Converging Parallels (18 page)

“And your wife? How is she?”

“Agnese?” He made an open gesture with the hand that held his fork. “When we were here ten years ago, she wanted to get away. She found everything so provincial. When I was transferred to Bari she was over the moon; but within six months she hated the place. I didn’t like it much either, but I had my job. She was out most of the day, playing bridge or going to the yacht club. She had friends, she was never lonely but she hated it. Wanted to come back.”

“The Mezzogiorno is special. They’re different, they’re unreliable, the southerners.”

“Pescara is not the South?”

Behind his sunglasses, Magagna seemed genuinely offended. “Pescara is Central Italy. We were never invaded by the Arabs or the Spanish. We are European.”

“Now my wife is fed up here. She wants to go to Bologna, she says. Somewhere more exciting and less provincial.”

“She’s right. The city is provincial.”

“And Pescara?”

“It’s a city, a real city. They’ve spoilt it with the long esplanades of skyscrapers like something in America. But beautiful even so. The sea, the long, sandy beach. And girls—there is no one who can beat Pescarese girls.”

“Of course.”

“Commissario. Your wife is right. I’d rather live in my own city, with its sprawling new suburbs and its streets snarled with
traffic, its whores that line the road at nights and all the poor peasants who have come from the countryside to look for a job—I prefer all that to this provincial, stuck-up city. Arrogant. A town of shopkeepers and lawyers. A town that pretends to be proud of its theater and its university and its historic churches, but in fact all it cares about is making money. A town of moneymakers who go to bed early. It votes Communist but in its stony little heart—and in its wallet—it is grasping and indifferent. A town without a soul, Commissario, a hardworking, provincial little city. Give me Pescara any day. Far from the foggy plain of Lombardy; pine trees, sandy beaches and the smell of the Adriatic.”

When they had finished the ham and the cheese and when they had emptied the dark bottle of wine, the girl came over and placed a scrawled bill on the table. Trotti paid. “One other thing,” he said, placing his hand on her arm—she had dark black hairs that ran in neat parallels across the pale flesh. “We’re looking for a church.”

“A church?” She looked unhappy. “You’d better ask the manager.”

“This place is full of cretins,” Magagna whispered as the girl hurried off, her shoes flapping on the ground, towards the kitchens. “Perhaps there’s something in the water.”

She came back a few minutes later accompanied by a large man in a dark suit and brown shoes. She led him to the table like a road accident victim leading a policeman to the scene of the crash.

“Signori?” A glint of gold teeth.

Trotti showed his identification.

The man visibly paled. Brusquely he turned to the girl and made a motion of dismissal. She returned to her place behind the bar where she stared intently into the air.

“The ham was excellent.”

The man gave an ingratiating smile while his hands wiped nervously at his trousers. “You are very kind.” He nodded sideways and sat down slowly on a wooden chair beside Trotti. He had a large belly that swelled out beneath the dark fabric of his
trousers; the leather belt unsuccessfully attempted to keep the swelling back, but it pushed from either side of the narrow strip of crocodile leather. He sat with his legs apart and his hands on his knees.

“How can I help you?” His forehead was damp with perspiration.

“We’re looking for a choir.”

The man puffed his cheeks and looked about him with offended dignity. “This is a restaurant, signori.”

Magagna gave Trotti a worried glance.

“We’re trying to locate a choir because if we can find it, it might be of use in our enquiries.” He added, more softly, “A case of kidnapping.”

“What sort of choir? I know nothing about choirs.” The dark eyes looked intently at Trotti.

“A church choir in this area that probably practices during the week.”

Magagna added, “And somewhere where there are bells. Church bells.”

“Ah,” said the man and he sat back in his chair. “Strange.” He scratched his ear. He was probably about fifty years old and was almost bald. His nose had the same shining, greasy texture as his dark suit. “There used to be a church here with a choir. But now they use records. Young people—they don’t go to church any more. A shame. Not that I’m devout, of course. But it’s wrong. The young people today, they’ve got everything but they are not grateful. They’ve got no time for church.” He scratched his ear again. “A choir that practices during the week. Bells.” He looked at Magagna, then back at Trotti. “In one of the villages, perhaps.”

