aquarium from which she never emerged.
But if she was thus protected from suffocation, the effect on Zen was exactly the reverse. He had never particularly liked the apartment, in a drab, pompous street just north of the Vatican, but in Rome you had to take what you could get. The nearest he had come to a personal feeling for the place had been an appreciation of its anonymity: it had been like living in a hotel. But his mother’s arrival had changed all that, swamping the sparse furnishings provided by the landlord with possessions laden with dull memories and obscure significance. At times Zen felt that he was choking, and then his thoughts would turn to the house in Venice, ideally empty now, the rooms full of nothing but pearly light, intimations of water, the cries of children and gulls. He had promised himself that one day he would retire there, and in the meantime he was often so intensely there in spirit that he wouldn’t have been in the least surprised to learn that the place was believed to be haunted.
From the kitchen came a clatter of pans supplemented by Maria Grazia’s voice alternately berating the ancient stove, encouraging a blunt knife, singing snatches of the spring’s big hit and calling on the Madonna to witness the misery to which her life was reduced by the quality of the vegetables on offer at the local greengrocer’s. He would have to eat something here before sneaking out to meet Ellen. His mother’s birthday was in a week, he realized. He would almost certainly still be away. At all events, he would have to tell her about the change of plans, which meant hearing once again how he should have got a nice job on the railways like his father. Did she really not realize that she told him this every single time he returned? Or was she, on the contrary, having a good laugh at his expense? That was the trouble with old people, you could never be sure. That was the trouble with living with someone you loved more than anyone else in the world, but had nothing in common with now but blood and bones.
‘But I don’t understand. Surely you’re not a real policeman? I mean, you work for the Ministry, don’t you? As a bureaucrat. That’s what you told me, anyway.’
Ellen’s implication was clear: she would never have had anything to do with him if she had thought he was a ‘real’ policeman.
‘And it’s the truth. Ever since I’ve known you that’s what I’ve been doing. Going the rounds of provincial headquarters checking how many paperclips are being used, that sort of thing. Inspection duty, popularly known as Housekeeping, and just about as glamorous. The nearest I’ve got to real police work was smashing the great stolen toilet-roll racket at the Questura in Campobasso.’
She didn’t smile.
‘And before that?’
‘Well, before it was different.’
‘You were a real cop? A police officer?’
‘Yes.’
There was so much shock in her look that he could not tell what else it might contain.
‘Where was this?’ she asked eventually.
‘Oh, various places. Here, for example.’
‘You worked in the Questura, here in Rome?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Christ! Which department?’
She was looking hard at him.
‘Not the Political Branch, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
It was, of course. Ellen’s circle of expatriate acquaintances already regarded it as rather bizarre that she had got involved with an official from the Ministry of the Interior, just as Zen’s few friends were clearly at a loss to know what to make of his liaison with this American divorcee, a classic straniera with her bright little apartment in Trastevere filled with artistic bric-a-brac and books in four languages and her Fiat 500 illegally parked in the street outside. The only answer in either case had been that whatever it was, it worked for both of them. It had seemed to be the only answer necessary. But now, without the slightest warning, Ellen found herself facing the possibility that her official had once been an active member of La Politica: one of those who beat up demonstrating students and striking workers and pushed suspects out of windows, while protecting the neo-fascists responsible for the indiscriminate bombings of public squares and cafeterias and trains.
‘I asked you what you did do,’ she insisted, ‘not what you didn’t.’
Her manner had become that of the tough brutal cop she perhaps assumed him to have been, bullying a statement out of a suspect.
‘I was in the section concerned with kidnappings.’
At this, her features relaxed slightly. Kidnappings, eh? Well, that was all right, wasn’t it? A nice uncontroversial area of police work. Which just left the question of why he had abandoned it for the inglorious role of Ministry snooper, spending half his time making exhausting trips to dreary provincial capitals where his presence was openly resented by everyone concerned, and the other half sitting in his windowless office at the Viminale typing up unreadable and no doubt unread reports. But before Ellen had a chance to ask him about this, Ottavio appeared in person at their table and the subject changed to that of food.
Ottavio outlined in pained tones his opinion that people were not eating enough these days. All they ever thought about was their figures, a selfish, short-sighted view contributing directly to the impoverishment of restaurateurs and the downfall of civilization as we know it. What the Goths, the Huns and the Turks had failed to do was now being achieved by a conspiracy of dietitians who were bringing the country to its knees with all this talk of cholesterols, calories and the evils of salt. Where were we getting to?
Such were his general grievances. His more particular wrath was reserved for Zen, who had told the waiter that he did not want anything to follow the huge bowl of spa¬ ghetti alla carbonara he had forced himself to eat on top of the vegetable soup Maria Grazia had prepared at home.
‘What are you trying to do?’ Ottavio demanded indignantly. ‘Put me out of business? Listen, the lamb is fabulous today. And when I say fabulous I’m saying less than half the truth. Tender young sucklings, so sweet, so pretty it was a sin to kill them. But since they’re dead already it would be a bigger sin not to eat them.’
Zen allowed himself to be persuaded, largely to get rid of Ottavio, who moved on to spread the good word to other tables.
‘And how have you been?’ Zen asked Ellen, when he had gone.
But she wasn’t having that.
‘Why haven’t you told me this before?’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested. Besides, it’s all past history now.’
‘When did all this happen, then?’
He sighed, frowned, rubbed his forehead and grimaced.
‘Oh, I suppose it must be about… yes, about four years ago now. More or less.’
Surely he had overdone the uncertainty grotesquely? But she seemed satisfied.
‘And now they’re suddenly putting you back on that kind of work? This must be quite a surprise.’
‘It certainly is.’
There was no need to conceal that, at any rate!
‘So it was 1979 you quit?’
‘The year before, actually.’
‘And you got yourself transferred to a desk job?’
‘More or less.’
He tensed himself for the follow-up, but it failed to materialize. Fair enough. If Ellen didn’t appreciate how unlikely it was that anyone in that particular section of the Rome police would be allowed to transfer to a desk job in 1978 of all years, he certainly wasn’t going to draw her attention to it.
‘What made you do that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I was just fed up with the work.’
The food was brought to their table by Ottavio’s youngest son, a speedy little whippet who, at fourteen, had already perfected his professional manner, contriving to suggest that he was engaged on some task of incalculable importance to humanity carried out against overwhelming odds under near-impossible conditions, and that while a monument in the piazza outside would be a barely adequate expression of the debt society owed him, he didn’t even expect to get a decent tip.
They ate in silence for several minutes.
