Death in Sardinia (27 page)

‘You didn’t give me enough time,’ said Bordelli, smiling. Odoardo looked at him, eyes flashing with hatred. He arranged the scarf around his neck, put on his goggles, and put the scooter into first gear. Making a final gesture of goodbye, he left, leaving a cloud of white smoke in his wake. Bordelli didn’t leave straight away. The place gave him a feeling of peace. Odoardo had left a light on, and it shone on a little Madonna built into the wall at the corner of the house. The dim lamp cast a lunar glow across the threshing floor. He put a cigarette between his lips, lit it and stood there listening to the sound of the Vespa heading down towards the Certosa. As he blew the smoke out of his mouth, he looked up. The sky was black and riddled with stars.

‘Do you know, my dear Inspector, where the word
assassin
comes from?’

‘No, Rosa, I don’t think so.’

‘And you’re supposed to be a policeman?’ she asked.

‘Should I be ashamed?’

‘If you like, I’ll tell you myself.’

‘Okay.’

‘Wait for me here …’

‘Who’s going anywhere?’ said Bordelli, with a glass in his hand and his feet propped up on the coffee table. Rosa ran into her bedroom and returned with a small book decorated with arabesques. She turned off all the lights except for a small reading lamp beside her. The coloured lights on the Christmas tree flashed on and off in clusters and created a sense of peace in the dimly lit room. Putting on her glasses, Rosa looked for the page and started reading in a fairy-tale tone of voice …

‘“In the year 1000, in a great oasis there lived a very powerful Arabian prince who was the envy of all. He had many enemies, and wanted an army of devoted followers in whom he could place his blind trust. For months he thought day and night how he might do this. He paced back and forth, and back and forth, without rest …”’ – Bordelli closed his eyes, the better to listen –

‘“until, one day, he had an idea. He summoned his most faithful servant and ordered him to dissolve a great deal of hashish in his men’s wine, and when they fell asleep he had them transported to a beautiful garden, full of flowers and fountains and lovely, sweet women, and food fit for a king, and great jugs of scented wine. The men enjoyed all these pleasures and felt happy. But that wine, too, was mixed with hashish, and soon they fell asleep again. When they reopened their eyes, they were back in their familiar world, and they felt sad. The prince had them summoned to him, and he looked them in the eyes and said: ‘You have been in the garden of valorous men, the place that awaits you if you die for me in battle. But for as long as you are alive, every time you kill one of my enemies, you shall return to that garden for a few hours.’ And so, in the hope of tasting those pleasures again, the prince’s men became ferocious, ruthlessly killing anyone who dared threaten the prince. They would go out in groups and return with scimitars dripping with blood. Soon people began to call them the
hachchaachii
, that is, the hashish drinkers, and from this derives the word
assassin
…” Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t. But it’s a nice story.’

‘Have you ever smoked the stuff ?’ Rosa asked, a little smile on her lips.

‘No, I’ve never come across any.’

‘And what if your Rosina happened to have a little bit of weed?’ Bordelli gave her an amused look.

‘Finish your sentence.’

‘Would you smoke it with me?’

‘I should warn you that I’m a policeman.’

‘Would you arrest me before or after we smoked the joint?’

‘Where did you get it?

‘A girlfriend of mine gave it to me, but don’t ask me who, because I’m not a snitch,’ said Rosa, crossing two fingers over her lips.

‘What’s it like?’ asked Bordelli, curious.

‘It makes you feel light headed.’

‘So I would need some every day.’

‘It’s fun, and then you get hungry like you wouldn’t believe …’

‘That’s never been a problem for me.’

‘Do you want to try it or not?’ she asked impatiently.

‘Well, I guess, as a policeman, it’s my duty to get to know certain things from up close,’ said Bordelli, trying to remain serious. But he really was rather curious to know what sort of effect the stuff had. He didn’t want to remain in the dark on the subject, especially when dealing with people like Raffaele.

‘Yes or no?’ said Rosa, as insistent as a little girl.

‘All right.’

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ Rosa turned on a light in the corner and ran back to her room, hands fluttering. She returned a second later with a small wooden box.

‘Okay, now I’ll show you how you do it,’ she said.

