“Why?”
“It corresponds to the burial places which the Tonna brothers had acquired beside their sister years ago. You understand now?”
“I do. The killer was well informed about their lives.”
“He must have been somebody from the locality.”
“But how did you work out that it was the Mantua cemetery you were looking for?”
“Oh that…” Soneri muttered evasively. “It was all to do with the angels. That’s what they call it in these parts.”
Juvara had no idea what Soneri meant, but he was thankful to be relieved of the tedious task he had been set.
The Tonnas’ niece was not in the bar. Soneri found himself face to face with a tall young man with long hair and one earring.
“You must be the matelot who didn’t quite make it, or have I got that wrong?”
The young man stared at him vacuously, before replying: “I didn’t like it, so I gave it up.”
He did not seem very bright. Perhaps he took after his mother.
“Is your mother-?”
“No, she went into town.” The boy interrupted him curtly, as if to suggest that the conversation was at an end.
Although he had nothing particular in mind to ask, Soneri chose to persist. He had never had much time for braggarts, but there was fun to be had with them. “You didn’t fancy life on the river, then?” he said, deliberately mocking.
“No, maybe a bit at first, but then…” The boy was obviously annoyed.
Half a dozen young people were in the bar, their backs towards them and each one absorbed in a video game. The one behind the bar was not much different from the others.
“What’s your name?”
“Romano.”
Names with Fascist connotations seemed to be a family tradition, although the long hair and earring would hardly have been congenial to Anteo.
“You didn’t like the life or you didn’t like your uncle Anteo?”
“I am not cut out for the solitary life, and anyway, the river is always the same.”
“And yet you carried a lot of cargoes. I’ve been having a look at the rosters…you can’t have been short of cash.”
Romano gave him a swift, nervous glance. He had the air of a pupil who could not answer the teacher’s question. “The barge is very old and wouldn’t have been able to struggle on much longer. The engine eats oil and it needed no end of care and attention…it couldn’t have gone on even if my uncle…”
Soneri thought he picked up a trace of antipathy. He looked out and saw some big, shiny cars parked in a row, an image of the affluence which had invaded the Po valley like a flood. “Were you ever aware of your uncle having received threats? Maybe money problems?”
“He alone had dealings with the clients. He didn’t even have any competition because, considering the times we’re living in and the few landing stages left, it’s much more convenient to transport stuff in lorries. He didn’t realize he was out of date.”
“Is that why you left?”
“In part. Who’s going to put their money in barges? They’ve had their day. Don’t forget, my uncle was around eighty.”
“Did you try to persuade him to settle down on dry land?”
“My mother tried to get me to do it several times, but he would just lose his temper. He said that it was his life and he liked it that way. After a bit, I said good-bye. I couldn’t stay and rot in the middle of a river. I don’t like the Po and I’m not interested in it. And it is a threat. And then all this stuff about its legends and its beauty…young people nowadays couldn’t care less and shove off.”
“Will you leave too?”
“As long as the bar is here, no. I’ve done my best to bring it up to date, with things that people of my age like,” he said, looking over at the video games with their flashing lights and loud music. “In this town, there’s nothing to do but play card games in the Italia and drink Fortanina in Il Sordo, where you’ve got the added attraction of the same old moans and groans from Verdi.”
In the background Soneri heard the irritating, repetitive strains of the video games. “Do you know Barigazzi, Ghezzi and the rest of them?”
Romano gave a disgusted scowl. “Shitty communists!” he hissed.
“At least you agree with your uncle on that one.”
“A bunch of losers who only believe in taxes and stopping other people from getting on in life. If it was up to them, we’d still be going up and down in big boats. They hate us because we own something. Look, they call us shopkeepers, but they’re gushing with sympathy for those foreign beggars who turn up here and start stealing. My uncle was always on the other side. He had his barge and he was always his own boss.”
These were the only sentences Romano spoke with any spontaneity. They were fired out like a belch, having plainly been rehearsed for some time in a brain not much given to rumination.
Soneri got to his feet. Everything now seemed clear to him, but he was not sure if it had much to do with the investigation. He strolled down towards the embankment until, leaving the colonnade behind him, he heard the water pumps at work.
Barigazzi told him that the pumps had been going for a couple of hours. They had arrived that morning from Parma and it had taken some time to get them set up in the best operational position. “A waste of effort,” he said.
The chug-chug of the diesel engines seemed to cause the inlets to shake, and sent up clouds of smoke. To one side, he noticed Arico in earnest conversation with a group of about twenty people. “Who are they?” he said.
“The ones who were evacuated from their houses in the floodplain,” Barigazzi said. “It’s for their sake that this whole shambles is under way, but if they don’t erect some kind of breakwater across the river upstream of the port, they’ll never drain anything. The pump that can empty the Po has yet to be invented.”
Vernizzi joined them to say that the dredger and the excavators were placed sideways across the river to close off the floodplain. Barigazzi spat on the grass and that seemed to be his verdict.
“They want to go back to their houses,” Soneri said.
“Do they really believe that merely getting the water out will solve their problems? The walls are soaked, so when it freezes, they’ll crack. Houses don’t dry out here in the Po valley in winter.”
“Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“If you buy a house on the flat lands, you’ve got to allow for the fact that things will not always go well. Sooner or later, the Po’s going to come and pay you a little visit.”
Arico was perspiring. He had pushed his cap to the back of his head, exposing the beads of sweat on his forehead. The crowd who clustered round him, pacified by seeing the pumps at work, had allowed him a moment’s peace. The people forced out of their homes had moved on to the embankment to watch the water being drained out litre by litre and poured back into the riverbed. Soneri too made his way up to the elevated road, leaving the town centre behind him. Having reached the same point where he had been the previous evening, he crouched among the branches which had been so damaged by the current. He moved to halfway down the embankment and studied the poplar trees with the water lapping around them.
In the silence, the inlet looked like an immense pot from which thin streaks of vapour were beginning to rise, as invisible as the lines used in fishing for barbel. The Canadian poplars made the autumnal twilight draw in more quickly. Squatting on his heels, he waited, rolling the extinguished cigar around his mouth. He lit it, but held the glowing end towards him, as his grandfather had done at the front. He took wartime precautions, but he did not expect to see a warship with cannons, only a solitary boat in a strip of dead water. The light faded at the same pace as the mist thickened. It seemed to him that the time had come.
Soneri became aware of its presence, hearing it before he saw it. He heard the low swishing sound, as when water is poured from a bucket over gravel, then made out the profile of a boatman rowing with few, slow strokes in
