Friday, 11.15-14.20




While the archives section presented a slightly more
animated appearance during office hours than on Zen's
previous visit, it could by no means have been described
as a hive of activity. True, there were now about a dozen
clerks on duty, but this manning level had evidently been
dictated by some notional bureaucratic quota rather than
the actual demands of the job, which wa:i being carried on
almost entirely by one man. He had a neurotically intense
expression, compulsive, jerky movements, arid the guilty
air of someone concealing a shameful secret.
Unlike the others, he couldn't just sit back and read the
paper or chat all morning. If there was work to be done, he
just couldn't help doing it. It was this that made him a
figure of fun in his colleagues' eyes. They watched him
scurry about, collecting and dispatching the files which
had been ordered, sorting and reshelving those which had
been returned, cataloguir.g and indexing new material,
typing replies to demands and queries. Their looks were
derisory, openly contemptuous. They despised him for his
weakness, as he did himself for that matter. Poor fellow!
What could you do with people like that? Still, he had his
uses.
As on his previous visit, Zen asked to consult the file on
the Vasco Spadola case. While it was being fetched, he
called to the clerk who had been on duty the last time be
had been there.
The man looked up from the crossword puzzle he was
completing.
'You want to speak to me?' he demanded, with the
incredulous tone of a surgeon interrupted while perform-
ing an open-heart operation.
Zen shook his head. 'You want to speak to me. At least,
so I've been told. Something about a video tape.'
An anticipatory smile dawned on the clerk's lips.
'Ah, so it was you, was it? Yes, I remember now!'
The other clerks had all fallen silent and were watching
with curiosity. Their colleague strode languidly over to the
counter where Zen was standing.
'Yes, I'm afraid there's been a slight problem with that
tape, dottore.'
'Really?'
'Yes, really.'
'And what might it be?'
'Well it might be almost anything,' the clerk returned
wittily. 'But what it is, quite simply, is that the tape you
gave us back is not the same tape that you took out.'
'What do you mean, not the same?'
'I mean it's not the same. It's blank. There's nothing on
it.'
'But... but...' Zen stammered.
'Also, the tapes we use here are specially made up for us
and are not available commercially, whereas what you
handed in is an ordinary BASF ferrous oxide cassette
obtainable at any dealer.'
'But that's absurd! You must have muddled them up
somehow.'
At that moment, the other clerk interrupted to hand Zen
the file he had requested. But his colleague had no inten-
tion of letting Zen get away with his clumsy attempt to
shift the blame for what had happened.
'No, dottore! That's not the problem. The problem is
that the tape you brought back is a blank. Raw plastic.'
~34
Zen fiddled nervously with the Spadola file.
'What exactly are you accusing me of?' he blustered.
The clerk gestured loftily.
'I'm not accusing anyone of anything, dottore. Natur-
ally, everyone knows how easy it is to push the wrong
button on one of those machines and wipe out the pre-
vious recording..'
'I'm sure I didn't do that.'
'I know you didn't,' the clerk replied with a steely smile
that revealed the trap Zen had almost fallen into. 'Our
tapes are all copy-protected, so that's impossible. Besides,
as I said, the brand was different. So a substitution must
have taken place. The question is, where is the original?'
There was a crash as the Spadola file fell to the floor,
spilling documents everywhere. As Zen bent down to
pick them up, the assembled clerks signalled their col-
league's triumph with a round of laughter.
Zen straightened up, holding a video cassette.
'46g29 BUR 43$/K/95,' he read from the label. 'Isn't that
the one you've been making so much fuss about?'
'Where did that come from?' the clerk demanded.
'It was inside the file.'
Without another word, he went back to picking up the
scattered documents. The clerk snatched the tape and
bustled off, muttering angrily about checking its auth-
enticity.
Zen wasn't worried about that, having played it
through the night before, after he and Gilberto spent the
best part of an hour rewinding the damn thing into the
cassette by hand. His mother had gone to bed by then,
still blissfully ignorant that a stranger had entered the
apartment while she had been watching television.
Zen himself was still in shock from what had hap-
pened, and it was left to Gilberto to bring up the question
of what was to become of his mother during his absence
in Sardinia, now that their home was demonstrably
under threat. In the end, Gilberto insisted that she stay
with him and his wife until Zen returned.
