Converging Parallels Page 7

  “What work?”

  “The cutting and the sawing and the sewing.”

  “Oh, that!” There was something sad about his smile. “The nurses.”

  “They’re not qualified.”

  “As I said, this is Italy. Do you want the casualties to die? Because that’s what’d happen if I got my hands on them. For the time being, at least. You see, I’m getting my first practical training now. And I’m one of the lucky ones—the professor seemed to like me and he managed to get me a place in the hospital. All students want to get into the hospital to get a real training. About one student in twenty is accepted. There just aren’t the places.”

  “I’ll make a point of not coming to the hospital for treatment.”

  “You’re better off at our Policlinico than in most Italian hospitals. In most places you can go in with a broken arm and come out with glandular fever.” He shrugged modestly. “And I’m not all that bad. I’ve done a few things—a few childbirths, even a caesarean. And …” He opened a bedside drawer and fumbled around. “I can’t find it but there should be an appendix around somewhere. All my own work.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I’m sure I left it here. Perhaps Tania took it.”

  “Tania?”

  “A friend.”

  “She has strange tastes.”

  “She wasn’t going to eat it. She likes to tidy up.”

  They looked at each other without speaking. The corner of Clerice’s mouth twitched as though he wanted to laugh. “Commissario, how can I help you?” He paused. “Don’t tell me it’s about somebody I’ve slaughtered. The old lady with cystitis? Or the Neapolitan with piles? Terminal hemorrhoids.”

  “I’m looking into the disappearance of a child.” He produced the photograph and while the young doctor looked at the picture, Trotti moved past him and went to the window. It looked down onto the intersection of via Darsena and vicolo Lotario. The three boys were still in the public gardens; the two older ones were striking the trunk of a tree. The small boy stood slightly apart, his head bowed. “Yesterday afternoon,” Trotti said, “at about this time, the girl you’re looking at disappeared from the gardens opposite. Were you at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing?” Trotti turned round, his hand still holding the billowing edge of the curtain.

  “Sleeping. Or at least, I think so. I normally get back at about one. Then by the time I’ve eaten, I feel tired. I need to sleep.” He scratched at the side of his head where the dark hair met his cheek. “At this time yesterday I was sleeping.”

  “You’re not sleeping now and the bed is still made up.”

  “I’m waiting for you to go, Commissario.”

  The atmosphere had changed. It had suddenly grown a lot colder and Trotti knew it was his fault. A young man—an innocent, law-abiding doctor—and he was treating him like a criminal. He could hear the professional disbelief in his own voice, the flat, untrusting monotonous questions of a questurino.

  “You didn’t get up at any time to go to the window? You didn’t look out onto the public gardens?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t notice anything suspicious?”

  “I was asleep, Commissario.” The smile had lost its friendliness, the corner of the red lips remained still. “And with your permission, I’d like to sleep now.” Even as he spoke Clerice pulled back the bed sheets and started closing the blinds.

  “I shall go then,” Trotti said emptily.

  They shook hands. No smile. As the door closed behind him, Trotti heard the key turning in the lock.

  He went down the stairs slowly. In the main hall, the door to the concierge’s apartment was open but she was nowhere to be seen. The smell of boiled vegetables was strong.

  Trotti was about to leave when he noticed the telephone call box in a shallow alcove. He took a token from his wallet, dialed. The phone was picked up immediately.

  “Gino?”

  “Questura.”

  “It’s Trotti.”

  Gino laughed. “Where are you?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “The Avvocato Romano phoned again for you.”

  “Is Magagna back?”

  “No.”

  “Well, who is there?”

  “Pisanelli. He came back half an hour ago.”

  “Okay.” Trotti clicked his tongue. “Tell him I want him. Tell him to take the yellow folder from my desk and to come in a car. I’ll be at the gypsy camp in twenty minutes and I don’t want him to be late. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Trotti hung up.

