“Gualerzi is not the type who welcomes mediation, as you will have noticed.”
“I know, but up there, on his own, running short of ammunition, hungry… and in addition, I understand he’s seriously ill.”
“He’s on his way out.”
“Exactly. There’s no point in him carrying on with this resistance. He’d never surrender to us, but you’re from here, and then there’s your father…”
“Have you seen the documents?” the commissario asked anxiously.
“Yes, I have, but they don’t say very much. At least they don’t resolve the doubt that’s been gnawing at you.”
Soneri’s expression darkened.
“I believe the Woodsman disposed of most of the papers,” the captain continued. “Or perhaps he’s hidden them somewhere.”
The commissario imagined Gualerzi making off with all he could carry to prevent the past from being exhumed, but once again Bovolenta’s words took him by surprise. “I’m asking you to go, as much because of your personal interest as anything else.”
Soneri needed only a few seconds to think it over before replying, “I will go.”
11
Since he wanted to be well on his way before the sun appeared behind the mountains, Soneri was out before daybreak. Bovolenta had promised him a truce until midday, after which, if the Woodsman had not given himself up, they would resume their pursuit of him. What worried him was not the carabinieri but that obsessive question to which he had found no reply. He was convinced Gualerzi would not accept any terms for surrender, and he feared he knew how the story would end. That was another reason why he was in a hurry.
He headed for Boldara then, with the first, faint morning light, turned onto the path to Malpasso. The ascent was gentle enough, but he was walking into a bitterly cold wind which whistled angrily around him and battered against the side of Montelupo which the sunlight had reached. Around the cabins, he saw figures making their way down, off the path, and he assumed these were the last of the herdsmen leaving before the snows blocked the passes, and taking advantage of the hours when the carabinieri were not likely to be patrolling the mountain. Twenty minutes further on, the dark, lonely outlines of the mountain bar appeared. Baldi had made a thorough job of closing the place down. The doors and windows were boarded up with wood covered by metal panels to prevent the snow knocking down the shutters, the roof was reinforced by wooden planks for protection against the north wind and the drainage channels had been dug deeper to prevent damage in the thaw.
He walked round the bar, which appeared impregnable. To the west, he saw a bank of thick clouds, and although they were still far off, he was sure they would soon arrive overhead to bury Montelupo and all its stories. He stood for a while gazing at the summit against the shifting landscape of late autumn. He felt he was engaged in a farewell ceremony which had nothing to do with the seasons, but had everything to do with himself. It was the feeling he had already had with Sante and the people in the village, but now the experience was more violent, like a time of mourning.
He was overwhelmed by a sense of deep foreboding, but recognised the need to make immediate contact with the Woodsman. He started calling out, yelling into the wind at the top of his voice. That too was an act of violence for a man accustomed to subdued tones or to the soundless words of his long debates with himself. He hoped the Woodsman would come out, to alleviate his solitude and hold back time a few seconds longer.
He heard Dolly bark at the hut where the logs were stored. The door opened outwards and Soneri saw a powerfully built man bend under the frame of the door and then straighten up again. The Woodsman was even bigger than he had imagined. No-one could fail to be intimidated by that giant with the long beard, heavy step and hands like shovels. He held a rifle which looked like a toy next to his enormous body. Plainly distrustful, he stopped a few metres from the commissario.
“I’m on my own,” Soneri said, raising his hands slightly.
“I know,” Gualerzi replied in his baritone voice. “I’ve been watching you for the last half an hour coming up Malpasso.”
Soneri glanced at the ammunition belt which Gualerzi was wearing round his waist and saw he had only a few cartridges left.
“If you’ve been sent by that carabiniere officer, you can tell him he’s wasting his time,” the Woodsman said, in a tone of terrifying calmness. At that moment, the sun rose over the heights to the east of Montelupo and lit up the peak where the bar was. Gualerzi glanced at the light, while the freezing wind blew around him without causing him to shiver.
“It wasn’t him who sent me. I’ve wanted to meet you for some time. It’s a personal matter.”
For a second, the Woodsman showed some curiosity, but immediately repressed that feeling. “I never wait for anyone. Up here, nobody makes appointments. You might happen to bump into someone, that’s all.”
“You waited for me this time.”
“Today is different. The time has come — ” he stopped abruptly.
“The time for what?”
The Woodsman waved vaguely towards the west, indicating the white clouds on the horizon which were growing ever more menacing. “It’s going to snow tonight, and that’ll make everything more difficult. For a few days, you’ll be able to walk about in the woods, and then not even there. The snow betrays you,” he said, ambiguously.
It was clear he had lost the thread of his thought. The explanation had done nothing to calm him down.
“How are things?” the commissario said, to relieve the tension.
“There’s no escape for me. There isn’t for anyone. Sooner or later, it comes to us all. The doctor said it was the fault of the coal I’ve been breathing in ever since I was a child.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to get treatment?” the commissario suggested tentatively.
“That makes no sense now,” the Woodsman said brusquely. “I’ve killed a carabiniere. I’d end up suffering in a police cell. It’s better to put up with the pain where I’ve always been. We all have the right to die in the place we were born, don’t we? My own earth on top of me and a chestnut tree where the sun rises in the morning as my gravestone.”
“Palmiro Rodolfi too…” Soneri started to say, stopping in mid-sentence.
The Woodsman shrugged. “They put him in a little hole in a cemetery wall, and closed it off with cement. I don’t want to end up like that. I want to draw my last breath in the fresh air and then give myself to the earth.”
“We could come to an arrangement with the carabinieri,” Soneri said, thinking aloud.
“I did not kill Palmiro’s son,” he growled, in a tone calculated to arouse fear. “He ruined me, but he did the same to lots of other people. If anything, I was bitter with Palmiro himself. He cheated and tricked me too often.”
“Did you go looking for him recently? Did you want him to repay you?”
“I hadn’t the money to get my wife looked after. She could have been saved, not me.”
“So you shot at him.”
The Woodsman glowered at the commissario, angered at what was turning into an interrogation, but he must have decided it did not matter any more. “Yes, I shot at him, and he shot at me. But it was misty, and Palmiro’s cunning.” There was a pause before he asked, “How did you know?”
“Once you came close to getting me. Above Boldara. I was looking for mushrooms.”
“In the mist, nobody goes out in the woods above Boldara, except him and me. There was a game we used to play with our catapults as boys. One hid, trying not to make any noise, and the other one fired his sling at him if he heard him. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”
“You were both so sure of yourselves that you didn’t stop to think someone else might be there?”
“There are some places nobody goes when it’s misty. Nobody knows Montelupo well enough, not even Volpi, the gamekeeper.”
