po. Two cars passed him, one in each direction, but each travelling at such a speed that Gabriele could have figured to the occupants as no more than a hazardous blur to be avoided if possible. The remaining locals all drove like maniacs, as though taking revenge for the years when their forebears had had to trudge endless distances each day of their lives, under a blazing sun or pouring rain, to or from their work in the fields.
The road eventually curved around to join the main strada statale at the triple-arched medieval bridge leading up into the small town perched on its ledge safely above the flood level of the plains all around. Gabriele dismounted, hid the bicycle away in a grove of poplars near the junction and then continued on foot.
Within the walls, all was as quiet as a tomb. He turned left, off the main road, and then right into a street of low, two- storey brick terraces. The town had a name, but on a deeper level it was generic; one of a thousand or more almost indistinguishable communities dotted across the Po valley and delta, low and modest in appearance, built of plastered brick, and originally serving as a market and shopping centre for the surrounding area. Since the flight to the cities of the sixties and seventies, such places had a sad air of living in enforced retirement. This suited Gabriele’s plans perfectly. Three-quarters of the population had left, and those who remained stayed within doors of an evening and went to bed early. There was no one about on the street, and his rubber-soled sports shoes made no sound as he walked towards the central piazza. Apart from the lack of people about, everything was as he remembered it from forty years earlier. More parked cars, of course, and the odd bit of repainting or remodelling here and there, but basically the same old stale loaf of a town.
The shop was still there too, although with a new sign and plate-glass window, and presided over not by Ubaldo and Eugenia, but by a menopausal woman whom Gabriele finally recognized with a shock as their daughter Pinuccia, about whom he used to have wet dreams. He had put on his dark glasses before entering the shop and he now put on his thickest Milanese accent and asked if they sold batteries, in a tone suggesting that hicks like them probably wouldn’t know what batteries were, never mind have any.
While Pinuccia was searching through a mass of cardboard boxes stacked on a shelf in a dim recess of the shop, Gabriele’s eye was caught by a large black skeleton printed on transparent plastic which was hanging from a hook behind the counter. A witch with a pointed hat and broomstick dangled on the other side of the cash register. Of course, Halloween was approaching. When he had last been interested in such things, the importation of exotic items such as this had not yet been thought of. The church would have banned it, for that matter, or at least fulminated against it. All Saints’ Day was a religious festival, and the superstitious legends and old wives’ tales surrounding the preceding evening something to be ridiculed or ignored.
Pinuccia returned with a selection of batteries, of which Gabriele purchased six. He paid and left, removing his dark glasses so that he could see his way. The almost full moon peeked over the roofs of the houses on the main road. He had timed his journey perfectly.
The light of the town’s one public telephone box gleamed dully from the far side of the pompous rinascimentale piazza. It would probably be broken, or of the almost obsolete variety that only took tokens. Maintaining public phones cost the company a lot of money, and even the beggars had mobiles these days. So did janitors, on the other hand.
The interior of the box was a bit of a mess — cigarette butts on the floor, a heavily used copy of Il Giornale replacing the missing phone book, a tang of urine in the air — but the machine accepted his phone card and connected him to Fulvio’s mobile. Gabriele was well aware that making this call also involved an element of risk, but he had assessed it at length over several days and had decided that it was acceptable.
‘ Pronto! ’
As always, Fulvio answered the phone as if making a declaration of war.
‘It’s Passarini.’
‘ Dottore! How have you been? Where have you been?’
‘I’m fine. I’m just calling to find out whether anyone has been trying get in touch with me. Do you understand?’
Although unprepossessing in manner, the janitor was remarkably quick on the uptake.
‘ Certo, certo! ’
‘Well?’
‘Actually there has been someone. Was, I should say. I haven’t seen him for a few days.’
‘What happened?’
‘He came to my cubicle in the front hall and asked if I was responsible for the building. I said that I was, and he asked if that included the…’
He was however, Gabriele remembered, long-winded.
‘Yes, yes. And the upshot?’
‘He asked about the bookshop, your shop. I said I didn’t know, I understood that there had been a death in the family and that you’d decided to take some time off. He asked how long, I said I had no idea. He said he had a very important business matter to discuss with you — huge amount of money at stake, something that couldn’t wait, all the rest of it. But he wouldn’t leave a name or number. I simply told him I had no idea where you were, which is true apart from anything else, and I was sorry but I couldn’t help. Basically just stone-walled him out of there, but he didn’t want to go, I can tell you that.’
Gabriele was silent for so long that the janitor thought they’d been cut off and started going ‘ Pronto? Pronto? ’
‘I’m still here, Fulvio. Anything else?’
‘Just the usual post and casual callers. That professor from the university dropped by while I was taking out the garbage. He wanted to know if the plates he’d ordered had arrived. From some atlas.’
Jansson’s Atlas Novus, thought Gabriele. A few loose sheets from one of the Latin editions, possibly 1647. He had acquired them very reasonably in Leipzig, but now he had a buyer in the United States interested, so the professor would have to wait and see what the market price turned out to be.
‘That man who came asking after me. What did he look like?’
‘Thick-set, average height, brown eyes set close together, bald, prominent ears. Oh, and a broken nose. Really splayed out, like a boxer or rugby player. What more can I say? He had a sense of power about him, as if he was someone, or thought he was. That’s about it.’
‘Very good, Fulvio. Thanks for your help.’
‘But when will you be back, dottore?’
‘I can’t really say. It may be some time. Anyway, just keep on as you have been doing and I’ll make it up to you as soon as I return.’
He hung up, retrieved his phone card and then, as a final thought, rolled up the copy of Il Giornale and stuck it in his coat pocket. It might be mildly interesting to find out what had been going on in the world since he had left it.
He was about to start back to his bicycle when an idea struck him. He returned to the shop and asked Pinuccia if she had any fireworks. It was only when she looked at him in a way suggesting a certain confused recognition that he realized that he had forgotten to put his stage shades back on.
‘Fireworks?’ she said.
‘ Certo,’ he replied in his pushy Milanese accent. ‘For Halloween. Firecrackers. Bangers. Light blue touch-paper and retire immediately. Boom. Big thrill for the kiddies. You understand?’
For a moment he was worried that she’d understood only too well, but in the end the dullness in her eyes subdued that momentary spark of intelligent interest and they concluded the transaction without further incident. Still, the spark had been there, if only for a second, he thought as he walked back down the street leading to the bridge.