Converging Parallels (19 page)

Trotti spoke. “There was no sign of movement; the ground hadn’t been disturbed near the front or back of the house.” He offered a sweet to Magagna, who shook his head.

“Use dogs.”

“Probably the only solution. But it’s by no means certain Leonardelli will give me permission—particularly now. A warrant to search the mayor’s private villa—just before elections. You know Leonardelli, he’ll refuse.”

They crossed the river, running sluggishly between the pebbly shores and the raised fishing huts, standing on their wooden stilts.

Then they were in the city and Magagna took the northbound road out to via Milano.

It was just after six when Trotti got home. Pioppi was waiting
for him impatiently. She stood on the front balcony, wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse open at the neck. She was visibly relieved at the sight of her father.

Magagna pulled into the curb and Trotti got out.

“Tomorrow morning in the Questura.”

“Ciao.”

“Ciao.”

Magagna did a three-point turn and drove back into the city.

“Papa, you are late,” Pioppi said as he came up the stairs.

He smiled. “A breakthrough. I was up in the hills and something unexpected came up.”

“It could have waited.”

He looked up and the effect was almost uncanny. The evening sun caught her black hair and she stood with one hand on her hip; an aggressive stance. Her voice was querulous. Unwittingly, she imitated her mother.

“Five minutes to get washed,” he said lightly, stepping past her.

“And put on a suit, Papa.”

He showered quickly and shaved; then he slapped aftershave onto his wet cheeks.

“We’re in a hurry.”

He went into the bedroom—leaving a trail of wet footmarks on the hall floor—and took a shirt from the wardrobe. In theory, he shared the wardrobe with his wife, but gradually her collection of clothes had built up, leaving him little more than thirty centimeters for his suits and jackets. The floor of the wardrobe was cluttered with ill-assorted women’s shoes. Agnese often promised that she would tidy up; more promises that she never kept.

His best suit, neatly pressed and still under the cellophane wraps from the dry cleaners, smelled slightly of cleaning fluid. He put on a white shirt, a dark tie and later, a pair of brown shoes.

Pioppi was waiting for him downstairs. He bolted the door, placed the key under a flowerpot and ran down the stairs. Pioppi held the garden gate open for him.

“Now take me to church.” He passed his arm through hers. “My daughter.”

After a hot day in the windless Po valley, the air was
beginning to cool with the approach of evening and from beyond the road, where the new blocks of flats petered out into open fields and ditches, there came the gentle cacophony of croaking frogs. Early Saturday evening and still little traffic along via Milano. One or two cars parked outside the brick walls of the new pizzeria—the neon sign had been turned on—and a few cars heading towards the city. A bus went past, almost empty and the driver smoking. Then a motorbike; and then an old Guzzi van, its engine beating with the slow rhythm of its single ageing piston.

Pioppi walked fast and it was with surprise that Trotti noticed she was wearing high heels.

“Did you have a nice day?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied without looking at him. It was probably the effect of her shoes that made her appear taller, more mature.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing much.” Her lips formed a pout; then, sensing the abruptness of her reply, she relaxed her face. “I studied in the morning and then Angela came over and we watched television. There was a film on Monte Carlo.”

“Your mother didn’t phone?”

Again the face hardened. “No.”

“I’m sorry I was late in getting back—but it could be something important.”

“You could’ve tried to get back just a bit earlier.”

Trotti did not reply; he did not want to irritate her further. As a child, she was able to sulk for days on end. It was strange, Trotti mused, that although Pioppi was much closer to him than to Agnese, she had nonetheless many of her mother’s characteristics. He could now feel Pioppi’s mood as he walked beside her.

They turned into viale Caporetto. Five years earlier, there had been only fields here—and an occasional, red-brick farmhouse, with the familiar smells of animals and the earth. Now there were low villas, slightly back from the road and hidden by trees and fences of cascading poinsettia.

At the traffic lights they had to stop; then they crossed the
road to the new fountain. The air carried the gentle smell of the tree blossoms and the odor of roasting coffee.

Our Lady of Guadalupe was once a village church; by accident it had been bombed during the war as the Germans were in retreat. Then for thirty years it had been left unused and forgotten. It was the new priest who had organized the rebuilding program. The church was virtually new, built of red brick and a steeple of square cement. At the top, there stood a gaunt iron cross, silhouetted against the sky.