  He found another token in his hip pocket. He dialed and as the phone was picked up at the other end of the line, the token clattered noisily within the machine.

  “Pronto.”

  Pioppi.

  “Papa here. Is mother back yet?”

  “Where are you calling from, Papa? Are you coming home for supper?”

  “If I’m late, eat by yourself. Take something from the freezer.”

  Pioppi’s voice was lower. “Mother’s not here.” There was a note of reproach and Trotti did not know who it was directed at. “Please hurry back, Papa. You know I don’t like being alone.”

  “Do your homework. And if you want, you can watch television.”

  “I’m lonely.”

  “I’ll be back later, Pioppi. Ciao, ciao.”

  He lowered the telephone gently and moved out of the alcove.

  “Commissario!”

  With heavy splayed movements of her legs, the concierge was coming towards him. She brushed the hair from out of her eyes. She was smiling and in her hand she held a bulging plastic bag. “For you, Commissario.”

  “What?”

  She handed him the bag. “Freshly cut from the garden. Giovanni’s best—no insecticides and no fertilizers.”

  He looked into the bag; it was full of green lettuce.

  “It is for your wife. I’m sure she must be very beautiful, being married to a nice man like you. And a good man. Get her to make you a nice salad—with fresh eggs and olive oil.”

  Trotti took the bag, thanked her and left the college.

  10

  THE WOMEN OF Borgo Genovese wore black dresses and they used to come down to the river to wash their dirty linen. Now everybody had a washing machine and the women had disappeared. However, there were still the old photographs. They stood, their backs to the camera, beating the sheets against the pebbles of the Po; in the background, the city rising up from the river and on the horizon, the majestic dome of the cathedral. Now an enterprising baker used one of the ancient photographs as decoration on his packages. He had a smart shop in Strada Nuova and around Easter time, his sponge cakes—liberally dusted with icing sugar—could be bought in boxes and on the lid, a sepia tinted reproduction of the old women.

  Trotti could remember seeing them before the war.

  On leaving the college, he cycled along the Lungo Po. The road was flat, there was a slight wind behind him and the white tires hissed on the surface of the road. It was nearly half past five. The air was warmer, the threatening grey clouds had disappeared. The sky was cloudless. Tomorrow it would be hot.

  On the far side of the bridge, he stopped outside a tobacconist’s and leaned his bicycle against a lamppost. He went into the shop. A bell rang above his head as he was greeted by the dusty smell of black tobacco and licorice. The man behind the counter had a round head and hair the color of straw. He was out of sweets, he said without looking up. “And I can’t give you any change.”

  “I don’t want change.” Trotti placed a five hundred lire note on the dish which advertised—incongruously, he thought—fodder for cattle and fowl. “I want five packets of sweets.”

  The man looked up and was apologetic. “They come in here, you see, and they all want change. They think I’ve got change because I’ve got a public telephone. But believe me, coins are hard to come by and I can’t ke
ep running backwards and forwards to the banks. And anyway, the banks won’t give you coins any more. They’ve all been taken, the fifty lire pieces and the hundred lire pieces. Gone to Japan to make watches.” From under the counter he produced a carton of pineapple-flavored sweets. “In France and Germany they’ve got change. It’s only us, the Italians, who have to put up with this absurdity. The tourists laugh at us, you know. ‘No small change?’ they say. ‘Nix gut.’ ”

  “I don’t really like pineapple.”

  “I can’t give you any change,” the man said unhelpfully as he shook his head.

  “Give me two packets.” Trotti moved towards a rack of postcards. “And I’ll take a couple of these.” He took two views of the Sforzesco castle.

  The man put the sweets in a bag—which advertised the same brand of animal fodder. “Four hundred and fifty lire. But I haven’t got cash. Another packet perhaps.”

  “Keep the change.” Trotti left, the doorbell ringing after him.

  The people of Borgo Genovese had the reputation of being tight-fisted.