'Quite impossible!' Zen had replied. His mother hadn't
left the apartment for years. She would be lost without the
familiar surroundings that replicated the family home in
Venice. Anyway, she was practically senile much of the
time. It was very difficult even for him to communicate
with her or understand what she wanted, and it didn't
help that she often forgot that her Venetian dialect was
incomprehensible to other people. She could be demand-
ing, irrational, bad-tempered and devious. Rosella Nieddu
already had her hands full looking after her own family. It
would be an intolerable imposition for her to have to take
on a moody old woman, contemptuous and distrustful of
strangers, someone who in her heart of hearts believed
that the civilized world ended at Mestre.
But Gilberto had brushed these objections aside.
'So what are you going to do with her, Aurelio? Because
she can't stay here.'
Zen had no answer to that.
And so it came about that early that morning an
ambulance rolled up to the front door of Zen's house. The
attendants brought a mobile bed up to the apartment,
placed Zen's mother on it and took her downstairs in the
lift before sweeping off, siren whooping and lights flash-
ing, to the General Hospital. Thirty seconds later, siren
stilled and flasher turned off, the ambulance quietly emer-
ged on the other side of the hospital complex and drove to
the modern apartment block where the Nieddus lived.
Throughout her ordeal the old lady had hardly spoken a
word, though her eyes and the way she clutched her son's
hand showed clearly how shocked she was. Zen had
explained that there was something wrong with their
apartment, something connected with the noises she had
heard, and that it was necessary for them both to move out
for a few days while it was put right. It made no difference
what he said. His mother sat rigidly as the ambulancemen
wheeled her into the neat and tidy bedroom which Rosella
Nieddu had prepared for her, having shooed out the two
youngest children to join their elder siblings next door.
gen thanked Rosella with a warmth that elicited a hug and
a kiss he found oddly disturbing. Gilberto's wife was a
very attractive woman, and the contact had made Zen
realize that he had neglected that side of his life for too
long.
The archives clerks had gone back to their desks, now
that the fun was over. Zen gathered up the papers relating
go the Spadola case and started to put them into some sort
of order while he awaited confirmation that the video tape
he had produced from his pocket after dropping the file
was indeed the genuine article.
Suddenly his hands ceased their mechanical activity.
Zen scanned the smucigy carbon-copied document he was
holding, looking for the name which had leapt off the page
at him.
 XXX informed that Spadola was in hiding at a farmhouse
near the village of Melzo. At 04.00 hours on 16 July
personnel of the Squadra Mobile under the direction of
Ispettor Aurelio Zen entered the house and arrested
Spadola. An extensive search of the premises revealed
various items of material evidence (see Appendix A), in
particular a knife which proved to be marked with traces
of blood consistent with that of the victim. Spadola
continued to deny all involvement in the affair, even
after the damning nature of the evidence had been
explained to him. At the judicial confrontation with Par-
rucci, the accused uttered violent threats against the
witness.
Once again, Zen felt the superstitious chill that had
come over him that night after viewing the Burolo video.
Parrucci! The informer whose gruesome death had thrown
Fausto Arcuti into a state of mortal terror! It seemed quite
uncanny that the same man should figure again in the file
which Zen had asked to see two days before as part of his
stratagem for substituting the blank video tape.
But he had no more time to consider the matter, for at
that moment the clerk reappeared, video cassette in hand.
'It's the right one,' he confirmed grudgingly. 'So where
did the other come from, I'd like to know?'
Zen shrugged.
'I'd say that's pretty obvious. When I brought the tape
back the other day, you got it muddled up with the file I
asked to consult at the same time. When you couldn't find
it you started to panic, because you knew that it had been
handed back and that you would be responsible. So you
substituted a blank tape, hoping that no one would notice.
Unfortunately, one of my colleagues had asked to see the
tape, and he immediately discovered that...'
'That's a lie!' the man shouted.
Snatching the Spadola file from Zen, he abruptly went
on to the attack.
'Look at this mess you've made! It would be no wonder
if things sometimes did get confused around here with
people like you wandering in and upsetting everything.
Leave it, leave it! You're just making a worse muddle.
These documents must be filed in chronological order.
Look, this judicial review shouldn't be here. It must come
at the end.'
'Let me see that!'
The form was stiff and heavy, imitation parchment. The
text, set in antique type and printed in the blackest of inks,
was as dense and lapidary as Latin, clogged with odd
abbreviations and foreshortenings, totally impenetrable.
