Marco Vichi - Inspector Bordelli 04 - Death in Florence (26 page)

Bordelli woke up in his bed, emerging slowly from a tiring, anguishing dream in which he’d done nothing but wander aimlessly through a vast, transparent palace full of people, going up and down stairs and corridors, through rooms large and small that were never the right room. His muscles ached. Without lifting his head from the pillow he saw the daylight filtering through the slats of the shutters. It was very cold. He glanced over at the alarm clock. Ten-twenty. He’d gone to bed past four o’clock, bringing the last inch of candle with him. He vaguely remembered accompanying Ennio to the so-called guest room, a square space crammed with depressing furniture he’d inherited from some old aunts.

He heard the sound of a powerful engine in the street and, defying his headache, summoned the strength to go and look out of the window. An amphibious army vehicle was passing at a walking pace, forcing its way through the wrecked cars and tree trunks, continually stopping to distribute emergency provisions. Other soldiers busied themselves removing animal carcasses, loading them on to a small truck. The street was already teeming with men and women hard at work removing debris from homes and shops and hoping to find things worth salvaging. About a foot and a half above their heads, the black band of heating oil was beginning to dry. Nauseating smells filled the air.

Bordelli dragged himself into the kitchen and made coffee with Botta’s water. Just last Saturday he’d cursed the gas cylinder to the darkest circle of hell when it had run out. Now, of course, it was full, thanks to the gasman, who’d come by barely a week ago.

He turned on the transistor radio and heard the tail end of a news report. The Gavinana district was still flooded, and in the countryside around the city many people were still stranded on rooftops, awaiting rescue. President Saragat was supposed to visit Florence that morning to take stock of the situation in person.

There weren’t any clean espresso cups so he drank his coffee from a glass, staring at the blue sky through the window. He went into the bathroom and, pouring a few drops of water at a time into the basin, tried to wash himself. He shaved, rinsed his face, washed his neck, chest, arms and feet as best he could. Then he put on a clean set of clothes, two pairs of socks, and pulled his rubber boots back on.

He heard snoring at the end of the hallway, and went and poked his head into the spare room. Ennio was sleeping with his mouth open and arms spread out like Christ on the cross. Bordelli gently closed the door again and went back to the kitchen. He wrote a note:
I’ve gone out and don’t know when I’ll be back. Make yourself at home. If you go out, please be sure to lock the door, as the world is full of thieves
.

It looked like one of those notes his mother used to tape on to the mirror in the entrance hall when she would slip out on tiptoe to go to mass on Sunday mornings. He placed the piece of paper well within view, next to the espresso pot. Then he put on his coat and went out. Splashing around in the oily muck, he headed for Piazza Tasso, passing silent people busy sorting out wreckage and rubbish. A boy holding a mattress over his head was trying to manoeuvre into a doorway and finally succeeded. The old lady with the grocery shop in Piazza Piattellina was whimpering like a wounded animal, emptying her shop of the last rotten remains.

The minute he got into the squad car he lit a cigarette. The Viali were just as clogged as the day before, if not more so. The only hope was to go through the centre of town. He flashed his badge to the soldiers on guard and they let him through. He’d never taken out his badge so many times as in the past few days.

He rolled along at a snail’s pace, slipping and sliding through the slime. A number of streets were blocked by debris, but in the end he managed to cross the Arno by way of the Ponte Vespucci. On the streets in the centre of town, men in overalls were busy working on telephone exchanges and electrical transformers. Young people of both sexes were helping out with brooms and mops, emptying out houses and shops and piling rubbish on to the pavements. Students with rucksacks walked about in small groups, and there were many longhairs about.

Bordelli came to Piazza del Duomo, where a flood-damaged pharmacy had already miraculously reopened. He saw soldiers in front of the Baptistery door, protecting Ghiberti’s panels, which had fallen off and were lying in the sludge. An elderly man was feeding pigeons on the steps in front of the church.

