In a Heartbeat (19 page)

At the end, the answering machine said that it was full and that I should delete the old messages to make space for the new ones. No way! I wondered how the Ad Exec could be so stupid as to leave the means for these people to find him. There was no way he could avoid them now. Only telepathy was missing. Or was it?

After the second sandwich I had enough energy to get back to the mental hospital issue. I had put that aside. I was afraid that it could happen again at any time, but did I really want to know more?

No thanks. I wasn’t ready yet.

This happened before I found out that the cops would do a background check on me. Imagine if they had caught me trying to stab some old bastard in the eye. It was best to hear it from the doctors who had treated me, if only I knew where to find them. Giulio had suggested asking my father but just the thought made me sick. In this new life, I hoped that I would never see that bastard again. I didn’t have his number in the address book. Maybe because the Ad Exec knew it by heart, so I called the home number that I remembered hoping that it was still the same …
the number you have reached has been disconnected
… Shit.

The bartender had a phone directory. There were about sixty Dentis. I was one of them but there was no Piero, my father. It had always been his dream to spend his winters on the beach somewhere. I had always thought that the old man said this to make himself look good, like the time he said that he was going to fix up and race the old Guzzi Galletto motorcycle. It wound up just rusting in the basement. He also said that we would tour Europe in a camper van, which we never did.

He’d collect a pile of brochures, changing his mind each time. ‘We can also rent or maybe it would be better to buy or maybe we could find a used one, why not?’ I was ten years old and I’d believed him because at that age every father is a cross between Superman and Aladdin’s genie. As the weather got warmer, however, he talked about it less and less. He even seemed embarrassed when I asked him about it. In July he’d said, ‘Maybe next year.’ Then he went down to the bar with his useless loser friends. Who knows, maybe this time he had actually followed through?

Then I had a brilliant idea, all thanks to the wrinkled and dirty newspaper at the café that closely resembled my shirt. I was looking for something about Roveda and I found it on the third page. There was a picture of a villa near the coast and an article on the investigation. The killer had left no trace but a series of clues suggested that maybe Roveda roamed in
gay circles
. Oh, so Roveda was gay!

I chill went down my spine.

Could the Ad Exec also be … ?

That would explain why he put Spillo on him. Jealousy! Maybe I should search my house to see if there were any photos of naked men around? I could see myself explaining this to Monica.
There’s something else that I didn’t tell you, a small detail
…

I read more. Maradona had lost weight! In the colour photo, (the newspapers were all in colour nowadays), he was twice the size that I remembered. I read the story: cocaine, trouble with the law, redemption. Our stories were a bit alike. More news. An old joke on Berlusconi, surveys about the forthcoming elections (every party forecast victory). There was a story about a guy they’d found on a beach in Cornwall who had forgotten how to speak but knew how to play the flute with his nose so well that everyone who heard him play cried. Hmmm … Something very similar had happened to me according to what Ines said, except for the flute. There was also the possibility that I too had been in the newspapers, maybe in the local news.

Where do they keep old newspapers? In the library. The only one that I knew was the Sormani Public Library, where I’d been once to do some research for a science project in secondary school. I still remember the experience as one of the most boring of my life. Now at least I didn’t know what to expect.

I got there by tram. The building was just as I remembered it in the previous century, boring grey stone with a lot of bicycles locked in front of it. The last time I had left my moped out there and when I came back the spark plug was gone.

The woman at the information desk told me how to get to the periodicals section. It was a huge room with vaulted ceilings and a series of monitors fixed to tables that seemed to be there just for decoration. Only recent newspaper editions were immediately available; to get to the older ones you had to fill in a request form.

I filled out one for the Corriere della Sera and instead of a pile of newspapers the librarian brought a small cylinder of microfilm. I tried to look at it against the light. The pages were there but to read them I needed a microscope. After I’d stood there for about twenty minutes trying to figure this out, the employee finally showed me how to insert the film in the microfilm machine. So that’s how you do it!

August 1991, how nostalgic. It made quite an impression on me, thinking that it was so long ago that it was now a microfilm, like in a James Bond movie. I focused on the Milan sections but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I changed the cylinder four times, going through La Repubblica, Il Manifesto and Il Giorno. The fourth was the lucky one, La Notte. I should have checked that one first; it was my trusty evening newspaper. The sticker on the microfilm box said that it had stopped publication in 1998. That’s why the sign was gone in Piazza Cavour.

The article was dated 12 August. ‘A man was found on an abandoned farm in Vaiano Valle. The Milanese carabinieri found a man of approximately 30 years of age in a fragile physical condition. The man was unable to identify himself and was also without identification.’ There was a photograph of the farm but there was no photo of the man.

Was it me? What the hell was I doing on a farm anyway? Who the hell had stolen my wallet? From the time I was at Ines’ to the time they found me, six days had gone by. Six days was a long time to wander deliriously. Maybe I was out there picking mushrooms?

I looked at the newspapers from the following days, and this time I was left with no doubts. For 18 August I read: ‘The man from Vaiano Valle has finally been identified. S. D., resident of Via dei Transiti 6, Milan, is in a stable condition but continues to suffer from amnesia and is presently undergoing treatment at the Luigi Sacco psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr Zurloni.’

Zurloni? Why is that familiar? While I tried to remember with my nose pressed to the screen the librarian came to annoy me about letting someone else use the machine if I was just going to sit there and warm the seat.

‘I need a photocopy.’ I pointed to the first article. ‘Can I get one?’

‘Thirty cents a page.’

