men sat facing each other, she said: “We paid a heavy price for that.”
The Fascists. She could not be talking of anything else.
“What did they do to you?”
“Reprisals, round-ups. Fortunately we could always hear them coming from a long way off and we were able to make our escape along the Po. Sometimes they burned down houses, although there was not much to burn. They even set fire to my home, but we managed to get there just in time. There being no shortage of water.”
“Were there any partisans among you?”
“Yes, but they stayed away so as not to get their families involved. All that were left were women, old folk and children.”
The man made an effort to focus on the commissario, but his eyes were too weak and stared up towards the ceiling, having been misled by the shadows.
“So there were not many people killed, is that so?” Soneri said cautiously, thinking of what San Quirico must have been like, a mass of grey stone suspended over the water, at the mercy of the currents.
“Life’s hardships took many more,” the woman said.
There followed another silence which seemed all the more profound in that house with its dimmed lights, oppressed by a cellar-like darkness. Just as it was becoming embarrassing and Soneri was about to take their unwillingness to speak as a sign that it was time for him to leave, the man said: “The worst thing was when they burned the Ghinelli house, and the women…” The sentence was moving to its climax, but he stopped. His wife made a gesture expressing her displeasure, turned her face away, overcome by the horror brought on by the recollections.
“Was he a partisan?” Soneri said.
“He was killed near Parma. In ’44, I think.”
“And the women?”
The old couple looked at each other, and something like a reproach came into the woman’s eyes. Memories from a far-distant time, long buried and now being hauled out, must have been bitter.
“They… I don’t know how to say it. They used them,” the man said. “There were so many of them. One of the women couldn’t bear the shame and threw herself in the Po near the whirlpools. The rest of them disappeared and were never seen again.”
“What was left for them there?” the old woman wondered. “Their house had been pulled down, and the little they had was destroyed.”
“What about the brother in the partisans?”
“A brave man who was afraid of nothing. Always in the thick of things, whatever the danger. But nothing more was heard of the Ghinelli family after the war.”
“Was there anyone in the partisans from San Quirico who was called ‘the Kite’?”
The old man looked up, trying to locate Soneri’s face, but he turned the wrong way and ended up peering at the lamp, whose light forced him to look down. Instead, palms upwards, he stretched out hands as calloused as hard clay. “There were so many names. The Resistance fighters…the partisans in that formation, what was it called, the Gruppo di Azione Patriottica, kept changing names all the time.”
They heard the sound of a car drawing up outside. It seemed extraordinary that anyone would willingly come back so late to such a place, but a middle-aged, rather stocky man smelling of iron and oil made his entrance. “My son,” the woman said.
The commissario looked closely at him and formed a picture of a deeper solitude yet: two old people with an unmarried son destined to remain on his own and to grow old in a place like this. No-one had invested anything in the future of San Quirico.
As he was taking his leave, all three came out on to the veranda with its glass front and gilt aluminium frame, and from behind the glass the old man gazed at things that were not there. From the window of his car, Soneri kept his eyes on them, still together, until the mist swallowed them up.
The darkness fell quickly as he tried to find his way back on to the main road. After a while, he fell in behind a lorry and resolved to return to the police station. When he entered the office, Juvara looked up in surprise. “Did you turn off your mobile to avoid the journalists?”
Soneri took out his telephone and saw it had no battery left. He must have switched it on by mistake. “Have you been trying for long?”
“Three hours,” Juvara said timidly.
The commissario would have apologized but could not find the words.
“I wanted to reach you to let you know,” the ispettore said, “that I’ve found out who the Kite was.”
“Where?”
“In the Resistance archive in Mantua. He was from Viadana and a member of the Garibaldi Brigade.”
“What was his real name?”
“Libero Gorni. Born 1924, died aged twenty.”
“Where?”
Juvara consulted his notebook, running an eye down the page. “Captured during a skirmish on the banks of the Po, province of Parma, near Torricella,” he said, reading word for word the note he had copied out exactly as he had found it. “He was shot at Sissa four days later, in spite of an attempt to save him by a prisoner exchange.”
“Nothing else?”
“In the original exchange of fire, two partisans fell: Ivan Varoli and Spartaco Ghinelli.”
“Get back on to the archive and see if these two or any other members of the partisan group had relatives among the combatants. Ask if they are known to be still alive and if so, where they can be found.”
Seated in front of the commissario’s desk, his great belly wedged between the arms of the chair, the ispettore favoured his superior with a puzzled glance. “You don’t really think,” he stuttered. “It’s more than sixty years ago…”
Soneri made no reply. He was not sure himself about what he had just told Juvara he wanted done.
“It’s because of the note. The one that referred to this Kite. It has to mean something.”
The moment Soneri was left on his own, the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver impatiently and heard the voice of the questore. The attention lavished on him by the television crews had obviously acted on him like amphetamines. His ego had swelled, as was clear from the waves of rounded rhetorical frills, each as neatly finished as an embroidered quilt. There were even grand words of praise for Soneri, more for having left the stage to him alone than for his having had the intuition to conduct an investigation along the banks of the Po in the first place.
When he put the telephone down Soneri should have been pleased, but instead he was nagged by a sense of unease. No-one was more aware than he that the conclusion was not yet within sight. He lit a cigar and tried to calm himself, but at that moment the strains of “Aida” rang out. He sat indecisively for a moment, the mobile in his hand, until the noise irritated him so much that he decided to press the button.
“Commissario, I’m ready to collect payment of your debt.”
“Angela, could we not just spend the evening in town? I’ll take you to dinner.”
“It’s a long time since you called me by my name. Pity the only places you know are places to eat in. You measure out your life in restaurants.”
“We could go macrobiotic or vegetarian.”
“No. I prefer to be afloat.”
There was no changing her mind. They would only quarrel and he had no appetite for a barrage of wounding remarks. As it was, his mood was upsetting him more than any ulcer.
“But there’ll be people at the boat club until ten. Can’t we just stop off somewhere for a bite to eat?”
“No, you know I love running risks.”
“We’ll go in your car. Mine’s too recognizable.”
Walking under the arches of the town, along the less-travelled streets so as not to be seen, made him feel like a teenager again. Angela, hugging him close, went on tiptoe to avoid making any noise with her heels.
“Be ready for criticism,” she warned in a whisper.
“Haven’t I had enough already?”
“All my criticisms are good-natured. I might bark a lot, you know, but I don’t bite. I meant from your superiors.”
