boiled sweets.
When he’d finished eating, Minot sluiced out the bowl under the tap and left it to dry. Then he went next door, sat down and turned on the television, an old black-and-white set given to him by a neighbour who had changed to colour. He could only get two channels, and either the picture or the sound was often indecipherable, but Minot didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in any of the programmes anyway. He just liked having the set on. It made the room more lively.
He was watching a film when the police arrived. There was heavy interference on the screen, with ghost doubles floating about and the picture skipping upwards repeatedly like the facial tic which used to afflict Angelin when things got tense. But the soundtrack was clear enough, and at first Minot thought that the noise of the jeep drawing up and the imperious knocking was part of the movie. It was only when the rat perched on top of the set swivelled towards the door, nostrils twitching, then leapt down and disappeared, that he had realized his mistake.
He was taken by surprise this second time, but for a different reason. Ever since they had locked him into his cell the previous evening, the air had been throbbing with loud music from a radio which someone had left on somewhere close by. He had tried shouting and banging on the door to get them to turn it off, but all in vain. In the end he had lain down on the bench provided and tried to get some sleep.
The bench made a primitive bed, but Minot was not fussy in this respect, any more than in others. The cot he slept on at home was no more spacious and hardly any softer, but the only time he’d ever had trouble sleeping was when the resident rodents used to scurry over the covers and tickle his face with their feet or whiskers. He’d solved that problem by fixing rounded wooden caps just below the frame, one at the top of each leg, so that the bed seemed to be resting on four giant mushrooms. The rats couldn’t climb past the caps, and after that Minot slept in peace.
As he would have done that night, too, if it hadn’t been for that damned music! He hadn’t made any fuss when the cops told him they were taking him into detention. He’d been more or less expecting something of the sort anyway, ever since the maresciallo had taken to dropping in — and to dropping heavy hints. In any case, Minot wasn’t the type to give them any satisfaction by getting upset.
But after being assaulted for several hours by that thudding, repetitive, tuneless barrage that he’d heard kids listening to in their cars or at the local cafe, he was finding it hard to remember the motto by which he lived: keep cool, say nothing, make them show their hand. In the end, he’d drifted off into a state which was neither sleep nor wakefulness, but seemed to combine the disadvantages of both. While in this stressful but disoriented condition, a succession of sounds detached themselves from the hellish cacophony with which he was being tormented, the light in his cell was turned on, and he awoke to find himself confronting the two policemen. The armed and uniformed one guarded the door, the other advanced into the cell.
‘Time to go,’ he said shortly.
Minot stood up. Time to go, the man had said, but what time was it? Minot never wore a watch, relying on his knowledge of the seasonal and diurnal rhythms, with occasional data from a distant church bell floating past on the breeze. Now he had a panicky feeling of being completely lost. It might be midnight or midday. Both made sense, so neither did.
The policemen gestured him out of the cell and escorted him upstairs. As the pounding of the music receded into the distance, Minot began to feel better. Passing a window on the stairs, he saw that the darkness outside the window, although still seemingly complete, had lost its inner confidence, sensing the inevitable defeat to come. Half-six to seven, he thought automatically, probably nearer seven. By the time the uniformed patrolman knocked at a door on the second floor, he was once again in control of the situation.
His new-found confidence was almost cancelled by the discovery that the officer sitting behind the desk inside was the one from Rome he’d seen the day before at the Faigano house. This was bad news, for it meant that the Vincenzo case was involved. The uniformed man led Minot to a stool opposite the desk and then returned to keep the door, his gun at the ready, while the plain-clothed cop plonked his ample bum down on a stool beside the desk and opened a notepad.
‘I suppose you want a lawyer,’ announced Zen.
Minot made a vestigial bow, just like everyone used to in such situations years ago.
‘A lawyer?’ he said, with an air of astonishment. ‘Eh, no, dottore! A lawyer? He would just waste your time and my money.’
Aurelio Zen looked at him with unfeigned interest.
‘Well, that’s an original approach, at least.’
He dragged some papers towards him.
‘All right, what’s your real name? Minot is what people call you, but it won’t do for our records. Official forms come with blanks which need to be filled in, you understand.’
Minot nodded briskly.
‘Piumatti Guglielmo, dottore.’
Zen noted this down, then got to his feet.
‘Right!’ he said. ‘You’ve declined the offer of legal representation, Signor Piumatti. This being so, I shall proceed directly to the interrogation. Present Inspector Nanni Morino and Patrolman Dario…’
He glanced at the uniformed man, who responded, ‘Tamburino, dottore.’
‘Date such and such,’ continued Zen, ‘time whatever, place etc, etc.’
While talking, he had moved around the desk and was now standing directly in front of Minot. Bending forward suddenly, he caught the prisoner by the jaw and pulled his entire head back by a fistful of hair.
‘We know you did it, you son of a whore! You’ll confess in the end. Why not save yourself any more pain?’
He glanced at Nanni Morino.
‘Delete that from the record.’
Zen smiled at Minot.
‘Sorry about that. Nothing personal, and thanks for the ride the other day. But I’ve had just about enough of this sleepy, friendly, crime-free community where everyone has been pissing me around ever since I arrived. I’m in a mood to do a little damage myself, and it’s your bad luck that it happened this morning.’
Minot looked him straight back in the eye.
‘Go ahead! Beat me up, if that’s what you want. But if you think you can get anything out of me that way, you’re even more stupid than I thought. I’ve seen far worse than you!’
Aurelio Zen shook his head slowly, holding Minot’s eyes all the while.
‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘You’ve never seen worse than me, Minot. I’m as bad as it gets.’
A contemptuous laugh.
‘I faced up to the Gestapo and the Republican death squads while you were still sucking on your mother’s tit! What can you do that they couldn’t?’
Zen continued to hold his eyes.
‘I can destroy you, Minot. Unless you cooperate, I will destroy you.’
Another laugh.
‘Go ahead!’
Zen leaned forward, his face a breath away from the other man’s.
‘Let’s talk about your father, Minot.’
The prisoner’s eyes flared briefly, then dulled again.
‘My father? What has he to do with anything?’
‘He had quite a bit to do with your mother, I’m told,’ Zen said evenly. ‘And not just in the usual way. I hear they had a — how shall I say? — a previous connection.’
Minot froze into a tense stasis.
‘Meaning,’ Zen continued, ‘that they were related not only in bed but by blood. Meaning that your father was also her father.’
He straightened up and took a step back.
‘Meaning that he fucked his own daughter and that you’re the outcome. Meaning that you’re not just a bastard but an incest bastard, Minot! A gene pool so swampy that nothing can live there, a cloning experiment gone badly wrong, an abortion on two legs…’
