He opened his mouth.
He clenched his fingers.
He thought he was going to pass out but didn’t. His legs, as stiff as stilts, one step at a time, carried him over to Bruno Miele. Mechanically he asked him: ‘What’s happened?’
Miele, who was busy coordinating the operation of loading the body onto the ambulance, swung round irritably. But seeing Graziano appear like a ghost, he was puzzled for a moment, then exclaimed: ‘Graziano! What are you doing here? Weren’t you on tour with Paco de Lucia?’
‘What’s happened?’
Miele shook his head and in the tone of someone who has seen it all before said: ‘Miss Palmieri’s died. That teacher from the junior high. She was electrocuted in her bath … We don’t know if it was an accident. The pathologist says it could have been suicide. I knew it, everyone said she was half crazy. She was out of her mind. It’s strange, though, her mother died the same night. A massacre. Oh, by the way, I’m having a little party this afternoon, nothing very grand. I’ve been promoted, you see …’
Graziano turned round and walked slowly back to his car.
Bruno Miele was disconcerted for a moment, but then turned back to the nurses: ‘What are you trying to do now? There isn’t room for both of them in there.’
The positive currents had suddenly disappeared and the albatross, its magnificent wings numb with pain, was plummeting into a grey sea, and a black, bottomless abyss was opening up, ready to receive him.
147
Pierini was feeling good.
The teachers had bitched at him a lot during the year but in the end they’d passed him. His father was happy.
He himself couldn’t give a shit.
I’m damned if I’m going back next year anyway.
Flame hadn’t finished school either and he’d said that if you simply refused to take their crap, in the end they stopped going on at you.
The new development was that he had made some influential friends in Orbano. Mauro Colabazzi, aka Jawbone, and his mates. A gang of sixteen-year-olds who hung out night and day outside the Yogobar, a gelateria that specialised in yoghurt ice cream.
Jawbone, who had been around a bit, had taught him a couple of very simple tricks for getting rich. Smash a window, put two coloured wires together and bingo, the car is yours.
Child’s play.
And for every car you brought him you got three whistlers (three hundred thousand lire). Only one and a half whistlers if you did the job with Flame, but what the hell, two’s company.
And Ischiano Scalo, in some ways, could be seen as one big car park full of vehicles just waiting to be ripped off, and if you added the fact that the local police were a bunch of imbeciles, the whole situation could not but put him in a good mood.
That night, for example, he was intending to steal Bruno Miele’s new Golf. He was sure the fool didn’t even lock it, convinced as he was that nobody would dare to steal a car from a policeman. How wrong can you be!
And next day he was going with Jawbone to Genoa, where he’d heard there were rich pickings to be had.
That’s why he was feeling good.
The only thing he was a bit sorry about was that he’d heard Miss Palmieri had died. Drowned in the bath. One of his favourite masturbatory fantasies had gone, because wanking over a dead woman isn’t much fun and someone had even told him it brought bad luck.
After he’d set fire to her car, he had grown quite fond of the schoolmistress, his anger had cooled, he had almost come to love her, but then he had seen her with that arsehole Biglia, the guy he’d had a fight with that day when he had been beating up Moroni.
That was the kind of thing that drove him wild.
How could any woman screw a jerk like that?
The schoolmistress deserved better than some poor fool who thought he was Bruce Lee. He must be well hung, that was the only explanation.
And now she was dead.
But who cares, anyway. He caught the frisbee and threw it to Ronca, who was standing opposite him. The disc skimmed across the piazza and arrived as hard and true as a bullet, whipped through Ronca’s hands and landed by the drinking fountain.
‘What are your hands made of, shit?’ shouted Bacci, who was standing by the palm tree.
They had been playing for half an hour, but the heat was beginning to make itself felt and soon the piazza would be as hot as a grill. He was tired of playing with those two idiots. He would seek out Flame and go to Orbano to hear the latest news at the Yogobar.
At that moment Moroni appeared, on his bike.
