The Second Day of the Renaissance Read online

  “If you really want something in this life, you work for it.” Spadano extended his hand in welcome. “Good to see you again, Piero Trotti.”

  As the two men shook hands, simultaneously they both seemed to change their minds and hugged each other. “As prickly and irascible as ever. Don’t tell me you’ve given up your boiled sweets.”

  Trotti took a step back and placed a Vichy pastille in his mouth. He nodded towards an overflowing ashtray, “Pity Signora Spadano hasn’t weaned you of those foul Toscani.”

  The general laughed. “Contraband Toscani from Scranton, Pennsylvania.” He gestured to a low divan for Trotti to sit down, then, pulling at the crumpled creases of his trousers, Spadano lowered himself into the armchair opposite. “Coffee?”

  A muscular body and a thick neck. Hair that showed no sign of thinning. For a man of well over sixty-five, Spadano had aged gracefully.

  “I’m trying to give up coffee. The doctor said it was bad for my blood pressure.”

  “But not the sweets?”

  “My dentist told me to give up sweets years ago.” Trotti clicked the sweet truculently against his teeth. “My last remaining vice.”

  “You had so many. Now tell me about the Signora Scola you’re supposed to marry.”

  “Always thought you’d return to Sicily, Spadano.”

  “So did I.” The general nodded as he opened the pack of cigars, “The day the television showed the blown-up Croma at Capaci, my wife stopped eating. Virtually stopped talking to me. Said she’d never accompany me, said if I took a job in Sicily, she’d return to her little town in Lombardy with Chicco. Wasn’t going to have her husband and her child murdered by the Mafia. Sicily didn’t need another Falcone or Borsellino.”

  “Chicco?”

  A proud nod towards a photograph on the desktop. “So here I am in Tuscany, looking after our cultural heritage.”

  “Done very well for yourself.”

  “My son doesn’t get to see the land of his grandparents.” Spadano looked round at the office, at the Byzantine murals, red and gold, at the modern furniture. At the four telephones, at the desk and at the slim, portable computer. “Just sitting things out, Piero. Sitting things out until I can retire and take my wife and child home—home to Sicily, where I belong. I don’t have to tell you I’m not really interested in chasing up grave-robbers and antique dealers. With age, as you’ve no doubt remarked yourself, a man’s ideals can alter.”

  “Never aware you had any ideals, Spadano.”

  “You and I, Piero, we thought we were going to change the world. Instead, the world’s changed us.”

  “The insignia and the pips of the Carabinieri tattooed into your flesh?”

  “I never gave marriage a second thought. Not once in thirty years. As you say, the insignia of the Carabinieri were tattooed into my flesh—into my soul.” Spadano shook his head as he fumbled with a cigar, “I now have a family of my own. My wife and my son’s future’s all I care about—as I enter the foothills of old age.”

  “The pre-Alps.”

  “Your part of the world, isn’t it?”

  “To tell me about your happy family life and your retirement plans—is that why you contacted me?”

  “I thought you’d like to see me, Piero.”

  “Perhaps you thought I’d enjoy this weather, too?”

  Spadano glanced briefly through the window. He turned to face Trotti. “Something I need to tell you.”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  Spadano put the unlit cigar to his mouth, “Somebody wants to kill you, and I thought you should be told.” Spadano added blandly, “A professional killer, Piero.”

  4: C’eravamo Tanto Amati

  The rain ran down the windows of via Milano and against his will, Trotti started to cry, possibly from nostalgia but probably more from a feeling of loss that he now sensed whenever he started thinking about the past, about his past.

  Colleagues in the Questura had given him a video recorder on his retirement, and that autumn afternoon, while the rain pattered against the window of the kitchen, he had watched C’eravamo tanto amati for the second time in his life.

  It was the last film Trotti and Agnese had ever seen together. She had put on her mink stole and together they had gone to the Castello Cinema. It was one of the last occasions he would ever get to talk to his wife as a friend, yet eighteen years on, Trotti had little recollection of the evening in 1978 except that the ice cream vendor fell asleep in the front row and had to be awakened by an irate audience during the interval. Agnese, surprisingly mirthful, had laughed happily.

