Back to Bologna (2 page)

2

At about the time that the blue Audi A8–covered in a tarpaulin, with the driver’s body still behind the wheel–was being winched on to a low-loader for transport to the police garage, Aurelio Zen and his phantom double were deep underground somewhere in the wilds of Tuscany.

It had been a long day, a long month, indeed a long life, thought Zen. Or maybe it was his double who had these thoughts. It had never been established whether he could think, but the question was of no real importance. The essential point was that unlike Zen, whom he outwardly resembled in every last detail, he had no feelings. Perhaps this explained why he looked so disgustingly hale and hearty. There might be a few silver tints in the lustrous black hair, a heightened tautness of skin over bone here and there, but these merely added to his general air of distinction and maturity. Here, one felt, was a man who had lived and learned much, and now, in full command of this accumulated experience, was in charge of his life like an accomplished horseman of his mount, not striving fretfully to dominate and control, but serenely conscious of and responsive to every eventuality.

It was difficult not to envy such a man, although he showed no more hint of possessing any sense of superiority than the Matterhorn–or indeed of having any feelings at all. To Zen, who nowadays seemed to have, and indeed to be, nothing but feelings, this was in itself supremely enviable. Whether physical (throbs, tingles, twinges) or mental (despondency, dizziness, dread), feelings had so intensely taken over his consciousness as to banish even the memory of other perspectives. He had once been someone else. That much seemed probable, although it could not of course be verified. The fact that he no longer was that person, on the other hand, was irrefutable. All the personal qualities, opinions, skills, ideas, habits, likes and dislikes, together with similar data subsumed by the words ‘I’ and ‘me’–in short, everything about Zen, except for his feelings–had apparently been transferred as though by electronic download to the
Doppelgänger
currently visible beyond the darkened carriage window. As for the discarded husk and its prospects for the future, the less said the better.

It had to be admitted that the specialist whom Zen had gone to Rome to consult had viewed matters rather differently.

‘A good recovery,’ had been his verdict after inspecting the X-rays, inserting a monocular catheter like some giant tropical worm down Zen’s oesophagus, and vigorously kneading the flesh around the surgical wound as if intending to barbecue it later.

‘But I feel terrible,’ Zen had murmured in response.

‘Are you in pain?’

‘It’s not so bad now. But I feel totally exhausted all the time. The slightest effort, and I have to lie down for half an hour to recover. Walking up a flight of stairs leaves me breathless and dizzy. Even talking drains me.’

His voice dispersed like smoke.

‘That’s to be expected,’ the consultant replied with heartless nonchalance. ‘Your system is still healing. That leaves it less disposable energy for other tasks.’

‘I know, but there’s more to it than that. I just don’t feel myself any more. I don’t feel like me. And perhaps I’m not.’

The consultant closed Zen’s file with a flourish, then tapped the cover several times as though to emphasise the professional significance of this gesture.

‘Medically speaking, as I have already explained, the prospects for a full recovery are excellent. The duration of that process depends upon too many variables to quantify with any precision.’

He glanced pointedly at the clock, his interest in the case clearly at an end. Like a policeman who knows there is nothing more he can usefully do, thought Zen. In the past, he too had often made it brutally clear that he had no time to waste, but now any such attempt would ring hollow. The plain fact of the matter was that time to waste was all he did have.

Perhaps the consultant had allowed himself to be touched by the expression on his patient’s face, or perhaps he was more subtle than Zen had given him credit for. At all events, as they shook hands at the door, he asked an unexpected question.

‘Is your wife being supportive?’

Zen did not answer for so long that the silence finally became embarrassing. First he had to work out that his ‘wife’ must be a reference to Gemma, who had made the appointment for him at a time when he had felt too weak to deal with hard-bitten Roman personal assistants with an attitude as long as their credit card statements. As for the query itself, that seemed unanswerable. The story was far too long and complex to sum up in a few words. It would take hours to explain even the bare outlines of the situation.

‘Supportive?’ he managed at last.

The consultant clearly wished that he had never spoken.

‘Oh, just generally,’ he said dismissively. ‘You’ve got to remember that the whole business must have been disturbing for her too. In fact it’s often harder for family members than for the patient, oddly enough.’

Zen thought, but no words came.

‘She’s been…’ he began, and broke off.

The consultant nodded with transparently fake enthusiasm, murmured ‘Good, good!’ and walked quickly away.