Something must have changed, because he didn’t feel an immediate urge to beat him up. Since he had been hanging around with Jawbone, he had lost interest in that kind of entertainment. He had tired of playing the cock on the dung-heap. A few kilometres away he felt that there were infinitely more exciting things to do and picking on a loser like Moroni was stupid.
Pathetic little jerk, he was the only one they’d failed. And he’d burst into tears in front of the noticeboards. If he could have done, he’d have given him his own place in the higher year, for all he cared about it. And what if he was going out with that little slut Gloria I’m-the-only-one-who’s-got-one? Pierini cared even less about that, he had the hots for a little girl he’d met at the Yogobar, a certain Loredana, known as Lory.
I’ll leave him alone.
But Ronca was not of the same opinion.
As soon as Moroni came within range, he spat at him and said: ‘Hey, Dickhead, you failed and we didn’t!’
148
The gob of spit hit him on the cheek.
‘Hey, Dickhead! You failed and we didn’t!’ Ronca jeered.
Pietro braked, put his feet on the ground and wiped himself clean with his hand.
He spat in my face!
He felt his guts twist together and then a blind rage explode within him, a black fury which this time he wasn’t going to suppress. Too many things had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours, and now he was getting spat on as well. No, he couldn’t accept that.
‘You’re going to repeat the whole year, you stupid little Dickhead,’ continued that odious little flea, hopping around him.
Pietro sprang off his bike, took three paces forward and slapped him in the face as hard as he could.
Ronca’s head bent over leftwards like a punchball, bent slowly back over to the other side like a slack spring, then finally straightened up again.
Ronca opened his eyes wide in slow motion, passed his hand over the offended cheek and stammered, in utter amazement: ‘Who did that?’
The blow had come so quickly that Ronca hadn’t even realised he had been hit. Pietro saw Bacci and Pierini arriving to help their crony. He was past caring by now. ‘Come on then, you bastards!’ he roared, putting up his fists.
Bacci raised his hands, but Pierini grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Wait. Wait, let’s see if Ronca can beat him.’ Then he addressed Ronca. ‘It was Moroni who hit you. Go on, hit him back, what are you waiting for? I bet you can’t. I bet Moroni beats you hollow.’
For the first time since Pietro had known him, Ronca had lost that odious leer on his face. He was rubbing his cheek and looking bewildered. He glanced first at Pierini, then at Bacci, and realised that this time nobody was going to help him. He was on his own.
So he behaved like the desert dragon, that harmless non-venomous lizard, which, to frighten its adversaries, looks mean, raises its crest, swells up, hisses and goes red all over. Very often this technique works. But for Stefano Ronca it didn’t.
He gnashed his teeth, tried to look fierce, jumped up and down and threatened him with: ‘Now I’m going to hurt you. Really, really hurt you. You’re going to suffer like hell,’ then he threw himself on Pietro, shouting ‘I’m going to whip your arse!’
They rolled over and over on the ground. In the middle of the piazza. Ronca seemed epileptic, but Pietro grabbed him by the wrists, pinned him to the ground, got his shins over his arms and rained
punches on his face, neck and shoulders, making strange hoarse noises. And if Pierini hadn’t been there to grip him by the scruff of the neck, God knows what he would have done to him. ‘That’s enough! That’s enough, you’ve beaten him! Now stop it!’ He pulled him away, Pietro still kicking at the air. ‘You’ve won.’
Pietro brushed off the dust, breathing heavily. His knuckles hurt and his ears were buzzing.
Ronca had got to his feet and was crying. A trickle of blood ran down from his nose. He limped over to the drinking fountain. Bacci was laughing and clapping his hands in delight.
Pietro picked up his bike.
‘It’s not fair,’ said Pierini, lighting a cigarette.
Pietro got on to the saddle. ‘What?’
‘Them failing you.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You’re right.’
Pietro put his foot on the pedal. ‘I must be going. Bye.’
But before he could move, Pierini asked him: ‘Do you know Miss Palmieri’s dead?’
Pietro looked him straight in the eye. And he said it: ‘Yes, I know. I killed her.’