But there was no need to read it to understand the import
of the document. It was enough to scan the brief phrases
inserted by hand in the spaces left blank by the printer. 29
April 1964... Milan... Spadola, Vasco Emesto... culp-
able homicide ... life imprisonment ... investigating
magistrate Giulio Bertolini...'
It was enough to scan the spaces, read the messages,
make the connections. That was enough, thought Zen. But
he had failed to do it, and now it might be too late.
Back at his desk in the Criminalpol offices, which were
deserted that morning, Zen phoned the Ministry of Justice
and inquired about the penal status of Vasco Ernesto
Spadola, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in
Milan on zg April xg64. A remote and disembodied voice
announced that he would be rung back with the infor-
mation in due course.
Zen lit a cigarette and wandered over to the window,
looking down at the forecourt of the Ministry with its
pines and shrubbery which flanked the sweep of steps
leading down to the huge shallow bath of the fountain in
Piazza del Viminale. Although the implications of the
facts he had just stumbled on were anything but
cheering, he felt relieved to find that there was at least a
rational explanation for the things that had been going
on. It was not just an uncanny coincidence that Zen had
happened to ask for the Spadola file the day that he had
read about the killing of Judge Bertolini. At some level
beneath his conscious thoughts he must have recalled the
one occasion on which his and the murdered judge's
paths had crossed. As for Parrucci, the reason why the
name had meant nothing to Zen was that he knew the
informer only by his codename, 'the nightingale'. When
Parrucci agreed to testify against Spadola, his name had
been revealed, but by that time Zen's involvement with
the case was at an end.
A thin Roman haze softened the November sunlight,
giving it an almost summery languor. At a window on the
other side of the piazza a woman was hanging out bedding
to air on the balcony. A three-wheeled Ape van was
unloading cases of mineral water outside the bar below,
while on the steps of the Ministry itself three chauffeurs
were having an animated discussion involving sharp deci-
sive stabs of the index finger, exaggerated shrugs and
waves of dismissal, cupped palms pleading for sanity and
attention-claiming grabs at each other's sleeves. Zen only
gradually became aware of an interference with these
sharply etched scenes, a movement seemingly on the
other side of the glass, where the ghostly figure of Tania
Biacis was shimmering towards him in mid-air.
'I've been looking for you all morning.'
He turned to face the original of the reflection. She was
looking at him with a slightly playful air, as though she
knew that he would be wondering what she meant. But
Zen had no heart for such tricks.
'I was down in Archives, sorting out that video tape
business. Where is everyone, anyway?'
A distant pl ione began to ring.
'Don't go!' Zen called as he hurried back to his desk.
He snatched up the phone.
'Yes?'
'Good morning, dottore,' a voice whispered confiden-
tially. It sounded like some tiny creature curled up in the
receiver itself. 'Just calling to remind you of our lunch
appointment. I hope you can still make it.'
'Lunch? Who is this?'
There was long silence.
'We talked last night,' the voice remarked pointedly.
Zen finally remembered his arrangement with Fausto
Arcuti.
'Oh, right! Good. Fine. Thanks. I'll be there.'
He put the receiver down and turned. Tania Biacis was
standing close behind him and his movement brought
them into contact for a moment. Zen's arm skimmed her
breast, their hands jangled briefly together like bells.
'Oh, there you are,' he cried. 'Where's everyone gone
to?'
It was as though he regretted being alone with her!
'They're at a briefing. The chief wants to see you.'
'Immediately?'
'When else?'
He frowned. The Ministry of Justice might phone back
at any minute, and as it was Friday the staff would go off
duty for the weekend in half-an-hour. He had to have that
information.
'Would you do me a favour?' he asked.
The words were exactly the ones she had used to him
two days earlier. It was clear from her expression that she
remembered.
'Of course,' she replied, with a faint smile that grew
wider, as he responded, 'You don't know what it is yet.'
'You decided before I told you what I wantecl,' she
pointed out.
'But I had reasons which you may not have.'
Tania sighed.
'I don't know what you must think of me,' she said
despondently.
'Don't you? Don't you really?'
They looked at each other in silence for some time.
'So what is it you want?' she asked eventually.
Zen looked at her in some embarrassment. Now that his
request had become the subject of so much flirtatious
persiflage, it would be ridiculous to admit that he had only
wanted her to field a phone call for him.
