And Then You Die (3 page)

Opposite the grocery, from a white lorry parked at the kerb, fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs were being sold to a bevy of housewives, all of whom were giving the vendor a hard time about his quality, selection and prices, a daily ritual necessary to everyone’s sense of dignity and self-esteem. The women knew that short of driving to one of the supermarkets on the highway inland, they were stuck with what Mario had on offer, in very much the same way that they were stuck with their husbands, children, relatives, homes and general lot in life. Their only perk was the right to bitch loudly and at length about the inequities of the situation, and in this they indulged freely. Mario,
understanding
that this was one of the costs of doing business, entered into me ensuing series of mini-dramas with gusto and vivacity, playing his part to the full.

Zen drifted back across to the shady side of the street, taking in the scene at the greengrocer’s van, a cluster of young people on bicycles, a group of women cooing over a neighbour’s baby, a man leaning against a concrete telephone pole eating an ice cream and eyeing the passers-by. He was wearing a T-shirt with some
sort of English slogan on it. Zen walked down two blocks to the end of the commercial area, then turned left into a street old enough to pre-date the rigid grid which had been imposed on later development, curving gently off past wrought-iron gates and spurts of greenery spilling over weathered walls. The villa which he had been assigned was about halfway along the curve, which ended at a crumbling gateway leading into one of the last remaining portions of the original
pineta
. There was virtually no traffic at all, and no sound to disturb the silence but the
perpetual
murmur of televisions and the occasional yapping of a small, neurotic dog kept by one of the neighbours.

He reached his gate, and for some reason paused before unlocking it to glance over his shoulder. There was no one in sight.
So they already know where you live
, said a voice in his head. ‘Oh, shut up!’ Zen muttered audibly. Such professional paranoia was like the vanity of one of those women on the beach who couldn’t get used to the fact that the sexual stock she had been
living
off for the last thirty years had just tanked in the market. ‘We’re both yesterday’s men,’ he had told Don Gaspare Limina in Sicily, and he had been right. Why couldn’t he accept that he was no longer a player, and never would be again? In the event the Mafia had failed to kill him, thanks to a stroke of luck and their own incompetence, but he was as good as dead just the same.

The gravel driveway inside the gate led to a stairway at the side of the house. At first-floor level this connected with a
balcony
running along the west face. Zen passed the shuttered
windows
and unlocked the door giving access to his domain. He took his groceries through to the kitchen immediately to the left of the front door and put them away neatly, then returned to the large
salotto
which took up most of the apartment and slumped down in an armchair, wincing slightly. The panoply of pain that he had lived with for so long had now lifted, but there were still a few malcontent twinges and jabs prepared to make his life a misery if he stretched too far in the wrong direction, or went to sleep in an unsuitable position, or generally overexerted himself in almost any way whatever. The doctors he went to consult once a week at the hospital in Pietrasanta had assured him that there was no
permanent
damage, and that any ‘perceived discomfort’ was purely
superficial, temporary and nothing to worry about. He believed them, but these pains were less like the dramatic and evidently causal agony he had suffered in the months immediately
following
the explosion than the normal discomforts of age and
decrepitude
, telltale signs that the body was reaching the end of its useful life. This somehow made them even less bearable.

He closed his eyes, feeling the delicious cool of the
high-ceilinged
room begin to massage his stress away. How many such rooms had he passed through on the long journey back to his present convalescence? He would never know. Of the first few weeks, his mind retained only jagged little splinters of
memory
, precise yet totally specific and uncontextualized. For the rest, he had to rely on what he’d been told. The driver had hauled him out of the burning car and radioed for help, and they’d both been rushed to hospital in Catania. After the immediate operation for a collapsed lung, Zen had been transferred by air to a military hospital on the island of Santo Stefano, off the Sardinian coast, where he had spent weeks in traction. Later he had been moved again, first to a sanatorium in the Adige valley, then to a private nursing home in the hills above Genoa.

In all that time, he had seen no one that he knew or could trust, except in the impersonal sense in which you trust a garage mechanic to repair your car. His body had had the best of
attention
, but it was only gradually that he had come to understand that the reason why the authorities were lavishing such care on him was because they needed him alive and presentable to
testify
at an upcoming trial in the United States. The most informative and forthcoming of his visitors had been a young man from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had managed to intimate,
without
of course naming any names, that the Americans had
succeeded
in arresting a number of prominent mafiosi who had been on the Italian ‘most wanted’ list for years, including two
members
of the Ragusa clan whom Zen had identified from
photographs
in the course of a preliminary debriefing at the military base on Santo Stefano. This tended to reflect rather poorly on the Italian authorities, the young diplomat had continued, and it was unanimously felt at the highest levels that to send a hero of the unceasing domestic struggle against ‘the octopus’ to the USA, to testify in person that he had seen Nello and Giulio Rizzo
unloading illegal drugs from the plane on which he himself had just arrived from Malta, would help redress the balance and
generally
help the home side cut a better international
figura
.

Meanwhile, all he had to do was wait and make the most of the amenities of the accommodation that had been placed at his disposal. Which, he had to admit, were considerable. The
property
was apparently owned by two brothers named Rutelli, one based in Turin and the other in Rome, who divided it between them for vacation use. Zen had been allotted the upper storey, while the lower one had been empty until the day before, when he had heard noises indicating that someone had moved in. This someone was presumably the other brother, but Zen had been given no instructions to make contact with him, and had not done so.

