The Art of Waiting (27 page)

‘I'm afraid I don't know where they are.'

The Chief Inspector raised his eyebrows.

‘You see,' continued Aldo, ‘I came back from the war last summer and they'd gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘I went home and they weren't there any more.'

‘Oh, dear. How very sad, how truly awful. How long were you away?'

‘Eight years.'

The Chief Inspector whistled through his teeth. ‘An awful lot can happen in eight years.'

‘I'm aware of that,' Aldo snapped. ‘An awful lot
did
happen.'

‘Please try to control yourself, Signore Gardini. This is not the time for displays of temper. So, you went home and . . . and nothing. So where are you living now?'

‘On Burano. In my grandfather's house.'

‘And you work at the
bottega?'

‘That's right.'

‘For long?'

‘Two or three months.' ‘And before that?'

‘I was unemployed.'

‘So how did you survive?'

‘I got by.'

‘Yes, there's something of the survivor about you, I can see that. And you play the violin in the streets, I hear?'

‘Yes.'

‘Around San Marco?'

‘Yes. How do you know?'

‘I've seen you. I even put some money in your tin once or twice.'

‘Thank you. Very kind, I'm sure.'

‘Oh, don't thank me, it was purely in order to study you more closely. And you survived on small change for . . . for how long?'

‘I have modest needs.'

‘For how long? How long have you been playing? In the street, I mean?'

‘A while.'

The Chief Inspector folded his arms and exhaled loudly and his junior colleague did the same.

‘What did I say about the questions I was going to ask you? I want answers, simple ones. Simple questions, simple answers. Precise information. Ambiguity won't help you, my friend, so be as specific as you can. The more information you can give me, the quicker I can bring this matter to an appropriate conclusion.'

‘I still don't know what matter it is that you're talking about. Is it illegal to play in the streets? If that's the case, I'll stop.'

‘No, some people may not approve of people like you littering our streets, but I don't think you could call it a crime. Again now, how long have you been playing in the streets?' He raised an index finger in Aldo's direction and his gold teeth glinted. ‘Careful now, be precise.'

‘Since November. Or the beginning of December.'

The Chief Inspector lifted his finger again and Aldo stammered out a few more words.

‘I can't remember exactly, I honestly can't remember. For a while the days all just blurred into one. It was a difficult time.'

‘The beginning of December, then. Shall we say the beginning of December? I don't recall seeing you before then.'

‘Yes, that's probably about right.'

‘And you came back from the war in the summer, you say?'

‘Yes.'

‘The month?'

‘July.'

‘And you started playing this violin in the streets in December, the beginning of December. How did you survive until then? You were unemployed, you say?'

‘Yes. I still had some of my repatriation allowance.'

‘That can't have lasted long.'

‘I eked it out slowly.'

‘Did you stay with friends? Family?'

‘My family aren't around any more. I told you.'

‘Ah, yes, of course, I'm sorry. Friends? Do you have friends?'

‘Yes.'

‘And did you have any then?'

‘Not so many.'

‘Yes, I imagine, after so long away, surely you lost touch.'

‘Most of my friends were killed in the war. But I suppose you wouldn't really know about that.'

‘Perhaps not. But anyway, how did you get by? I'm genuinely curious.'

‘I had to . . . I had to, you know, scavenge, scavenge a bit.'

‘Scavenge? Scavenge a bit? What does that involve exactly?'

Aldo rubbed his forehead with a sweaty palm. ‘Look, this is difficult for me.'

‘Then don't make it more difficult than it has to be. What did this scavenging involve? It sounds rather elemental, primitive . . . rather uncivilised.'

Aldo raised his voice slightly. ‘I had no choice. I was starving, I had to do what I could to get by. Look, it's difficult for me to talk about those days. It's not something I like to think about all that much.'

‘Dark memories?'

‘Not dark. Just unpleasant.'

‘I'm sure. You must have been desperate.'

‘At times. But you can get used to anything if you have to.'

‘So you don't feel guilty?'