‘My friend taught me.’ She kicked off her shoes and sat down on the carpet, crossing her legs like a fakir. Then she opened the box and took out the necessary items. Marijuana, rolling papers, and tobacco. Bordelli observed the procedure. Rosa took a small strip of cardboard about one third the length of a cigarette, rolled it up tightly and set it aside, then picked a magazine up from the table, placed it in her lap, and dumped some tobacco on it. Then she mixed some of the marijuana into the tobacco and slid the blend into a cigarette paper, put the little roll of cardboard at one end, and rolled it all up into a joint.

‘
Voilà
!’ she said, holding it up in the air. It was all crooked, with clumps of tobacco sticking out of one end.

‘Now we only have to light it,’ said Bordelli.

‘I’ll let you have the honour.’

‘If you insist.’ Rosa handed him the cigarette and struck a match.

‘You have to inhale the smoke and hold it in for a few seconds. It works better that way,’ she said in the tone of an expert. Bordelli obeyed and, after taking three or four puffs, passed the joint to Rosa. It had a nice smell, and the taste it left in one’s mouth wasn’t bad, either. Rosa took a drag and coughed.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked, passing it back to him.

‘I certainly like the smell.’

‘It takes a few minutes before you feel the effect.’ Taking puff after puff, they finished the cigarette. Rosa got up to put a record on the gramophone at low volume. It was
Famous Symphonies of Rossini
, directed by Toscanini. Then she went and sat down comfortably on the sofa.

‘Where’s Gideon?’ Bordelli asked. He hadn’t seen him yet.

‘Out roaming the roofs,’ said Rosa.

‘There must be a female involved.’

‘Don’t you feel anything yet?’ she said, giggling.

‘I guess not,’ said Bordelli, listening to
The Thieving Magpie
with his eyes closed. But the moment he’d said it he realised that the music was entering his head differently … as if the melody were forming inside his brain and then coming out of his ears. He didn’t know how else to explain it. Without opening his eyes, he made a gesture to Rosa, to let her know that the stuff was starting to work.

‘The music …’ he said.

‘What about the music?’ asked Rosa.

‘I’m imagining it … it’s like a great big snake moving around.’

‘A snake?’ she asked.

‘It seems all … I don’t know how to say it … but it’s very interesting …’

‘And what’s this great big snake doing?’

‘It’s as if … it were coming out of my ears …’

‘What ears?’

‘It’s as if … as if I can see the music … and … see it turning into the snake,’ said Bordelli.

‘Your face looks strange,’ Rosa said in a serious tone. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

‘What do you mean?’ he said, touching his cheeks.

‘It’s as if …’

‘What?’

‘It’s like y …’ but she couldn’t finish her sentence and burst into laughter. When she caught her breath and tried to speak again, another even greater fit of laughter overcame her, and she flopped back on to the sofa. Bordelli kept touching his face, worried. And she kept laughing to the point of tears, not recovering her breath for a good minute. Sitting up, she pointed a finger at Bordelli and started laughing even harder than before. Her face turned all red, and at one point she seemed to have gone so long without breathing that it appeared as if she could die. She tried two or three more times to speak, but couldn’t even manage to get out the first consonant. At a certain point Bordelli caught the giggles too, and started laughing for no reason at all. Or perhaps there was a reason, but he didn’t know yet what it was. He was laughing, full stop. And more and more. It was hard to speak.

‘You say … my face … is it … the snake? …’ he managed to say between hiccups. Rosa was rolling around on the couch, shaking her hands as if to tell him to stop. She was squeezing her legs together and seemed in danger of peeing her pants. They both carried on laughing and laughing like idiots, weeping from the strain.

‘M … my … face …’ Bordelli said with great effort, but didn’t have the breath to continue. Rosa rolled off the couch, holding her stomach, then managed to bolt to her feet and, running on tiptoe, raced to the bathroom. Bordelli flopped back in his chair, letting the
William Tell
Overture enter one ear at a gallop and exit the other just as fast. He couldn’t recall ever having laughed that way before. Rosa kept on laughing in the bathroom, then took a deep breath, and all fell silent. She returned a few moments later, reeling. She looked serious. She sat down like a good girl, then raised her eyes, looked at Bordelli, and opened her mouth …

‘Your face … looks like it’s falling down,’ she managed to say, then burst out laughing so hard that Bordelli almost thought he should somehow help her. But he wouldn’t have had the strength, because he too then started laughing again like a simpleton. Little by little they regained their senses. Rosa got up and, light as a butterfly, went and put a more ‘modern’ disc on the gramophone.