  Trotti put a sweet in his mouth and, taking his bicycle, he went along the path that led down between the shops to the river’s edge. The wheels slipped on the fresh mud of the incline. The rims were too wet for the brakes to function well. Trotti got off and, holding his bicycle by the saddle, he let it run down to the flat. Occasionally, the front wheel jumped as it hit a large pebble.

  In the last two years, the banks of the river—and the river itself—had been made a natural park. It was the mayor’s idea. All building projects had been halted and now waste water and sewage from the city went through purifiers before being recycled into the grey water of the Po.

  He followed the edge of the river; from time to time he lifted the bicycle to step over the rails that ran from several boathouses down to the water’s edge. There were a few floating jetties, too, their grey wood bleached by the sun. As Trotti walked, a swarm of kayaks nosing upstream moved past him, the faint sound of people calling to each other.

  The gypsy camp was partially hidden by a copse; the path moved away from the river towards the trees. Beneath Trotti’s shoes, the ground squelched and the bicycle left deep, overlapping tracks. For twenty meters the trees cut out much of the afternoon light; then he stepped out onto the grass field and into the sunshine.

  There were a few caravans. Forming a loose square, they stood alone, deserted by the vehicles that once pulled them. The triangular trailer attachments rested against the grass.

  It was a large, open field with trees on two sides and to the south, the high embankment of the Milan-Genoa motorway. The ceaseless hum of traffic was partly drowned by a cassette recorder; it stood on the top of a pile of tires and emitted a strange, harmonic music. Two young girls in dark red dresses that came down to their bare feet were dancing. They stopped suddenly when they saw Trotti. They stood as though petrified, their dark eyes following him distrustfully.

  On up-ended boxes seven men were sitting round an open fire. Sparks jumped upwards towards the sky; the men sat forward, their forearms resting on their thighs. Several of them held glasses; they stopped talking and turned to watch Trotti approach.

  Their clothes were worn. Shabby jackets that came no lower than the waist, felt hats pushed back on the head and boots without laces. Grey trousers, black trousers—they were shiny with wear and mud-stained where the edges rubbed against the boots.

  Two Mercedes Benz Saloons stood apart. Gleaming, spotless, with their gunmetal finish, they looked like an advertisement against the damp grass. They had oval German registration plates.

  As though pulled by hidden strings, the two girls suddenly came alive again; they darted into a caravan, closing the battered door behind them. Trotti noticed the edge of a curtain move behind the caravan’s misted window.

  Here and there across the grass there were bits of paper, car tools, a few plastic utensils and a broken doll.

  He leaned his bicycle against a tree. “Dimitri.”

  A man stood up. He had a narrow, worn face—a curve of thin wrinkles formed an arch above his mouth. He wore a felt hat; beneath the battered brim, the man’s hair was quite white and it hung in loose lanks down to the shoulders of his jacket.

  They stood facing each other, a couple of meters apart.

  “We had an agreement,” Trotti said.

  The man opened a mouth full of gold teeth; he did not speak.

  “I don’t want any of you going into the town, stealing from the shops.”

  “They know.” He moved a pace closer. Trotti could smell his odor of wood smoke and old dirt. “They are young.”

  “Don’t steal and you can stay—as long as you like. That was the agreement. You must keep your young people under control.”

  The eyes were the same color as the band around the hat; they now sparkled. “We harm nobody.”

  “In a half hour I can have you cleared out.”

  “The young ones want”—he shrugged—“some pocket money.”

  “They could work for it,” Trotti said. “All of you could work. You could settle down, buy houses—not cars.”

  The man seemed amused. “That is not our way of life.”

  “It is the way of other people.”

  “We travel,” he said simply. “We know no other way.” He turned and nodded towards the caravans. “We are together, we are happy.”

  “Other people have to work.”

  “We work.” He folded his arms.

  The cassette player wailed. No one was listening.

  Trotti took the photograph from his pocket. “This girl—do you know her?”