Pierini blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘Don’t talk crap! She drowned in the bath.’
‘Who are you trying to kid?’ Bacci chimed in.
‘It was me who killed her,’ Pietro persisted, earnestly. ‘I’m not talking crap.’
‘Oh yeah? Why did you kill her, then?’
Pietro shrugged. ‘Because she failed me.’
Pierini nodded in agreement. ‘Prove it.’
Pietro began pedalling slowly away. ‘Inside the house, somewhere, there’s a grass snake, I took it there. Go and see, if you don’t believe me.’
149
It might even be true, Pierini said to himself, throwing away the stub. Moroni’s no bullshitter.
150
The Miele household was celebrating. And there were good reasons for doing so.
In the first place, Bruno had been promoted and in September would be joining a special squad of plain-clothes detectives who would be investigating the links between local and organised crime. His dream was finally coming true. He had even bought a new Golf, to be paid for in fifty-six easy instalments.
In the second place, old Italo was retiring. And with permanent disability he would be getting a tidy little sum at the end of each month. From September onwards, therefore, he would no longer be spending his nights in the cottage by the school, but in his farmhouse with his wife like any normal human being, and would be able to tend to his vegetable patch and watch TV.
So, despite that African heat, father and son had organised a party in the field behind the house.
A long carpet of charcoal embers was surrounded with stones, and on top was an old bedspring, and beef offal, pork chops, sausages, scamorzas and little tunas were roasting.
Italo, in vest and sandals, was checking with a long pointed stick that the meat was done. Now and then he would wipe a damp cloth over his bald pate so as not to get sunstroke and then call out that the sausages were ready.
They had invited practically everyone they knew and there were at least three generations together. Children chasing each other round the vineyard and squirting each other with water from the pump. Pregnant mothers. Mothers with prams. Fathers stuffing themselves with tagliatelle and red wine. Fathers playing bocce with their children. Old men with their wives sheltering from that pitiless sun under the parasol and pergola and fanning themselves. A radio-cassette recorder in a corner was playing Zucchero’s latest album.
Clouds of excited flies buzzed about among the smoke and the delicious food smells and settled on the trays of pastries, rice croquettes and mini-pizzas. Horse-flies were batted away with rolled-up newspapers. Inside the house there were a group of men clustered around the TV watching football and a group of women gossiping in the kitchen as they cut up bread and salami.
Everything as expected.
‘Mm, this carbonara’s delicious. Who made it? Was it auntie?’ Bruno Miele, with his mouth full, asked Lorena Santini, his fiancée.
‘How should I know who made it?’ snorted Lorena, who had other problems at that moment and who, having got sunburned on the beach, was the colour of a lobster.
‘Well why don’t you go and ask? This is how carbonara should be made. Not that pap you make, which is practically a spaghetti omelette. You cook the eggs. I bet this is auntie’s work.’
‘I don’t want to get up,’ protested Lorena.
‘And you expect me to marry you? Ah, never mind.’
Antonio Bacci, who was sitting between Lorena and his wife Antonella, stopped eating and intervened. ‘It is good, I agree. But to make it really special there should have been onions in it. That’s the original Roman recipe.’
Bruno Miele raised his eyes to the heavens. He felt like throttling him. Thank God he wouldn’t be seeing any more of this guy from next winter, otherwise they might have come to blows one day. ‘Don’t you realise what nonsense you talk? I don’t know why you open your mouth. You know nothing about cooking, I remember you telling me once that it spoils bass if you grill it. You don’t know how to eat … Carbonara with onions, for goodness’ sake!’ He had got so worked up that little bits of pasta flew out of his mouth as he talked.
‘Bruno’s right. You know nothing about cooking. Onions go in amatriciana,’ echoed Antonella, who never missed a chance to put the boot in on her husband.
Antonio Bacci held up his hands in surrender. ‘All right, calm down. I didn’t insult you. What would you have done if I’d said there should have been cream in it, killed me? Okay, there shouldn’t have been any onions in it … What’s the big deal?’