‘You were right, Rosa. Now I feel hungry,’ said Bordelli.

‘Me too …’ They ate a bit of everything, drinking wine and listening to Modugno. As soon as the song

‘
Vitti‘na crozza
’
¹⁹
ended, Gideon started scratching at the pane of the French door. Rosa went to let him in, and he replied with a miaow. He allowed her only one caress, then, tail wagging, ran to the far end of the room and hopped up on to the sideboard. Lying down at once, he licked a paw three or four times, yawned, and then closed his eyes, with the two of them looking on.

‘
All he ever does is sleep,’ said Rosa. Bordelli looked at his watch and stretched his back.

‘I think I’ll go to bed too,’ he said.

‘It’s barely half past two,’ she complained.

‘I need to sleep, Rosa.’

‘Oh, poo …‘
a donna riccia non la voglio n-no
…’ she started singing along with Modugno.
²⁰

‘I don’t suppose you could give me a bit of that stuff ?’ asked Bordelli, gesturing towards the little box with the marijuana inside.

‘I’d like to continue my investigation of its effects.’

‘Only if you don’t leave …’

‘I’m sorry, Rosa, but I’m a wreck. And tomorrow I have a very busy day.’

‘You’re mean,’ she said. Then she tore a page out of the magazine, put a little grass and a few rolling papers in it, wrapped it all up in a little package, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

‘You’re a dear,’ said Bordelli. He drank his last drop of wine and stood up. Rosa followed him to the door, still huffing in frustration. When she didn’t feel like sleeping, it bored her to be alone. On the wall in the entranceway hung a sort of small bowl with the face of Pope John XXIII on it. Rosa ran her finger over it.

‘Look how dirty. I really need to dust the place,’ she said, frowning.

‘Goodnight, Rosa.’

‘Will I see you again before Christmas, monkey?’

‘I’ll come on Christmas Eve with your present.’

‘Oh, goody! You’ve already bought it?’ she asked, her expression changing.

‘Of course,’ Bordelli lied.

‘What is it? No, wait, don’t tell me!’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Bordelli. He opened the door and lowered his voice.

‘Let’s be quiet,’ he said, gesturing towards the door of Signora Anichini, an old maid born not long after the unification of Italy who still liked to spy and eavesdrop on other people. Rosa stood up on tiptoe and kissed the inspector on the chin.

‘Goodnight, Rosa, thanks for everything.’

‘You’re leaving me all alone, you wicked man.’ He kissed her hand, as in the old days. He knew she liked it. A last wave goodbye and he vanished down the stairs, quiet as a burglar, followed by Rosa’s incomprehensible whisperings. As he was descending the last flight, a rapid-fire burst of kisses came down through the stairwell. When he was already at the main door, he heard Rosa’s voice.

‘Tell me what the present is, since I’ll forget anyway.’

‘Sshhh …’ said Bordelli, closing the door behind him.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was raining. The car seat was cold, but Bordelli barely noticed. He drove distractedly, grinding the gears. When he got home, he went straight to the kitchen. He was still hungry. He wolfed down a slice of the pecorino he’d bought at the market in Impruneta and finished what little was left of the
finocchiona
salami. All without bread, since there wasn’t any. He even scarfed down half a banana and a week-old piece of mozzarella. Then he rolled himself another cigarette of that stuff and smoked it pacing slowly about the flat. He really liked the smell of it. He went and poked his head back into the room he never left open. Nobody had ever slept in it. Which was sad, when you came right down to it. He decided that he would fix it up a little by the end of the month. He might even sleep there himself from time to time, just for a change. Closing the door again, he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He couldn’t quite grasp how he actually felt. His face in the mirror looked back at him with an amused expression, and he felt as if he was being watched. He’d never felt that way before. But, still, he also felt calm and relaxed.

He went into the bedroom and got undressed. He folded his clothes, which he had never done before, and arranged them tidily on a chair. Then he got into bed, switched off the light, and turned on to his side. He felt as if he were floating in the middle of the room and let his mind drift away. He fell asleep thinking of the hashish drinkers who woke up in a pleasure garden.