'I can't tell you here,' he said. 'It's a bit complicated, and
well, there're various reasons. Look, I don't suppose
you could have lunch with me?'
It was a delaying tactic. He was counting on her to
refuse.
'But you've already got a lunch engagement,' she
objected.
It took him a little while to understand.
'Oh, the phone call! No, that's ... that's for another
day.'
Tania inspected her fingernails for a moment. Then she
reached out and lightly, deliberately, scratched the back of
his hand. The skin turned white and then red, as though
burned.
'I'd have to be home by three,' she told him. She
sounded like an adolescent arranging a date.
Zen was aboat to reply when 'he phone rang again.
'Ministry of Justice, Records Section, calling with refer-
ence to your inquiry in re Spadola, Vasco Ernesto.'
'Yes?'
'The subject was released from Asinara prison on y
October of this year.'
Zen's response was a silence so profound that even the
disembodied voice unbent sufficiently to add, 'Hello?
Anyone there?'
'Thank you. That's all.'
He hung up and turned back to Tania Biacis.
'Shall we meet downstairs then?' he suggested casually,
as though they'd been lunching together for years.
She nodded. 'Fine. Now p1ease go and see what Moscati
wants before he takes it out on me.'
Lorenzo Moscati, head of Criminalpol, was a short stout
man with smooth, rounded features which looked as
though they were being flattened out by an invisible
stocking-mask.
'Eh, finally!' he exclaimed when Zen appeared. 'I've
been able to round up everyone except you. Where did
you get to? Never mind, no point in you attending the
briefing anyway. All about security for the Camorra trial in
Naples next week. But that won't concern you, because
you're off to Sardinia, you lucky dog! That report you did
on the Burolo case was well received, very well received
indeed. Now we want you to go and put flesh on the
bones, as it were. You leave on Monday. See Ciliani for
details of flights and so on.'
Zen nodded.
'While I'm here, there's something else I'd like to dis-
cuss,' he said.
Moscati consulted his watch. 'Is it urgent?'
'You could say that. I think someone's trying to kill
me.'
Moscati glanced at his subordinate to check that he'd
heard right, then again to see if Zen was joking.
'What makes you think that?'
Zen paused, wondering where to begin.
'Strange things have been happening to me recently.
Someone's picked the lock to my apartment and broken in
while I'm not there. But instead of taking anything, they
leave things instead.'
'What sort of things?'
'First an envelope full of shotgun pellets. Then some-
thing which had been stolen from me at the bus-stop a
couple of days earlier.'
'What'?'
Zen hesitated. He obviously couldn't tell Moscati about
the theft of the Ministry's video.
'A book I was carrying in my pocket. I assumed some
thief thought it was my wallet. But last night I got home to
find my apartment covered in paper. The book had been
torn apart page by page and scattered all over the floor.'
'Sounds like some prankster with a twisted sense of
humour,' Moscati remarked dismissively. 'I wouldn't...'
'That's what I thought, at first.' He didn't mention that
his principal suspect had been Vincenzo Fabri. 'Then I
remembered that the widow of the judge who was shot
said that exactly the same things had happened to her
husband just before he was murdered. Meanwhile some-
one has been watching my apartment from a stolen Alfa
Romeo recently, and yesterday I was followed half-way
across the city. Nevertheless, it didn't seem to add up to
anything until I heard that an informer named Parrucci
had been found roasted to death near Viterbo. Parrucci
was the key witness in a murder investigation case I
handled twenty years ago, when I was working in Milan.
The investigating magistrate in that case was Giulio
Bertolini.'
All trace of impatience had vanished from Moscati's
manner. He was following Zen's words avidly.
'A gangster named Vasco Spadola was convicted of the
murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was
released from prison about a month ago. Since then both
the judje who prepared the case and the man who gave
evidence against Spadola have been killed. It doesn't
seem too far-fetched to conclude that the police officer
who conducted the investigation is next on his list.'
A strange light burned in Lorenzo Moscati's eyes.
'So it's not political, after all!'
'The killing of Bertolini? No, it was straight revenge, a
personal vendetta. You see, the evidence against Spadola
was faked and Parrucci's testimony paid for by the vic-
tim's family. Presumably Bertolini didn't know that,
but...'
'Do you realize what this means?' Moscati enthused.