  C’eravamo tanto amati?

  A typical commedia all’italiana, the film had left no lasting impression on Trotti then. Gassmann, Manfredi and Satta Flores played the roles of partisans who, once the war was over, drifted apart, each following his own destiny as time slowly destroyed any hope of the brave, new Italy that the three friends had fought for.

  There was a moment in the film when Gassmann, now a wealthy lawyer in Rome, recalled his years as a partisan. In a flashback to the hills, he saw his younger self lying spread-eagled on the snow of 1945, killed with a German bullet through the forehead.

  While he watched the film with Agnese, it never occurred to Piero Trotti to identify with the protagonists, even though he was of the same generation.

  Sitting in front of the television, the retired policeman now wondered whether Piero Trotti himself should not have died earlier. A premature death would scarcely have changed the course of history.

  “Like a peasant, you’ve never learned how to enjoy yourself,” Agnese had rebuked him as they walked home, their footfalls echoing off the granite facades of the new town. “Only your work matters, Piero. I don’t believe you even enjoy having a family. You’re dead—a dead father and a dead husband.”

  Had Piero Trotti’s continued existence served any purpose? Had it brought any lasting joy to the world?

  His wife had wanted to believe so for years, but in 1978 she had finally given up and left him and Italy for America.

  Had Trotti died, Francesca and Piera would have been just as happy with another grandfather.

  Had Trotti died, three men, perhaps four, would still be alive today. Alive and breathing God’s air.

  In tears in front of the video machine, Trotti saw himself as an old man impatient for his own demise, an old man who had outlived his usefulness.

  “A professional killer,” Spadano repeated.

  For all his professed philosophy and genuine self-pity, Piero Trotti realized he was in no way ready for death.

  Not yet.

  5: Partisans

  The afternoon light lit up his features. “You remember Gracchi?” The general had the good looks of a mature film star.

  “A common enough name, Spadano.”

  “You met him back in 1978—when the little girl was kidnapped?”

  “You mean Anna Ermagni, my goddaughter?”

  “So you do remember Gracchi?”

  “Son of the city architect, as I recall. Originally from Turin. Bit of an armchair terrorist.”

  “More armchair than terrorist,” Spadano ran the tip of the cigar along his mouth. “One of the founders of Lotta Continua.”

  “Gracchi’s out to gun me down?”

  The grey eyes watched Trotti carefully. “Why do you pretend to forget these things?”

  “You expect me to remember Gracchi? Eighteen, twenty years ago. He was important, Spadano?”

  Spadano spoke from behind a cloud of smoke, “You never call me by my Christian name.”

  “Never knew you had one. Gracchi’s a professional killer?”

  “Gracchi was murdered.”

  “He got on my nerves, too.”

  “When you knew him, Piero, it was during the Years of Lead. Like a lot of wealthy
kids, he was overeducated and underemployed. That’s why he got involved with the extreme left wing. Lotta Continua and that sort of thing.”

  “Gracchi accused me of being a fascist.”

  “Anybody in uniform was a Fascist in the seventies.”

  “My brother was murdered by the Repubblichini. My cousin Sandro received a German bullet in his scalp. We’re not Fascists in the Trotti family.”

  “You and I are old men, Piero—nobody wants to know about our beliefs or what we fought for fifty years ago. The twentieth century? That’s ancient history, now. Who could care less?”

  “Then why mention Gracchi to me? I’m ancient history—and I’m retired.”

  “You were unfair on him.”

  “Unfair on most people. At least, that’s what I’m told.”

  Spadano resumed, “Gracchi was never a terrorist. Not the Red Brigades and no kneecapping of the bosses.”

  “I had reason to believe he was involved in Anna’s kidnapping.”

  “You were wrong.”

  A shrug, “Not the first time.”

  “Which never stopped you from roughing him up.”

