‘Which one?’
‘Any of them. The last one.’
‘Codreanu? King Carol had him killed in 1938. Two years later Antonescu overthrew the monarchy and turned the state into a dictatorship run by the Legion of the Archangel Michael, otherwise known as the Iron Guard.’
Rodolfo yawned again and embraced her.
‘You’re Scheherazade, spinning me crazy stories to keep me awake all night. You and your Ruritania! I don’t believe the place even exists.’
Flavia nodded.
‘It’s never been very real, particularly if you happened to be a “stateless alien” of Hungarian or Jewish origin. But it does exist. And some of the things that happened there definitely weren’t imaginary.’
‘Like what?’
It was Flavia’s turn to rise, though with evident reluctance, to the perceived challenge.
‘Like the sealed rooms. They couldn’t afford gas chambers, so they just locked them up and left them to suffocate.’
Rodolfo leaned over her and took a cigarette.
‘What’s all this got to do with Vincenzo, precisely?’ he enquired in the pedantic tone, unwittingly borrowed from Professor Ugo himself, that he employed in the latter’s classes.
Flavia took a long time to answer, as though her reply had to travel all the way back from the planet she had been observing earlier, situated at a distance that made even light lame.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘I know only that he is very strong. So am I, but I may not be here to take care of you. And you are not strong, caro mio. You’re very sweet and intelligent, but you’re weak. The man you are living with is none of those things. So be careful.’
4
Gemma Santini stood in her nightdress, dispassionately surveying the ravages of time in the mirror above the dressing table. Not too bad, all things considered, was her conclusion. Some decorative details might have succumbed to wear and tear, and the odd patch of pediment gone missing, but the Goths and Vandals had yet to lay waste to everything in sight. In short, she still felt reasonably confident that she could get a date, if it should come to that.
Which it very well might, she reflected. This was an uncomfortable thought, but Gemma had never felt at ease with anything but the truth, however inconvenient it might be. Facts had to be faced, whether they were the facts about her own face, as reflected in the bedroom mirror, or about the man in her life, as reflected in the kaleidoscopic sequence of grotesque and disturbing patterns into which their life together had recently disintegrated. Gemma took a modest pride in being a truth-teller who did not spare herself or others; a realist who, whatever mistakes she might make, could recognise them as such and learn to stop making them. And she was beginning to consider her relationship with Aurelio Zen as just such a mistake.
Another characteristic of hers was that having come to this decision-or at least contemplated the possibility of doing so-she had not the slightest interest, unlike her partner, in endlessly analysing the hows, whats, whens and whys of the situation. At the same time she took a certain satisfaction from knowing that if she had chosen to play this game, she could have beaten Zen hollow. There were, for instance, two crucial factors involved of which he remained totally unaware. One he might be forgiven for, since it was a family matter which Gemma had kept from him. He had only himself to blame for his ignorance, however. If you make it abundantly clear that certain concerns of other people are of not the slightest interest to you, it is only to be expected that they will spare you any details of subsequent developments.
The other factor was Zen’s hypochondria, in the broadest sense of the term, encompassing not only a morbid anxiety about his health but also chronic depression. Of this, Gemma had originally been as unaware as Zen still was that she herself might be going to become a grandmother. Looking back, she had perhaps been a little slow on the uptake, but then she’d had plenty of reasons for wishing it not to be true. But by now the evidence appeared incontrovertible. First there had been Zen’s endless complaints about abdominal pains and a vague sense of lassitude. Then, once it became clear that he had no intention of seeing a doctor of his own free will, Gemma had had to browbeat and virtually strong-arm him into doing so. Diagnosis had proved to be another series of hurdles, involving trips first to the local hospital and then to a private clinic in Rome, where the consultant that Zen was revisiting that day had prescribed a surgical intervention which was reported to have been ‘routine and without complications’. The patient, on the other hand, seemed to regard this everyday procedure as a nightmarish and potentially lethal ordeal comparable with being the first-ever recipient of a brain transplant.
And so it had gone on ever since. Like any pharmacist in a culture where, even by strictly legal criteria, the profession is granted considerable discretionary powers, Gemma had her share of regulars who frequently dropped in to discuss their latest ailments and general state of health before asking her to supply ‘a little something’ to alleviate their symptoms which, however, were ‘not worth bothering the doctor with’. Nevertheless, she had never before encountered a full-blown case of paranoid hypochondria until Zen returned home to recuperate after his discharge from the clinic.
She had initially been indulgent, reasoning that he would soon pull himself together and return to normal. Not only was there still no sign of this, but he seemed to come up with a fresh complaint every day. If it wasn’t backache, it was toothache. When those afflictions lost their novelty, he claimed to have terrible migraines that made sleep impossible, so that he felt-there was a lot about his feelings-utterly exhausted, confused and depressed. He couldn’t think straight, he couldn’t remember anything, and he certainly couldn’t go back to his job. He’d finally realised how important his work was to him, and now he would never be able to work again. In short, he no longer recognised himself. ‘I just don’t feel like me any longer,’ he’d moaned. ‘It’s as if a thread has broken somewhere and the whole fabric is unravelling before my eyes.’ These melodramatic displays had finally pushed Gemma’s patience to its limits, and the result had been some quite lively rows, followed by long periods of sullen silence. Zen had apparently adopted the tactic of pointedly ‘not speaking’ to her, which she was only too happy to reciprocate. But things plainly couldn’t go on like this much longer.
When the phone rang, she nearly didn’t answer it, suspecting that it would be her former lover, as she now thought of him, soliciting a lift from the station, or even from Florence. But the caller turned out to be her son. This was as welcome as it was unusual. It had almost always been Gemma who initiated contact with Stefano, particularly after she had made the mistake of touching ever so lightly on various aspects of his new situation which she privately found worrisome in the extreme. Neither mother nor son had much small talk, but both made a show of chatting briefly about neutral topics such as the weather and Zen’s health before Stefano got to the point.
‘Actually, Lidia and I were wondering if you could come up here some time.’
‘To Bologna?’
‘Well, yes. This weekend, if you’re free.’
‘Has something happened?’
She tried to keep an edge of urgency out of her tone, without complete success. Stefano had obviously been expecting this question.
‘We’ve got lots to tell you, but let’s wait till you come. If you’re able, that is. But it’s hard for us to get away, and…’
‘Don’t be silly! Of course I’ll come.’
She replaced the phone with mixed emotions. On the one hand she was looking forward to getting away from her own domestic problems, on the other she was already concerned about those that might await her at the other end. She could think of at least three main possibilities, none of them good. But they would have to be faced anyway, and a change of scenery was a definite bonus.
The echo of a door shutting in the stairwell, followed by a series of trudging, faltering footsteps, warned her that her significant other had returned. She quickly turned off the light, dived into bed, pulled the covers over her face, and was to all appearances deeply asleep by the time that Aurelio Zen hesitantly pushed open the door.