‘Why should I feel guilty?'

‘Just wondering . . .'

‘I've done nothing wrong. My situation was none of my doing.'

‘Your situation? None of your doing?'

‘I had no choice.'

‘We always have a choice. Always. For example, you could choose to stand up and walk out of this office now . . .'

Aldo shifted in his seat.

‘. . . but of course we would then be free to bring you back here again, and we would simply have to start once more from the beginning.'

‘So what fucking choice is that?'

‘Watch your fucking language,' said Inspector Marchiori.

‘The choice to contest your destiny,' said the Chief Inspector.

‘That doesn't sound like much of a choice to me.'

‘Perhaps we'll have to choose to differ. But the thing I do find difficult to understand is this . . . if your situation was so desperate, and I have no reason to suspect that it wasn't, why did you wait until the beginning of December to start playing your violin again . . . in the street, I mean?'

Aldo leant forward, rested his hand on the desk and stared the Chief Inspector in the eyes. ‘How could you ever understand? Coming back from where I'd been, you can't just pick things up again where you left them. It's not that easy, it can't be done, everything was gone, all shot to hell. I had nothing left in me, and there was nothing left for me here, so what the fuck was I supposed to do? It was all gone and I was empty and I couldn't have played if I'd wanted to.'

‘But after four or five months of . . . scavenging . . . you felt able to?'

‘Those four or five months were considerably better than the preceding years.'

‘So you didn't play at all? Until December?'

‘No.'

‘But you had the violin? You'd had it for years? A number of years?'

‘Yes, I've already told you that.'

‘So during the war, where was it during the war, this violin? You say your family has, well, disappeared, gone away, whatever . . . where was the violin all that time? I don't imagine you took it with you.'

‘Are you making fun of me?'

The Chief Inspector shook his head and looked at Inspector Marchiori and laughed.

‘Of course not, that would be unprofessional. But tell me now, where was the fucking violin all that time!?'

‘Fuck you!'

The Chief Inspector stood up. Inspector Marchiori walked around behind Aldo and placed a hand on his shoulder.

The Chief Inspector enquired again, leaning closer this time.

‘Signore Gardini, where . . . was . . . the violin . . . during the war?'

Inspector Marchiori rested a hand on Aldo's other shoulder too now and squeezed hard with both hands and then leant down and whispered in Aldo's ear, ‘Where was the fucking violin, you little prick?'

‘On Burano.'

‘Where on Burano?' whispered the Chief Inspector, his face now close up against Aldo's, his fetid breath all over him.

‘In my grandfather's house.'

‘Where you now live?'

‘Where I now live. Now get out of my fucking face!'

The Chief Inspector withdrew slightly.

‘He must be an old man now, your grandfather.'

‘No, he's dead too.'

‘You're joking?'

‘Of course I'm not fucking joking!'

Inspector Marchiori dug his fingertips in hard again.

‘And whose is the house now?' asked the Chief Inspector.

‘Mine.'

‘Are you sure about that? A formal inheritance?'

‘No one has told me otherwise.'

‘Perhaps we should check it out for you, just to make sure everything's in order and all above board? There may be other claimants.'

‘I don't see why that should be necessary.'

‘We shall have to see. Anyway, we seem to have got a little sidetracked in all this excitement, and I know you're in a bit of a hurry to get back to work by . . . three o'clock, was it?' He looked at his watch. ‘I'm so sorry, you're already rather late. We'll try not to keep you much longer.' He sat back down behind the desk and gestured Inspector Marchiori away to one side. ‘So anyway, after the war, in July, when you came back . . . you went to this house on Burano and the violin was there? In a drawer? Under the bed? Placed conveniently upon a shelf?'

‘In the kitchen cupboard.'

‘The kitchen cupboard? A rather unconventional place for a violin, don't you think?'

‘My grandfather was an unconventional man.'

‘And you happened to find the violin, in this cupboard, but you just left it there for a few more months. Even though you needed the money, had nothing to eat, you didn't think of playing it for a bit of loose change now and again? So you could afford a loaf of bread?'