He turned down Via Martelli. When he was in front of the Prefecture, a young
carabiniere
turned and gestured for him to stop, then turned his back to him again. Bordelli was about to get out and ask him what was happening, but there was no need. Seconds later, a military jeep ridiculously crammed with people came out of the great door of Palazzo Medici-Ricciardi, followed by an RAI van full of television cameras. There must have been about fifteen people in the jeep, most of them standing, with the deputy mayor actually on the footboard, hanging on to the wing mirror with both hands. Bordelli realised the reason for all the hoopla when he recognised President Saragat and Mayor Bargellini next to the
carabiniere
, squeezed in by all the other people. Among the people standing he managed just in time to see the prefect, Commissioner Inzipone and a few other bigwigs whose names escaped him. He followed the grotesque caravan in his rear-view mirror as it headed towards Piazza del Duomo. Bargellini and the prefect would have sufficed to act as guides, but apparently nobody wanted to miss that Sunday-morning spin in the president’s jeep.

He continued on down Via Cavour, and in Piazza San Marco he bought the day’s edition of
La Nazione
from an old woman who’d set up a small wooden table in the mud.

A DISASTER WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN THE CITY’S HISTORY

FLORENCE DEVASTATED BY THE ARNO CALM AMID THE TRAGEDY

He tossed the newspaper on to the passenger seat and drove off. A short while later he pulled up in the courtyard of police headquarters. There was less confusion than the day before. Mugnai told him the commissioner was looking for him, and Bordelli shrugged. He had no desire to see the man. He found Piras in the radio room, hollow-eyed and dishevelled.

‘Did you get any sleep?’ he asked him.

‘I got enough, Inspector,’ said Piras. ‘On the night of the fourth I tried to phone you several times.’

‘I wasn’t feeling well and unplugged the telephone.’

‘So much the better for you. It was a hellish night.’

‘Your true love is lucky she lives in Via Trieste,’ said Bordelli, referring to Piras’s Sicilian girlfriend. He didn’t stay long in the radio room. He wasn’t cut out for sedentary lines of work. He would rather go to the worst-hit areas, scouting out potential emergencies.

He went out of the station again, got into the 1100 and headed for the centre of town, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He parked in Via del Proconsolo and continued on foot, walking through crowds rummaging through smelly debris. People everywhere were muttering the same things. I have nothing left, I’ve lost everything, What will I do now? An elderly woman was whimpering that all she had remaining was her pension of fifteen thousand lire.

In Piazza San Firenze the muck was still deep, and the going was slow. A skinny little dog was hopping around in the mud, looking scared. The courthouse had been visited by the Arno, and the staircase in front was lined with young men and women passing large mud-covered folders to one another.

He turned on to Borgo dei Greci, leaning against the wall to keep from slipping. An old woman had lowered a basket on a rope from her window and a lad was filling it with bundles. A slender man with a pained expression was walking slowly with his head down and his trousers rolled up to his knees, splashing about in the mud.

‘I lost my grandmother’s ring … if anyone finds it, it’s mine … it’s got a diamond this big … it’s a memento of my late grandmother,’ he whined, as false as Judas. The people around him were giving him dirty looks and shaking their heads as they carried on with their labours.

Bordelli then went down Via dei Neri and saw Rosa from afar, made-up and well coiffed as always, sweeping away the mud together with the other flood victims.

‘
Et tu, Rosa?
’ he said, grabbing her arm.

‘Argh! … Oh my God, you scared me!’ said Rosa, a hand on her chest. Bordelli brought his mouth to her ear.

‘You look fabulous even in the mud,’ he whispered, ignoring the others’ curious glances. Rosa blushed and giggled. At that moment a hunchback not more than four and a half feet tall walked by, and a big strapping lad leaned on his spade and turned to him.

‘Hey, hunchback, is it true you’ve got a hump on your cock as well?’ he called out, and everyone laughed. The hunchback turned round and looked at him.

‘Damn, I told your mamma not to tell anyone!’ he said, and everyone laughed even harder. The hulking youth merely glared at the hunchback as he hobbled away through the mud, and didn’t have the courage to say anything else.

‘Serves him right,’ Rosa whispered with a titter.

Bordelli gave her a kiss on the cheek and continued his rounds. He was wandering randomly, without any precise destination. He wended his way through the wrecked cars in Via de’ Benci and came out on the Lungarno. The river was calm and low, a pleasant little torrent flowing gracefully towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. It hardly seemed possible that just a few hours earlier …

He took a left turn in the direction of the Biblioteca Nazionale. The parapet in Piazza dei Cavalleggeri had collapsed and the area had been cordoned off. He flashed his badge and was let through. Young volunteers had come in a flurry from all over Italy and the world and were still at work. There were even some children among them. They were passing to one another great tomes dripping with slime and then loading them on to army lorries. They were covered with mud from head to toe, and at times it was difficult to tell the men from the women.