People stood on the stairs leading up to the main porch.

“You see,” Trotti said cheerfully. “We’re not late.” Then holding her arm tightly, he added, “You look very pretty in your shoes. A young lady.”

She tried to smile but then looked down at the concrete steps; particles of glass-like sand glinted in the sun’s glow.

“Pioppi,” he said softly.

She stopped and looked up at him; around them, several young people, well-dressed and in dark clothes, made their way towards the church entrance. The lines about Pioppi’s mouth were firm—again he recognized her mother—and he knew that she was both angry and embarrassed.

“Papa, you know that I love you.”

“I love you, Pioppi.”

She sighed. “Then why do you do it, Papa?”

Trotti smiled. “Do what?”

“Why do you wear that suit?”

“My suit?” He looked down in amazement. A good suit, well cut and of a light brown color. “What’s wrong with my suit?”

“It’s terrible.” She screwed up her eyes. “It’s absolutely terrible. I want to be proud of you, Papa—but you dress like a scarecrow. It’s old-fashioned, it’s too short for you and it’s tight at the waist like a sack of potatoes. And your shoes are the wrong color, Papa.” She shook her head. “You really don’t understand, do you? For you, it’s not important. But …” She blushed slightly. “You look like a peasant. A peasant, Papa—someone who’s never been to the city before.”

The bells of the grey, concrete tower began to peal.

S
UNDAY MORNING
. A
LREADY
the sun was hot in the narrow streets. Half past eight; Trotti stepped past the fast-drying damp patches where the shopkeepers had sluiced down the pavements, and he could smell the tang of ammonia.

The streets were empty. There used to be cars about the town hall; parked on the broad marble slabs, along the pavement and even at the top of the stairway. Now there was just a small sign indicating that the town hall was a historic building. If it had not been for the oil stains, black on the veined marble, Trotti would have found it hard to believe his own memory. Not a car in sight. A few bicycles leaned against the plastered walls of the town hall and two porters, hands behind their backs, stood talking. They were both looking up at the cloudless morning sky.

Without ending his own conversation, one of the porters stepped in front of Trotti, barring his entrance.

“I have an appointment.”

The man nodded to his companion; then he turned to face Trotti. The smile on his face disappeared.

“An appointment with the mayor.” Trotti showed his card. “Now.”

The smile returned, but less sincere, more ingratiating. “This way, Commissario.”

The city was Roman in origin, with the two ancient roads, Strada Nuova and the Corso that crossed at right angles and the
bridge over the river to Borgo Genovese. But the churches, the private houses with their shaded courtyards and the winding cobbled streets were all medieval, the signs of a new, affluent class of burghers.

The town hall was out of keeping with the city, out of keeping with the medieval architecture and the later Habsburg expansion. The town hall was baroque.

The grandeur of the building still impressed him. The facade with its bulging balconies and its ornate, intricate decoration; the smooth marble pillars and on the inside, the winding staircases and the red—admittedly threadbare—carpet, the dark paintings of forgotten notables that hung from the high walls, themselves in need of a fresh coat of paint. Trotti was impressed and perhaps even intimidated. A sense of tradition, of both bourgeois frivolity and purpose filled the somber halls with an almost tangible quality. The city as a republic, as a responsible, self-governing entity. It was an atmosphere that he had rarely felt in Italian public buildings and certainly never in a Questura. But then, most Questuras had been built at the time of Mussolini in an age of national bombast. The curving brick facades, the granite faced statues of purposeful, muscular men and women with firm, molded breasts, marching towards the new era of the Fascist, corporate state—they were buildings that were too old to be modern but not old enough to have character.

The town hall had character.

The sound of the street, the rest of the city—it was a world away; here there was silence and the continuing tradition of civic responsibility.

The air smelled of damp carpets and furniture wax.

Trotti followed the porter up two flights of curving stairs and they came to a wooden door opposite a painting—very large, it took up an entire wall—of St. George, his escutcheon the same as the city’s, slaying a grotesque dragon. Lit up by spectacular rays of sunshine on an otherwise gloomy horizon, the familiar silhouette of the city, its cathedral and its towers.

