‘And what about her? Is she as far gone as you?’
‘I think so. And that’s what scares me.’
‘Scares you?’
Rodrigo changed expression and sat up.
‘You want to know the real reason I’ve been holed up at home for two weeks? Do you?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Because every time I leave home I go immediately to her place and we make love all day for two days straight. Now do you understand?’
‘Is that all? And to think I was worried about you.’
‘You’re right to be worried.’
‘Well, there are worse things in life.’
‘But don’t you understand? Joy, happiness … they’re ghastly.’
‘Don’t worry, happiness doesn’t last very long.’
‘Well, I’m scared stiff of all that. Do you think it’s easy … just like that, overnight?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I’m afraid, terrified — I’m entering a world I know nothing about, and yet I can’t help but enter it. Is that a little more clear?’
‘Crystal clear. But what world are you talking about?’ asked Bordelli.
‘I can sit there and look into her eyes for hours and hours, and when I hold her in my arms, I don’t give a damn about dying … Does that seem normal to you?’
‘Sounds like the usual lovey-dovey stuff to me.’
‘Of course, except that this time it’s happening to me, which is another matter entirely.’
‘I think that’s fantastic, don’t you?’
‘I feel like I’m being swept away by a river in spate, I no longer know what I feel …’
‘Perfectly normal.’
‘Not for me. I’ve tried to stop and think, to try to understand what is happening to me.’
‘And have you understood?’
‘Only one thing: that the wall I had built around myself, brick by brick, has collapsed, like the house of the three little pigs. There’s nothing left standing.’
‘Magnificent.’
‘What the hell is so magnificent about it? I’m trying to tell you I’m shitting my pants!’
‘Throw yourself into it, Rodrigo. I’m telling you for your own sake. You’re over fifty, and life is shorter than the time it takes a mouse to piss. You’re still in time to throw it all overboard.’
Rodrigo was tense, continually wiping his face with his hands.
‘Why me, of all people?’
‘If I were in your place, I would dive straight into that river in spate and gladly drown. You can sort things out later.’
Rodrigo kept staring at the floor, long faced. He was puffing on the spent butt like a madman. Bordelli decided it was time to go and stood up. His cousin had to think this through alone, and probably needed to slap himself in the face a few times. He looked around for his shirt. Rodrigo turned abruptly to look at him.
‘Are you leaving?’ he said.
‘It’s late.’
‘I won’t see you out.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Bordelli put on his shirt.
‘Would you do me a favour on your way out?’ said Rodrigo.
‘Sure.’
‘Would you plug the phone back in?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Bordelli left him lying there, staring at his own feet. In the entrance hall, he bent down, plugged in the phone cable, and went out. He hadn’t descended the third stair when he heard it ring. He turned back to eavesdrop. The seventh ring was interrupted halfway through, and then he heard Rodrigo’s voice.
‘Hello, Beatrice … no, it’s nothing serious, don’t cry … Let me explain …’
At nine that evening Bordelli pulled up at Dante’s gate in his Beetle. He got out and paused for a few minutes to look at the countryside. The sun was low on the horizon. A cool, mild wind had risen and now caressed his face. The thought of spending a little time with the inventor made him feel better. He pushed the gate open and walked down the lane. A family of cats lay spread along the rim of a waterless fountain. He liked this house, drowning as it was in a sea of wild vegetation. It had a peaceful atmosphere. As he walked along, spikes of brome grass remained embedded in his trouser legs near the bottom, prickling his ankles. In the silence he could hear the soporific hum of an aeroplane overhead. He would have liked to lie down in the tall grass and go to sleep.
The front door to the villa was wide open, and by now Bordelli knew his way around. He went downstairs to the great room where Signor Dante spoke to mice. He found him standing in the middle of the room, enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke. He was still wearing the same white smock, open over his paunch. The inspector threaded his way through the piles of books stacked on the floor. The inventor made a gesture of greeting without breaking his train of thought.
‘Did you phone me?’ asked Bordelli.
‘Possibly,’ said Dante, distracted. He shook some ash to the ground, went to get the bottle of grappa, and filled two small glasses, passing one to Bordelli. Then he extracted a photograph from his pocket.
‘You’ve only seen her dead. I wanted you to see what she really looked like,’ he said gloomily. It was a photo of Rebecca as a girl. She was very beautiful. Smiling, with a lock of hair in her mouth.
‘She always used to do that,’ said Dante.
‘Do what?’
‘Put a lock of hair in her mouth.’
‘My mother used to do that, too,’ said Bordelli.
‘Do you ever think of death, Inspector?’
‘At night sometimes, before falling asleep.’
‘What exactly do you think about?’
Bordelli took a sip of grappa and suddenly felt all the weight of the day on his shoulders.
‘They’re rather vague thoughts,’ he said.
The inventor waved his index finger in the air.
‘I often think about it myself, and I don’t like it one bit. Death is unacceptable, disgustingly unacceptable … unless there really is such a thing as an immortal soul, an eternal consciousness of oneself.’
‘I agree.’
Dante dropped his hands into the pockets of his smock. A deep furrow formed in his brow.
‘And what about the resurrection of the flesh? What do you think about that?’ he said.
If it hadn’t been so hot, Bordelli might have tried to reflect on this. Dante chewed his spent cigar and began to pace in silence through his ingenious debris. The rhythmical sound of his footsteps very nearly managed to put Bordelli to sleep. A few minutes later, Dante was standing in front of him again.
‘The great themes, Inspector … It’s the great themes that drive me mad. Death, consciousness, life … Take life, for instance. A spermatozoon plunges headlong into an ovum, and immediately a long-term project is set in motion. The cells proliferate at a dizzying rate, clustering, diversifying. Out of that initial, infinitesimal particle will grow a beating heart, hands, fingernails, hair, glands, and a brain with the power to think of itself … And it’s already all written down, from the position of the liver to the composition of the cartilage. But from time to time nature, too, gets things wrong, and so you’ll have six fingers on one hand or one leg shorter than the other, or else she may construct a brain incapable of understanding the simplest things … And the reason for this? A simple mistake? Or is there a design? And why, if I know I can’t answer these questions, do I continue to ask them?… A little more grappa, Inspector?’
There was no point in answering. Dante was already headed towards the bottle. He returned, clutching it by the neck, and filled the two little glasses to the brim again. Emptying his own, he dropped his head, chin resting on his chest.