One feature of Zen’s condition that he had not bothered mentioning was that bits of his body he had never used to think about now demanded his constant attention, while others, on which he had unconsciously depended, were now conspicuous by their absence. It thus came as no particular surprise that the dull roar in his ears suddenly receded to a distant murmur, while the shrilling of his mobile phone a moment later sounded perfectly normal. He studied the strip of transparent plastic where the incoming call was identified for the length of five rings before answering.

‘I’m on the train. We were in a tunnel.’

‘How did it go?’

It took Zen some time to answer.

‘It was a normal tunnel,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps a bit longer than most.’

‘Tell me what the doctor said.’

‘I just did.’

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘The doctor says I’m fine. It’s just that I’m in a long tunnel.’

‘But there’s light at the end of it?’

‘No, it’s dark now. It must be there too, surely.’

Asound like some cushions make when sat upon.

‘What time do you get in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you want me to pick you up? I was thinking of going to a movie.’

‘Go, go! I’ll take a cab. Or walk.’

‘What about dinner?’

‘I had a huge lunch and I’m not hungry. Go to your movie. I’ll let myself in and…’

He broke off, realising from the increased background noise and air pressure that the train was sheathed in yet another tunnel, cutting off the conversation between him and Signora Santini.

Not that it took much to do that these days. The cut-offs, drop-outs, robotic acoustics, phantom voices and dead silences in their communications were becoming more frequent all the time, as if the entire network had gone bust and was being progressively run down. He could have sworn that her very voice–the voice he had fallen in love with on the beach in Versilia that memorable summer–had become harder and more strident, appending an unspoken ‘take it or leave it’ edge to the most commonplace remark. And he sensed that authentic anger, concealed like the raw hurt of his own mangled bowels, lay just below the surface of quotidian banality, securely rooted and feeding, for the moment, on itself. In short, the affectionate, calm and dependable woman he had fallen in love with had grown distant, capricious and tetchy. So it seemed, at least, but Zen accepted that he was the least reliable of witnesses. A stranger to himself, what could he know of others?

The earlier mention of food pushed him out of his seat and along the carriage, grabbing at each seat-back to keep his balance, precarious everywhere these days. In the buffet car he bought a plastic-wrapped ham roll and a can of beer and carried them over to an elbow-high ledge by one of the windows, where his double was already installed. Maybe she had met someone else when he was in hospital. Or indeed before, during the period when he had been away on his last case. Or before that. It wasn’t unlikely. Both partners are always at least subliminally aware of the balance of power in their relationship, and the fact was that Gemma was younger than him and still very beautiful. Moreover, he knew that she had enjoyed a certain reputation for flightiness before they got together.

He munched his way ravenously through the roll, having lied to Gemma about his ‘huge’ lunch. In his present state, Zen could only achieve anything by breaking the task down into small, achievable subsets and then concentrating wholly on performing them, to the exclusion of all else. Today his chosen assignment had been to get to the consultant in Rome in time for his appointment. He had accomplished this, but at the price of forgetting totally about other matters, such as making an appearance at the Ministry and possibly seeing his friend Gilberto. He had even forgotten to eat. There were times when he remembered his period in the clinic almost with nostalgia. Everything had been so simple then. No one expected you to be competent or to take any initiatives. On the contrary, such behaviour was frowned upon. The staff told you what to do and when to do it, and you obeyed them. There was no need to plan or act. In retrospect, it had all been very relaxing.

He finished the rather dry roll, washing it down with the rest of the beer. To be honest, he realised, the visit to the consultant had been just a pretext. His real reason for going had simply been to go, to escape the encircling walls of Lucca. This massive brick barrier had once seemed reassuring, but after one month bedridden and another confined to the apartment in Via del Fosso, it had become as spiritually suffocating as it literally became in high summer, shutting out every open perspective and refreshing breeze. No doubt that was why he had arrived in Rome hours before his appointment, killing the time by sitting around in cafés and gazing mindlessly at everyone who came and went, like a tourist. And afterwards, instead of taking the first train north, he wasted further hours at a cinema in a seat so close to the screen that the movie was an incomprehensible blur. Now, though, he was on his way home, this brief spell of parole at an end. It could be prolonged slightly by deliberately missing the connection at Florence, so that by the time he arrived back at the apartment, Gemma would with any luck be asleep.

But there was still tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after that. Once upon a time he could have turned to his work for distraction, but it seemed doubtful, feeling the way he did, that he would even be able to hold down the sort of routine administrative job he had been allocated years before during a period when he was in disfavour, doing the rounds of provincial headquarters to check that the petty pilfering and misappropriation of funds were being kept within broadly acceptable limits. In a word, his career was over. He had been granted indefinite sick leave once the extent of his medical problems became clear, and the temptation now was to string that out for as long as possible, then parlay it into early retirement. He had a powerful backer at the Ministry, and was clearly of no use to anyone. A gilt handshake seemed to offer the most painless solution to this embarrassing situation for everyone concerned, and he could see no reason why it should be refused.