“Or in the hills?”

“In the villages. You need young boys for a choir. All the young people have left the villages. They go to Milan or Genoa for work. The villages are dying, they are full of old people. Who wants to spend his life working in the fields when you can earn twice as much in the factories—and when you’ve got independence? The hills are empty. Bells, you say?”

“Bells,” Magagna repeated and very slowly, like a worried doctor, he removed his sunglasses.

“Not in the hills. There are no choirs there. The young have all left. Independence, they want independence. They go to the big cities”—he threw a hurried look at the girl—“where nobody knows who you are, where you can do what you like. I don’t know. Bells?”

“And a choir.”

“Well, I don’t know. Unless …”

“Unless what?” Magagna was leaning forward in his chair, his glasses dangling in one hand, his young face only a few centimeters from the man’s flabby face, “Unless what?”

“It’s only a guess.”

“What?”

“Well, if you take the road on the left as you head south—left, mind, not right or you’ll land up on the autostrada—if you take that road and follow it as it winds upwards, following the signposts—the yellow ones, they were put there by the Ufficio Provinciale del Turismo, a real waste of money …”

“Well?”

“You follow the road for twenty-five kilometers and you come to Tarzi.”

Trotti nodded.

“Just before you get to Tarzi, on your right, there’s a convent.”

“Of course,” Trotti said, standing up. “Of course, Santa Roberta.”

The fat man nodded and smiled hesitantly.

“Why didn’t I think of it before?” Trotti slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. Then picking up the map, he thanked the proprietor, placing a hand on the shoulder of his shiny suit.

“And the ham was excellent.”

Trotti left, followed by Magagna, who replaced his sunglasses before stepping out into the street.

The billiard players and the fat man watched them leave; the girl continued to stare at some private horizon.

U
NLIKE
A
LBANA
, T
ARZI
had hardly changed since Trotti’s childhood.

It was as he remembered it. It nestled, a small, forgotten town, between the Apennine slopes. The church tower rose and like a grey finger pointed out the cloudless sky.

“When I was ten,” Trotti said, leaning forward to turn off the radio, “I came here with my cousin Anna Maria. I cycled on a bicycle lent to me by her brother Sandro—he’s an important doctor now at the hospital in Brescia. In those days—it was just at the outbreak of war—the roads weren’t surfaced and you had to be careful of getting a puncture.”

Magagna drove, an arm resting against the door frame. Without taking the cigarette from his mouth, he said, “These hills—I wouldn’t like to climb up them on an old bike. A strong girl, your cousin.”

“To own a bike of my own.” Trotti shook his head. “That was my dream. The freedom to be able to escape.” He paused. “Later, after the war, I bought a Vespa. I had it for ten years and it was with it that I courted my wife—she was a student at the university. She used to ride side-saddle—all the girls did in those days. Then later, as the money came in we bought a car—a little Fiat. Then a bigger one when Pioppi was born.” He shook his head again. “My first love. You know, I don’t need a car and I could get by without one. Ugly, expensive and dangerous. But
a bicycle. Nobody can build bicycles like the Italians. It was an old Legnano—I can remember it—with slightly buckled wheels. I had to stand on the pedals to get up any hill. And sometimes like Anna Maria I had to get off and push it. Then when my cousin went off to war he left the bike with me. Perhaps that was the happiest day of my life.”

“And Anna Maria?”

“My cousin? She went to university and there she met a foreigner and got married. A Dutchman. She lives in Amsterdam now.”

“Anything to get away from the hills.” Magagna grinned and threw his cigarette out of the window. “And this convent?”

“A couple of kilometers south of Tarzi. There.” Trotti pointed. “You can see the roof from here. Along the ridge where the two hills appear to meet.”

They went through Tarzi and followed the winding black road that went uphill between the small fields towards the convent.

The convent had once been completely isolated, cut off from the rest of the world and looking down upon it with disapproval. It was here—or so the tradition went—that Dante had spent a night in his flight from Florence. Now modernity had begun to encroach upon the convent’s independence. There was a hotel and a couple of hundred meters down the road a few shops selling souvenirs and Kodak film. Newly built villas stood in various clearings of the wooded slopes, their flat roofs and painted blinds out of keeping with the local architecture.