'The Politicals have been holding up this Bertolini affair
as proof that terrorism isn't finished after all and so they
still need big budgets and lots of manpower. If we can
show that it's not political at all they'll never live it down!
That bastard Cataneo won't dare show his face in public
for a month!'
Zen nodded wearily as he understood the reasons for
his superior's sudden interest in the affair.
'Meanwhile my life is in danger,' he reminded him.
'Two men have been killed and I'm number three. I want
protection.'
Moscati grasped Zen's right arm just above the elbow,
as though giving him a transfusion of courage and con-
fidence.
'Don't worry, you'll get it! The very best. A crack squad
has been set up to handle just this sort of situation. AII
hand-picked men, weapons experts, highly skilled, using
the very finest and most modern equipment. With them
looking after you, you'll be as safe as the President of the
Republic himself.'
Zen raised his eyebrows. This sounded too good to be
true.
'When will this become effective?'
Moscati held up his hands in a plea for patience and
understanding.
'Naturally there are a lot of calls on their time at the
moment. In the wake of the Bertolini killing, everyone's a
bit anxious. It'll be a question of reviewing the situation on
an on-going basis, assessing the threat at it develops and
then allocating the available resources accordingly.'
Zen nodded. It had been too good to be true.
'But in the meantime you'll put a man outside my
house?'
Moscati gestured regretfully. 'It's out of my hands, Zen.
Now this new squad exists, all applications for protection
have to be routed through them. It's so they can draw up a
map of potential threats at any given time, then put it on
the computer and see if any overall patterns emerge. Or so
they claim. If you ask me, they're just protectirig their
territory. Either way, my hands are tied, unfortunately. If I
start allocating men to protection duties they'll cry foul
and we'll never hear the end of it.'
Zen nodded and turned to leave. From a bureaucratic
point of view, the logic of Moscati's position was flawless.
He knew only too well that it would be a sheer waste of
time to point out any discrepancy between that logic and
common sense.
As the working day for state employees came to an end,
doors could be heard opening all over the Ministry. The
corridors began to hum with voices which, amplified by
the resonant acoustic, rapidly became a babble, a tumult
which prefigured the crowds surging invisibly towards the
entrance hall where Zen stood waiting. Within a minute
they were everywhere. The enormous staircase was barely
able to contain the human throng eager to get home, have
lunch and relax, or else hasten to their clandestine after-
noon jobs in the booming black economy, 'the Italy that
works', as Fausto Arcuti had joked.
Ever since Tania Biacis had accepted his invitation to
lunch, Zen had been racking his brains over the choice of
restaurant. Given her wide and sophisticated experience
of eating out in Rome, this was not something to be taken
lightly. The only places he knew personally these days
were those close to the Ministry and therefore regularly
patronized by its staff, and it would clearly be unwise to go
there. Quite apart from the risk of compromising Tania,
Zen didn't want to have to deal with winks,. nudges or
loaded questions from his colleagues. Again, it was impor-
tant to get the class of establishment right. Nothing cheap
or seedy, of course, but neither anything so grand or
pretentious that it might make her feel that he was trying
the crude old 'I'm spending a lot of money on you so you'll
have to have to come across' approach. Finally, there were
the practicalities to consider. If Tania had to be home by
three, it had to be somewhere in the centre, where by this
time most of the better restaurants might well be full.
Every possibility that occurred to Zen failed one of these
tests. He was still at a loss when Tania appeared.
'So, where are we going?' she demanded.
She sounded tense and snappy, as though she was
already regretting having agreed to come. Zen panicked.
He should never have confused his fantasies with reality
like this. The situation was all wrong. It would end in
disaster and humiliation.
'There's a place in Piazza Navona,' he found himself
saying as he led the way out into the pale sunlight. '1t's
crowded with tourists in summer, but at this time of
year...'
He didn't add that the last time he was there had been
with Ellen.
Outside the Ministry Zen hailed a taxi. The brief journey
did nothing to alleviate his fears that a major fiasco was in
the offing. He and Tania sat as far apart as possible,
exchanging brief banalities like a married couple after a
I'OW.