Which left the question of his personal life. Zen had had relationships go wrong before, of course, and had felt amazed, dismayed and at a loss, but this time the effect was much more intense, perhaps because the possibility of its happening had never occurred to him. Neither Zen nor Gemma had bothered to get a divorce from their previous partners, and so the question of their remarrying had never arisen. But to all intents and purposes they had acted, and had seemed to feel, as if they were indeed husband and wife. More often now, though, they resembled two boxers circling each other warily, occasionally jabbing out, then getting into a clinch and pounding each other at close quarters with no referee to pull them apart. There was never any winner, only two losers, and the contest invariably ended with Gemma stalking out and slamming the door behind her.

Turning to the window, Zen eyed his spectral other, so smugly solid and substantial. He felt as if he were the reflection and that image the original. ‘A shadow of his former self,’ as the stock phrase went. A hopeless invalid. A sad case. The long, sleek train poured out of the final tunnel and clattered over the bridge across the Arno. In the past, on his weekly visits to the Ministry, Zen had always felt a lifting of the heart at this moment, because it was when he felt that he was almost home. Now, for exactly the same reason, it filled him with foreboding.

3

When Vincenzo burst in, Rodolfo was lying naked on the bed and savouring one of those rare moments when, to quote a German poet recently cited by Professor Ugo, ‘a happiness falls’. What had he done to deserve this? The answer appeared to be nothing. At the advanced age of twenty-three, Rodolfo was reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he was not one of life’s natural achievers, a doer of deeds, attainer of goals and winner of women. If he had won Flavia, for the moment at least, it was only because she had fallen into his hands. There was nothing wrong with his intellect, but when it came to everything else, he seemed to be an under-motivated if well-meaning lightweight who had always taken, and no doubt always would take, the path of least resistance.

Ahappiness had fallen, and he had been fortunate enough to be there to catch it, but you couldn’t count on such luck indefinitely. Normally what fell broke, or broke you if you were standing unawares beneath. Rodolfo’s father had continually striven to remind his son of such basic facts, in a weary but dutiful tone of voice which suggested–indeed, almost proudly advertised–that while he had accepted the utter futility of any such attempt, he would not have it said of him that he had shirked his paternal responsibilities.

The thought of his father had brought to mind, by natural degrees of progression, the family home, the little market town, and the whole intimately immanent landscape of his youth. Puglia! So when Vincenzo burst in, resembling an Errol Flynn lookalike after a particularly hard night’s carousing, his flatmate felt naked in more ways than one.

‘Siamo in due,’
he hissed angrily, yanking the covers up over Flavia’s torso and his own genitals.

The intruder leant on the door frame like a drunk against a lamppost.

‘Where the fuck’s my fucking jacket, you cunt?’

As always, Rodolfo marvelled at how repulsively attractive Vincenzo was, with his sleek black hair, aquiline features, intense eyes, slim body and devastating devil-may-care manner.

‘Jacket?’ he replied, getting out of bed and pulling on his jeans.

‘My football jacket! It’s disappeared!’

Vincenzo grasped the shapeless, acid-green polyester garment that he was wearing over an incongruously fashionable dress shirt.

‘I had to borrow this piece of shit from Michele. I want my own jacket to go to games in, God damn it! My signature jacket!’

Rodolfo steered his flatmate out into the living room and softly closed the bedroom door behind them.

‘You mean the black leather one with the Bologna FC crest on the back?’

‘Of course I do! I’ve worn it to every single match since…For years and years. For ever! It’s the team’s lucky charm! When I don’t wear it we lose, just like we did tonight.’

Rodolfo gestured apologetically.

‘I’m sorry, Vincenzo. My coat was stolen at the university. I haven’t been well, as you know, and it’s freezing cold out there so I borrowed one of your jackets. You weren’t around, so I couldn’t ask, I just took the shabbiest one I could find. I didn’t realise it was so precious to you. You’ve got tons of clothes, after all.’

Vincenzo Amadori’s extensive and eclectic wardrobe was indeed one of the principal reasons why he and Rodolfo were sharing this relatively luxurious apartment in the first place.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Rodolfo repeated. ‘Your jacket’s safe next door, but I don’t want to turn the light on and wake Flavia.’

But Vincenzo, typically, had already lost interest in the subject.

‘Who cares?’ he said, dismissively waving a limp hand. ‘It’s all hopeless anyway.’