“The Milanese,” Trotti said. “They leave the countryside to make their money in the city and then they come back to the hills bringing the ugliness of Sesto San Giovanni or Rho. They buy the land cheap from the peasants and then they put up their monstrosities. Look.” He pointed at a house, built in Spanish American style, with a patio and white plastered colonnades. The red earth at its foundations was a wound in the slope above the convent. “Of course the mayor lets them build—even if there is no water or drainage or electricity. The village mayor and the local inhabitants are only too happy for the work that building these villas brings. And anyway, the local people hate
their own land. They don’t care about the way these villas spoil the country. They want to get away, too, get away from the soil that has kept them prisoner for centuries. They want to go to the city to get rich.”

“Like you.”

“I had no choice. When I was young, there was not enough food to eat. There was a war on and there was no mechanization. At harvest time, we couldn’t go to school; we had to help our parents in the fields. Things have changed. When my father was young, he worked for a kilo of bread a day. Now there’s a decent wage for a man’s work.”

“You heard what the man in the restaurant said. The young leave as soon as they can. They can’t stand the life.”

“Because they don’t know what the life is like in the factories.”

The car came to the top of the hill.

The convent Santa Roberta was in a clearing, its tiles of red and pink partially hidden by a row of high cypress trees, whose tops moved with the wind. Opposite there was the hotel, its name in sculpted yellow letters. One or two cars—local registrations—were parked in the shade of a couple of trees.

Magagna parked the car and switched off the engine; the sound of the wind seemed loud; the mountain air was fresh and whipped at their ears. There was the sound of crickets, their monotonous and interrupted song competing with the wind.

“I think we’ve come to the right place,” Magagna said and Trotti smiled briefly. “We’ve found our angels.” There was a distinct sound of women singing.

A few people were sitting on the hotel terrace. Although the sun was shining, the air was cool because of the wind. One woman, her horse-like teeth caught in an ice cream, wore a heavy cardigan. A child in a sailor’s hat and white short trousers was playing with a colored ball.

Somewhere on the far side of the valley a bird began to sing, and in reply, another bird, much closer, gave an answering song.

They entered the hotel; the smell of boiled milk and bleach. A man was sitting behind the long bar; he was reading a newspaper balanced on his knee.

“Commissario Trotti, Pubblica Sicurezza.”

He lowered the paper. “Yes?” he said uncertainly. He was young and his dark hair fell into his eyes. Green eyes.

“Two cups of coffee.”

While the man busied himself before the Gaggia machine, Trotti said, “We’re looking for a car. Perhaps you might be able to help us.”

“I have a car of my own.” His voice was highly pitched, almost effeminate.

Magagna looked at Trotti. In a flat voice, Trotti said, “We’re not making any accusations. We just want your help.”

“What sort of car?” He placed two cups on the counter and then set a couple of envelopes of sugar in each saucer.

“A French car—a Citroën.”

The man seemed genuinely surprised. “A red Citroën—one of those long things that have special suspension?”

“Yes.”

“Of course I know it.”

“Here in the village?”

He nodded and his hair fell into the green eyes.

“Who does it belong to?”

“The mayor.”

“You have a mayor here?”

“This is part of Tarzi, administratively at least; although they make such a fuss of coming up here to empty our dustbins.”

There was disappointment in Trotti’s voice. “And the mayor of Tarzi has a red Citroën?”

“Of course not.” With a movement of his hand, he made a gesture of frustration at Trotti’s stupidity. “Your mayor—the mayor of your city. He’s got a villa on the hill. Gaetano Mariani.”

I
T WAS LATE
afternoon when they returned. Magagna drove while Trotti stared ahead in silence. For some time they had been able to see the city lying before them in the Po valley. Trotti was reminded of the old lithographs he had seen; the city looked like the medieval fortress it had once been. Sharing the horizon with the dome of the cathedral were several high brick towers. In the eleventh and twelfth century, private citizens had built them as a sign of personal wealth. Once there had been a hundred; now there were only seven, caught against the blue of the summer sky.