The taxi dropped them by the small fountain at the
south end of the piazza. As they walked out into its superb
amplitude, two kids sped past on a moped, one standing
on the pillion grasping the driver's shoulders. The noise
scattered a fiock of pigeons which rose like a single being
and went winging around the obelisk rising above the
central fountain, while a second flock of shadows mim-
icked its progress across the grey stones below. The
breeze caught the water spurting out of cleavages in the
fountain, winnowing it out in an aerosol of fine drops
where a fragmentary rainbow briefly shimmered. Just for
a moment Zen thought that everything was going to be
all right after all. Then he caught sight of the restaurant,
shuttered and bolted, the chairs and tables piled high,
and knew that he'd been right the first time. 'Chiuso per
turno' read a sign in the window.
Tania Biacis looked at her watch. 'It's getting late.'
Zen nodded. 'Perhaps we'd better leave it till another
hme.'
He knew that there would be no other time.
Tania stared intently at the faqade of the palazzo
opposite, as though trying to decipher a message written
in the whorls and curlicues of stone.
'Your place isn't very far away, is it? We could pick up
something from a rosticceria and take it back there, if you
don't mind that is. The food's not that important. What
we really want to do is talk, isn't it?'
She made it sound so natural and sensible that Zen was
almost unsurprised.
'Well, if that's... all right.'
'All right?'
'I mean, it's all right with me.'
'With me, too. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested
it.'
'Then it's. all right.'
'It looks like it,' she said with a slightly ironic smile.
'How do you know where I live?' Zen asked, as they
walked up the piazza.
'I looked you up in the phone book. I thought you'd be
the only Zen, but there are about a dozen of you in Rome.
Are the others relatives?'
Zen shook his head absently. He was wondering
whether Vasco Spadola had employed the same simple
method to track him down.
In a rosticceria just north of the piazza they bought a
double portion of the only main dish left, a rabbit stew, and
two of the egg-shaped rice croquettes called 'telephone
wires', because when you pull them apart the ball of melted
mozzarella in the middle separates into long curving
strands. Then they walked on, out of the clutches of the old
city and across the river. Zen paused to draw Tania's
attention to the view downstream towards the island, the
serried plane trees lining the stone-faced embankment, the
river below as smooth and still as a darker vein in polished
marble. While she was looking, he looked over his shoulder
again. This time there was no doubt.
They moved on, towards the wildly exuberant fagade
which might have been a grand opera house or the palace of
a mad king, but was in fact the law courts. Here they paused
until the traffic lights brought the cars to a reluctant,
grudging halt, then crossed the Lungotevere and turned
right down the side of the law courts.
'Wait a minute,' Zen told Tania as they passed the corner.
A few moments later a young man in a denim suit
trimmed with a sheepskin collar appeared, striding quickly
along. Zen stepped in front of him, flourishing his identity
card.
'Police! Your papers!'
The man gawked at him open-mouthed.
'I haven't done anything!'
'I didn't say you had.'
The man took out his wallet and produced a battered
identity card in the name of Roberto Augusto Dentice. In
the photograph he looked younger, timid and studious.
Zen plucked the wallet out of his hand.
'You've got no right to do that!' the man protested.
Ignoring him, Zen riffled through the compartments of
the wallet, inspecting papers and photographs. Among
fhem was a permit issued by the Rome Questura,
authorizing Roberto Augusto Dentice to practise as a
private detective within the limits of the Province of Rome.
'All right, what's going on?' Zen demanded.
'What do you mean?'
'Someone's hired you to follow me. Who and why?'
'I don't know what you're talking about. I was just going
for a walk.'
'And I suppose you were just going for a walk yester-
day. when you followed me all the way from that restaur-
ant to the Palatine? You really like walking, don't you?
You should join the Club Alpino.'
On the main road behind them, a chorus of horns
sounded out like the siren of a great ocean liner.
'What are you talking about?' the man said. 'I was at
home all day yesterday.'
Zen's instinct was to arrest Dentice on some pretext and
shut him up in a room with one of the heavier-handed
officials, but he no longer worked at the Questura where
such facilities were available, and besides, Tania was
waiting.
'All right,' he said in a voice laden with quiet menace.
'Let me explain what I'm talking about. This job you're
doing, whatever it may be, ends here. If I so much as catch
sight of you again, even casually, on a bus or in a bar,
anywhere at all, then this permit of yours will be with-
drawn and I'll make damn sure that you never get
another. Do we understand each other?'
These tactics proved unexpectedly successful. Faced
with violence and menaces the man might have remained
defiant, but at the threat of unemployment his resistance
suddenly collapsed.