‘We lost?’

‘We lost. But it doesn’t matter.’

‘How come there was a game tonight? It’s midweek.’

‘Postponed from the original fixture. Cancelled due to a spot of nastiness engineered by yours truly. So we all had to go back to Ancona. The fans, the player, the manager, the owner…’

‘And we lost.’

Vincenzo roused himself briefly, felt in various pockets and finally produced a bottle of
limoncello
.

‘Leading at half-time and then pissed it away, with a little help from the ref as usual. Three-one final.’

‘You just got back?’ Rodolfo remarked, to get off the subject of the match before Vincenzo started insulting him as a shitbrained southerner, a Bari supporter whose sister did it with Albanians. It was just a matter of time before Vincenzo twigged that Flavia was from the unfashionable side of the Adriatic and made some remark which Rodolfo would not be able to overlook.

‘Shit happened,’ his flatmate replied with that raffish smile he could switch on and off at will. ‘I was out of it, Rodolfo. Way, way out!’

He took a long, gargling swig of the lemon liqueur. Rodolfo noted that it was the genuine pricey product made exclusively with fruit from the officially guaranteed zones in Capri and Sorrento. Nothing but the best for Vincenzo, even when his goal was oblivion.

‘Well, I’m glad you got back all right,’ he said, making a show of concern before returning to the bedroom and Flavia.

Vincenzo again smiled the raffish smile that he could switch on and off at will.

‘Somebody gave me a lift. And then…’

He broke off, clutching his stomach, then tried unsuccessfully to stand up. Familiar with these symptoms, and mindful of the fact that he would have to clean up any resulting mess, Rodolfo went to help him.

‘And then?’ he prompted, trying to keep Vincenzo’s brain engaged and his reflexes dormant.

Vincenzo shook his head urgently and plunged down the hall to the bathroom. A moment later came loud groans followed by the sounds of repeated vomiting. Rodolfo sighed and returned to bed, locking the door behind him.

‘I don’t like your friend,’ said a quiet voice.

‘He’s not my friend. We share this apartment, that’s all.’

Flavia edged herself upright in the bed on each elbow alternately, the fleece of dark-red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts. She cleared it off her face, lay back on the pillow and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table.

‘Why?’ she asked.

As so often, out of sheer ignorance of the basic logic of the language, she had wrong-footed him. That was what happened if you had affairs with foreigners, Rodolfo reflected sourly. Next thing you’d be falling in love and deciding that their banal gaffes were actually profound insights into the human condition.

‘Why what?’ he asked irritably, his idyll now completely disrupted. He was equally angry with Vincenzo for waking Flavia, and with Flavia for allowing herself to be woken.

‘Why do you share with him?’

Rodolfo lay down on the bed beside her.

‘I don’t know. It just happened. Like you and me.’

Flavia smoked quietly and made no reply, her startling blue eyes regarding him with no little concern.

‘I got back after Christmas to find that there’d been a fire in the building where I had been living,’ Rodolfo went on. ‘It was a question of finding alternative accommodation, and fast. On the allowance my father gives me I didn’t have a lot of choice, and of course most places were already let for the whole academic year. So I photocopied some ads with those tear-off strips and pinned them up all over the university district, but nothing came of that. Then someone who was moving out of this apartment tipped me off about it. It was out of my price range, but I came round to take a look anyway and ran into Vincenzo as I was leaving. He’d heard about the place independently, and of course money’s no problem for him. He paid the landlord a deposit right away and then suggested that we go and have a drink together as he had a proposition to put to me. I didn’t know him, but he seemed pleasant enough. Anyway, classes had already started and I couldn’t afford to be choosy. Over coffee–well, he had something stronger–he suggested that since there were two bedrooms we should share the apartment and split the rent. When I told him that even half would be a stretch for me, he said, “All right, you pay a third, on condition that I get the big bedroom. I don’t care about the money, but I need my space and I don’t like living alone.” So there you are. Pure chance.’

‘There’s no such thing as chance.’

Rodolfo laughed.

‘If you kept up with the news, you’d know that there’s nothing else.’

The girl frowned.

‘So you’re not–what is it?–
credente
?’

‘A believer? Of course. I’m a fervent Protestant.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. I protest against everything.’

Flavia’s frown deepened.

‘I try to watch the news, but I can’t always understand.’

He leaned over and kissed her pale face.

‘I don’t mean the small screen, I mean the big picture. And there’s nothing to understand. Or better, nothing that can be understood. Deterministic materialism is the only game left in town. The intellectual high rollers have figured out the odds down to the last decimal point, and basically they agree with Vincenzo. Details aside, the deal is that shit happens.’

