3
If Zen had spent the night at home instead of at Tania’s, he could have walked to his first appointment next morning. As it was he ended up on foot anyway, the taxi he summoned having ground to a halt outside the Liceo Terenzio Mamiani, just round the corner from Zen’s apartment. Wednesday mornings were always bad, as the usual rush-hour jam was supplemented by the influx of pilgrims heading for the weekly papal audience. Zen paid the driver and strode off past lines of honking, bleating vehicles, including coaches whose utilitarian styling and robust construction exuded a graceless charm which awakened nostalgic memories of the far-off, innocent 1950s. From portholes wiped in their misted-up windows, the Polish pope’s compatriots peered out at the Eternal City, perhaps wondering if the last kilometre of their pilgrimage was going to take as long as the previous two thousand.
Zen crossed Piazza del Risorgimento and followed the towering ramparts of the Vatican City State up the hill, passing women carrying wicker baskets and plastic bags of fruit and vegetables home from the Trionfale market. The bells of the local churches were in some disagreement about the exact moment when nine o’clock arrived, but the Vatican itself opened its doors dead on time, as though to emphasize that although in Rome, it was by no means of Rome. The handful of tourists waiting for the museums to open began to file inside. Zen followed them up the curving ramp to the cash desk, where he plonked down his ten-thousand-lire note with the rest. Then, like someone doing Rome in two days, he hurried through the collections of classical antiquities, following the arrows marked ‘Raphael Stanze and Sistine Chapel Only’.
A marble staircase brought him to a gallery receding as far as the eye could see. The walls were hung with tapestries and painted maps alternating with windows overlooking a large courtyard. Dust swarmed like a school of fish in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Zen had already left the other early visitors far behind, and this part of the museums was deserted. At the end of the gallery, he turned left into a chamber hung with enormous battle scenes, then down a staircase to a suite of rooms on the lower floor overlooking a courtyard patrolled by a Swiss Guard. Zen smiled wryly, thinking of the night before. Following their hasty exit from the house where Giovanni Grimaldi had been murdered, he and Gilberto Nieddu had climbed down a fire escape into the internal courtyard of a building in the next street and then sneaked past the lodge where the portiere was watching television.
‘Never again, Aurelio!’ Gilberto told him as they parted in the street. ‘Don’t even bother phoning.’
Back at Tania’s, Zen had called his mother to tell her that his duties in Florence unfortunately required him to stay another night but he would be back for sure the following day.
‘That’s all right,’ his mother replied. ‘At least you ring up and let me know what’s happening, not like some.’
‘What do you mean, mamma?’
‘Oh, that Gilberto! It makes me furious, it really does! Rosella phoned here only half an hour ago, to ask if I knew where you were. Apparently Gilberto called her this afternoon and said he might be a bit late home this evening because he was meeting you, if you please! Can you believe the cheek of it? Poor Rosella! Come nine o’clock there’s no sign of him and the dinner’s ruined, so she phones me to try and find out what’s going on. Of course I didn’t know any of this at first, so I just told her the truth, that you were in Florence. It’s the old story. I told her. Just look the other way. There’s no point in making a fuss. You’re not the first and you won’t be the…’
‘Listen, mamma, I’m running out of tokens. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Wait, Aurelio! There’s a message for you. This gentleman called, he wouldn’t leave his name, but he said it was about a Signor Giallo. He asked you to phone him immediately.’
Zen dialled the number he had been given by Lamboglia. It was answered by a different voice, this time with a foreign intonation. But why not? The Vatican was the headquarters of an international organization.
‘Your presence is required tomorrow morning,’ the man told him. ‘Come to the main entrance to the Vatican Museums, pay in the normal way, then follow these directions.’
Zen noted them down.
‘Now there’s something I want you to do,’ he told the anonymous voice. ‘Contact whoever is responsible for the maintenance of the building where Signor Giallo lived and find out whether a workman was sent there yesterday to investigate the sewers.’
He had hung up just as Tania walked in naked from the shower, looking rather like the gracefully etiolated females in the frescos which covered the chamber where he now found himself. The subjects were nominally biblical, but the action had been transferred from the harsh realities of historical Palestine to a lush Italian landscape peopled by figures of an ideal renaissance beauty. On one wall, ships navigated under full sail and armies manoeuvred for battle. Another showed a large chamber where men were disputing and orators pronouncing. The painted room was about the same size and shape as the one on whose wall it was depicted, and the artist had cleverly included a painted door at floor level, creating the illusion that one could simply turn the handle and step into that alternative reality. Zen was just admiring this amusing detail when the handle in fact turned and the door opened to reveal the stooping figure of Monsignor Lamboglia.
‘Come!’ he said, beckoning.
Inside, a spiral stone staircase burrowed upwards through the masonry of the ancient palace. They climbed in silence. After some time, Lamboglia opened another door which led into a magnificent enclosed loggia. The lofty ceiling was sumptuously carved and gilded, the rear wall adorned with antique painted maps representing a world in which North America figured only as a blank space marked Terra Incognita. The large windows opposite offered an extensive view over St Peter’s Square, now reduced to serving as a parking lot for those pilgrim coaches which had managed to fight their way through the traffic.
Zen followed his guide through a door at the end of the loggia, beneath a stained-glass light marked ‘Secretariat of State’ and into a vaulted antechamber. The walls and ceiling were covered in fantastic tracery, fake marble reliefs and painted niches containing trompe l’oeil classical statues. Lamboglia pointed to one of the armless chairs upholstered in grey velvet which stood against the painted dado, alternating with carved wooden chests and semi-circular tables supporting bronze angels.
‘Wait here.’
He disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor. Zen sat down in the designated chair, which proved to be as uncomfortable as it was no doubt intended to make the occupant feel. The windows on the opposite wall were covered in lace curtaining which strained the sunlight like honey through muslin. Zen closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what he was going to say. Try as he would, though, his thoughts kept drifting away to the night before. Tania had lied to him, there was no doubt about that. Not just filtered the truth, as he would shortly do for the benefit of the Vatican authorities. No, Tania had lied.
‘Were you out this afternoon?’ he had asked casually as they lay in bed together.
‘Out?’
He ran his fingertips lightly over her ribs and belly.
‘Mmm. About six o’clock.’
She pretended to think.
‘Oh yes, that’s right. I stepped out for a moment to do some shopping. Why?’
‘I tried to phone. To tell you I’d be late.’
He rolled up on his side, gazing down at her.
‘A man answered.’
A distant look entered her eyes, and he knew she was going to lie. The rest was routine, a matter of how hard he wanted to press, how much he could bully her into revealing.
‘You must have got a wrong number,’ she said.
He looked away, embarrassed for her, regretting that he’d brought it up. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help adding. ‘It happened twice. I dialled again.’
She laughed lightly.
‘Probably a crossed wire at the exchange. It’s a pity the Vatican doesn’t run a phone system as well as a postal service. They fly their mail out to Switzerland to be sorted, you know, yet it still arrives in half the time it takes the post office.’
He accepted the diversion gratefully.