'No one told me you were a cop!' he complained.
'What did they tell you?'
'Just to follow you after work.'
'How did you report?'
'He phoned me in the evening. And he paid cash. I
don't know who he is, honest to God!'
Zen handed back the man's wallet and papers and
turned away without another word.
'What was all that about?' Tania asked as they resumed
their walk.
'My mistake. I thought he looked like someone wanted
for questioning in the Bertolini killing.'
That was the second time that afternoon that he had
broken his rule about not lying to Tania, Zen reflected. No
doubt it had been an unrealistic ideal in the first place.
It felt odd to be walking home with the woman who had
occupied so much of his thoughts recently, to pass the cafe
at the corner in her company, to walk into the entrance
hall together under Giuseppe's eagle eye, travel up in the
lift to the fourth floor, unlock the front door, admit her to
his home, his other life.
He was acutely aware that, for the first time in years,
his mother was not there. Freed from the grid of rules
and regulations her presence imposed, the apartment
seemed larger and less cluttered than usual, full of possi-
bilities. Zen felt a momentary stab of guilt, as though he
had manoeuvred her transfer to the Nieddus just so that
he could bring Tania back to the flat. It was strangely
exciting, and he caught himself speculating on what
might happen after lunch. Rather to his surprise, Zen
found that he could quite easily imagine going to bed
with Tania. Without any voyeuristic thrill, he visualized
the two of them lying in the big brass bed he had
occupied alone for so long. Naked, Tania looked thinner
and taller than ever, but that didn't matter. She looked
like she belonged there.
Zen put these thoughts out of his mind, not from a
sense of shame but out of pure superstition. Life rarely
turns out the way you imagine it is going to, he reasoned,
so the more likely it seemed that he and Tania would end
150
up in bed together, the less likely it was to happen.
Maria Grazia had been told to stay away for the time
peing, and since Zen had no idea where she kept the
everyday cutlery and crockery, he and Tania foraged
around in the kitchen and the sideboard in the dining
room, assembling china, silverware and crystal that Zen
had last seen about twelve years previously, at a dinner to
celebrate his wedding anniversary. Unintimidated by
these formal splendours, they ate the rice croquettes with
their fingers, mopped up the stew with yesterday's bread
and drank a lukewarm bottle of Pinot Spumante which
had been standing on a shelf in the living room since the
Christmas before last. Tania ate hungrily and without the
slightest self-consciousness. When they finally set aside
their little piles of rabbit bones, she announced, 'That's the
best meal I've had for ages.'
Zen pushed the fruit bowl in her direction.
'I find that hard to believe.'
She gave him a surprised glance.
'Given the life you lead,' he explained.
'Oh, that!'
She skinned a tangerine and started dividing it into
segments.
'Look, there's something we'd better clear up,' she said.
'You see, I didn't quite tell you the truth.'
He thought of them sitting together in the speeding taxi,
the bands of light outlining the swell of her breasts, the
line of her thigh.
'I know,' he said.
It was her turn to look surprised.
'Was it that obvious?'
'Oh come on!' he exclaimed. 'Did you honestly think I'd
believe that you went to all that trouble, getting me to fake
a phone call from work and all the rest of it, just so that
you could go out to the cinema? I mean you don't have to
explain. I don't care what you were doing. And even
supposing I did, it's none of my business.'
Tania was gazing at him with dawning comprehension.
'But that was what I was doing! Just that! It was all the
other times that were lies, when I told you about the films
I'd seen, and going to the opera and the theatre and all the
rest of it.'
She looked away as tears swelled in her eyes.
'That's why I got so embarrassed in the taxi, when you
asked where I was going. It wasn't that I had a guilty
secret, at least not the kind you thought! It was just that
my pathetic little deception had been found out and I felt
so ashamed of myself!
'It all started when you mentioned some film I'd read
about in the paper. That's all I ever did do, read about it. So
I thought it would be fun to pretend that I'd seen it. Then I
stated doing it with other things, building a whole fantasy
life that I shared with you every morning at work. It was
never real, Aurelio, none of it! On the contrary! We never
go anywhere, never do anything. AII Mauro wants to do is
sit at home with his mother and his sister and any cousins
or aunts or uncles who happen to be around.
