shady going on aboard that yacht. And Vanna is on their case. And you know something else?”
“What?”
“In my opinion the people on the
Fazio sat down.
“Tell me everything,” he said wearily.
“How should we proceed?” Fazio asked after he’d heard the whole story.
“Well, while we know plenty about the
“I can look into that myself.”
“Fine, but you have to start somewhere. Tell you what. Go to the Harbor Office and talk to Lieutenant Belladonna, who is a woman. Have her fill you in on everything they know about the
He didn’t feel like going there personally in person. He couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Laura, especially after she’d surely spent the night with Mimi.
“And what if she asks me why I need all this information?”
“I think you can speak freely with her. Tell her we have strong suspicions the killing occurred aboard the cruiser.”
It was half past twelve when the outside line rang. It was Mimi Augello.
“She’s taken the bait.”
“In what sense?”
“In the way that we wanted. Laura took me aboard and then left immediately. I told the lie about the fuel and had them fill a jerry can with a sampling. La Giovannini didn’t leave me alone for a minute. Among other things, she convinced me she really knows her engines.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“From the wharf. I came off the boat to put the jerry can in my car. But I have to go aboard again because I’ve been kindly invited to stay for lunch. The lady has set her sights on me and won’t let up.”
“What do you think you’ll do next?”
“The captain will also be there at lunch, but I’m hoping to find a moment where I can ask her out to dinner, alone, tonight. I think she’ll accept. I get the impression the lady wants to eat me alive.”
“Bear in mind, Mimi, that La Giovannini has gone and protested to Tommaseo that the yacht is being detained illegally. Tommaseo wanted to give her permission to leave right away, but I got him to give me one more day. So time is running out. Got that?”
“Got it.”
It was a beautiful day. The sky looked as if it had received a new coat of paint during the night, and yet the moment he got in his car to go eat at Enzo’s, a sudden bout of melancholy descended on him with such force that everything-sky, buildings, people-turned grey all at once, as on the darkest of winter days.
Even his appetite, already skimpy, suddenly deserted him. No, there was no point in going to the trattoria; the only thing to do was to go home, unplug the telephone, undress, get in bed, and pull the sheets up over his head and blot out the whole world. But what if, for example, Fazio had something important to tell him?
He got back out of the car and went to see Catarella.
“If anyone asks for me, I’m at home. I’ll be back at work around four.”
He got back in the car and drove off.
Naturally, though covered so thoroughly by the bedsheets he looked like a mummy, he couldn’t fall asleep.
There was no wonder as to the cause of this bout of melancholy. He knew it perfectly well. It even had a name: Laura. Perhaps the moment had come to consider the whole matter in the most dispassionate manner possible, provided, of course, that he could manage to be dispassionate.
He had liked Laura a great deal at first sight. He’d felt something emotional, something deep, almost moving, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the days of his youth.
But this probably wasn’t something that happened only to him. No doubt it happened to a great many men well past the age of fifty. But what was it? Nothing more than a desperate, and useless, attempt to feel young again, as if the feeling alone could wipe out the years.
And this was precisely what was muddying the waters, because he could no longer tell whether this feeling was real and genuine or false and artificial, since it arose in fact from the illusion of being able to turn the clock back. Hadn’t the same thing happened to him with the equestrienne [11]? With Laura, however, he hadn’t had a chance to put his thoughts in order. He was letting himself be carried away by the current he himself had created when the unforeseeable had happened.
That is, when Laura had told him she felt the same attraction to him. And how had he reacted?
He’d felt simultaneously scared and happy.
Happy because the girl loved him? Or because he’d succeeded, despite his age, in making a young woman fall in love with him?
There was a pretty big difference between the two.
And didn’t fearing the consequences actually mean that the intensity of his feeling was weak enough to allow him still to consider it rationally?
In matters of love, reason either resigns or sits back and waits. If it’s still present and functioning, and forces you to consider the negative aspects of the relationship, it means it’s not true love.
Or maybe that wasn’t quite the way things were.
Maybe the fear had arisen in him from the very feeling he’d had when hearing Laura’s words. The sense, that is, that he wasn’t up to the task. That he no longer had the strength to bear the violence of a genuine emotion.
This last consideration-perhaps the most accurate so far-gave rise to a suspicion in him.
When he’d thought of using Laura to put Mimi in contact with the owner of the yacht, did he not, perhaps, have another, inadmissible, intention?
For this last question he had no answer.
He lay in bed for another half hour or so, then got up.
But he’d achieved a fine result. His melancholy, instead of dissipating, had increased and turned into a black mood. “Black mood at sunset,” as Vittorio Alfieri once put it.
11
