So, what now? The answer was clear enough: another five or ten years plugging away at a job he no longer believed in and messing about with tentative relationships which were doomed from the start, while the world around him gradually changed into an unrecognizable although all too familiar place. Age makes us all exiles in our own country, he thought.
He looked up, startled, as an electronic beeping filled the room. It was his mobile phone, which he never took with him. He located it, on a cupboard in the kitchen, and pressed the green button.
‘Aurelio?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Gilberto.’
Silence.
‘Gilberto Nieddu. Listen, the thing is…’
Zen clicked the phone shut. He had had no contact with his former Sardinian friend since the latter had betrayed him — unforgivably, in Zen’s view — by first stealing and then selling, at a vast profit, a video tape which was evidence in a case Zen had been investigating. One man had died as a result and another could have joined him, in which case Zen’s career prospects might easily have turned out to be even less inspiring than they were at present.
The phone rang again.
‘Don’t hang up on me, Aurelio!’ Gilberto’s voice said. ‘This is important, really important. It’s about…’
‘I don’t give a fuck what it’s about, Gilberto. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a treacherous scumbag and I never want to speak to you again, still less see you.’
He snapped the phone shut again, like a clam closing its shell, then stalked down the room and opened the doors on to the balcony overhanging the courtyard. At once he was subject to both an overwhelming tide of hot air, and a deafening outburst of hilarity which was the trademark of Signora Giordano, his herb-growing neighbour. She was a retired lady of some consequence and independent means, but socially nervous. Normally there was never a sound from her apartment, but on the few occasions when she entertained a harsh, convulsive laugh would burst forth at regular intervals, on average once every ten seconds. No sounds of conversation or of others’ merriment were audible, just this dreadful, forced cackle like a hack actor trying to signal a punchline to an unresponsive audience.
Behind him, the telefonino had started to beep again, a distant exclamation point amid the ambient noises of the neighbourhood and Signora Giordano’s outbursts. Zen lit a cigarette and waited for it to stop. But it didn’t stop. Why didn’t Gilberto get the message? What did he have to do, install one of those devices to block nuisance calls? He smoked quietly for a minute by the clock on the wall. The phone continued to ring. ‘It’s no use hiding,’ it seemed to say. ‘We know you’re there, and we’ve got plenty of time.’
After the second hand on the clock had described another complete circle, Zen threw his cigarette into the courtyard below, stalked over to the sofa and picked up the phone.
‘Well?’ he bellowed.
‘Excuse me…’
It was a frail, elderly woman’s voice, vaguely familiar to him.
‘Yes?’
‘This is Maria Grazia,’ the voice said after a pause.
Zen’s expression relaxed from aggression to a bored tolerance lightly mixed with perplexity. The housekeeper at his apartment in Rome had never phoned him before about anything.
‘Signor Nieddu asked me to call.’
‘Well, you can tell Signor Nieddu to…’
‘It’s about your mother, you see.’
Zen broke off, frowning.
‘My mother?’
‘Yes. You see…’
‘Hello? Maria Grazia?’
‘Yes. You see, the thing is…’
‘What’s going on? What’s all this about?’
A silence.
‘It’s about your mother.’
‘Thank you very much, Maria Grazia,’ Zen replied sarcastically, ‘I think I’ve just about grasped that. So let’s move on to the next point. What about my mother?’
Another silence, longer this time.
‘How soon can you get here?’
‘Get where?’
‘To Rome, of course!’
Zen stiffened. He was not used to being interrogated like this by the donna di servizio.
‘Look, Maria Grazia, please stop this nonsense and just tell me why you’re calling.’
Another silence, ending in a sniff and what sounded like weeping.
‘Excuse me. I would never have done it, only… Only it’s your mother, you see.’
‘What about my mother? Put her on the line if she wants to talk to me!’
This time the silence went on so long that they might almost have been cut off. When the answer to his question finally came, it was in a neutered tone of voice such as might issue from a public address system playing some pre-recorded emergency message.
‘She’s dying, Aurelio.’
Nineteen minutes past seven, Corinna Nunziatella had said. ‘Be in the entrance hall of your building by seven fifteen, but don’t open the door.’ Carla smiled to herself as she completed her preparations for the evening, checking her hair in the mirror and removing a stray strand from her blouse. How ridiculous all this secret-service stuff seemed! But also romantic, in a way, like being in a movie.
The entrance hall to the apartment building where she lived was a dreary space, replicated ad infinitum by the mirrored walls and dimly lit by five circular lamps of pebbled glass dangling on their cords from the meaninglessly high ceiling. Mafia chic, circa 1965, in short. Carla waited just inside the front door, eyeing the bank of mailboxes, in each of which the same round of junk advertising pamphlets lingered like a bad smell. When the door opened, she started forward, only to encounter the stout, overdressed form of Angelo La Rocca, a retired and chronically deaf lawyer who lived in solitary splendour in his illegal apartment on the roof, up a flight of stairs from the end of the elevator on the sixth floor, and exercised his rights over any unfortunate he happened to meet in the public areas in his unchallenged capacity as the building’s Official Bore.
‘Ah, Signorina Arduini!’ he cried, spying his prey. ‘How lovely you look this evening! A veritable symphony of shapes and shades, as fashionable as it is delectable. You are going out I perceive. And who’s the lucky young man? Forgive my impertinence, my dear. An old man’s privilege, just as you young women now enjoy the privilege of going out unescorted whenever you please, wherever you please, with whoever you please. I can still remember the time when a woman had to stay at home…’
‘Listening to old farts like you,’ muttered Carla.
The avvocato leaned forward, pleased to have provoked a response.
‘What, my dear?’
A horn sounded outside.
‘My taxi’s here,’ said Carla loudly, opening the door.
In fact, it wasn’t a taxi but a blue Fiat saloon. None the less, Carla had three reasons for thinking that this was the car which Corinna Nunziatella had sent for her. The first was that it was now exactly seven nineteen, and the second that the driver had parked right outside the building, blocking the traffic, and didn’t seem at all bothered by this. The third and decisive factor was that the tough-looking young man who had been sitting in the front passenger seat was already walking towards her, scanning the street to both sides, his right hand grasping something bulky concealed inside his jacket.
‘Signorina Arduini?’ he barked.
Carla nodded.
