‘At last the situation was clear. She could leave, but only if she abandoned me. If she wanted me, she had to stay. I don’t think she ever quite appreciated what it must have cost them to be so explicit. With one of their own kind they would never have expressed themselves so frankly. The whole exchange would have been conducted in undertones and innuendoes, messages containing other messages, all in code. But my mother was a foreigner, and they had to make sure that she had understood.’
‘My God! So what did she do?’
Corinna put her head on one side and smiled. One of the reasons she looked so different from usual, Carla realized, was that she was wearing a lot more eye make-up.
‘Ah, well, that’ll have to wait,’ said Corinna with finality. ‘Enough about my mother for one evening. Your birthday is coming up, you told me. Would you like to go away for the weekend to celebrate?’
‘Where?’
‘What about Taormina? Quite apart from the pleasure of your company, I’d love to get out of town for a while, and away from these young thugs with their radios and guns.’
‘But don’t you want to go with your boyfriend?’ asked Carla coyly.
Corinna Nunziatella gave her a level look.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘But you said you were in love.’
There was a long, awkward silence.
I’m sorry,’ said Carla. ‘I didn’t mean to pry’
‘Taormina’s a charming place!’ Corinna went on eagerly. ‘And I know a very nice hotel, right in the centre but completely secluded. We’ll have to give some thought to getting rid of my escort, but I think it can be managed. If you’re interested, that is. Are you?’
The two women regarded one another for a moment.
‘What have I got to lose?’ said Carla.
In Zen’s experience, Roman taxi drivers came in just two forms, as though cloned: threateningly sullen or manically voluble. A codicil appended to this law dictated that you always got the one least suited to your current state of mind, so it came as no surprise to Zen when the driver who picked him up at Fiumicino turned out to be one of the chattiest and most inquisitive.
Where had Zen flown in from? Sicily! Eh, must be hot there, this time of year! Even hotter than here in Rome! His cousin had married a Sicilian girl, who was definitely hotter than the local article if Maurizio was to be believed! They were living in Belgium now, if you could call it living. And where to? The Fatebenefratelli? Of course! At once, if not sooner! A wonderful hospital. Three of his own relatives had gone under the knife there. But no one in Zen’s family was involved, God willing? A friend? And Zen had come all the way from Sicily to be with him in his hour of need? Now that was real friendship! He himself, Paolo Curtillo, could do with a few friends like that, instead of which he was surrounded by leeches, vampires and bloodsuckers whose only thought was to enrich themselves at his expense. He could tell stories of barefaced treacheries, devious deals and vicious back-stabbing that would make Zen’s blood run cold, but what was the point?
And what about Lazio, eh? That second goal against Fiorentina on Sunday? No? Zen hadn’t seen it? He wasn’t by any chance — ha ha! — a Roma fan, was he? Because if so — ha ha! — he could get out right now and walk the rest of the way. Not that he hadn’t had all sorts in the cab at one time or another. Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, mafiosi — no disrespect intended — secret-service agents, policemen… Even politicians! That was the sort of man that he, Paolo Curtillo, was. As long as you could pay, he would take you wherever you wanted to go, even to Florence or Naples — even if you worked for the tax authorities!
Nevertheless, he had his limits. There was a certain class of human scum that he wouldn’t let past the door of his Mercedes SE500 — over the purchase of which, incidentally, the brother of the aforementioned siciliana had screwed him royally — only a year and a half old, and look at it, all but wrecked, three hundred thousand kilometres on the clock, he’d have to buy another next year and his wife kept telling him ‘secondhand’, but he preferred the peace of mind the warranty gave you — no, there were some people he wouldn’t let in the cab, not for any amount of money, wouldn’t even give the time of day to, and they were the so-called fans of the so-called Roma football club, that clan of degenerate wankers and marginal know-nothings who…
Outside the speeding taxi, the streets gaped, stripped bare by purposelessly bright overhead lights. The air flowing in through the open window was as clammy and oppressive as the sweat-dampened pillow used to suffocate some terrified victim. Where was he? They’d mocked up a city set, but it remained austerely or teasingly generalized, as though it had already served as the establishing archive material for so many knockabout farces and weepy melodramas that it no longer expected anyone to take it seriously as an entity in itself. What sort of show is it tonight? That was the question which every perspective and backdrop immediately asked, like the seasoned professionals they were. You want happy or sad? Sinister or idyllic? We can do either or both, and plenty more besides, but you need to tell us what you want.