‘All right, let’s splash out’.

‘Fill out the form; it’ll take about half an hour.’

I filled out the form.

‘Can I use the internet here?’

‘Fill out a form and give me some ID.’

I filled out a form. He looked at it and took out a pen, making a few minuscule corrections before directing me to the opposite wall where there was a queue of people nodding off in front of computers. After a twenty-minute wait, I finally got to one when an old lady had finished writing down an apple pie recipe. It wasn’t a Mac and it took some time for me to finally click on the right icon to open the browser.

I found the website of The Flock of the Good Shepherd. There were a few pages that went on and on about values. Family, brotherhood and love for your neighbour. There were also gastronomy (gastronomy?), horse racing, boutiques and photos of youths with flowers in their hair together with friars and priests. Whoever wanted to donate could do so with a simple credit card transaction, cheque, money order, gold dust.

Zurloni. There he was. I recognised him. The founder had a page all to himself. He looked like he had lived a thousand years. He was as thin as a rake with fine white hair and dark sunglasses. In the photo he was hugging a couple of Africans who smiled, showing the gaps between their teeth. The caption read: They found a home thanks to
The Flock.
What a name. Biography … Hmmm. A degree in medicine and a doctorate in psychiatry … at the Luigi Sacco psychiatric hospital until 1998. OK, I got it. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to escape the gala dinner that night. I picked up my photocopy and then I went outside to smoke a cigarette.

The temperature had dropped even further and I suddenly had a great desire to jump into bed and go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I called Monica and shut her up before she bombarded me with unrequested office stuff. I found out that the English man on the answering machine was my London counterpart from an advertising agency who was in Milan to see me. The appointment had been made more than a month ago.

‘About what?’

‘The European launch for Tampax.’

‘That’s what you women stick in, isn’t it?’

‘Wait until you see where Bianchi’s going to stick it when you get to the office.’

‘What time are we meeting tonight?’

‘So you’re coming? It didn’t sound like you really wanted to.’

‘You were right.’

‘Come over to my place around seven.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’

‘Yeah.’

She explained things to me. I still had a good three hours before the meeting so I decided to put the time to good use. The first thing: wheels. I was tired of taking public transport just because someone might have stuck dynamite in my car. A rent-a-car sign caught my eye and with a swipe of the card I was aboard a fire-red Lancia Y. The seats reclined so in an emergency I could sleep in it. I couldn’t exclude the possibility that I’d have to. I turned on the radio and I found a station that played music old enough for me to recognise. Then I went hunting for farm where they had found the man who lost his memory. Not a bad idea to go there I thought; little did I know that I’d have nightmares for the rest of my life.

4

I almost passed it without even realising. There it was, the abandoned farm exactly like the one in the newspaper photo. I hadn’t recognised it because there was scaffolding and fencing that wrapped around the courtyard. I hit reverse, kicking up mud and rocks.

An Arab construction worker, about twenty years old with dreadlocks, swore at me from the cement mixer. A sign read WORK TO BE FINISHED DECEMBER 2007. The worker leaned on his shovel when I knocked on the gate. ‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Is it OK if I come in and walk around?’

‘Are you the inspector?’ he asked. He was speaking good Italian, almost without an accent.

‘No,’ I’m just passing by.’

‘Then I’m sorry, you can’t. This is private property.’

‘Are the owners here?’

‘No.’

‘So what do you care?’

‘I care if you get hurt. Then I get in trouble.’

‘What, are there rattlesnakes in there? C’mon man, just give me ten minutes. It used to be my aunt’s place.’

‘Really?’

‘Fifty euros?’

‘OK, but be careful.’

I gave him the money. ‘I’ll walk on eggshells.’

I walked in while the guy began shovelling again, a bit happier than before, no doubt. I walked around the small farmhouse. There was nothing but dirt roads, neglected fields and rubbish. I saw an empty Dericoni yogurt container (
The future is Prunes!).
My new job tortured me wherever I went. There wasn’t one thing that I recognised, absolutely nothing. If they had really found me here, it was one of those memories that wouldn’t come forward. Maybe I needed someone that I had had sex with to help me remember, just like what happened with Vale and Salima? It didn’t happen with Monica. She didn’t have this privilege.

I stopped in front of the wooden door that had been repaired with a piece of plywood. It was rotting and looked like it had been kicked in. I turned the doorknob and went in. The farmhouse was a single room with termite-eaten beams and walls blackened by smoke. It was probably used either by junkies or those trying to get laid. There was no furniture, only piles of wood and bricks. I was looking at the place for the first time in my life. Maybe the people from the newspaper had just taken a random photo. I went up to the first floor on a wooden staircase, afraid that it would collapse at any moment under my weight. I found two small, bare rooms with windows facing the field where I could see a church bell tower in the distance against the sunset. The only sound came from the cement mixer. It would be a lovely place once the construction was over, a villa for a nice, happy family. If I’d known where the Ad Exec had hidden the money I’d have been able to buy a place like this and breathe air that didn’t taste like exhaust fumes.

I went back downstairs, determined not to miss anything. I leaned against a wall and looked at the ceiling that was covered in cobwebs and through the cracks I saw nothing. Just when I was beginning to think that I was wasting my time, I kicked something that was covered with plastic sheeting. When I moved it, inhaling a cloud of dust, I discovered a trapdoor with a metal ring that stuck out from the centre.

It was there that I had my first bad feeling but it went away while I focused on what it was.

‘Is everything OK?’ The builder had stuck his head in, scaring the hell out of me.