else, these things happened, she’d been meaning to tell him for some time, she hoped they would remain friends. This was what he had glimpsed earlier, the answer to the question of what was making her act in this odd way, of what it was that had taken her over. The only possible answer was another man.
‘The thing is, I’m going home, Aurelio.’
But you are at home, he thought. Then he realized what she meant.
‘For a holiday?’
She shook her head.
‘You’re joking,’ he said.
She walked over to the glass jars where she kept rice and pulses, pulled out an envelope tucked under one and handed it to him. ‘Whether you travel for business or pleasure, MONDITURIST!’ it read. ‘Our business is to make travelling a pleasure!’ Inside there was an airline ticket to New York in her name.
‘I decided one night last week. For some reason I had woken up and then I couldn’t get back to sleep. I just lay there and thought about this and that. And it suddenly struck me how foreign I feel here, and what that was doing to me.’
She paused, biting one fingernail.
‘People who have been exiles too long seem to end up as either zombies or vampires. I don’t want that to happen to me.’
There was a roar from the street outside as a metal shutter was hauled down, then a gentler rumble as it was eased into position and the lock attached. The greengrocer opposite was closing up and going home to his family.
‘I think we should get married,’ Zen said, to his total astonishment.
Ellen gave a yelp of laughter.
‘Married?’
One of the other tenants had put on some rock music whose bass notes penetrated to where they sat as a series of dull thumps. Somewhere else, seemingly quite unrelated to them, a tinny melody line faintly wailed.
‘You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined that you might say this, Aurelio,’ Ellen sighed. ‘I always thought that it was the one thing needed to make everything right.’
‘It is. It will.’
But his voice lacked conviction, even to himself.
He looked around slowly, conscious that all this was about to join his huge gallery of memories. The latest addition to our collection. A significant acquisition. ‘They’re turning the whole city into a museum,’ Cinzia Miletti had complained. But it wasn’t only cities that suffered that fate.
‘I’d better go.’
She made no attempt to stop him.
‘I’m sorry, Aurelio. I really am.’
The rain had almost stopped. Zen stood waiting at the tram stop, his mind completely blank. The shock of what had just happened was so severe that he found it literally impossible to think about. The last thing he could clearly remember was eating the hamburger and telling Ellen about the Miletti case. He had not mentioned the most recent development, which had occurred just the day before.
The arrest of Ivy Cook had had the unusual effect of uniting both sides of the political spectrum. On the one hand there was talk of a carefully orchestrated attempt by the forces of the Left to undermine the Milettis, on the other of a typically cynical solution by the Right to the embarrassing problem of the family’s involvement in Ruggiero’s death. In short, whatever your political leanings, Ivy Cook appeared as a humble employee who was being made to carry the can for others, a foreigner without influence or power, the perfect scapegoat. Di Leonardo, the Deputy Public Prosecutor, contributed to the debate with some widely quoted off-the-record criticisms of ‘serious irregularities in the procedures adopted by the police’, Senator Gianpiero Rossi publicly expressed the opinion that the tape recording was inadmissible evidence since it had neither been authorized by the judiciary nor made on official equipment, while Pietro Miletti flew back from London to demand an end to ‘the continual harassment of the Miletti family and their dependants’. The net result was that Rosella Foria had finally granted an application for Ivy Cook’s release on bail pending a full investigation. The case still hung in the balance, but Ivy was free.
The tram arrived and Zen was rumbled and jolted across the Tiber, over the Aventine hill and past the Colosseum to Porta Maggiore. He then walked three blocks to the street where Gilberto Nieddu lived with a dark- haired beauty who treated him with bantering humour, as though Gilberto’s clumsy attempts to woo her aroused nothing but her amusement. In fact they had been married eight years and had four children, who sat open- mouthed and wide-eyed as Uncle Aurelio described the dramatic end of his relationship with ‘ l’americana ’.
Rosella Nieddu diagnosed a lack of proper food and made Zen eat a bowl of ravioli, while Gilberto opened a bottle of the smooth and lethal rose made by a relative of his. Then the children were packed off to bed and the adults spent the evening playing cards.
‘Unlucky at love, lucky at cards,’ Gilberto joked to his friend, but as usual Rosella Nieddu easily beat both of them, even with one eye on the television. Then the phone rang, and while the Sardinian went to answer it Rosella changed channels for the late movie, catching the end of the late-night newscast. There were stories about the seizure of a shipment of heroin by the Customs in Naples, a conference on the economic problems of the Third World due to open in Rome the following afternoon and a trade fair promoting Italian agricultural machinery which had just opened in Genoa.
‘ And finally the main news again. In a dramatic develop ment in the Miletti murder case, Signora Ivy Cook, the foreign woman formerly being held in connection with this crime today failed to report to the police in Perugia as laid down in the conditions of her release. According to as yet unconfirmed reports she may already have left the country. Investigators are attempting to trace the person who chartered a light aircraft from Perugia to an airfield in Austria late this afternoon. And now for a round-up of the weekend sports action here’s…’
‘I have to go,’ Zen said as soon as Gilberto came back. ‘Mamma will get anxious.’
It had stopped raining. He started to walk home through the almost deserted streets. The chartered plane to Austria would no doubt have been followed by an international flight to South Africa, from which she could not be extradited. Ivy’s plans would have been laid for days, carefully worked out in the course of her meetings with Silvio. Her passport had been impounded, so he must have obtained false papers for her as well as putting up bail and arranging the flight. Money would have been no problem. All sorts of people would have been happy to contribute financially to ensure that the contents of the famous safety-deposit box vanished with Ivy.
So she was in the clear. For Silvio the consequences were likely to be more serious, at least in the short run. The fickle public mood was about to turn very ugly indeed. Important people had been made to look foolish. The Miletti name would no longer be enough to protect Silvio. Her hands freed, Rosella Foria would have him arrested and charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The case would drag on and on, getting bogged down in tedious details until everyone had lost interest, and then in a year or so, when the whole thing had been forgotten, Silvio would be quietly released for lack of evidence.
Suddenly Zen felt something give way inside his chest. It’s my heart, he thought, I’m dying. Unable to go on walking, or even stand upright, he bent over a parked car, fighting for breath. Only very gradually did he realize what was happening. He was weeping. It was the first time for years, a brutal and convulsive release, as painful as retching on an empty stomach.
‘Waiting for a bum-fuck, grandpa?’
Hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him round.
‘Rim-job you’re after, is it? Up from the provinces for a bit of fun, or are you local? I can fix you up, no problem. Not personally, you understand, but for the right money up front I can lay on a kid who went down on Pasolini. Meanwhile, let’s check your financial standing. Wallet, fuckface! Wallet!’
A torch flashed in his face. Then he heard a gentle chuckle.
‘Well, well, dottore, what a coincidence! Don’t you remember me? That time on the train a few weeks back, with the old fart who tried to act tough.’
He looked more closely at Zen.
‘But what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What have the bastards done to you?’
