'Shame. I was there a few years ago. A private trip to visit relatives in Chicago. You'd have liked it.' Zen sniffed.
'I've never had any desire to go anywhere that wasn't part of the Roman Empire.'
As soon as the sentence was spoken, he realized how pompous it sounded. De Angelis looked at him in a way that made Zen realize suddenly that their friendship, if not over, had at least shifted in some important way. A moment later, he thought: he's envious.
'But if you'd been around at the time of the Roman Empire,' De Angelis replied, 'where would you have wanted to live? Carthage? Barcelona? Marseilles? London? Byzantium? Antioch? Alexandria? All very nice provincial cities with a low crime rate, state-of-the-art amphitheatres and immaculately maintained forums, and regularly topping the list of 'Ten Most Livable Cities in the Empire'. No, you'd have wanted to live in Rome, at the heart of the beast, where the horrible action was. Well, today America is Rome.'
Zen nodded abstractedly.
'Have you heard about La Biacis?' De Angelis murmured. The last thing Zen wanted to hear about was Tarda Biacis, yet another former girlfriend who'd toyed with him for a while and then decided she could do better. But it would of course have been fatal to display the least reluctance to hear whatever Giorgio had to say. 'How is she?' he asked.
'Rich’ De Angelis replied. 'And I mean seriously rich. Remember that start-up company she founded to export authentic food and drink from the Friuli? Well, she branched out and started handling small quality producers in other areas of the country, nearly all in the south. When the Internet came along she saw her chance, hired a firm to design a killer web site, and started selling online. Agrofrul – now branded as Delizie – got big write-ups in a bunch of those glossy' food-porn mags, and the next thing you know she was deluged with orders from all over the world. I mean she was shipping Calabrian honey to America and Sicilian bottarga di tonno to Japan!'
Zen smiled thinly. He was thinking of his interview with Borunn Sigurdardottir, the Icelandic policewoman. Maybe Tania's private impresa, which she had used to run from her desk at the Ministry, had been the inspiration for the cover story he had given her. He hadn't thought consciously about Tania for years, though, and certainly didn't want to hear about her now. Nevertheless, he nodded.
'Good for her’
De Angelis laughed.
'No, no. That’s just the set-up. Then she got really smart. Just before the dot.com market crashed, she sold out to a multinational distributor looking for a high-end flagship line.'
'But why would she do that, if the business was so successful?'
De Angelis held up his right hand, the fingers outspread. Zen shrugged impatiently.
'Cinque miliardi,' pronounced De Angelis distinctly. 'Five billion lire. She'd already quit her job here, of course. The last I heard, she's bought a fabulous abandoned monastery near her native village in the Friuli and is restoring it as a luxury hotel and resort for the discerning rich.'
Zen nodded vaguely. De Angelis slapped him on the stomach with the back of his hand.
'You should have stuck with her, Aurelio. Then you could have told Brugnoli where to put this McJob he's dreamt up for you.'
He glanced at his watch. 'Well, I must be going.'
'All right. But keep in touch. Come up to Versilia for the weekend some time. I'll be there till the end of the month. Bring the wife and kids too, if you want. There's plenty of room’
‘I might take you up on that.'
'You should.'
The two men shook hands with a certain constraint, and then Zen walked back to the railway station, where he picked up his bags from the left-luggage office and took a cab to his home in the Prati district.
It was as his 'home' that he still thought of it, but the moment he turned the key in the lock and stood on the threshold, he realized that here, too, things had changed. A shaft of sunlight created a rectangle of brilliance on the floor, casting the rest of the room into comparative obscurity. The light looked as still and solid as a marble plinth, and yet it was changing even as he gazed at it. That was the real problem, he thought. The boundary between the darkness and the light was shifting all the time, but too subtly for us to be aware of it, except when it was too late.
He had not been in the apartment for almost a year, and then only to make the necessary arrangements for his mother's funeral. Every horizontal surface was covered in a fine layer of dust, while cobwebs hung like wisplets of high grey cloud from the ceiling. Maria Grazia, the housekeeper and latterly Giuseppina's nurse, had long wanted to retire to her native village, but given the demands of Zen's job and his mother's state of health had loyally agreed on various occasions to stay on 'for the time being'. Following Signora Zen's death, however, she had finally given her notice. Oddly, Zen found himself missing her presence more than he did that of his mother.
He lifted the phone and was greeted by silence. Evidently it had been cut off for non-payment of bills. He walked over to the kitchen door and flicked the light switch. Nothing. Probably the gas and water didn't work either. This bothered him less than the phone being dead. He already felt sufficiently isolated and forgotten, an honorary member of the huldufolk.
On instinct, he dug his mobile phone out of his baggage and dialled Gilberto Nieddu.
The number rang and rang. Zen was just about to give up when a voice answered.
'Fuck off’ it said. 'I don't care any more, understand? It’s over. Just leave me alone, all right? Is that too much to ask?'
'You're not talking to me, Gilberto’ said Zen.
'Who's this?'
'Aurelio.'
'Who?'
Zen didn't answer. There was a silence. 'Oh. Yes. Hi, Aurelio.'
Well, thought Zen, this is different. Since emerging from his shadow persona as Pier Giorgio Butani, everyone he'd spoken to so far had been all over him with questions and theories and opinions about what had or hadn't happened to him in Sicily and since. Yet here was Gilberto, his closest friend, acting as though Zen had just got back from a week's walking holiday in the Dolomites.
'So who did you think was calling?' Zen asked.
'Oh, it doesn't matter.'
'What are you doing?'
'Drinking.'
'Drinking what?'
'Who cares?'
'Are you all right, Gilberto?' 'No.'
'Why? What’s happened?'
'Nothing. It doesn't matter’
Zen took a deep breath.
'Where are you?'
'At home.'
'Can I come round?'
'Suit yourself.'
'In an hour or two?'
'Whenever.'
'I've been travelling all night and I'm exhausted.' 'So you're not feeling chirpy? Good. I couldn't stand chirpiness.'
'I don't think there's much risk of that.'
Gilberto hung up. Zen followed suit, wishing he hadn't called in the first place. Since leaving the police and setting up on his own account in the security and electronic surveillance business, Nieddu's career had been a roller-coaster ride of success, failure and close brushes with the law. When Zen had last been in touch, enlisting his friend's help in extricating himself from a difficult situation he had found himself in during his posting to Catania, the situation had seemed to be improving. This latest contact seemed to confirm that, once again, the Sardinian had not overlooked an opportunity to plunge himself back into crisis.