The floor he had was more than ample for his needs. There were two bedrooms, a pleasant bathroom, the small but adequate kitchen, and this great living area which breathed an air of calmer, more spacious times. Zen had always believed that every building came with its own aura, a sort of immaterial scent you picked up the moment you crossed the threshold. But unlike a scent, this couldn’t be sprayed on. It was unique and inalienable, and told the sensitive visitor much about the people who had lived in the space and the things that had happened there. Zen had been in beautiful houses he could hardly wait to get out of, so overwhelmingly oppressive was the sense of evil and despair which they radiated, and also in fetid inner-city tenements that felt as serene as a monastery cell. This room was visually
pleasing
, in a restrained, craftsmanlike way, but its real gift to him was the overwhelming sense of peace and contentment it radiated. He didn’t know who had lived there, but he would have testified under oath to their moral character and general probity.

That was his last thought until he woke to find the room
significantly
darker and the clock showing twenty minutes past seven. It took him another moment to remember his dinner date with Gemma, for which he still had not made a booking. He had boastfully said that he could get them into Augusto’s, counting on using Girolamo Rutelli’s name to do the trick, but he hadn’t counted on leaving it this late.

In the event this proved to be no problem. He had only just
dialled the number of the restaurant when the phone was answered by an obsequious voice saying, ‘Augusto’s. Good evening, Dottor Rutelli.’

Zen was speechless for a moment. Then he said, ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘We have Caller Identification installed,
dottore
. I explained it to you last time, don’t you remember? That way we can filter out the riff-raff and answer only the calls that matter. What can we do for you?’

‘I’d like a table for two this evening. About eight, if that’s
possible
.’

‘
Ma certo, dottore. Come no? Alle otto. Benissimo. Al piacere di
rivederla
.’

‘I’ll be dining with a friend named Pier Giorgio Butani,’ Zen went on. ‘If I’m a little late, please look after him.’

He took a shower and then carefully picked out some suitable clothing in the casually formal mode which was the evening norm in Versilia. Realizing that this was a tricky balance to bring off successfully, Zen had taken the bus to Viareggio shortly after his arrival and put himself in the hands of one of the men’s
outfitters
there. As always, his aim was to remain invisible. ‘Get lost in the crowd,’ the young man from the Farnesina had told him. ‘Keep your head down, melt into the background, don’t draw attention to yourself. We have decided against providing you with a resident bodyguard for that very reason, although there will be people keeping an eye on you. But Versilia’s full of tourists at this time of year, and as long as you’re reasonably cautious there’s no earthly reason why anyone should give you a
second
thought. Just remember who you’re supposed to be, and try to look the part.’ This last was a reference to one Pier Giorgio Butani, a distant cousin of Girolamo Rutelli. Butani really existed, just in case anyone checked, but he had moved with his parents to Argentina in the mid-Fifties, only rarely visited Italy and had never been to Versilia.

Zen left the house at a quarter to eight, which gave him just enough time to reach the restaurant in time by cutting across the park at the end of the street. The sun was already down behind the umbrella pines, the air was fresh but still pleasantly warm. The birds that flocked in the gardens all around were chirping
and chattering loudly, but there was no other sound. Zen passed under the gateway to the original estate, past the ruins of the porter’s lodge, and over a hump bridge across one of the narrow canals constructed a century or more earlier to drain the malarial swamps.

In the wood, the shadows were gathering swiftly. The birds here were larger and louder, rarely showing themselves except to swoop in packs across the track in front. To either side, the undergrowth was dense and impenetrable, except to the various small animals which could be heard scuttling away at the sound or smell of this intruder.

It was only when he turned left on to the track leading back towards the shoreline that Zen noticed the other man. He was about thirty metres back, walking calmly along. By now it was almost dark beneath the tall pines. Zen could just make out that the man seemed to be wearing jeans and a short jacket of some kind, and was glancing about him to either side as though
admiring
the beauties of nature.

Zen ignored the warning signal which automatically sounded in his brain, and carried on towards the invisible strip of streets where Augusto’s was situated. He had to learn to become an ordinary civilian again, he told himself. The days of danger and glory were over. No one was trying to kill him, no one was even interested in his existence except as a token witness at a foreign trial, flown in like a consignment of truffles or rare wine, a
luxury
import to impress the locals and make the old country look good. Nevertheless, he counted off another thirty metres, and then dropped his bunch of keys. Retrieving them, he noted that the other walker had also made a left turn at the parting of the ways.

For a moment, he was half inclined to force a confrontation and find out who the man was, but then it occurred to him that it might well be one of those whom he’d been told would be ‘
keeping
an eye on him’. If so, that would be unprofessional and an embarrassment for all concerned. And if not, it would break the cardinal rule of his existence here in Versilia, which was not to draw attention to himself. In the end he decided to do nothing, but he lengthened his stride as much as possible, eager to see the bright lights and crowded streets again.

He was looking forward to his dinner with Gemma, even though he knew hardly anything about her. In the long
wearisome
months since the ‘incident’ and the death of his mother, he had been alone almost the whole time, apart of course from the purely professional and usually painful attentions of doctors, nurses, policemen and bureaucrats. However the evening turned out, it would be a welcome change from all that. And if he knew nothing about Gemma, she knew even less about him. Almost everything he’d told her during their very brief exchanges had necessarily been a lie. He reminded himself that he was going to have to keep that up during the whole of the time they were together, adding new details where called for, but such as were consistent with what Gemma already knew. Maybe it wasn’t going to be such a relaxing evening after all.

At last the gateway at the south-western edge of the former estate appeared in the gloom up ahead. This time, Zen risked an unmotivated glance behind. The man who had been there was nowhere to be seen, but they had passed many minor paths off through the undergrowth to either side, any one of which he might have taken. A moment later Zen had crossed another of the drainage canals, and was out in the streets leading down to the sea.