  Trotti said, “A spoilt, clever kid, he thought he could play on the big boys’ playground. Then he went running back to daddy as soon as he got a bloody nose.”

  “Gracchi spent a year in prison for the murder of a policeman.”

  “Ancient history, Spadano.”

  The general repressed a sigh, “My first name’s Egidio.”

  “If it’s not Gracchi who’s trying to kill me, why mention him?”

  Spadano appraised Trotti thoughtfully, was about to say something then changed his mind. He placed his cigar on the edge of the ashtray. “Sure you wouldn’t like something to drink? Something to sweeten you up?”

  “A coffee, if you’ve got it.”

  “Against your doctor’s orders?”

  “My doctor doesn’t spend his nights in the waiting room at Empoli.”

  Spadano leaned sideways and pushed a button on the Venetian desk. He gave a brief order as his eyes watched Trotti. Then he sat back. “You still haven’t told me about your young lady friend, Piero.”

  “I’d rather hear about your professional killer.”

  Spadano asked, “Your wife’s still in America?”

  “Most probably.”

  “And your daughter?”

  Piero Trotti relaxed; a smile creased the tired face, “Pioppi gave birth for the second time last year. In Bologna.”

  “The boy you always wanted?”

  “A little girl called Piera.”

  “Named after her grandfather?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Let’s hope being a grandfather will make you a little less surly.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” Trotti added, “Egidio.”

  6: Killer

  Trotti glanced through the window. The view belonged to the Renaissance: the duomo against the backdrop of a grey sky. Trotti had the feeling of not belonging; of having been catapulted into an alien world, a medieval world. “How do you manage to stay so healthy, Spadano?”

  “All the boiled sweets I don’t eat, the sugared coffee I don’t drink. And a lot of activity.”

  “Being married to Signora Bianchini made you rather fat, Spadano.”

  “Calabria made me fat—but thank goodness, that’s all behind me.” The general’s hand tapped the flat belly. “In Calabria I got no exercise because I spent my time drinking beer and breaking wind in helicopters.”

  “You mean farting?”

  “We have a swimming pool here in Siena.”

  “Perhaps I should have joined the Arma.”

  “Not sure you’d’ve enjoyed the Carabinieri. You always had a problem with discipline, Piero.”

  “News to me.”

  “Your ingrained conviction that only Piero Trotti can possibly be right. You were a lot better off with the civilians in the Polizia.”

  “A lot better off retired.”

  “I believe you.”

  The sun appeared briefly through the dark clouds over Tuscany. It cast a sudden light on the dome of the cathedral.

  “Farting’s rather coarse, isn’t it, Piero?”

  “Wasn’t Pugliese the man Gracchi killed?”

  “Gracchi killed nobody; he wasn’t even in Milan at the time of Commissario Pugliese’s murder—but he spent the better part of a year in prison, and perhaps that’s what changed him—teaching on a literacy program.”

  “Changed him?”

  “Gracchi’d gotten his degree from the University of Trento in the late sixties—he was part of the first generation that studied sociology there, then managed to turn the university into a revolutionary hotbed. Ten years later in prison he found himself sharing a tiny cell with four common criminals and he started to realize it wasn’t armed revolt that was going to change Italy. Armed revolt or anything else.”

  “He needed a degree in sociology and a year doing time in San Vittore to understand that?”

  Spadano grinned bleakly. “Gracchi distanced himself from the revolt of the proletariat—and from the more radical elements of Lotta Continua who wanted to continue the armed struggle.”

  “You mean he had a criminal record and he needed to find a decent job with a salary at the end of each month?”

  “Gracchi didn’t have a criminal record at all. There was no case against him—he was released for lack of evidence. Anyway, his father could’ve got Gracchi a job any time at the city hall in your foggy little town.”

  “God help us.”

  “That’s when Gracchi went off to India. Went to meditate with some oriental guru who had all the answers to life’s mysteries. When Gracchi came back to Italy, he was wearing saffron robes.”