'The irony of it is that that's one thing that attracted me to
Mauro in the first place, the fact that he came with a
ready-made family. My own parents are dead, as you
know, and my only brother emigrated to Australia years
ago. Well, I've got myself a family now, all right, and what a
family! Do you know what his mother calls me? "The tall
cunt." I've heard them discussing me behind my back.
"Why did you want to marry that tall cunt?" she asks him.
They think I can't understand their miserable dialect. "It's
your own fault," she says. "You should never have married
a foreigner. 'Wife and herd from your own backyard.' " This
is the way they talk! This is the way they think!'
She fell silent. A car door slammed in the street outside.
Footsteps approached the house. Zen got to his feet,
listening intently.
'What is it, Aurelio?'
He went to the window and looked out. Then he walked
quickly through to the inner hallway, closing the door
pehind him. He lifted the phone and dialled 113, the police
emergency number. Keeping his voice low so that Tania
would not hear, Zen gave his name, address and rank.
'There's a stolen vehicle in the street outside my house.
A red Alfa Romeo, registration number Roma 846gg P. Get
a car here immediately, arrest the occupant and charge
him with theft. Approach with caution, however. He may
be armed.'
'Very good, dottore.'
As Zen replaced the phone, he heard a sound from the
living room. No, it was more distant, beyond the living
room. From the hall.
His heart began to beat very fast and his breath came in
gulps. Slowly, deliberately, he walked through the door-
way and past the television, brushing his fingertips along
the back of his mother's chair. How could he have been so
stupid, so thoughtless and selfish? To imagine that no
harm could come to him in the daylight but only after
dark, like a child! To put a person he loved at risk by
bringing her to a place he knew to be under deadly threat.
They'd been watching the house. They'd seen him and
Tania enter, and they'd had plenty of time to prepare their
move. Now they had come for him.
As he approached the glass-panelled door that lay open
into the hall there was a loud click, followed by the charac-
teristic squeal as the front door opened. On the floor
above, the canary chirped plaintively in response.
The scene refiected on the glass door was almost a
replica of the one the night before. But this time Zen
knew that he had not left the door open, and the dark
figure walking towards him along the hallway did not
call his name in a familiar voice, and it was carrying a
shotgun.
'What's going on, Aurelio?'
Tania was standing on the threshold of the inner hall-
way, looking anxiously at him. Zen waved her away, but
she took no notice. Outside in the streets a siren rose and
fell, gradually emerging from the urban backdrop as it
rapidly neared the house. The gunman, now half-way
along the hall, paused. The siren wound down to a low
growl, directly outside the house.
Zen jumped as something touched his shoulder. He
whirled round, staring wildly at Tania's hand. She was
close behind him, gazing at him with an expression of
affectionate concern. He looked at the reflection of the
hallway on the surface of the glass door. The gunman had
v.anished. Zen grabbed Tania suddenly, holding her
tightly, gasping for breath, trembling all over.
Then abruptly he thrust her away again.
'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' he exclaimed repeatedly. 'I didn't
meant to! I couldn't help it!'
After moment she came back to him of her own accord
and took him in her arms.
'It's all right,' she told him. 'It's all right.'
I didn't mean to do it. I was just paying a visit, like before. They
sgouldn't have tried to shut me out, though, or else done it
properly. As it was, I just pushed and twisted until the whole
iging came crashing down. But it made me angry. They
shouldn't have done that.
I thought the noise might bring them running, but they were as
deaf and blind as usual. To get my own back, I decided to make
the gun disappear. I'm no stranger to guns. My father was
famous for his marksmanship. After Sunday lunch, when the
animals had been corralled and lassooed, wrestled to the ground
like baby giants and dosed with medicine or branded, the men
would hurl beer bot tles up into the air to fire at. Drunk as he was,
the sweet grease of the piglet they had roasted before the fire still
glistening on his lips and chin, my father could always hit the
target and make the valley ring with the sound of breaking glass.
'There's nothing to it!' he used to joke. 'You just pull the trigger
and the gun does the rest.'
As I lifted it from the rack, I heard someone laugh in the next
room. It was sleek and fat and arrogant, his laugh, like one of the
young men lounging in the street, pngering their cocks like a
pocketful of money. That was when I decided to show myself.
That would stop the laughter. That would give them something to
think about.
After that things happened without consulting me. A man came
at me. A woman ran. I worked the trigger again and again.
Father was quite right. The gun did the rest.