A man was sitting at a desk before the door. He was reading a book, a yellow-bound paperback edition of Agatha Christie.
Evidently the literature was too engrossing for him to look up. The porter bent down and whispered something, his lips almost touching the man’s ear.

The sitting man did not raise his glance but continued to stare at the print of his book; nervously, the fingers of one hand played a tattoo on the scrubbed desktop.

Then he looked up; a younger face than Trotti expected, narrow shoulders in a well-pressed serge uniform. The eyes were hidden by a pair of sunglasses, similar to those of Magagna, but with lenses tinted a pale, almost bilious yellow.

“Yes?” Behind the glasses, the eyes looked at Trotti.

“I have an appointment with the mayor.”

Carefully a strip of paper was placed between the pages, the book was closed and relegated to a corner of the desk. The porter stood up. He was a midget.

His small legs—the trousers well-creased and without a speck of dust—took him to the door where he tapped reverentially before opening and allowing his small frame to slip into the mayor’s office. The door was closed quietly behind him.

Trotti and the other man waited a couple of minutes, without either of them looking at the other. The door opened again, very slightly, and the midget emerged backwards, his small body bent in a bow. Like a priest retreating from the Holy of Holies.

“The mayor informs me that he is busy. But as the appointment has been made …” A sigh of vicarious responsibility, weighing heavy on the narrow shoulders. “Please.” He pushed the door open. Trotti squeezed past the man and through the narrowness of the aperture.

The mayor’s office had been completely redecorated and the style—Italianate nordic, harsh lines, pine wood and pale, angular furniture—had little in common with the rest of the building. A low lampshade, pale pink like an anaemic toadstool, hung from the ceiling at the end of a long white flex; the carpet was of a pale grey. Beside the window, a varnished tabletop of pine, supported by trestles.

The morning sun lit up the room; a black cat nestled on the carpet.

The door closed behind Trotti.

He crossed the carpet. “It is very good of you to allow me an interview at such short notice. This must be, I realize, a busy time for you.”

The mayor raised his shoulders in acquiescence.

“I see that the forces of order are equally caught up in the events of our contemporary history.” Sitting behind his desk, the mayor tapped at the open newspaper.

Since his return to the city, Trotti had seen the mayor on several occasions; official functions or political meetings, once or twice even in the street, accompanied by an entourage of well-dressed men, like him wearing a dark green loden overcoat. And of course, Trotti had seen the electoral posters that had appeared a couple of days previously.

Trotti was surprised that the mayor looked like the posters; he had imagined him older and unhealthier. Mariani was sturdy without being fat. Large, heavy jaws that even this early in the morning appeared dark with stubble.

The cold, grey eyes drew away from the newspaper and looked up at Trotti.

“Yes, I am busy.” The mayor rose to his feet and held out a hand which Trotti shook. “But I am always willing to help. Please be seated.”

There was a pale varnished chair against a wall that Trotti carried and placed before the desk. He sat down. “I had to phone you because I needed to speak with you as soon as possible. In the course of an enquiry.”

The eyes returned distractedly to the newspaper. “And you are …”

“Commissario Trotti, Pubblica Sicurezza. We haven’t met but …” Trotti shrugged. “I have of course often seen you.”

“Your name is not familiar to me.”

“I returned here less than a year ago. I was in the Mezzogiorno—in Bari.”

“But you are not from the South?”

“From the hills, Signor Sindaco. I studied at the university here, as did my wife.”

“Signora Trotti? Do I know her?”

“She is a doctor. But she no longer works; occasionally she works as an agent for certain Milanese pharmacy companies.”

“She is a colleague, then?”

The mayor’s smile was bland. “As you know, I too am a doctor. But with my responsibilities here,” he looked around at the office, inviting Trotti to do likewise, “I no longer have the time to practice. I am a pediatrician by training and I still give a few lectures at the university hospital.” The mayor gave a rapid smile. “In the last four years, I’ve had to give up any private work. Perhaps one day I shall be able to return to medicine. Who knows?” The dark hands brushed the cover of the
Corriere
with a smoothing movement. “Now, Commissario, how can I help you?”