From the hallway, as if on cue, came the sound of the toilet flushing. There followed various unidentifiable thumps and bumps, and finally the slam of the other bedroom door.

‘Yes,’ said Flavia.

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, I understand. But…’

She fell silent.

‘What?’ Rodolfo insisted.

But Flavia shook her head in that decisive way she had.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s none of my business anyway. What do I know about this country, what’s normal and what’s not? I’m just passing through. Another piece of shit working its way through the system.’

Rodolfo chose to regard this as a challenge.

‘Tell me anyway,’ he insisted, rolling over and holding her.

‘No. It would be
invadente
.’

This gave him a chance to lighten the mood.

‘But you are an invader!’ he declared, clutching his chest with one hand and flinging the other out dramatically. ‘Not only have you invaded my country, but also…’

He was about to add ‘my heart’, but realised just in time that under the circumstances this might not sound like ironic hyperbole but simply hurtful. Lost in her own thoughts, Flavia seemed to pay no attention to the unfinished sentence.

‘He reminds me of…’

She broke off to shake the ash from her cigarette into the saucer by the bed.

‘He’s very beautiful,’ she finally added inconsequentially.

Again Rodolfo made an attempt at humour.

‘Believe me, if I had a single gay gene in my body…’

Flavia seemed uninterested in this speculation.

‘But he’s wicked,’ she said, as if pointing out the logical conclusion of her argument.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Flavia did not seem troubled by either his manner or the question.

‘I probably used the wrong word. Or maybe this thing doesn’t exist here.’

Aradiant smile appeared for a moment, transfiguring her intimidatingly regular features.

‘But you spoke of genes in your body,’ she continued, expressionless again. ‘Well, I have my own genes, and one of them gives me a very clear sense of this thing, whatever you call it.’

She stubbed out her cigarette and lay back.

‘Vincenzo’s just a spoilt brat,’ Rodolfo said in a dismissive undertone. ‘Father’s a lawyer, mother has a pretend job with the
giunta regionale
fixing up artsy exhibitions and the like. Typical Bolognese upper middle class, in short, with a history of mild political activism when young that makes them socially acceptable now, and enough disposable income to take pricey “alternative” vacations in the Lofoten Islands or wherever. It’s all the usual clichés, so Vincenzo’s done the clichéd thing and rebelled against the family life he can return to any time he wants. He skips his classes and exams, hangs out with a bunch of low-lifes at the football stadium, and drinks to excess. But evil? He doesn’t have the balls to be evil. Or anything else for that matter. The guy’s just a wanker.’

Flavia just lay there, gazing up as though at a distant light faintly visible through the ceiling.

‘Nevertheless, I know such people,’ she said at last. ‘Even though I never met them, I know them. Can you understand? Ion Antonescu, Gheorghiu-Dej, Corneliu Codreanu…I know them very well.’

Rodolfo yawned. It was late, and he had a lot of revision to do for Ugo’s seminar the following day. His attitude to his renowned tutor had become much more overtly confrontational of late, so he’d better be able to demonstrate a flawless grasp of the subject.

‘Who are they?’ he murmured.

‘Which one?’

‘Any of them. The last one.’

‘Codreanu? King Carol had him killed in 1938. Two years later Antonescu overthrew the monarchy and turned the state into a dictatorship run by the Legion of the Archangel Michael, otherwise known as the Iron Guard.’

Rodolfo yawned again and embraced her.

‘You’re Scheherazade, spinning me crazy stories to keep me awake all night. You and your Ruritania! I don’t believe the place even exists.’

Flavia nodded.

‘It’s never been very real, particularly if you happened to be a “stateless alien” of Hungarian or Jewish origin. But it does exist. And some of the things that happened there definitely weren’t imaginary.’

‘Like what?’

It was Flavia’s turn to rise, though with evident reluctance, to the perceived challenge.

‘Like the sealed rooms. They couldn’t afford gas chambers, so they just locked them up and left them to suffocate.’

Rodolfo leaned over her and took a cigarette.

‘What’s all this got to do with Vincenzo, precisely?’ he enquired in the pedantic tone, unwittingly borrowed from Professor Ugo himself, that he employed in the latter’s classes.

Flavia took a long time to answer, as though her reply had to travel all the way back from the planet she had been observing earlier, situated at a distance that made even light lame.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘I know only that he is very strong. So am I, but I may not be here to take care of you. And you are not strong,
caro mio
. You’re very sweet and intelligent, but you’re weak. The man you are living with is none of those things. So be careful.’