They were about halfway there when the light went out. The intolerable memory of the shrieks and pleas and curses surged up in Gabriele’s mind. ‘You’d scream like that if it was happening to you,’ he’d thought at the time. That had been the worst aspect of it, the way they had reduced Leonardo — ‘the young priest’, Nestore had jokingly dubbed him, because of his seeming lack of interest in women — to the lowest common denominator of the human animal. People could be destroyed even before they were killed, and he had been an accomplice to such a destruction, as well as to the killing itself. There had never been any hiding from that horror, only forgetting. But forgetting was no longer an option, for the others involved would not forget.
‘ Dottore? ’
The echoes lent Fulvio’s voice an unwonted authority, but the only reply was a wheezing respiration which reminded the janitor of the bellows they’d used to blast the furnace back when he’d started as an apprentice at the foundry. He groped around in his pocket, found his cigarette lighter and clicked a flame.
‘ Dottore? ’
With an effort, Gabriele got the attack under control. The screams faded, the grisly details vanished, the naked rock walls became dressed stone again.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
‘The steps are just here. Follow me.’
They climbed the stairs and walked along a short passage. After some fumbling with his lighter and keys at the dead end, Fulvio unlocked yet another door, and promptly fell over.
‘ Porca Madonna! ’
The lighter went out and the interior behind the door was dark, but Gabriele advanced confidently, getting out his keys. He knew where he was now. Stepping over the recumbent janitor, as well as the cleaning mop and bucket he had tripped over, he unlocked and opened the inner door. The lattice steel grill protecting the shop windows gave just enough light to see by. Behind him, Fulvio had got to his feet and was groping for the switch inside the door. Gabriele’s hand grasped his arm.
‘No!’
The janitor gazed at him with a look of astonishment which had nothing to do with the absence of eyebrows.
‘No lights?’ he breathed.
Gabriele shook his head.
‘But why? What’s all this about, anyway?’
Bruised and humiliated by his fall, Fulvio sounded angry now.
‘You had your keys all along! So why all this fooling about? What’s going on?’
Gabriele had stepped forward into the centre of the room and stood looking round at the serried spines. Their discreet but sumptuous tones seemed to fill the air like gentle organ music.
Fingers yanked at his sleeve.
‘I demand an explanation, dottore!’
Gabriele placed one forefinger on his closed lips.
‘All in good time, Fulvio.’
He felt calm and strong and safe now. He knew each volume by heart, could name the title, author, edition, date and publisher from where he stood. If only he could just stay here, with a nice apartment upstairs so that he could get some sleep and have a shower and change once in a while, but still be able to come down and commune with his books at any time of the day or night!
He went over to the safe located behind the desk where he normally presided over the ceremonies of the shop. The janitor shuffled about awkwardly, mumbling something under his breath. Gabriele spun the dial the requisite number of times and eased the heavy door open. Turning his back on Fulvio, he rapidly pocketed a bundle of banknotes.
‘This is most irregular,’ the janitor repeated in an aggrieved tone. ‘With all due respect, dottore, you owe me an explanation.’
Gabriele relocked the safe, then perched over his desk and wrote rapidly on a card. With a last look round, he stood up and walked back to Fulvio. He extracted two of the notes from the bundle in his pocket and held them out.
‘Here’s your explanation,’ he said. ‘I may be away for some time. When I get back, I’ll pay you the same again for each week I’ve been gone. In return, I want you to keep a sharp eye on the shop, and particularly on anyone who comes round asking after me. Keep a note of dates, descriptions and names, if they give any, and above all of what they say. Finally, please fasten this to the window at the front of the shop once I’ve left.’
He handed the janitor the card he had written. Under the name and logo of the bookshop was printed Chiuso per Lutto. Fulvio looked at him with a new understanding, sympathy and respect.
‘You’re in mourning, dottore? A death in the family?’
Gabriele very faintly smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s what it amounts to.’
II
‘I suppose you’ve heard about that terrible thing.’
Riccardo was standing just inside the kitchen, the piled plates in his hand, looking about him sheepishly as he always did.
‘What thing?’ Claudia asked, relieving him of his burden.
He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he turned back and closed the door to the living room. That was something he had never done before. For a moment she wondered…
But that was silly. It was only Ricco, and besides those days were over. She set the plates down on the counter and looked at him with a touch of asperity. These sociable afternoons with the Zuccottis had a fixed, reassuring rhythm that nothing ever disturbed. The fall of the cards was the only invariable permitted, and even there she and Danilo virtually always won.
‘What are you talking about?’
The question seemed to confuse poor Riccardo still further. And when the answer came, it was in a disjointed stutter, like a terrified declaration of love.
‘That body. Corpse, I mean. In the mountains… What a terrible business.’
He rubbed his hands together helplessly.
‘It had been there thirty years, they say.’
Claudia wrinkled her nose in disgust.
‘There was something about it on the news. Yes, of course, terrible. So why bring it up?’
Riccardo looked at the floor, at the sink, then out of the window at the roofs of Verona, anywhere but at her. It looked almost as if he was going to cry, and the answer to her heartless question was suddenly obvious. He must of course have known the victim, or at least the family. Lightly burdened by remorse, she stepped over and took his hand, rubbing it gently.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
It was at this moment that the door opened and Raffaela walked in.
‘Oh!’
She set down the coffee pot she had carried in as a pretext. This too was new. When they met at the Zuccottis’ home, Raffaela served and Danilo helped her clear up. Here at Claudia’s, she and Riccardo did the work. As at cards, they never cut for partners.
‘I do hope I’m not interrupting anything!’ Raffaela went on archly.
‘Of course not!’ her husband snapped, his fit of nervous hesitancy quite dispelled. ‘I was simply…’
He broke off.
‘Ricco was just telling me about that terrible business of the climber they found dead in that cave near Cortina. I didn’t know you two were personally concerned. I’m so sorry.’
Raffaela Zuccotti gave her a look which was clearly intended to convey that if she, Claudia, thought for a moment that she, Raffaela, was going to fall for such a transparently flimsy excuse as that, then she had another think coming. She turned to her husband and very forcefully said nothing.
‘I thought it was someone Claudia might have known,’ Riccardo said feebly.
‘A dead climber?’ his wife queried acidly.
‘No one knows who he was. He was found by some Austrian climbers. Well, they were cavers, actually.’
Thirty years of teaching at a liceo classico had left Raffaela well prepared for such badinage as this.
‘Whether their explorations concerned peaks or grottoes,’ she said with a pointed glance at Claudia’s ample figure, ‘I fail to see why any of this is of such personal concern to either of you.’