Death in August

little drive in the country might not be such a bad idea. He scraped together all the cigarettes he could find in his drawers and left the station. He no longer felt tired; on the contrary, he seemed to be bursting with energy. The same thing used to happen to him during the war, when he was forced to stay awake for two or three days in a row. He kept going on nerves alone, relying on those mysterious powers that come into play when you least expect it. If he went home now, he wouldn’t sleep a wink; he would only spend hours and hours tossing and turning in bed, sweating in the dark, in the clutches of the usual sad memories.

He got into his Beetle and calmly crossed the city, which was slowly repopulating. At Porta Romana, he turned on to the Via di Pozzolatico, which would take him up towards Dante’s house. He drove slowly, enjoying the landscape. Mezzomonte was a tiny outlying ward on the hillside opposite the one where Signora Pedretti-Strassen lived. It was fairly wild countryside there. There were a few large aristocratic villas, but the rest were peasant houses, some still inhabited by old farmers, others half ruined and abandoned. The young were all fleeing the countryside to work in the city. Nobody seemed to want to live any more between the soil and the cow pats.

Bordelli pulled up in a clearing of beaten earth in front of number 117, Via Imprunetana, and got out of the car. He found himself in front of an open, rusty gate. On one of the gate’s pillars was an old, terracotta plaque with the name: Il Paretaio, ‘The Bird-Trap’. If this was the right place, Dante’s house could just barely be glimpsed from the road, at the end of a grassy lane, hidden among the cypresses of an utterly neglected garden. Bordelli continued on foot and entered the garden, walking along a path of trampled grass which cut feebly through a jungle of shrubs and wildflowers. It was a two-storey house, but very broad. A sort of cross between a peasant house and a landowner’s villa. On one side a sort of small, rather shabby turret had been built, apparently outfitted as a dovecote. Seeing the state of abandon of the entire property, it was hard to imagine it was inhabited. But that was the address. Bordelli approached the front doorway, which was open and as dark as a wolves’ den, and pulled a sort of handle that looked in every way like a doorbell. In fact it was a mechanical ringer. He heard a clanging far off inside the house. By way of reply, he heard a muffled yell that sounded like it came from underground.

‘It’s open!’

Bordelli entered and proceeded in darkness along a disjointed floor. He didn’t know what to do; he could see only one step ahead. He called Signor Pedretti loudly, then heard the same voice as before, shouting from inside the earth.

‘Turn right, and at the end of the corridor you’ll see an open door. Go down the stairs, but watch your step.’

The inspector followed these instructions and, groping along, came to a half-open door. He pushed this and found himself in front of a steep staircase that led below. At the bottom of the stair was a faint, flickering light. He descended the stairs, stepping carefully, and ended up in a vast, rectangular room the size of the house’s entire floor plan. The walls were lined with old shelves full of books. Practically everywhere shone the flames of countless candles in large candelabra. At the back of the great room was a tall, fat man in a yellowish smock covered with stains. A white, woolly mane enveloped his head like a cloud of smoke. He was standing, busying himself over a long wooden workbench cluttered with a chemist’s glassware and a thousand other strange tools and objects, including a pair of jugs with steam rising from their mouths. The workbench was at least ten metres long and one metre wide, but in that great space it looked like a pack of cigarettes on a desk.

‘Are you Dante?’ Bordelli asked, though there was no need for the question.

‘I am.’

The inspector advanced, looking all around the room. It was as if he had entered another world. The floor was made of large wooden boards that creaked with every step. Dante didn’t look up at the inspector until the last moment. After wiping it on his smock, he held out a gigantic hand to him, almost too big to shake. He had a broad, joyful face, like an enthusiastic baby’s, with eyes ever so slightly veiled by sadness.

‘Candlelight is so much more restful,’ he said in his powerful voice.

‘I agree.’

Dante looked at him as though sizing him up, from his height of six foot three inches.

‘So you’re a police inspector,’ said Dante.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you. What were you doing?’ asked Bordelli, to buy time.

Upon hearing the question, Dante became as excited as a child.

‘I am creating a substance that will revolutionise the world,’ he said, smiling, as if he were talking about chocolate. Curious, Bordelli asked him what this substance was. Dante pulled a half-smoked cigar out of the pocket of his smock and lit it on a candle. He sat down slantwise on the workbench.

‘It’s a substance that will make mice happy,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Mice?’

The inventor bared his huge teeth in a gargantuan smile.

‘I love mice. I don’t like that people kill them simply because they prowl in kitchens and frighten women. The powder I am creating will make them immune to all poison.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t. I can tell that you, too, think mice are trouble and full of diseases.’

‘That’s what we were always taught.’

Dante pointed a gnarled index finger at Bordelli.

‘Would you like me to call them?’ he said.

‘Call whom?’

‘The mice.’

‘The mice?’

‘But keep very still. They don’t know you and might get anxious.’

Though Bordelli was already thinking that this man was simply mad, he felt perfectly at ease in that great, candlelit room. Maybe I’m mad, too, he thought.

‘How many of them are there?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry. They’re friends.’

Dante made some strange noises with his mouth, and a few seconds later the floor started to fill up with dark little creatures advancing with caution, sniffing the air in fits and starts. They approached the inventor. There were at least twenty of them. Dante knelt down and started whispering to them. The mice walked over his shoes without a care. He touched them with one finger, calling them each by name: Jeremiah, Attila, Erminia, Achilles, Desdemona.

Bordelli couldn’t restrain himself.

‘How can you tell them apart?’

Dante bit his cigar and spat out a wad of tobacco.

‘To us the Chinese, too, look all alike,’ he said. He took a piece of chocolate out of his pocket and started crumbling it on the floor. The mice ate the bits and went quietly home. Dante bid them goodbye in his basso voice, then turned to Bordelli.

‘Coffee, Inspector?’

‘I’d love some.’

‘It’ll be ready in an instant.’ He went over to the workbench and began fidgeting with an alembic with a coiled pipe. He lit a flame under it and poured a handful of coffee grounds into it.

‘A patented system,’ he said. ‘The fats evaporate and only the best part remains.’

Bordelli looked at the workbench, fascinated. It was crowded with incomprehensible gadgets, cogs and scattered test tubes. He had never seen anything like it in his life.

Dante put his big hands in his pockets.

‘We inventors devote our lives to improving the lives of everyone. But I must admit we also have a lot of fun.’

There was a buzzing sound: the coffee was ready. Dante poured it into two strangely oval espresso cups.

‘Another invention of mine,’ he said proudly.

‘I figured as much.’

‘These cups are adaptable to every kind of mouth. Try drinking from it.’ The inspector took a sip, and a large drop of coffee fell on to his shoes. The inventor frowned at him.