‘I don’t know!’ Zen said. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘I do,’ the cabbie replied. ‘You’re a Lazio man! I spotted it right away. That Roma lot are all stiff, rich, well- connected arseholes. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the power, they’ve got everything! The only thing they don’t have is the one thing we do, and that’s balls. Courage. Belief. Pride. A spirit that will never be broken. That’s a Lazio fan for you! We don’t care if we lose and lose for ever. We know they’ve fixed the odds against us and we don’t stand a chance. E ce ne freghiamo! Vero, dottore? Fuck ‘em all! We’re Lazio to the core. We have no choice. That’s how God made us!’
They had by now reached the Piazza di Porta Portuense, and continued along the embankment to the bridge leading across to the island in the middle of the river. Here Zen paid off the taxi, cutting through the driver’s attempts to prolong the conversation, and walked off across the Ponte Cestio. The remnants of the Tiber, reduced to a fetid trickle at this time of year, scuttled away in the deep trench of darkness beneath the bridge.
Half-way across he stopped, his elbows on the parapet, and leaned down over the invisible depths. Grasping his squished packet of Nazionali, he lit up and exhaled a flutter of smoke, an apt correlate to the impoverished stream existing only as a minor sound effect, a susurration emanating from the darkness beneath.
As he tossed his unsmoked cigarette into the gutter, he noticed a rectangular sheet of paper lying there like a discarded letter. In another vain attempt to delay his inevitable arrival, he picked it up. To the touch, the glossy surface revealed itself to be pitted by being crushed between shoe soles and the uneven surface of the pavement. It was just one of those advertising flyers which were thrust on passers-by or stuck under the windscreen wipers of parked cars, DIVENTARE INVESTIGATORE PRIVATO was the shout-line: BECOME A PRIVATE EYE. In the background, red on white, was an image of a vaguely Sherlock Holmesian figure, sporting glasses and a prominent pipe. ‘The courses are open to all detective enthusiasts, and can open the door to a new and fascinating profession,’ continued the copy beneath.
Zen threw the paper aside and continued on his way. Perhaps he should sign up. The only problem was the name of the company running the courses, which called itself the Istituto Superiore di Criminalita. If there truly was a high-level institution of criminality in Rome, Zen was beginning to get the feeling that he already worked for it.
At the hospital, there was no one at reception, and the only person in the waiting area was an elderly derelict, drunk or mad, who was having a violent argument with an invisible opponent. Zen walked off down the gleaming corridor which stretched away, seemingly for ever, the fake marble floor a molten glare of arrogant light. There were doors to either side, but he hesitated to open them lest he interrupt the performances which might be going on inside. They should really have a red warning light, he thought, as they did at radio stations when a studio was on air.
Further down the corridor, a man was mopping the floor in a series of precise spiral motions, each followed by a rinse in the metal bucket resting on a towel, then a final squash on a grid to one side, to remove excess water before the next washing sequence began. Actually, Zen realized, he was still too far away to see clearly what the cleaner was doing, but that was how his mother had always dealt with the large red-yellow slabs of their house in Venice, working her way from the top to the bottom. He’d always assumed that she enjoyed it, the way he did the games he played. Why else would she bother? The mop handle was darkened in the two places where she wrapped her bony, calloused fingers about it. From time to time she would straighten up, press her left hand to the small of her back, and give a mild moan.
