absolutely fundamental. Barbaresco is the Beethoven, taking those qualities and lifting them to heights of subjective passion and pain that have never been surpassed. And Brunello is its Brahms, the softer, fuller, romantic afterglow of so much strenuous excess.’
Aurelio Zen was spared the necessity of answering by an attack of coughing which rendered him speechless for almost a minute.
‘How long have you had that cough?’ the other man asked with a solicitude which was all too evidently feigned. ‘Come, let us go back upstairs.’
‘No, no. It’s only a touch of chestiness. A cough won’t kill me.’
Zen’s host looked at him sharply. To someone who did not instantly recognize him — no such person was known to exist — he might have appeared an unremarkable figure: trim and fit for his sixty-odd years, but distinguished mostly by the layers of expensive tailoring which clad him like a second skin, and by a face whose wrinkles and folds seemed an expression not of calendar age but of inheritance, as though it had been worn by countless other eminent and powerful members of the family before being bequeathed to the present owner.
‘Kill you?’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course not!’
With an abrupt laugh, he led the way further into the labyrinth of subterranean caverns. The only light was provided by the small torch he carried, which swung from right to left, picking out stacks of dark brown bottles covered in mildew and dust.
‘I am also a purist in my selection,’ he announced in the same didactic tone. ‘Conterno and Giacosa for Barolo, Gaja and Vincenzo for Barbaresco. And, until the recent unfortunate events, Biondi Santi for Brunello. Poco ma buono has always been my motto. I possess an excellent stock of every vintage worth having since 1961, probably the best collection in the country of the legendary ’58 and ’71, to say nothing of a few flights of fancy such as a Brunello from the year of my birth. Under these exceptional circumstances, vertical tastings acquire a classical rigour and significance.’
He turned and shone his torch into Zen’s face.
‘You are Venetian. You drink fruity, fresh vino sfuso from the Friuli intended to be consumed within the year. You think I am crazy.’
Another prolonged outburst of coughing was the only reply, ending in a loud sneeze. The other man took Zen by the arm.
‘Come, you’re unwell! We’ll go back.’
‘No, no, it’s nothing.’
Aurelio Zen made a visible effort to get a grip on himself.
‘You were saying that I don’t understand wine. That’s true, of course. But what I really don’t understand is the reason why I have been summoned here in the first place.’
His host smiled and raised one eyebrow.
‘But the two are the same!’
He turned and strode off down the paved alley between the bins. The darkness closing in about him, Zen had no choice but to follow.
The instruction to attend this meeting at the Rome residence of the world-famous film and opera director, whose artistic eminence was equalled only by the notoriety of the rumours surrounding his private life, had come in the form of an internal memorandum which appeared on his desk at the Ministry of the Interior a few days earlier. ‘With respect to a potential parallel enquiry which the Minister is considering regarding the Vincenzo case (see attached file), you are requested to present yourself at 10.30 hrs on Friday next at Palazzo Torrozzo, Via del Corso, for an informal background briefing by…’
The name which followed was of such resonance that Giorgio De Angelis, the one friend Zen still had in the Criminalpol department, whistled loudly, having read it over Zen’s shoulder.
‘Mamma mia! Can I come too? Do we get autographs? I could dine out on this for a year!’
‘Yes, but who’ll pay the bill?’ Zen had murmured, as though to himself.
And that was the question which posed itself now, but with renewed force. The celebrity in question clearly hadn’t invited Zen to his palazzo, scene of so many widely reported parties ‘demonstrating that the ancient tradition of the orgy is still not dead’, merely to show off his wine collection. There was a bottom line, and the chances were that behind it there would be a threat.
‘I can appreciate your point of view,’ his host’s voice boomed from the darkness ahead. ‘I myself grew up in the estuary of the Po, and we drank the local rotgut — heavily watered to make it palatable — as a sort of medicine to aid digestion and kill off undesirable germs. But perhaps there is some other way I can make you understand. Surely you must at some time have collected something. Postage stamps, butterflies, first editions, firearms, badges, matchboxes…’
‘What’s that got to do with wine?’
The famous director, known to his equally famous friends as Giulio, stopped and turned, admitting Zen back into the feeble nimbus of light.
‘The object of the collection is as unimportant as the quantities inserted in an algebraic formula. To the collector, all that matters is selection and completeness. It is an almost exclusively male obsession, an expression of our need to control the world. Women rarely collect anything except shoes and jewellery. And lovers, of course.’
Zen did not reply. His host pointed the torch up at the curved ceiling of stone slabs.
‘The nitre! It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are now below Via del Corso. Young men, my sons perhaps included, are racing up and down in their cars as they once did on their horses, yet not a murmur of that senseless frenzy reaches us here. The wine sleeps like the dead.’
‘I used to have a collection of railway tickets,’ Zen remarked.
Giulio flashed a smile.
‘I knew it!’
A dry rustling amongst the bottles to his left made Zen start.
‘Rats,’ said the famous director. ‘You were saying?’
‘My father…’
Zen hesitated, as though at a loss, then started again.
‘He worked for the railways, and he used to bring them back for me, little cardboard tickets with the name of the destination printed on them, the class and the fare paid. By the end I had one to all the stations as far as Verona, Rovigo, Udine and Trieste…’
He paused again, then clicked his fingers.
‘All except Bassano del Grappa! I remember someone making a joke about having to wait until I was older before trying grappa. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just annoyed at having that gap in my collection. It ached like a pulled tooth.’
‘Excellent! Perfect! Then no doubt you will understand how I felt when I heard about this dreadful business involving Aldo Vincenzo.’
Zen frowned, returning reluctantly to the present.
‘Vincenzo?’ he echoed.
The famous director shone his torch around the neighbouring bins, lifted a bottle and held it out to Zen. The faded label read:
BARBARESCO 1964. VINIFICATO ED IMBOTTIGLIATO DAL PRODUTTORE A. VINCENZO.
‘Aldo Vincenzo was one of the producers I selected more than thirty years ago as worthy of a place in the cellar I then decided to create,’ he declared solemnly, replacing the bottle on the stack with as much care as a baby in its cot. ‘And now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! That’s the reason why you have been “summoned here”, as you put it.’
‘You want to complete your collection.’
‘Exactly!’
‘To continue your horizontal tastings.’
His host regarded Zen sharply, as if suspecting some irony.
‘They might be that,’ he remarked, ‘if one actually swallowed all the wines on offer. Such, of course, is not the way in which a vertical tasting is conducted. But in any case, if you imagine that I have any chance of personally enjoying this year’s vintage at its best, you credit me with the longevity of a Methuselah. The patriarch, not the