  Trotti laughed as he sucked the sugar from his coffee spoon.

  “More or less given up on politics, and he was now looking for a spiritual solution.” Spadano added, “Gracchi chose to set up a rehabilitation center in Sicily. Rehabilitation for drug addicts.”

  “Mother Theresa in saffron?”

  “He needed a purpose to his life. What else could he do?”

  “Start a family—like you.”

  “He was just eighteen when he married and the marriage’d fallen apart. Gracchi had lost touch with his son, who lived with the ex-wife in Turin. By now Marxism and the revolt of the working classes was falling apart all around him. As Gracchi used to say himself, ‘Dopo Marx, Aprile.’”

  “I don’t recall his having a sense of humor.”

  “Didn’t give him much opportunity, Piero. Too busy kicking his head.” Spadano smiled serenely. “He went to Trapani. Though Gracchi’s mother’s Sicilian, he’d never been to Sicily before—he was born ‘up there,’ as we say in Palermo. Born and bred in Turin. He wanted to get back to his roots and in Sicily, Gracchi found a new direction to his life.”

  “Sicily, Sicily, Sicily,” Trotti dropped the spoon noisily onto the saucer. “Why d’you keep talking to me about Sicily? And about Gracchi?”

  Spadano smiled indulgently.

  “I know nothing about Sicily, Spadano. I’ve never been there and I don’t know anybody there—apart from you. I don’t give a damn for Gracchi, alive or dead and I don’t give a damn about Sicily. Are you trying to tell me there’s a contract on my head?” Trotti ignored Spadano’s protesting hand. “Is that what you’re saying, Spadano? A Mafia hit man out there waiting for me?”

  Spadano did not reply while the steady grey eyes held Trotti’s.

  7: Res Publica

  Trotti had folded his arms across his chest. He sat quietly; there was the occasional click of the Vichy pastille against his teeth.

  Spadano said, “In the seventies, Gracchi’d’ve been considered a fool—an outsider and a foo
l. We Sicilians are a backward people. We’ve never really been interested in change—particularly if it comes from outside. The viddani managed to change all that.”

  “Viddani?”

  “The peasants, Piero—they went too far. Not the Palermitans but the upstarts, the Corleonesi. The viddani and their drugs made things change. We Sicilians are conservative. Violence doesn’t frighten us, but change does. We’ve always lived with violence—it’s in our blood, it’s in the dust, it’s in the wind. It’s something we learn as children—it’s all part of the tradition, our sense of being different—of being Sicilian and being better. It took us a long time to realize the changes the Corleonesi were making were directed against us, against Sicilians.”

  “Still see yourself as a Sicilian?”

  “You’re a Sicilian for life.” Spadano did not smile. “And for death.”

  “That’s why you live in Siena?”

  “There was a time when no Sicilian would’ve ever considered turning to the mainland, turning to Rome for help. During the seventies and the years of Anonima Sequestri, Sicilians didn’t care where all the easy money was coming from. A few industrialists kidnapped in the North? The only thing to matter was the narcolire should keep pouring into the economy. The shops in Palermo had nothing to envy those in Rome or Milan, even if they were paying their pizzo to the clans. So what? Who could care less?” Another wave of Spadano’s hand. “Sicilians like the winning side and the winning side’s the Mafia. We’ve always preferred our Mafia to the Phoenicians or the Normans or the Arabs or the Bourbons. Or to Rome. That’s the way things would’ve gone on indefinitely if the Corleonesi hadn’t started processing heroin. Until then, Palermo had simply been a point of transit between the Middle East and America. But by refining heroin, the viddani introduced their idea of added value—a thousand lire of raw opium could be sold for a million lire. The Corleone sold their refined stuff—not just ‘up there’ in Milan or Rome but in Palermo and Messina and Trapani. Selling drugs to children—our children. With heroin pouring into Palermo, with syringes lying in the gutter, our retarded, insular emotions began to change. For the first time in two and a half thousand years, we started asking questions about ourselves, about the nature of our thing.”