‘You’re always sounding off about things you know nothing about. That’s what’s so annoying,’ retorted Bruno, still not placated.
‘I’d have liked it better if there’d been onions in it,’ mumbled Andrea Bacci, who was already on his third helping. The boy was sitting next to his mother, wolfing down his food.
‘Oh sure, that would have made it even more fattening.’ Bruno scowled at his colleague. ‘You ought to take this boy to the doctor. How much does he weigh? Eighty kilos at least. When he starts growing he’s going to be a monster. Watch out, these things shouldn’t be trifled with.’ And to Andrea: ‘Why are you so hungry, anyway?’
Andrea shrugged and began mopping up the sauce with a piece of bread.
Bruno raised his arms and stretched. ‘I could do with a coffee now. By the way, didn’t Graziano come?’
‘Why, is he around? Is he back?’ asked Antonio Bacci.
‘Yes, I saw him outside Miss Palmieri’s house. He asked me what had happened, I told him and he went off without even saying goodbye. Strange.’
‘Do you know what Moroni said?’ Andrea Bacci nudged his father.
Bacci senior ignored him. ‘But wasn’t he supposed to be on tour?’
‘Well, maybe it’s finished. I told him about the party. Perhaps he’ll come.’
‘Papa! Papa! Do you know what Moroni said?’ Andrea persisted.
‘For goodness’ sake, why don’t you go off and play with someone your own age and leave us in peace?’
Bruno was sceptical. ‘The amount of food he’s eaten, he won’t even be able to stand up. You’ll have to call a breakdown truck to lift him.’
‘But I wanted to say something important,’ the boy whimpered. ‘Pietro Moroni said he killed Miss Palmieri …’
‘Okay, now you’ve said it. Run along and play,’ said his father, pushing him away.
‘Wait a minute …’ Bruno pricked up his antennae. The antennae thanks to which he now belonged to a special unit and wasn’t going to remain an ordinary officer like that numbskull Bacci. ‘And why did he say he killed her?’
‘Because she failed him. He said it’s the truth. And he said there’s a grass snake in Miss Palmieri’s house. He put it there. He said to go and see.’
151
Pietro was with his father and Mimmo in the
farmyard nailing boards onto the roof of Zagor’s kennel when the cars arrived. Those two, in their green Peugeot 205 with a Rome number plate, accompanied by a police car.
Mario Moroni looked up. ‘What do they want now?’
‘They’ve come for me,’ said Pietro, laying down his hammer.
SIX YEARS LATER …
Dear Gloria,
First of all, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
A few days ago I spoke to my mother and she told me you’ve decided to go to Bologna University. She heard from your mother. You’re going to do film studies or something, is that right? Not economics after all, then. You were right to hold out against your father. It’s what you wanted to do. People ought to do the things they want to do. I’m sure this film course will be very interesting and Bologna’s a nice lively city. So they tell me, anyway. When I leave the institute I want to travel all round Europe by train and I’ll come and see you, so you can show me around.
It won’t be long now, in two months and two weeks I’ll be eighteen and I’ll be leaving. Amazing, isn’t it? I can hardly believe it – at last I’ll be able to get out of this place and do what I want. I haven’t decided what that is yet. But I’ve heard you can study for a degree at night school and maybe I could do that. They’ve offered me a job here, actually, helping the new arrivals to settle in and that sort of thing. They’d pay me. The teachers say I’m good with children. I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it, all I want now is go on that trip. Rome, Paris, London, Spain. I’ll decide about the future when I get back, there’s time for that.
I must admit I wasn’t sure whether to write to you, we haven’t been in touch for so long. In my last letter I told you I didn’t want you to come and pay me a visit. I hope you weren’t upset but I couldn’t bear to see you like that, after all this time, and in this place, for just a couple of hours. We wouldn’t have known what to say to each other, we would have talked about the usual things people talk about in these cases and then you would have gone and I would have been miserable, I know. I’d made up my mind to phone you as soon as I got out so that we could meet in some nice place, far away from here.