He turned back, and after crossing the Ponte alle Grazie took a left. In Via dei Renai the mud was still nearly knee- high. Out of habit, he looked up to see the line left by the heating oil. The water had risen above the first floor. Together with Santa Croce, it was surely the lowest-lying part of Florence.

He turned the corner and come out in front of the church of San Niccolò. People from the neighbourhood were still emptying houses and shops of every manner of now-useless objects. Broken furniture, tables, chairs, bookcases, everything made of wood was being piled up outside Porta San Miniato. A man with big blue eyes ringed with fatigue and sparkling with irony was struggling to drag a pew out of the church with the help of a skinny lad staggering on his feet.

‘Need a hand?’ Bordelli asked, drawing near.

‘A crane would be nice,’ said the man.

The inspector helped them carry the pew up the incline. The blue-eyed man had a round white collar under his jacket, and Bordelli realised he was a priest. They laid the pew down beside the other wooden scraps.

‘It’s for making a fire at night. We’re all sleeping outdoors,’ said the priest. Then he introduced himself. He was called Don Baldesi, the local parish priest. Bordelli shook his hand.

‘Pleased to meet you, I’m Inspector Bordelli, police. D’you have any urgent needs I could help you with?’

‘We’ve already been to Campo di Marte several times, but it’s never enough. Bread, water, blankets, medicine, we need it all.’

‘I’ll try to have a lorry come round as soon as I can.’

‘I’ll ask Saint Peter to shave off a few weeks in Purgatory for you.’

‘You probably shouldn’t bother, I may be going straight to hell,’ Bordelli said with a smile. And he started walking towards the church with the priest beside him, already thinking he would continue on foot towards Campo di Marte …

At that moment the person he least expected to see came out of a building, and he felt his heart leap. Assisted by a tall young man with a handsome, shadowy face, the salesgirl from Via Pacinotti was carrying a mud-soaked mattress out into the street. She was wearing jeans, rubber boots and a heavy, oversized jacket. He walked past her, but the girl remained unaware of the magnetic wave enveloping her and did not bother to look his way.

When he got to the church, the inspector felt weak at the knees, like a boy experiencing his first crush. He turned round to look at her again, but she was gone. He told Don Baldesi that he would go at once to Campo di Marte to look for food and medicine, then said goodbye and left without turning round. The minute he had turned the corner, he lit a cigarette. He was so excited that he no longer felt tired. Once again fate had pulled out another surprise for him. But he still didn’t know whether it was a gift or a taunt. Who the hell was the shadowy young man? Her boyfriend? Better not think too much about it. At fifty-six years of age he could hardly compete with a handsome lad like that.

Along the Lungarno he took a right turn, walking towards Piazza Ferrucci and watching the students hard at work in front of the Biblioteca Nazionale. Lucky blighters, he thought. Young, beautiful, heroic. They had their whole lives before them, with all their hopes and dreams. Not like him, who felt like an old man no longer able to believe in illusions. All he had to look forward to was retirement, filling the long hours, dropping in at police headquarters to visit his busy colleagues. He’d better hurry up and decide to move to the country, so he could hoe the vegetable garden and raise chickens, and take long walks in the woods.

He crossed the San Niccolò bridge and continued down Viale Amendola, trying to keep his balance in the mud. It was as if he were walking through a car cemetery. He passed in front of the Cristallo, the ancient temple of the Rivista, the famous variety show, awakening prehistoric memories of his adolescence. Things were very different when he was young. Mussolini shouting from balconies, the Fascist Youth organisations, crystal radio sets, the empire, the African war, autarky, the songs about perfidious Albion …

After Piazza Beccaria he turned down Viale Mazzini, walking its entire length all the way to Via Mannelli. He clambered up the footbridge over the railway and then back down, and arrived at Campo di Marte out of breath. It was Sunday, but a number of grocery shops were open and people had formed long queues along the pavements. In the general chaos Bordelli presented himself to the camp commander and organised for a truckload of foodstuffs and medical supplies to be delivered to San Niccolò.