'In the old days the landowner, he arranged everything, decided everything. You couldn't fart without his permission, but at least there was only one of him. Now we've got these new bosses instead, these pen-pushers in the regional government, hundreds and hundreds of them!
And what do they do? Just like the landowner, they look after themselves!'
Turiddu broke off briefly to gulp some more wine and accept one of Zen's cigarettes.
'And when they do finally get round to doing something, it's even worse! The old owners, they understood the land. It belonged to them, so they made damn sure it was looked after, even though we had to break our bums doing the work. But these bureaucrats, what do they know? All they do is sit in some office down in Calgliari and look at maps all day!'
Turiddu's companions sat listening to this harangue with indulgent and slightly embarrassed smiles, as though what he was saying was true enough but it was pointless and rather demeaning to mention it, particularly to a stranger.
'There's a lake up there in the mountains,' Turiddu continued, striking a match casually on his thumbnail. 'A river used to flow down towards the valley, where it disappeared underground into the caves. The rock down here is too soft, the water runs through it. So what did those bastards in Cagliari do? They looked at their maps, saw this river that seemed to go nowhere, and they said,
'Let's dam the lake, so instead of all that water going to waste we can pipe it down to Oristano to grow crops.''
Turiddu broke off to shout something at the pizzeria owner in Sardinian. The young man came over with an unlabeld bottle and four new glasses.
'Be careful,' he warned Zen with humorous exaggeration, tapping the bottle. 'Dynamite!'
'Dynamite my arse,' Turiddu grumbled when he had gone. 'I've got stuff at home, the real stuff, makes this taste like water.'
He filled the four tumblers to the brim, spilling some on the tablecloth, and downed his at one gulp.
'Anyway, what those clever fuckers in Cagliari didn't realize was that all that water from the lake didn't just disappear. It was there, underground, if you knew where fp look for it. All the farms round here were built over caves where the river ran underground. With that and a bit of fodder, you could keep cattle alive through the winter, then let them loose up in the mountains when spring came. But once that fucking dam was built, all the water – our water -went down the other side to those soft idle bastards on the west coast. As if they didn't have an easy enough life already! Oh, they paid us compensation, of course. A few lousy million lire to build a new house here in the village.
And what are we supposed to do here? There's no work. The mountains take what little rain there is, the winter pasture isn't worth a shit. What's the matter? You're not drinking.'
Zen obediently gulped down the liquid in his glass as the Sardinian had done, and almost gagged. It was raw grappa, steely, unfiltered, virtually pure alcohol.
'Good,' he gasped. 'Strong.'
Turiddu shrugged.
'I've got some at home makes this taste like water.'
The door of the pizzeria swung open. Zen looked round and recognized Furio Padedda, who had just walked in with another man. Zen turned back to his new companions, glad of their company, their protection.
'Tell me, why is that bit of forest on the other side of the valley so green? It almost looks as though somenne was watering it.'
Turiddu gave an explosive laugh that turned into a coughing fit.
'They are! We are, with our water!'
He refilled all the glasses with grappa.
'The dam they built, it was done on the cheap. Bunch of crooks from Naples. It leaks, not much but all the time. On the surface the soil is dry, but those trees have roots that go down twenty metres or more. Down there it's like a marsh. The trees grow like geese stuffed for market.'
Zen glanced round at Furio Padedda and his companion, who were sitting near the door, drinking beer.
Despite his drunkenness, Turiddu had not missed Zen's interest in the newcomers.
'You know them?' he demanded with a contemptuous jerk of his thumb at the other table.
'One of them. We met today at the villa where he works.'
Turiddu regarded him with a stupified expression.
'That place? You're not thinking of buying it?'
Zen looked suitably discreet.
'My client will make the final decision. But it seems an attractive house.'
The three men glanced rapidly at each other, their looks dense with exchanged information, like deaf people communicating in sign language.
'Why, is there something wrong with it?'
Zen's expression remained as smooth as processed cheese. Turiddu struggled visibly with his thoughts for a moment.
'It used to belong to my family,' he announced finally.
'Before they took our water away.'
He stared drunkenly at Zen, daring him to disbelieve his story. Zen nodded thoughtfully. It might be true, but he doubted it. Turiddu was a bit of a fantasist, he guessed, a man with longings and ambitions that were too big for his small-town habitat but not quite big enough to give him the courage to leave.
The Sardinian laughed again. 'You saw the electric fences and the gates and all that? He spent a fortune on that place, to make it safe, the poor fool. And it's all useless!'
Zen frowned. 'Do you mean to say that the security system is defective in some way?'
But Turiddu did not pursue the matter. He was looking around with a vague expression, a cigarette whirh he had forgotten to light dangling from his lips.
'Just take my advice, my friend,' he said. 'Have nothing to do with that place. Terrible things have happened there, things you can't wash away with water, even if there was any. There are plenty of nice villas up north, on the coast, houses for rich foreigners. Down here is not the place for them. There are too many naughty boys. Like that one over there, for instance.'
He nodded towards Furio Padedda, who was just finishing his beer.
'Is he a friend of yours?' asked Zen.
Turiddu slapped the table so hard that the bottle nearly fell over.
'Him? He's no one's friend, not round here! He's a foreigner. He's got friends all right, up in the mountains.'
He lowered his voice to a sly whisper.
'They don't grow crops up there, you know. They don't grow anything, the lazy bastards. They just take whatever they want. Sheep, cattle. Sometimes people too. Then they get very rich very quick!'
One of his companions said something brief and forceful in Sardinian. Turiddu frowned but was silent.
A shadow fell across the table. Zen looked up to find Furio Padedda standing over him.
'Good evening, Herr Gurtner,' he said, stressing the foreign title.
'What the fuck do you want, Padedda?' growled Turiddu.
'I just wanted to greet our friend frcm Switzerland here.
Been having a drink, have you? Several drinks, in fact.'
'None of your fucking business,' Turiddu told him.
'I was thinking of Herr Gurtner,' Padedda continued in an even tone. 'He should be careful. Our Sardinian grappa might be a little strong for him.'
He called his companion over.
'Let me introduce my friend Patrizio. Patrizio, Herr Reto Gurtner of Zurich.'
Patrizio held out his hand and said something incomprehensible. Zen smiled politely.
'I'm sorry, I don't understand dialect.'
Padedda's eyes narrowed.
'Not even your own?'
A silence like thick fog fell over the pizzeria. You could feel it, taste it, smell it, see it.