‘Like I told you, I couldn't bring myself to play it. I didn't have it in me.'

‘Oh, how very artistic. How very sensitive. And when you did decide you could play again, once you . . . had it in you, shall we say . . . was it in a suitable condition? After so long in the cupboard?'

‘It was all right, I suppose.'

‘But the strings, for example, weren't they a bit . . . a bit old, a bit dull? The sound can't have been the best.'

‘No.'

‘So I assume you changed them. The instrument sounded clear enough when I heard it.'

‘You know about violins?'

‘A colleague of mine does. Did you change the strings?'

‘Yes.'

‘So you bought new ones?'

‘Er, yes.'

‘From? Did you buy those in Rome too?'

‘No, in Venice of course.'

‘Of course. I don't suppose you still have the receipt? They did give you a receipt, didn't they?'

‘Possibly not. I can't remember.'

The Chief Inspector shook his head. ‘Bad form, very bad form. Assisting a commercial enterprise in the evasion of taxes.'

‘They may have given me a receipt, I really don't remember.'

‘You're getting all ambiguous on me again. How much did you pay for the strings?'

‘I don't know. I can't remember!'

‘For Christ's sake! Do you want us to be here all night? All right, all right, remind me, how long ago did you buy the violin?'

‘A few years ago, like I said.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘How much did it cost?'

Aldo gave an approximate figure. ‘I can't remember exactly – I told you, my dad bought it for me – but it was something like that.'

‘Don't you think it's strange that you remember how much the violin cost several years ago, when you didn't even pay for it . . . that's right, isn't it, you never paid for it? And you can't remember how much you paid for the strings just a couple of months ago.' He looked at Inspector Marchiori. ‘That's quite strange, isn't it?'

‘It certainly is,' Inspector Marchiori agreed. ‘Pretty fucking implausible.'

The clock on the wall struck four.

‘My dad always spent the same on our birthday presents,' Aldo went on. ‘So I know more or less what it cost.'

‘And where in Rome did you . . . did he . . . get it?' asked the Chief Inspector. ‘Or perhaps you don't remember that either. You see, if
you could give us the name of the shop, perhaps they could confirm your story.'

‘After so many years? I don't think so. We got it in the market, anyway. Porta Portese.'

‘How terribly inconvenient. Perhaps you could give us the name of the shop where you bought the strings in December? Or did you get those in a market too?'

‘I don't know the name of the shop, but I can give you the address, roughly.'

‘The address, roughly? That would be helpful. I'd also like you to bring the violin in sometime so my colleagues and I can take a look at it. Because, you see, I've been told it bears a certain distinguishing mark. Nothing too obvious, but rather difficult to duplicate. A knot in the wood, something along those lines.'

‘According to who?'

‘A colleague of mine. Quite an accomplished musician himself, as it happens. A cellist.'

He paused and drew back his lips and his teeth were suddenly visible again. Aldo stiffened in his chair.

‘And the thing is, there's this case that's been puzzling us for, well, three or four months now, I suppose. Since the beginning of December, as it happens. There was a street musician, an acquaintance of this colleague of mine, the cellist – they'd got talking in the street once and had struck up a bit of a friendship, something along those lines. This man, he used to play in Campo Santo Stefano, the kind of thing you do now, I suppose, and he was there most nights and my colleague would stop for a chat on his way home and this fellow would let him try out his violin. And then for a couple of days the man wasn't there and my colleague thought he must be ill . . . it was pretty damn cold and who knows where this fellow lived . . . and then a body was found in one of the canals in San Polo, up one of the back alleys, right out of the way. And guess what? It was this man, and he'd been hit over the head. Well, we assume he'd been hit over the head – of course he may have fallen and hit his head on his way into the water. But the balance of probability, given the nature of
the wound, is that he was struck a heavy blow. By a fist, for example.' He looked at Aldo's hands. ‘And his violin wasn't anywhere in the vicinity, it wasn't near the body, it wasn't floating in the canal . . .'