  With his arm stretched out as far as possible, Dimitri took the photograph. The hands were slightly greasy and he smeared it with his shapeless fingers. “Your daughter?”

  “My goddaughter.”

  The man nodded; a small bridge of compassion.

  “I need information.”

  Dimitri did not appear to understand. He moved back to his companions and, speaking in the strange language, handed them the photograph. The men stood round, some rising to their feet, each turning his neck. They spoke excitedly, they pointed. They shook their heads.

  “They haven’t seen her.”

  “If you see her, you must tell me.”

  A woman appeared from beyond the caravans. She wore a satin floral bodice and a dark turquoise skirt down to her feet. High upon her chest, she held a child; dark hair, dark inquisitive eyes and tearstains down his sunburned face. The woman ran nimbly across the grass towards Trotti and began shouting at him. Her voice was harsh, her tongue grating against the palate. She gestured with her free hand towards the child she held; then she prodded at Trotti. Her dark finger touched his shirt.

  “What does she want?”

  Dimitri clicked his tongue and moved away.

  “Tell her to be quiet.”

  The woman continued shouting.

  “Tell her to be quiet. What’s wrong with her, what does she want?”

  A crowd of children was forming. They appeared from out of nowhere; smiling faces, dark lustrous hair, they were enjoying the entertainment. They held their hands against the sun and watched Trotti and the screaming woman.

  “Tell her to go away. It was you that I wanted to speak to.” Trotti raised his voice. The men were watching him without any apparent emotion. He became aware of his own vulnerability. In the distance the kayaks had now reached the bend in the river, the paddles hitting the water’s surface in silent unison.

  “She wants her husband,” Dimitri said; he had now rejoined his companions. He put the stub of an old cigar in his mouth and took a cigarette lighter—Dupont or a very good imitation—from his pocket.

  The girl was still prodding.

  “I haven’t got her husband.”

  Perhaps she understood Italian. She raised her voice yet louder and, hitching the child higher on her chest, she began to scream, “Sotsul meu, sotsul meu.” Her mouth was large with several
teeth missing. She had a kind of prettiness but she was prematurely old.

  The children clapped their hands in delight; the men, sitting round the campfire, stared with blank faces. They had rounded features and skin of a soft, oily texture.

  “Her husband has done nothing wrong.”

  “I know nothing about her husband.” Trotti was beginning to feel angry. And absurd, and perhaps even slightly ill at ease. He could not fend off the jabbing dark hand for fear of hurting the woman. The cars hummed past on the motorway; it was another world. He was alone, he was among strange people. He could have been in a foreign country.

  “Sotsul meu.”

  A foolish dog barked angrily from the end of its short chain.

  Dimitri spoke with the woman, who answered him in the same high scream.

  “She says your friend took him.”

  “Which friend?”

  Dimitri asked the woman and then translated, “The man with the car. He came an hour ago; over there.” He pointed towards Borgo Genovese.

  “I know absolutely nothing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Dimitri shrugged.

  “In uniform?”

  Again Dimitri translated, “Yes.”

  The woman was now wailing; a keening cry of lamentation. The children ceased to smile. She fell slowly to her knees, still holding the little boy.

  The other men stood up. They moved towards Trotti. Their arms hung loose at their sides. One—he had a cold face and a drooping nose—wore a corduroy jacket. The men looked at Trotti. Blank faces, dark eyes and a cold, concealed anger. The woman was screaming on a single, high-pitched note. Trotti looked about. The kayaks had moved out of sight. The traffic continued to rumble with distant indifference.

  It was then that Pisanelli arrived.

  He came in an Alfetta and skidded on the muddy track that ran down from the road. He parked the car alongside the two Mercedes and got out. He smiled sheepishly and raised his hand in a vague salute towards Trotti.

  11

  LATER THEY SAT in the car while over the radio the woman’s voice scratched unnecessarily. From time to time, Pisanelli picked up the microphone and spoke softly, almost apologetically, into the black wire mesh.